High on my list of esoteric forgotten things that I still love is ’70s and ’80s electric jazz fusion and the more esoteric reaches of prog rock adjacent to it. Return To Forever, Brand X, Billy Cobham, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, that sort of thing. Also its modern descendants like Planet X and Protocol.
I’ve spent years trying to encourage the YouTube algorithm to find me more stuff like this. Fairly successfully, until recently it seems all I can get is repeats of stuff I’ve already heard.
Could be the algorithm is stuck in a rut and underweighting novelty. Or it could be that YouTube’s coverage is inadequate. But this morning the truly horrifying possibility occurred to me. That YouTube’s coverage is complete, and …
Maybe … maybe I’ve heard it all.
ESR, Twitter, 2025-04-14.
July 15, 2025
QotD: Music on YouTube
July 14, 2025
The “War of the Sexes” is over … men now expected to surrender and go back to doing what women want
The more I read about the state of male-female interactions on the dating scene (such as it is), the more grateful I am that I’m decades out of that killing ground. Male survivors have clearly decided that the risks are far greater than the potential relationship rewards and individually withdrawn in large enough numbers that the “dating scene” is a shadow of what it once was in the pre-swipe-left era. Janice Fiamengo responds to a “men, come back!” plea from Rachel Drucker in the New York Times:
The question of where men have gone, in the title of Rachel Drucker’s New York Times op/ed, is surely disingenuous. Drucker thinks she knows: men have disappeared into social media posting, digital lurking, uncommitted sexting, and porn. Allegedly afraid of emotional intimacy, they are no longer “showing up” for women. Drucker addresses men directly, diagnosing their feelings: “You’ve retreated — not into malice, but into something softer and harder all at once: Avoidance. Exhaustion. Disrepair.”
Well, maybe. Maybe not.
Drucker’s article is part social lament, part personal ad, and like many statements by modern women about men, it is notable for its presumption. Drucker seems to think she can call off the sex war simply by saying she’s had enough. Men were never supposed to stop being available to women. Drucker mourns a lost time when men “asked questions and waited for the answers”, when they “listened — really listened — when a woman spoke”. It doesn’t seem to occur that men have been listening and have heard women’s messages, loud and clear.
Drucker goes so far as to express nostalgia for a time of male sexual pursuit, when having a woman on one’s arm was a way for a man to prove himself and impress other men. “It wasn’t always healthy”, she says in one of her many massive understatements (ignoring the barrage of condemnation leveled against such men) “but it meant that men had to show up and put in some effort”.
Drucker produces no evidence of men’s lack of effort, and it is not clear that her personal anecdotes — all culled, it seems, from her monied Chicago milieu — are representative. I know many men, including young men, who are still willing to pursue romantic relationships with women; many put in a lot of time and thought. But it does ring true that at least some portion of men are far more wary than in previous eras, unwilling to risk the potential hell of divorce or of a false accusation in a culture that believes women and belittles men.
Some men have simply come to the conclusion that modern women aren’t, in general, all that likable — neither marriage material nor viable candidates for motherhood.
As far as female pronouncements about men go, Drucker’s piece is not the worst. It does not hector or accuse (at least, not much), and Drucker expresses some genuine liking for men. But it’s not clear how much that is worth when she is so oblivious to men’s points of view and unaware that at least some of the onus for re-engaging men must fall on women. Drucker’s blind spots and unearned certainty turn her wistful dirge into a tone-deaf commentary on contemporary sexual politics.
The article begins with a restaurant, where Drucker notes the absence of men. There are women together, doing what women do, but almost no coupled men. And in her own life, Drucker notes, there has been retreat. It isn’t just her, she’s sure: it’s a collective act in which men are removing themselves from women’s lives, no longer “trying to connect”.
Drucker is part of the problem, though she doesn’t seem to recognize it. She admits that she “spent over a decade” working for Playboy and more hardcore sites to get men addicted to digital pornography. Part of her job was “to understand exactly what it took to get a man to pay for content he could easily find for free”. She does not seem to regret this work or recognize its damage; on the contrary, she exults that it helped her understand men’s deepest selves.
Her characterization is simplistic and contemptuous: “We knew what worked”, she boasts. “It wasn’t intimacy. It wasn’t mutuality. It was access to stimulation — clean, fast and frictionless. In that world, there’s no need for conversation. No effort. No curiosity. No reciprocity.”
