Wesley Livesay
@historyofthesecondworldwar.com
Creator of History of the Great War and History of the Second World War weekly history podcasts. Always ready and willing to discuss video games, Tolkien, and the Detroit Red Wings
strange we built an entire military establishment on half year rotations and significant dwell time and now that we aren't doing that things are falling apart
Patrick Chovanec@prchovanec.bsky.social · 9h agoKeeping people constantly deployed has a mounting cost. www.ms.now/news/conditi...
I have done somewhere around 650 podcast episodes. I am not going to say that they are all the greatest episodes, but when I write and record a real banger, I know it during recording. Just feels right sometimes.
"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.
I don't think this is a hot take but much like other topics about the World Wars where popular understanding has shifted greatly in the last few decades it just takes time for the Olds to find their way out of the conversations. See also: Lions led by Donkeys
Reconstructionist@unavaleable.bsky.social · 2d agohere's a hot take for US carrier commanders in WW2 Spruance > Fletcher > Halsey
Re-enactors again not beating the allegations. Market Harborough at War today, apparently. @waitmanwbeorn.com @alanallport.bsky.social @garius.bsky.social @andraswf.bsky.social
Germany has sent new ultimatums to Russia and France: the former must cease the mobilisation of its armies within 12 hours; the latter must make clear what stance it would take if war broke out between Russia and Germany. Failure to respond will lead to German mobilisation.
Fortunately there is no possible way this will be used for nefarious purposes.
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d agoNew from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...
Listen guys, all those millions of munitions we have wasted so far didn’t work but trust me the next few million will!
Shipwreck@shipwreck75.bsky.social · last wk.CENTCOM: U.S. forces began launching strikes against Iran at 8 p.m. ET today. The strikes are a powerful response to yesterday's attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces based in the Middle East.
Surprised I was not instantly struck down by lightning fired from heaven and channeled through the might and majesty of the history of the Royal Navy when I made this typo.
I’m very proud of many of my books, but this is the best yet. My co-author (and daughter) has greatly raised the standard. The story of a city that wouldn’t die. And as a bonus: order now at a discount.
Doing my roughly yearly check in on Hearts of Iron IV DLC releases and plans. Steam users have some THOUGHTS on how those DLC prices and content have evolved...and most of them are not good thoughts.
Love tracing something you see all over the internet back to an unsourced paragraph in a book from 2003. Was Gunther Prien's death personally announced to the Commons on March 21st? Did British propaganda taunt the Germans with a "Where is Prien?" campaign? The internet seems to think so.
Been thinking about Odyssey a lot today after seeing it last night (avoiding spoilers): 1. It is good, but isn't my favorite Nolan movie maybe not even top 3 2. Some all-time moments and sequences but some issues on the story side 3. Was surprised at how much I liked Holland's performance
Sir Arthur Harris the most optimistic person you will ever meet. From Hasting’s Bomber Command:
I kind of agree with this take, although I would expand it out to be the majority of the early war in North Africa. Just the Italians, British, and Germans taking turns learning how long it takes them to run out of fuel
lauren@lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 3w agoat the risk of alienating a bunch of history dad mutuals: operation crusader is boring. it's just rommel running out of gas while british tank columns get lost in the desert over and over. it was the snoozefest front
It is wild how many more sites have had to add the Cloudflare bot check over the last six months. Wandering about through journal sites on a source hunt for some future episodes and I have had to confirm I am not a robot about 12 times.
Pete Hegseth: "We need our warriors to embrace the Spartan mindset" U.S. Military: *suffers crushing defeat to the Persians*
At the beginning of the year I started doing monthly Q&A episodes. They have been some of the most fun to research and write of anything I have ever done. And so many questions arrive every month that I might have to do a few a month to catch up!
I see a lot of people dunking on this but given the Gemini-ification of Google Search is there really much of a difference between finding links on Google vs finding links through ChatGPT?
Holden Thorp@holdenthorp.bsky.social · 3w agoHi, this is Holden emerging from my Bluesky hiatus to tell everyone that when checking the links in the piece, I used ChatGPT as my search engine (does anyone use Google anymore?). The piece was written by me and edited by humans. So all the links were checked by me and again by our copyeditors.
Very excited to embark on this project! Without getting too far into the weeds just yet, it's going to be a history of American naval aviation in the Pacific (hence all the posting lately) during World War II from 1943 to 1945, told through the pilots and squadrons who flew off the carriers!
I'm Writing a Book!
What that means for the newsletter going forward and how you can help!
secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com
I think this can be fun to discuss, but this also means that we are only about a decade or two before real arguments start being made for 1914-1949 being simply one conflict and "The World War". I hope everyone is preparing for that discourse.
John C@badsocialism.bsky.social · 3w agoJonathan Fennell Defines the Second World War as 1931-1949, frames conflict around China's experience: millions of armchair historians found dead in plush leather furniture
I have what I think could be an interesting idea for a 25ish part series for the podcast. But I think it only makes sense as a conversational pod with another host. If you or someone you know has thoughts on the British government and their actions during the Phoney War period, let me know.
It has only taken 15 years (I am ashamed to admit I actually forgot I had not completed it), but here is the second part of the story of the CVB(Battle) class of US Navy aircraft carriers - the culmination of the "armour or not to armour" flight decks debate. www.armouredcarriers.com/uss-midway-d...
Armoured Aircraft Carriers
The US Navy's armoured flight deck debate produced the USS Midway (CVB) class of aircraft carrier in 1945.
armouredcarriers.com
Apple does not get enough shit for the absolute nightmare of how apps targeted at children have wildly predatory monetization. There are child targeted apps on iOS charging $20 A WEEK for disabling ads and tiny content packs. Max revenue on the first charge with the expectation is gets cancelled
I feel like I have seen 50 versions of this type of site over the last few months. Where somebody just throws an LLM at consuming public datasets (Wikipedia, Internet Archive, sometimes more structured data) and then throws more tokens at building a UI for them. waratlas.org#year=1914
War Atlas — Every Named War in Human History
Explore 5,000 years of conflict on an interactive world map. 10,584 wars, 427 empire borders with shifting frontiers, casualty estimates with sources.
waratlas.org
