Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 31, 2026

Russia’s oil and gas revenues are shrinking. Meduza explains what that means for the Kremlin’s war chest.

Asia on Alert as Nipah Virus Cases in India Trigger Airport Screenings. India says it has contained Nipah virus outbreak and both the CDC and WHO are “monitoring the situation.” Infections with this pathogen can result in a severe and often fatal illness that primarily affects the brain and respiratory system. The case fatality typically ranges between 40 and 75%, impacted by the quality of medical care available to the infected person.

Births Plummet In China As Population Growth Stalls. According to the National Statistics Bureau of China (NBS), the country’s birth rate fell to 5.63 per 1,000 people in 2025. This is the lowest level since 1949, when the Communist Party took power. Meanwhile, China’s death rate rose to 8.04 per 1,000 people. This resulted in last year being the fourth consecutive year for the country’s population to fall, reaching 1.4 billion.

The prostate cancer test dilemma

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 30, 2026

Last Call for Mass Market Paperbacks

A lot of population numbers are fake. Do we have any idea how many people there are in the world?

USAF F-35s Redeploy Across Atlantic From Puerto Rico, Final Destination Unknown. The F-35As are on the move after assisting in the Maduro capture and could end up in the Middle East.

U.S. Handing Over Seized Tanker to Venezuela

This borrowing was in violation of statutory PAYGO and would normally lead to a $529 billion debit in the first year of the PAYGO scorecard, leading to a sequestration of up to $200 billion in mandatory spending. Instead, policymakers passed legislation to ignore the law and wiped out the balances on both PAYGO scorecards, which avoids the requirement for PAYGO sequester for the budget year and removes the accountability for Congress to pay as they enact costly legislation.

For instance: did you know that daily social media use increases the likelihood a child will commit suicide by 12-18%? Or that teenagers are far more likely to visit the ER for psychiatric problems if they have an Instagram account? Or that a child’s amount of social media use, past a certain threshold, correlates exponentially with poorer sleep, lower reported wellbeing, and more severe mental health symptoms? If that was all true for social media— and again, none of it is — you and I both would agree that people under 16 or so should not have access to platforms like Instagram or Snapchat. Imagine allowing your child to enter any system that would make them 12-18% more likely to kill themselves. That would be insane. You wouldn’t let your kid anywhere near that system, and the public would protest until it was eliminated once for all. Great. So let’s get rid of school.

Tesla is killing off the Model S and Model X

US Cancer Survival Has Reached a Milestone High of 70%

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 28, 2026

Destroyer, Electronic Surveillance Jet Joins U.S. Forces Massing In Middle East

Iran’s internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only. The regime is testing a two-tier internet where access becomes a vetted privilege.

Loose Rules Let State Police Hand Out Lax Penalties for Serious Misconduct

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 27, 2026

Residents of world’s largest Arctic city left without heat as sub-zero temperatures persist in northern Russia

Iran’s Currency Falls to Record Low as Intel Says Regime at Its ‘Weakest Point’ Since 1979

MSNBC uses edited photo of man shot by ICE that makes him appear more masculine I would say they just tried to make him look more handsome but whatever. To a certain extent there is a little bit of whataboutsim in this post because the liberals have been making hay about a trump official retweeting an AI generated photo to support his narrative and so now constatives are pointing out the liberals are doing it as well. But I do think there is a little bit of a difference between some trump official mouthing off and a media outlet that supposedly fact checks doing it. I guess it just a sign about how few people care about the truth and just want to embrace everything that builds their team up.

Massive Potomac River Sewage Spill Exposes D.C. Water’s Cracked Priorities

We tend to think that things just work and complain about them failing when they do. But a lot people don’t realize what goes on to keep things from failing on a more regular basis. At a place I used to work I can remember when were told to go on generator or get off of natural gas to help keep things functioning for others. The Energy Department also waived emissions rules so fossil-fuel plants could run at maximum capacity. Early Sunday morning, coal accounted for some 40% of power in the Midwest’s MISO grid, 24% in the eastern PJM Interconnection, and 18% in Texas, with most of the rest coming from natural gas and nuclear. Power plants in New England burned oil, which accounted for 40% of electricity at peak demand

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 26, 2026

Lincoln Carrier Strike Group Has Arrived In CENTCOM’s Area Of Responsibility. Assets continue to pour into the Middle East, including high-end air defenses, but there still hasn’t been a large migration of airpower.

