archer

Germany has announced that it is sending 1,000 anti-tank rockets and 500 anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. They're also dropping some restrictions on other countries sending German-made arms to conflict zones.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60541752

MSNBC this afternoon says that on Ukrainian social media that there's multiple images of Russian tanks which have been abandoned in place because they ran out of fuel.

MSNBC this afternoon says that on Ukrainian social media that there's multiple images of Russian tanks which have been abandoned in place because they ran out of fuel.

Putin has threatened to attack Sweden and Finland if they join NATO, which sounds like the best possible way to get them to join NATO.
 
I also know at least one fearsome Swede who could probably repel any such attack singlehandedly, through sheer intellect and force of will.

Lest we forget, it was the Finns that coined the term, "Molotov cocktail".  

Hi,
 
There's been a lot of conversation about banning Russia from the SWIFT financial system, so I've been engaging in a lot of conversations about the SWIFT financial system. Then having to recreate what I've already written because I can't easily find what I've already written repeatedly.
 
Anyway, I thought it'd help me to write up some basics of where we're at, for the moment, so I could have something to come back to in later conversations. And I thought it might be useful or interesting to people here rather than squirreling it away for my personal use in my email.
 
====
 
SWIFT is the system which banks use to communicate with each other about the financial transactions they're making between themselves. Before SWIFT, they made telephone calls or sent telexes which basically anyone could read so communications weren't secure.
 
Many countries are wanting to kick Russian banks off of the system because it'd make it more difficult, or at least slower, to conduct their business. When Iran was kicked off of SWIFT in 2012, it basically eliminated close to half of their transactions with foreign banks.
 
Of NATO countries, France, Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and the UK have come out in favor of removing Russian banks from the SWIFT financial system. France is the big surprise on that list since it's highly-dependent on Russian natural gas and had been talking like it'd be against the removal.
 
====
 
Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, US at the moment are against removing Russia from SWIFT.
 
Germany, Italy, Austria are highly-dependent on Russian natural gas and so need some way of paying Russian banks. 
 
Italian and Austrian banks being highly exposed with loans into Russia which might not be repaid if Russia were to retaliate when removed from SWIFT.
 
Hungary's strong-man-in-charge, despite his country being in NATO, has been a fairly reliable friend of Putin.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/anger-explodes-at-germany-italy-and-hungary-over-europe-s-failure-to-cut-russia-off-from-swift-payment-network/ar-AAUi8DM
 
====
 
Germany and the US are against removing Russia from SWIFT because they're looking at it this long and involved way...
 
The Bank of Russia began developing its own alternative to SWIFT in 2014, called the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS). As of 2021, SPFS was already handling up to one fifth of Russian’s payments messaging volume.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/swift-russia-ukraine-war/
 
 
The Russian system has its drawbacks.
Whereas SWIFT operates 24 hours a day, SPFS can send payment messages only during weekday working hours, Maria Shagina, a fellow at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Zurich, wrote earlier this year. SPFS also has shorter limits on the size of messages, she said. (But they'd likely upgrade their system if it became their primary way of receiving payments from foreign banks.)
 
China, whose economy is far larger than Russia's, is also developing an alternative to SWIFT. In 2015, Beijing launched the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) to help internationalize use of the Chinese currency, the yuan.
 
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-swift-nuclear-option/31601868.html
 
Russian banks could go back to phone calls and telex. But it's much more likely that they'd just insist on their European customers using their system or China's system.
 
Doing one would be a major benefit to Russia while doing the other would be a major benefit to China...because it would make that system a legitimate alternative to SWIFT for banks worldwide to use.
 
Both Russia and China have objected for decades about having to do oil/natural gas transactions in dollars rather than their own currencies. If Russia is dumped from SWIFT, it could likely get away with insisting that its customers buy rubles from the Russian central bank and then pay for oil in those. 
 
That would help stabilize the ruble which had dropped in value significantly when Putin announced his invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, it would tend to devalue the dollar since it would no longer be the international standard for energy trading.
 
And likely if Russia could get away with making their energy transactions in their national currency rather than the dollar, China could probably get away with it as well.
 
