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Russian troops struggle to adapt A Ukrainian team had just exited their armored personnel carrier near Bakhmut in March when it came under Russian fire from multiple directions. One killed, nine wounded (New York Times): The ambush was part of a patient, disciplined operation that was in contrast to the disorderly Russian tactics that marked much of the first year of the war, which began in February 2022. It was a deadly demonstration that the Russian military was learning from its mistakes and adapting to Ukrainian tactics, having grossly underestimated them initially. Russians are adapting to Ukrainian tactics, reports say, as Ukraine begins its counteroffensive reinforced by NATO weapons and communications equipment. But Moscow’s forces have improved their defenses, artillery coordination and air support, setting up a campaign that could look very different from the war’s early days. These improvements, Western officials say, will most likely make Russia a tougher opponent, particularly as it fights defensively, playing to its battlefield strengths. This defensive turn is a far cry from Russia’s initial plan for a full-scale invasion and Ukrainian defeat.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Primal, Star Trek/Boston Legal, AEW, Beast Boy, Batman, Good Omens 2, CM Punk, Scott Pilgrim, and tons more!
What else is there to be said about Ken Loach? Plenty, it turns out. As British Cinema’s go-to socialist turns 87, having recently announced that his latest film, The Old Oak, is likely to be his last, Loach’s filmography is a gift that continues to give. Six decades deep, his has been a career of […]
Daniel Ellsberg has died, aged 92. I don’t have anything to add to the standard account of his heroic career, except to observe that Edward Snowden (whose cause Ellsberg championed) would probably have done better to take his chances with the US legal system, as Ellsberg did. In decision theory, the subsection of the economics […]
A document shows the Protective Services Battalion uses sophisticated surveillance tools that can pinpoint anyone’s location.
The post Pentagon’s Secret Service Trawls Social Media for Mean Tweets About Generals appeared first on The Intercept.
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Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who after experiencing a sobbing antiwar epiphany on a bathroom floor made the momentous decision in 1971 to disclose a secret history of American lies and deceit in Vietnam, what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, died on Friday at his home in Kensington, Calif., in the Bay […]
Baby wolves! A zoo in South Dakota has welcomed a litter of critically endangered red wolf pups — a litter vital to the existence of the species with only an estimated two dozen left existing in the wild. The Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said that they were “thrilled to announce the births of six critically endangered red wolves” on Thursday in a statement on the zoo’s website. The six pups — two females and four males — were born to first-time parents Camelia and Uyosi, who only arrived at the Great Plains Zoo in October of last year from facilities in Washington and Texas, respectively. These six pups are vital to the existence of the species with an estimated 23 to 25 red wolves remaining in the wild and only an estimated 278 alive in captivity, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program. “Camelia and Uyosi are amazing parents, I wouldn’t expect anything less from them,” said Joel Locke, the Animal Care Director of the Great Plains Zoo. “We are fortunate to have vet staff and animal care staff that have worked with red wolves for more than 15 years.
They have Anheuser-Busch bowing and scraping Via Axios: In a new bid to steady his rattled company, Anheuser-Busch U.S. CEO Brendan Whitworth vowed to protect the jobs of employees and those of independent wholesalers. Why it matters: With conservatives in revolt over Bud Light’s courting of a transgender influencer, Whitworth’s statement is an effort to fight back and regain market share. Axios has learned that Whitworth plans to go on the road around the U.S. this summer to listen to consumers, in connection with Budweiser’s MLB sponsorship. The company’s summer ad campaign, which begins next week, will portray Bud Light as “easy to drink and easy to enjoy,” he added in the statement Thursday. By the numbers: Sales of Bud Light, a new top target in the culture wars, are off as much as 25%. After the right savaged Bud Light for its relationship with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, sales dropped so sharply that data out this week shows Mexican lager Modelo replacing Bud Light as America’s best-selling beer.
