Afghanistan and Iraq were nothing like what Russia is doing now. Not even close. And it's pretty lol that you're bringing up WW2 history. Ukraine was not an independent country then. It was controlled by both Germany and Russia, depending on exactly what part of the war and where you are talking about. Indeed, Nazi Germany and Russia were allies at the beginning. What relevant is the situation now. Ukraine and Poland are at peace, as is Germany and Poland. Russia has continued to choose war.

I have a policy of not talking about family in public. HBO doc showed that giving up info is a bad idea... I have plenty of friends in Ukraine, including active duty military. And I spend a fair bit of time there for various reasons, such as the active Bitcoin community there. It's very common among Ukrainians to have views similar to mine. Or even more "ruthless". Russia has a long history of massacring Ukrainians, and this war itself goes back to 2014. You know, pretty much every Ukrainian town has a war memorial somewhere with the names of soldiers who have died defending Ukraine and the dates they were born and died. Even now a significant % of those dates are pre-2022.

Of course I do. Farming is a huge contributor to Russia's export economy, which is what funds their invasion of Ukraine, along with other aggression from them. It would be perfectly valid for Ukraine to attack Russian farming infrastructure and farmers themselves. The better strategy is probably to stick to attacking infrastructure only, for PR reasons, and that is exactly what Ukraine has done so far. But it is ethical to attack both in this circumstance. In WW2 it was reasonably common for returning allied fighters with spare ammo to strafe German farmers in their fields on the way home. I've seen the gun cam footage of them doing it. That was a perfectly valid strategy, and helped end the war sooner: towards the end Germany was starving, including the soldiers.

It's likely that it won't be possible to install GrapheneOS on any Android phones in the near future. It's becoming quite uncommon for bootloaders to be unlockable. Graphene's backup plan is to try to build their own phones. But that has enormous costs and has a high chance of failing, at which point we're all screwed. The tendency of phones to being totally locked down requires a legal solution. There is not a good technical solution. At minimum we need laws passed to force manufacturers to ship phones with unlockable bootloaders.

"civilians" certainly work in Russian oil refineries. As I said, in war at this scale, those "civilians" working for the aggressor are just as valid military targets as any Russian soldier. Ukraine has probably killed a few hundred Russian "civilians" so far. People in obvious targets tend to go to bomb shelters. So it's rare for Russians to actually die in Ukrainian attacks. Those deaths are a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands, possibly low hundreds of thousands, of Ukrainian civilians that Russia has killed. And he's, Ukrainian civilians are civilians: Russia has zero right to be invading Ukraine and every single death by Russian hands is murder.

I've spent much of my adult life being hated by people it's long ago stopped having much or an effect. 😂 I do very liberally use the block button, because that crap is basically just spam.

A recent fundraiser video to send these beautiful baby drones to the front. 😂 They accept Bitcoin, like most Ukrainian charities: https://www.sternenkofund.org/donate Marginal cost to kill or seriously wound a Russian by a drone is estimated at about 1,000,000 sats. And with AML/KYC Bitcoin, you can donate untraceably. Quite cypherpunk in a way really.

You are not a civilian if you meaningfully contribute to a war of invasion. About 50% of Russia's entire tax budget goes to war; something like 20% of their entire GDP. The working population in Russia are not civilians. They are just as valid military targets as Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

A problem here is that western media is underplaying these successes, and western politicians aren't making it clear that this is the goal (for them, it isn't). If there was a clear message that Russia's economy was going to be attacked until collapse, then Russia might genuinely negotiate to stop fighting and withdraw. But since that message isn't clear there isn't that pressure to stop. Of course, the Russian population aren't stupid. They know damn well that their refineries are being hit and it's causing shortages of gas. So a more clear message might not actually discourage them. You don't start a war like this because you think the way we do... The Russian culture is fundamentally evil in an aggressive way. It's probably not as aggressive as Islamic extremitism. But compared to the average extremist Muslim, Russians are on average a lot smarter. Which makes them dangerous. And Russia does have a large and growing Muslim population too...

“what they've done post-2014 to Ukrainians to get them to hate Russians" Dude, the "they" here is Russians. They've been killing Ukrainians in large numbers since 2014. It's so bad that Russians regularly put out propaganda videos bragging about how they murder Ukrainian civilians with drones. Here's one of the latest from the other day, attempting to murder a man walking his dog in the Kherson area: The only way that you could say Ukrainians and Russians are "like brothers" is if you had a psychotic family member who had tried to abuse you your entire life. The faster Russian culture is exterminated, the better off we all are.

Exactly. Gas prices increased because there are shortages. Reality can't be fooled with mere willpower. Keep this up and at some point Russian soldiers will have to surrender or flee due to lack of supplies.

I care about making a difference; I do not care whether or not you think I'm a man. Obviously, money is more than mere virtue signaling. And I'm pretty good at making money. One of the clever things the Ukrainian government has done is found ways to declare lots of highly paid people "essential workers", exempt from the draft. If you're paying a lot more than the usual share of taxes, obviously your money maybe worth more than your skills in a trench.

You don't live in Ukraine. Russia hasn't tried to take your stuff, yet.

The draft exists because society needs defense against evil. It's just a more serious version of paying taxes. Russia brought war to Ukraine. Ukraine needs to defend themselves. There's a reason why the draft has a _long_ history in the US, and indeed, most counties.

Ok Saturday I went to the K-41 nightclub in Kyiv. It's similar to Berghain, with a bouncer girl at the door who rejects you if you aren't the right "vibe". They're kinda woke, and insist you agree to their non-discrimination policy, no cameras, lots of trans people, etc. etc. If the music wasn't good I certainly wouldn't go. The entrance fee is a minimum $10 donation to a military unit to buy drones. Turns out the left aren't stupid when evil men really are trying to murder them. K-41 probably gets 1000 attendees on a Saturday night. That means ~$10,000 to the military unit, or ~10 casualties at $1000 marginal cost/casualty. Fatality rate is ~50%, so that's five more Russian soldiers killed in the course of us having a party. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if 10% of the men there had actual combat experience at this point. There was even one guy clearly recovering from combat injuries. No-one is complaining about where the money was going.

Really interesting stats from Ukraine's Unmanned System Forces (aka drones). The big one: the marginal cost to kill or seriously injure a Russian with drones is just $911 USD. I've personally spoken to quite a few soldiers at different units (units have fundraising and recruiting booths at basically every big event in Ukraine), and they all say the same thing: a remarkably high percentage of their drone funding comes from private donations. A big problem is Western military aid tends to be tied to specific weapons systems – not money – so the overall resources can't be spent optimally. Of course, it's not like the war itself costs $911/Russian casualty – there's lots of other costs and investment necessary to get there. But the fact that units are still short on drones even though relatively little investment would fix this is absurd. Also, I don't keep track. But I wouldn't be surprised if just my personal donations – anonymously with Bitcoin – have resulted in the deaths of a few Russians. You can easily make a difference. https://x.com/414magyarbirds/status/1952644301793456560

https://petertodd.org/2025/coinjoin-comparison My comparison of the three major forms of coinjoin in active use: Wasabi, JoinMarket, and Payjoin. tl;dr: Payjoin is cool and you should use it if possible. JoinMarket unfortunately has a serious flaw. Wasabi is the best overall and provides decent privacy.

https://petertodd.org/2022/surprisingly-tail-emission-is-not-inflationary Relevant reading!