Quotulatiousness

August 15, 2025

The Royal Canadian Navy should go for the GLAAM

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At True North Strategic Review, Noah returns to a familiar topic when discussing the Royal Canadian Navy’s current and future needs, in this case he recommends that the RCN goes for the GLAAM:

Photo from True North Strategic Review

One thing I neglected to fully discuss during that piece, and one that always comes back to me time and time again, is the Global Logistics, Aviation, Amphibious, Medical Support Platform from Davies, aka GLAAM.

This is quite funny, as I have had somewhat of a monopoly on the GLAAM subject, which is probably why it keeps coming back to me. I think I’m one of the few who ever brings it up, and probably the one who does most frequently.

Maybe that’s why it always surprises people when I don’t throw my support behind it. In fact, historically, like most larger vessel proposals, I have been fairly unsupportive of talks of acquisition. As I stated in my Support Ship post, I believe priorities are needed elsewhere, on getting more important things done, and given the River-class, subs, and CDC are a decade out, there is little pressing need for anything beyond the two JSS in the immediate term.

At least not to the point of urgency. I would rather see CPSP fully funded along with CDC before any talks of new vessels like GLAAM. I have always made that clear. That remains my overall position now.

However, in the last few months, I’ve been surprised to see just how much universal support the proposal has, both from the average online reader and those in the navy. There is a fairly broad love for GLAAM, even among those who would rather have JSS — there is always some love to be thrown its way, even as an “if only x and x allowed it” conversation piece.

And let it be known, I don’t dislike GLAAM at all. I think it’s cool. I think it’s unique and has capabilities I like. Even if it didn’t make it into my initial assessment, I focused on vessels a lot smaller like the Vard 7 313, that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge GLAAM and its potential.

So. What is GLAAM?

First, what is GLAAM? For those unaware, GLAAM is a proposal from Davies Shipyard for, essentially, a Multi-Functional Support Ship. One could even call it a Joint Support Ship! In fact, looking at GLAAM you can see a lot of what was originally demanded from the Joint Support Ship in its first proposals with the Afloat Logistics Support Capability (ALSC).

Of course, ALSC would evolve into the JSS project and over time drop the amphibious, RO/RO, and vast majority of HADR capabilities. Of course, that’s another conversation for another day, but a lot of GLAAM, at least to me, reminds me of that concept—and then some.

Visually and capability-wise, she is very similar to the HNLMS Karel Doorman. In fact, you could almost call them sisters. They share many design features and capabilities that take a step above the traditional Landing Platform Dock we see in other navies.

“HNLMS Karel Doorman, which GLAAM shares a striking resemblance to.”
Photo and caption from True North Strategic Review

The pen that ended WWII: Inside Field Marshal Slim’s hidden collection

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

BFBS Forces News
Published 14 Aug 2025

Ahead of VJ Day — go behind the scenes for a rare glimpse into the private collection of Field Marshal Slim’s wartime artefacts.

In this exclusive film, Tim Cooper visits Viscount Slim — grandson of the legendary Second World War commander — for an intimate look at a treasure trove of historical items. From a razor-sharp Japanese sword surrendered in 1945, to the pen that signed peace, and even the stark telegram announcing Britain’s entry into war, each item tells a powerful story.
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Ted Gioia on Hunter S. Thompson

Filed under: Books, Education, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I must admit that I got hooked on Hunter S. Thompson’s writing very early. I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in my mid-teens and it blew my mind. I couldn’t actually believe everything he wrote, but I couldn’t completely discount it either. I certainly haven’t read everything he wrote … especially his later sports commentary, but I have read most of the best-known books. On his Substack, Ted Gioia is running a three-part series on the writer and his work:

That’s Hunter Thompson. There’s always someone in control behind the wheel — even when he seems most out of control.

This hidden discipline showed up in other ways. Years later, when he ran for sheriff in Aspen or showed up in Washington, D.C. to cover an election for Rolling Stone, savvy observers soon grasped that Thompson had better instincts and organizational skills than some of the most high-powered political operatives. People rallied around him — he was always the ringleader, even going back to his rowdy childhood. And hidden behind the stoned Gonzo exterior was an ambitious strategist who could play a long term game even as he wagered extravagantly on each spin of the roulette wheel that was his life.

“I don’t think you have any idea who Hunter S. Thompson is when he drops the role of court jester,” he wrote to Kraig Juenger, a 34-year-old married woman with whom he had an affair at age 18. “First, I do not live from orgy to orgy, as I might have made you believe. I drink much less than most people think, and I think much more than most people believe.”

