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Khodorkovsky is ambivalent about Alexei Navalny, the charismatic Putin critic who was recently moved to a maximum-security prison. “We have absolutely no differences as far as this war is concerned or the need for regime change. But we disagree quite a lot on the future of Russia, which is normal.” Khodorkovsky argues that Navalny sees himself as a future tsar. “I think believing in a good tsar is a very dangerous idea for Russia today” — because any tsar-like figure needs an external enemy to govern. Instead the next government of Russia “should be put together by the regions, because the regions, unlike the tsar, don’t have any vested interest in foreign aggression.”

It takes mountains of money and many years to even get through the process of permitting and approval to being a project in the US. Furthermore, while these policies intend to protect the environment, they actually don’t. They simply slow down the process and increase costs.

This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. Currently, the West may not have the industrial capacity to fight a large-scale war. If the US government is planning to once again become the arsenal of democracy, then the existing capabilities of the US military-industrial base and the core assumptions that have driven its development need to be re-examined.

Europe on brink of gas crisis as Russia squeezes market

Central banks try to block attempts by poor countries to use digital currency to upend monetary norms.

For example, in my own apartment building, I once asked the front desk if I could leave my dry cleaning with them, so a cleaner could pick it up while I was traveling. They said no. It was too much of a liability. When I told the story to an Irish friend, he chuckled and mockingly replied: “That would never happen in my country.”

This same lack of imagination makes it difficult to understand the primacy of foreign policy in understanding the world on a day-to-day basis. If you lack imagination, you will tend to assume that the current configurations of countries, alliances, and so on are simply going to last.

The second principle of our long-term development is a reliance on entrepreneurial freedom. Every private initiative aimed at benefiting Russia should receive maximum support and space for implementation. (Putin)

Try searching for a product on your smartphone and you’ll see that what was once a small teal barfeaturing one “sponsored link” is now a hard-to-decipher, multi-scroll slog, filled with paid-product carousels; multiple paid-link ads; the dreaded, algorithmically generated “People also ask” box; another paid carousel; a sponsored “buying guide”; and a Maps widget showing stores selling products near your location. Once you’ve scrolled through that, multiple screen lengths below, you’ll find the unpaid search results. Like much of the internet in 2022, it feels monetized to death, soulless, and exhausting.

The US Department of Agriculture estimates that wheat fields statewide will average roughly 39 bushels per acre this year, down sharply from 52 bushels per acre last year. But many farms in the western half of the state will produce far less than that.

In August last year, a friend of Mo’s named Shiu Ka-chun received a letter from her, which he shared excerpts from on social media. Mo said she had been teaching English to other prisoners and that her Christian faith was helping her. She thanked Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 90-year-old retired bishop of Hong Kong, for visiting. “I may be stumbling but not falling,” she wrote. In January this year, Zen gave her Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazovto read. Two months ago, to the shock of many, Zen himself was arrested under the national security law, though not remanded into custody. (He is still in Hong Kong.) Apart from the odd letter, Mo and many other former prominent politicians have ceased talking to the press. In rare cases where activists have been released on bail, they have had to agree to forgo public commentary altogether. Mo was denied bail partly due to WhatsApp messages she sent to international reporters.

Those deliverables might not add up to a big fat bank account. But they create a healthy culture. So the Long Tail does have a role for us—but it should be built on our wisdom and generosity, not our business plans.