This piece by Paul Waldman takes up one of my longest standing pet peeves, this notion that somehow rural and small town America is not only more authentically American, its values are far superior to those who live in urban America (where most of the people are.) This is taken as a given and is so accepted that they are allowed to bash cities mercilessly while screaming like wounded harpies if anyone criticizes their “way of life.” I’m sick of it. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum did not announce his bid for the GOP presidential nomination by grabbing a guitar and crooning out the chorus to John Mellencamp’s “Small Town,” but he came awfully close. “I grew up in a tiny town in North Dakota,” he says at the opening of the video meant to introduce him to voters. After touting his business success, he concludes, “A kid from small town North Dakota: That’s America.” Burgum is practicing a version of small-town identity politics. “Small-town values have guided me my entire life; small-town values are at the core of America,” he says.
Today, on a special bonus episode of Lever Time Premium exclusively for supporting subscribers, we’re re-releasing David Sirota’s 2018 interview with Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who exposed the U.S. government's lies about the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg just passed away at the age
Researchers uncover striking parallels in the ways that humans and machine learning models acquire language skills.
The post Some Neural Networks Learn Language Like Humans appeared first on Nautilus.
Either way, L’état c’est lui More on the subject of my earlier post. William Saletan at the Bulwark catalogues all the ways in which the right endorses his status as an autocrat: Once again, Trump is testing America’s tolerance for autocracy. And once again, his allies on the right are backing him up with extreme and dangerous theories of vast presidential power. Here are some of their arguments. 1. A former president is entitled to obstruct investigators if he doesn’t trust them. John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general, says Trump’s lawyers can argue that “he didn’t initially cooperate with DOJ or the FBI because of the way he’d been mistreated by them.” Alan Dershowitz, who represented Trump at his second impeachment trial, goes further. According to Dershowitz, it doesn’t matter whether Trump was truly mistreated; his subjective perception is enough. In defense of Trump’s defiance of the FBI, Dershowitz asserts: “A president doesn’t have to cooperate with people he believes are trying to get him.” 2.
“He is not believed to be carrying a weapon, but he could be carrying documents indicating the location of weapons,” a police spokesman said.
A tale of two blowhards The Brits show that a political party doesn’t have to blindly back its leader even when he’s popular: An angry, aggrieved former leader attacks the institutions he once led for accusing him of flouting the rules and lying about it. His allies whip up supporters against what they call a witch hunt. A country watches nervously, worried that this flamboyant, norm-busting figure could cause lasting damage. There are obvious parallels in the political tempests convulsing Britain and the United States, but also stark differences: Former President Donald J. Trump faces federal criminal charges while Boris Johnson was judged to be deceitful about attending parties. And yet, Britain’s Conservative Party has regularly stood up to Mr. Johnson while the Republican Party is still mostly in thrall to Mr. Trump. Conservative lawmakers in Britain form the majority on a committee that found Mr. Johnson, a former prime minister, had deliberately misled Parliament over lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street during the coronavirus pandemic. Mr.
Jinkx Monsoon (RuPaul’s Drag Race) offered an update on how production is going with the upcoming new series of Doctor Who adventures.
Sperm whales learn patterns of clicks and other social behaviors from their clans.
The post Do Whales Have Culture? appeared first on Nautilus.
Opposition to the AUKUS deal among rank and file Labor supporters and similarly aligned voters is increasing by the day. It’s not simply because AUKUS is a malignant inheritance from the Morrison government that people who voted Labor at the last election are expressing their alarm about it today. On every level it is so obviously Continue reading »
My first article published here at Pearls and Irritations, titled Built on a tower of lies, described how positive feedback loops have created at a societal level an enormous tower of lies that guide public discourse. I further warned that if we failed to dismantle this tower the consequences would be traumatic. Unfortunately, the horrifically Continue reading »
In Asian Media this week: Chinese see Biden Admin as ‘incompetent and ignorant’. Plus: China ready to sign no-nuke zone treaty; spending on nuclear weapons surging; Beijing, Delhi expel each other’s journalists; ambassador slams Seoul’s foreign policy; China passes 50pc non-fossil fuel power supply Anthony Albanese warned of the dangers of the diplomatic deep freeze Continue reading »
Having witnessed the last days of my parents and in-laws, I don’t delude myself – as they did – that I’ll be able to avoid being carted off to an old people’s home. Sorry, an aged care residential facility. Actually, I dream of dying in the saddle. My last, half-finished column would be the announcement Continue reading »