Good morning friends. I hope you had a relaxing weekend. Let’s get to your daily digest:
News Briefing
•Ukraine has rejected a Russian ultimatum offering people in the besieged city of Mariupol safe passage out of the port if they surrender. Under Russia's proposal, civilians would be allowed to leave if the city's defenders laid down arms. But Ukraine has refused, saying there was no question of it surrendering the strategic port city.
•In besieged Mariupol, people are now so hungry they are killing stray dogs for food. Witnesses depicted post-apocalyptic scenes of stray dogs eating the remains of bombing victims who lay unburied on the street. Civilian casualties have been placed in mass graves or buried in the courtyards of houses: proper funerals are too dangerous. More on this here.
•Russia's military has fired a hypersonic ballistic missile and destroyed a big underground arms depot in western Ukraine, the defense ministry in Moscow has said. More on this later.
•Here are a couple of Slovak border guards welcoming Ukrainian refugee kids into Slovakia:
•The latest situation on the ground reflected on the map:
•Russian forces bombed a theater in the city of Mariupol last week. The building was serving as a shelter for hundreds of refugees in the embattled city.
New satellite images show the word "CHILDREN" written largely in Russian outside the theater.
Which in turn inspired the meme below:
•In other news, UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title after finishing first in the women's 500-yard freestyle last week. "I try to ignore negative comments as much as I can. I try to focus on my swimming and what I need to do to get ready for my races and block out everything else," Thomas told ESPN after the race.
The emperor has no clothes:
“He’s a man!” yells a women’s rights protestor as Lis Thomas gives remarks after finishing first in the women’s 500 freestyle finals. #NCAASwimDiveAlso this:
Russian Hypersonic Missile in Ukraine
Hypersonic missiles are thought to be the next generation of arms as they can travel at exceptionally high speeds, more than five times the speed of sound. Until recently, hypersonic missiles have remained a closely guarded secret however President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of Russia’s investment in the weapons. Carried by MiG-31K fighter jets, it can fly at 10 times the speed of sound - 7,672 mph - and can hit a target some 1,250 miles away.
The Russian Ministry of Defense released a video early Saturday that it claimed showed a Kinzhal hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile hitting a Ukrainian missile warehouse about 300 miles southwest of Kyiv.
But there are elements of Russia's claims that don't quite add up. The claimed target was an underground missile storage facility in Delyatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, which is exactly here:
And they filmed the explosion with a drone plane, which is highly improbable since air defense in Western Ukraine is very effective, but let’s suppose they were willing to sacrifice the drone in order to capture this important moment.
The problem is that satellite images show that the strike depicted happened nowhere near the western part of the country and not at some major military weapons storage area. It happened at a heavily bombarded rural area in the far eastern area of Ukraine:
In the satellite imagery you can clearly see the farm featured in the video. It was partially destroyed by the time the image was taken, on March 12th, 2022, a week before this video was released and news of Kinzhal's use was distributed:
With all this in mind, it is very unlikely we are seeing a Kinzhal missile being used in the video. (Source: thedrive.com)
Vitalik Buterin
Let’s now talk a bit about Vitalik Buterin, the 28-year-old founder of the Ethereum blockchain, the second-largest blockchain by market value after bitcoin. So Vitalik is basically a genius, one of the greatest builders and thinkers of our time. Born in Russia in 1994, his family migrated to Canada when he was six.
Why are we talking about him? Recently he was on the cover of Time magazine. Here’s the actual cover:
Now, you don’t need to be a design professional to see that Time could have done a much better art direction/composition for this cover, visually conveying creative superpower of subject rather than what this cover conveys. Notice the positioning and placement of hands, gaze direction relative to subject and reader compared to more zoomed in, power stance or other choices made on other cultural icon covers. Imagery matters and the continued portrayal of powerful, inspiring tech leaders as cliché nerds is just annoying.
And of course the trolls poured in:
To which Vitalik replied in true Vitalik fashion:
And then the GOAT got a reply from the GOAT:
House Prices
The popular narrative that real estate is out of control and out of reach seems to be off base. See below:
Median home price in 1990: $126,800
Median home price today: $408,100
Average 30-year mortgage rate in 1990: 10.26%
Average 30-year mortgage rate today: 4.16%
Mortgage installment on median house 1990: $1,137 (adjusted for infl.: $2,486)
Mortgage installment on today’s median house at today’s average rate: $1,986
From 1990 to today, house prices increased 5.72% (CAGR).
Per-capita GDB was $23,868 in 1990. Per-capita GDP today is $72,188. This is an increase of 5.41% (CAGR).
Housing price increases are largely in line with increases in income. Additionally, the rates are lower.
Mortgage payments as a % of disposable income is also at historic lows. The popular narrative is wrong.
Pics, vids & memes
For all the Breaking Bad fans out there, the trailer of the final season of Better Call Saul is out and looks sick.
I think the Europeans are up to sth here.
Situation is crazy in Hong Kong.
No shit. Some more wisdom please.
So bottom line is:
Got it.
His real name.
That was it for today folks. Wishing you a nice rest of the day, peace.