Did Putin really win here or was this not two old men wasting time, playing games that do not matter much distracting them from their main jobs? Putin making Trump look weak win anything or is he not accelerating Trumps downfall which would stop the US slide to irrelevance?

Not sure it won‘t affect finance badly. If there is a massive devaluation of costal housing stock that will affect both new credit volumes (and with it money in the economy) and holders of existing not being repaid mortgages (pension funds). Survivable maybe but going to be painful.

I remember the line from the Rocky Horror Picture Show: „Lost in time, and lost in space. And meaning“.

Worked the past years on an app spread over multiple repos. All working on dev, as there was evil coupling forced to check in often. Context lost, reviews near impossible. Forensic skills needed.

Trump kicked to many hornets nests: Ukraine, Putin praise, immigration, chainsaw government cuts, 3rd term, anti health, anti Muslim, any due process, Canada, Denmark and trade war with China. Division as strategy is now failing and opposition threatens to combine. A deal no matter how was needed.

The cease fire plan almost looks like someone sane in the Trump administration sold this to Trump as a way to get a quick win playing to his impatience with the hidden intention to undo to the degree possible the damage to Ukraine supply lines.

Trump is leveraging his control of the Government to destroy the rule of law. Destroyed government and destroyed justice enables mob rule - he who is the strongest makes the rules based on personal interests and in case of a less stable genius mood.

Trump is not ultraflexible but mentally unstable in a clinical sense. His reactivity is part of it. The best framework to analyze him is old angry king. Macron humiliated him in the Oval next Zelensky attacked but in a self destructive way. This is not strategic but madness focused on revenge.