Bottled Diplomacy

‘THE ODYSSEY’ will end its theatrical run by earning $1.8B globally. The highest grossing R rated film of all time.

Nikola Pasic Square, Belgrade. Right now. Mostly young men, wearing balaclavas and masks. They are arriving in small groups and moving between the square and the park in front of the National Assembly.

Kremlin aide Ushakov just confirmed what was widely believed, the US agreed to force Ukraine to capitulate: "Before, it seemed after Anchorage, that the U.S. administration might be able to dictate something and force Kyiv to comply. But so far, this hasn't really worked out"

The regime's security forces are being deployed at various key locations throughout Belgrade, including the electoral commission and public television. Looks like Vucic has no intention of leaving peacefully. This will be a difficult night for Serbia.

The polling stations are closing soon in Serbia. The high turnout (just Iver 70%) clearly shows that the days of the Vucic-regime are numbered. The fear grows on the streets tho, hence more and more provokateurs arriving to Belgrade, apparently to deploy clashes around 9pm.

In New Belgrade, the elections have reached the level of pure comedy. Under the headquarters of the ruling party (SNS), a bus pulled up with planted "ghost voters." One of the residents decided to block the intersection to stop them. The police reacted lightning-fast: they grabbed him and shoved him into the back seat of the patrol car. What did the detainee do? He opened the door on the other side of the car, got out, and simply walked away. And the police? They didn't even run after him. They too can clearly see what's happening and how this will end today. When you can exit a patrol car more freely than an elevator, it means the system's dignity is flat on its back.

For Serbians, ousting the Russian-backed Vucic regime after its decade of looting the country is serious business, so serious that some come directly from their own wedding to cast ballots.

Things heating up in Serbia as the election hasn't gone as the Russian-backed Vucic regime planned, now pouring troops onto the streets, here readying (in true soviet fashion) to seizing the city's TV station.

The difference between Ukrainian armed forces and Russian in how they treat their own.

It is possible that the rumors relating to a new batch of European-made Stormshadow / SCALP EG missiles to Ukraine might be true. Another factory in Russia has been struck this afternoon, this time in Yelets, Lipetsk region. Several impacts have been reported. The area has been cordoned off and ambulances are rushing in. This comes only 2 days after a factory belonging to Russia's military industrial complex in Oryol was targeted and shot ablaze.

First satellite image of the aftermath of the Ukrainian strike on the 'Proton' plant in Oryol by planet: a building where semiconductor silicon wafers were manufactured and an adjacent one where microchips for Russian weapons systems were produced.

When a Chinese person understands the Russian situation better than all the so-called experts on talk shows: «Looking at the current situation, this Russian operation is like being dealt a perfect starting hand and managing to play it so badly that you blow the whole thing to hell. If it hadn't invaded Ukraine, today, in the great global poker game of artificial intelligence, alongside the United States and China, Russia would very likely have been there too. To develop AI and train large-scale models, the underlying logic is: consume an enormous amount of electricity, cool everything down, and assemble tons of hardware. In the last two years, data center managers around the world have been complaining about their electricity bills and cooling system costs. And Russia? It's as if God himself served it all up on a silver platter: in Siberia, you just open a window to get a top-class natural air conditioner. The country has water, nuclear power, and low-cost gas. No wonder, when cryptocurrency mining was a thing, everyone chose Siberia. Moreover, Russians are strong in math and algorithms. In international programming competitions and on Kaggle, in the machine learning field, Russians regularly crush the competition. And, outside the United States and China, Russia is one of the few countries to have developed its own complete digital ecosystem: there's Yandex for searches, VK for social networks, plus Telegram. And now there's Nebius, the rising star in the computing power sector, whose shares have skyrocketed on the American stock exchange. Its core is made up of the very same Russians who worked at Yandex. If, after the pandemic, Russia had made land, cold air, and low-cost electricity available, then invited China—that infrastructure war machine—to contribute to building high-voltage lines, factories, and fiber-optic networks, while also attracting European capital to construct server factories, the Russians could have turned themselves into Eurasia's largest "supercomputing factory." While the United States and China faced off like gods, Russia could have sat in the middle and collected tolls from both sides. And instead, how did it end up? Putin slapped his thigh and decided: no, I have to conquer those two little pieces of land. Putin's mind has remained firmly trapped in the old nineteenth-century Tsarist dream of "border expansion." What does it matter to have a sea outlet or a military buffer zone? Even if they were truly necessary, there are a thousand ways to get them. But we're in the 21st century! The struggle for global dominance today is fought over semiconductor supply chains, the most advanced algorithms, and the conquest of the best high-tech talent. And you go and get stuck in the Donbass for a couple of patches of muddy land and some abandoned steel mills, mortgaging the future of the entire country in exchange. As soon as the first shots rang out, everything collapsed. The brightest programmers and engineers fled overnight. Yandex's technological core had to undergo a brutal amputation to avoid sinking: it severed ties with the motherland to rebuild itself in Europe under the name Nebius. Putin terrified the country's most forward-thinking people, turning them into refugees and startup founders abroad. On the eve of the artificial intelligence explosion, the whole world is racing frantically to boost its computing capacity and desperately seeking a ticket to the new industrial revolution. And Russia's leader is dragging tens of thousands of people down into the mud, fighting a World War I-style trench war, a hundred years later.»

Z-blogger and rapper Misha Mavashi just died suddenly in Russia. He'd raised money for Russian occupiers and was sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court to 8 years with asset confiscation for funding the war. Russian media claim Mavashi allegedly shot himself in the head by accident while cleaning a gun.

Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter pilot Air Davy shared footage of people in Kharkiv Oblast waving to him as he flew past on his way back from a combat mission in Donetsk Oblast.

Trump admin goes for the all-time record breaking level of bullshit in attemot to appease their Russian master, now saying that Ukraine kidnaps Russian kids.. Insane.

A large, carefully planned Russian propaganda operation appears to be underway. Having starved people in the town of Oleshky for months, Russia, withe US help, will now "liberate" it. Source.

Julian Assange sides with pro russian contrarian-bros.

I think Russian propaganda in Italy is winning hands down and that we’re vastly underestimating the problem. Today, in all the squares, the same slogans could be heard: “No to war,” “No to rearmament,” “Get Italy out of the war.” Let’s remember that not a single euro has been taken from schools to fund rearmament or war. And besides, what war are we even talking about? The war of a country defending itself from an aggression? What on earth are we discussing? And yet people are protesting precisely about this. In the most extreme cases, it even gets to the point of justifying violence with these very arguments. How can anyone think Russia has nothing to do with it? Who spent billions, using the most underhanded methods too, to plant certain ideas in people’s heads? If we keep going like this, things are only going to get worse.

This is how German police deal with rioters and restore order. French police should take notes.