If this is what men fundamentally are to Drucker — sex bots without emotion or desire for reciprocity — why is she so disappointed that they are no longer around?
Day Seven – Ghost Division! – Ten Days in Sedan
World War Two
Published 13 Jul 2025May 16 1940: Our WW2 Blitzkrieg documentary, Ten Days in Sedan, continues as Winston Churchill arrives in Paris. The Prime Minister still has hope but he’s shocked to see the French burning documents and preparing to evacuate. Meanwhile French and German tanks slug it out in Stonne, Guderian reaches Montcornet, and Rommel leads his Ghost Division far behind French lines.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:58 Recap
01:38 Stonne
03:05 Panzers Drive West
07:02 New French Plan
12:23 Rundstedt’s Halt Order
16:06 Ghost Division
21:53 Churchill in Paris
(more…)
Emperor Hadrian and Antinous the God
Reginald Godwyn reviews a new monograph from Dr. Sean Gabb:
Sean Gabb’s The Cult of Antinous is not a hagiography. It is something better: a quiet, erudite demolition of pious lies from both the ancient and modern world. The lecture-turned-book is a brisk, sardonic tour through the most decadent cult of the Roman world, and one of its most effective. The boy died, yes — but what followed was a miracle of political opportunism and spiritual success. Gabb does not flinch from the disturbing parts. Nor does he genuflect before the fashionably uncritical idolatry now surrounding Antinous as gay icon. This is not a work of celebration. It is a work of historical thought, dressed as a lecture and sharpened with scepticism.
It begins, as it must, with a photograph of Hadrian and Antinous — stone fragments now housed in the British Museum, staring out from beneath museum glass and centuries of self-serving speculation. “Hadrian is on the left”, Gabb says, “Antinous on the right”. But from then on, it is the boy — not the emperor — who takes centre stage. The story is simple enough. Antinous was a Bithynian youth, met Hadrian at around age twelve, became his lover, travelled with him, and died in the Nile under suspicious circumstances. Hadrian made him a god. Cities were built. Statues were raised. Coins were minted. Shrines were erected. And the worship spread quickly and widely—and in ways that make some modern historians uncomfortable.
Gabb’s treatment of all this is not exactly kind, but it is always fair. He reminds us that, when it comes to Antinous, we know almost nothing. The written sources are sparse: Dio Cassius gives a few lines; the Historia Augusta offers rumour. Most of what we “know” is based on “could have”, “may have”, “might have”. And yet on this we have built dissertations, operas, novels, and now neopagan blogs filled with inverted pentagrams and airbrushed torsos. Gabb is not impressed. His repeated refrain is “castle of supposition”. And rightly so. Royston Lambert, he notes, was especially fond of these castles.
But for all that, there is a real story here. Gabb walks us through the ancient views of sex, pausing only to make the necessary disclaimer for his mixed audience of Chinese undergraduates and English middle class language students:
Please be aware that other civilisations frequently have or had views of sexual propriety different from our own. This lecture will discuss, and sometimes show depictions of, sexual relationships between adults and persons somewhat below the present age of consent. Some of these relationships involve disparities of legal status. Though not recommended for imitation in modern England, such relationships are nowhere explicitly condemned. The lecture will also not avoid language that many may consider indelicate or obscene.
What follows is a lesson in ancient sexual economics. Among Greeks, boy-love was structured: older men pursued beautiful adolescent boys, usually between 12 and 17, who were supposed to receive but not enjoy. The Romans were less sentimental: they cared only who did the penetrating. “To use was fine. To be used was shameful.” Gabb’s phrasing here is withering, but accurate. There is no anachronistic moralising — just the dry, clinical reconstruction of a culture with different priorities.
Tiberius: Rome’s Most Underrated Emperor?
The Rest Is History
Published 31 Jan 2025The Roman historian Suetonius’ biography of the controversial Emperor Tiberius is one of his most shocking and salacious, condemning Tiberius to infamy. But was Tiberius really the perverted monster Suetonius would have us believe? Born of Rome’s most illustrious family and a sacred bloodline — the Claudians — Tiberius’ mother Livia was unceremoniously taken from his father while she carried him, to marry the great Emperor Augustus. So it was that Tiberius grew up in the very heart of imperial power, proving himself intelligent, and a superb military commander. But, following the unforeseen deaths of Augustus’ young heirs, he found himself primed to become the next Caesar of Rome. The reign that ensued would prove largely peaceful, prosperous and stable, though Tiberius himself was increasingly plagued by paranoia and fear. While the last of Augustus’ bloodline were wiped out one by one, he retired to Capri, much to the horror of the Roman people. Before long, rumours had begun percolating of the heinous deeds, sick proclivities, and vile abominations Tiberius was practicing on his pleasure island …
Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss Tiberius, the impressive though widely lambasted second emperor of Rome. What is the truth behind the sordid myths and mysteries of his reign …?
