Lawrence Freedman: "[Putin's] war against Ukraine has been hampered by failings experienced by autocratic states during conflict* due to *the inability of those at the top to take responsibility for mistakes."

But, he adds, "It's not that democracies always make better decisions."

The "power of stories" may be inadequate to deal with problems or injustices of global scale, such as a pandemic, or the coming global heating disaster.

*… some of the most urgent and lethal challenges our society is facing are too giant and unwieldy to fit into the little patterns our human minds are used to making. Our present pandemic response policies suggest some people don't get to be "heroes" on a "journey", and many traditional western storytelling conventions aren't up to the task of understanding a climate emergency that defies any sort of conflict-resolution arc.*

Biden got the court's approval to end the persecutor's "Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum-seekers coming from Mexico.

US citizens: call for repeal of Florida's law to monitor the political views of every student and every professor.

A black family was denied a loan because of an apparently racist low appraisal of their home. They showed the home to another company, covering up indications that the inhabitants were black, and got an appraisal of almost three times as much.