Mark Stoneman

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 11:29:07 -0400

Above all, Trump learned one very big thing from Cohn: that the veneer of morality in the American upper class is very thin. Cohn proved conclusively that there is no limit to its tolerance for corruption. Trump got that message—and so did Jeffrey Epstein.

—Fintan O’Toole, “Devils in America,"The New York Review of Books, Oct. 8, 2026, 12.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 01:51:59 -0400

Rüdiger Suchsland’s “Hitler’s Hollywood: German Cinema in the Age of Propaganda” (Kino Lorbeer, 2018) made for interesting viewing this evening. It weaves a fascinating array of scenes and themes into a personal rumination of what Nazi Germany’s cinema might reveal about mindsets in the country. The result is good cinema, but I found it less satisfying as history. The pathos in the narrator’s voice and in the filmmaker’s script also made me uncomfortable at times.

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 05:59:19 -0400

Sore body, restless night. Yesterday’s vaccinations seem to be hard at work.

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 21:55:12 -0400

Sometimes I prefer social media at times I should be sleeping so I can hear about the misery and insanity in other countries with a lot less pestilential news oozing out of the White House. Dumpy Donny does bad stuff overseas, but people seem to be taking him less seriously these days.

Russian 'Democracy'

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:10:20 -0400

In one federal TV studio, the cameras were rolling, the host was ready, but the politicians were nowhere to be found. Another Russian broadcast managed to do slightly better: one candidate actually appeared in the studio, but … he spent his alloted minute in complete silence.

–TVP World’s “Break the Fake” with Benjamin Lee, Sept. 2, 2026, https://youtu.be….

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 21:35:17 -0400

Ukraine identifies another asymmetric weakness in the terrorist state—its size, its underdeveloped transportation system, its reliance on air transport. “Zelensky vows ‘Russian sky will be de facto closed,’ warns airlines, foreign governments…” kyivindependent.com/the-russi… #RussoUkrainianWar

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 01:27:38 -0400

Ultimately, we depend on the stories we tell each other.

–Yaroslav Hrytsak, Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation, trans. Dominique Hoffman (PublicAffairs, 2024), last paragraph.

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 19:40:45 -0400

I just watched Oz Katerji’s “The Battle for Kyiv” (Byline Media, 2024). It covers events that happened 4 1/2 years ago, but it still feels immediate. It begins with the initial full-scale invasion and ends with the Bucha atrocities.

Bucha was not a one-off. Russia continues with their barbaric sport, for example, in Kherson with their “human safari” There, Russian drone pilots have been hunting and killing Ukrainian civilians, regardless of age or gender, for some two years now.

Meanwhile, that child kidnapper, war criminal, megalomaniac, and khuylo Putin recently invoked the image of orcas killing polar bears as an appropriate metaphor for teaching children about Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Solovyov the Unhappy

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:12:06 -0400

Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov seems despondent. He is so gloomy in the following clip that he doesn’t even fly off on one of his trademark tirades.

youtu.be/wokGOejrM… by Russia Media Monitor (Julia Davis)

Here is the comment I left:

The way he introduces this segment, it sounds as if he was going to talk about something real. But no, we get Kayne West.

When he returns to the war, and the notion of soldiers returning home, I again get the feeling that he is helping to set up a “stab-in-the-back” legend of the kind that proved so deadly to the Weimar Republic. The soldiers are always victorious, especially if still in enemy territory. If Russia loses the war, who will be at fault? Our man Solovyov will blame wreckers, traitors, egotists, and weaklings at home.

He also sounds like a Stalinist. He seems to forget what happens to those who do the dirty work of purging – they get purged themselves.

By the time he gets to the threats against Finland and Great Britain, I am unable to decide whether I’m listening to a broken record, or if this now banal demand reflects the frustration he expressed at the beginning. There are no new ideas. Under system-threatening stress, all he can do is repeat himself.

If you’re unfamiliar with the channel and are at all interested in contemporary propaganda and disinformation, add it to your subscription list. Many viewers seem to find the clips funny. It is certainly self-parody, but also sickening and informative.

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:09:30 -0400

If a subscription-based app requires a login just to look at it, I delete it.

If a website requires me to disable my ad blocker before I’ve even seen it, I move on.

#LifeIsTooShort

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:40:31 -0400

“How a Ukrainian [youth] survived FSB filtration and escaped Russian occupation” (Kyiv Independent, Aug. 26), youtu.be/pdCwslqd-… #RussiaIsATerroristState

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:16:20 -0400

“Former Pussy Riot member escapes Russia after 3 years of forced work for FSB” by Kate Tsurkan, The Kyiv Independent, Aug. 24, 2026. ICYI, here’s my response. #RussiaIsATerroristState

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 02:24:20 -0400

Here’s a picture I took with my iPhone SE 3rd gen. on the Boulder Loop Trail in Albany, NH, on Saturday. I used the camera’s panorama mode. The elevation gain to the top is only about 925 feet, but that was meaningful for me. It’d been too long since I walked on granite ledges with a view.

