Evgenia joins me on the phone from the Duchy of Moscow for a late night convo about what’s happening in Russia and about what to her feels like the dawn of a new era for Russian society.
Interesting how both Russia and the US both attempt to revert to pre-WWI mean. Centralized monarchy vs imperialist robber baron oligarchy. I wonder if these changes are informing/influencing each other?
"The field?" She's in Moscow, not Pokrovsk. The city she's in is more modern, civilized, and culturally vibrant, and ruled by a higher-quality oligarchy than any in the US.
We say the war "brought the people together" but there's only unity in the perception of the enemy and the resolve to defeat it, and that unity has been created with the somewhat stage-managed recreation of the Kursk battle into which the NATO nazis were suckered by Gerasimov and Lapin (though of course they'll never admit it).
Outside of that unity which arose in the face of the clear and present danger of the nazi horde, there is a huge ideological wilderness that used to be occupied by Putin's psyops and his master mystifier Surkov but has been abandoned to nature as the war with the West destroyed Putin's entire strategy of integrating Russia to the EU, scattered his oligarchs to the winds, and basically laid waste his entire life's work, turning him into a confused old king who no longer understands the world and just tries to keep out of its way.
In the absence of Putin's elaborate stageplays, Russians have sought identity and purpose in the past, some going back to the tsars and some reviving the cult of Stalin. There are even folks on the front sporting swastikas and black suns.
Interesting how both Russia and the US both attempt to revert to pre-WWI mean. Centralized monarchy vs imperialist robber baron oligarchy. I wonder if these changes are informing/influencing each other?
nice dispatch from the field
"The field?" She's in Moscow, not Pokrovsk. The city she's in is more modern, civilized, and culturally vibrant, and ruled by a higher-quality oligarchy than any in the US.
like “reporting from the field” meaning reporting from on site rather than from afar, I’m not calling Moscow a field
This was funny...Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession https://youtu.be/m3xVdxDWFWU?feature=shared
We say the war "brought the people together" but there's only unity in the perception of the enemy and the resolve to defeat it, and that unity has been created with the somewhat stage-managed recreation of the Kursk battle into which the NATO nazis were suckered by Gerasimov and Lapin (though of course they'll never admit it).
Outside of that unity which arose in the face of the clear and present danger of the nazi horde, there is a huge ideological wilderness that used to be occupied by Putin's psyops and his master mystifier Surkov but has been abandoned to nature as the war with the West destroyed Putin's entire strategy of integrating Russia to the EU, scattered his oligarchs to the winds, and basically laid waste his entire life's work, turning him into a confused old king who no longer understands the world and just tries to keep out of its way.
In the absence of Putin's elaborate stageplays, Russians have sought identity and purpose in the past, some going back to the tsars and some reviving the cult of Stalin. There are even folks on the front sporting swastikas and black suns.
Exhilarating ep! Trump's AI Action Plan released today. Precog instincts 100%.
1. Unchaining the Future / Joe Costello
https://life-in-the-21st-century.ghost.io/the-politics-of-ai-ii-unchaining-the-future/
2. How the AI Action Plan Made America a Command Economy for Big Tech That You Will Pay For / Chris Castle
https://musictech.solutions/2025/07/23/beyond-standard-oil-how-the-ai-action-plan-made-america-a-command-economy-for-big-tech-that-you-will-pay-for/