The demise of Zhang Youxia hits different

On immigration warrants

Hard on the heels of the lawsuit targeting Ziploc bags comes a report linking microplastic exposure to coffee consumption.

Do Commodities Get Cheaper Over Time?

I was taught as fact that this came from Europe and honestly I had no reason to doubt it. To get an idea of how sensitive this is to the politically correct read the religious invocation against getting canceled at the end of the article. Ancient DNA pushes back record of treponemal disease-causing bacteria by 3,000 years

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 25, 2026

Iran may have slaughtered 30,000 protesters in 48-hour intense crackdown. If the estimates are true, the only comparable massacre in history databases would be the murder of 33,000 Jews in the Babyn Yar massacre during the Holocaust outside of Kyiv in 1941. They are talking about killing people by gun shot and it is very arguable in terms of historical comparisons but it is still a lot.

Israel Destroys Hezbollah Weapons Factory Amid Terrorist Buildup in South Lebanon

China’s Xi Places His Top General Under Investigation as Military Purges Heat Up

For what it is worth, I think it was a bad shoot by current legal standards although I think it was a result of poor communication and not malice afore thought. But I think the same thing about the lady who got shot at the capital. But nobody cares about consistency anymore and depending on what media you consume you have a completely different understanding of what happened. Few conservative sites show the video or talk about the facts that make people think it is a bad shoot. And liberal sites don’t talk about what leads up the shooting or the background of what people are doing over there.The Left Doesn’t Want You to Know This About Alex Pretti, the Man the Border Patrol Shot

Ukraine War, 24 January 2026: The Russian Killer Strike

China’s rural banks struggle to sell seized properties despite hefty discounts

It bothers me that all sorts of smart people are “learning” that you can have a conventional war between nuclear powers like it is some kind of scientific fact. During Operation Sindoor, India learned that it can carry out “calibrated retaliation” without igniting a nuclear crisis between the two countries. Indian strategists such as Adm. Arun Prakash, have since reflected that the war “further expanded the space for conventional operations below the nuclear threshold.”

A weird, itchy rash is linked to the keto diet—but no one knows why

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 23, 2026

Safe Passage Deal For Kurds In Syria Will Help Protect U.S. Forces There

It might be too early to say, but it does appear like that ‘four-days-cease-fire’ between the Syrian government and the PKK/SDF didn’t really hold even for minutes.

Historic Graphite Mine in New York Marks Start of Made‑in‑America Battery Supply Chain

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 22, 2026

Russia is filling its ranks with foreign fighters and treating them as ‘disposable soldiers’

Military Buildup In The Middle East Continues, Including What Trump Describes As A “Big Flotilla”

As a reminder, this a Chinse English language mouthpiece. Read it it with that understanding. Is Trump About to “Abandon” Taiwan, Too?

China is beating the United States in the race to control the Gulf’s driverless car market. The latest win came in October 2025 when Chinese company WeRide secured an exclusive deal with Ras Al Khaimah, the northernmost of the United Arab Emirates, to build its entire transport system around driverless cars. The sleepy emirate — preparing to become the Gulf’s Las Vegas — is betting on Chinese technology instead of traditional metros and buses.

Shadow Fleet Tanker Seizure Operations Expand In The Face Of Russian Warnings

In Upstate New York, for example, thousands of solar panels are covered in ice, snow, and sleet during winter, only generating five to 10% of their potential power. In the summer, they fare slightly better. They produce an annual average of 15-17% of total power. As the House of Green Substack explains, they survive and continue to be built in New York due to the state’s Renewable Energy Certificates, where the state pays developers for each megawatt hour of renewable electricity generated, independent of the actual sale of the electricity. The solar developer earns two to three times more from the certificate than from selling the power generated from the solar facility.