would it use drones to attack civilians?

I will sip from my awesome thing while you think about that. Would they be doing it if it's happening at all? Are they trying to depopulate the city? Are they trying to get people to move so for what? So it'd be easier to take over the city?

One theory is that they were just practicing and that they just use it for target practice to train the drone operators. Do you think they're doing it for target practice just to train the drone people? Now that doesn't seem like good use of training. Are they trying to demoralize the city? Is it revenge? Some people say it's revenge for something the Ukrainians did. That doesn't make sense.

Or is it propaganda and it's not actually happening? Or is it happening but not at the level that's being reported? I would say I'm not quite willing to believe that it's even happening. I would say it's too much fog of war. It's too much exactly like something somebody would lie about in a war. Oh you're monsters. You're killing our civilians. We would never do that.

So I'm going to say I don't believe that story.

Then I tried to use Grok to understand how likely is it that Ukraine and Russia would find an acceptable peace. And I think the answer is there's not really any way. I don't think there is a way.

So I started with some context. You know I've been hearing forever that Ukraine could have made peace back in 2022. And I guess the offer was on the table that Russia would keep Crimea and the Donbass that has a bunch of Russian ethnic people would have some kind of special rule and that Ukraine would agree to never join NATO. And the theory is that Russia would have taken that offer.

But it looked like Zelenskyy may have been the one who... Let's see if I have this right. So according to Grok, I'll just tell you what Grok says. Grok said that in 2022 Ukraine floated some concessions to maybe wrap things up with the war and Zelenskyy signaled openness to neutrality, not joining NATO, and autonomy or special status for the Donbass. But Putin pushed for total demilitarization, a handover of Crimea and more, so it tanked.

So according to Grok there was never anything that both sides agreed on. So if there was never anything that both sides agreed on, was it ever something that could have not happened? And then Grok also says that the egos of the two leaders is in play. You know that neither of them can lose. So that's part of it.

So here's what I think. I don't think there was ever a chance it wasn't going to go to war because they were never that close. They say they were. But I think that's just propaganda. And both think the other is the reason that it went further.

So here's why I think it's impossible for them to get any kind of peace. Because if Zelenskyy makes peace by giving up land, he will lose his job and probably be killed. If Putin decided to go easy on Ukraine, that wouldn't make sense because he seems to be in a sort of a winning position in the long run.

So you've got two leaders who neither of them have much incentive to settle it. But they have an incentive to keep doing what they're doing. At the very least you would need one of the sides to think it was a bad idea to be at war, and I don't think we have that.

Greetings from Moscow. Somebody in the comments is in Moscow.

So I would say that I don't believe the story that there was a point in the past where they could have made peace. I think that was always maybe exaggerated and probably this was always going to happen just because of the interests of the two leaders and it's more about the leaders than the countries. What do you think? I'm looking at the comments. Do you think there's any chance that they could have settled this thing earlier like 2022? Yeah, I'm really feeling like no.

And then on top of that you have all the smart people saying that even if Putin agreed, you couldn't trust him. So there's not enough to make a deal, but even if he made a deal it wouldn't be worth anything. Because I can't see Putin giving up on at least controlling Ukraine as a proxy.

So it proves again. What did I prove again? So I guess I don't believe anything about that they could have had peace before. I just don't think it was possible. And it isn't possible now either.

So I would say at minimum I'm going to re-up my prediction. I think there's going to be at least another year of war and there it'll be perpetual war unless something changes and I think time is on Russia's side right now. Yeah, it looks like they're in a winning position. So they would have no reason to negotiate. I mean it certainly doesn't look like Putin wants peace, does it? I don't think he cares at all. I mean he would want peace if he also got as much of Ukraine as he wanted, but it doesn't look like that's an option.

Ukraine is not a country anymore. Well there's still something left. Kyiv is still unoccupied.

All right, that's all I have for today. If you're joining late, my whispering is because I'm trying to save energy and I thought I