Trent Hone

Orchestrating Power by Nathan K. Finney | Hardcover | Cornell University Press Orchestrating Power explores how the expansion of the American state for the First World War reshaped the nature of governance. This wartime state expansion is examined through the creation, structure...

Orchestrating Power: The American Associational State in the First World War” has an official publication date of December 15, 2025!

Please pre-order a copy (40% discount: 09FORTY) & consider asking your local or university library to order a copy!

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

One of the things that doesn't come out in the soundbites but does in the full speech is Hegseth's repeated, explicit emphasis on viewing problems from the perspective of an E-6 or O-3, wholly unaware (as a bad O-4) that the job of the 0-7s to O-10s in front of him is quite different.

as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.

This was a great listen. I really appreciate the perspective @sifill.bsky.social brought.

Books

More books.

Open til 8pm. Furloughed folks get 10% off.

Something’s about his posture and expression feels extremely relatable to me.

I second this perspective.

As a long-time fan of blue, I love this!

I thought about this just this morning!

A thesis of my current project could be succinctly stated as “bureaucracy is good, actually.” More specifically, the collaborative decision making process of the CCS, coupled with the civilian administration of the U.S. and Great Britain were far more important than any single individual.

Just a heads up that Chris and I will be hanging out in a YouTube livestream tomorrow to just chat about WW2 aviation and whatever else. There isn't a concrete time yet, but probably around midday mountain time (early evening in the UK). I'll be sure to post when it goes live!

This is amazing! As a child, I also imagined what this might be like (think I saw drawings in a book). Never thought I’d see video.

"Trump's Argentina bailout" just start saying that over and over again. Something goes wrong in the economy? What did you expect? Trump spent all our money bailing out Argentina

Autistic traits are genetic and exist across every single human population, which means they had already evolved before Homo Sapiens migrated out of Africa. Autistic traits exist because they conferred our ancestors an evolutionary advantage due to its association with systematic thinking. 1/x

Opinion | The MAGA Movement Is Not a Debating Society

a few thoughts (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

’Tis thought, my lord, that you took bribes

the Anakin Padme meme, Anakin says he's testing and monitoring an AI system. Padme hopes he doesn't just mean he's monitoring the software bits...

Me, every day

I think it's important and useful for us, as academics, as writers, as professors, to open up the hood and pull out the parts and show our students how they fit back together sometimes, even in lower-level courses, so they see what a writing process looks like, not just a polished finish.

This is extrajudicial execution, without any clear threat to the US, no authorization from Congress, and far beyond even Article II. The military is not the president's personal hit squad.
Or wasn't, until now.

Frontispiece from "Annales Ecclesiastici Ex XII Tomis Cæsaris Baronii S. R. E. Presbyt. Card. Bibliothecarii Apostolici, in Epitomen redacti" showing a man sitting at his writing desk in 1614. The room has an opened window, flowers, and books. https://fuldig.hs-fulda.de/viewer/fullscreen/PPN494605340/7/

To all of you, writers, working the weekend shift because inspiration hit you. Do as Cesare Baronio did in his lifetime around 1600: open the window from time to time, have flowers around, have books handy, do some correspondence in between (read letters, draft letters), and write ...

#AcademicSky

An excellent essay.

It's pretty simple. You either see others as full human beings worthy of respect, autonomy and flourishing or you don't.

For a more nuanced view of the interplay of battleships, carriers, and how to integrate various platforms to enhance naval power, I recommend my Learning War. Covers the same ground but from less of a “battleships vs. carriers” perspective.

www.usni.org/press/books/...

Love these. Please keep it up.

Secretary of War (1940-1945) Henry L. Stimson. With a thick, bushy mustache. No beard. No squirrels.

I’d accept a stylish mustache.

No one has been able to invent a technological innovation that is better for learning than simply reading books and getting together in small groups to talk about them.

a large ship is floating on top of a body of water . Alt: An Iowa class battleship approaching rapidly. It is a GIF from the movie battleship.

There can be no legitimate
“Department of War” without a peer Department of the Navy.

If the 1947 National Security Act is going to be undone, it should be undone properly.