Iranian women are braver than Russian men

My Sunday movie was the last four episodes of season 1 of Heartstopper. Charlie is definitely gay and Nick isn’t sure. More accurately, Nick had to work through what his love for Charlie means. Sometimes it takes a while to figure it out. Then it takes a while to be ready to say this is who I am and this is who I love and I don’t have to follow expectations. It is good to see the parents aren’t homophobic. However, there is homophobia from the other members of Nick’s rugby team, especially from Harry, who likes to bully. Charlie is sure he is the cause of all the damage from Harry and it takes Nick while to convince him the trouble is worth it. When Nick does get to it he says it very well. Overall it is a sweet story. There is another aspect of the story I appreciated – Nick and Charlie do nothing more than hug and kiss. From what’s on the screen I would have guessed the lads were perhaps 16 and 17, the equivalent of high school junior and senior (though they weren’t celebrating Nick’s imminent graduation). But during Charlie’s birthday party he wore a prominent “15.” So (at least in the US) if they had done anything more than kiss criminal charges could have been brought for molesting a minor. This four hours of story is taken from a graphic novel series of the same name by Alice Oseman. So I looked up the books. There are four books in the Heartstopper series, plus one titled Nick and Charlie. So while episode 8 neatly tied up the series I see that seasons 2 and 3 have been approved. I would enjoy spending more time with Charlie and Nick. And I guess I shouldn’t look into the descriptions of the books so I don’t spoil the upcoming seasons when they appear. GeoConfirmed is a volunteer group that verifies things that happen in the world. In this thread they turn their attention to the Kerch Bridge explosion. They examine the video of the fireball and images of the damage. One interesting image is the road bridge has been blown off its support pillar, but the pillar itself is undamaged. Their conclusion is a VBIED, a vehicle based improvised explosive device. In this case that implies an SVBIED, or suicidal –. You may have noticed I’ve started sharing a lot more political cartoons. I discovered that in Daily Kos pundit roundups Denise Oliver Velez has been using the comments to do a cartoon roundup. One of these is a cartoon posted by Julia Ioffe, which is a parody of the famous painting “The Scream” with Putin doing the screaming. Another cartoon notes the explosion happened the day after Putin’s 70th birthday and features a Ukrainian soldier giving the Dear Leader a cake in the face. As has been reported in the general news Putin responded to the Kerch Bridge explosion with mass missile strikes against Ukrainian civilians in cities across the country. As Kos of Kos reported this included apartment buildings, a busy intersection in rush hour, electric power stations, a pedestrian bridge, a school, and a playground. Fortunately, because the sirens had sounded the children were not at the playground. If Russia was retaliating – destroying the same sort of infrastructure as the bridge – they would have struck bridges and rail lines Ukraine uses to move military equipment around. Kos wrote:

There are lots of reasons Russia is losing this war, and amongst them, the unimaginably cruel prioritization of civilian targets over military ones. Russia has a limited number of long-range precision-guided missiles and rockets. Using up the last ones to take out playgrounds, rather than HIMARS or other high-value targets, only hastens the end of the war.

And what did that do to the Ukrainian spirit? Kos included a tweet from Defense of Ukraine showing residents of Kyiv gathered in a metro station as a bomb shelter – and singing. ChrisO tweeted comments by retired retired Major Myka Tyry of the Finnish Defence Forces, an explosive ordnance disposal expert. He discussed the likely size of the explosive material (maybe more than two tons) and that it was perhaps laces with combustible metals, such as magnesium or thermite. There was growing chatter that Belarus was joining the war. Last March and April, at the start of the war, there was similar talk and Belarus never did put troops over the border. Kos discussed how unlikely Belarus would join now, especially since it is obvious Russia is losing. How does Belarus dictator Lukashenko, a Putin ally, manage to not actually commit his troops? First, when Putin is around Lukashenko is good at playing the buffoon and idiot. That idiot is quite good at “accidentally” broadcasting Putin’s plans, thus thwarting them. Second, Lukashenko is very good at dangling the promise of unification with Russia (what the entire Ukrainian war is about), yet always having a reason to not actually do it. In the process he asks Putin for special economic favors and for loans that don’t get repaid. The tail wags the dog. Third, Lukashenko has a clear eye on the state of his army – small (only 20K) and not worth much. This whole thing about Belarus joining the war might be because they are sending some of their old decrepit tanks to Russia. Towards the end of the post Kos quoted a couple tweets. The first from Paul Massaro:

700,000 reported to have left Russia since mobilization. Now imagine if those 700,000 had risen up. This genocidal war would be over.

And from Julia Ioffe:

Iranian women are braver than Russian men.

Kos also included a tweet from Tendar, who noted each Russian missile cost up to 13 million US dollars. Tendar included images of MFA of Ukraine that showed bomb craters which, a day later, were filled in and paved over. That showed Russia’s missile spree accomplished very little. Kos reported that since Ukraine seems able to recover so quickly from these attacks (yeah, the damaged apartment buildings will take a while to rebuild) it must mean that somehow Russia is holding back, pulling its punches, and worse attacks are yet to come. Kos wrote:

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) sources estimate that Russia spent $600-800 million on their attack, which to their own admission only knocked out power for half a day, so they think Russia held back. Yet despite Ukraine’s admitted vulnerability to such attacks, Russia’s problem is that they simply lack the missiles to sustain that level of attack. And as is obvious to Russian nationalists, anything less than a sustained assault is essentially an empty gesture.

Kos quoted a tweet from TV Rain Newsroom that has a video of an openly gay Ukrainian soldier saying that through the war the homophobia has been significantly reduced. It is now low enough that Russian state TV is calling for volunteers to fight against gay parades. Cartoonist Mike Luckovich tweeted one showing Russia’s retaliation to the bombing of the Kerch Bridge was to send a bomb to take out a playground bridge. In another thread ChrisO wrote about how thousands of teachers have been conscripted in the mobilization or who fled to avoid it is devastating Russian schools, bringing many close to collapse. A private school in St. Petersburg has lost 80% of its staff and may close. The teachers union is trying to get teachers exempt from the draft, though probably won’t succeed. Even before the mobilization Russia has a big teacher shortage. Dave Granlund tweeted one of his cartoons that shows men at a Russian military draft office with a military guy reading a doctor’s note: “Please excuse Igor because of bone spurs.” Sean Hannity of Fox News played an audio clip of Biden that he thought would be embarrassing, but isn’t. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported about the news segment and wrote:

The audio clip was from Oct. 15, 2018, when Hunter was struggling with addiction. In the call, Biden says, “It’s Dad. I called to tell you I love you. I love you more than the whole world, pal. You gotta get some help. I don’t know what to do; I know you don’t either. But I’m here. No matter what you need. No matter what you need. I love you.”

Sager included several responses that say how I feel – it showed Biden to be a concerned and loving father. Every addict should be so lucky. Matthew Abraham-Michael tweeted:

It really feels like being a decent human being is such a foreign concept to conservatives that they assume it causes embarrassment.