States are something different. “States tend to have a relatively rigidly defined territory, whereas non-state societies do not. States tend to have more complex social stratification with both a greater degree of labor specialization and a greater degree of social… Read More »Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part II: Government Without States
The basics, also for managers. “Dashboards provide numbers, but numbers alone do not explain the system. Averages, CPU, and throughput plots are misleading if you do not know the math behind them. At One2N, our SRE practice has seen this… Read More »SRE math every engineer should know: a practical guide
How people get food dictates structure of a society in a major way. “one of the best ways to start thinking about any historical society is to begin with the subsistence foundation it is built on, because how people get… Read More »Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part I: Aristocrats, Retainers and Clients
Slow mo is cool not only on screen.
Accountability in tech industry is almost nonexistent. “Three years and $70 billion later, the metaverse is dead, and everybody acts as if it didn’t happen. Whoops! In a sane society, investors, analysts and the media would never trust a single… Read More »This Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble
This is the closest thing you can see in modern times to ancient battle formation and warfare. Also, who wins is not the one who kills the most but the one that breaks morale of the other side. That is… Read More »Riot Policing and Ancient War
Most stuff that seems wrong is the way it is for a reason. “Large software companies have real problems. Some are structural. Some are cultural. Many are self-inflicted. But many of the behaviors people complain about are not pathologies –… Read More »Common misunderstandings about large software companies
Morale is not one number. “Morale is the commitment the combatants have to their leadership and their cause. To simplify a bit, we might say that soldiers with good morale believe three things: that their cause is a worthy one,… Read More »Collections: Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part IIIc: Morale and Cohesion
Having an army is expensive. “expense of doing this would have been in most cases enormous and of course those are resources that could be deployed to any number of other uses, including simply raising a larger army of less… Read More »Collections: Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part IIIa: Discipline
Leading in battle is sometimes more important than commanding. “We have to start not with tactics or the physics of shouting orders, but with cultural expectations. First, we need to establish some foundations here. First, in a pre-modern battle (arguably… Read More »Collections: Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part II: Commands