Happy New Year

Let's give some money to charity

Good Evening:

Technically, you still have more than an hour to get half off of #DogShirtDaily subscriptions. But as of now, for charity donation purposes at least, I declare the end of the Sol Invictus on Steroids Sale, so I can actually make three of the four promised charitable contributions before the end of the calendar year.

The terms of the sale were the following: I promised to donate half of all estimated gross annual revenues associated with the posts this calendar year post-dating the announcement to a basket of four charities. These donations included:

• 25 percent of the proceeds would go to Lawfare;

• 25 percent would go to United Help Ukraine;

• 25 percent would go to Protect Democracy; and

• 25 percent would go to a charity decided upon by the readership.

Let’s deal with the easy stuff first. The total annual estimated proceeds associated with the nine posts covered by the Sol Invictus pledge, according to my calculations, is $6,678. Half of this is to go to charity, which is to say, $3,339. To make matters simple, the Sun—may it ever go unconquered—has suggested to me that I round this figure up to $4,000, so that each charity will get an even $1,000. Here are the receipts for the three that have been decided so far:

Here’s Lawfare:

Here’s United Help Ukraine:

Here’s Protect Democracy:

This leaves the small matter of the fourth charity. I suggested in the original “Sol Invictus on Steroids” post that people leave options for the fourth charity in the comments. Only two people did so. One suggested a second Ukraine-related charity, the Come Back Alive Foundation. Another suggested, somewhat generically, an animal welfare organization. Both of these are fine with me, but in the interests of diversity of options, I’m going to keep the proverbial suggestion box open for another day on this question. If either of the two stated suggestions prevails in the following poll, I will donate the money in accordance with readership wishes. If “Other” prevails, by contrast, I will hold a further poll.

If you vote “Other,” please include in the comments below some guidance as to what direction you would like this donation to take:

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Today on #DogShirtTV, I welcomed the estimable Minna Ålander, a Finnish expert in Northern European security issues. I invited her on to tell us about Russian undersea cable cutting, and she sure did that. We talked about methods of undersea cable cutting, strategic aims of undersea cable cutting, defenses against undersea cable cutting, and who is doing undersea cables cutting. The estimable Alicia Wanless also came by to keep me company and engaged Minna is a broader discussion of Arctic security measures:

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is an ivory fox dressed as a monk. We wouldn’t have thought this was a distinct variety of fox, but apparently it is, because we have here two separate ivory fox-monks, one from medieval Denmark, one from 19th century Japan. Some motifs are just so obvious as to be universal, apparently.

Danish Ivory Fox-Monk, circa 1530. Source

Japanese Ivory Fox-Monk, circa 1800. Source

If anyone knows of any other ivory fox-monks, please send them our way. We’re starting a collection. Please don’t kill any elephants for the ivory, however.

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Ok, ok, the #BeastOfTheDay is not actually the ivory fox-monk, because the #BeastOfTheDay has to be a real beast, and there are no real ivory fox-monks documented as yet. But today’s Beast is still the fox, specifically this Arctic fox conning a fish out of a reluctantly charmed fisherman: