Impressing little boys

One of the little boys in our neighborhood looks like an elf. I took a picture of him once holding a stick and I decided to send sunrays out of it, making it a magic wand. Today I saw him playing with a much bigger stick, including riding it. I asked if it was a horse and then I asked if it was a dragon. Then I showed him and his babysitter the picture of me with the dragon in Iceland and, naturally, they were both incredibly impressed. 

Today I got to tell my mother-in-law all about the trip to Iceland but I forgot to tell her about meeting the dragons. How could I leave out that part????

I'm on two facebook groups that keep showing me pictures of the aurora borealis. I'm going to have to turn off notifications for these groups, I can't take it.

Zelensky thanked the United States for supplemental support and for the bicameral and bipartisan nature of it. He also thanked his central and eastern European neighbors for backing Ukraine's membership into NATO and condemning Russia's attempt to annex territories. 

Thanks to social media and cellphones we have more insight into Ukraine than we have into any other country Russia has invaded and violated over the past two decades. Thanks to social media - Telegram - and cellphones, we have more insight into Russia's reaction to current events than we could otherwise hope to have. 

This means we know that police and military officers in Moscow have been indiscriminately grabbing men from subway stations, apartment building lobbies, hostels, malls, offices, homeless shelters, etc., and that across Russia men are going into hiding. Moscow and St. Petersburg suffered very little in the war before because conscripts were ethnic minorities from rural areas. Now reports are coming in. This isn't the positive news I work to recount, but it may be a turning point in Russia's support for the war and for Putin. Indeed, more than 300K Russian men and their families have fled Russia. There are reports of people who supported the war, believing Nazis were killing Ukrainians, who are changing their opinions now that they are on the front line. A senior member of the United Russia party, Putin's party, said the conscription drives are illegal. People are calling home and telling their families that they aren't getting training or supplies and that the war is going badly. They are posting videos. 

In addition, people within Russia are posting videos of themselves confronting authorities. 

Putin was confronted by one of his inner circle who disagreed about how the war is being handled. This was put in Biden's daily intelligence briefing (should we know this??). The heads of parliamentary committees are asking why the army is not supplies properly and the war not going well. These are not direct challenges, Putin is not necessarily in any jeopardy, but it is unprecedented. Maybe we are near a breaking point. 

Ukraine's allies have begun providing warm-weather gear. The U.S. has provided several thousand parkas, pants, hats, and gloves. Canada will send up to 500,000 pieces of winter clothing.