domain:thezvi.wordpress.com
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
20hr ago
He also would have been 44 years old at the time, which seemed a little old for a Chilean communist; revolutionary leftism is a game for the young, no? But it turns out it's all fake news; he was probably never an asylee, and he died in his home country of Chile in 2019.
hydroacetylene
20hr ago
Un-restricting the TLM
TC is too unpopular with the first world bishops, and not really asked for by the Latin American or third world ones, to stick around. That doesn't mean Summorum Pontificum is coming back but it has to get loosened for political reasons.
normalized SSPX relations
What do you mean by 'normalized'.
There is a tendency for conservative Catholics in the Anglosphere to wait eagerly for a big, beautiful deal that isn't coming, and won't be anytime soon, and claim that nothing short of a big, beautiful deal makes any difference. TBH, the conservative American bishops want a big, beautiful deal. But no one else does. The Vatican doesn't particularly want a big, beautiful deal. The bishops in other locations the SSPX is present in don't want a big, beautiful deal(what they do want varies, of course). The liberals don't want a big, beautiful deal. The other Latin mass groups don't particularly care for a big, beautiful deal. The society itself doesn't want a big, beautiful deal. Instead the gradual process of increasingly regular legal status, relations, etc which has been happening since 2007, didn't cease under Francis, and is probably going to continue on roughly the same trajectory makes the society, the Vatican, the French bishops, etc very happy. French bishops don't want to be stuck answering for the society's far right political associations if the French deep state steps up the cordon sanitaire against FN(which the SSPX officially supported since the Jean-Marie le Pen days), and other European bishops are mostly leery of the same situation developing; SSPX leadership has literally been prosecuted for hate speech and this is, well, Europe. But they also don't want to take the risk of a hardline attitude towards the SSPX, and most of them like the flexibility to grant faculties and negotiate with them. The Vatican doesn't want a big, beautiful deal it can be beholden too- especially given the SSPX history of playing hardball- and doesn't want the political blowback of whatever deal might get announced. It also appreciates the SSPX's influence among 'independent/irregular' groups of a traditional persuasion. And the society enjoys the flexibility of not having a formal deal, obviously, but they also don't want the attention of anti-far-right secular politicians, or a blowback from the terms of such a deal, or whatever, and, crucially, they don't envision themselves as a permanent organization. The SSPX's conception of its own future is that it will dissolve itself upon accomplishing its goals of banishing modernism from the church- part of their confidence that this will happen is psychohistory and conspiracy theories about apocalyptic prophecies, of course, but they also see themselves as well on track to accomplish them over a long enough timeframe(and they do not think in terms of years or even decades) by their own metrics. The regular Latin mass groups see the irregularity as an insurance policy for themselves.
Instead everyone gets what they want, except for conservative Americans. The SSPX gets to make steady progress on their plans measured in centuries. The French bishops and liberals get a convenient way to distance themselves from icky right wingers, but without declaring them to be in schism. The Vatican doesn't have to deal with everything a big beautiful deal would entail. The FSSP and ICK(who control the negotiating commissions, either directly or through sympathizers) get their insurance policy. The bishops of persecuted Christians in parts of Asia get society priests to violate local laws for them with plausible deniability(no, I will not provide a source, although SSPX clergy who are appropriately placed will discuss it freely if asked in person). Nobody has to give a particular interpretation of certain passages of Vatican II quasi-official endorsement(this disappoints conservative American bishops, who broadly do not hate VII but also identify the 'hermaneutic of rupture' or 'supercouncil thesis' as a primary problem in the church today. They're also mostly canon lawyers who are used to dealing with a markedly more cliquish and sectarian local church than is the global norm- as I keep pointing out, tradcath is, in the US, one part of a collage of different conservative Catholic movements, all of which would be reckoned as basically concerned with orthodoxy, socially conservative, and highly devout. It might be the biggest but is definitely a top five, and highly religious Catholics in the US are increasingly picky about where they go to mass.). Nobody has to sort out what's going on with the SSPX's associated religious orders, everywhere all at once, or their chapels that local bishops don't like, or whatever.
TIRM
20hr ago
After the attempted shaming heaped upon Romney, they'd be wise to harden their hearts and automatically reject all shaming attempts from their left. It is a weapon wielded too much by Democrats in recent years. Time to deny them it.
