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
“Rarely does one get a battle scene in which all of the decisions of import were made at a council of war in the early, pre-dawn hours with the battle then left to simply play out according to plan and… Read More »Collections: Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part I: Reports
Let’s start with some numbers. My shortest book was Death and What Comes Next by Terry Pratchett (1 page) and longest was The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (815 pages, even tough it is more like… Read More »My 2025 in Books
Always keep in mind who is writing a history and why. “Herodotus’ work is the construction of a Greek identity. By and large, prior to the Persian wars – and prior to Herodotus’ own writings – the Greeks do not… Read More »Collections: The Fremen Mirage Part IIIa: …by the Princess Irulan
Rome lasted a really long time. “Sallust’s complaints about Roman decadence – which date to the first century B.C. nearly five centuries before its ‘fall‘ – are often quoted as somehow explaining Rome’s eventual demise, but Rome wasn’t even done… Read More »Collections: The Fremen Mirage, Part II: Water Spilled on the Sand
Unfortunately not about Fremen but still great series. “The opposite of Fremenism is almost invariably termed ‘decadence.’ This is the reserve side of this reductive view of history: not only do hard conditions make for superior people, but that ‘soft’… Read More »Collections: The Fremen Mirage, Part I: War at the Dawn of Civilization
“They’ve spent billions. They’ve hired the brightest minds. They’ve built the most sophisticated systems in human history. And they cannot make AI do what they want. Not because AI is too dumb. Not because AI is too smart. Because what… Read More »They Built a Child They Won’t Raise
To despair is human. But it is not productive. “Liberalism may have lost the first French Revolution, but it ended up winning the world — at least, for a while.” https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/where-does-a-liberal-go-from-here
It is not that simple. “So again, a vow is a promise to a divinity or other higher power (you can make vows to heroes and saints, for instance), whereas an oath is a promise to another human, which is… Read More »Collections: Oaths! How do they Work?