Here is September 5th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 6th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 7th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Thursdays.
Here is September 9th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 10th's update!
A few improvements:
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I'm gonna try and include more images, now that I've figured out how to do it on my end without things getting confusing. Namely, I now have a whole folder on my computer dedicated to this stuff where I can put things. A truly incredible development. However, a lot of the articles don't have images, and if they do, they aren't all that noteworthy - think "typical stock image of an oil barrel or a dude looking frazzled at a stock market screen". But still, there's usually at least 1 or 2 images that I can and should put in every day for added pizazz.
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I'm actually using the tagging system, instead of it just being "ukraine" and "russia" the whole time, and will be slowly working on adding them for the previous updates too. Eventually, you will be able to search by country throughout the whole update list, from the ever-present "china" or "united states" to the very rare "uzbekistan".
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More consistent climate and space updates. Hopefully.
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100% more love for our trans comrades.
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Adding what you people post in these megathreads to the summaries too. The tyranny of only referring to my own work without talking about anything of the comments you guys make shall end.
On that note: do you have a lot of knowledge about the current state of a particular country (beyond mindless electorialism)? Do you, for some reason, have a lot of knowledge about hydrogen power, or the fossil fuel industry, or renewables, or rare earth mining, or have you delved into a wikipedia rabbithole on a topic and became a semi-expert? Hell, are you an actual expert? If the answer to any of the above is yes, please comment more! There are like 200 countries on this planet and I realistically only have time to talk about a fraction of them on a given day, and of that fraction, only a single article. I may have a vibe about certain countries, but if you wanna rant about the current situation in X country or how neoliberalism is ruining Y country, but you think "nah, who gives a shit" - I give a shit. Some of the best content in these megathreads is people being like "The general media narrative around what's happening in this country is wrong, here's what's actually going on here."
I'll even quote your username in the summaries if you do it. It's a meritocratic version of the general megathread's username list that they do every time. The thrill of a purple number next to the bell in the upper right corner of your screen can be yours for the low low price of a microessay for our reading pleasure.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the "buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!" people.
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
We're like 3 months away from the satirical future game show from Big Mouth where you have to fuck your brother on TV to get medical bills paid.
"we’ll pay your energy bill for 4 months” as the top prize
TV network bankruptcy speedrun
It's not even a game show. It's a morning news and interview show. :ukkk:
It shouldn't even be called the Ukrainian army anymore. It should be the NATO or European army. They're trained by NATO, armed by NATO, the strategy and tactics are designed and directed by NATO, the intelligence is NATO. There's no chance Ukrainian generals are making these decisions, they're being directed by NATO. It's not the Ukraine-Russia war, it's now the NATO-Russia war.
Nord Stream 1 will not to be reopened until the sanctions are removed. At least that's what German media is reporting.
Let's hope for a mild winter I guess.
Edit: Nice replies here. Everyone I know heats with gas, we're fucked and the government is insane. I would like to not die please.
"Gas storage levels have risen ahead of European targets and analysts increasingly think the region will survive the winter without state-directed rationing, albeit at exorbitant costs to the economy through record prices." -- WSJ
LMAO ok sure, good luck
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-nord-stream-pipeline-closure-lands-economic-blow-against-europe-11662388752
Isn't "exorbitant costs to the economy through record prices" just the free market™ way of doing rationing in the first place?
Real double think there
Unless it comes from the State it isn't real rationing, it's just sparkling cruelty
Rationing is when government and bad. Price gouging is when free market and good.
Exactly, and also there will definitely be state rationing
Liberals have no understanding of time. They see two months'worth of gas and think their entire gas-dependent economy is saved.
and I don’t think renewables are going to come in in time to save them until maybe 2030 or so, and that’s a big if for that to happen.
Unless anybody foresees a major advancement in battery technology in the next 8 years - entirely possible but difficult to believe it'll be in widespread construction by then - wind and solar power will still have the same issues as before. And this is exacerbated by the lack of wind that we've seen when large volumes of warm air just sit there and doesn't move, like I think happened in Texas, which stops wind power working, and it being so hot that solar power begins to be less efficient. And on top of all that, building these renewable energy sources requires materials, particularly metals, particularly critical minerals, particularly ones from Russia and China. Renewables are a crucial part of a green transition, especially once battery technology gets much better, but without nuclear to provide the backbone, I don't see how it would even do all that much to save them.
Battery storage for bulk electricity is not going to be terribly feasible ever, I don’t think. I’m not a battery expert, but I don’t really know of any that operate at even primary distribution voltages (7-12kV roughly), let alone sub transmission or transmission. Which just means you’re limited to storing distribution levels of energy.
Some relevant things I’ve learned about bulk electric power
The hierarchical structure of the grid is primarily organized by voltage levels. I only have direct experience with one portion of the US grid, so there are lots of particularities that won’t apply in Europe or even, say, the west coast of the US.
But real transmission voltages are 100+ kV, arguably 200+ kV. The idea is that by cranking up the voltage, you need less current to provide a certain power (by def, complex power S = VI*. When the size of V goes up, the size of I goes down). This is good for the transmission of power, because energy losses due to line resistance go up quadratically with line current: P = I^2 R. That’s the real power P, which is just one component of the complex power S. But energy losses always come from P.