I actually agree with your sentiment and the particular statements you just made. But, it has been poisoned due to recent misuse, so get ready for the era of no shame.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
20hr ago
I think you summed it up pretty succinctly, but you forgot the best conspiracy theory angle - Seymour Hersh was deliberately fed a poison pill that bore enough similarities to his other big breaks to convince him to suspend his skepticism, tanking the credibility of the concept in the eyes of the public!
I still don't think that makes him an irredeemable source though.
TIRM
20hr ago
According to the timing of this article, he moved to the US months or maybe a year before Pinochet was out of power after losing that plebiscite. Something like that. Interesting he got to remain for the following 3 decades even though his excuse was immediately made invalid. Also despite the ban on communists. Rules don't apply to this guy.
I hear it's decent at creative writing, but that's sort of a wishy-washy benchmark. Maybe it will become the smut model of choice like R1 was for a while? That's... something at least?
K2 is censored. It refused my prompts to write Evangelion and Nagatoro lemons on the grounds that the characters were underage. I tried Uzaki-chan, since that's a college setting, and it still refused because it didn't want to write smut about copyrighted characters. Then I tried an original story, and it gave me a million excuses before finally writing a non-explicit response.
Okay, so we need a jailbreak. Which is a pain in the ass, but since it's an open source model, at least it won't be patchable. I looked around, and I found Mei Unfettered. I applied it, and... that was not worth the effort. I still had to age up the characters, the prose was more like the obligatory sex scene in a romance novel than a Literotica story, and then there's this gem:
“Condom,” she says, reaching for the nightstand. “Unless you want to explain a post-apocalyptic child support claim.”
You're better off using Grok, jailbroken ChatGPT, and whatever experimental SOTA models get tested in the arena.
Dean
Flairless
21hr ago
I am on record for doubting the US navy could/would attack and seize the shipping vessels of much of the world that would still prefer to trade with China, but I will admit to chuckling at your description.
Seymore Hersh did a long and somewhat fanciful article claiming that the US bombed the Nord Stream Pipeline.
It was sourced to anonymous intelligence sources, but reflected a misunderstanding of how the US government functions (claiming certain parts of the US military did it to avoid the Congressional oversight that is also present under a different channel for the alleged organization, i.e. not avoiding Congressional oversight), operational security (claiming simultaneously that significant parts of the US government couldn't be told but also sharing it with key NATO allies), munition physics (claiming an airdrop of a precision submersible munition rather at altitudes that would break it, rather than lowering off a boat), and planning timelines (the bomb had to be planted during a major NATO exercise, when many NATO witnesses would be present, but detonated months later lest the Russians discover it, rather than use a boat closer to the time), and signal technology (the bomb had to be detonated by a signal from a military aircraft that would be conspicuously flying overhead, rather than a boat sailing through the area). It also relied on falsifiable claims (no NATO aircraft was observed launching from or flying around the places and times he claimed) that were falsified shortly after publication, unfalsifiable claims of vague, unspecified, but undefeatable Russian underwater sensors that would detect the bombs a few months after the bomb was planted but not the months prior, and a someone exaggerated view of the technical requirements of blowing up the pipeline (minimal requirements being professional swimming gear and a commercially available boat).
Whether you believe the US bombed the pipeline or not- and there have been people who insisted with straight faces no one else possibly could have the means or motive to and that even considering anyone other than the Americans was a self-evident waste of time- Hersh's account was an incompetent way to go about it. It was incompetence that treated itself seriously, presenting what it clearly thought was a super-professional and competent means that only the Americans could have achieved. In practice it was more Hollywood fantasy than Tom Clancy technothriller in quality, not least because Hersh had a bizar insistence of using any other method of delivery or initiation for a water-based explosive to a target in the water other than use a boat.
It also was not followed in the months or years since by any supporting revelations by any of the many motivated parties who would happily have the Americans receive the blame. Instead, eventually, Germany put the equivalent of an arrest warrant for Ukrainians. Coincidentally, the same week, the Wall Street Journal published an account blaming the Ukrainians.
(They rented a boat.)