That wasn’t just posturing. It had to be true, merely judging by how well-read and au courant Thompson became long before his rise to fame. “His bedroom was lined with books,” later recalled his friend Ralston Steenrod, who went on to major in English at Princeton. “Where I would go home and go to sleep, Hunter would go home and read.” Another friend who went to Yale admitted that Thompson “was probably better read than any of us”.

Did he really come home from drinking binges, and open up a book? It’s hard to believe, but somehow he gave himself a world class education even while living on the bleeding edge. And in later years, Thompson proved it. When it came to literary matters, he simply knew more than most of his editors, who could boast of illustrious degrees Thompson lacked. And when covering some new subject he didn’t know, he learned fast and without slowing down a beat.

But Thompson had another unusual source of inspiration he used in creating his unique prose style. It came from writing letters, which he did constantly and crazily — sending them to friends, lovers, famous people, and total strangers. Almost from the start, he knew this was the engine room for his career; that’s why he always kept copies, even in the early days when that required messy carbon paper in the typewriter. Here in the epistolary medium he found his true authorial voice, as well as his favorite and only subject: himself.

But putting so much sound and fury into his letters came at a cost. For years, Thompson submitted articles that got rejected by newspapers and magazines — and the unhinged, brutally honest cover letters that accompanied them didn’t help. He would insult the editor, and even himself, pointing out the flaws in his own writing and character as part of his pitch.

What was he thinking? You can’t get writing gigs, or any gigs, with that kind of attitude. Except if those cover letters are so brilliant that the editor can’t put them down. And over time, his articles started resembling those feverish cover letters — a process unique in the history of literature, as far as I can tell.

When Thompson finally got his breakout job as Latin American correspondent for the National Observer (a sister publication to the Wall Street Journal in those days), he would always submit articles to editor Clifford Ridley along with a profane and unexpurgated cover letter that was often more entertaining than the story. In an extraordinary move, the newspaper actually published extracts from these cover letters as a newspaper feature.

If you’re looking for a turning point, this is it. Thompson now had the recipe, and it involved three conceptual breakthroughs:

  1. The story behind the story is the real story.
  2. The writer is now the hero of each episode.
  3. All this gets written in the style of a personal communication to the reader of the real, dirty inside stuff — straight, with no holds barred.

Why can’t you write journalism like this? In fact, a whole generation learned to do just that, mostly by imitating Hunter S. Thompson …

The History of Pancit in the Philippines

Filed under: Asia, China, Food, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 11 Mar 2025

Rice and egg noodles cooked with shrimp and pork belly, and garnished with calamansi and hard-boiled egg

City/Region: Manila
Time Period: 1919

Pancit, a distinctly Filipino dish, has its roots in the food brought and cooked by Chinese immigrants who began moving to the Philippines in significant numbers by the 15th century. Like many immigrant communities, the Chinese in the Philippines cooked and sold food from, or close to, that of their homeland.

The flavor in this dish is so wonderful and complex and I really like the texture of the thin rice noodles and thicker egg noodles. The homemade shrimp liquor not only reduces waste, but adds so much flavor.

A note on ingredients: Some of the Filipino ingredients may be hard to come by, so I’ve included some substitutions in the ingredients list that may be easier to find.

    1/8 kilo miki
    1/8 kilo bijon
    1/8 kilo pork
    25 shrimps
    3/4 cup water
    1/2 head garlic
    1 tablespoon kinchay
    1/2 onion
    1 cake bean cake
    1 hard-boiled egg
    1 tablespoon patis
    6 calamansis
    Cut the bean cake in small pieces. Peel the shrimps; pound the shells in a mortar; strain the juice and save it. Cook the pork; add the bean cake. Sauté the shrimps; when cooked, remove them and the bean cake from the carajay. Fry the onion and the garlic; remove from the carajay. Put the pork, the shrimps, and the bean cake in the carajay; add the patis; cook a few minutes. Soak the bijon in water 4 minutes. Wash the miki. Add the miki and the bijon to the mixture in the carajay; add the shrimp liquor. Cover and cook slowly 10 minutes. Serve with fried garlic and with slices of boiled egg. Cut the calamansis in halves and serve with pansit.
    — Housekeeping: A Textbook for Girls in the Public Intermediate Schools of the Philippines by Susie M. Butts, 1919

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QotD: American Puritanism

Filed under: Quotations, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The American, in other words, thinks that the sinner has no rights that any one is bound to respect, and he is prone to mistake an unsupported charge of sinning, provided it be made violently enough, for actual proof and confession.

H.L. Mencken, “Puritanism As a Literary Force”, A Book of Prefaces, 1917.

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