"In tsarist times Russia’s aristocracy sent its daughters to finishing schools known as Institutes for Noble Maidens..."

"... where social graces and domestic skills were honed in preparation for an advantageous marriage. Similar academies are springing up around the country for the purpose of training the next generation of wives and mothers. Like their forebears these girls are taught floristry, cooking and dancing. And so too they are referred to as 'noble maidens.' In the parlance of the 21st century though, a closer translation may be 'tradwife.'..."

I'm reading "The tradwife schools making ‘noble maidens’ of Russian girls/A state-backed elective programme prepping schoolgirls for domestic life is expanding under the Kremlin’s push for traditional values" (London Times).

"For the past 30 years, Russia has battled natural population decline: low birth rates coupled with notoriously high mortality rates... Meanwhile the state has aggressively restricted and criminalised anything that it deems to fall outside its definition of traditional family values.... In 2023 the supreme court designated LGBT groups as extremist organisations, making them equivalent in the eyes of the law to neo-Nazi groups and Islamic State. The following year, the Kremlin brought in legislation that outlawed the promotion of a 'childless lifestyle' across the media, internet, literature and films.... [J]ournalists spoke to some of the parents who have put their daughters into the Traditional Education of Girls course. One woman said that the programme initially struggled to recruit. 'There were a lot of whispers around the room about how they were going to raise nuns and housekeepers,' the woman said."

"They would jam Voice of America, but my dad would wake up like in the middle of the night. He wanted to know what's happening out there."

"And he would sit there and listen to that quietly. And I remember as a kid, I asked dad, 'What are you listening to in the middle of the night?' And he goes, 'Shh, don't let neighbors hear us. This is Voice of America. We're not allowed to listen to it.' Wow. So, you had to keep it secret.... They would jam it during the day, but at night time, they didn't think anybody would wake up at 3:00 in the morning and sit there and listen to it.... I would then start also waking up and listening, and it would be just standard American thing: Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor.... There's a Statue of Liberty waiting to greet you if you come to the United States. And he would always say, 'You know this this would be something that I would love you to experience.' And my mom hated that because she was afraid that we'll get in trouble and so she didn't want to even talk about this. So, if I drew a picture as a kid, I would draw a picture of Statue of Liberty. And she would like, 'Don't do that. Don't let anybody see this. We'll get in trouble.'..."

It's Yakov Smirnoff, on Joe Rogan!

I'm cuing it up to the beginning of his story of leaving the Soviet Union:

"I knew the risks were rising. The American basketball star Brittney Griner had been detained days before the invasion..."

"... the latest example of the Kremlin stockpiling foreign prisoners to secure diplomatic leverage. But the censorship laws hadn’t yet been applied to foreign journalists, and I felt a responsibility to continue working in the country if I could. I started taking short trips back to Russia. The importance of the work, and the sense of covering history in the making, made me feel alive. The door to cell No 40 slammed shut. I heard the clank of metal keys in the lock behind me, the deadbolt sliding into place with two noisy turns...."

From "Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter in Russia, thought he was meeting a sourceInstead he was arrested for spying. In an exclusive extract from his prison diaries, he reveals how he survived — and won his freedom" (London Times).

"I remember one of the first things my parents would say about Americans when we immigrated to America, was that they always seemed so unhappy..."

"... despite the fact that they were so much richer than us. We were living on government cheese for a time, and my parents and other Russians would say: Oni ot zhira besyatsa. Which translates very vaguely as: They’re wild with their own fat. They’re so juicy and fat, and yet they don’t know what to do with it. Just enjoy the fat. But sometimes this greater meaning combines with this egotistical impulse to have more and more and more. And to not die is one of those almost Protestant extensions of everything. And striving. Why should the striving ever end?"

Said Gary Shteyngart, in his interview with Ezra Klein, the "I" in the headline "I Keep Telling People We’re Living in This Dystopian Novel" (NYT). The novel is Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story" (commission earned).

