Stephen England

I am looking for solid resources on the Knights Hospitaller covering their activities at Malta in the 16/17th centuries, particularly focusing on their corsair/anti-corsair operations. Does anyone have any recommended reading to suggest?

I feel he did a decent job with characters in the Ryan series. Agree completely re: Red Storm Rising.

Yeah, that was abundantly clear reading his book.

I don't, of course, blame him for hoping that his wife will come to share his faith. But he's not handling any of this in a mature manner.

Yeah, that's who I was hoping to hear was involved.

JD Vance tweet about his wife's religion.

It's "reek," Vance. Not "wreak."

For further context, that's the name of a Game of Thrones character you resemble.

Eh, okay. McNeill is solid, my impression of Thorpe is pretty meh.

"When valour preys on reason
It eats the sword it fights with."

~ William Shakespeare, "Antony & Cleopatra"

#poetrysky

Cat on an embankment along the Bosphorus, fishing fleet in background

A year ago today, on the shores of Bosphorus, watching with the cats of Istanbul as the fishing fleet came back in with the dawn.

Interesting. Who do they have onboard from Black Library?

Your daily reminder that 2025 was the we decided to speedrun "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"

Is anyone actually putting in the work to build out the world of Trench Crusade? I've come across a few stray YT videos, but beyond that I'm really not familiar with what's out there for the setting.

Heck, my grandparents' best friends were "aunt" and "uncle" to me all through my childhood and I was in my teens before I fully registered that this wasn't strictly *true* (And I still called them that until they both passed). Similarly, I'm "uncle" to a friend's kids.

"Be not offended: I speak not as in absolute fear of you.

I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;

It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds. . ."

~ William Shakespeare, "Macbeth"

#poetrysky

I would ask "what could possibly go wrong?", but I see it's already busy whitewashing war crimes, so. . .

Making my review debut on @spybrary.bsky.social today with my thoughts on David McCloskey's latest thriller. Brilliant read, I can't recommend it highly enough.

spybrary.com/the-persian-...

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

I too want to see Dogs of War--I was never into tabletop, but everything I've learned about them seems cool.

I've still had some good times with it, and I'll no doubt play it some more if they can get some decent fixes implemented. It's just been an utter head scratcher to figure out what corporate is doing.

Russia’s Grain Smuggling Fleet Continues Undeterred - bellingcat Bellingcat has identified yet another Russian-flagged vessel exporting grain from occupied Crimea to Houthi-controlled Yemen.

Another Russian ship has been added to the grain smuggling fleet, captured on camera and on satellite imagery, evading sanctions to deliver grain from occupied Crimea to Houthi-controlled Yemen. Follow its covert journey here: www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/10...

his coworker justin bronk reached roughly the same conclusion this summer too. drones will be a tool in future wars but future wars will not be drone wars

I would love to know how she continues to get away with this slapdash approach to "research," but we live in a world where some people consider Bill O'Reilly a historian, so I suppose some questions answer themselves.

At one point, I uninstalled it and went back to playing Game II. The quality of experience was like night and day.

Eh, it was fun but buggy on launch, has gotten buggier as things have gone along, to the point where factions have stayed unplayable for months, and whereas we had new content dropping 2-3 times a year for the second game, a DLC planned for TW:WHIII for last spring *may* come out in December.

Watching one of my long-time favorite companies (Creative Assembly) turn the closing title of their wildly successful Warhammer Fantasy trilogy into a slow-motion trainwreck has been instructive.

They watched the *trailer* for Sicario. 😏

Valid point!

Many focusing on the hubristic blasphemy of “we’re saving God”—and fair enough—but also, Kaepernick?

All he did was exercise his 1A right to expression in a calm, quiet, unobtrusive way. And he last played Jan. 1, 2017!

How lacking in real problems that this was ever a grievance, let alone still.

A tweet by Theo Nash, which reads, "The problem is that (almost) no one, at least in the humanities, is able to produce ‘new knowledge’ at anything like the rate expected. So scholars grasp at faddish trends and voguish theories to publish books that seem exciting in the moment but have no enduring value."

Maybe this is simply a difference in the expected 'rate' of knew knowledge, but this take puzzles me, because there's quite a bit of new data and studies needing to be done that I can see pretty easily in Roman history.

Knowledge creation steady and clearly visible.

"You must contend with all your might against the foe; but it must be not with physical force but with that spiritual charity which is never overcome."

~ Jerome of Stridon, "Letters"

Soldiers at the Bass Pro Shops pyramid in Memphis, TN.

> It is 2025 BC. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis

> It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis