"Inversion is building earth-orbiting capsules to deliver goods anywhere in the world from outer space."

"To make that a reality, Inversion’s capsule will come through the earth’s atmosphere at about 25 times as fast as the speed of sound, making the parachute essential for a soft landing and undisturbed cargo.... Inversion aims to develop a four-foot-diameter capsule carrying a payload equivalent to the size of a few carry-on suitcases by 2025. Once in orbit, the capsule could, the company hopes, navigate itself to a private commercial space station or stay in orbit with solar panels until summoned back to earth.... If Inversion is successful, it’s possible to imagine hundreds or thousands of containers floating around space for up to five years — like some (really) distant storage lockers."

Not a joke. A big article in the NYT: "Dreaming of Suitcases in Space/A California start-up company believes it can one day speed delivery of important items by storing them in orbit."

"[T]here has been surprisingly little discussion of the fact that [Ketanji Brown Jackson] would join Justice Amy Coney Barrett as the court’s second working mother."

Writes by lawprof Melissa Murray in "Another Working Mom for the Supreme Court?" (NYT). 

While Democrats have touted [Jackson's] sterling qualifications and the historic nature of her nomination as the first Black woman to the court, few have leaned into her identity as a mother, as the Republicans did with Justice Barrett.

Murray knows there are 2 big differences. One is that Barrett has 7 children — and the youngest was only 8 at the time of confirmation, 2 were adopted (from Haiti), and 1 has Down Syndrome. Jackson, by contrast, has 2 children, ages 21 and 17.  

The other big difference is, as Murray puts it: "Democrats may be less inclined to flag a nominee’s family status as evidence of professional accomplishment or acumen." What I'd say there is that liberals and progressives are more likely to criticize people who call attention to a woman's status as a mother: Why are you talking about the fact that a woman is a parent when you don't talk about men that way?! In fact, I have to wonder about Murray, touting Jackson's momhood. Does she write NYT columns about the dadhood of male nominees?

"The phrase wuxin gongzuo – ‘working with your mind on Ukraine’ – has been trending on Chinese social media network Weibo."

"Essentially what it means is ‘distraction from work because you’re obsessed with the war.’...  There’s little doubt that in Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in Beijing, Chinese Communist party higher-ups are, in a more literal sense, working with their minds on Ukraine.... A few weeks ago, a prominent Chinese nationalist told me that the Ukrainians were ‘Russians really.' It doesn’t seem that way today... Beijing has in the past argued, in terms like those used by Moscow about Ukraine, that long-standing historical ties and linguistic similarities make the case for unification. Yet regardless of the legal differences between Taiwan and Ukraine’s international standing, the scenes from Kiev and Kharkiv show a very different narrative to the world, including to China: people in a democratic, developed state refusing to accept annexation by a powerful, autocratic neighbour.... Any assault on Taipei would receive massive coverage. Russia cares little about global PR. China, despite its increasing assertiveness, is still keen to promote its image as a peaceful power that seeks economic partnership. Footage of terrified civilians hiding in the Taipei metro would hardly burnish that image. The brutality evident in the streets of Ukraine may have given Taiwan a breathing space."

From "Could the Ukraine war save Taiwan?" by Rana Mitter, Oxford history professor and author of "China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism" (The Spectator).

"Mr. Ortiz was classified as a sex offender, and a New York law barred him from living within 1,000 feet of a school while on parole."

"Prison officials would not let him go until he identified a suitable address. They did almost nothing to help him.... Mr. Ortiz served an extra 25 months because he could not find a place to live. He wanted to return to New York City, where his mother and daughter lived. But most of the city was off limits because almost all residential areas are within 1,000 feet of a school.... [There is] 'a cruel Catch-22' for people classified as sex offenders, Allison Frankel wrote in 2019 in The Yale Law Journal Forum, because corrections officials will 'not release them from prison until they obtained approved housing, but their poverty, disabilities and sex-offender registration status made finding housing impossible.'"

From "Their Time Served, Sex Offenders Are Kept in Prison in ‘Cruel Catch-22’/New York prisons will not release people convicted of some sex offenses until they find housing far from schools. But that is hard to do, especially from behind bars" by Adam Liptak (NYT).

"Prices at the pump already top four dollars a gallon in some states, and Joe Biden’s approval rating stands at just forty-two per cent... so it’s easy to see..."

"... why the prospect of another rise in prices would alarm some people in the White House. But, with Russia’s government reliant on energy exports for about forty per cent of its income, the moral argument for cutting off these mammoth revenue streams is hard to counter. 'The world is paying Russia seven hundred million dollars a day for oil and four hundred million dollars for natural gas,' Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, told me, in a telephone interview from Kyiv this weekend. 'You are paying all this money to a murderous leader who is still killing people in my country.'"

From "The Economic Challenge and Climate Opportunity in Supporting Ukraine/Putin’s dependence on oil-and-gas exports presents a chance to make the U.S. less beholden to fossil fuels and the autocratic governments that control them" by John Cassidy (The New Yorker).

