History Is Too Loud

      I can barely hear myself think.  Sorry.  Maybe tomorrow.

You've Never Heard It Like This

      Rather than talk about all the troubles of the world, here's a lovely version of a lovely piece of music:

How To Read The War News

      "The first casualty of war is truth," the many-sourced epigram holds.  Whoever first said it, and however they meant it, it's true.  In the battle, no one knows the entire picture.  While the "fog of war" is a lot less foggy for modern generals thanks to advanced technology, for ordinary troops, regular citizens and journalists things are as murky as ever, if not more so: social media is the latest extension of the battlefield, strafed with rumor and strewn with Photoshop landmines and poisonous memes.

      Reports of large-scale movement are likely to be approximately correct.  Everyone has spy satellites these days and while NRO-or-whoever is unlikely to show their cards, commercial imagery is widely available.  On the other hand, NATO is unlikely to be flying anything at all over Ukraine and bordering non-NATO nations (or at least anything but thoroughly anonymized drones, which of course belong to no one, no one at all) and if they did, they wouldn't tell Fox or CNN what they were seeing.

      From the Russian government,* we'll get bullshit and bravado; from the Ukrainian government, we'll get bravado and bullshit.  A lot of the "amateur reporting" supposedly from Ukraine has been shown to be faked.  Is some real? Certainly; but only the crudest fakes are easy to spot.

      One of the major products of war is dead people.  Count on it.  Not just soldiers; grandparents, babies, schoolchildren, grumpy bastards and nice young people have already died and more are going to die.  No sane person cheers for that.  But we can't stop it.

      Various sanctions have been implemented, more will be, and most of the complaining about this or that not having been done is based on profound misunderstandings of who runs what.  Take SWIFT, a secure financial-exchange communications system: it's owned by the member banks, all across the world.  It takes some doing to get them to agree to pull the plug on member banks.  The President of the U.S. can't order them to.  It's a pretty sure bet that NSA reads all of SWIFT's mail, too, and that can be a valuable source of intelligence info.  That's one tiny corner of the complicated picture, and it's all that knotted, or worse. 

      Most of the big-picture reporting will be reasonably accurate; most of the live coverage in-zone from major news organizations will be a mixture of official news releases (generally serving a specific end), whatever they can find out themselves or from locals (eyewitness testimony, which can be of variable trustworthiness) and live pictures (what's in-frame is real, and what's out of frame is unknown).  The heart-wrenching human-interest stuff?  Who can say.  War is terrible.  It's also chaotic.  We're always being told to "remember the Maine!"  We're rarely encouraged to find out what actually happened to the Maine.

      Be compassionate.  Follow the news as closely as you care to.  But don't be a sap (MIT has some hints) -- and don't cheer for the aggressor.  That'd be the side that sent tanks clanking towards the capitol city.
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* Which includes nearly all Russian media and they're working on the holdouts.  Ukraine is better off for press freedom, with independent press and both official government-run and independent radio and TV broadcasters.  But they're trying to report and run their transmitters, webservers  and printing presses from inside a war zone, so....

Useful?

      In case you were wondering, Ukrainian for "Wolverines!" is "Росомахи!" according to Google.

Dead Archduke Time

      And time, yet again, for tanks rolling into Poland, er, Ukraine on the thinnest of lies.

      This will be on History tests, eventually -- presuming there's anyone around and current events don't eventually poke a hole in history big enough to throw a Dark Ages through.

      The Republican-aligned punditry are still talking about what a great fellow Mr. Putin is, as mechanized armor clanks in and the missiles fly.  Meanwhile, no few of the socially-conservative, limited-democracy, ex-Warsaw Pact nations so admired by the talking-head Right are turning to NATO and the EU, away from Gospodin Putin's smothering Russia.  Viktor Orban's for Ukraine sovereignty (wasn't it just last month he was cuddling up to dear old Rodina's muscle-boy for reactors and heating gas?).  Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have triggered the NATO bat-signal  -- okay, "urgent Article 4 consultations" -- over the Russian invasion.  Suddenly, those (well-armed) "decadent Western nations" of the EU and North America are looking a lot better to them than borscht and culture-war orthodoxy.

      It will be interesting to see how that plays out domestically.  Especially along the Trumpian MAGA axis. (Though watching the traditionally antiwar Left generate spin will be another fine show for one of the smaller rings in the media's Big Top.  It's all clowns, jackasses and elephants these days.)

      On the world stage?  My bet is that Mr. Putin still thinks he can have a nice, neat, well-contained war, pick up as  much of Ukraine as he cares to and break the remainder to saddle without the free world doing anything worse to him than weak economic sanctions and strongly-worded objections.  Is he right?  I don't know.  These things have a way of getting out of hand, one way or another.

