Joseph Stephenson 🇺🇦

@khodaishere @shanaka86 If you think that t’Rump calling someone a stupid nickname is proof that some is in trouble, you are sniffing putin’s ass a bit too much. Ukraine beat the entire EU in drone war games recently.

Interesting analysis. Wrong theater. Ukraine fights Shaheds that fly alone, on predictable paths, over flat terrain, at night. Four years of data against a single drone type in a single flight profile. That's real. Respect to Ukraine for cracking it. Iran doesn't send Shaheds alone. Mixed salvos. Drones, cruise missiles, ballistics — simultaneous. Your $2,500 interceptor drone chases the Shahed. Great. What's chasing the Emad behind it? The Kheibar Shekan? The cruise missile at wavetop altitude? The interceptor drone solves one layer of a five-layer problem. And that 68% success rate. Run your own math. 300 drones daily, 32% get through — that's 96 penetrations, not 21. Before a single ballistic missile enters the picture. But here's the part that actually matters: Iran has four years of Ukrainian intercept data too. Every modification Russia requested, every weakness Ukraine exploited — that feedback loop runs through Tehran. The Shaheds hitting the Gulf aren't the 2022 model Ukraine trained against. Ukraine has yesterday's playbook. Iran is already flying tomorrow's variant. Now follow the money. Zelenskyy just got abandoned by the news cycle. Trump compared him to P.T. Barnum last week. Ukraine's war funding is drying up while Congress dumps $50 billion into Epic Fury. So Ukraine shows up offering drone expertise to the Gulf — not as charity. As a sales pitch. Relevance in exchange for revenue. The $2,500 interceptor is a real innovation. Against a single drone type in a permissive environment. Against mixed Iranian salvos over saturated Gulf airspace where Kuwait already shot down three of its own F-15s because it couldn't tell friend from foe — it's a brochure, not a solution.

The most important number in this war is not the oil price or the casualty count. It is $2,500. That is what a Ukrainian interceptor drone costs. It flies into an incoming Shahed and destroys it midair. The Shahed costs Iran roughly $30,000. A Patriot PAC-3 missile costs $3 to $13 million depending on the variant. Standard doctrine fires two Patriots per incoming drone to maximize kill probability. Ukraine has been fighting this exact cost war for four years. Russia launched 54,538 Shahed type drones at Ukraine in 2025 alone. Ukrainian forces shot down over ninety percent of them. By February 2026, interceptor drones accounted for thirty percent of all Russian aerial targets destroyed, with a 68 percent success rate per engagement and a single night record of 64 Shaheds downed by interceptors alone. Now look at the Gulf. Iran has launched over 2,000 Shaheds across the Middle East since February 28. The UAE alone detected 1,072 drones in the first week. Seventy one penetrated, a 93 percent interception rate that sounds impressive until you calculate what it cost. Gulf states and American forces are using Patriot interceptors, THAAD rounds, and ship based missiles to kill $30,000 drones. At two interceptors per target and conservative missile pricing, the defense is spending between 100 and 500 times what the attacker spends per engagement. Iran can sustain this. The defenders cannot. That is why Zelenskyy’s March 5 announcement matters more than any military briefing this week. Ukraine is sending specialists and the AI enabled Merops interceptor system to the Gulf. The Financial Times confirmed the Pentagon and at least one Gulf government are in talks to buy Ukrainian interceptors. Trump told Reuters he would accept help from any country. The penetrations that occurred tell their own story. An Iranian drone destroyed a $1.1 billion early warning radar in Qatar. The Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia halted 550,000 barrels per day of production after a debris fire. The US embassy in Riyadh was hit. The Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain took a strike. Ninety three percent interception. Seven percent penetration. And that seven percent destroyed a billion dollar radar, shut down half a million barrels of daily refining, and hit an embassy. The math is brutal. If Iran launches 300 drones daily and seven percent penetrate, that is 21 hits across the Gulf every day. The cost to Iran is $9 million. The cost to defenders in interceptor munitions alone exceeds $500 million. Thirty days of that arithmetic and either the interceptor inventory is empty or the budget is. Ukraine cracked this equation by replacing million dollar missiles with thousand dollar drones. The specialists arriving carry four years of combat data against the exact weapon. They know its radar signature, its flight profile, its GPS vulnerability, and every modification Russia made since 2022. Nobody knows the Shahed better than the people it has been trying to kill every night for four years. They are on their way to the Gulf. The arithmetic changes the day they arrive. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@McCollumBrent @TheWarMonitor Oh, wow, that's really cool. Soo... you can just make up laws now? Ignore the constitution? Do you understand what America is?

CBP showed up claiming to have a warrant, but it wasn’t signed by a judge. It appeared to be a generic template, and they left once it was questioned.

@PatrickMac9159 @TheWarMonitor The fourth amendment to the constitution is still a thing. Hope this helps.

@TheWarMonitor Falsehood, distortion. and yes, lie. They have full legal authority to act. It drives you crazy doesn't it Communists?