"Spies in Russia’s infamous security apparatus were kept in the dark about President Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine, according to a whistleblower who described the war as a 'total failure' that could be compared only to the collapse of Nazi Germany."

"A report thought to be by an analyst in the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB... said the FSB was being blamed for the failure of the invasion but had been given no warning of it and was unprepared to deal with the effects of crippling sanctions.... FSB officers had been ordered to assess the effects of western sanctions, they said, but were told that it was a hypothetical box-ticking exercise. 'You have to write the analysis in a way that makes Russia the victor... otherwise you get questioned for not doing good work,' they wrote. 'Suddenly it happens and everything comes down to your completely groundless analysis.'"

The London Times reports.

That makes it sound as though the spies are trying to save their ass by saying that before the invasion they were trying to save their ass. We weren't wrong, we were deceptive, and we didn't think it would matter. We did bad work, yes, but it was all because we wanted to meet your standard of doing good work.  

A bit more from the unnamed analyst:

"A Russian gymnast has been placed under investigation for wearing a 'Z' symbol linked to support for President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on his leotard while sharing a podium with a Ukrainian rival...."

"[Ivan] Kuliak wore it in place of the Russian flag, which had been banned by the governing body of gymnastics.... The symbol, which has been used as a designation on Russian military vehicles deployed in Ukraine, has become a symbol in Russia of support for Putin and the war.... The Russian Defence Ministry has previously issued a statement saying that 'Z' means victory."

The London Times reports.

If would be trivial and not worth saying, but because we are talking about symbols and victory, I will add that the Ukrainian gymnast, Kovtun Illia, won the gold. The Russian was on the podium to pick up the bronze. 

Is "Z" supposed to be the Roman letter Z? It doesn't look any of the letters in the Russian alphabet. If you were using that shape to mean something other than a letter, what would you be trying to say. Perhaps it means "anti-Nazi" — half of a swastika.

At the London Times link, there's a photo with the caption: "In Kazan, Russia, terminally ill children and their parents made a Z formation at their hospice to show support for the invasion."

"Hundreds of French châteaux for sale as owners cut and run."

The London Times reports. 

On the one hand environmental rules and other bureaucratic initiatives are driving up the cost of maintaining stately homes. On the other, “the younger generations are urban,” [said Olivier de Lorgeril, chairman of La Demeure historique]. “They often want to have international careers and to live in towns and cities.”...

“A monument that is not lived in is a monument that is not looked after,” he said. “We keep repeating that our national monuments are in danger.”...

And here's a conversation between the elderly owners of Château de Courson, whose family has owned the place since 1775 and whose children don't want it because it "consumes just about all your life":

“We had that singer here once”...

“Oh, what was his name?”

“Sting”...

Yes. The article makes it sound as though Sting just dropped by once, but it was the location for his excellent 1985 film, "Bring on the Night." We saw the band rehearsing in at the Château de Courson. Michael Apted directed. 

From the contemporaneous NYT review:

In addition to the performance footage, Mr. Apted also includes a few unexpected moments: a visit by a tourist group to the chateau where the musicians happen to be rehearsing (one woman keeps her fingers in her ears while walking through the room) and a disagreement between the costume designer Colleen Atwood and Miles Copeland, Sting's pushy manager. ''Well, I'm sorry, I'm just a peasant, man, but I'm telling you they look boring to me,'' Mr. Copeland complains noisily about the backup singers. It's a scene straight out of ''This Is Spinal Tap.''

Speaking of Sting, I was just thinking about his song — also from the mid 80s — "Russians":

We share the same biology, regardless of ideology/But what might save us, me and you /Is if the Russians love their children too....

"Russia did not show up for a hearing at the United Nations’ top court on Monday, effectively boycotting Ukrainian efforts to seek an immediate end to the fighting."

"The proceedings in front of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, went ahead without Russia’s presence. The case centers on Russia’s official explanation for its invasion of Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin has said is supposed to lead to the 'denazification' of Ukraine and end a 'genocide' in eastern Ukraine.... Ukraine seeks an emergency order that would require Russia to halt its invasion. Both countries have signed the 1948 treaty on the prevention of genocide, and Russia would in theory be mandated to follow the court decision.... [O]ne of its long-time lawyers, Alain Pellet, resigned last week, writing in an open letter that it 'has become impossible to represent in forums dedicated to the application of the law a country that so cynically despises it.'"

WaPo reports.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

That photograph is from yesterday — 15 minutes earlier than the vivid orange photographs that many of you liked in last night's post. I didn't catch the sunrise today because it was too windy to go running safely in the woods.

And let me give you one more. This one is from 6:42 — 2 minutes after the ones posted yesterday and significantly different, with a full view of the sun and a big reflection on the ice.

"Being deprived of seeing half of the face could be overcome precisely because of that brain plasticity. Babies and young children are far more adaptable to their changing conditions in the world than we are as adults."

