For this weeks #histbookchat, #photofriday and #booksky, I’ve just finished “London Falling” by Patrick Radden Keefe, and am just starting Eckart Frahm’s “Assyria”. “London Falling” is a very readable and moving bit of investigative journalism, a contender for best book I’ve read so far in 2026.

“Talk to me, Goose”

Pick a Bond from photos you already have on your phone

I’m sure the plague of bees at the White House is completely unrelated to this modest and tasteful development

More positive reinforcement for my decision early in life to never pursue a career that involved seafaring.

Results of this are a combination of predictable and confounding. If I was completing this from the perspective of someone in, say, the US or UK rather than Australia, my trust in institutions might be somewhat lower. findmypolitics.com?e=-9&so=-22&...

C2, manoeuvre, intelligence, fires, sustainment, protection.

Best: It’s a toss-up between Eve’s Hollywood by Eve Babitz and The First Man by Albert Camus Worst: The Lonesome Commander, ostensibly about the Commander of the British 5th Bde in the Falklands War. This had the potential to be revealing but instead was almost entirely unfounded speculation.

Slightly increase a band. Midnight Avgas

Depends how you count the Brits at Dakar or Leros, or the Japanese at Milne Bay, maybe? I remember this question came up a while ago (either on here or at the old place) and I couldn’t think of many examples of a battalion or above landing and not at least making and holding a lodgement.

How to Be a Real Man, 2026 GOP Edition: -Drink whiskey, smoke cigars, make sure it's on camera -Claim you'd kill for your kids, but barely parent -Say you could beat up a bear -Say an out-of-shape 80-year-old can beat you up -Express pants-wetting fear of cities -Be an asshole to women -Whine a lot

For this weeks #histbookchat, #photofriday and #booksky, I’m looking at a bit of sports history with “How Football Began: A global history of how the world’s football codes were born”, by Tony Collins.

I’d probably rather work for General Veers (either as a subordinate commander or on his staff) than quite a few of the senior officers I have actually worked for in real life.

MacArthur doesn’t make it out of the Philippines in 1942 (doesn’t matter whether he’s KIA or a POW). Interesting implications for: 1. Emphasis on SWPA and Philippines in the Pacific War 2. Aus - US relations and Aus civ-mil relations 3. Occupation of Japan 4. Korean War and US civ-mil relations

Mogadishu, 3 Oct 93 - Op GOTHIC SERPENT is executed perfectly, the targets are captured, no Black Hawk Down, no 18 US KIA, etc. How does this affect the Clinton administration’s approach to Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s? Is the US more interventionist?

A Tale of Two Suburbs

Platoon, but it’s set in 2007, in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle during the Surge.

Post a random cool car photo you took on another year, with no explanation.

Weaken a film title. Star Special Military Operation

post your favorite LOTR character, wrong answers only:

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.

What's most concerning to me about the emerging political realignment around "crank" and "not crank" (which, by the way, I think is materially different than edpol) is that it's far easier to become any kind of crank than a person who can discern and reject woo.

For this weeks #histbookchat, #photofriday and #booksky, I’m about to make a start on something topical. “Iran: What everyone needs to know” by Michael Axworthy

This is almost exactly the same as my relationship with Proust (if I had sold my own overpriced edition of “À la recherche du temps perdu”, that is)

Never mind the 1920s (although we ALL know the implications of that). Set it in the 2020s, you cowards, and all the little yellow bastards are working for DOGE, ICE, Palantir, or otherwise up to their necks in Trumpworld.

Art.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

…but only if it’s being done to Americans. A couple of sunk DDGs, a LHD, or even a CVN? US military families killed in missile strikes on Kadena? Strikes on the US homeland? Absolutely. But if it’s just being done to Taiwan? Or any other INDOPAC ally? Well, they’re pretty woke, you know…

The White House has just released a new photograph of JD Vance taken during his negotiations with Iran last week.

"We need to spend more on defense" folks have to reckon with the fact that we have blown colossal amounts of cash on DoD and CENTCOM's emotional support activities and the American voter does not see anything positive received in return for this spending.

Even for Hegseth, this is stupid and lazy. If you really want something bloodthirsty, vengeful or otherwise shocking there’s a lot of the Old Testament to choose from. Judges 19-21 in particular is a wild ride.

Look, if I was DJT and I was going to do an "I am Jesus" slop post, I would tell Gronk that under no circumstances should the guy I was healing have an uncanny resemblance to Jeffrey Epstein.

For this weeks #histbookchat, #photofriday and #booksky, I’m about halfway through Ben Barry’s “The Rise and Fall of the British Army 1975-2025”. Its covered late Cold War BAOR, Northern Ireland, Falklands, Gulf War and Bosnia so far. What I expect to be some Iraq/Afghan axe-grinding awaits me. 1/2

‘This account of how Mr. Trump took the United States into war is drawn from reporting for a forthcoming book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.”’ Well, of course it is. Why promptly report news of consequence when you can string along a NYT book deal instead?

📚last book you read: After Henry by Joan Didion 📚your current read: The Rise and Fall of the British Army 1975-2025 by Ben Barry 📚last book you bought: Iran: What Everyone Needs To Know by Michael Axworthy 📚next read: The People Immortal by Vasily Grossman

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

The biggest story in the world right now is that the president of the United States is a demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity. And yet most legacy media outlets are too cowardly to tell it like it is.

Damn that's crazy. Maybe if he wanted to show that white dudes had a monopoly on winning wars, he could demonstrate it first by stopping Iran from setting up a toll booth in the Strait of Hormuz.

Maybe it’s an acceptable risk if you plan on never fighting a peer with space capabilities who can threaten your space based ISR, but only plan on using your armed forces for ‘mowing the grass’ in the Middle East at the behest of Israel and whichever Gulf petrostate is lining your pockets this week.

Apart from anything else, if the US administration thinks it doesn’t need FVEY, it’s not the slightest bit interested in China or the Indo-Pacific.

Italy's commitment to boycotting World Cup's hosted by ethically immoral countries is quite impressive.

This is all true (and obvious to anyone who has closely observed the generation of US Army and USMC officers who were in Iraq over 04-08 or so), but I still don’t fully understand the white-hot hatred of Iran and Quds Force while Pakistani / ISI support of the Taliban is met with relative apathy.

The Netflix miniseries that gets made after this (A Bridge Too Far meets Black Hawk Down meets Lone Survivor meets Stalag 17 meets Argo) will be amazing content, though.

Not to mention the little detail that Singapore doesn’t have nuclear weapons, either

This Instagram post by NATO does seem like an exquisite bit of trolling. “We can defend our interests in the far north, with our E-3s that haven’t been blown in half” www.instagram.com/p/DWOyr06jVt...

Did they accidentally leave off something like “even in smallish red state cities like Missoula, Montana” Fem the end of that sentence?

“Only I am a true son of the Chicago soil who deserves to be here (unlike you interlopers who need to stay away ), having been here TEN WHOLE YEARS” is truly an amazing bit.

Trump scribbling something incoherently with a sharpie, claiming it’s a map of the Middle East strategic picture, and RFK Jr believing it, IS plausible, though.

Not convinced that this compels the Iranians to open the straits (or do anything else), and apparently everyone else is going to timidly accept the US unilaterally blockading their ships? This does seem like “the airpower crowd stupidity call it a nail and use their stupid hammer, but MY hammer…”

Seems like a high price to pay for keeping the Epstein files out of the news cycle for a couple of weeks