Alexandra St 🇷🇴🇺🇦🇪🇺

This is why. When some russian in a hotel asks me why I do not want to talk to him, when some European asks me why I am not "tolerant" – the answer is in this photo. There are thousands of such kids in Ukraine whose parents were killed simply because russians followed their crazy tsar instead of stopping him. The russian army is 2.4 million. Most of them have been to Ukraine. The police is about 1 million. There are also smaller forces – FSB (200 thousand), National Guard (340 thousand) and others. So we are already at more than four million people involved. And then count those who work as subcontractors for the army. Those who work in weapons factories. Count the government and everyone working for it. You get every 10th adult russian working for the war. 30% of russia's budget is spent on it. This is not "Putin's war," this is "every russian's war." So when I meet a russian man in some hotel, I know there is a 10% chance he is directly involved. And the remaining 90% support it – by action or inaction. So how should I treat them? If he wants a conversation, he should start by asking for forgiveness and condemning their army and their regime. In all other cases, I won't even talk to such a person.

.@conor64 finds cigarettes noxious—but the United Kingdom’s sweeping smoking ban “flagrantly violates the natural human right to bodily autonomy” and “portends more paternalism to come,” he argues. theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/…

@nathan_covey There’s a show I recommend, it’s called The Flintstones

Turning 27 today and got myself a flip phone. I've determined that a smartphone has become a net negative for my life. Excited for this new phase!

@chydorina I’m sorry. Everything you write is just incomprehensible to me. I literally cannot understand one single sentence. Like what is the correlation between autoimmune diseases and leaky gut? 🤔

When we are chronically ill the body has found a highly dysfunctional yet stable state to ensure survival - it also means minimal function. It will fight hard to snap back whenever you try and push a big lever. The way forward is to nudge all the levers - push the systems function as a whole into a new state. Some parts of this framework sounds pretty counterintuitive at first glance when viewed through a lens of AIP and autoimmune reactivity. What I would like to suggest to you is that the autoimmune reactivity is a stage of certain subtypes of chronic conditions - and many of us learn that we can partially control our flares or symptoms by removing foods and other triggers (and it can work, at least a bit - right?). Those that have autoimmune conditions can (at least somewhat) figure out triggers and reduce reactions. Because of this - it makes sense that the gut is to blame. If the gut wasnt leaky - the triggers wouldnt make it into general circulation and all would be well. Trying desperately to hold off disease through actions like this is however is not a wise approach in the long-run (thou shalt not pass). I am not saying its not important - it is, it is just not a real ultimate solution. Think of a complex system. your goal is to switch it from one state to another. how would you do this while causing the least disruption to the system? Would you target a highly connected node (big lever) or would you deal with dozens of smaller ones on the edges of the network first? What I am arguing is that when you press 100 biochemical levers just a bit in the right way - you can nudge a system from one stable state to another without collapsing the system. The way most of us approach our issues is by trying to find a few high impact levers and putting all our force into changing those sections. Because we have no understanding what changing that subsection (functional) will do to other sections it often results in stress/strain elsewhere and a system that then rushes in to maintain (dys) function. When we are chronically ill the body has found a highly dysfunctional yet stable state to ensure survival - it also means minimal function. It will fight hard to snap back whenever you try and push a big lever. The way forward is to nudge all the levers - push the systems function as a whole into a new state. Full list at bornfree.life/learn/protocol/ @joshual_tm

For tiny Moldova, the conviction of Vlad Plahotniuc was a huge step—a sign that the notoriously corrupt and cowed judiciary has begun to work as it should economist.com/europe/2026/04…

Investigation finds 300 more Russian doping cases. Get those guys back in global sport immediately. bbc.com/sport/articles…

Four years ago today, Crimean journalist, nurse, and human rights defender Iryna Danylovych was abducted by the Russian regime on her way home from work. She was held incommunicado for 13 days, tortured, and later sentenced to seven years on fabricated charges of “possession of explosives” for her reporting on repression in Crimea.

@JohnDoejkmd @Brahmacharyan @109evictions @NomosEvents Belgium

@Brahmacharyan @109evictions @NomosEvents Name one (1) country that does art deco better than the US.

Yes, Europe IS better. Until Americans can admit to themselves America is an embarrassing high crime fugazi then they are to be gatekept. Ethnic Europeans come from Europe, an older & better civilisation than MLK RapeApe burgerland & it's mere 250 years of liberal waffle.

@POLITICOEurope Why is any russian allowed in the EU, apart from the dissidents?

Estonia has blocked some 1,300 Russian ex-combatants from entering the country this year. Now it’s pushing Brussels to ban Moscow’s former soldiers from entering the EU — and keep them out long after the guns fall silent. 🔗 politico.eu/article/estoni…

That would be chic!

@EBasilion BS

This is likely one of the reasons I have never met a dumb Greek. The language. The other thing to consider is that language shapes cognition. So you could also say that the Greek language creates smart Greeks.

King brings the House down on day of jokes, ovations and warm words. So proud of His Majesty for saying what needed to be said. A truly King worthy speech. telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2…

I burned through all my tokens in a session on Claude Pro this morning in maybe 10 minutes trying to pull data out of one PDF — there’s just no way there’s enough compute to disrupt a meaningful number of jobs this year.

Se scrie AUR, se citește PSD, dar se aude PCR.

