"It’s not the rate of price change that’s bothering people. It’s the level. When you fill the grocery cart…you’re paying today’s sticker—not today’s sticker minus last year’s.…people don’t forget the original price shock just because the rate of change stopped rising."
Regency Cthulhu is a hoot. We’ve been using it as a periodic break from our main Call of Cthulhu game and its been wonderful.
Happy Shoulda Finished The Job Day
Happy Appomattox Day to all that celebrate
Sun Tzu (looking at a map of Iran, taking note of the mountains, deserts etc): sucks air through his teeth and declares “I’d leave that alone mate”
Oh if this is what the deal actually looks like we lost this fucking war
If you leave biscotti and espresso out for Giulio Douhet, he’ll bring you another century of misused airpower.
sindar-princeling Bilbo barely passed Old Took's record lifespan after having a supernaturally-life-extending ring for 60 years. which begs a question. what the hell did Old Took do mitsuhachiinthehive I have a theory that somewhere back up the line gandalf fucked a took. This sounds like complete crack but hear me out. The tooks are rumored to have "fairy blood" which in LOTR terms means either elves or maia. There is an ancestor who's unusually tall and many of them are noted to live unusually long lives unless they meet with illness or injury, same as the numenorians did. They don't hve extra pointy ears and elves don't have a special interest in the line. But who DOES have a special interest in looking after tooks (and bilbo who is a took on his mother's side/his adopted son frodo)? Gandalf. That dude is ALWAYS fussing over some silly little guy. He regularly brought the old took birthday presents. Back in the day some bold hobbitess decided to climb that old man and ever since then gandalf has been looking after his line of tiny crazy bastards and no one will convince me otherwise.
So my more Tolkien-minded friends how do we feel about this theory? Because I mean it makes a lot of sense…
Guys, is it good when you fire the head of the army in the middle of a war ahead of a possible controversial ground invasion? It's a thing you do if you're winning, right?
We're really doing "Imperial Japan but 10,000 times stupider," my god.
Well, I am not sure what my analysis here is worth, but here is my 7,500 word primal scream of a military historian's take on the War in Iran.
My best summary: this war is dumb as hell.
acoup.blog/2026/03/25/m...
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
- Frank Herbert, Dune (Dune #1)
I am working on a project for my friends @liberalcurrents.com so I haven't had time to research and write an article but here is another reading list. Enjoy!
I wonder at what point the US Navy gives up on reading with horror about Gallipoli and the Dardanelles and instead starts reading with mounting horror about Operation Pedestal and the Malta Convoys.
Looks like all hydrocarbon-related infrastructure in the Gulf except that directly enabling crude oil exports is now a legitimate target: gas, fertilizer, petrochemicals.
Qatar and Bahrain are the weakest links, again.
And the limits won't last. Abqaiq is going up eventually.
That is some amazing work, John!
Another gem from Reskit.
Screenshot from 1960s Japanese movie Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. A serious-looking man in a suit is explaining his latest idea. Subtitle reads 'It may sound primitive and unscientific, but through the fairies, we could ask Mothra to help.'
The latest White House thinking on the Strait of Hormuz.
Everything is bad, but at least I can focus on my dissertation chapter about how the British in 1915 didn’t have the navy to force a strait when it needed to because it spent the previous decades funding their army’s misadventures in unimportant areas that turned into expensive quagmires.
Hello Gaius my old friend
“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is Pete Hegseth”
Carl von Clausewitz, probably.
Aw, man - defending Traveller Character Creation is a hill I will die on...during character creation, most likely...
Clausewitz, pictured in his grave:
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
YOU CAN GET EVERY DISCWORLD TOME ON EBOOK FOR LESS THAN THE COST OF A SUBWAY FOOTLONG COMBO.
USUALLY GETTING EVERY SINGLE BOOK LEGALLY IS LIKE 400+
NOT.
A.
DRILL.
www.humblebundle.com/books/terry-...