(Personally I don't get the economist's arguments that "trading in rubles" would stabilize the value of the ruble more than "Russia's central bank increasing its store of foreign currency". But they all seem to agree that actually using a country's currency is more stabilizing than having foreign reserves to back the value of it.)
 
So basically, Germany and the US are looking at the "next level" of the bad things which would happen after Russia is kicked out of SWIFT rather than focusing on the immediate bad things which would happen to the Russian economy as it made the adjustment.
 
That's the argument of "in SWIFT" or "out of SWIFT", which you aren't going to get from media sources because the people who write the articles don't understand it for the most part. And the few who do understand it are ordered to not write in that level of detail because it will supposedly "go over the audience's heads".  
 
====
 
Also worth noting, in 2019 then-Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated that removing Russia from SWIFT would be a declaration of war. Take that for what you will, Russian officials say a LOT of marginally crazy things which don't turn out to become actual government policy.
 
https://news.yahoo.com/putin-demands-nato-guarantees-not-193448779.html
 

Hi,
 
There's been a lot of conversation about banning Russia from the SWIFT financial system, so I've been engaging in a lot of conversations about the SWIFT financial system. Then having to recreate what I've already written because I can't easily find what I've already written repeatedly.
 
Anyway, I thought it'd help me to write up some basics of where we're at, for the moment, so I could have something to come back to in later conversations. And I thought it might be useful or interesting to people here rather than squirreling it away for my personal use in my email.
 
====
 
SWIFT is the system which banks use to communicate with each other about the financial transactions they're making between themselves. Before SWIFT, they made telephone calls or sent telexes which basically anyone could read so communications weren't secure.
 
Many countries are wanting to kick Russian banks off of the system because it'd make it more difficult, or at least slower, to conduct their business. When Iran was kicked off of SWIFT in 2012, it basically eliminated close to half of their transactions with foreign banks.
 
Of NATO countries, France, Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and the UK have come out in favor of removing Russian banks from the SWIFT financial system. France is the big surprise on that list since it's highly-dependent on Russian natural gas and had been talking like it'd be against the removal.
 
====
 
Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, US at the moment are against removing Russia from SWIFT.
 
Germany, Italy, Austria are highly-dependent on Russian natural gas and so need some way of paying Russian banks. 
 
Italian and Austrian banks being highly exposed with loans into Russia which might not be repaid if Russia were to retaliate when removed from SWIFT.
 
Hungary's strong-man-in-charge, despite his country being in NATO, has been a fairly reliable friend of Putin.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/anger-explodes-at-germany-italy-and-hungary-over-europe-s-failure-to-cut-russia-off-from-swift-payment-network/ar-AAUi8DM
 
====
 
Germany and the US are against removing Russia from SWIFT because they're looking at it this long and involved way...
 
The Bank of Russia began developing its own alternative to SWIFT in 2014, called the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS). As of 2021, SPFS was already handling up to one fifth of Russian’s payments messaging volume.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/swift-russia-ukraine-war/
 
 
The Russian system has its drawbacks.
Whereas SWIFT operates 24 hours a day, SPFS can send payment messages only during weekday working hours, Maria Shagina, a fellow at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Zurich, wrote earlier this year. SPFS also has shorter limits on the size of messages, she said. (But they'd likely upgrade their system if it became their primary way of receiving payments from foreign banks.)
 
China, whose economy is far larger than Russia's, is also developing an alternative to SWIFT. In 2015, Beijing launched the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) to help internationalize use of the Chinese currency, the yuan.
 
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-swift-nuclear-option/31601868.html
 
Russian banks could go back to phone calls and telex. But it's much more likely that they'd just insist on their European customers using their system or China's system.
 
Doing one would be a major benefit to Russia while doing the other would be a major benefit to China...because it would make that system a legitimate alternative to SWIFT for banks worldwide to use.
 
Both Russia and China have objected for decades about having to do oil/natural gas transactions in dollars rather than their own currencies. If Russia is dumped from SWIFT, it could likely get away with insisting that its customers buy rubles from the Russian central bank and then pay for oil in those. 
 
That would help stabilize the ruble which had dropped in value significantly when Putin announced his invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, it would tend to devalue the dollar since it would no longer be the international standard for energy trading.
 
