Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[Savonarola]

Had a quick look at their open positions. This sounds like it might be of interest for Languishites.

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/institute/career-education/job-vacancies/intern-m-f-div-geopolitics-of-telegraph-cable-investments-1850-1914/

Intern (m/f/div), Geopolitics of Telegraph Cable Investments 1850-1914
The Research Center International Finance and Macroeconomics at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy is looking for an

intern (m/f/div), full-time or a three-day working week
for our research project on "The Geopolitics of Telegraph Cable Investments 1850-1914" at the earliest possible date. We are a young, dynamic, research-oriented team with a large international network, focusing on international capital flows, financial globalization, financial history, and questions of international political economy, in particular geopolitics and geoeconomics.

The intern will actively participate in our research project on the geopolitics of international telegraphy before 1914. In this ambitious research project, we explore the geopolitical investments by countries. We are in particular interested in the battle for technological sovereignty in international telegraphy before World War 1. Generating micro-level data on telegraph cables, and private and public expenditures from historical sources, and processing them for use in Excel and Stata will constitute a big part of the project.

Heh, that does sound like fun.  My alma mater is located in a copper mining area but almost all the mines shut down in the 1960s so (fittingly enough) they offer programs in industrial archeology and industrial history.  I never took courses in either discipline (I was only interested in real history at the time) after working on the railroad for several years I think those would have been interesting courses to have taken.  (When I was in cellular people kept 80s era bag phones and car phones as antiques.  Even the first several generations of iPhone would be antiques now as GSM and UMTS are no used in the United States.)

[Zoupa]

I think a large part is very simply propaganda/morale against Wagner specifically.

More broadly though, keep asking Russia questions in more and more fields. It may not cause huge shifts in resources (although I suspect the Moscow drones are having an impact on that) but may well be on attention. Can't help but feel there'll have been a few in the general staff/MoD asking similar questions today, not working on Ukraine.

https://x.com/CalibreObscura/status/1595912755759964163?s=20

[HVC]

Poland gonna stop arms shipment over grain dispute. Ukraine sometimes, uhm, harsh diplomacy might have backfired.

*edit* Link

[DGuller]

Ugh, guys, you're overdue for makeup sex.

[HVC]

Ugh, guys, you're overdue for makeup sex.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Poland gonna stop arms shipment over grain dispute. Ukraine sometimes, uhm, harsh diplomacy might have backfired.

*edit* Link

Yeah. Stupid, only the Russians gain from that kind of behavior. As for the grain: rather than selling it all/more in the EU, which isn't going to go over well anyway, the EU countries should put much more effort in getting it to market in the regions affected by the Russians. Basically making sure the Russian don't gain leverage.

And its of course election time iirc, and there were some scandals, and it's a surefire way to get some additional money from the EU.

[Josquius]

How much do the polish farmers want to stop being cocks? Surely can't be that much of a pay off.

[Admiral Yi]

How much do the polish farmers want to stop being cocks? Surely can't be that much of a pay off.

Ukraine was the second largest exporter of wheat.  That has to go somewhere.

[celedhring]

I've read that Polish stocks are depleted anyway - that's why they are spending so much in new arms - and this is a way to twist that fact into some leverage.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I've read that Polish stocks are depleted anyway - that's why they are spending so much in new arms - and this is a way to twist that fact into some leverage.

Yep. Making a public spat out of it for electoral gain is stupid though. Perfectly understandable since politicians will politic, but still stupid.

[HVC]

Zelensky going to the UN and saying Poland (in all but name ) "feigning solidarity" to appease Russia was dumb. You can brow beat Germany into good behavior, they're used to 80 years of politically prodded guilt. Poland dont play that game. They're the guilt baiters, not the baities.

*edit* BBC just straight up changed the whole article.

[Sheilbh]

I've read that Polish stocks are depleted anyway - that's why they are spending so much in new arms - and this is a way to twist that fact into some leverage.

Yeah and they're planning to double their defence spending and significantly re-arm Poland. I'd add this is a slightly wider issue, especially in Europe, of stocks running down and not properly being replenished. I'm not sure we've got the military industrial complex up and humming as you'd hope given basically every European country has been sending Ukraine stuff from their own stocks.

You'd hope we'd be able to walk and chew gum, but here we are. I also think the real risk is actually that part of the economy has more or less atrophied since 1990 and needs something a bit more drastic.

[Sheilbh]

Zelensky going to the UN and saying Poland (in all but name ) "feigning solidarity" to appease Russia was dumb. You can brow beat Germany into good behavior, they're used to 80 years of politically prodded guilt. Poland dont play that game. They're the guilt baiters, not the baities.

*edit* BBC just straight up changed the whole article.

Also, bluntly, it's not true. Compared to GDP there is no country that's helped more than Poland (and the Baltics). Poles know it, Ukrainians know it - and so does everyone else. There's nothing feigned about it.

I'd add having gone to Poland a couple of times in the last year there is an atmosphere about the place. I can't compare but maybe something of West Berlin? There's lots of Ukrainians and Belarussians, lots of physical signs of solidarity, lots of signs of activity by those groups. It really feels like the edge of free Europe.

[DGuller]

Ugh, guys, you're overdue for makeup sex.

Sorry, I was talking to Poland and Ukraine. 

[Josquius]

Strange movements around the Moscow hospital where the chechen leader is. Supposidely just to visit a random uncle.
Seems he might be on the brink or even gone.
I wonder what it means for Chechnya. Do they have it in them to rise again?