Multiple items ordered via #ebay over the past week. Most are being delivered today, purely by coincidence.

Not one of the suppliers is using #evri. They all use #RoyalMail

How #reassuring.

Just noticed that #DuckDuckGo is back up.
Noice!

#reassuring #DDG

Mostly.

#spiders #reassuring

https://www.joeydevilla.com/2023/11/27/mostly-resolved/

Should we be careful what we wish for in cheering Putin’s demise? 

“Putin is really not our problem,” Historian #Tim #Snyder asserts.

“I mean, the last 30 years have shown quite clearly that we don’t actually have much ability at all to influence Russia . . . time after time we have demonstrated we don’t change anything inside Russia.”

He continues: “I find the #Prigozhin interlude honestly quite #reassuring, because it shows us that there are Russians who perfectly well understand the situation in Ukraine; that Russians are also capable of completely #forgetting about #Ukraine when there’s a #greater #stress — when there’s an actual succession struggle going on, all they talk about is themselves.

“We drive ourselves round and round in anxious circles about what Russia is thinking about this war, and we’re not letting ourselves realise that the Russians will find ways out for themselves . . . They don’t need for us to have our focus groups and our studies and our exit ramps. Anthropologically speaking, our exit ramps are not applicable to their highways, if you’ll forgive that stupid metaphor?”

He quickly alights on a more elegant turn of phrase: “It’s two different fairy tales, as the Poles say.” 

In Russia, the west seems to forget it is not seeing a mirror nation-state to its own. It is a different #paradigm of #power altogether, driven by “Weberian notions of #charismatic #leadership”, says Snyder.

“The thing is, Russia can’t have a domestic policy,” Snyder muses. “The elite have stolen all the money, all the laws are corrupted, and there’s almost no social mobility or possibility of change in most Russians’ lives, so foreign policy has to compensate and provide the raw material — the scenography — for governance.”

https://www.ft.com/content/9a23b1a7-da4e-466b-99f4-9f7f369fe128