MBW - 3/16/2022
Good morning friends. It’s the middle of the workweek and your daily news digest is ready:
•Finally some optimistic news from the Ukrainian front. In a video address late last night, Zelensky revealed “the positions in the negotiations already sound more realistic.” But he added that “time is still needed for the decisions to be in the interests of Ukraine”.
•The prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia went to Kyiv, an active war zone, to talk with Zelensky and his government.
•Two journalists of Fox News were killed in Ukraine in the past 24 hours.
•In the meantime fighting on the ground continues. The Russian advance seems to have stalled. Here’s Vladimir Klitschko the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world reporting from Kyiv:
Putin's dream of creating a Greater Russia is my country's nightmare. #SaveUkraine #kyiv #StopPutinsWar #Standtogether #FreeUkraine #WeAreAllUkrainians #StandWithUkraine #StopTheWar•A suspect has been detained in DC in relation to the killings of homeless people. Gerald Brevard III, 30, allegedly struck five times in nine days in both New York and Washington DC. Two of the men died. One's tent was set on fire, after he was stabbed and shot.
•More bad news for the Petrodollar. According to the Wall Street Journal, Saudi Arabia is considering accepting yuan instead of dollars for Chinese oil sales. The domino effect that this would cause cannot be understated.
•The US Senate has unanimously passed The Sunshine Protection Act, a bill to make daylight saving time permanent across the US starting from November 2023.
•Marina Ovsyannikova, the Russian journalist who protested with the ‘No War’ sign on live TV, was questioned for 14 hours. She did not sleep for two days, and was not given access to legal help. Eventually, she was released with a 30,000 rouble ($280) fine.
•Ukrainian farmers pulling abandoned Russian military vehicles with their tractors through the countryside has become a common sighting as of late. As a result the web was flooded with memes like these:
•This is the Russian embassy in Lisbon a few nights ago:
•Let’s talk for a bit about this guy:
His name is Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of Chechen Republic, a Russian province in North Caucasus. The son of a former independence fighter who switched sides, Kadyrov has used Russian cash to rebuild the republic from the ruins of war and has been given a free hand to rule as he pleases in return for pledging allegiance to Vladimir Putin. He commands the Kadyrovtsy, a 25,000-strong militia that has been credibly accused of widespread abduction, torture and extrajudicial killings. There is widespread testimony of his forces using torture. So why are we talking about him?
Apparently he is in Ukraine. “The other day we were about 20km from you Kyiv Nazis and now we are even closer,” he wrote on Telegram, claiming to be close to Hostomel airport, just north of Kyiv. “You can relax for a minute, because you won’t have to look for us — we’ll find you. Oh, you don’t have long left. It’s better you surrender and stand alongside us or your end will be at hand.”
Kadyrov claims 10,000 Chechens are being deployed to fight in Ukraine. They are much more motivated fighters, available at a time when the Russians are desperately short of manpower. They are also fighters more habituated to brutality.
Kadyrov considers himself answerable to Putin alone, not the Kremlin’s generals or Russia’s powerful intelligence apparatus. Many in Russia’s senior echelons recall that Kadyrov’s father originally fought against them in the first Chechen war, only swapping sides in 2000. That is why he a wild card for the Russian armed forces as they do not control Kadyrov.
•Elon Musk challenged Vladimir Putin to a fight on Twitter a few days back. The winner’s prize would be Ukraine (whatever that means).
But instead of Putin, he got a response from Kadyrov. Here’s the English translation of what he posted on Telegram:
After which Elon changed his Twitter name to Elona and said the following:
•Anyways, enough with war and fight news, here’s John Oliver helping Kadyrov find his cat:
There is an Irish restaurant chain called Supermacs that has opened around 100 stores in Ireland since 1978.
Recently, McDonald’s decided that this small restaurant chain that hasn’t even made it out of Ireland needed to be taught a lesson, and sued them on the basis that ‘Supermacs’ infringes on the ‘Big Mac’ brand name. Which is, of course, absolutely ridiculous.
McDonald’s ended up losing the case, because of course they did, they didn’t have a case to begin with. As a result, McDonald’s lost the rights to the term ‘Big Mac’ across the entire European Union. Which is why Burger King gets to do this with no legal repercussions:
Ahhh… the classic “Be careful what you wish for” self-burn.
Apparently, women today speak at a deeper pitch than their mothers or grandmothers would have done, thanks to the changing power dynamics between men and women.
Researchers at the University of South Australia studied the voices of two groups of Australian women aged 18–25 years. The researchers compared archival recordings of women talking in 1945 with more recent recordings taken in the early 1990s. The team found that the “fundamental frequency” had dropped by 23 Hz over five decades – from an average of 229 Hz to 206 Hz.
The research speculates that the transformation reflects the rise of women to more prominent roles in society, leading them to adopt a deeper tone to project authority and dominance in the workplace.
Former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher employed a professional speech coach to help her to sound more authoritative, deliberately dropping the pitch of her voice by a massive 60 Hz. (Source: BBC)
And lastly, the usual pics, vids and memes from around the web:
More like slow and fit, amirite?
Totally insane.
Speaking of stock-picking great-grandmas leading the country.
12? One is more than enough for my balloon. And it doesn’t have to be on my phone either.
Price of strawberries in a grocery store in LA. #inflationistransitory
Chinatown, NYC. Look at the long, long line of mostly Asian women and elderly waiting to get their pepper spray. This is the clearest sign people are living in fear 😔💔 #StopAsianHateThe line to buy pepper spray. Asian hate in NYC is alive and thriving.
Some real dystopian shit coming out of Russia.
That was it for today folks. Enjoy the rest of your day. Peace.