00:00 The bad emperor?
06:45 Was he depraved?
08:30 The Roman version of the Kennedys
13:29 How he became the heir
16:50 The greatest general of his generation
17:53 Tiberius is manoeuvred into the succession
21:23 Tiberius the emperor
(more…)
QotD: The inevitable endgame of power-for-power’s-sake
I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.
Or, if you prefer it in slightly more modern English:
Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power … Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
That’s the bedrock of human existence, right there: Power. Everything that isn’t Power is nothing, until Power requires it; when it’s no longer useful to Power, it becomes nothing again. Nietzsche would’ve understood O’Brien perfectly.
But please note: Human existence.
Human — animals aren’t like that. They can’t be. They’re not mere automata, as Descartes would have it, but they’re obviously not self-conscious, either. All that Green hooey about animals living in harmony with their environment is, nonetheless, true. They can’t do any other, because they’re animals. Only humans can see that extra step ahead, all the potential dangers that will never let him rest content with the power he has.
And existence – not life, existence. The world Hobbes and O’Brien describe with such terrifying eloquence isn’t life, it’s mere existence. O’Brien couldn’t see where his philosophy led, but Hobbes could:
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
This is the end of power-for-power’s-sake. O’Brien was wrong about that boot stomping on a human face, forever. The “state of nature” doesn’t actually exist IN nature, but Big Brother’s Party created it artificially.
But for such a creation to continue, as O’Brien shows, it must be completely static … and that’s impossible. The opposite of Power is Entropy, and Entropy always wins in the end.
Severian, “Salute the Hat”, Founding Questions, 2021-12-07.
July 13, 2025
Tiger II: What was the point?
The folks at the Tank Museum at Bovington put together a video comparing the Tiger II to the earlier Tiger I and the typical allied tanks they faced on the battlefield. On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, historian Jonathan Ware posted a long thread about both the topics the Tank Museum’s video raised and where he feels they should have added more context:
And here’s the Tank Museum’s video itself:
FEATURING FOOTAGE OF TIGER I AND TIGER II RUNNING TOGETHER AT TANKFEST 2025 – with thanks to Musée des Blindés and World of Tanks.
It’s absurdly large, heavy, expensive, and difficult to build. So, you have to ask; what is the point of Tiger II when you already have the biggest, toughest and meanest beast on the block – Tiger I.
Whilst the Tiger I has maintained a legendary status since its appearance on the battlefield, there were many aspects of this tank’s design that were pretty much dead ends. The turret couldn’t be resized to fit a more powerful gun. And adding extra weight in the form of armour would put a huge amount of strain on the internal mechanics. So, a new tank was needed to ensure the German’s could maintain their edge against Allied armour.
Enter the Tiger II, otherwise known as the King Tiger. Heavily armed, the Tiger II could take on any Allied tanks that it faced, with its KwK 43 able to penetrate the frontal armour of a Sherman at 1,800m. Its thick sloped armour was incredibly dependable, and no Allied tank commander would willingly engage a Tiger II in a head-to-head fight.
The Tiger II’s battlefield presence came at a significant cost. A single Tiger II could take up to 400,000 hours to build at a price of RM 321,500 – up to 100,000 more hours than a Tiger I, and over twice the cost of a Panther. A while the Allies were churning out tanks that were “good enough”, the Germans were committed to quality and ensuring their tanks would always have the edge against enemy armour.
The Tiger II has often been described as a tactical success for its battlefield prowess, but a strategic failure for being so resource-hungry, expensive and relatively low in number. Given their cost, it forces us to question whether the German war machine should have dropped Tigers altogether in favour producing tanks that were cheaper and easier to build
00:00 | Introduction
00:55 | Durchbruchswagen
06:15 | Tiger I vs Tiger II
12:52 | The Numbers Game
17:34 | Was Tiger II a Success?This video features archive footage courtesy of British Pathé.
