NULLIFICATION!

Asked to briefly summarize "that heritage foundation shit" and the best I could do was a meme: Heritage Staffer 1: "We are declaring war on anyone who sells Nazis to the community." Heritage Staffer 2: "But Heritage Staffer, I sell Nazis to the community!"

Need that copy of Soldiers and Silver? Now is a great time to buy: use the code UTXGIFTS to get 40% off the print version or 50% off the Ebook when you buy direct from the Press. More soldiers for less silver....can't beat that! utpress.utexas.edu/9781477330777/

The messages were bad but honestly what do these folks expect? "I can't imagine why you are upset with me, all I did was support sending masked, armed men into your communities to abduct your neighbors and brutalize your children." Yeah, people are going to be really angry.

I suppose my lingering off-year-election vibe is that the Dems got carried forward by a wave of anti-Trump fury at a time when pretty much all of the potential movement for Trump is down. The economy has room to fall, but not rise. ICE has space for catastrophic failure, but not notable success.

So their plan is to start cutting flights two and a half weeks before Thanksgiving. I'm sure that will go great.

I have submitted my book manuscript! And then, of course, immediately come down with a cold. I told my classes today that if I collapsed at the lectern to just leave me there so I could get a little nap.

My list, by raw playtime: TW: Warhammer 2 Rimworld CK2 Fallout 4 (huh.) HoI4 EU4 Elite: Dangerous Monster Hunter: World Skyrim Stellaris TW: Warhammer 3 Victoria 3 HOI3 Bannerlord Darktide TW: Empire Victoria II CK3 UG: Civil War Cyberpunk2077 Battle Brothers Elden Ring

Honestly, one of the great American poems. Arguably the great American poem.

it's insanely funny for people to be talking like this about New York of all places, the city with a big metal lady in the harbor holding a sign that says "we love immigrants"

LOL, naturally the NYTimes, engaging in just the most open self-parody, has a big homepage video for Ross Douthat "Mamdani's victory is less significant than you think" so you have to scroll down to see anything else, because they have to be sullen and bitter about it.

So I feel like the obvious GOP strategic choice now is, "outrage wave is real, so find a way to fold on the shutdown and give back those ACA subsidies to blunt the wave." And what they'll actually do is send ICE to invade NYC and N.Va, which will backfire spectacularly.

ah, america

LET'S COME TO TERMS WITH RUMBLING BEGINNING AT DIFFERENT TIMES IN DIFFERENT PLACES, AS BEFITS A VAST AND SPRAWLING FEDERAL STAAAAAAAAAATE

"The carriage workshop, which also had evidence of fixing horseshoes, was situated along the well-traveled Via Claudia Augusta & offered services to travelers in the 1stC CE" 🐴 www.popularmechanics.com/science/arch... NB: Romans did not have traditional horseshoes; they look more like slippers.

So I went to the war crimes store to get my exploding weapon, full of *lethally* sharp cheddar cheese and devastating incendiary jalapenos. Only in America can a person walk the streets with such a deadly weapon. Grateful for my Second Amendment right to Bear a Sandwich.

And surely you know that the use of exploding sandwiches against human beings is a war crime, pursuant to the Sandwich (Kent) annex to the St. Petersburg declaration.

The danger we face here is, to my mind, not that the typical GOP voter is a groyper, but that the cult of personality around Trump and the partisan 'red tribe' identity is so strong that they will *become* such over time as a question of group belonging.

No one did resting emperor face quite like Caracalla (photo is my own from the Baths of Diocletian).

I don't have any story that wild but Vermeule went through multiple rounds of liking something I posted on Twitter, following me, then blocking me over any criticism at all, then unblocking, repeat. Just the thinnest skinned guy imaginable.

As an aside, one of the things that continues to be striking to me is how so many of the folks excitedly building an authoritarian MAGA state don't seem to have put 2 and 2 together about how is obviously going to get long-knived the moment that state is secure.

Gonna be honest, 'take advantage of LegendofTotalWar's dissatisfaction with his current liege to pull one of the largest Total War youtubers into making Paradox content' does seem like a Crusader-Kings-esque plot (youtu.be/XdclLPe5y8s?...). Real strategy requires cunning, I guess.

Struck by the admission in this that Johnson doesn't think the GOP could ever really win a majority of voters in its current form and so relies on minoritarian rule to wield power. That is a significant - I'd argue defining - difference from the Reagan-Bush era GOP.

