Richard H Brooks

Boy, this was smart insightful stuff, great combination of detail, big picture and historical parallels. Really felt I leaned something here.

Which no doubt was part of the intention.

And a note to the rest of the world: this isn't just the natural result of fighting a bigger power. Russia has consistently targeted civilian infrastructure, whereas Ukraine hasn't. There has always been a difference in morality throughout the war, just some choose to blind themselves to it.

Motivational poster, right there.

English is currently a mostly racial/ethnic identity because there is no English state for individual to affix an Enhlidh civic identity

He said exactly the same thing. In both he said he was British - "just like me". He wasn't wildly respectful in how he phrased it, but it's an identity my British Chinese wife would certainly agree. The problem is not Kisin here, it's that an English civic identity doesn't exist unlike in Scotland.

290,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq over 20 years is no small deal and a lot of the UK payment was in blood.

But ultimately, what's the point in complaining, we see the value of our investment in loyalty.

Worth noting though, the US would never get in Afghanistan today.

Every moment of every day leaving the EU and Common Market seems worse.

This Christmas season, from Vanishment.

The Lights of Wychywood

A haunting tale, set in 1920s England.

Two Girl Guides awake in a dark forest to discover their whole camp has disappeared.

One knows the secret.

Only one will escape.

Available here
open.spotify.com/episode/6UKx...

Well, thats crushingly depressing. Dark days to be an Atlanticist. However, I despait almost as much of the UK. Yes, talking responsibility, but driving through a budget that leavings its tenuous defence capacity and fiscal position on the same dispiriting path.

It's a weird time to listen to good folk like yourself. On one hand it's a great reminder of how many intelligent, committed, passionate Americans are there fighting the good fight. On the other hand, I feel on tech and defence, Europe she cut off links with this administration and get real on 🇷🇺

Now I know I'm at risk of being cast out from the Maggs presence, but normally I'm not a big superheroes guy in audio... but this does sound pretty exciting!

I've increasingly been a fan of protectionism for Europe in the digital economy. The problem is we see it like the industrial economy - you can compete with TV, car brands and the consumer gets the benefit. The social media economy are monopolies - FB is a monopoly. X only works if it is a monopoly.

Nowhere in the hysterical pile-on against the BBC in the British press has anyone mentioned that BBC News now has 77 million viewers & listeners in the US and has established itself as the second most trusted news source there.

Ever more personal relationships have been brokered and broken by remote billionaires, with undefined and unregulated agendas. Its actually a new form of totalitarianism - not controlling, as in the past - but still getting in between each social interaction.

When I was young, society was geographical. You knew where people lived, either in person or thru the phone book.

Then it became electronic, you knew close friends on FB and broader society on Twitter.

Now it's neither. FB, X etc are mediated by ads, pay-to-play algorithms. Soon it will be AI.

It blows my mind how bad X has become. Twitter was great, if flawed. It really did connect the world, but over time it developed a pile-on culture that needed changing. Musk arrives and it's now a one-way super highway for misinformation and crack-pot conspiracies. Its a staggering cultural loss.

I recently heard a Swede and Dane suggests they should renew their long history of feuds by an annual battle with Minecraft and Lego swords. It honestly seemed like such a fun idea and a proper way of dealing with history.

The thing that blow my mind on a daily basis is just how much Twitter has changed. It's unrecognisable now. Either the world is an irredeemable morass of reactionary opinion and Alice in Wonderland moral relativism or the bots have gone absolutely nuts.

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The only thing I think these discussions miss is that nearly all the West is living beyond its means in government finance and this is more acute in Europe due to an older age profile and a dearth of cheap energy. A new world order for Europe must address the miltary, energy and finance crisis.

Great episode. It fascinates me why today's alt-right doesn't much care for defence or in Farage's case why more sovereign control of the nuclear deterrent might not be attractive to an isolationist. It feels like we've replaced former extreme right miltarism with alt right gerontocracy.

This is why people are choosing not to have children.

In an almost Shakespearian twist, without the USSR to embody the authoritarian threat we must strive against, faith in the importance6 of liberalism is hollowed out and we are unable to perceive our own declining institutions, which a bitter and corrupting Russia is keen to accelerate.

I found this a fascinating concept. Maybe, if reframed, the Cold War started with Waterloo and the uneasy Concert of Europe between the liberal Atlantic and authoritarian Continental powers, but also within our minds between traditionalist commutatian impulses and more individual rules based system.

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders?

Every one hour of an audiobook takes three hours of work. You burn hours trying to drink away mouth pops, redoing too loud or too soft lines, and forgetting how to say “penguin”

I wonder whose immortality he specifically has in mind.

For summer, a haunting and powerful audio drama you won't forgot in a while. A Haunting Beyond the Lake.

Vanishment Podcast

vanishment.podbean.com/e/a-haunting...

The sad irony is that the Matrix analogy is correct. We are the feed that enables AI to continually better itself. We have given any geninuely informed consent but we're lulled by the other services the digital revolution offers.

A new bottle of ketchup in a fridge. On it is a Post-it note that reads ‘do NOT squirt this directly into your mouth Angus. Love, angus xx’

It’s a shame, really, that it had to come to this…