      Europe was due for another war.  I wish they weren't.

Beef Stew

      The world continues to turn and you still have to have supper.  I had thawed a pound of stew beef.  There were a couple of parsnips in the refrigerator and a red onion and small, multi-colored potatoes in the cabinet.  Beef stew is pretty quick to make.

      I wanted a thick broth.  There are lots of ways to accomplish that (a little cornstarch stirred into cold water, added to the simmering broth and brought to a boil is a quick classic) but I wanted to try something.  I have a container of "Italian Panko," really just seasoned breadcrumbs with a fancy title.  I crumbled about a cup of them into a bowl with a little flour and cornmeal, salt and pepper, and snipped the stew beef into small pieces, across the grain.  With hot olive oil in my Always pan (this will be important later), I dredged them through the breadcrumb mixture a little at a time, adding the breaded meat to the pan as I went.

      Each batch was turned and pushed away from the center of the pan before the next was added.  By the time it was all in, there was a pretty fair coating of breadcrumbs on the bottom of the pan, very dark in a few places.  I deglazed those with a little balsamic vinegar (acidic liquids will take out the "burned" taste) and water and turned down the heat.

      Parsnips next, peeled, cut into small pieces and added to the center of the pan.  The onion got the same treatment -- I took my time, so the parsnips would cook longer.  Eventually, the diced onion went in, and I let it cook uncovered while I got out and washed three medium-small potatoes, then covered the pan while I cut them up,

      Once the potatoes were ready, the onion was getting translucent.  I added a cup and a half of water and deglazed again.  Not everything on the bottom was coming off, but the broth was a lovely dark brown.  I added some parsley and mixed seasoning (sage and some others), and as it got to bubbling, had a taste.

      Okay, but a bit bland.  I added a packet of powdered beef bone broth, stirred it up and had another taste.  That had done it! (Our corner grocer carries this brand, the version in a box holding several packets, each good for one cup of sipping broth.  It has a long shelf life and works well for cooking.)  It came to a low boil and I added the potatoes and covered it, setting a twenty-minute timer.

      That left me time to tidy up and wash a load of dishes.  It took twenty-five minutes before I was done, and the stew was ready by then, potatoes and parsnips soft, onions cooked down, and the beef remarkably tender, especially for the short cooking time, about an hour.

      Tam and I had dinner while watching an episode of Black Mirror.  I chickened out of the last half -- a complicated plot involving multiple murders, which I had sussed out* and was finding the drama being acted out just a little too much to take.  So I went to freeze the leftover stew and clean up the kitchen.

      Once I had poured the stew into a freezer bag, there was a pretty thick coating of cooked-down, gluey breadcrumb stuff sticking to the bottom of the pan.  I wiped out as much as I could with a paper towel, added a little hot water and wondered if I'd done in my fancy pan.

      I'd dished the stew out with a large, soft silicone spoon.  I poured off the water that hadn't been absorbed and tried scraping at the stuff with the edge of the turned-over spoon.  Success!  It peeled up cleanly in long strips.  I got nearly all of it up, with just a little scrubbing with dish soap and the little loofa provided with the pan* to get the last few spots before washing and drying.  So the breadcrumb thing works, but be prepared to use some elbow grease afterward, especially if you use a pan that isn't non-stick.
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* One thing about writing fiction is that you start to recognize where plots are going -- this character will kill again, that one will be a victim, this casually-introduced thing will be critical later, and so on.  I figured out early on that this episode, "Crocodile," was along the lines of a Greek tragedy and after the second inevitable murder, I found it too intense to watch.

* This wouldn't have occurred to me but it's a clever idea.  The non-PTFE nonstick lining is harder than Teflon but still too soft for a Scotch-Brite pad.  A loofa is just right.

Say They Threw A World War

      ...And everyone was invited.  There's nothing more inclusive than a world war, after all.  At least unless you're Swiss.

      Then what?

      The first fork is conventional or nuclear.  Nuke's worst; a "limited nuclear exchange" costs everyone an important city or two, the nations of the world freak out and stop fighting, and we all lay off milk for awhile.  Some governments may topple, but don't bet any big money on it.  Cancer cases will start to ramp up and it might even cure Global Warming -- but not in a good way.  All the actuarial tables will be out of date and if you thought the pandemic fouled up supply chains, you ain't seen nothin' yet.  Conversely, if it's an all-out slugfest, forget it.  We're dead.  (Indianapolis is the home of the Army's check-writing accountants.  I figure we're a second- or third-tier target if worse comes to worst.)

      So forget that fork.  If it's bad, it will be bad all around, think late 1929 - 34 only with more fallout.  If it's worse, nobody worries for long because the dead have no worries.

