Putin's decision to invade Ukraine hurt Russia. In his eagerness to destroy Ukraine, he is also destroying his own country. There's no reason Ukraine and Russia couldn't have lived together in peace. So much destruction because of Russia's stubborn refusal to accept Ukraine as a separate nation.

Peace for Russia means a nominally independent Ukraine under effective Russian control. Russia wants a pliant satellite. It wants Ukraine to be Belarus. That's why the Minsk accords were always a sham. Russia has never recognized Ukrainian sovereignty. Neither, apparently, does Trump.

How seriously should we take peace talks between Ukraine and Russia? Russia is doing everything it can to destroy Ukraine. Lavrov calls Ukraine's democratically-elected government a Nazi regime. Putin says Ukraine is Russian territory. Where's the basis for peace?

He talks about countries as if they are billiard balls controlled by the laws of physics instead of political entities run by people with agency. Russia wasn’t compelled to invade Ukraine. Putin chose to attack. He could have chosen not to.

Thread: A viral clip of Donald Trump Jr saying on his Triggered podcast that "the US should have been sending weapons to Russia" instead of Ukraine is AI-generated and fake.

Worryingly, the fake AI audio sounds near identical to Don Jr's real voice.

Let's see how we can verify that it's fake.

Marxists have sometimes been good at critiquing capitalism, but they’ve never offered a better alternative. The Soviet Union was such a disaster largely because the Bolsheviks seized power without a clear idea of how to create socialism or even a clear idea of what socialism would look like.

The idea of people being immersed in different media environments isn’t new. Jacques Ellul wrote about something similar in the pre-internet age, but the walls seem thicker online. In Ellul’s time people were exposed to different interpretations of events, but there was still a shared reality.

I’ve only read the first hundred pages of the book so far, but I’m interested in the idea of “bespoke realities.” Different groups are siloed into separate online environments with little interaction between them. It makes political dialogue difficult.

There’s a whole world of internet influencers I’ve never come across who have massive audiences. Do you know who Khaby Lame is? I didn’t, but he has 11 million followers on TikTok.

I’ve been reading Renée DiResta’s @noupside.bsky.social book Invisible Rulers which talks about how various interests use social media to influence different audiences. I learned a YouTube personality named MrBeast may soon be a billionaire. I’m shocked because I had never heard of this guy.

For the past month, I’ve been reading about the French Revolution. It’s a complicated subject, but very interesting. I can see why scholars spend their entire careers studying it. My own curiosity comes from wanting to know more about the relationship between democracy and nationalism.

It’s hard to brood when you’re always looking at your phone.

Not weird

Benjamin Franklin would be surprised to learn Philadelphia was established in 1776.

I remember those guys. Their career was destroyed because they were caught lip-syncing on stage, but there was a backstory that made me feel bad for them. I forget the details. Were they brothers and did one commit suicide? They went on the Arsenio Hall show where they proved they could sing.

Listening to Putin lecturing Tucker Carlson on Russian and Ukrainian history reminded me of Ukrainian Saturday school in Toronto. The names and events recited by Putin were familiar to me, but his interpretation was the opposite of what I was taught.

I’m a real person - a Canadian in Sarnia, Ontario - who reads about history. I’m using this new account to follow historians- some of whom I used to follow on Twitter.