Brookside Gardens!

Had a wonderful time walking around Brookside Gardens with my friend and his family. How to choose a picture? I almost never get butterflies while they are flying so I’ll go with this one. 

I took the whole day off, no work. 

“Ukraine's military said on Saturday that it had struck oil facilities inside Russia, including a major refinery as well as a military airfield for drones and an electronics factory.”

“An overnight Ukrainian drone attack on an oil depot near the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi has ignited a raging fire…” I think this is the same oil facility. “More than 120 firefighters were trying to put out the blaze…Russia’s civil aviation authority temporarily halted flights at Sochi airport.”

“On Friday, Germany said it would soon start delivering two more US-made Patriot launchers in addition to three Patriot systems already delivered…”

If you stigmatize a health issue you make it massively difficult to deal with effectively. Russia has high rates of HIV in general. “Figures from the UNAids agency show that Russia accounted for nearly 4 per cent of global HIV infections in 2021, despite having less than 2 per cent of the world’s population.” Going after gay people made it even less likely that they would seek medical services. “By the end of 2023, there were 20 times more HIV diagnoses among Russian soldiers compared with before the war.” Why? They are generally catching it during mobilization. “Unprotected sex and sharing needles to inject drugs are “thriving in a fighting army of men who live every day as if it were their last”.” Even more people getting and then sharing HIV is not good news, but maybe Russian soldiers going off to war demoralized at the beginning will help reduce their fighting effectiveness and help Ukraine win. 

Trump came up with a deal which is the US would supply weapons to Ukraine and Europe would pay for them. The particulars are being figured out - it sounds as though NATO will pay for them and the bonus of this is it will avoid lengthy bureaucracy. “If a NATO country decides to donate weapons to Ukraine, the mechanism would allow that country to effectively bypass lengthy U.S. arms sales procedures to replenish its own stocks, said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.” Bureaucracy is necessary, it is how governments run effectively and keep corruption under control, except when they are excessive and give everyone an incentive for corruption. But if we can get weapons to Ukraine more quickly, good.