@compostablespork TIL that Eugene hosts a big truffle dog contest: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/02/19/joriad-north-american-truffle-dog-championship-eugene-oregon-photo-essay/

I wanted to read some happy news and found this article: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/22/art-benin-looted-african-nation-french-army-priceless-artefacts-treasure

The first stolen artworks returned by France to Benin are now being exhibited in Cotonou along with a bunch of contemporary work, to much excitement.

We went to a Ukraine vigil at the Provincial Legislature today. I’m glad that all the critical signs I saw there named Putin personally. Though I was there in solidarity with Ukrainians first and foremost, I did also see it as solidarity with all the people in Russia who’ve taken risks we didn’t have to, to protest the war in their own country.

I fail to see how any of this hurts Putin. Meanwhile it can put people who have no responsibility for the war out of jobs, and I’m worried about where this goes. We’re heading into day 5 of the war and the appetite for collective punishment is already this strong. Is “don’t punish people for the actions of a far away homeland” another lesson we all failed to learn from the 20th century?

I’m disappointed to already be seeing backlash against Russians who are not the commander in chief of any army. BC’s state liquor stores (and ISTR a few others) have made a public show of dropping Russian products, and I just read a super gross article in which a retired NHL star ranted about how if the league doesn’t suspend all Russian players it’s complicit in the war.

In the early days of the Turkish Republic, dots had to be rationed to protect the supply of 🧿. This is why when Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet it had to introduce a special dotless ı, now the bane of computer programmers throughout the English-speaking world.

Look, Putin's arguments are ridiculous, but they're also irrelevant. I'm getting more and frustrated with discussions about Ukraine that unquestionably accept that the country is a tidbit for the Great Powers to fight over. Fuck all of that. The only relevant question is what the people of Ukraine want, which is pretty fucking overwhelmingly not to be recolonised by Russia.

And if you're going to parrot the Russian propaganda about Ukraine being a festering pit of Nazis, maybe first ask yourself why the [predominantly Russian-speaking] Jewish community of Odessa is much more afraid of being "liberated" by Putin than of the status quo in Ukraine: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/world/europe/ukraine-jews-russia-evacuations.html

[full disclosure: 2 of my grandparents were born in that region and fled to Turkey while the USSR controlled it]

@thor@berserker.town the other take I’ve seen about this, which I am inclined to agree with, is “Fascist is Putinish for ‘person who opposes me’”.