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Warm day down here in Sicily, already 24° at 8.30am.
I’m not working today so we might head down to the beach, though the water is still too cold for me!
Did people in the schools you went to have dress code/uniform drama? I remember it being an issue for some of the more “fashionable” teenage girls getting in trouble for pants/skirts too high above the knee or the rule about no tank tops. Interestingly, I think it was certain female teachers that were very much on it while none of the male teachers cared too much. Later on in high school, they relaxed some of the bottom wear length restrictions, and tank tops were unbanned (unless they were spaghetti straps). The drama dropped off some.
For some reason [outer walls like these](https://i.imgur.com/inoKbtq.png) fascinate me, on the sides of buildings where they’re just left as exposed brick. Like, the forward facing part of the building could be this super ornate art nouveau thing and then the side is just brick with one random window in the middle of it.
Ukraine seems to have withdrawn from most of Kursk that they occupied due to Russian attacks in recent months. Russia’s advances in the Pokrovsk direction has slowed, but they are still a dangerous distance away from a key highway supplying Pokrovsk still.
I wonder what will come out of these new ceasefire negotiations. I really doubt that Trump can get Putin to stop without massive concessions because the developments over the past few months have been very favorable to Russia; they simply have no incentive to right now (that might not be true in another year depending on their economy). Ukraine has both incentives to agree to one and not agree to one. On one hand, their economy has been hit a lot worse than Russia’s, and they have not seen that much battlefield success. They would benefit quite a bit from European NATO countries militarizing their economies to send more equipment as those countries have GDPs well in excess of Russia’s. On the other hand, there’s no guarantee that those allies would continue militarizing their economies to send aid to Ukraine should the war end and fade out of peoples’ minds. Their governments have other priorities. Pensioners need their pensions, the sick need to be cared for, the children educated, and the civilian sector scientists need their research budgets. Something has to give.