"Maybe such freaks should come to power — those who aren’t afraid of anything, who just do things — at least there are visible changes."

Said Svetlana Popova-Znamenskaya, who "stayed in Vologda to establish an architecture practice where she restores wooden houses and builds furniture" and has "a showroom with a specialty coffee shop opposite the local Kremlin and the new monument to Ivan the Terrible."

Quoted in "He Shut Liquor Stores and Banned Abortion, All for the Glory of Russia/A firebrand governor aims to transform his region into a laboratory for the Kremlin’s reactionary ideals" (NYT)(gift like).

"He" = Georgy Y. Filimonov, "the governor of the northern region of Vologda," who has "vigorously embraced the sort of 'traditional Russian values' espoused by the Kremlin, asserting Vologda as an undistilled bastion of 'Russianness.'"

And here's a quote from Misha Priyemyshev, "a designer who worked on branding for the city before Mr. Filimonov’s arrival": "Everything is very slow here, like in a true swamp. That swamp has a lot of power — the more you move in it, the more it sucks you in."

You have to be very deeply into Democratic Party politics to write a blank-days-that-shook-the-blank headline about this.

"10 Days That Shook the House Map and Democratic Confidence."

That's the top headline at the NYT this morning. 

You know the story: "Just two weeks ago, Democrats felt increasingly emboldened about taking control of the House in November after seeming to fight the redistricting wars to a draw. But two court rulings — one by the Supreme Court and another by Virginia’s top court — and an aggressive new push by red states to carve up congressional maps have delivered the Republican Party its biggest burst of momentum in many months. Put bluntly, Republicans have roughly 10 more House seats that favor them than they did just 10 days ago, and Democrats are suddenly grappling with a new landscape."

This feels like one of those NYT articles that's mainly performing the service of tending to the readers' emotions. Let's all do panic together this morning. When I encounter that sort of thing, my natural instinct is to go somewhere else. If we're doing group emotion, I'm looking for the door.

So: I'm interested in the history of titles in the blank-days-that-shook-the-blank form. The original is "10 Days That Shook the World," the 1919 first-hand account of the Russian Revolution by John Reed. His editor described Reed's frenzy:

"Ukraine is intensifying drone strikes on Russian oil facilities, hitting a key Black Sea refinery four times in two weeks and setting off a days-long carcinogenic blaze..."

"... that environmentalists say represents one of the country’s worst ecological disasters since the fall of the Soviet Union. A plume of black acrid smoke once again rose over Russia’s Black Sea city of Tuapse on Friday after Ukraine struck the refinery and oil terminal there overnight, the fourth in a spate of attacks that have also caused oily droplets of 'black rain' to fall on residents and contaminated more than 30 miles of coastline as an oil slick spread...."

From "Poisonous black rain falls in Russia as Ukraine strikes oil facilities/Residents of Tuapse, on the Black Sea, complained of an inadequate government response and coverup of what they say is a huge environmental and health disaster" (WaPo).

"They cut off the internet. No blogs. No channels.... We don't want it. We don't want it. You won't find us on line."

"We don't sit. We don't sit on your internet. We don't want it. We don't want it. Don't sit. Don't sit there. I declare a whole year of everything turned upside down."

Russia's main TV channel is airing songs about how great life is without the internet. Getting even closer to North Korea. pic.twitter.com/KS2Hur0ioc

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) March 20, 2026

"Is President Trump serious about annexing Greenland?"/"President Trump strongly believes that we cannot outsource our security."

 

BESSENT: It might not be next year. Might not be in 4 years. But down the road this fight for the Arctic is real. We would keep our NATO guarantees. And if there were an attack on Greenland from Russia, from some other area, we would get dragged in. So better now, peace through strength, make it part of the United States.... The Europeans project weakness. The U.S. projects strength....

"One possibility of what we get out of it is basically a spheres of influence kind of organization of the world..."