In this film, Chris Copson breaks down the differences between two legendary tanks – the Tiger I and Tiger II. Whilst Tiger I was an impressive tank, certain areas of its design were an evolutionary dead-end. Its boxy turret couldn’t be enlarged to fit a bigger gun, and the hull couldn’t be up armoured without adding stress to the drive train. So, Tiger II ordered in 1943, including even thicker, sloped armour and a much more destructive gun. With mixed success on the battlefield, difficulties in maintaining its complex mechanics and reliance on dwindling supply lines, the Tiger II ended up being a tactic success, but a strategic failure.
Want to learn more about the Tiger I and Tiger II? Here are some of the sources we used to make this film:
Panzer Tracts No.23 – Panzer Production from 1933 to 1945 by Thomas Jentz and Hilary Doyle, 2011
Germany’s Tiger Tanks, DW to Tiger I: Design, Production and Modifications by Thomas Jentz and Hilary Doyle, 2000
Germany’s Tiger Tanks, VK45.02 to Tiger II: Design, Production and Modifications by Thomas Jentz and Hilary Doyle, 1997
Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two, Revised Edition by Peter Chamberlain and Hilary Doyle, 1993
Tigerfibel. English translation by The Tank Museum, 2022
Panther and its Variants by Walter Spielberger, 1978
Armored Champion: The Top Tanks of World War II by Steven Zaloga, 2015
www.tankarchives.com
www.forum.axishistory.com
www.achtungpanzer.com
www.feldgrau.net
Q&A: Finland and Finnish Small Arms (From Berdan to New Sako AR)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Feb 2025Today’s Q&A is brought to you by the fine folks at Patreon!
I figured that Finland would be a good subject for this month’s Q&A, as I am visiting the country to shoot Finnish Brutality this month. In fact, this video was filmed during the trip (the match took place last weekend, and its video coverage will be coming soon!).
00:39 – Development of the Suomi and PPSh-41 submachine guns
03:24 – Oldest guns used in Finnish Independence War
04:40 – Biggest strength and weakness of the Suomi
06:43 – Soviet use of captured Suomis?
08:52 – Finnish Maxim guns
11:41 – Finnish alcohol
17:05 – Finnish small arms that could have been globally popular but weren’t?
20:04 – Benefits of a small invaded country using the same weapons as its invader?
23:07 – Favorite and least favorite Finnish customs?
25:57 – Finnish Mosin Nagant book by Matt DiRisio
27:26 – Sisu movie
28:28 – Are the Finns masters of improving other peoples’ guns?
30:08 – Pre-independence Finnish arms production
31:47 – Shower beer or sauna beer?
32:20 – Why so few RK95 rifles made, and RK95 vs RK62M?
35:35 – Swedish Mausers in Finland
37:54 – Commercial Sako rifles before and after Beretta bought Sako
39:19 – Finnish gun laws, specifically CCW
40:58 – Interlude: Finnish Brutality 2025 match update w/ Jari Laine
42:24 – Did Finland improve the PKM and SVD like they did the AK and Mosin?
44:57 – 7.62x54R vs 7.62x53R
47:56 – Thoughts on new Sako AR for Swedish and Finnish militaries
(more…)
QotD: The ever-elusive perfect future (maybe we can get there with more blood spilled…)
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2020-06-15.
July 12, 2025
Noah Smith on how surprisingly well free market policies are working in Argentina
In the headline, you should read the unstated “surprising to far too many mainstream economists and political commentators”, but full credit to Noah Smith for admitting that Milei’s radical agenda has started to make life much better for ordinary Argentinians:
Javier Milei at CPAC in National Harbor, Maryland 20 February, 2025.
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.
So to be clear, when I say that criticism of free markets has been overdone, I’m partly talking to myself. A couple of months ago, horrified by Trump’s tariff policies, I wrote an apology to libertarians, admitting that I had failed to see the political usefulness of their project in terms of maintaining economic sanity on the Right.
But it’s not just the political benefits of free markets that have been undersold; I think the purely economic advantages are also too often ignored.