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
21hr ago
· Edited 21hr ago
The Department of Homeland Security weighs in
TL;DR: "¿Qué? ¿Quién?"
The family of the individual allegedly told reporters he was handcuffed and taken by federal officers at a green card appointment in Philadelphia. This claim is completely false. There is no record of the man appearing at any green card appointment in or around the area of Philadelphia on June 20, 2025.
Furthermore, ICE has not deported Luis Leon—a Chilean national—to Guatemala, as his family members have said. ICE’s only record of this individual entering the U.S. is in 2015 from Chile under the visa waiver program.
(ICE appears to be denying he was ever a refugee or had a green card!)
And The Morning Call -- the original paper reporting this -- has a new story
A Chilean journalist, Jose Del Pino of Canalo 13, said a doctor at the Guatemala City hospital where Nataly claimed to see her grandfather had no record of him. Additionally, Del Pino said, a man by the same name and date of birth died in Santiago, Chile, in 2019. Chilean citizens are issued national identification numbers and none matches another person with that name and birthday, he said. Del Pino provided a copy of the death certificate to The Morning Call.
Looks like the Count got himself banned over 100% fake news. The story is a hoax, the only bit of reality is the existence of an man named Luis Leon who would be 82 years old if he were still alive.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
21hr ago
Unimpressive sophistry. No one is demanding anyone "airbrush fentanyl from the story."
Shrike
21hr ago
We need to dramatically increase our advanced missile stocks and production capacities. We should probably just buy ships from e.g. South Korea and Japan, because boy did we fuck up there. We should also make Anduril a very valuable company by having enough autonomous capacities to make the Chinese realize that even if our carrier battle groups can be taken out, Taiwan would effectively be a minefield.
Sure. None of these, frankly, seem all that far-fetched.
The best way to deter China is not to have a bunch of missiles in a warehouse. The best way to deter them is making them fear the resolve of the US in defending its friends and allies in the face of risking WWIII.
Look, China can do math. All the "resolve" in the world doesn't do us any good without missiles in the warehouse.
Which is why the question of "will they/won't they" is more important than "just how long will US missile stocks last."
If we are confident nuclear madman theory alone is sufficient to deter China, we don't need to do any of the above. But I don't actually think anyone wants to die in nuclear fire for Kiev or Taipei and as such the threat of a nuclear madman is unlikely to be persuasive and, even if persuasive, unlikely to be consistent in a democratic society (note the difference in Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine after the election of President Biden!) So one concern with the nuclear madman threat is that it will simply result in waiting out the madman. (Another concern is that two can play that game, of course!)
fribble
21hr ago
I loved Agatha Christie as a kid and she's how I learned-and-it-stuck that adults really under estimate kids. I was in the gifted and talented program and my 4th grade teacher still publicly accused me of plagiarism for my book report on one of her books. Not that he ever explained who he thought I was cribbing from, but apparently 8 year olds aren't supposed to be reading and writing coherently. After he quizzed me, right then, in front of the class, he stopped. No apologies were made.
It amuses me that 3? Of my foundational childhood memories involve her books as a critical element.
Shrike
22hr ago
Right.
IMHO, the US Navy could conduct a devastating far blockade of China relatively easily. (That's something that is missed in discussions of superior Chinese shipbuilding: "The PLAN said that the US Navy was seizing all of their cargo vessels and I asked him what he was doing about it and he said he just kept building more ships and I told him it kinda sounded like he was feeding the US free cargo ships and Xi Jinping started crying.")
The main question is if that's actually something that is fast enough to help Taiwan. If they prioritize air and sea denial strategies, their survival becomes more likely.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
22hr ago
Yet AI skeptics tend to make moving the goalposts into the entire sport. I will grant that their objections exist in a range of reasonableness, from genuine dissatisfaction with current approaches to AI, to Gary Marcus's not even wrong nonsense.
I may or may not be an AI skeptic by your definition - I think it's quite likely that 2030 is a real year, and think it's plausible that even 2050 is a real year. But I think there genuinely is something missing from today's LLMs such that current LLMs generally fail to exhibit even the level of fluid intelligence exhibited by the average toddler (but can compensate to a surprising degree by leveraging encyclopedic knowledge).