Europe’s Socialists have spent years scolding the center-right for cutting deals with the far right. Now they face the same charge after a deal to topple Romania's centrist coalition government. politico.eu/article/europe…

In Romania, the PSD — the country’s Socialist Party — has withdrawn its support for Liberal Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan and is now appearing hand in hand with AUR, a far-right, anti-EU party, ahead of a no-confidence vote scheduled for early May. This is not a tactical detail. It is a political choice. European Socialists cannot denounce extremism in Brussels while opening the door to it at home. Democracy needs alternatives, not alliances of convenience with those who weaken Europe from within. @PES_PSE @TheProgressives

The EU Wall of Shame - Eastern Europe edition robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/the-eu-wall-…

I am half blind because of Chornobyl, and I want more nuclear power. On April 25, 1986, my mother crossed into the USSR on a two-week work trip. She was six months pregnant. The following day, reactor 4 of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant exploded, triggering the worst nuclear disaster in history. The Soviet authorities acknowledged nothing. My mother travelled through Ukraine for two weeks, unaware. Three months later, I was born with congenital glaucoma. It is thanks to her stubbornness and a skilled doctor in Romania that I have any vision at all today, and was lucky enough to build a fulfilling life and a career in filmmaking. Around the time I turned 30, I travelled to Ukraine and Belarus to make a film about people like me, others living with the legacy of Chornobyl. The trip changed my life and set the course for the following decade. That's where I met Helena, who became my co-director and creative partner on several projects that followed. We met extraordinary people carrying that legacy. In Gomel, Belarus, I met an ophthalmologist who had been studying glaucoma since before the disaster. She told me that after 1986, congenital glaucoma cases rose tenfold. The Soviet authorities, and later the Belarusian government, suppressed her work, because her findings, alongside other studies linking illness to the disaster, pointed directly to an institutional responsibility they had no intention of accepting. I also met Dima, a musician who had the same illness as me but lost his vision as a teenager because in late-1990s Belarus there was virtually no care available for those affected. Dima doesn't talk politics. In Belarus, you can't, not really. Instead he focuses on what he can control: his family, his music, the community that loves him deeply. He has a good heart and a full life, and he carries it all with a grace I genuinely admire. But I can't help thinking about how different his life might have been had he been born somewhere else, somewhere free, with the same chances I had. Same illness. Different country. Different outcome. Helena and I made Everything Will Not Be Fine, a personal film about the legacy of Chornobyl and how people born under its shadow live today. Though the film is intimate in focus, we spent four years on research: travelling to the exclusion zone multiple times, speaking to doctors, scientists, and people involved in the cleanup. What that research confirmed is this: Chornobyl wouldn't have happened in a free society. And even if it had, it should never have become the catastrophe it was. The accident began with a flawed reactor design the Soviet system refused to acknowledge or correct. When the explosion happened, fear, the defining trait of totalitarian systems where no one wants to deliver bad news upward, delayed the disaster response for critical days. Then, once the scale became impossible to conceal, the authorities did everything they could to minimise and lie about the consequences. A 1991 international assessment, produced in close collaboration with Soviet authorities, concluded that health impacts were limited. That report has since been contested by numerous independent health experts who argue its methodology was shaped more by politics than science. The IAEA knew what it was working with. It went along anyway, because Western nuclear powers had their own industries to protect. The people who paid for all of this were ordinary people. They always are. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the situation has taken on a darker dimension. Russian forces occupied the Chornobyl exclusion zone in the early weeks of the war, causing significant damage and destroying safety equipment. In 2024, a Russian drone struck the sarcophagus covering reactor 4. Russian attacks have also repeatedly hit electrical infrastructure in the zone, which is needed to keep monitoring and cooling systems operational. This is not incidental. It is a pattern. It is also no accident that for years before the invasion, Russia aggressively lobbied Western governments to buy its oil and gas, and those governments obliged. The result is that some European countries are still funding this war through their energy bills. And yet I am still for nuclear power. I believe it can be a safe and reliable energy source in a society that values truth and accountability. The lesson of Chornobyl is not that nuclear is dangerous. It's that authoritarianism is. The tragedy of Chornobyl has shaped my life in ways I am still understanding. But it also led me to Ukraine, to lasting friendships, and to a sense of purpose, the belief that documenting these lives and keeping this history honest is worth doing, however small the contribution. You do what you can, with what you have, from where you stand. 40 years on, that still feels like enough of a reason. (pictured, Helena and me, Pripyat and a couple of stills from our film - Everything will not be fine - 2020)

Trump and Elon Musk destroyed most of the global H.I.V. program that saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Zambia. Now the US is threatening to cut remaining support, unless Zambia gives access to the country’s mineral resources. nytimes.com/2026/04/25/hea…

This should be on the front page of every newspaper in America. A Syrian billionaire needed U.S. sanctions lifted so he could cash in on $12 billion in reconstruction contracts. In an attempt to influence American foreign policy, he proposed a Trump-branded golf course, cut Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump into a multibillion-dollar real estate deal for a resort in Albania, and had someone physically deliver a stone engraved with the Trump family crest to a Republican Member of Congress with instructions to take it to the White House to get the President's attention. Trump threw his weight behind repealing the sanctions. They were lifted. The contracts are moving, the Trump family’s deals are expanding, and not a single Washington Republican is willing to say a word about any of it. This is a corruption of everything the office of the presidency is supposed to stand for, and the American people deserve to know about it. nytimes.com/2026/04/19/us/…