Image is of container ships waiting outside the canal. While there is usually some number of ships waiting for passage, the number has increased significantly lately.
In order to move ships through the Panama Canal, water is needed to fill the locks. The water comes from freshwater lakes, which are replenished by rainfall. This rainfall hasn't been coming, and Lake Gatun, the largest one, is at near record low levels.
Hundreds of ships are now in a maritime traffic jam, unable to cross the canal quickly. Panama is attempting to conserve water and have reduced the number of transits by 20% per day, among other measures. The Canal's adminstrators have warned that these drought conditions will remain for at least 10 months.
It is unlikely that global supply chains will be catastrophically affected, at least this year. Costs may increase for consumers in the coming months, especially for Christmas, but by and large goods will continue to flow, around South America if need be. Nonetheless, projecting trends over the coming years and decades, you can imagine how this is yet another nudge by climate change towards dramatic economic, environmental, and political impacts on the world at large. It also might prompt discussions inside various governments about nearshoring, and the general vulnerability of global supply chains - especially as the United States tries, bafflingly, to go to war with China.
After some discussion in the last megathread about building knowledge of geopolitics, some of us thought it might be an interesting idea to have a Country of the Week - essentially, I/we choose a country and then people can come in here and chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants, related to that country. More detail in this comment.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
Putin and a young physicist from Sarov came up with a formula for the ideal wife
spoiler
– Where will we look for dark matter? In the Universe or somewhere closer? – Putin unexpectedly asked the young scientist Maxim Vyalkov.
The graduate student in physics was not at a loss, he explained that dark matter is everywhere, there is even more of it than visible matter, and therefore he is ready to look for it right here. Putin asked what to do when dark matter is discovered.
– We'll get new riddles. But first we’ll get the Nobel Prize,” the graduate student answered, not without scientific humor.
The head of the Russian state wished the young scientist success in studying neutrinos and searching for dark matter and was ready to give the floor to another participant in the meeting, when the graduate student added the president’s wish with words about success in finding his wife. Vladimir Putin immediately expressed interest in discussing this issue, possibly with the future Nobel laureate.
– It is not known what is more important. I am not kidding. You come across some girl who is not very keen on science, and what will you do? – the president asked. – You’ll forget about neutrinos ...
“I found a formula: there must be a wife who is an architect,” the young physicist immediately answered.
The President was surprised and asked for clarification why this was so. Maxim Vyalkov revealed his formula for finding the ideal wife: an architect is a man of art.
“The building has a soul, and the architect lays it out.” She must feel the beauty of the Universe, and in the same way a mathematical physicist feels this beauty of the Universe,” explained the Russian President’s interlocutor.
Putin, from the height of his life experience, decided to give advice to the young scientist not to limit himself to stereotypes.
– Don't limit yourself to stereotypes. Be sure to be an architect and that's it! And you will run into some kind of wall there,” Vladimir Putin vividly presented a figurative picture. – We need a person who thinks in images, and this can be a person from a variety of professions.
The graduate student gave up on this. He promised to take the presidential advice into account in his life and be sure to write it down. But here Putin showed his delicacy: “no, no, it’s your choice,” he misspoke.
But the formula for an ideal wife is unlikely to have changed from this scientific dialogue. The Rossiya 24 TV channel and the We Watch media platform broadcast Putin’s meeting with scientists from the scientific center in Sarov, where Soviet nuclear weapons were created.
Smotrim
This feels like a Three Body Problem bit.
We need a mega rule that limits mention of the damn three body problem, imo.
Yeah like everytime the 3 body problem is mentioned, it causes some sort of collapse in the rate of 3 body problems from then on in a constantly expanding bubble to other threads and instances. We can call it 3 body speed of light limit or such. It can then even be used as an attack preemptively to prevent any other mentions of the book. This may also cause all mentions of 3, body, and problem to eventually disappear
The dual vector post.