My sneaking suspicion is that the "missing something" from today's LLMs is just "scale" - we're trying to match the capability of humans with 200M interconnected cortical microcolumns with transformers that only have 30k attention heads (not perfectly isomorphic, you could make the case that the correct analogy is microcolumn : attn head at a particular position, except the microcolumns can each have their own "weights" whereas the same attn head will have the same weights at every position), and we're trying to draw an equivalence between one LLM token and one human word. If you have an LLM agent that forks a new process in every situation in which a human would notice a new thing to track in the back of their mind, and allow each of those forked agents to define some test data and fine-tune / RL on it, I bet that'd look much more impressive (but also cost OOMs more than the current stuff you pay $200/mo for).
This is an interesting concern, and I mean that seriously. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be empirically borne out. LLMs are increasingly better at solving all bugs, not just obvious-to-human ones.
LLMs are increasingly better at solving a particular subset of bugs, which does not perfectly intersect the subset of bugs which humans are good at solving. Concretely, LLMs are much better at solving bugs that require them to know or shallowly infer some particular fact about the way a piece of code is supposed to be written, and fix it in an obvious way, and much much worse at solving bugs that require the solver to build up an internal model of what the code is supposed to be doing and an internal model of what the code actually does and spot (and fix) the difference. A particularly tough category of bug is "user reports this weird behavior" - the usual way a human would try to solve this is to try to figure out how to reproduce the issue in a controlled environment, and then to iteratively validate their expectations once they have figured out how to reproduce the bug. LLMs struggle at both the "figure out a repro case" step and the "iteratively validate assumptions" step.
I don't see this as a major impediment, why can't LLMs come up with new words if needed, assuming there's a need for words at all?
In principle there is no reason LLMs can't come up with new words. There is precedence for the straight-up invention of language among groups of RL agents that start with no communication abilities and are incentivized to develop such abilities. So it's not some secret sauce that only humans have - but it is a secret sauce that LLMs don't seem to have all of yet.
LLMs do have some ingredients of the secret sauce: if you have some nebulous concept and you want to put a name to it, you can usually ask your LLM of choice and it will do a better job than 90% of professional humans who would be making that naming decision. Still, LLMs have a tendency not to actually coin new terms, and to fail to use the newly coined terms fluently in the rare cases that they do coin such a term (which is probably why they don't do it - if coining a new term was effective for problem solving, it would have been chiseled into their cognition by the RLVR process).
In terms of why this happens, Nostalgebraist has an excellent post on how LLMs process text, and how that processing is very different from how humans process text.
With a human, it simply takes a lot longer to read a 400-page book than to read a street sign. And all of that time can be used to think about what one is reading, ask oneself questions about it, flip back to earlier pages to check something, etc. etc. [...] However, if you're a long-context transformer LLM, thinking-time and reading-time are not coupled together like this.
To be more precise, there are 3 different things that one could analogize to "thinking-time" for a transformer, but the claim I just made is true for all of them [...] [It] is true that transformers do more computation in their attention layers when given longer inputs. But all of this extra computation has to be the kind of computation that's parallelizable, meaning it can't be leveraged for stuff like "check earlier pages for mentions of this character name, and then if I find it, do X, whereas if I don't, then think about Y," or whatever. Everything that has that structure, where you have to finish having some thought before having the next (because the latter depends on the result of the former), has to happen across multiple layers (#1), you can't use the extra computation in long-context attention to do it.
So there's a sense in which an LLM can coin a new term, but there's a sense in which it can't "practice" using that new term, and so can't really benefit from developing a cognitive shorthand. You can see the same thing with humans who try to learn all the jargon for a new field at once, before they've really grokked how it all fits together. I've seen it in programming, and I'm positive you've seen it in medicine.
BTW regarding the original point about LLM code introducing bugs - absolutely it does, the bugginess situation has gotten quite a bit worse as everyone tries to please investors by shoving AI this and AI that into every available workflow whether it makes sense to or not. We've developed tools to mitigate human fallibility, and we will develop tools to mitigate AI fallibility, so I am not particularly concerned with that problem over the long term.
TIRM
22hr ago
Thanks for the links, but I seriously doubt learning a second language degrades your primary language abilities. Your brain is indeed not infinite, but it has a lot of space.