Exhibit A is Javier Milei’s track record in Argentina. A year and a half ago, when Milei was elected President of Argentina, a bunch of left-wing economists warned darkly that his radical free-market program would lead to economic devastation:
The election of the radical rightwing economist Javier Milei as president of Argentina would probably inflict further economic “devastation” and social chaos on the South American country, a group of more than 100 leading economists has warned … [S]ignatories include influential economists such as France’s Thomas Piketty, India’s Jayati Ghosh, the Serbian-American Branko Milanović and Colombia’s former finance minister José Antonio Ocampo …
The letter said Milei’s proposals – while presented as “a radical departure from traditional economic thinking” – were actually “rooted in laissez-faire economics” and “fraught with risks that make them potentially very harmful for the Argentine economy and the Argentine people” … [T]he economists warned that “a major reduction in government spending would increase already high levels of poverty and inequality, and could result in significantly increased social tensions and conflict.”
“Javier Milei’s dollarization and fiscal austerity proposals overlook the complexities of modern economies, ignore lessons from historical crises, and open the door for accentuating already severe inequalities,” they wrote.
Milei won anyway. His first big policy, and the one the lefty economists fretted about the most, was deep fiscal austerity. Argentina’s long-standing economic model, created by dictator Juan Peron in the 1950s, involved a large and complex array of public works projects and subsidies for various consumer goods like energy and transportation. Milei slashed many of these, as well as cutting pensions, civil service employment, and transfers to provinces. Overall, he cut public spending by about 31%, resulting in a near-total elimination of Argentina’s chronic budget deficit:
The point of all this cutting wasn’t just to remove state intervention in the economy — it was to stop inflation. Basically, macroeconomic theory says that if deficits are high and persistent enough, then they convince everyone that the government will eventually inflate its debt away by printing money (which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy). And most or all countries that experience hyperinflation end up escaping it only when they get their fiscal house in order. Perpetual deficits were part of Argentina’s “Peronist” system, and it’s probably a good bet that this has been responsible for the periodic bouts of hyperinflation that it experiences.
[…]
But still, Milei’s success so far should make us somewhat more confident about free-market policies — especially when we evaluate them against the new socialist ideas that have been gaining currency in the U.S. In the past, socialists and other left-leaning economic thinkers advocated central planning and nationalization of industry; in recent years, they have taken to calling for expansion of the state through fiscal policy, mixing macroeconomic justifications with micro. At all times, they call for deficit-financed expansion of social programs; when fiscal hawks want to tame the deficits, the lefties warn of the short-term macroeconomic harms of austerity.
If you’re always more terrified of austerity than you are of deficits, expansion of the state — and of the deficit — becomes a one-way ratchet. This approach is very different than Keynesianism, which advocates stimulus to overcome recessions, followed by austerity during boom times. You’ll recognize it as bearing a distinct similarity to MMT; that pseudo-theory has largely fallen out of favor, but there are plenty of more respectable progressive types whose ideas nonetheless have a lot of this “macroleftist” flavor.
G.K. Chesterton on the dangers of cultural surrender
Andrew Doyle on Chesterton’s novel The Flying Inn (1914) which warned against the risks of unfettered immigration and what came to be known as “multiculturalism”:
The creed of multiculturalism has made it difficult to discuss the impact of unfettered immigration. The far right have always opposed it on the basis of racial prejudice and ethno-jingoism. Yet there are authentically liberal concerns to be raised about the problem of political Islam and how all discussions are stifled through accusations of “Islamophobia”. What happens when an essentially anti-democratic ideology is allowed to flourish within a society that otherwise depends upon democratic norms?
To help illuminate the troubles of our time, and in particular the perverted form of liberalism that ensures its own undoing, we might return to G. K. Chesterton’s The Flying Inn (1914), a whimsical novel about a future Islamic England. With today’s proliferation of sharia courts and the government’s determination to criminalise blasphemy against Islam by legislative stealth, one might call Chesterton’s novel prescient.
The key figure is Lord Ivywood, a politician who becomes enamoured of Misysra Ammon, an Islamic cleric who styles himself as the “Prophet of the Moon”. Ivywood is an exemplar of the zealotry of the progressive reformer, a prototype of the virtue-signaller, one who “did not care for dogs” but “cared for the Cause of Dogs”. He first introduces Ammon at a private event at the “Society of Simple Souls”, where he is able to preach his creed to the gullible bons vivants of the upper middle-class. The collective thrill of the crowd is pure orientalism, and they are easily mesmerised by Ivywood’s panegyrics.