My Phone's Unreliable Activity Measurements on a Hike

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 01:38:27 -0400

On a modest hike this past Saturday, I learned that my iPhone woefully undercounts elevation gain and recklessly overcounts distance covered. My ignorance of such matters reveals how long it’s been since I could even use the word “hike” instead of “walk.” My phone’s measurements have long been useful on walks. I confirmed that again on Friday when my distance matched up with trail signage during a four mile excursion. There was enough uphill on that to make me work, but the elevation gain did not change the length and regularity of my strides. Saturday was different.

The overcounted distance flustered tired me because I was making invalid assumptions about where I was. If the hike had been longer or the weather had changed, that could have been unsafe. The next time I hike, I could try out something like AllTrails. But I’m leaning much more toward a trail guide and map. I used to enjoy that process. And it’s good to read trail route descriptions beforehand anyway in order to make informed choices when out in the woods.

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 23:28:16 -0400

The Ukrainian–English dictionary seems to have had an upgrade in iPadOS 27. When I trigger the contextual menu with a long press and select “look up,” I no longer come up empty when the word has been declined or conjugated in some way. (I’m still very much a beginner, so others' mileage might vary.)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 23:16:32 -0400

Cringe: “Thank you for trusting us with your information.” In an email from a U.S. online pharmacy (owned by a huge health insurance company) requesting information outside its remit. Capitalism isn’t satisfied with leaving health to the patient and their health care team, it seems.

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 02:22:59 -0400

Few people anticipated this war; before it happened people said it was impossible. But nothing is impossible in history. We cannot take historical reality as something that is already provided, we have to work against it to create a new reality.

–Yaroslav Hrytsak, Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation, trans. Dominique Hoffman (PublicAffairs, 2024), chap. 6.

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 17:42:53 -0400

Fascinating rumination on being human in an era shaped by frequent interactions with LLMs and their human-mediated output: “Life on the Uncanny Precipice” by Naomi Saphra, Aug. 8, 2026, nsaphra.net.

Odd Internet Speak -- Using 'Correct' to Express Agreement

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 23:19:01 -0400

Has anyone else noticed random guys writing “correct” under other people’s web comments? They are responding to something that makes sense to them or that they agree with, but to me it comes off as a combination of arrogance, ignorance, and social ineptitude. Is this usage of “correct” a weird side effect of judgy social media rhetoric? Or do I need to recalibrate what I think I’m hearing? Perhaps it is shorthand for “you speak the truth”? In this age of epistemological uncertainty, such shorthand might be useful for some as they make sense of the world. Still, I would suggest restricting it to one’s own internal monologue, so as not to sound conceited. But maybe that’s just me.

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:18:44 -0400

Sleepy day. The short visit from my son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter wore me out. We spent much of our time indoors so that my mother could enjoy the wee one’s company, but we also managed to spend a little time in Swift River at a small public beach.

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 18:01:50 -0400

A sweet slice of ordinary life in extraordinary times by the Kyiv Independent: the watermelon harvest in an unoccupied part of Kherson Oblast, youtu.be/dCASqlOEH… 🇺🇦 🍉

#StandWithUkraine

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:43:56 -0400

Hugh Roberts (Uni Exeter) introduces translations of moving poetry by Ukrainian soldiers in a conversation with Adelie Pojzman-Pontay on Ukraine the Latest. It starts at 12:30 in today’s episode. youtu.be/7AXCoKZkX… 🇺🇦

#WarPoetry #RussoUkrainianWar #StandWithUkraine

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 19:15:16 -0400

“When righteous calls to end the war become warmongering” – Important opnion piece by Andrew Chakhoyan – kyivindependent.com/when-righ…

#RussoUkrainianWar #RussiaIsATerroristState #LanguageMatters

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:27:30 -0400

“Know Your Rights Comic” by WeTeachNYC, available in 14 languages, www.weteachnyc.org/resources…

#USimmigration

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:18:03 -0400

The meter and app I use to measure my glucose levels was provided by Livongo through my health insurance. But now Teledoc has taken over. Unlike the Livongo app, theirs won’t write data to my iPhone’s Health app. Instead, it only wants to receive data. After much poking around and one unhelpful phone call, I learned that I can export a CSV file from their website. That’s at least something, though it strikes me as unnecessary friction. I guess I could use the Health CSV Importer app to get that data into the Health app. Then I would just have to remember to manually enter the data as I go. So much for the notion that technology was there to serve me and not the other way around.

By the way, if trusting Apple’s Health app sounds just as crazy as trusting Teledoc’s app, keep in mind that I have some level of control over what phone I use and when I might change it. The existence of a health insurance plan or the services it provides, however, depends on dark forces whose actions are extremely difficult to anticipate.