And likely if Russia could get away with making their energy transactions in their national currency rather than the dollar, China could probably get away with it as well.
 
(Personally I don't get the economist's arguments that "trading in rubles" would stabilize the value of the ruble more than "Russia's central bank increasing its store of foreign currency". But they all seem to agree that actually using a country's currency is more stabilizing than having foreign reserves to back the value of it.)
 
So basically, Germany and the US are looking at the "next level" of the bad things which would happen after Russia is kicked out of SWIFT rather than focusing on the immediate bad things which would happen to the Russian economy as it made the adjustment.
 
That's the argument of "in SWIFT" or "out of SWIFT", which you aren't going to get from media sources because the people who write the articles don't understand it for the most part. And the few who do understand it are ordered to not write in that level of detail because it will supposedly "go over the audience's heads".  
 
====
 
Also worth noting, in 2019 then-Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated that removing Russia from SWIFT would be a declaration of war. Take that for what you will, Russian officials say a LOT of marginally crazy things which don't turn out to become actual government policy.
 
https://news.yahoo.com/putin-demands-nato-guarantees-not-193448779.html
 

On the Norway/Russia border:
 
 

If you play Nicki Minaj songs backwards you can hear satanic messages...
 
even worse, if you play them forwards you can hear Nicki Minaj.

What is Irish and stays out all night?
 
Patty O'Furniture

Germany hopes protein-based Covid vaccine will sway sceptics
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/21/germany-hopes-nuvaxovid-protein-based-covid-vaccine-will-sway-sceptics
 
It uses a protein base rather than the novel mRNA technology used in the most commonly used vaccines.
 
 
This is one of the very slow vaccine projects which was partially funded by Operation "Warp Speed" which appears to finally be ready.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/11/933864908/novavax-posts-coronavirus-vaccine-contract-that-government-didnt-disclose
 
 
Of course, I'm sure it has the side effect of turning you into one of the lizard people so the anti-vax crowd will still refuse to take it. 😕 

The police came to my house tonight holding a picture of my wife.
 
They said, "Is this your wife, sir?" Shocked, I answered, "Yes."
 
They said, "I'm afraid it looks like she's been hit by a bus."
 
I said, "I know, but she has a lovely personality."

One day in class the teacher asks the students to tell a story that has a lesson.
 
Suzie puts her hand up and tells a story about the time she was at the beach and jumped into the water and cut her leg badly on a jagged rock she didn't see. She said the lesson of the story was to look before you leap.
 
Next Pete told a story about how he went with his dad to a junkyard and they found a bike someone had thrown out. Pete and his dad brought it home and cleaned it up so Pete could ride it and it was his favorite thing in the whole world. The lesson of the story was that one persons trash is another persons treasure.
 
They went around the room until they got to Little Johnny. He told a story about how his grandpa was a soldier in World War II. One time his grandpa found himself all alone and out numbered. All he had was a grenade, his rifle, 20 bullets, a bottle of whiskey and his bayonet. He was facing 30 enemy soldiers.
 
He took a swig of whiskey, pulled the pin and threw the grenade, taking out 5 enemy soldiers. He took another hefty swig and picked up his rifle and shot 20 more. Out of ammunition he fixed his bayonet, drained the last of the whiskey and charged the remaining soldiers. In bloody hand to hand fighting he managed to kill them all.
 
The class grew silent as he finished his story. The teacher said "That's incredible Johnny. What is the lesson to that?"
Johnny said, "The lesson from that is you don't want to mess with my grandpa when he's been drinking."

One day, this guy, who has been stranded on a desert island all alone for ten years, sees an unusual speck on the horizon. "It's certainly not a ship," He thinks to himself. And as the speck gets closer and closer, he begins to rule out the possibility of a small boat, even a raft.
Suddenly, emerging from the surf comes this drop-dead gorgeous blonde woman wearing a wet suit and scuba gear. She approaches the stunned guy and asks, "How long have you been on this island?"
"Ten years," he answers.
"How long has it been since you've had a cigarette?"
"Ten years!" he says.
She reaches over and unzips a waterproof pocket on her left sleeve and pulls out a pack of fresh cigarettes. He takes one, lights it, takes a long drag, and says, "Man, oh man! Is that ever good!"
She then asks him, "How long has it been since you've had a sip of bourbon?" Trembling, he replies, "Ten years!"
She reaches over, unzips her waterproof pocket on her right sleeve, pulls out a flask, and gives it to him. He opens the flask, takes a long swig, and says, "Wow, that's absolutely fantastic!"
Then she starts slowly unzipping the long zipper that runs down the front of her wet suit, looks at him seductively, and asks, "And how long has it been since you've played around?"
The guy, with tears in his eyes, replies, "Oh my God! Don't tell me you've got golf clubs in there!"