Said David Lewkowicz, who studies speech and language development in young children, quoted in "Do masks for young children impede their language development? Research is sparse on this issue. But the few studies that do exist suggest masks do not inhibit kids from learning how to communicate" (WaPo).

There's an understandable effort to assure parents that there children are not being damaged by masks, but in amongst the reassurance, I'm reading:

"There can only be one conclusion: You also want us to be slowly killed."

UPDATE: My post consisted of an embedded Reddit post that is now removed. It showed Zelensky, speaking in Ukrainian, and had subtitles that may or may not have been accurate. I don't know why Reddit removed the post. 

AND: You can still see the Reddit post here, along with a note that it was removed by moderators. And: "Moderators remove posts from feeds for a variety of reasons, including keeping communities safe, civil, and true to their purpose."

The subreddit, r/nextfuckinglevel, is "A subreddit for gifs and videos that are next fucking level!" My guess is that they don't want that subreddit to be updates about Ukraine.

"It hadn't penetrated my think-tank that this was your hacienda when I came mavericking in."

Wrote William MacLeod Raine in the Western novella "Bucky O'Connor" (1910). 

The original meaning of "think tank" was brain. I learned that just now from the OED. 

In 1964, the St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Dispatch quoted Harry Truman saying that he wants to live to be 90 "if the old think-tank is working."  I guess the skull is the container — the tank — and the brain the contents. I see that people also said "think box." 

Does anyone still use the phrase "think tank" like that? It would be confusing, now that "think tank" has come to mean "A research institute or other organization providing advice and ideas on national or commercial problems" (OED). 

The oldest published appearance of that usage is:

"How does Putin extract himself from this nightmare of his own making?"

That's the headline at the London Times, asking precisely the question I had. I could not think of any answer. It seems there's nothing Putin can do but move forward into his calamity. Even if he wants out, there's no way out.

This piece is by Mark Galeotti, an honorary professor at University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the author of "The Weaponisation of Everything." 

"As the only Black member of the court, Thomas’s views on race and racism may carry particular weight with his colleagues."

"After all, he — and he alone — is positioned to explain, drawing on personal experience, the impact of racism on the Black community. And his conservative bona fides make it hard to dismiss his views as 'wokeness' run amok.... Next term, the justices will hear a critical challenge to affirmative action, and, depending on what happens in the Mississippi abortion case currently pending, there may be yet more opportunities to consider the scope and substance of the right to abortion. On both of these issues, Thomas has been incredibly vocal — and his views have been presented in racialized terms. He is a stalwart critic of affirmative action, arguing that such programs 'stamp minorities with a badge of inferiority and may cause them to develop dependencies or to adopt an attitude that they are "entitled" to preferences.' He has dismissed claims about the supposed benefits of diversity in education as a product of 'faddish social theories' at odds with a constitutional commitment to equal protection of the laws. His opposition to reproductive rights is well known, though recently, his rhetoric has grown more aggressive: He has associated abortion with the eugenics movement of the 1920s and has voiced concern about the eradication through abortion of minority groups.... Serving as a counterweight to Thomas, [Ketanji Brown] Jackson would make clear, through her presence and her arguments, that the Black experience is anything but one-dimensional."

Writes NYU lawprof Melissa Murray, in "A new kind of diversity on the Supreme Court: Two formidable Black voices/It used to be said that there was a ‘Black seat’ on the Supreme Court. But Black legal perspectives are far too diverse to be represented by any single figure" (WaPo).

There are too few Justices to achieve real diversity — the kind of "critical mass" the recent affirmative action cases talk about, where no member of a minority group has to feel that they represent their group. 

But isn't 2 better than 1? With 2, we may be asking which of the 2 really represents black people. We don't ask that about the white Justices. And Professor Murray isn't blatantly asking that. What she says outright is that with 2 black Justices, it will be plain that there isn't just one black perspective. 

And yet, Clarence Thomas has never been thought of as representing the black perspective. For 30 years, he's been battered with the criticism that he doesn't count as the black perspective. I anticipate that people will be saying that Ketanji Brown Jackson represents the real black perspective — finally, after all these years of Clarence Thomas, we've got the real thing. Watch out for that.

"Throughout, Barr affects a quasi-paternal tone when discussing Trump, as if the president were a naughty but good-hearted adolescent."

"When Trump says repeatedly that he fired the F.B.I. director James Comey because of the Russia investigation, Barr spins it as, 'Unfortunately, President Trump exacerbated things himself with his clumsy miscues, notably making imprecise comments in an interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt and joking around with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador the day after firing Comey.' The just-joking defense is a favorite for Barr, as it is for the former president. In a strikingly humorless book, there is one 'funny' line from Trump: '"Do you know what the secret is of a really good tweet?" he asked, looking at each of us one by one. We all looked blank. "Just the right amount of crazy," he said.'"

Writes Jeffrey Toobin in the NYT, reviewing William Barr's book, "One Damn Thing After Another."

(Yes, Jeffrey Toobin, speaking of "a naughty but good-hearted adolescent.")