N was curious about what the chief Russian propagandist and a major TV star Solovyov was saying in his most recent shows about Russia’s war against Ukraine. He watched a bunch of shows and was very surprised to see that Ukraine was mentioned infrequently and with very little feeling. The main target of Solovyov’s vitriol was Western Europe and the US.

This is not new. By the end of the 1990s the anti-US propaganda in Russia was enormously stronger than during the Soviet era. In the Soviet era, almost nobody believed it. In late 1990s, people started to believe. After 30 years of hearing truly horrid things about us on a daily basis, it’s not surprising that Russians hate us with an all-abiding passion.

This is why, to people who complain that supporting Ukraine costs the US too much money, I always respond that it will be more expensive when Russia nukes New York. It would have cost cheaper to prevent that if Obama did what Biden is doing today back in 2014. Every year you let pass without doing anything about this tumor that Russia has become, the deadlier it gets. We can pout and “yeahbut” it to death but reality can’t be argued away.

A very interesting article on whether the Big Bang really happened. Unfortunately, the author spoils it with utterly misplaced accusations of “censorship,” but those parts of the article can be safely skipped.

Unfortunately, it’s now fashionable to scream “injustice, persecution, bigotry, cancel culture, and censorship” whenever one doesn’t get the desired results instantly. Censorship and cancel culture exist but it’s counterproductive to claim “I’m being censored and persecuted” when the only reality is that you failed to do your work.

In wartime, the number of marriages in Ukraine went up dramatically, and the number of divorces fell off a cliff. 103,903 couples got married in the past 6 months. Only 7,632 couples got divorced.