Podcasts, videos, books and tweets of the week 38

I’ve been reading drafts this week and am quite pleased. Always room to improve my content. But you can’t paint a moving train as Chris Bellamy says. At least paint it perfectly.

Here are some links and videos.

F16s to Ukraine

A nice authoritative write up of the issues, problems and solutions connected with supplying these planes to Ukraine.

You can read it or nonsense from the usual. One of whom finally visited Ukraine, a while after I did.

Read this instead of nonsense from a man who repeats ISW and MoD releases.

My position:

I've decided that Ukraine should get what it asks in hardware for without saying no like a parent to a child. Similar to my thoughts on crime of aggression tribunal, its a terrible idea I will argue against (shut up Gordon Brown) but Ukr is the victim&can choose, at the end.

How to deal with stress in any situation

Sorry, doesn’t embed. Good methods of bypassing your stress reaction. Your body and mind work in a feedback loop.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Se_YrjjnR7w?feature=share

Only tv, I’ve been watching.

I’m wary of sci-fi tv because I haven’t met a non-episodic series (the Orville, Black Mirror, New Worlds are fine) that hasn’t been cancelled on a cliff-hanger or hasn’t collapsed through the writers making nonsense up once they run out of the ideas they had in their heads for twenty years. I particularly despise the trope of forbidden, unknown knowledge that some Gandalf will reveal eventually and shadowy organisations with secrets they kill to conceal or mystical purpose. It’s always smoke and mirrors for not having any ideas or actual story arc to work with - Battlestar Galactica I’m looking at you. Which is why Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 were so good.

Been playing this, this weekend.

Not really developed compared to Rule the Waves 2, which is not surprising because this sequel started life as a DLC to the previous game. It has lots of improvements, but it’s not really a new game. If you haven’t played the previous game, then well worth the purchase, especially compared to the terrible rip off that is Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts, a game that takes everything from RTW to the extent I think it’s copyright infringing - as an IP lawyer.

It’s a fleet building game where you design ships and fleets and get to test them out in an interface reminiscent of the game Harpoon but much less advanced.

Somebody hasn’t understood Dune

“Though it would undoubtedly be an enormous change, altering how the Jihad plays out in the wake of Paul's victory could help him retain his core characteristics in the eyes of the viewer.”

Come on.

Paul Atreides is not a hero.

Paul Atreides is not Aragorn. Paul Atreides is not Luke Skywalker before Disney ruined him.

His Jihad was always going to end badly. It’s the cart of faith with the blind messiah guiding it to disaster.

Frank Herbert didn’t make a ‘mistake’.

I’m going to watch the film knowing that Paul’s victory will bring in an era of violence (Jihad), slavery (Atreides Empire) and stagnation (Leto II) much darker than any the Harkonnens could have brought.

And how exactly do you turn the Jihad into a fairy tale of benevolence without changing all of Children of Dune and Dune Messiah?

Read the book!

I try and read it every couple of years. Unlike the Lord of the Rings, you can discover new things constantly in it.

I even like the Lynch film.