Fellieꑭ🏴🇨🇦🇺🇦

We map an incredible number of events, and it requires an insane amount of work from a group of people to make this possible. Yesterday I was listening to a woman from the ISW talk about how over the course of the past four years their processes have barely adapted. Suspicious. Over the past few years we have had to invest heavily in developing our own tools, adapting methodology, and increasing work efficiency to barely keep up with the exponential rise in footage. We've done this at significant personal expense, with no funding outside of small donations from our users and supporters. Not to mention the tens of thousands of work hours that have gone into collecting, processing, and analyzing the data. Which is often then stolen by aggregators or others so they can lazily synthesize the data for their own purposes, spending 20 minutes vibe coding some dashboard built on top of maps they never bought licenses to, data they stole from others. Or, worse yet, the people who steal data, and then pretend to have collected it themselves. Who go on talks about how their data cannot come from AI because it takes a human touch to analyze the data. Which you then sell commercially to governments or journalists who whoever will buy it. And then when you look under the hood, nearly all of their data is taken from others. And, in most cases, from the team of people producing our map here. But, hey, it took a lot of human effort to personally steal every data point you sell for a profit. And, somehow, the journalists, whose job is to be able to have a brain and understand the most basic things, do not see what is happening. That a middle man is coming through stealing data and then selling it to them. Or maybe it is convenient to the journalist, because other journalists have quoted this middleman so many times that the middleman is now considered some sort of valued source, even though they aren't a source at all. They are an aggregator of other people's work. But, even worse, is that that work they are aggregating IS ALREADY AGGREGATED BY THE CREATORS OF THE WORK. So the aggregation is not even valuable or unique in the first place. Which brings us back to the true hilarity of the situation. Journalists think that sources of information are less valuable than officially recognized aggregators. Let that sink in. Let it stew within you. Journalists think that people who do work, who understand the work, who understands what went into the work and what it means and its limitations are LESS VALUABLE than people who take others people's work, without understanding context, without fully understanding what it means, having to add abstractions and bias and noise. Historically, it was the job of a journalist to seek out sources for the exact reason of getting closer to the truth. Today, journalists avoid them intentionally for the sake of time savings and laziness. What do you think this says about the quality of their work? What do you think the impact is on their work? If you look at the writing, you see the impact clearly. You see bias amplified. You see incorrect information amplified. And, occasionally, when Russian propaganda is quoted as a legitimate source (which these aggregators do regularly btw), you see Russian propaganda accepted as literal fact and injected into the discourse uncritically even by anti-Russian news outlets who rely on these aggregators rather than actual information sources. That is the true result. So, to get back to my original point: It takes an insane amount of work to analyze and map this data.

In historical terms, the Russians are losing, one hundred percent. Right now, they are suffering a terrifying number of casualties – 30,000 to 35,000 people a month. Russia cannot keep up with mobilization, contract recruitment, and certainly cannot keep up with training its troops. Will they decide to launch a full-scale mobilization? That I cannot tell. So far, they have been afraid to take such steps and have relied only on offering large sums of money to recruits. Why do we react so sensitively to sanctions being lifted? Because it’s about money. And money isn’t just tanks. Nobody fights with tanks anymore. Money means drones. Money means people. People mean contracts. And if they don’t have the money for contracts, their strength is declining. From an interview with Le Monde (4/5).

When you consider everything they did to silence Riley, you realize why so many women & girls still fear speaking up. It also deepens your respect for those that bravely do it anyway, regardless of the price. And there’s always price.

$20K per small recon drone... The US DoD doesnt seem to be even trying to get decent value for money.

China's mobile solar units. It can be quickly deployed to provide electricity

BREAKING: Hasan fires back at criticism for staying in a five-star hotel during his “humanitarian aid” trip to Cuba—blames U.S. policy. “The government makes it illegal for us to stay where we want in Cuba. We have to stay in five-star hotels.” 🤣