@RepDonBacon The victims spoke unanimously that they wanted the discharge petition advanced. Why are you on the opposite side of the issue from Epstein's victims?

Another low IQ social media influencer. Readers can post false info. Our Oversight Committee is tasked to subpoena the files & release them to public. Brian doesn’t seem to realize that a discharge bill has to pass both Senate & signed by President. The House is moving out now.

@KitKotler1 @mitchellvii Oh, yes, we are definitely saying t'Rump is corrupt. Old news.

@mitchellvii Doesn’t everyone know he’s corrupt? Or are we not saying the quiet part out loud yet?

To achieve peace, Ukraine would have to cede Donbas and Crimea to Russia. These areas have long been under Russian control and are a small price to pay for peace. Of course Zelensky refuses because war is his only grip on power and to hide his corruption.

@thethoughtofth1 @zee_thru Consider Hamlet and Titus Andronicus.

Are there any good works of literature that prominently depict bipolar disorder? Suggestions would be appreciated.

@Vixen1965 @RealSaltySlim @miguelifornia @AlexPadilla4CA What law did Sen. Padilla break? Is shouting out a question illegal now? Have you read the first amendment?

@RealSaltySlim @miguelifornia @AlexPadilla4CA 😂🤣😅 NO ONE is above the law!!

If that’s what they do to a United States Senator with a question, imagine what they do to farm workers, day laborers, cooks, and the other nonviolent immigrants they are targeting in California and across the country. Or any American that dares to speak up. I will not stop fighting to demand accountability on behalf of the people of California.

A pleasant visitor 🪶

@jeff8875 @RadioFreeTom Russia and the US signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 guaranteeing the 1994 borders of Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. Russia has no right to annex Ukrainian territory. The US has no right to characterize Ukraine’s borders as negotiable.

@RadioFreeTom Right because if you don’t drink the narrative that Russia is the enemy, then you are evil have you ever been to Russia? You obviously don’t understand the history and the deals that we broke with Russia the invasion was in large part due to the US.

I never thought I would see the leader of the American nation siding with the Kremlin in a war of aggression.

@emellghostlight @robert_stagg @TheRSC The 2021 production at @The_Globe had a good mix of serious/poignant moments and lighter scenes. The set definitely communicated that “something bad has been happening here”—apropos for 2021.

@robert_stagg @TheRSC I'll be so glad when we can let 12th Night be complicated again, it swings between light & shadow in the most beautiful way. Saw a Serban production yrs ago that ended w/the funeral of Olivia's brother - black umbrellas, a silver rain falling, an ending & a beginning. Perfection.

An unconvincing ‘Twelfth Night’ @TheRSC. Too much slapstick and easy audience back-and-forth at the expense of the play’s sometimes sad sometimes sour comedy. Samuel West’s distinctly ‘classed’ Malvolio is rather vitiated by the production’s confused range of accents. [1/2]

@KellyMSocia @KristinaTodo4 When some of my students copied and pasted the prompt "onto their word doc so they'd have it handy while writing" (hmmmmm...), the hidden instructions showed up. So they emailed me asking, "Wait, is this part of the prompt?" Thus, it didn't work for me.

#ShakespeareSunday Such welcome and unwelcome things at once ’Tis hard to reconcile.

@SarahEMcBride Keep being awesome. Sorry this is happening to you. Don't let the idiots get you down.

I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.

@DrSheeha Intrigued....

Writing ✍️

@will_tosh See you there!

Yup.

@thea987 @JoseAPerezDiez Hey, friends. You may have noticed that this place is going a bit crazy. I'm with a lot of other wonderful people over where the sky is azure. It's nice! Would love to see you over there! 🦋

@JoseAPerezDiez What? Where did it go?

The Shakespeare Institute Library’s newspaper cutting collection, a 120-year-old resource of incredible cultural importance, scrapped in 2022 by the budgetary myopia of @artsatbham / @unibirmingham.

I'm very happy over on the other place. 🦋 Would love to see more friends over there. #Shakespeare #RestorationDrama #EarlyModernEurope #AngloDutch #Humanities #EnglishLiterature #Renaissance

@BollandFb @The_Globe Hey, friend, are you going over to 🦋? Not sure how long this place will be worth it.... (Same name over there.)

The people @The_Globe are just the kindest 💖 Many thanks to everyone who helped with another wonderful season

@gill_othen Not sure I've found you over there???

@_JoeStephenson_ I'm in the place of blue already. I don't feel incline to support Lone Skum round here much longer.

Just a note that things are looking . . . pretty cool over at the place where the heavens are azure. Found a lot of academic peeps who used to be here and some who are still here. Most of us seem to have the same user names over there. Check it out.

@LeVostreGC Hast thou ynterest in the place of skyey azure? A faire lot of the clerks and doctours have settled in those partes. 🦋

Billionaires want to cut governmente yn order to replace servyces provided through fair taxation for the public goode wyth commodified servyces thei kan charge you for at prices of their choyce