And they’re actively looking to expand their borders too. Putin has referred to a Eurasian empire from Vladivostok to Lisbon.

His ideas are absolutely more brutal than those of the US, it’s just that his reach is less, and he hates that.

I will say this for Russia: they restrict their indiscriminate bombing and terrorism mostly to countries they actually border. I don’t know if that makes it any better, because it does mean they’re occupying a big part of another country and abducting or massacring parts of their population with the explicit intent of genocide, but at least it’s only regional instead of global.

Rich, coming from him.

He blindly jumped into a sudden exchange of bombs because he didn’t want to be left out. I’m pretty sure Israel and Iran know very well that Trump is out of his depth, and that that’s why they ignore him.

Of course he’s right that they should stop, but everybody sees he’s a broken clock that just happens to be right this time. He lacks understanding and authority to handle these sort of conflicts.

If he really believes the two countries should be united, he could always decide to surrender to Ukraine and give Ukraine control over Russia. I’m sure Ukraine would do a better job of governing Russia than Putin has done.

Good! The unreliability of German trains has been utterly surreal lately. We went on vacation by train from NL to Switzerland last year, and of course that connection goes through Germany. Confusion, delays, cancelled trains, 5 layovers with a ton of luggage (instead of the 1 we booked), standing in trains instead of sitting in our reserved first class seats. Even if you don’t arrive all that late, it’s still a terrible trip.

Before that, I’ve had a major event at Essen where the last connecting train to the ICE from Düsseldorf was cancelled. Tons of people stranded. I made it by paying through the nose for a taxi because I saw that their replacement bus wasn’t going to make it.

Some fixes to their crumbling system are clearly long overdue.

What!? But that haka was awesome! How can you not enjoy that?