Inevitably, Ivywood’s submission to Islam is framed in syncretic terms; not so much surrender as a beautiful fusion. “The East and the West are one”, Ivywood says. “The East is no longer East nor the West West; for a small isthmus has been broken, and the Atlantic and Pacific are a single sea.” Islam, he claims, is the “religion of progress”, a phrase that anticipates today’s oft-echoed slogan of Islam as the “religion of peace”.
This kind of doublespeak is ubiquitous among those activists who routinely strive to force the square peg of Islamic doctrine into the round hole of woke politics. This is exemplified by articles such as “Prophet Muhammed was an intersectional feminist” in Muslim Girl magazine, a piece that includes the inane claim that the founder of the religion “wanted to generate as much inclusivity as possible”. In similarly convoluted terms, Ammon in The Flying Inn argues that there is nothing more feminist than a harem. “What is the common objection our worthy enemies make against our polygamy?” he asks. “That it is disdainful of the womanhood. But how can this be so, my friends, when it allows the womanhood to be present in so large numbers?”
Today’s readers will recognise Chesterton’s depiction of the tendency of liberal politicians to kowtow to the demands of Islamic clerics in a bid to avoid causing offence. At one point, Ivywood explains that he has tabled the “Ballot Paper Amendment Act” in parliament to allow citizens to vote with a mark resembling a crescent rather than the traditional cross.
If we are to give Moslem Britain representative government, we must not make the mistake we made about the Hindoos and military organization — which led to the Mutiny. We must not ask them to make a cross on their ballot papers; for though it seems a small thing, it may offend them. So I brought in a little bill to make it optional between the old-fashioned cross and an upward curved mark that might stand for a crescent — and as it’s rather easier to make, I believe it will be generally adopted.
The main plot of The Flying Inn revolves around the innkeeper Humphrey Pump and the Irish sailor Captain Patrick Dalroy, who take it upon themselves to sell alcohol in spite of the new Islamic prohibitions in England. They find a loophole in the law that permits them to conduct their business so long as they first erect an official inn sign. And so we follow the pair as they dash from location to location, with their barrel of rum and a wheel of cheese on a donkey’s back, planting their portable sign wherever refreshment is needed.
Organizing two new divisions for the Canadian Army
To emphasize, these are just strong rumours and have not been formally announced or confirmed by the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces:
Let’s start with the major aspect of today’s rumours, restructuring. This has been a hot topic for the last few months and one I have been very hesitant to put in here due to the conflicting and volatile information.
However with plans approved in the last few weeks, as well as going though about four different people for verification, I think I’m finally in a position where I can confidently put this out there.
The new army will be centered around three [two?] divisions, broken down between the regular, reserve, and a support division. The working designation for these two new Divisions are the 6th and 7th.
The 6th Division will be comprised of:
- 1 CMBG
- 2 CMBG
- 5 CMBG
- 1x Light Infantry Regiment
- 1x Fires Brigade
- 1x Protection Brigade
- 1x Sustainment Brigade
The 7th Division will be the reserves and rangers and has been, at least in some documentation, been referred to as the “Continental Division”. I sadly don’t have much on the Seventh.
This is the info that I have as of now. I am still working on gathering more details but this is the basic structure of how the future army will look. Obviously some of you were expecting more, and hoped to see something more radical done.
Some of you will be very happy with this and how straightforward it is. It is a plan that makes sense and is within realistic expectations. As always, we take these as speculation and not as fact. Plans can change but I am fairly confident that this is the active plan.
Feeding Emperor Augustus Caesar – Handmade Roman Cheese
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 11 Feb 2025Fresh handmade cheese as Augustus might have enjoyed it with some bread and figs
City/Region: Rome
Time Period: 1st CenturyAugustus, a man meticulous about his public image and about consolidating power as the first emperor of Rome, had rather simple tastes when it came to food. Suetonius, a Roman historian from the first and second centuries, wrote in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars that Augustus “preferred the food of the common people, particularly the coarse sort of bread, small fishes, fresh, moist, hand-pressed cheese, and green figs of the second crop”.
This recipe from the first century does indeed make a fresh, moist, hand-pressed cheese that is slightly nutty and is a clear predecessor to modern mozzarella. It’s just as historically accurate if you make it with goat, sheep, or cow milk, you just need to make sure that the milk is pasteurized, not ultra-pasteurized, and that it’s non-homogenized.
Note that this recipe is vegetarian if you use vegetable rennet.
