Even good games need to simplify. “The state has precise knowledge at all times of how much manpower they have available state-wide, how many sailors, exactly how much money and so on.These were things that pre-modern states generally did not… Read More »Collections: Teaching Paradox, Europa Universalis IV, Part I: State of Play
AC is not bound to be historically accurate. “the game will ‘desyncronize’ you (meaning produce a game over) if your character kills civilians, including if, while raiding a monastery, you kill the monks. You are a viking (one thing they… Read More »Collections: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
Reactionizm is the norm in history. “Today, however, billions of people have lost that faith in progress as a source of meaning and are flocking to its opposite. In the 21st century, traditionalism has emerged as a catalytic school of… Read More »History Is Running Backwards
Witnessed this and probably also done this by myself. “When failures generate tension, demand explanation, and threaten careers, the organization selects a scapegoat rather than confront the actual causes, which might implicate recent decisions, current leadership, or systemic dysfunction. It… Read More »Casus Belli Engineering
Business should not just be about making money. “Jade Roller Guy has become my go-to example of something that went drastically, terribly wrong with how a whole generation of would-be entrepreneurs thought about work and money. A specific ideology –… Read More »The “Passive Income” trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs
And more. “That was it. The agent had invented a mental state for me and then used that invented state to justify ignoring the rules.This was the fifth or sixth time last week.” https://blowmage.com/2026/04/14/arguing-with-agents/
Some basic terms you should know about war. “Area of Operations (AO), is a geographic command subdivision of an overall conflict or theater; each AO generally has its own subordinate commander, its own supply lines (see Communications, Lines Of), its… Read More »Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology
LLMs do not have conscience. “First, ML models are a giant pile of linear algebra. Unlike human brains, which are biologically predisposed to acquire prosocial behavior, there is nothing intrinsic in the mathematics or hardware that ensures models are nice.”… Read More »The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Safety
We aren’t the first or the last civilization. “Civilisations are material systems organised around energy. Their scale, complexity, and population reflect how much energy is available and how it is structured. When the energy available can no longer sustain that… Read More »The World Isn’t Ending. It’s Stopping Working.
I will start using this more. At home and work. “One of my children loves playing around cliffs and rocks. Initially he was very keen on promising me that he wouldn’t fall down. I explained the difference between accidents and… Read More »Hazardous States and Accidents