Cyclone Freddy has been a record-breaking and disturbing storm.
After first forming on the 4th of February, it moved across the entirety of the southern Indian Ocean, only one of four cyclones to have ever done so; the others were in 1994 and 2000.
It made landfall in Madagascar, weakening overland, but survived, hitting the Mozambique Channel, the body of water separating Madagascar from Africa, allowing it to once again intensify. It then struck Mozambique and weakened once again - but again survived. On March 1st, it emerged back over the Channel and struck Mozambique a second time on March 11th.
It has broken the record for the longest lived tropical cyclone on record - the last one being 31 days long in 1994. It has had the highest accumulated cyclone energy of any tropical cyclone, the last one being in 2006. It is the first cyclone to have undergone seven separate rounds of rapid intensification - anything more than three times in a storm's life is considered exceptional.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
March 13th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 14th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 15th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 17th's update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
American anti-war rally on March 18th by left groups!
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Another big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia's army.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
For reference, bank trading was halted today because this is what happened within the first 30 minutes of the market opening:
PacWest dropped 46% (total bank assets: $40.3B)
Zions Bancorp dropped 44% (total bank assets: $81.5B)
First Republic Bank dropped 67% (total bank assets: $181.1B)
Bank of America dropped 5.5% (total bank assets: $3.015 Trillion (what the fuck))
W Alliance Bancorp dropped 75% (total bank assets: $67.7B)
EW Bancorp dropped 32% (total bank assets: $60B)
Zions Bancorp dropped 44% (total bank assets: $40.3B)
Bank Hawaii dropped 42% (total bank assets: $16.5B)
Comerica Bank dropped 39% (total bank assets: $73.4B)
Customers Bancorp dropped 54% (total bank assets: $19.7B)
Economy is fine though folks don’t worry :this-is-fine:
Capitalism is the most rational system and the market price of something represents that thing's objective value.
Trade, you cowards
Love having fundamental institutions for society to function on the stock market
Holy shit
That’s trillion with a T there? Jesus
Yes
:porky-scared-flipped:
I think we're gonna need a bigger, more deep-fried porky for the collapse we'll be seeing soon.
mmmmm.... deep fried porky... I'm trying to eat more environmentally friendly and go vegetarian, but I'll make an exception when it comes to eating the rich.
deleted by creator
I’ll edit the original comment in a minute to show the total value of each bank
i now also need the value of the silicon valley bank , sorry... but its important for perspective...
$212 billion according to internets
you did that very well and i shall always speak highly of you !
:chavez-salute:
any chance of getting their size ranking.
a jolly tune begins playing
Not that this has anything to do with the broader point which is pretty terrifying, but the BoA 3 trillion thing had me googling, and I think that doesn't include debts. So like if someone bought a 150k house with a 145k loan, they'd have 150k in assets immediately, even though you'd normally think of them as owning 5k of their house.