Vlad Vexler

Know the difference between Soviet and Russian Propaganda:

Zelensky's unforced error alarms allies -

“I honestly just did not realise that it was possible, in the UK in 2025, to be as sick as my husband is & for there to be basically no specialist NHS services to provide any kind of support” Our co-founder @KarenLHargrave on Radio 4 WATO 👇 (Recording via @ABrokenBattery)

The dismantling of anti-corruption safeguards in Ukraine has sparked talk of Ukraine “losing the peace,” whatever happens in the war. But this framing misses something crucial: Putin’s theory of victory is to pressure Ukraine until it irreversibly poisons its own politics.

Wonderful short review piece by @danielcallcut of what seems to be a very interesting book on hope, optimism, pessimism by Mara Van der Lugt. Highly recommend!

Hey #severeME person, I know you are at the bottom of a fire pit dungeon being eaten alive by dragons. Wanna send us a drawing from down there? ME charities are often run by people with ME doing their best. But we need a conversation about what messages we send out to the…

Trump Can’t Shake Epstein - But MAGA Doesn’t Care

Western politics is drifting toward the collapse of impersonal legitimacy - a world where only personal power, what a leader says or does, confers legitimacy.

Very rapid notes on a shifting moment. Trump wants to break Europe - but he is wrecking American power. Mark Rutte’s visit to Washington gave the illusion that NATO had been steadied. Trump reinforced the illusion, telling the BBC that NATO was “the opposite of obsolete” and…

Trump Wants to Break Europe — but he is wrecking American power (rapid substack thoughts on a shifting moment) open.substack.com/pub/vladvexler…

A video on the philosophy channel about that makes one a professional vs an amateur artist, musician, painter, philosopher, wine taster . . .

Thanks so much to @J_Bloodworth for citing me in his excellent @prospect_uk piece on political opportunism and the politics of resentment. This really matters - because political opportunism is fast becoming a worldview in our culture.

To shield Europe from Putin, we must spend more on defence. But if that spending guts the welfare state, trust collapses even faster, and our defence budgets fall into the hands of authoritarian populists who admire Putin. Protection risks becoming submission by other means.

Health’s been shocking in the past 24 hours. The only thing I could briefly think about was: did Mozart have ADHD and autism? These labels are often misapplied to great figures, but with Mozart there is a real case. I’ll explore it on the new classical music channel soon.

When democratic decline looms, it’s scary and there is a tendency to react with the minimal effective dose. But minimal doses don’t work in the age of democratic decline. In fact, they fuel our crisis.

My reaction chat - Trump's gives 50 day "ultimatum" to Putin

Correction to the commentariat reaction that Trump has lost patience and done an about-face with Putin: Trump is episodically frustrated with his ideological ally, Vladimir Putin.

Trump is incapable of arriving at a stable understanding of any major issue. The idea that he’s “progressing” misunderstands who he is. He doesn’t grow - he relives the same day over and over, hunting for narcissistic supply.