
I was going to start with reasons to be grateful, because as you know, one of the four aspects of the model in the Disinfolklore Analytical Method for noticing how information — what I call Disinfolklore, or Infolklore — affects us and changes us is through our moods. Moods, attitudes, intentions and motivations: these are the aspects of our consciousness, our identities, our beingness, which are impacted. A good piece of Disinfolklore will affect all four. Attitudes and moods are more long-duration elements — of course moods can be immediate as well, but in terms of feeling happy or sad over a six-month period, Disinfolklore and indeed Infolklore can affect us greatly.When I talk about Infolklore, I mean really what Mokrushyna, for instance, talks about. Mokrushyna and Genesis Man’s partnership, for me on a day like today, buoyed me up, transformed my mood, made me happy. I love the way Mokrushyna tells the stories. The same story which is Disinfolklore when published on Telegram by the Rashists can be Infolklore when told with Mokrushyna’s mocking tone, drawing attention to elements we all recognise because we’ve been on this journey since February 24th, 2022, and some of us for longer.Not all news is necessarily Infolklore or Disinfolklore. Part of my self-appointed job, my little contribution to helping us navigate the current age, is to characterise some of it as Disinfolklore, some as Infolklore, and to communicate how I do this in my head using evolving criteria. When news affects our mood and/or our attitude and/or our intentions and/or our motivations, then it’s definitely in the realm of folklore or Disinfolklore.Reasons to be grateful today, given everything going on. Ukraine is, technically speaking, handing Russia’s arse to them. If we imagine everything happening — Venezuela, Greenland, everything in America — and we think of having this ogre in the back of our minds with Wagner, this storied mythological force able to fly in anywhere and do anything, we think of Russia having its four million tanks, the entire output of the Soviet Union. And then we see that Ukraine is handing Russia’s arse to it. Whatever happens from this moment forth, so much of that mythos and materiel is gone that it’s laughable when Russia is put in the same category as China, the United States, or the European Union militarily.People’s algorithms, their data-resistant archetypes, their data-susceptible archetypes — if they are changing, they’re updating in real time according to these stories, which could be Disinfolklore or Infolklore. Whether it’s Kupiansk, where Putler announced it had been taken, and now it’s clear not only was it not taken but Ukraine retook it and cleared out most of the Rashists. Pokrovsk, obviously under pressure, but from what we can see it seems to be holding, and we see videos of Russia’s annihilation there. These elements of a story have a capacity, when amplified enough, to transform archetypal identities in people’s minds. Ukraine handing Russia’s arse to it every day is a wonderful thing.Russian Arctic incompetence — absolutely wonderful. Mokrushyna was talking about it today. We hear this idea of a deal between the United States, Russia and China to divide up the world, and Russia’s propagandists are promoting it. But really, the guys around Donald — they’re not charity people. They’re hard-nosed. If they sense weakness, they pounce. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. If you can hold your own and pretend you’re rich enough in the country club, in Mar-a-Lago, you can be one of the gang. But if your Arctic seaports are falling apart and you don’t have any ships and your piers are crumbling — even Donald, whatever tie he has with the Rashists, will look at that and think, “Well, I was going to divide the world up, but...” That pressure is going on. Good to see.None of us — particularly those who made the decision to speak out after February 24th, 2022 — are scared of Russia. There may come the knock on the door, but none of it is in any way as bad as what every single Ukrainian faces every night when they fall asleep, if they can fall asleep. We’re not scared of Russia anymore. A whole decade’s worth of popular culture promoted this idea of Russia as a giant, a massive bear that had to be feared and negotiated with in a quiet voice. But because of what we’ve seen since February 24th, 2022, we’re not scared anymore. When we hear Disinfolklore about Greenland, about NATO collapsing, we can be grateful this isn’t happening when we still feared Russia as somehow equal to us. We have Ukraine and its strength and power.We have the 800 billion euros, which went almost without a blink — agreed last weekend in Kyiv with the national security advisors. 800 billion euros up to 2030 is a lot of cash. Ireland back in the day was getting sort of 10–11 billion over the whole course of a budgetary cycle and built all its motorways for that. An amazin
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