Gernot retweeted
The arrogance of these American weirdos, thinking they have the right to carve up Europe, will come back to haunt them when Europe and China start carving up Russia in the near future. The unipolar moment is over
Gernot retweeted
Maar een overval techniek, je coalitiepartner niet op de hoogte brengen, een premier die afwezig is maar als topdog van D66 van die deal op dehoogte moest zijn maar zweeg en Jesse Klaver die op TikTok glunderend als een rancuneus kind lachend de VVD in de zeik nam was rampzalig.
Gernot retweeted
Even though Ukraine struck 9 refineries in 11 days, we haven't seen a major change in overall refinery levels.
Several Russian refineries that had been spared strikes for several months likely came back online over the past 2 weeks. However, there aren't any left in that category.
This is likely why we are hearing reports of localized outages. The system has to adjust to a rapid shift of supply as ~500 kbpd came online and ~600 kbpd when offline in rather concentrated areas.
Going forward, expect a more direct downtrend with every strike. However, don't expect significant systemic shortages until the solid line drops into the gold band or outages until it reaches the bottom of the band.
Note that a 9 hard strikes per 11 days is likely significantly more than Russia's repair capacity. Restarts take an average off 45-60 days to recover from major hits. Any rate above 0.5 refineries per day have a very noticeable impact.
Based on September-October outage maps such as those from @MalcontentmentT , ~5 more strikes in a week would probably make it very colorful.
Refinery list is in the first reply and methodology in the second.
And as a reminder, this is based on an experimental process being tested real-time. It uses only public sources that can be delayed or noisy such as a restart/shutdown only being announced 2 weeks late. Further, correlating sources such as NASA FIRMS satellite data has some seasonal and environmental quirks. Expect variations in the record when I post updates every ~2 weeks.
Gernot retweeted
In 1904, 13 experts signed a report saying a horse in Berlin could do math.
They checked for tricks and found none.
The horse was called Hans. His owner, Wilhelm von Osten, was a math teacher who had trained him like a schoolboy.
Ask Hans what 3 plus 5 was and he tapped his hoof 8 times. Ask him "If the eighth day of the month falls on a Tuesday, what is the date of the following Friday?" and he tapped 11. He told the time. He kept track of the calendar. He spelled words. The New York Times wrote about him. Von Osten never charged a cent to watch.
Germany's board of education wanted an answer, so a commission of 13 was formed. A vet. A circus manager. A cavalry officer. Schoolteachers. The director of the Berlin zoo.
In September 1904 they announced their verdict: no tricks were involved.
Then the case was handed to a young assistant named Oskar Pfungst.
Pfungst didn't try to catch a cheat. He changed one thing at a time.
He let strangers ask the questions. Hans still got them right. So it wasn't von Osten.
He put blinders on the horse. The answers fell apart.
Then he ran the test that ended it. He had people ask questions they didn't know the answer to themselves.
When Hans could see someone who knew the answer, he got 89% right.
When he couldn't, he got 6%.
Hans couldn't count. He was reading faces.
As his hoof got close to the right number, the person asking tensed up without realizing it. On the final tap, they relaxed. A tiny lift of the head. Hans stopped right there, every time.
Von Osten wasn't a con man. He never accepted the result and kept showing Hans to cheering crowds until he died in 1909.
The strangest part came later. Pfungst learned the cues so well that he could perform the act himself, and he found he kept giving the cues even when he tried not to.
It's one reason experiments on people are run double-blind today.
And it never went away.
In 2011, researchers at UC Davis sent 18 certified drug and bomb dog teams through rooms with no drugs and no explosives in them at all. Handlers were told red paper marked where a scent was hidden.
The teams made 225 alerts. Most of them landed where the handlers believed the scent was.
The dogs smelled nothing. They read the person holding the leash.
Thirteen experts watched a horse for months and never once looked at the humans standing next to it.
What's something you were sure you understood, until you realized you were just reading the room?
Finally Germany is growing a spine and uses its power within the EU to protect europe from Russian aggression by supporting Ukraine
"What the German Chancellor is doing is typical blackmail. And I reject it." - PM of Slovakia Fico.
He threatened to veto the new budget of EU that would include aid for Ukraine.
The Chancellor insists that the EU's 2028-2034 budget agreement must include guarantees of financial support for Kyiv in 2027 and beyond. Merz warned that he would block the EU budget if such guarantees were not included.
According to Fico, Hungary, Czechia, and Bulgaria share this position.
7
Gernot retweeted
Massie: "I hope Hegseth addresses the 8 articles of impeachment, and doesn‘t get up and misquote the Bible in Quentin Tarantino fashion and do some pull-ups and call everybody fat and gay. I may have just given you half his speech, I don't know."
Gernot retweeted
What's crazy is that music like this could have been played for centuries, just no-one thought to do it. What else are we missing?
Gernot retweeted
Seamos sinceros muchachos, si Chiang Kai-shek le hubiera ganado la guerra civil a Mao, hoy China sería la primera potencia del mundo, con la economía más grande, el nivel de vida más alto y encima, el país se hubiera ahorrado 80 millones de muertos. Prefirieron cazar gorriones.
Gernot retweeted
How do you even wrap your head around this? Nearing the end of the fifth year of its full-scale war, the great and invincible Russia is bitching that Ukraine, a feeble artificially created American puppet with no agency, refuses to obey its masters and keeps blowing up Russia’s oil industry.
Next thing you know, Putin will be calling Trump to complain about Zelenskyy.
Gernot retweeted
Ukraine treating Jared Kushner with all the respect he deserves.
WSJ feels the timing on this one.
Kushner, dialing into a meeting remotely because he was sick, told Zelensky to hold off on strikes since he and Witkoff are burning time and jet fuel brokering with Moscow, and a 30-day pause on refinery strikes would be Ukraine's way of saying thanks, per a WSJ source.
wsj.com/world/ukraine-pauses…
Gernot retweeted
Reality is finally crashing down on the Kremlin: Trump can't deliver the easy capitulation putin was banking on.
In a telling moment of backdoor realisation, putin’s top aide, Yuri Ushakov, just exposed Moscow's deep desperation. He admits that dealing strictly with Trump and his real estate “diplomats”, isn't working because Trump can't just bully Kyiv into submission. Instead, Russia is finally forced to accept a hard truth: they have to deal with a united Europe that stands firmly behind Ukraine. Desperate for progress, Moscow now wants Europe at the table—proving once and for all that Trump's 'magic wand' has completely failed.
Pavel Zarubin: “Is such an option possible, if Zelensky continues to behave insolently toward the American administration, that the American administration will simply dictate and force him to make the decisions that the American administration considers correct?”
Yuri Ushakov: “Well, you understand, even earlier there was an impression after Anchorage, too, that the American administration could dictate something like that and force Kyiv to fulfill it. But so far this hasn't quite worked out, because it's not enough to talk only with Kyiv; one needs to talk with the whole of Europe, which fully supports Kyiv, and perhaps Europe's position here is of a key character.”