A jar of cucumbers

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. I now have data that covers two full years – 734 days. This week the peak in new cases per day was 983. This is great compared to the peak of 28,023 at the beginning of January. The case rate hasn’t been this low since mid July at the start of the delta variant rise. Deaths per day for the week before this past week were 20-35 per day. Bits from yesterday’s Ukraine Updates on Daily Kos: In a late morning post Kos of Kos explained another reason why NATO shouldn’t establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The primary reason is this would be a declaration of war between NATO and Russia. The other important reason is Russian airplanes aren’t doing the damage. Not many of those in the air. The damage is done by missiles. Some are launched from vehicles in Ukraine and others launched from bases in Russia. And planes can’t protect against missiles. There are things that can protect against missiles. One is something similar to the Iron Dome system in Israel. But that would take too many months to set up and train Ukrainian soldiers to use. Another would be anti-air missiles, which Ukraine has and is getting more. And another is drones. Turkey has sent some, and maybe can send more. In an early afternoon post Mark Sumner wondered, after so many other companies pulled out of Russia, why are fast food companies still doing business? These are companies such as McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Subway, Papa John’s, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi. An important thing from this post is a quote and a short video of a tweet by Erin Schaff:

David Martello plays piano for refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine at the Medyka border crossing in Poland. David said “my goal is to tell everybody you’re safe now, they’ve heard bombs and all sorts of weapons and I want them to hear music.”

I note Martello’s grand piano has larger than usual wheels and is connected to a bicycle. Does he ride from place to place towing his grand piano behind him? In a late afternoon post Kos quoted and discussed a thread by Kamil Galeev. Mr. Serdyukov used to the Russian minister of defense. He reformed the army and increased its efficiency. He fought with corrupt and crony armament producers. And was ousted in 2012. His successor was Mr. Shoygu who is the only minister to work continuously in Russian government since the government’s founding in 1991. How did he stay on so long? Because he didn’t object to the corruption. That didn’t matter in peacetime. But in war, when the quality of the equipment actually matters, there are tires that fall off trucks.

That’s what’s clearly happening here: the Rothenbergs and other arms manufacturers pilfer; the steel-, iron-, and component-manufacturers pilfer; the plant managers pilfer; the employees pilfer; the unit commanders pilfer; the supply officers pilfer; the soldiers pilfer. It’s a wonderful grift. Everyone benefits! Well, except when war is called. Suddenly, all that equipment that was supposedly in the field turns out to have been an illusion, long sold off for Italian villas and bottles of vodka. That’s likely why we haven’t seen much of a Russian Air Force in action. I bet they can’t even get their birds in the air. The poor 18-year-old conscripts dragged off to a war they didn’t ask for get f’ed as a result. But it’s hard to feel sorry for anyone else.

Kos also included a couple videos of crowds that have turned out to support Ukraine. In both Tbilisi, Georgia and Prague the crowds are astonishingly large. In an early evening post Sumner talked about the Silicon Curtain closing in around Russia. The name is a reminder of the Iron Curtain that divided Europe during the Cold War. This Silicon Curtain is blocking the American tech giants and keeping Russian citizens from learning what’s going on in the rest of the world, including Ukraine. This is what actual censorship looks like. Sumner quoted Nexta TV which said Ukraine has asked Germany for heavy weapons – tanks, helicopters, and ... submarines. In a late evening post Sumner talked about the success Russia has been having – towns encircled and taken, the number of missiles fired (over 500) and the number of troops in Ukraine (160,000). Then he wrote:

And still, the outcome on the ground seems somehow less inevitable by the day. Even as Russia is drawing in its forces, sending even more equipment to the battle, and calling in its most experienced generals to take direct command in the field, the prospect that Ukraine might just win this thing—not in a “after 10, or 15, or 20 years of guerilla fighting” sense, but 10, or 15, or 20 days from now—seems entirely… thinkable. All over Ukraine, both on the ground and in the air, there are signals of hope as well as signals of despair. And there are even more reasons to think that Russia is a paper bear, its cruelty the only thing it has left.

And a little tweet from Liubov Tsybulska that Sumner has no confirmation for but he (and I) very much want to be true:

In Kyiv a woman knocked down a Russian drone from a balcony with a jar of cucumbers. How did they expect to occupy this country?

Miranda Mazariegos of NPR reported on the difficulties of LGBTQ people fleeing Ukraine. I think Ukraine is LGBTQ friendly (or at least not hostile). But that’s not true of Poland and Hungary, the two primary countries to which refugees are fleeing. So LGBTQ people in those countries have been making trips to the border entry points to pick up LGBTQ refugees and offer them housing (even if just a couch), food, and mental health services. This will protect them from discrimination until they have a chance to move on to safer Western countries. Many transgender women can’t leave Ukraine because their government IDs still say they are male and men are forced to stay and fight. Women are included in Ukraine’s military and LGBTQ people are not expelled, though they may not be welcomed. Laura Clawson of Kos reported on the great jobs report that came out yesterday. Non farm jobs grew by 678K in February. The unemployment rate is down to 3.8%. The growth in the last year has been over a half million jobs per month. The economy has regained 90% of the jobs lost when the economy shut down because of the pandemic two years ago. There is one hole in this job growth – black women. Their unemployment rate rose from 5.8% to 6.1%. Clawson included a chart showing the job losses and gains in this recession compared to the Great Recession. That one took more than six years to restore all the lost jobs. This one may do it in a bit more than two. The difference is the government stimulus for the Great Recession was way too little. This time the stimulus was much more generous. Two days ago I wrote about the birthday of Yellowstone National Park. Meteor Blades, in his Earth Matters column for Kos and working from a report from Greenwire, wrote that native tribes are hoping for a reboot at Yellowstone and other national parks. Some of the reasons for wanting a reboot: This had been native land (as had all of North America) and the natives were pushed out. That pushing included the slaughter of a native band (and not the band involved in a lethal incident). The leader of that massacre was Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane and he was awarded with a mountain in Yellowstone named after him. That needs to change. A place name should not glorify ethnic cleansing. Natives want a more complete telling of the history of Yellowstone and other parks. They want co-management of the land, and in some cases the land turned back to them. They have a much deeper reverence for wild spaces, they don’t want the land tamed and plowed under. They have a long history of administering the land while dealing with competing interests. A couple other Earth Matters articles: Back in 2015 offshore wind leases went for $1.06 an acre. In a recent auction leases went for $9,000 an acre. In a Pew Research Center poll 69% of Americans favor the US prioritizing a drive toward carbon neutrality by 2050, though only 31% think fossil fuels should be phased out completely. 173 countries agreed to develop a treaty over the next two years that would cover the full lifecycle of plastics, from production to disposal. An article by Bill McKibben says the way to stand with the brave people of Ukraine is to stand against oil and gas.