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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 6d

And that's how ethnic Russians make up a majority of all but a handful of Russia's Asian regions.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 7d

Penguins fan. One gram of hope. Only need a de-aging machine.

Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 7d

If you support one of these teams...good luck.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 7d

An equally strong predictor (correlation = 0.53) of this season's point total is last season's goal differential (difference between goals scores and goals allowed).

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 7d

By contrast, the correlation between an NHL team's point total in the previous season and its point total in the current season is 0.54.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 7d

Since it's that time of the year (when NHL fans have hope for their team based on its preseason performance), I decided to run some correlations between performance in the preseason and the ensuing season. The correlation is 0.08. A perfect correlation is | 1 |.

For the graphically inclined:

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 10d

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 10d

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 10d

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · 18d

Important lesson for ruling party elites who believe there's nothing to fear as long as they remain loyal to those in power.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/w...

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Sep 2

This is also what happens when you anger your own constituency while forgetting that opposition supporters live in an entirely different media ecosystem that will never give you credit, no matter how consistent your policies are with their previously stated preferences.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 19

Putin wants legal recognition of Russia's military conquests. But getting that recognition would require Russia to give something in return. Meanwhile, Russia isn't actually offering a single concession. No, promising not to attack (especially given Russia's track record) isn't a serious concession.

Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 19

The equivalent situation today would be for Russia to push for the annexation of the Crimea, with perhaps some form of an autonomous status (within Ukraine) with a Russian veto for certain decisions in Donetsk and Lugansk. The reason there is no chance for peace is Russia is asking for too much.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 19

Alternatively, countries needed to achieve major military successes to annex a single region. This is because they realized that achieving international legal recognition of an annexation was worth more than military victory. Without such recognition, the value of the land was severely diminished.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 19

Since Putin is basically acting as if we're still in the 19th century in terms of foreign affairs, it's strange that he doesn't apply a 19th century logic to his current war. Back then, if you wanted to achieve maximalist goals, you needed to occupy the enemy capital.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 18

Nominal GDP (in trillion $):

California: 4.10
Texas: 2.71
New York: 2.30
Russia: 2.08

Missouri: 0.45
Moscow: 0.42

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 18

Nominal GDP (in trillion $):

Sweden: 0.62
Norway: 0.50
Denmark: 0.45
Finland: 0.30
Iceland: 0.04
Total Nordic: 1.91

Russia: 2.08

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 17

Might as well have promised to attack Estonia instead of Ukraine next time.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 16

The other inexplicable part is the public support dispute Putin failing to paint this as an existential war. It's telling that the factor that helped Russia recruit countless soldiers for the war wasn't the claim that NATO was behind the war but a drastic increase in signing bonuses.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 16

That might have some role, but non-ethnic Russians made up a good chunk of the Afghan War casualties, too. Russia has a long history of using ethnic minorities as cannon fodder.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 16

The repression is the highest it's been in post-Soviet times, but still not what it was under the USSR. And the public desire for war was basically nonexistent until the war started. It's entirely a function of highly effective propaganda (and some level of rally around the flag).

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 16

We've always been allies with Eurasia and at war with Eastasia.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 16

A lot of Russian actions in the past 3.5 years have been pretty predictable, but if you told me that Russia would suffer ~200k fatalities (about 10 times higher than in the Afghan War) and there would be no publish backlash, there's no chance I'd believe you.

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 15

Am I the only one curious how du Plessis, an Afrikaner MMA fighter, has the same last name as the famous French foreign minister, Cardinal Richelieu?

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Gennady Rudkevich @grudkevich.bsky.social · Aug 13

I've seen research on the ability of social media to help coordinate resistance in authoritarian regimes (e.g., Arab Spring), but that was written mostly before authoritarian governments found ways to use social media to their own advantage.

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