"... something we haven't really seen since the late 1800s. This is a world in which the United States dominates its own territory, that China dominates the Pacific, and that the Europeans dominate Europe — but if they don't get their act together, maybe Vladimir Putin dominates Europe.... I think this is where we see the America First doctrine becoming something closer to Americas First — Americas with an S — that he views the region as basically the subsidiary of the United States. And you know, I've traveled with President Trump. I've covered 5 American Presidents since I got back to Washington... and my takeaway is that Trump is really not an isolationist. He never has been. He's actually more of a unilateralist.... He wants the total freedom of action. He knows that he is not really interested in democracy promotion. He knows that he wants to prioritize economics and economic development over everything, even if those economics don't necessarily come with security benefits to the us.... [E]ach region of the world — and even our allies — are going to have to learn to depend on themselves.... I think the fundamental trust in the US as the defender of a certain set of concepts of the West has been shattered for some time...."

Says David Sanger in today's excellent episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Trump’s Plan to Reorder the World."

AND: Here's the "National Security Strategy" document Sanger is discussing.

ADDED: There's some discussion of the Monroe Doctrine in that podcast, so

"He walked through the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia... Later, he reached the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia — the midway point of his walk...."

"In the winter, he said, the strait does not entirely freeze over. 'It is this massive body of crushed ice and seawater…you’re literally climbing over the ice to make any short distance,' he said. He met a fellow adventurer in Alaska who traversed the strait with him. 'No one believed we were going to make it,' Bushby said. 'As it turned out, we managed to nail it on the first go, which no one expected, least of all us.' Once Bushby arrived in Russia, he hit another hurdle: he was detained for entering the country at an incorrect border. He spent 57 days in detention, he said, and faced a trial, until authorities agreed to let him continue his walk. 'It was just a whole series of miracles,' Bushby said...."

From "He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over. Karl Bushby is expected to finish his globe-walking expedition by September 2026" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can see the photos, including Bushby immersed in Bering Strait ice).

"Mind you, I am not at all against a negotiated solution. Indeed, from the beginning of this war I have made the point..."

"... that it will end only with a 'dirty deal.' But it cannot be a filthy deal, and the Trump plan is what history will call a filthy deal.... As my Times colleague David Sanger observed in his analysis of the plan’s content: 'Many of the 28 points in the proposed Russia-Ukraine peace plan offered by the White House read like they had been drafted in the Kremlin. They reflect almost all Mr. Putin’s maximalist demands.'... What would an acceptable dirty deal look like? It would freeze the forces in place, but never formally cede any seized Ukrainian territory. It would insist that European security forces, backed by U.S. logistics, be stationed along the cease-fire line as a symbolic tripwire against any Russian re-invasion. It would require Russia to pay a significant amount of money to cover all the carnage it has inflicted on Ukraine...."

Writes Thomas Friedman, in "Trump’s Neville Chamberlain Prize" (NYT).

Late last night, this went up at the NY Post: "Marco Rubio told US senators that Ukraine peace plan was not America’s — but a ‘leaked’ Russian ‘wish list.'" 

Republican Senator Mike Rounds is quoted at the Post: "[Rubio] made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan. It is a proposal that was received, and as an intermediary, we have made arrangements to share it — and we did not release it. It was leaked."

ADDED: "US senators say Rubio told them Trump’s Ukraine peace plan is Russia’s ‘wish list’" (AP).

"A Romanian worker died late on Monday after being trapped for 12 hours when the 13th-century Torre dei Conti, overlooking the ancient Forum, caved in..."

"... sending a cloud of dust and debris over tourists. Maria Zakharova, a Kremlin spokeswoman, claimed that Italian infrastructure was crumbling because funds were being diverted to backing Ukraine’s war effort. 'As long as the Italian government keeps uselessly wasting taxpayers’ money, all of Italy will collapse, from the economy to its towers,' she said on Monday on her Telegram channel...."

From "Russia blames fatal Rome tower collapse on support for Ukraine/Italy is outraged as the Kremlin links its military aid to the death of a maintenance worker in the Torre dei Conti" (London Times).