Sigh. My university's testing proctor system demands tests for students using the testing center to be submitted 'a business day in advance' which they've opted to define as 'before 11:59pm on the day before the business day before the exam' which doesn't seem to me to be how business days work.

"If you want a picture of the future of war, imagine a guy jumping through a flaming hoop to assuage the masculinity-anxiety of his boss - forever."

Embrace the healing power of 'and' - GWOT-era targeting, especially for drone strikes, was often excessively permissive AND it is the case that current Venezuelan boat strikes would, so far as I can tell, not have been permitted under that framework (not the least because there's no valid AUMF).

No, 3 hops was not standard signals intelligence procedure, targeting didn’t work like that, never. Stop it. You’re trivializing a major change in American military affairs.

I mean, Yasser Arafat was also a Nobel Laureate. So was Aung san Suu Kyi, who went on to run cover for Myanmar's violence against the Rohingya. Hell, in '73 they gave the prize to Henry Kissinger. So, you know, it's a little hit-or-miss.

It’s November, and like Mariah it’s time for my 248th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week to be defrosted. Add more below, share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

Nigeria - US relations in general are good, and they are one of the closer countries to the US in the region. We give them military aid and training. 250 million people. Not an ally per se but would be nothing like striking Iran or Syria or Venezuela or Somalia.

Ok this (arstechnica.com/space/2025/1...) is an amazing example of the kind of BS hype tech writing we see so much, because even I, a lowly historian, can see the Obvious Problems with 'space data centers' that the article by a journalist at a technical publication failed to ask.

The way you do this is to stop dwelling on the arguments and talk about the people who are making them. The argument is wrong and absurd, someone who raises or persistently is a traitor trying to undermine the constitutional order. The problem is media won’t take this second step.

OMG - Just got my 1st email from someone who has actually been playing De Agricultura I (as opposed to the not even prototyped yet De Agricultura II) w/ their game group online. Made my freakin' week! The idea that some interested history gamers could voluntarily play 1 of my protos -- so neat! 1/

I cannot shake the enduring dread that these idiots are eventually going to kill someone on camera in a way that causes mass civil unrest, which they will respond with violence and end up getting themselves and most of the rest of us killed in the insanity that results.

Hey, I can talk about EU5 now. It's good! It is very complex, it is complex by the standards of a Paradox game. But it also embraces a historical vision that sees a wider range of actors than just states - both people within states and people outside of them. acoup.blog/2025/10/31/m...

The book to read is James Tan’s Power and Public Finance in Rome. Which argues (among other things) that Roman taxpayers had real leverage over elites due to being taxpayers. Turning point: by 167 the empire was so profitable that direct taxation ended. Which ended that leverage.

The many monarchs of Europe, the slaver's Confederacy, the Kaiser, the Nazis, the Italian fascists, Imperial Japan and many more all assumed that because liberals value peace and human life, that they were weak and feckless and easily beaten. Go look for them now.

The author of the piece screen-shotted below is a U.S. army officer. I would contend that an officer planning for a 'post-liberal' military has betrayed their oath to "support and defend the Constitution," perjuring themselves before God and men and is as a result, unfit to serve.

I hate this for us

So, we may need @dieworkwear.bsky.social on this one, but there's something about DHS-guy's wannabe-Gestapo coat that seems like it's also a really bad fit, like it is two sizes too big or something? I mean, in addition to the problem where it is a wannabe-Gestapo coat.

Man, "it is in the public interest to be transparent about this" is a strange way to spell, "I need entirely unrealistic hype in order to pull together the next round of VC funding to keep my bloated, overvalued mess of a company running."

It would be the metaphor for our times.

Yeah, I am expecting and bracing for a future plunge on Patreon. Exits are already noticeably up, but so far balanced with new patrons. I think that balance is likely to tip and am hunkering down accordingly.

If you need to explain to an idiot why Tolkien would have despised these goons, I have already grabbed a picture of the relevant passage (and I doubt I was the first):

Instead of reading Elon Musk's BAD analysis of LOTR, why don't you read my GOOD analysis, in which I expand on some @bretdevereaux.bsky.social thoughts about how systems of magic and morality work in Middle-earth, and how they're essentially the same thing.

So, on the one hand, LOL. On the other hand: that thin red zone contains close to half of the Earth's population, which tells you something about settlement patterns.

I'm reading over @bretdevereaux.bsky.social 's awesome researched essays on Peasant lives, & it REALLY helps game design research to use a historical problem space diagram. Separates research into constituent game parts quite easily. Which is good, because that's the whole premise of my coming book!

I can’t unsee it.