When I originally started this website, I felt that just providing links with no commentary provided no value. When I felt that the commentary I was providing was worthless and I did not have time to improve on it, I let the blog die for awhile.
A chance comment that let me know that someone missed seeing my links to stuff he did not normally see on his own lead to reactivation of this blog as a link centric thing that it is now. It might be very low value added, but it is very low cost to me as well. It adds very little time cost to keep a window open and add links to it as I go about my reading. My main trouble is to remember to hit publish when I am all done.
But even though it is low cost, there is editing involved. I don’t post to a link to everything I read. I try to keep it to things that I think might have at least one or two people besides myself who would find it interesting. And I worry that having too many links will crowd out the ones that are really interesting and of value to other people. So I thought I would go over the thought process behind yesterday’s links for the day and see if my readers had any thoughts on what added value and what did not.
For ease of reference, the link will be posted above the text where I talk about it but nothing will be new to those who saw the previous links.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 29, 2024
The links start off with a link to the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment from the Institute for the Study of War as has become traditional. Only times I don’t are when they don’t publish it until after I have gone to bed. In fact, this one of the biggest culprits of my forgetting to hit publish. I am waiting for this to come out before going to bed but it don’t come out in time before I go to bed and I am forgetting to hit publish. I typically no longer read the entire thing (I usually stop after I finish key takeaways) and it seems silly to link to something that anyone interested likely already knows about. But I have been told it saves other people time to have it up there and so I keep doing it.
Ukraine Situation Report: UK MoD Says Two More Russian Ships Were Hit In Missile Raid
The second thing is the Warzone Ukraine Situation Report. This report is less academic and not as careful then the one from ISW but in some ways I find it more valuable because they provide more links to other sources. I typically read most of this one and only skim when it gets to the parts that I already have a good handle on from other sources. Since this one does not come out every day, I feel like there is more value to linking to it since you would have to have it in your feed (and how many people even have RSS feeds anymore?) or be checking their site every day to know that they have one out.
Facts: Russian Refineries Targeted by Ukraine’s Drones
Next is link from gCaptain. I found it a useful summing up of the recent drone strikes and what damage they may have caused. It seemed to me that it would be relevant to anyone interested in the Ukraine war. It also is relevant to one of my pet hobby horses in regards to how drones are giving a decisive advantage to the strategic offense that nobody has a good handle on how to deal with yet.
Number of injured in Moscow terrorist attack exceeds 380 and St. Petersburg law enforcement conducting raids, deporting migrants en masse
The following two links are both from Meduza. I hate having two links from the same sources in a links for today and I really hate having two links from same source back to back. Early on in this blog history I would go out of my way to not do this but I have gradually relaxed over time because I think it is a strictly emotional hangup that has no justification. It still bugs me though so a lot of time I will try to hide it by separating them with links from other sources but this time I did not bother.
That silly hang up aside, I try to collect feeds from sources that are written in English but come from a foreign perspective. Meduza (which is written by liberal Russians who for the most part have fled from Russia) is one of these sources.
The first Meduza link on the number of injured and killed in the recent Russian terror attack interests me because it is becoming an increasingly common method of terror attacks by Islamic terrorists. It has been used many times in the Third World (India and Kenya being notable examples) and the recent Hamas attacks on Israel can be looked at as being part of this trend. Just like terror bombings were common all around the world before they came to New York I suspect that eventually they will come to American as well. So I try to keep up on the methods and means that are being used in other countries and assume that others would be interested as well.
The second Meduza link is a more academic link of the type that I wonder if it is worth posting or not. On a surface level, who cares if the St. Petersburg law enforcement round up migrants? Migrants are being persecuted all over the world for a variety of different reasons. But for me it is interesting because Russia is on the horns of dilemma. The nationalist rhetoric that the Russian political class increasingly relies on naturally leads to anti migrant sentiment but the Russian economy really needs the migrant labor in order to function. For this reason ISW has consistently argued that the anti-migrant is all talk and nothing will come of it. Stories like this make me wonder if that is true although I understand that St. Petersburg is only a small part of Russia.
But without all this context, I wonder if links like this really have any meaning. The only reason I fell on the side of posting this story yesterday is because I have been linking to IFSW assessments that would run counter to the St. Petersburg story so I thought I would link to it for balance. But on another day I could have easily made a different decision on the grounds that it just cluttered up the links and nobody that did not have my interests would really get anything out of it. I am not sure even in retrospect which is the right answer.