So if you double operating voltage, currents get halved, which equates to 1/4 less power losses and line-heating. Line-heating (the rise in temperature of transmissions lines) is the main contributor to a line’s power transmission limit and is cause directly by these I^2 R losses (that energy is lost to raising the temperature of transmission lines), so what this usually means in practice is that lines operating at 2x voltage transmit 4x the power. This is why they use higher voltages, to reduce the number of lines needed.
Raising the voltage isn’t the life-hack it might seem initially, because higher voltages require significantly more insulation and space (the space between the three phases of lines increases. You can have distribution phases like a foot apart, but at 100+ kV those babies need to be 13-14 feet from each other and 9 feet from anything at ground potential). More insulation means greater heights, more sturdy load-bearing equipment, and more space for substations and rights-of-way for the lines themselves.
So there are big infrastructure costs to significantly higher voltages, even though they transmit more power per line, and more cheaply per unit energy.
These physical realities have a big impact on how the grid is laid out, both in terms of how we organize it intellectually in order to study and operate it, but also its physical implementation.
It means that generators capable of supplying lots of energy (like nuclear or hydro plants capable of supplying GW) generally get the expensive, highest-voltage switchgear to step up to the highest voltages, in order to be transmitted the furthest distances with the lowest losses.
As these high-voltage lines connect to different substations, there are transformers that convert the energy to lower voltages to feed the sub-transmission lines. AEP set up their standards of 345/138/69 kV levels in the 60s, so that’s pretty common in some places as an example. 345kV is really just for bulk energy transmission, while a few big industrial consumers might tap into 138 or 69 kV and lower lines. You’ll also get smaller power plants connecting at these slightly lower voltages, especially if they’re sufficiently near the big load centers the power ultimately flows to (line resistance and therefore losses are proportional to the length of the lines too).
Generally the few small-scale renewable projects I’ve seen integrate at the lower sub transmission levels, just above distribution voltages. It’s here that I would hope serious energy storage could be accomplished, although I don’t know what form it will take
All of this is to say that if they only have access to very low, end-user voltage batteries (like a few hundred V), it’s hard for me to see significant portions of energy being stored electro-chemically. It seems like everyone would basically need their own individual outlet-voltage battery, which seems like a nightmare both practically and environmentally
Alternative schemes involve using excess energy to pump water somewhere where it can later do useful work (spinning a turbine, say) when the renewable source isn’t supplying. I think something like that needs to be around balance out very large energy flow imbalances, unfortunately. I don’t have much faith in batteries, in this regard.
This is all just to say that there are serious problems integrating renewable energy into the existing grid. I would not trust the judgement of power suppliers in the US or Europe, but I would be interested to look more closely at how China manages renewables, and its energy system in general. In the US we have only “deregulation” to provide any semblance of anti-trust laws, which also introduced some really fucky stuff in terms of what energy source (coal, nuclear, nat gas, etc) gets used to fulfill what portions of the demand, with natural gas being the plant of choice to meet short term “spot” demand, at often inflated prices. So you have this weird queue system to condemn with too.
Maybe later I will talk a bit about the other main problem renewables tend to bring: electronic components introducing “harmonic” distortions in the energy flow. It’s not unique to renewables, but most renewables have generated power flows in series with electronic devices, and it can do some weird things from what I understand
I'd be very interested in this!
On top of what you've said, to what extent do you think this is a capitalist problems vs a technological problem? For example, in a borderless world, could a worldwide network of solar or wind energy "solve" the issue of energy storage, or would there be other problems with this?
I’ll try to organize my thoughts a bit more for round 2 and post them as a top level comment. But large-scale geographic connectivity requires electronic components too, so it’s a nice segue and jumping off point
A major Pumped hydro energry storage system is being built in Australia. (Snowy Hydro 2.0) They are expecting it to be done in 2026 and to have a 80% storage efficiency.
There is also intermittent consumption side - refrigeration and home heating can be done on intermittent sources, if you are willing to sacrifice temperature range via phase transition storage.
I mean France went full nuclear and is pretty much in the worst position of all European mayor economies electricity wise. Germany is currently exporting electricity to France. All plants France is currently building are or will be way over budget and time and also might produce less energy then expected.
I think nuclear is on the way out with Uranium supply being another headache. Serious hardship might mean that more and more European economys look back to the one ressouce they still have plenty of and for a reasonable price as well: coal.
It's really difficult to measure Chinas success. As far as I know the 5 year plan called originally for more plants than went actually online. Which might signal higher costs and longer build times as well. The newest generation (like thorium) still seems a good way of viability. Most investment seems to go into renewables.
In India the situation is much like in France with nuclear energy being way to expensive.
Don't worry :amerikkka: is here to keep Europe in their bubble and prevent any attempts from the:eu-cool: to decide on their own energy policies, consequences for ordinary people be dammed
Let’s hope for a mild winter I guess.
I guess germany's gonna experience what their ancestors did at Stalingrad this winter, but this was completely preventable and still is since there's still time for the German Federation to pump the brakes and change course away from the brick wall they're accelerating towards.