Cheese should be made of pure milk which is as fresh as possible … It should usually be curdled with rennet obtained from a lamb or a kid … and equally well with fresh sap from a fig-tree … The least amount of rennet that a pail of milk requires weighs a silver denarius … It is sprinkled with pounded salt … Some crush green pine nuts and mix them with the milk and curdle it in this way … Their method of making what we call “hand-pressed” cheese is the best-known of all: when the milk is slightly congealed in the pail and still warm, it is broken up and hot water is poured over it, and then it is shaped by hand.
— De re rustica by Columella, 1st century
QotD: Ancient empires
Unfortunately the initial problem with being farmers surrounded by hunter-gatherers who don’t understand property, is that such hunter-gatherers look at those nicely fenced grains and enclosed cows and sheep and goats as wonderfully convenient places to hunter-gather … (There is a reason the boundaries between hunter-gatherers and farmers are violent places, and all the crap written about “frontier wars” and extermination and the rest is just a shorthand for — these two cultures cannot co-exist peacefully … Nomads are different … they trade, therefore they understand property, therefore they can co-exist with farmers — though they will still raid where they can, be they Mongol or Viking!)
So farmers immediately face a law and order issue, which can only be solved if there is enough surplus available to provide a tax base that will allow an authority figure (chief, king, emperor, etc.) to employ people to provide protection. At village level that is usually a warrior caste who can keep the competition at bay, but once surplus gets to a level that allows higher tech, that will mean states or empires.
To put that in perspective, if your local community collects a surplus, and can afford a local chief/lord/king to provide protection, the resulting tax system is almost always (in recorded human cultures) based on a percentage of production. (In fact the earliest versions of written communication are almost always record keeping for crops and taxation.) This means that the local lord immediately has both the majority of excess funds locally, and a strong incentive to increase local production so his take will increase.
When I ask the average class of secondary school students what sorts of things the local lord could invest in to improve productivity, they get the idea pretty quickly. Irrigation for fields; animals for farm work; blacksmiths for tools and axles; wheelwrights; roads; bridges; mills; markets; guards; etc. This list is common to most parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America and Australasia. The only places it never develops are the very early farming communities in places like New Guinea that have no storable or taxable food items to allow such a development.
So all early farming societies that can tax — without exception — become tax based hierarchical cultures. Some are even referred to as kingdoms or empires. And they are based on the idea of keeping the farmers safe, so they can be taxed.
These early empires are all Security empires. In the Middle East they are often shown as large sprawls across the map, but such sprawls are fairly fanciful. In practice they usually refer to rich farm based river valleys, with an extended hinterland based on nomadic tribes that are trading with/employed by/or paid tribute to by the “imperial authority” simply to keep other outsiders at bay.
Traditionally they fall when their hinterland nomadic allies are not strong enough to keep outsiders at bay, or become strong enough themselves to try a bit of conquest. At which point of course the conquerors find that they have to adopt the systems of the despised lowlanders they have just conquered if they are to keep the loot coming in and the system going. (One of my favourite historical analogies is the nomadic conquerors crucifying the old king on the walls of his palace and sneering that he could watch his city burn, only for him to point out that it isn’t his city anymore, it’s their city that’s burning …)
Nigel Davies, “Types of Empires: Security, Conquest, and Trade”, rethinking history, 2020-05-02.
July 11, 2025
The 1st Canadian Infantry Division in Operation Husky, 10 July 1943
For Project 44, Nathan Kehler describes the role of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division as the western-most part of Montgomery’s 8th Army landings on the southern tip of Sicily:
In the days leading up to Operation Husky, the Canadian contingent suffered two major losses – one in leadership and one in logistics. Though the landings would ultimately succeed, these events cast a shadow over the operation before a single boot touched Sicilian soil.
The Death of General Salmon
On July 2, 1943, Major-General G.G. Salmon, commander-designate of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division for the Sicily campaign, was tragically killed when his Hudson aircraft crashed near Barnstaple, Devonshire, shortly after takeoff from Hendon Airfield. Also on board were several senior officers, including Rear-Admiral P.J. Mack, the Canadian naval force commander, and Lt.-Col. C.J. Finlay, the newly appointed senior logistics officer for the division. All were killed.
Major General Guy Simonds, commanding 1CID.