The next link is from a traditional news source (Politico). It is an example of a story that I link to only for a few facts that our buried in the story. A lot of times when this is the case I don’t use the title the source gives but instead pick out a few note worthy sentences as the link title and this link is a good example of this. To a certain extent, I felt a little sheepish about this link since for the most case it is largely confirmation bias about the limits a Western power in spite of the West’s seeming wealth that I have written about before. But I figure the fact about France’s deficit surprising people by how large it came in at would interest people who wanted to keep informed about the state of world economically even if they had no particular interest in my hobby horses.
China has a big problem with super gonorrhea
Even before Covid, I liked to keep abreast of the various new diseases in the world. A world pandemic of some kind or other was something I was expecting to live through in my lifetime although Covid was nothing like what I expected. A particular interest of mine has been the gradual failure of antibiotics across the board. The link about China’s problem with super gonorrhea falls in this category. All that said, this was another ink that I was not sure how much general interest it would have as I don’t see concerns about gonorrhea as being high on the list of what my limited readership is concerned about.
Canadian Judge Approves Young Woman’s Medically Assisted Suicide Plans Due to Her Autism and ADHD
I try to avoid getting sucked too much into outrage porn. But at the same time, I think it is important to keep track of how the boundaries are being moved. That is why I linked to the story about the Canadian Judge approving the suicide of a young woman with autism and ASHD. Even non-cultural warriors in America were upset by that one, but I think it is largely an age thing. I think with the passing of baby boomers, things like this will bother fewer and fewer people. All that said, I don’t find that these types of stories have a lot of value for me. I read several stories on this topic but I don’t remember anything other than the headline. In general, I find that this is what outrage porn does. It short circuits your thinking and does not leave you with much besides emotions. And there are enough of them in the world with seeking them out. At the same time, sometimes it is worth keeping abreast of the drama that moves the world and not just the facts. Where I decide what the balance between those two thoughts should be changes from day to day.
Looming Change to Repair Costs Drives Auto Industry Fight
The story about the fight over what warranty reimbursement rates should be for car repairs is why I worry about posting too many links as I am afraid of drowning out stories like this one. Of all the links I posted, I think this one had the broadest general interest. I think it could have been usefully read by anyone who owned a car and in particular to those who owned a car in New York. Regardless of whether the law is passed or what you think about it, I think it provided useful information about how the industry worked that all consumers would find useful to know. But since it was lost in a bunch of other links, I wonder how many people would pick up on the fact that it was one story that was worth reading all the way through. Sometimes I think I should call things out like this with a little blurb but that adds more time and I don’t know how much value it really adds.
California Proposes to Ban Diesel Trains and Has Asked EPA for a Waiver
I sometimes feel embarrassed about linking to the IER. They so clearly have an ax to grind and their main principle seems to be what makes the most money for their members. On the other hand, the energy industry is very important and the shear insanity of the current ruling class makes paying attention to it important in my view. A few years back I think I would have passed over this story on the grounds that nobody would really be crazy enough to do this outside of California. But now a days I don’t have that confidence.
Cows in Texas and Kansas test positive for highly pathogenic bird flu
Bird flu turning into something that kills people is something that people have been worrying about for a long time. I mostly thought this story was noteworthy because it showed that Bird Flu was jumping to mammals. Whether that means it will eventually turn into something meaningful for human health is something I don’t pretend to have a clue about. But I do try to keep educated on it although this is another ink that I wonder how much general interest it has.
And that is all the stuff that made the cut. The things that did not make the cut were mostly stuff arguing about Argentina, information about how various weapon systems worked, and some sources of information covering topics already addressed by links I did post. But the two things that I did not link to yesterday that stick the most in my mind were “Wang Huning and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Dark Visions of the Future” and Lucky Gunner’s video on why Hip Shooting was ever a thing.
Both of these were of interest to me but I felt they would not be of general interest as being to nerdy about obscure topics. Furthermore, the article comparing Huning to Tocqueville was too much in the category of stimulating your thinking with very arguable statements and not enough in the category of verifiable facts. And while the Lucky Gunner’s video was fascinating look on why people who are really good at something are often not the best teachers, it was video and I have gotten the impression that videos are less valued then text links overall. Plus, it was not on a topic of general interest in any case.
If you are one of the few regular readers of Links For Today hopefully you found this overview of my thinking behind the links of some interest. If you have any thoughts on what does and does not add value please feel free to share your thoughts.
For what it’s worth, I found the hip shooting video interesting.
Thanks for the feedback. I would not have picked you to be someone who would have found that interesting. Shows how little I know.