- "For the first time in more than two years, Ukraine regained more territory than it lost in February 2026, the New York Times reports."
- "While the Russian military held the battlefield initiative throughout 2025, Vladimir Putin's invading army was unable to achieve any major breakthroughs and managed to secure less than one percent of additional Ukrainian territory."
- "By early 2026, many Western officials estimated that monthly Russian military losses in Ukraine were now exceeding Moscow's capacity to replenish its forces... With Putin deeply reluctant to risk another mobilization drive inside Russia, Moscow is turning increasingly to Africa and other regions for mercenary troops."
"The false narrative of inevitable Russian victory is designed to demoralize Kyiv’s allies and undermine support for the Ukrainian war effort."
That's only the source for the first sentence. The second sentence cites the Associated Press, but the science and astrophography info starts in this article
"Briefly" is doing a lot of work there. Pre-deploy scans are useless once a bad mutation is actually live. If you don't have a way to auto-revert the infrastructure state instantly, you're just watching the fire spread.
"Another of the dissidents spirited out [of China] by Operation Yellowbird was Arthur Liu. Some 35 years later, his daughter would glide across Olympic ice wearing the red, white and blue."
"Media coverage of Alysa Liu’s achievements sometimes notes her father's history as a Tiananmen Square protester who fled China and made a new life in the United States. But the part about Operation Yellowbird remains little-known."
I wondered how this would work as a two-player game.
Like, I try for the center square, but fail to identify the word in four guesses. [Then maybe that square automatically goes to my opponent?] If they get another square, they'll have two in a row, and I've got to go for the block... (But if they don't solve one of the squares, then I've got a chance at going for two-in-a-row...)
To keep this a single-player game, maybe you'd have to compete against an automated opponent? (Maybe they get X's and Os's on their turn like a normal Tic-Tac-Toe game, but you only get to block them by solving the Wordle-like puzzle in a square? Or maybe they have to guess too...)
I think if the AI opponent plays their X/O directly on their turn, they have to be dumb enough to not make it too hard (even a slightly smart bot will probably force a tie most of the time, you might not be able to ever miss a tile), and that doesn't feel like it adds much fun.
Taking turns guessing could be interesting though. I wonder how the game theory of guessing works out there.
This isn't a blog, but more than 20 years ago I saw a Flash web game which I've always remembered as the most beautiful piece of interactive online content I'd ever seen.
It took a while to find it again... (I searched Google images until I found a screenshot that looked right.) Somebody archived it and resurrected it with Ruffle. (It looks better if you go to "Full Screen" mode.) But the aesthetic was just incredible...
My generic advice for job-seeking is always "work your contacts." Maybe spend time on LinkedIn? That's where some jobs get announced first, and you'll sometimes hear news about who's doing what. But also it's an easy way to connect/reconnect with people you've known at past jobs/etc.
"Ukrainian forces have retaken territory, imposed heavy casualties on Russian forces, and deployed a new long-range cruise missile... Last spring, there were reports of casualty ratios of one to five or six favoring Ukraine. Recent reporting suggests the ratio has gone up substantially—to the point that Russian recruitment efforts cannot fully replace combat losses, the first time this has happened in the war."
"We rate Reclaim The Net as Right-Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that align with a conservative perspective. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to poor sourcing, lack of transparency, and one-sided biased reporting."
- "For the first time in more than two years, Ukraine regained more territory than it lost in February 2026, the New York Times reports."
- "While the Russian military held the battlefield initiative throughout 2025, Vladimir Putin's invading army was unable to achieve any major breakthroughs and managed to secure less than one percent of additional Ukrainian territory."
- "By early 2026, many Western officials estimated that monthly Russian military losses in Ukraine were now exceeding Moscow's capacity to replenish its forces... With Putin deeply reluctant to risk another mobilization drive inside Russia, Moscow is turning increasingly to Africa and other regions for mercenary troops."
"The false narrative of inevitable Russian victory is designed to demoralize Kyiv’s allies and undermine support for the Ukrainian war effort."