TIRM
22hr ago
Pretty common in my experience. Too many personal anecdotes to bother typing out. This happens all the time.
The erosion of shame as a social force is one of the biggest impacts of the Trump presidencies.
An older one from earlier this year, but applicable. Core argument is that Trump is a product of this trend, not the cause.
US State Department is not adding here much, elections are suspended in accordance of Ukrainian constitution on account of having a war
Remember, the US is the hyperagent. Other countries don't make and execute their own decisions- other countries either act in accordance with American permission, or are forced to respond to American impositions.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
22hr ago
it seems
Yeah, I’d like to see the numbers on this. I remember thinkpieces in Trump 1 about the number of empty positions, the rate of turnover, etc. Was that normal? Was it any different than the attrition today?
I’m going to bet against the vaccine thing.
Not sure if I believe CBS’s suggestion that it’s a show of annoyance at Trump. But the CNN theory is simple enough. There was some infighting between the two of them and RFK axed both. I find that more plausible than a couple staffers having some sort of rogue policy push.
FtSoA
22hr ago
Or the aggressors who have been able to stockpile weapons might believe they've got an opening to re-open old conflicts now that the U.S. has stretched itself thin.
One thing is certain, a lot of Ruskies and Ukes have died to develop the absolutely Bleeding edge in drone-based warfare, which has probably changed the face of any conflicts from here on out. And that's BEFORE we've figured out how to have AI guided drones produced en masse.
Let's not exaggerate here. The US has in almost no actual way "stretched itself thin" in supporting Ukraine. We have not even significantly altered our force posture. (Which we did for Iran recently.)
The USAF and USN would absolutely demolish their Russian counterparts given their abysmal performance against Ukraine. Tactical drones are nice and all in trench warfare, but good old-fashioned air dominance is even better when you can get it.
That's not to say drones aren't important, they are and will be, but the US military is aware of that, as is Palmer Lucky and his competitors.
I also think conflicts have become more likely under current economic and demographic constraints, and that Ukrainian sacrifice isn't doing much to decrease that likelihood because that doesn't change the underlying incentives.
If wars of conquest (not motivated by ideological commitments that aren't "rational" in the usual sense) are shown to be more costly than they are worth, even in victory, then that's a huge deterrent.
I'd also guess you're very wrong in that age is negatively correlated with aggression and violence, and so older populations would seemingly be less warlike by default.
My knowledge of Ukr politics begins and ends at ‘I support whatever the UGCC wants’, so this is an honest question- does Zaluzhny
I'd preface my response by noting that after Hershs' earlier farce regarding the Nord Stream Bombing, in which he favored a Russian-backed conspiracy theory of perpetrator, with his own falsifiable and falsified narrative, over the implicit and explicit attribution of the European governments including Germany itself (i.e. Ukraine did it), I'd be very, very skeptical of any claim by him for insider insight. Hersh may have his sources, but I would not trust they are sources actually inside the American administration... and if they were, they'd be exceptionally desperate- and motivated- to publicize them via Hersh rather than someone else.
Hersh is a crank when it comes to the Ukraine War. More to the point, Hersh is the sort of person that majority of Trump's Republican administration considers a crank on the Ukraine War. You don't go to the other tribe's conspiracy cranks to launder your own efforts on the subject, unless you want to discredit the premise.
have sufficient internal support to force through a peace agreement over the nationalist’s objections,
Almost certainly not.
The biggest obstacle to a Russia-Ukraine peace agreement isn't the objection of 'the nationalists' to peace, but rather the 'everyone who suspects Putin would attack again' caucus to 'a peace agreement that sets conditions for Putin to attack again.' This is the reminder that the Ukraine invasion was the third, arguably fourth, continuation war by Russia against Ukraine since the invasion of Crimea. The first was the Nova Russia astroturf revolt, the second was the conventional military intervention to keep the separatist republics from falling, and the arguable third was efforts in between those, distinct from the attempts to coerce Ukraine into a state of constitutional paralysis by the inter-war negotiations.
There is no politically viable coalition of people who want to make a deal for the sake of a deal, particularly when Russia keeps claiming that a required condition of the deal is the demilitarization of Ukraine's capabilities to fight back. Just at a game theory level, such a demand requires a certain level of trust in the other player, and in this context- and for the foreseeable future- that other player is Putin.
or to expand the draft until Ukraine is fully staffed again?
