Assimilation - home from home

I'm sorry I haven't wrote a blog post in a while. I have been meaning to, but I keep getting distracted. Also, I am not on my ADHD meds and it is definitely telling, especially when I don't get enough sleep. I am catching up on these blog posts, and depending on the amount of content I might do a few days in one.

This day was mostly chilling - I am writing delayed, so this will have been the 12th, but I write in present tense as it is much easier

It was very fucking hot today, easily 30c. Also, because we are awaiting a thunderstorm the humidity was mental.

Not a fan? 𖣘

The morning began with an argument, which will have consequences later.

We really wanted a fan, and we didn't want to bust out their air conditioner because it was in a box and used a bunch of electricity (and should you trust soviet apartment wiring?).

However, for some reason my mother in law thinks we are incapable of putting together a fan. Yes, one of those you get from Argos 2 days into a heatwave then it pisses it down and you regret it, but then the next year you are glad you got it anyway.

I wonder how she reconciles that with the fact we got to Ukraine all on our own multiple times and I work a senior position...

So we suggested to her we would just buy a fan from Rozetka (like Ukrainian Argos). It was at that point she started arguing with my wife saying we would be wasting money. So we asked if we could build the fan and got a no, so we were stuck in a loop.

After a while she cracked... but we had to wait for Dad to come home to help us build it... whatever... a win is a win... (it's not really a win)...

To do nothing is the real doing something

While baking in the heat with no access to a ventilation device we decided to stay as still as possible.

Though before we could enjoy any lying still we had to eat. Luckily for us, our mother prepared Holubtsi or Гопубці - meat and other things wrapped up in a roll of cabbage.

They are traditionally cooked in a tomato based suace and finished off with some sour cream or сметана. I must not it is VERY important you understand that eastern european (and especially Ukrainian) sour cream is nothing like western sour cream. While western sour cream can be grainy and quite sour, eastern european sour cream is creamy, less thick, and completely smooth. It is more like a smooth and higher fat yoghurt, if anything.

If you want to eat along at home, you can look for Polish sour cream in your local Polski Sklep or big Tesco.

This is why you can put it on literally anything, and in my case I pile that shit on like I'll die tomorrow.

In debt again

I regret to inform you that I am in debt again, and this time I don't think I'll be able to get out of it. I have been sent a notice for a debt of 1 Hryvnia.

Papa, I don't want to see your Oreshnik! (Skip this section if you don't want to learn about missiles)

Today we have lots of useless level 2 headers (where the text is big). It is now we start seeing warnings for the potential launch of an Oreshnik missile. I think it would also be a useful time to explain how alerts of military action happen for citizens in Ukraine.

Surprisingly (at least for westoid me in 2023) these alerts primarily come through Telegram channels. Telegram is eastern european whatsapp. I don't need to explain much further than that.

You will have multiple channels, such as the official Ukrainian Air Force channel, as well as other community led channels that either try to amalgamate warnings and information into one place, or serve a specific local area/city (like Kyiv).

You can get REALLY local, but then you just have a Telegram channel with the Ukrainian equivalent of British local area Facebook group. Less moaning about bins, more moaning about war related stuff. Of course you still have the moaning about potholes.

This particular notice was about the "Oreshnik" which is a MRBM (medium-range ballistic missile). These are interesting in a terrible way because up until 2019 were banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which sought to ban missiles that were capable of intermediate range. This is because essentially they were short range enough (minimal time to impact), while being enough range to be out of surveillance and could be fired on mobile launchers.

It didn't ban air or sea launched, like the Zircon or Iskander.

There is debate to whether Russia participated fairly in the treaty, particularly after around 2007.

You could argue Putin wanted to have everyone else in on the treaty in 2007 or so but these missiles take ages to develop, so they will have already been in the pipeline with the test of a missile in 2008.

It was a useful and useless treaty, primarily because treaties are only good when the times are good. When the times are bad, there are no treaties. So they are self reinforcing in that when you have a high trust between two parties and lack of reasoning to build them, then you get treaties. It is why I get really annoyed when I see tankie leftist youtoobers talk about how we should disarm some missile types or whatever, and then point to the 1990s and early 2000s when we had all these treaties, which must be why we had no wars and arms races!