Wow, that's some cheap trolling from the Kremlin spokeslady.

"At the meeting her husband handed the Russian leader a 'peace letter' from his wife which called on Putin to restore the 'melodic laughter' to children suffering from the war in Ukraine."

"'Much has unfolded since President Putin received my letter last August,' said Mrs Trump, 55. 'He responded in writing, signalling a willingness to engage with me directly and outlining details regarding the Ukrainian children residing in Russia. 'For the past three months, both sides have participated in several back-channel meetings and calls, all in good faith. My representative has been working directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, eight children have been rejoined with their families during the past 24 hours.'"

From "Melania Trump secures release of children abducted from Ukraine/The first lady said she was working ‘directly’ with President Putin to release more children that were brought to Russia" (London Times).

"A Russian scientist who is close to President Putin has told a forum of schoolteachers in Moscow that the West is planning to exterminate the majority of the Earth’s population..."

"... leaving a tiny elite whose needs will be serviced by robots. Mikhail Kovalchuk, the head of Russia’s Kurchatov nuclear research institute... alleged that western countries were plotting to unleash a deadly virus to reduce the number of people on Earth. He also claimed the West was using LGBT and child-free ideologies to cut populations because robots would soon be able to work better and more effectively.... 'They introduced the LGBT agenda and for those who didn’t go along with it, they offered a second option — the child-free family. It’s working brilliantly. In a generation or two, there’ll be no continuation of their bloodlines. Only a small elite, the ones they actually need, will remain. As for the rest — the people they don’t even see as human — they’ll be eliminated with biological weapons. A virus or something like that with a 90 per cent mortality rate will come along and mow them down'.... Kovalchuk, who has been described as one of Putin’s close friends, told... the teachers that their country’s only friends 'are the army and the navy'...."

From "Putin scientist claims West will use a virus to kill most humans/It’s all part of an LGBT conspiracy to depopulate the planet, according to a friend of the president" (London Times).

Funky-looking and tentacular.

I'm fascinated by the mysteries of sportswriting, and these 2 sentences jumped out at me:

Even the way he plays, all funky-looking forehands and tentacular court coverage, is far from conventional, and at times polarizing. Away from forehands and backhands, he has always been a master of the dark arts, knowing how and when to work a crowd to his advantage, and being more than willing to turn a match into a circus if he thinks it will give him an edge.

That's written by Charlie Eccleshare, at the NYT, in "Daniil Medvedev, tennis’ walking Rorschach test, asks the U.S. Open what it sees."

"Tentacular" — a word I'd never noticed before. I see that H.G. Wells used it in "The War of the Worlds" (1898), to refer to the Martians with “long, tentacular appendages.” The use to describe the tennis player is close enough to the literal meaning. Apparently Medvedev was octopuslike.

But the word has appeared with a more attenuated connection to creatures with tentacles. Grok tells me that the philosopher Donna Haraway writes about "tentacular thinking" in the book "Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene" (2016). There's some notion of "multispecies, interconnected, and responsive" thought to be distinguished from "human-centered, linear, or hierarchical" thought. I'm told there's something called "tentacular empathy" and "tentacular relatings of kinship." Strangulating, and yet I get the sense we're supposed to love it.

Of course, the octopus is a mainstay of political cartoons. Here's one from 1877 that has some present-day resonance:

Lots more here, at "The Octopus in Political Cartoons/Russia, Germany and the United States have all been depicted as octopuses by their nemeses.

"I am totally convinced that if Russia raised their hands and said, 'We give up, we concede, we surrender..."

"... we will GIVE Ukraine and the great United States of America, the most revered, respected, and powerful of all countries, EVER, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and everything surrounding them for a thousand miles, the Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners would say that this was a bad and humiliating day for Donald J. Trump, one of the worst days in the history of our Country.' But that’s why they are the FAKE NEWS, and the badly failing Radical Left Democrats. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!"