General Salmon had been hand-picked to lead Canada’s first major amphibious campaign. His death, just days before the invasion, shook the command structure. With no time to replace him formally, Major-General Guy Simonds was appointed in his place. Simonds was known for his drive, discipline, and tactical focus. The loss of Salmon meant an abrupt shift in leadership style and planning assumptions on the eve of battle.
Sinking of Canadian Troop Ships
Only days later, Canadian forces suffered another blow. Between 4–5 July, as convoys moved across the Mediterranean from North Africa toward Sicily, Axis submarines attacked Allied shipping near the Algerian coast. Three ships were torpedoed: the St. Essylt, City of Venice, and Devis.
While the first two sinkings resulted in relatively few casualties, the loss of the Devis was severe. Carrying 261 Canadian troops, the ship was hit and engulfed in fire. Fifty-two Canadians were killed, with many trapped in the holds below deck. In total, the convoy lost over 500 vehicles and 40 guns, along with critical headquarters and signals equipment. Divisional Headquarters suffered particularly heavy equipment losses, forcing last-minute improvisation in communications and command coordination.
Despite these losses, the Canadian Division adapted quickly, and the operation went forward as planned. These early setbacks, however, underscore the high cost and uncertainty of even reaching the battlefield in the Second World War.
Canadian Beaches
On 10 July 1943, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division landed in southeastern Sicily as part of Operation Husky – the Allied invasion of Europe’s “soft underbelly.” The division’s assault was split across two main beaches: “Roger” Beach to the east and “Sugar” Beach to the west of the village of Le Grotticelle. These beaches formed the right flank of the British Eighth Army’s landings.
General Simonds’ plan for the Canadians was a two-brigade front:
- The 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade would land on Roger Beach and push inland to destroy a coastal battery near Maucini, seize the Pachino airfield, and establish contact with nearby British forces around Pachino town.
- The 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade would land on Sugar Beach, clear beach defences, support the adjacent British Special Service Brigade landing on the far left, and advance north past the Pantano Longarini marshes.
- The Special Service Brigade (British Commandos) would land west of Punta Castellazzo, eliminate enemy resistance in their zone, and cover the Canadians’ western flank from elevated ground north of the marshes.
The landings were scheduled for 2:45 a.m., with Commandos hitting the shore ten minutes earlier. Objectives were clear: knock out coastal defences, secure strategic positions, and quickly link up with Allied forces to expand the beachhead.
The Landings
Despite rough seas from a storm the day before, the landings went ahead as planned in the early hours of 10 July 1943. Just after 1:00 a.m., British Commandos began landing west of the Canadian sector, encountering only light resistance. By 1:34 a.m., the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade – the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry – were heading for Sugar Beach under covering fire from naval guns, including the 15-inch guns of HMS Roberts.
Navigation errors caused the Seaforth Highlanders to land to the right of the Patricias, reversing their intended order. But the heavy surf helped carry landing craft over a false beach, and both units came ashore with minimal opposition. They quickly cleared light beach obstacles and scattered Italian machine-gun posts. By 3:00 a.m., both battalions had successfully landed and were advancing inland toward their objectives.
On Roger Beach, however, the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade faced delays. Their assault relied on DUKWs and landing craft (LCTs) arriving from Malta. When these were delayed, Brigadier Howard Graham initiated a backup plan, switching to Landing Craft Assault (LCAs). Confusion and the heavy swell caused further delay, with some units landing as late as 5:30 a.m. – nearly three hours behind schedule.
Despite the setbacks, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment and the Royal Canadian Regiment landed successfully. The Hastings had one reserve company land 5,000 yards off target in the Commando sector but regrouped without major issue. Both units met minimal resistance. The RCR encountered light shelling from the Maucini battery, but naval gunfire quickly silenced it.
By 6:45 a.m., all three lead brigades had secured their assigned beachheads, with support units and armour – including Shermans from the Three Rivers Regiment – beginning to land. The 48th Highlanders of Canada and The Edmonton Regiment followed their respective brigades ashore, some accompanied by pipe bands.
Opposition during the landings was light overall. Many Italian defenders withdrew as the naval bombardment and confusion of the assault overwhelmed them. However, isolated machine-gun fire and limited artillery shelling still resulted in several Canadian casualties, primarily on Roger Beach.
The pre-invasion loss of ships to enemy submarine or air attack was taken fully into account during the weeks before the convoys set out. But as with all military planning, the enemy gets a vote too.