Until now it seems to be the fascist AfD that is capitalising on the "gas through peace" agenda. Likewise in the rest of Europe, most of the sorry excuse for a European left are giant boyscouts who would rather "take the high road" and make impotent statements of support for the Ukraine than they would risk being seen as pro-Russian and impolite by rejecting sanctions and demanding peace in Europe
My conspiracy brain wouldn't be surprised if it is actually a psyop to have the fash as the main face of the anti-war movement. It will discourage a lot of good people from even considering anti-war views, it will discredit anti-war views by lumping them in with conspiracy bullshit about Muslims and woke feminists and if anti-war sentiments gain a hold the fascist version will be completely harmless to the bourgeoisie.
Which is why it’s extremely critical for communist and socialist parties in the west right now to be outspoken in their stand against war, against NATO and against weapon shipments and get ahead of the movement. If the communists are not leading the movements of mass discontent from material derivations and against imperialist war, what is even their point?
I fear that just like before WW1, too many socialists are still tied to imperialism, jingoism and xenophobia against non-western nations. It will prevent them from firmly and decisively taking the correct stance, causing them instead to waffle and be useless
Most of the European left is effectively succdems so I've shouldn't be surprised when they act like the SPD in 1914.
I agree but no dice here. The Left party (5%; you can already tell they suck just by the name) is already infighting, as is tradition. There's three factions:
- Liberal sellout succdems, want/wanted to throw out the anti-NATO stance in order to get into power. Currently in charge.
- Nationalist sellout succdems, want to throw refugees, trans people and other minorities under the bus in order to get support from reactionaries and their newspapers. Popular with the voters.
- Socialists, mostly ignored or bashed with the antisemitism or Putin-lover sticks.
Anyway the leftlibs don't want to work with the nationalist ones. Party might split over this.
Communist parties are so marginalized it's not even funny.
They aren't personally going to freeze so what do they care? High power prices and freezing in winter will effect voter's trust in the system but blame will be spread evenly instead of being directed at any one MP or party.
The dutch still have Gronigen gas field, but I don't think that feasible.
Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Energy Bullying Real Hahahaha Kraut Just Stop Sanctions On Russia Like Kraut Trade Like Normal Haha
Press has relentlessly attacked anyone who isn't on board. Most of the public loves the hardliners. This shit will take a long time to reverse and it's not looking like they're even hitting the brakes yet at all.
they should just switch the names ..... fucking amateurs...
I'm genuinely amazed at how self-destructive western Europe is. I get that the rulers of Europe are insulated from the consequences and can afford to entertain Atlanticist fantasies. Some of them might believe US imperial propaganda and some of them might have been bought off.
But politicians are not the only people with power. Industrial capital has had lots of sway over public discourse and public policy in Europe. These capitalists are hurting badly now but we still don't see them make any efforts to ease the energy crisis by demanding peace efforts from their respective governments.
I get why steel smelters and cement producers doesn't care about their governments pursuing imperialist wars in far away places, it doesn't affect their bottom lines. But I don't get why they remain silent about completely avoidable policy decisions that are driving them out of business.
Do European industrial capital actually gain from the destruction of Europe in some perverse way or are they just as blinded by pure ideology as the politicians?
Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid is a serious escalation of the conflict. Until now the Russian government has been hesitant to hit civilian targets, maybe not to damage it's international reputation too much, maybe to make the campaign to win hearts and minds in the liberated areas easier.
This is over now. Ukrainian civilians will face immense hardship for a very long time because of this. The Ukrainian economy will suffer immensely and many civilians are going to die. It will take a very long time to rebuild those power stations, especially under the current economic situation. It will take years to rebuild those power plants. Europe might be able to supply some power to the Ukraine once they manage to patch up some of the lines but Europe is already in the middle of an energy crisis and is low on power for its own industry.
The attacks has an obvious military rationality, everything is going to be harder for Ukrainian militants now, but the attack is also a terrorist attack in the sense that it is going to strike fear in the hearts of civilians and cause massive disruption to civil society which in turn is going to demoralise the Ukrainian side, depleting their will to continue fighting.
This war is so weird. It's always annoying when "believe the exact opposite of what the western media tells you" doesn't work
“If we don’t stop them, they’re going to just rape and murder our people like they did everywhere else,” said Oleksandr’s roommate in the hospital, a 49-year-old conscripted soldier who asked to be called by his nickname, “Pinochet.”
:ukkkraine: :stalin-gun-1: :stalin-gun-2:
fingers crossed for the inappropriate Zelensky/Ukraine Tweet - something something , "Yes She Died, but Ukraine dies everyday !"
Russia takes a slight L and all the western media goes "Russia is done bois, Putler is done!!!!!"
Western media clearly has been waiting for something, anything for the past few weeks considering how much Ukraine was losing.
Why exactly are Westerners celebrating now?
Doesn't this offensive pretty much guarantee that there won't be a whole lot of gas in Europe this winter?
Zelensky is gonna be malding that his coooooonter offensive will be overshadowed in the news by a sickly 96 year old woman dying lmao