One day in class the teacher asks the students to tell a story that has a lesson.
 
Suzie puts her hand up and tells a story about the time she was at the beach and jumped into the water and cut her leg badly on a jagged rock she didn't see. She said the lesson of the story was to look before you leap.
 
Next Pete told a story about how he went with his dad to a junkyard and they found a bike someone had thrown out. Pete and his dad brought it home and cleaned it up so Pete could ride it and it was his favorite thing in the whole world. The lesson of the story was that one persons trash is another persons treasure.
 
They went around the room until they got to Little Johnny. He told a story about how his grandpa was a soldier in World War II. One time his grandpa found himself all alone and out numbered. All he had was a grenade, his rifle, 20 bullets, a bottle of whiskey and his bayonet. He was facing 30 enemy soldiers.
 
He took a swig of whiskey, pulled the pin and threw the grenade, taking out 5 enemy soldiers. He took another hefty swig and picked up his rifle and shot 20 more. Out of ammunition he fixed his bayonet, drained the last of the whiskey and charged the remaining soldiers. In bloody hand to hand fighting he managed to kill them all.
 
The class grew silent as he finished his story. The teacher said "That's incredible Johnny. What is the lesson to that?"
Johnny said, "The lesson from that is you don't want to mess with my grandpa when he's been drinking."

What is Irish and stays out all night?
 
Patty O'Furniture

A guy walks into bar, orders a beer and lets out a heavy sigh.
 
"What's wrong, Bob?" the bartender asks.
 
"Oh nothing really," Bob replies. "I guess I'm just not myself today."
 
"Yes," the bartender agreed. "I noticed the improvement immediately."

A old man as a pet mongoose who gives birth.
 
Deciding he can't look after the mongoose and the pup he decides to donate them to the zoo and writes a letter to explain.
 
Dear zoo,
I would like to donate two mongooses mongeeses mongi
.
.
.
Dear zoo,
I would like to donate one mongoose.
PS here is another.

Yeah, I'd go with, "As best as you can tell, this time your opponent is a man."
 
Then mess with their minds with some mental illusions seeing him/her the other way at various points in the confrontation.
 
And if they eventually find the villain's base, find the person's room with an assortment of wigs, toupees, men's clothes, women's clothes, makeup, disposable women's razor's, and aftershave.

Former Texas power chief says Greg Abbott directed him to charge customers max amount during 2021 winter outages
 
https://www.rawstory.com/greg-abbott-ercot/
 
Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliabilty Council of Texas (ERCOT), testified in court on Wednesday that millions of Texans received sky-high energy bills during last winter's deep freeze based on the instructions of Gov. Greg Abbott.
 
Magness alleged under oath that " when he ordered power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s frigid winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies, he was following the direction" of the Texas governor.
 
Magness said that keeping prices as high as possible were the only way to follow Abbott's directive, which was relayed to him by then-Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker, to keep power on at all costs.
 
“She told me the governor had conveyed to her if we emerged from rotating outages it was imperative they not resume,” Magness testified. “We needed to do what we needed to do to make it happen.”
 
 
For some context
 
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/texas/former-ercot-ceo-following-gov-abbott-order-prices-at-max-cap-feb-2021-winter-storm/269-fe79947a-8ed2-4817-b4d5-037b72c46443
 
Last year, Abbott's spokesman told the Chronicle that the governor was not "involved in any way" in the decision to keep prices at a maximum of $9,000 per megawatt-hour.
 
 

The correct answer, of course:
 
"It's a male mentalist!"
 
"Wait!  he was a she last time!"
 
"A very powerful mentalist."
 
"But last time--"
 
"See what I mean?"