Also almost certainly not.
For one thing, there's no particular standard of 'fully staffed.' The only time Ukraine has a meaningful manpower advantage- i.e. 'fully staffed- was pre-mobilization in the first year. This was a result of policy decisions by the Kremlin, not Ukrainian draft politics.
Ukraine has manpower challenges- though you probably look more towards Michael Koffman than anyone posting on the Motte this year for insight on that- but one dynamics of the situation is that the current issues aren't even something that forcibly conscripting more bodies would 'fix.' One of the reasons here is that the technology adaption/evolution of drones has limited the ability of both sides to actually maintain 'full' front line units. The drone dynamics are complicated, but the short end is that the Ukrainians are in some respects doing better defending longer terrain with fewer forces than would normally be considered 'full.'
But the flipside is that this is also applying to the Russians for much the same reason- drones are increasingly too common to allow maintaining massed forces on the battle line, and the more drones there are, the smaller that mass that can stand by gets. This is why the Russians have been getting increasingly effective use out of YOLO motorcycle/golf car assaults as with motorized/mechanized assalts. It's not that either is good, but both are bad, and the speed of the motorized assaults is enough to mitigate the exposure before the Ukrainian infantry can counter attack. Would more Ukrainian infantry in the trenches to resist attacks against the trenches be better? Sure. But it would also mean more exposure to the drones in those contexts.
I'm not claiming that the Ukrainian shortage is secretly an advantage, but it's a disadvantage that mitigates the cost of another significant risk factor. Which is not exactly unknown in conflicts.
Could that be the reason?
Also a third almost certainly not, though I'll pivot here to choosing to interpret 'the reason' as 'motive for the story.'
Hersh aside, the motive for an anti-Zelensky story 'now'- as in, 'why now?'- would probably be the consequence of internal Trump administration politics, as the losers of the cut-all-aid-from-Ukraine caucus shake some trees in hopes something falls. The biggest change in the Ukraine situation recently isn't that the military situation has gotten worse, but rather that the Trump administration relationship got better, and so negative press is part of that 'don't just do nothing, do something' response of people trying to shape an emerging policy.
I do owe a follow-up on late last year / early this year predictions, but one of the bigger predictions I made earlier this year was that the Trump-European relationship was primed to go transactional.
From February-
Low and behold, that's begun to happen, as the recent NATO summit that expanded the NATO spending target to 5% in a yuge win for Trump, also explicitly counts aid to Ukraine as counting for that limit. In turn, and around the time Trump made his more recent 50-day demand towards Putin,* Germany announced it was going to finance Patriots from the US for Ukraine. Europeans can win points from Trump, reduce Trumpian critcism of their defense investments, support Ukraine, and secure the American material that they themselves do not have, all while getting to claim they are meeting their NATO requirements by... buying American stuff for Ukraine.
In other words, the US-European relationship towards Ukraine is shifting from where where Biden donated aid to Ukraine, to where Trump sells aid to Europe who buys for Ukraine. Remember that the Russian theory of victory since choosing to prolong the war was that Ukraine would be cut off from American-European military-economic support and thus fall victim to the greater Russian military-economic mass. Having a transition where the rich Europeans using their economic resources to continue the supply of American munitions is 'better' for Russia than the US outright donating them outright, but it's a Bad Thing for Russian sustainability in the long term (as in- more than 3 years out).
But this is also a Bad Thing, specifically, for a small subset of the anti-Ukraine trump administration caucus who didn't want any military production to go towards Ukraine, at all, in favor of supporting the China buildup (or, more pressingly, Israel and the Middle East). This line of argument is against any diversion of material capabilities, including that which is sold rather than donated, on the urgency-of-China argument.
Well, that caucus has lost the bureucratic fight, and defying Trump openly is political suicide. Therefore, how do you try to undercut a commercial diversion? Lead corruption allegation #XYZ and hope it sticks, reducing / shrinking sales on corruption grounds.
