There was no local police in the past. “MMORPGs and fantasy worlds alike love their ‘local village guards,’ but these societies cannot afford many full-time soldiers and the ones they can afford tend to be guarding things like castles and towns (or just, you know, hanging around the Big Man’s person), not villages. The people… Read More »Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part IIa: Mobilization without Administration

Odkedy som založil tento web, dostal som stovky žiadostí, v ktorých mi ľudia písali, kto si podľa nich zaslúži miesto v Sieni tvrďáctva a prečo. O povesti tohto muža ako nezastaviteľného zmrda, ktorý rozbíja ksichty, svedčí aj to, že za posledné štyri roky som na neho dostal zďaleka najviac žiadostí zo všetkých. Meno Patton je… Read More »George S. Patton – Generál, ktorý nepoznal ústup

Notorický psanec, ktorého neskôr celý svet poznal ako Pancha Villu, sa narodil v roku 1878 v maličkej mexickej dedine chudobným rodičom, ktorí ako nevoľníci drieli na obrovskej haciende nejakého bohatého hajzla. Keď mal len pätnásť, otec mu zomrel a on musel ísť drieť na plantáž – zbieral jahody a podobné sračky za dva centy na… Read More »Pancho Villa – Revolucionár, ktorý vtrhol do USA

Takmer každý, kto sa čo i len okrajovo motal okolo real-time stratégií, už meno Tesla počul. Všadeprítomné, neustále iskriace cievky srbského boha bleskov ničia životy digitálnych spojeneckých vojakov a rozmetávajú americké bojové stroje na súčiastky už od roku 1996, keď vyšla hra Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Prekvapivo málo ľudí však dnes pozná život a… Read More »Nikola Tesla – Najšialenejší vedec všetkých čias

People are hard to coerce by force alone. “why do these fellows feel like they must or ought to serve. A lot of historical fiction or fantasy settings fail to address this particular question or else answer it with a very crude ‘because they have to’ (that is, compulsion) but that’s not usually how this… Read More »Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part I: Why They Fight

Not the old kind. The smart one. “There’s also an impulse to do a sort of “Good Tsar, bad boyars” maneuver, where people say “it’s not the phones, it’s social media”. But this is an argument over whether guns kill people or bullets kill people. Yes, we could access social media from laptops or other… Read More »Phones Are Bad

Even famous scientist can argue badly. “The idea that the Haber-Bosch process has “brought nothing like shared prosperity” is an absolutely wild claim. Nitrogen fertilizers are so important to human existence that by the most common estimates, about half of the entire population of Earth — 3.5 billion people — is only sustained thanks to… Read More »Book review: “Power and Progress”

Is it? And why?

And is it really?

Wow.

There was not one God. “Reading a Bible translation today, the text seems to speak everywhere of a generic “God” or “the Lord”. This, however, is a linguistic illusion produced by later confessional versions, which flattened and standardised under abstract categories the distinct proper names and epithets of the oldest Hebrew codices” https://andreafontana.it/en/birth-god-israel-yahweh-el.html

Central planning does not work.

Writing the code was never the main issue. “They rant and claim the era of subscription software is finished, but they are subscribed to AI services and AI software. The amount they are paying to AI companies is far higher than the cost of Adobe, Autodesk, Canva or Maxxon applications, and the result is barely… Read More »Attack of the Vibe Coded Photoshop Clones

A good TIP.

Story how Boeing ignored their engineers to maximize share values and how it lead to several disasters are well known. I have a feeling that the same is happening with AI use nowadays at many companies. Taking risks is fine. Without it we will not advance. But taking risks without even being aware of them… Read More »AI and Boeing

Kde bolo, tam bolo, bola raz krajina menom Grécko. Možno ste o nej už počuli. Jedným z mnohých gréckych kráľovstiev bol Argos a jeho kráľ bol totálny kokot. S manželkou mali dcéru, no každý vie, že v staroveku bol kráľ, ktorý nedokázal splodiť dieťa s pindíkom, úbohý skrachovanec, ktorý nezvládol základnú úlohu skutočného chlapa. Presne… Read More »Perseus – Premožiteľ Medúzy

Od Odysea po Aenea, grécka mytológia je plná hrdinských príbehov a epických povestí o bojovníkoch, bohoch a príšerách, ktorí nakopávajú rite a robia kopu legendárnych, absurdných sračiek. Každý mýtus je plný skutkov neprekonateľnej sily a odhodlania a celé toto náboženstvo priam praská tvrďáctvom ako hnisavá rana úžasnosti. Avšak, medzi všetkými týmito vyčnievajúcimi činmi neprekonateľnej veľkosti,… Read More »Zeus – Najtvrďáckejší boh Olympu

Do not trust the hype. “These tools to make sense of a body of evidence are one of the most important developments in science over the past few decades. They have the power to identify important conclusions that would never be possible from assessing each underlying study on its own. It’s the scientific equivalent of… Read More »How to assemble science

Because cancer. “Fragile kidneys are much the same. We could have kidneys that try harder to repair themselves. That’s probably biologically possible. But it would likely mean more kidney cancer. Arguably, the question isn’t, “Why are the kidneys such fragile crap?” but rather, “Why is the liver so weirdly regenerative?”” https://dynomight.substack.com/p/liver

Live your private life. You will be happier.

Russia is weird. “How did Moscow evolve from a swampy village in the 1100s to the biggest European city with over 20M people?” https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-is-moscow-so-weird

Interesting stuff I never knew about.

Technology shapes societies. “The difficulty involved in mining and transporting tin is one reason that access to bronze weaponry remained concentrated in military and elite institutions. The average citizen still largely relied on tools made of copper, stone, bone, or wood. But just a few centuries after Kadesh, ordinary Hittite and Egyptian farmers had access… Read More »Why the Bronze Age collapsed

This. “What I’m trying to elaborate is that I don’t want the services (that I depend on) to degrade just because someone pushed AI where it didn’t belong or skipped their job in quality, security, reliability and verification.” https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/coding-is-not-solved

Having a degree does not make you smart. “Caldwell toured the country. He met the leadership and learned about their policies firsthand. But the climax of his trip was the last evening — a private audience with Pol Pot himself. Reportedly, Caldwell was “euphoric” with excitement and anticipation. Once in private, Caldwell and Pol Pot… Read More »Intellectuals are F*cking Idiots

Russians have a history of miscalculation. “The North saw this as the South drifting apart, both as a separate country and into capitalism. They didn’t want that. And now that the Americans had left, Korea was defenseless. Kim Il Sung asked Stalin for support for an invasion of the south. Stalin was hesitant, but thought:… Read More »Why Did Korea Split?

This is exactly what AI CEOs sound to me.

Information rules. “The clergy was generally educated. They knew, among other things, the local vernacular, latin, and could read. Since the commoners didn’t speak Latin anymore, they couldn’t read the Bible directly, so the clergy became gatekeepers of the relationship with God. The clergy also exclusive had access to handwritten books. They strengthened that with… Read More »Internet and Blockchain Will Kill Nation-States

Search currents matter. “And this is why sushi is the most Japanese type of food. It’s where rice meets fish: the rice from the continent, migrating from south to north through the islands, and increasing the population through rice farming in the Japanese plains; the fish from the ocean, with the nutrients moving from north… Read More »Why Is Japan So Populated Despite So Little Land?

This is crazy. “Tokyo contains 30% of Japan’s population, yet it has been the capital of Japan for less than 200 years, and had just ~60k people around 1600! Yet by 1700, it might already have been the biggest city in the world!” https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/tokyo