      Conventional war?  This is looking more like 1914 than 1939: one thread gets pulled and the whole garment unravels.  It will ramp up slowly; Gospodin Putin's Russia has pulled the "gradual warfare" trick before, a slow escalation that boils the frog without blitzkrieg, and it has worked so far.  This time, it might not.  Will the conflict stabilize along a new set of trenchlines or become a war of movement?  I don't know.

      Even if the war grows, pulling in European nations and NATO (and thus the U.S. and UK), I think the growth will be gradual.  We're probably not going to be saving grease and scrap metal for the war effort.*  But if it continues for long, things like cyber attacks will increase and can make a mess, adding to supply-chain problems that will probably also increase, just as slowly (or, dammit, quickly) as the war spreads.  Throw in a few larcenous hackers making use of whatever new things they can learn, and that sphere of battle can spread to places far from the contested territory.

      The pandemic may have given us some useful habits.  I keep a month's supply of paper goods on hand these days, and about six weeks worth of coffee, a month or more of canned good, weeks of meat in the freezer, and so on.  There is no coffee grown in the continental U.S. and very little tea, so if it is a necessity for you (it is for me), keeping extra on hand is a good precaution.

      Russia can no more be shamed world by opinion into doing the right thing than a tiger can be shamed into not eating meat.  Ukraine can't afford to back down unless they are willing to give up being a country (and if they go, the Baltic states had better worry).  Chess players and military historians may be able to visualize the game from there but it doesn't go in any good direction.

      There's a lot of BS circulating.  If you want to know who's really pushing for war, check to see who's doing the most active and numerous movement of troops, weapons and materiel to the contested border.  It's not the United States -- but we have been the free world's Plan B since the second decade of the Twentieth Century and I don't think that's going to change, no matter who is scuffing the White House carpets.

      Whatever happens, I am damned well unwilling to face it without coffee.  First World problems?  You bet.
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* I hate to break this to you, but it now appears that WW II scrap drives were mostly a morale effort; saved grease was a useful source of glycerin, and scrap iron and steel was helpful, but the rest?  Not so much.

So, Who's Keeping A Wary Eye On Actual Commies?

      Conservative media being largely preoccupied with goofball takes on the COVID-19 pandemic and getting alarmed at the President,* it has fallen to Pro Publica and the Gray Lady to pick up the slack:

      How Bots and Fake Accounts Push China’s Vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland. 

      It ain't pretty, what Winnie the Pooh's evil twin is up to.  And his old pal Uncle Vlad is even worse.  At least somebody's watching them.
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* When it ain't Your Guy in the White House, the resident of 1600 Pennsy is simultaneously senile or deranged, a puppet of shadowy forces and a ruthless, sneaky mastermind in his own right.  The image is little more than a cheesy copy of a Bond villain.  Just as soon as the office-holder is replaced by one from the other party, the sides holding this view flip, but the narrative never changes.  In my life, I have seen a handful of would-be "masterminds" get elected and dig in, and every last one of them was more concerned with getting re-elected than evildoing, incapable of really effective sneakiness and of only average intelligence or a bit higher.  Few geniuses, no morons.  But where's the excitement in that?  And thus, always, Presidential Derangement Syndrome from the opposing partly, as reliable as the full moon and twice as howling.  There are plenty of Presidents I don't think much of and a few who I think have intended and done actual harm -- but they have never fit the dumb/puppet/mastermind PDS mold, because no one does.

Steaks: Cooking And Cooked

      Steaks, plus Red Gold potatoes that were nuked and then baked:

TAMARA KEEL PHOTO

TAMARA KEEL PHOTO

     The asparagus was fresh, prepackaged, microwave ready with garlic butter and diced red bell pepper.  The hardest work was cleaning and prepping the grill -- and that wasn't very difficult.

Sunday: Warm

      58 degrees when I stacked up kindling and hardwood charcoal.  It was windy, too, but not so windy I couldn't build a fire in the grill and make a couple of steaks.  With baked potatoes and asparagus, it was a good Sunday dinner -- specially for February.

      And by the way, truffle salt was amazing on the potatoes.  It only takes a little!

Put Them Together, What Do You Get?

      If this goes on, we could see some weird stuff:

      NPR on "The Big Sort," as people pick up and move to areas where they'll be among folks who share their politics.  Red and Blue, Left and Right, lots of people are doing it.

      And then,

      "COVID Is More Like Smoking."  You can greatly limit the harm it does to you by changing your behavior.  Not everyone is willing to do so.

      Combined, we could eventually see some regions where COVID-19 is far more widespread, and others where it isn't.

      I think we're better off purple.  Annoying though it can be.

Actual Headline

      Headline seen elsewhere, "Why is Norway so good at Winter Olympics?"

      So, slept through Geography and Social Studies, did we?