But then you fail to understand it's more that the treaties were a result of the good times, rather than good times a result of treaties.

Particularly in the 90s and early 2000s, Russians were struggling to buy bread at the shops - the costs of building more arms was not high priority or even possible with rampant corruption.

Anyway the Oreshnik - a medium range (~3000-5000km) ballistic (goes up to space then down again), with MIRVs (multiple independent re-entry vehicles). Essentially, at the top of its arc it splits the warhead into up to 11 independent bombs which have their own target. This makes them basically impossible to intercept as some of those will be decoys to mess with air defence. You have no chance.

Traditionally MIRVs are only used for nuclear warheads, so that you can destroy a city with a lot of little nukes rather than one big one.

So you can see why they an IRBM with this kinda tech would be banned or at least limited, neither you or your opponent can tell whether what you have fired is nuclear capable and you only have less than 10 minutes to react to the attack. How would you respond, not knowing if it would destroy an entire city of yours?

This is why for most launches, we are told beforehand that it will happen and that it will be non-nuclear...

But that makes you wonder, what's the point? If it's a dud and just meant to scare us, but you tell everyone it's relatively harmless and that you are trying to scare us, it becomes a lot less scary, no?

There is some fear in spectacle, though.

It is a continuous problem with Russian deterrance strategy - they will break past a 'moral red line' like using an "ICBM" as they are colloqually known. We shit our pants, think for a bit, rationalise it and then not care. They will bomb children, and then we gasp, then move on. They push the red lines further and further back.

We stop being scared of anything, but at the same time we are losing more and more of our humanity.

It would never lead to the end of the war - it just leads to us not seeing Russians as human.

Piercing!

Now I want to ask a question which I said would be on the test.

What did I ask you to remember from one of the prior blogs?

Have a think for a moment, and then I will come back to you for the answer.

The wife decided she wanted a belly piercing, and that it would help her 'serve cunt'. I agree, I think it does serve cunt, but then I think anything she does serves omega cunt and I don't think there is anything that she wouldn't serve cunt with. She could get a stupid propeller fan cap and a t shirt which says "im with stupid" pointing upwards, and I STILL think she would serve ultimate cunt.

So we got the taxi there, again it's boiling so any time we spend in the sun today drains us. We then struggle to find the place but I eventually help her find the entrance, as a native Kyivan.

Elevator out of order, 9th floor. She was going to be stinky for the piercing lady.

I sat down, thinking it would be a while like her tattoo (which took 6hours or something last time). But no, in and out like a yoyo. Real easy. Maybe 20 minutes?

Anyway as we are walking out... (answer is coming up) - the piercer asked wife if it was a 'green yuri' pin, and then pulled up her arm to show off a tattoo of the exact same yuri couple! Then she pulled her other sleeve up to show polygamous yaoi genshin.

Christ. I was in polite shock, but she was over the moon..

We hop downstairs and she almost faints, with a grandma running up to us asking if she needs to call the ambulance. I am stressing out as I don't know what to do with this fainting cunt server, all while the queen herself was telling me she wanted 4 different drinks at 4 different places on the street while I was trying to make sure she understood the taxi for the Georgian restaurant was already here...

Oy Mama, it was like in Tbilisi!

This is the second time we have ate at this place. The first time was in 2025 and we vowed to go back as soon as we finished the meal.

I also would like to say I am new to the whole blogging thing, picture blogging game. I forget to take pictures of all the stuff I eat. However, we had mushrooms with cheese and garlic cream, an eggplant honey salad with cheese, mushroom khinkali (georgian dumplings), grilled vegetables.

I also had pork shashlik, which is like grilled meat. I usually don't eat meat, but I feel like I have to try other cuisines with my entire mind in the zone...

Closing and goodnight

I lock in and write these sometimes, and I have cracked 2,000 words. It's a lot easier than a uni essay, because I don't have to think about what I am writing, and I know everything I write is true as it is just my thoughts of a day. I don't have to worry about sources, grammar, persuasion.

I will say goodnight with a beautiful (красивий - krasee-vee) picture of the inside of a Kruschevka.