Marius Hollenga

There's a great ol' documentary by John Romer called "Byzantium: the Lost Empire", he spends some time talking very lovingly about this piece. Really very good.

(It's on youtube.)

Because it is a tad obnoxious. :P

I see the ol' Fury/Generous Plunderer loop is about to be unleashed.

"Lads, we have this big shiny golden thing back home, it ain't big enough. So anything expensive that we can weld to it, bring it over, we'll pay you, in installments, after tax, maybe."

What I like is that this thing was constructed over many many years, in different places. And it's quite clear that instead of being finished organically, the Venetians just decided to loot some stuff from Constantinople when they had it sacked.

The loudest and most obnoxiously golden religious object ever produced, in all its depraved glory.

LOOK AT THAT THIIIIING!

Have been thinking about getting more tattoos. And have always wanted to do something with my longstanding fascination with the Eastern Roman empire.

Getting the Pala d'Oro as a full colour backpiece might be a bit much, mind. But I do love that (extremely loud and tacky) thing.

We're currently in the weird place where we can't get our eldest to eat so much as potato.

Meanwhile our youngest is happily munching everything from kimchi to aubergine. :p

*glances at exit polls*

Welp, that's going to be a tough cabinet formation.
Not impossible, mind.

Ja, hallo, zo werkt dat niet hè.
Als ik tegen mijn zin op PvdA/GL ga stemmen, en dat zit er dik in, dan jij ook. :p

My book 'How To Say No Emphatically In German' now available - only £9.99!

I love Modern, but I think my favourite is a good block constructed format. I think the last GP I traveled for was a Theros block constructed tournament. :D

Eldest is marching around the living room with a vague waft of a full diaper surrounding him.

@havelokthedutch.bsky.social: "Do I smell poop?"

Eldest: "Did daddy poop?"

He should go into politics, masterful deflection.

I think, judging by the three very big engines, that the 2012 boat is probably up to some mischief, that said, blowing them up is not a discussion, certainly not one that should end near "yes". :p

Throwing axes!

Downside: Children have passed their plague on to me, I feel like shit.

Upside: I've installed the Football Manager 26 beta.

There's a stomach bug running rampant at daycare, it has predictably spread to our house, too.

*gurgling in belly intensifies*

When I say Venetians, I mean Venetians ruled by Enrico Dandolo, high lord commander of the bottom line, magus of the golden contract, archpriest of the church of "money talks, we listen."

In fairness, they did invite them to come to solve a succession crisis*, promised them money, and then refused to pay.*

*Is the simple explanation.
**They were dealing with a crusade ran by a bunch of Venetians, what did they think was going to happen?

There appears to have been (at least in some quarters of the Roman establishment) the blind optimism that having a bunch of crusading hooligans camped outside the city walls was a situation to be exploited, rather than be alarmed about.

If you ever want to inject a shitshow in slow motion straight into your veins, The period April 1203 to April 1204 in the general Constantinople region takes some beating.

Or, a palace coup followed by the fourth crusade breaching the Theodosian walls.

(Looking at you, Isaac II Angelos)

Glancing at today's football results, I see that Lincoln Red Imps from Gibraltar have done a job on Lech Poznan, delightful.

Oh, yes I started this talking about how I wanted to read those books, first got distracted by the mighty T-34 medium tank, and then Operations Barbarossa and Typhoon, stupid ADHD.

Yes, gigantic encirclements and epic cockups did happen, but the Red Army fought several very succesful delaying actions, scored a few victories, and their ultimate defense of Moscow, although dreadfully costly, was tenacious and brave, in -30 celsius temperatures.

Part of the popular narrative of operation Barbarossa is that the Soviets spent the time until December '41 getting slapped around until finally stopping the Germans just short of surrounding Moscow, but that's only partly true.

I am interested in reading 7 out of 7 of these. Good score.

The first book listed will involve the mighty T34, a tank that gave the invading Axis forces fits, they had nothing that could beat it in a direct fight.

Anyway, reading those stats, I now know not to be too optimistic for the elections next week. All I need to do is show up, vote, and hope for the best.

Obviously, I'm not some naieve debutante, people that are younger than me have also been voting right wing in larger numbers than before, but not as dramatically.

And there's a significant number of voters that are 65+, that are very disciplined in actually turning up.

Just read a statistic that I'm trying to get my head around. Apparently, the average age of voters has increased by 5 years over the last 30 years, and it's now over 51.
Which might go some way to explaining the noticable shift to the right of center we've been seeing.