Trump is on a roll on Truth Social this morning. That may be his best written work — most absurdly comic and yet too true — maybe ever.

Trump talks about the "land swapping" that he says will take place in ending the war in Ukraine.

 

From the transcript of his press briefing yesterday, Trump talks about the "land swapping" that he says will take place in ending the war in Ukraine:

We're going to change the lines, the battle lines. Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They've occupied some very prime territory. We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine. But they've taken some very prime territory. They've taken largely, in real estate we call it oceanfront property.

The most powerful man in the world — attempting to manage what he's just called "by far the worst that's happened since World War II" — seems comfortable reverting to real-estate mogul mode.

That's always the most valuable property. If you're on a lake, a river or an ocean, it's always the best property. Well, Ukraine, a lot of people don't know that Ukraine was largely a thousand miles of ocean. That's gone, other than one small area, Odessa, it's a small area. There's just a little bit of water left. So I'm going to go and see the parameters. Now, I may leave and say good luck, and that'll be the end. I may say this is not going to be settled. I mean, there are those that believe that Putin wanted all of Ukraine. I happen to be one of them, by the way. I think if it weren't for me, he would not be even talking to anybody else right now. But I'm going to meet with him. We're going to see what the parameters are, and then I'm going to call up President Zelensky and the European leaders.

ADDED: The very next headline I read was: "For Trump, Cities Like Washington Are Real Estate in Need of Fixing Up/'It’s a natural instinct as a real estate person,' he said in announcing his federal takeover of the capital’s police, despite falling crime" (NYT).

"The first waves began hitting the U.S. West Coast after an 8.8-magnitude quake off Russia’s coast put a swath of Pacific nations on alert."

Live updates from the NYT. Gift link, here.

ADDED: "The Kamchatka Peninsula is so known in Russia for its wilderness and lack of communication links that it has become a byword for 'remote.'... Unlike Turkey and Syria, countries that have been devastated by earthquakes in recent years, Kamchatka is sparsely populated — and the Soviet-era housing there typically has only one or two stories.... Moving around Kamchatka is difficult: The peninsula has just a few hundred miles of paved roads, mostly around major towns, and there are no roads to cross the swampland separating it from the mainland. Kamchatka has become a popular destination for tourism in recent years, with travel companies offering camping, helicopter rides and off-road tours for the visitors to see the volcanoes or admire the pristine forests and rivers.... A tour guide in the Kuril Islands, Yelena Kotenko, posted a video of tourists running out screaming from a two-story building as tiles rained down from its roof. The tourists went up the side of a volcano while a tsunami was rising on the coast, she said."

"Last year, by some estimates, Ukraine’s factories turned out more than three million drones...."

"The drones that I examined were remarkably simple: a lightweight square frame, four propellers, a video camera, a battery-powered motor, and room for a bomb. The attack drones, known as F.P.V.s, for 'first-person view,' are guided by an operator watching a video screen that shows what the drone is seeing; other members of the unit monitor feeds from reconnaissance drones.... The Russians are terrorizing the Ukrainians with drone attacks of their own. Towns and hamlets have been largely pulverized along the front lines and for miles beyond; even American air defenses are mostly useless, because setting them up invites an immediate Russian attack. Iranian-made Shahed drones, capable of carrying large warheads long distances, have pummelled Kyiv and other cities with hundreds of strikes. Under the constant threat of attack, the Ukrainians have found it difficult to supply their front lines, and evacuation is sometimes impossible. The prevalence of drones appears to have given the advantage to the defense. Along the seven-hundred-mile front, soldiers on both sides are huddled in fortified trenches, separated by a no man’s land known as the 'gray zone.' With drones circling day and night, surprise attack is impossible, movement suicidal. If soldiers venture out, they are attacked immediately by drones or artillery...."

Writes Dexter Filkins, in "Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War With global conflicts increasingly shaped by drones and A.I., the American military risks losing its dominance" (The New Yorker).