Notably, however- and more relevant for some of the potential media planting efforts- it's not just inner-Trump admin dissidents who don't like the policy change. France and Italy have signaled dislike of the US policy change, less because they don't want to support Ukraine and more that they (especially France) don't want European money going to buy American weapons for Ukraine, as opposed to European (especially French) weapons. If Zelensky is particularly happy with the Trump development- and to be fair it's probably impossible to tell a sincerely happy Zelensky to one desperate to avoid a repetition of the White House blowup conference- then perhaps an alternative to Zelensky would also be more willing to entertain alternative (and long lead time) deliveries of military aid in a context.
I doubt it- I think this is not much ado about even less- but pettier axes have been ground.
*The 50 day puts us towards the end of the fighting season... which is about the point we'd see a summer/fall offensive peter out for the year regardless before the mud and winter season reset. I'll expect pro-forma negotiations there regardless, and that'll probably be when I do a Ukraine review of predictions.
As for Zelenskyy, making high risk maneuvers is far from unknown when leaders sense a direct threat to their power.
I'm not clear what high-risk maneuvers you think Zelensky is making in this context, but if this is referring to any given part of the OP, I wouldn't worry.
I would generally dismiss the objectivity the OP's framing of just about everything to do with Ukraine's negotiations, ranging from the 'surprising move' (something that has been repeatedly going on since the first Trump-Zelensky summit is not a surprise), to attribution of effort (the summer negotiations were not a result of Ukrainian 'trying,' but rather blatant coercion from the US), to even attribution of origin (the 30 day ceasefire demand did not originate from Ukraine, but was Zelensky echoing/supporting a Trump administration position on immediate cease fire).
Then again, I admittedly do have a flinch when I see someone unironically use 'regime journalist' as a way to discredit an objection to a known conspiracy theorist. Nor do I put much stock in the latest iteration of 'Ukraine is about to militarily collapse any month now' narrative that is over three years old at this point.
As far as Zelensky's political risk goes, I'd say his position has gotten stronger, not riskier, since this spring summer. Zelensky went from being 'the President who personally lost almost all American military support' to 'the President who made the American military support less generous but more stable, while offsetting the direct cost to us.' I can see a case for a palace coup against the former, but far fewer people within Ukraine will take the risks to reverse the later. Particularly if the nominal basis for removal- 'we must remove the appearance of corruption'- is to be done by...
Well, does anyone actually believe that the sort of people who think Ukraine shouldn't be given aid on account of corruption are going to be more forthcoming after an easy-to-characterize-as-corrupt palace coup?
(Curse you for directly asking for my opinion! I've been trying to Ukraine War post less this year.)
Yeah it's not really that much and in exchange here's one good advantage of Ukraine, it's an actual war with actual survival pressure making new strong technology for the west. The US Army is so far behind we're bragging about just being able to drop grenades from drones because there's no actual survival pressure on us to do anything.
Israel and Ukraine hold value just by being live testing grounds. If drone warfare is the future (it most likely is a pretty significant part of it) then having an ally actually expanding western drone capability for cheaper is a great return, instead of sticking with this level so bad we're bragging about being able to do things even rebels in Myanmar can manage. Here's Grok doing a comparison, it's baffling how much better the Ukrainians have gotten just by actually facing a real threat
The US Army's Skydio X10D drone costs ~$25,000-35,000, with 340g payload (e.g., M67 grenade) and advanced AI for precision, but high per-unit expense limits scalability.
Ukrainian homemade droppers (e.g., Osa quadcopters) cost $500-1,000, carry 0.5-2kg payloads, and excel in efficiency via mass production and combat-proven low-cost drops, enabling asymmetric warfare advantages.
Huh. My expectation was that there was more to the story, not that literally nothing could be corroborated.
Typically the way these play out is the person is going to an appointment with USCIS, it turns out the person already has a deportation order or a felony or something in their past that disqualifies them, and ICE took the opportunity to pick them up and deport them.
Stories like these demonstrate misunderstanding of how these systems work. They are still lumbering bureacracies. There are no Judge Dredds that will unilaterally send you to CECOT. Even if you're not already a green card holder, and the USCIS civil servant conducting your interview decides he doesn't like your face and won't approve your application, it's not straight to deportation. A Notice To Appear is issued, which starts the ball rolling for an Order of Removal.
Even the expansions under Trump to for expedited removal wouldn't apply to the particulars of this "case."
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