F**king Mondays: Ukraine Just Changed the Game, an Idea For Democrats, and Learning to Speak Dolphin!
The stunning attack from Ukraine could change the course of the war with Russia.
Welcome to another edition of F**king Mondays! In the roundup today:
Ukraine changes the game
Over the weekend, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) carried out “Operation Spider’s Web”—an audacious mission 18 months in the making. The plan involved smuggling more than 100 AI-guided FPV drones into Russia, hidden inside wooden structures mounted on trucks. The drones were then launched remotely from sites near five major Russian airbases, destroying approximately 41 military aircraft—including Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 bombers and at least one A-50 early warning plane.
Amazingly, the strike wiped out around 34% of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers, with damage estimated at around $7 billion.
The effects are likely to be profound. Beyond the sheer destruction, the operation proved Ukraine can now strike deep into Russian territory using cheap, off-the-shelf weapons. The message to the Kremlin is chilling: nothing is safe.
Logistically, this is a real nightmare for Russia. Not only have they lost a substantial portion of their strategic arsenal—they now face the constant fear that any truck, train, or cargo shipment within their borders could be the next Trojan horse.
The daring move has its downsides though — it risks escalation with Russia at a time when peace talks are finally happening, and it could alienate Ukraine from its allies. Ukraine also hit nuclear-capable bombers, so this could potentially trigger serious nuclear escalation from Russia.
Either way, it was a huge military victory for Ukraine that hurts Russia badly. Europe is militarizing rapidly to counter the growing threat, and NATO has made it clear that any use of nuclear weapons will result in “severe consequences for Russia”. My sense is that the upside probably outweighs the risks — it gives Ukraine better leverage in negotiations and it could force Russia to make real concessions.
An idea for the Democrats
Donald Trump was not elected president in 2024 because Americans adored him. He was elected primarily because of post-Covid inflation that took down incumbents of all stripes around the world.
The economy is by far the most important issue to voters — just check out this stunning recent chart from the Economist:
History has shown that Republicans are actually quite bad for the economy, but the myth of their business savvy persists — and Trump rode it all the way back to the White House. He is back to rescue the economy — and if Democrats want to take him on, they are going to have to spend the next few years taking the issue away from him.
While Democrats are busy proving how anti-trans they are, the reality is that most voters care more about their own finances. I’m not suggesting Democrats don’t moderate their positions on cultural issue (I’ve long argued they need to drop identity politics), but the truth is their messaging on the economy has not resonated.
Right now there is no coherent Democratic “vision” for the economy. On the left there is a choice is between Bernie Sanders style socialism and, er, something else?
Sanders style socialism is not an option given it has failed to capture enough of the left to win the Democratic primary, so the party desperately needs something to counter the “America First” economic nationalism of Donald Trump. Technocratic solutions reminiscent of President Clinton and Obama won’t cut it. Fiddling with the top rate of tax, and propping up a corrupt and dysfunctional health care system, and “infrastructure projects” won’t cut it. Democrats need something simple, radical, and very easy to understand.
Here’s my suggestion: “The Paycheck Guarantee Plan”.
At a time when people are taking out loans to buy groceries and no one can save anything for the future, this means every American gets a paycheck that they can actually live on. If they can’t the government will subsidize them through a universal basic income style credit. Then: “Healthcare For All”. Don’t call it “Medicare/Medicaid For All” — just a basic name describing what it actually is.
You vote Democrat you get a paycheck you can live on, and affordable health care guaranteed.
The details at this point are irrelevant and can be figured out later. But the Democrats need radically simplify their message around a new set of policies they can brand effectively.
I’d be curious to hear what Banter readers have to say about this, so drop your ideas/comments below.
Learn to speak dolphin!
There’s a lot of depressing news right now, so I thought it would be good to end the Monday column on something genuinely up lifting. The rapid evolution of AI language models is bringing us close to being able to communicate with whales and dolphins. This isn’t science fiction, but a real possibility that could be coming far sooner than anyone imagined. From the Guardian:
Sperm whales communicate in codas – rapid sequences of clicks, each as brief as 1,000th of a second. Project Ceti (the Cetacean Translation Initiative) is using AI to analyse codas in order to reveal the mysteries of sperm whale speech. There is evidence the animals take turns, use specific clicks to refer to one another, and even have distinct dialects. Ceti has already isolated a click that may be a form of punctuation, and they hope to speak whaleish as soon as 2026.
The linguistic barrier between species is already looking porous. Last month, Google released DolphinGemma, an AI program to translate dolphins, trained on 40 years of data. In 2013, scientists using an AI algorithm to sort dolphin communication identified a new click in the animals’ interactions with one another, which they recognised as a sound they had previously trained the pod to associate with sargassum seaweed – the first recorded instance of a word passing from one species into another’s native vocabulary.
We know that cetaceans are highly intelligent and learn like us through “vocal imitation” and, communicate “via complex arrangements of sound that appear to have structure and hierarchy.”
So what does human-cetacean banter look like?
If we do crack the code, it won’t be as simple as doing a quick Google translate underwater. Whale and dolphin language emerged independently of human language and we have almost no common cultural reference points. Their entire concept of reality would be completely alien to the human mind. Would they understand things like time in the same way we do? Do they have myths, moral codes, or even ideas of the self? It is possible that we’d be trying to translate not just a different language, but an entirely different kind of consciousness. If we succeed, it won’t just change how we see whales and dolphins—it could radically change how we see ourselves and our place in the world.
Have a great week!
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If Ukraine got help from all the countries Mobb Boss has offended, they'd be able to win!
I think the universal health care and basic income are good ideas. That $1000/mo income idea from the guy who ran for Prez (can’t think of his name) was good. Most important would be raising the tax rate on the wealthy, esp the obscenely wealthy.