Political structure matters. “neither Quintus nor Maximus are going back to their farm after this: they’re going back to Rome to be major figures in Roman politics, living on their large estates since senators were required by law to be… Read More »Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator’s Iconic Opening Battle, Part II
It’s epicly wrong. “The Roman army in this sequence has the wrong composition, is deployed incorrectly, uses the wrong tactics, has the wrong theory of victory and employs the wrong weapons and then employs them incorrectly. Perhaps most importantly the… Read More »Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator’s Iconic Opening Battle, Part I
Atomic bombs were not the main issue. The New York Review of Books Thu, Apr 9, 2026 “The prospect of widespread firebombing obsessed military planners. In 1944 US Air Force officers even consulted Canadian and British insurance adjusters who had… Read More »A Man-Made Disaster
What is genocide? [Throughline] Prosecuting Genocide https://podcastaddict.com/throughline/episode/209635773 via @PodcastAddict
Economics dictates a lot.
On Saturday I was not watching news feeds. I did not know that USA has started an attack on Iran. I found out just in the evening when my wife told me. If she did not tell me, I would… Read More »Not Knowing
It is not great powers competing, it is Game of Thrones.
World is changing rapidly and what is true today won’t be so in a few decades. “It’s difficult to state just how stark and catastrophic of a collapse this is. The number of births in China fell by 17% in… Read More »Let’s save the human species!
New Rome is in trouble. “Empires do not end because they want to. They end because the numbers leave no alternative.” https://nitishastra.substack.com/p/how-debt-bankrupted-the-british-empire
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