MBW - 3/8/2022
Hello friends! Looks like a sunny Tuesday from where I’m sitting. Here’s your daily digest.
War continues uninterrupted in Ukraine. The number of civilian casualties has been increasing steadily as people try to get away from Russian shelling. The third round of negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations didn’t produce anything. Below the situation at the Kharkiv train station yesterday:
More than 1.5 million Ukrainians have left the country.
Commodity prices have skyrocketed. Wheat, oil, gas prices are on record levels. There is talk that the US is considering banning Russian oil which was followed by Moscow’s threat that a ban on oil would force them to shut down the Nordstream 1 gas pipeline which is the main supplier of gas for Germany. In their push to minimize the effects of a potential Russian oil ban, Americans are in talks with Venezuela and have put the deal with Iran on the fast track. It is weird how the administration is willing to go to these kind of lengths without increasing internal oil and gas production.
Here’s Macron after his long call with Putin yesterday:
Ivan Urgant was some sort of Jimmy Kimmel of Russia having hosted more than 1,500 episodes of his talk show. Immediately after speaking out against the war in Ukraine his show was cancelled.
Here’s a photo of a protest in Hamburg, Germany in support of Ukraine over the weekend:
When it comes to the risk of nuclear weapons being used in the current conflict the most probable scenario wouldn’t be against a NATO country but rather dropping them in Ukraine. So the question is: Would Putin think it would be prudent to use nukes in Ukraine, like a low-yield weapon or even like a “demonstration” at a place or altitude where nobody dies, with the goal of bullying the West into backing away or trying to convince Ukraine to capitulate?
Here’s part one of the answer Alex Wellerstein provides to this question.
Exploding a nuclear weapon in Ukraine would be crossing a pretty firmly-drawn red line in terms of international norms since 1945. It would be a Big Deal and meant as such. It’s clear that Putin doesn’t mind crossing some of those lines. The entire open invasion of Ukraine (as opposed to backing the separatist movement) is such a norm violation. Not to mention the polonium poisonings or nerve gas assassinations of the past. But before answering this question, let’s consider what would be the response to such a thing. Most people are under the misconception that ‘one nuke used would immediately lead to all nukes used’ which is at best an expression of the concept of escalation, at worst a belief in some kind of Stragelovean death pact. (to be continued)
There were two big developments in the fight on cancer related to the so called CAR-T cell therapies. Every human body has T cells which are part of the immune system. They are programable, meaning that they can be taught where to go and what to destroy. A few years back humans came up with the tech (CRISPR) that allows us to program these cells telling them what to look for. The big application of programmed T cells has been in oncology (cancer treatment) where they have been taught to go and destroy specific cancerous cells instead of relying on much more dangerous traditional methods like chemotherapy which kills both good cells and bad cells. The way it works basically is that they take some T cells out of your body, a blood sample essentially, take it to a lab, have them undergo some electrical currents which opens them up slightly, and then a little engineered CRISPR editing happens. Now the DNA of the T cells is edited and they now know which cancer cells to attack. They put the programed T cells back in the body after they test them for a few days to ensure they are safe. Once inside the body they go to work, eradicating cancer cells.
The two recent breakthroughs have been the approval by the FDA of the J&J drug against a blood cancer and the development of a CAR-T cell therapy by A2 Bio that targets solid cancer cells (up to now only blood cancers were treated with CAR-T cell therapy).
Louis Ck is my favorite stand up comedian. So let’s speak about him a bit. He went through some controversy in 2017 when some sexual misconduct accusations were revealed by the New York Times. Five women (coworkers) would accuse him of masturbating in front of them. He apologized later that year saying to the NYT that “the power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.“ Needless to say, he got canceled to oblivion, but in mid 2018 he started making a comeback, not in a big way like a Netflix special, but appearances in various theaters and events. Wherever he would go, he would get a standing ovation. Anyways, here is where he tries to address the issue through his art form:
And here is an older clip which I like. Notice how he drags the audience with him to cross the moral line and then just drops them there. It sets them free in a way from the moral norms and institutions and leaves them with that freedom. Genius.
And lastly, the daily pics and memes from around the web:
The percentage of married women saying they are ‘very happy’ with their spouse is higher than the percentage of cohabiting women saying the same for their partner. For men there is not much difference.
Apparently in 2020 the mass of things created by humans surpassed the biomass.
Let me tell you a couple of three things: Divorce.
God I hated that mofo.
I know I don’t. (nfa etc.)
And to illustrate how bad the situation is, see below a younger Biden. Ignore for a second what he is saying (or don’t) and focus on the fluency of speech and formulation of ideas.
Biden in 1997 saying that the only thing that could provoke a "vigorous and hostile" Russian response would be if NATO expanded as far as the Baltic states
That was it for today folks. Enjoy the rest of the day. Peace.