I got Book Four's cover from the publisher last night.
PAPERBACKS ARE UP PRESALE IS LIVE!
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I got Book Four's cover from the publisher last night.
PAPERBACKS ARE UP PRESALE IS LIVE!

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"Kill Bill"... both volumes
Once Upon a Time in the West
Superman 1978
The Original cut of Star Wars
National Treasure
I feel like I got recruited way easier than that.
Fascinated by everyone's but especially American's desire to give medieval keeps, especially in colder regions, central heating (and I think Winterfell is to blame for this trope, where, to it's defence, the hot springs were not a matter of comfort but survival wrt the deadly fantasy Winter that's not real irl), because I'm always like. okay I know they told you in middle grade that castles were all cold and drafty but like ... no also what
There's generally going to be rooms dedicated to and build for warmth, the living quarters, both for nobles and their servants. This will be the central living tower, or parts of it called a Kemenate (literally 'room with a stove'), the great hall and work spaces around the kitchen. You can put the Kemenate on top of the hall to catch the big fires' and daily living's heat through the wooden floor, but you often can't put wooden stuff on top of the kitchens (that's a fire risk). If you have the money and space, you build a whole separate comfy place for living because you don't have to stay in the most defensible part of the castle all the time. These separate living buildings are also called Kemenate and are often build from wood, cob, brick etc.
People used to wear much more clothes indoors, including while sleeping, and those clothes were much thicker and sturdier than what we largely wear today. Every time you think of how cold those stone walls are, think about everyone wearing a linen shift + two-ish layers of wool on all body parts except hands and head + stockings and shoes + some kind of head-covering. In Ye Old Middle Ages, women are probably wearing a wimple, which is kind of like a modern Hijab in terms of coverage. People wear shifts, socks, and a head-covering to bed.
I think people used to radiators also really underestimate how much a large open fire/tiled stove heats up a room. Also, middle and northern Europe (as well as parts of Northern China) had and to this day have beds and benches build into tiled and cob stoves. Those fuck.
Beds are enclosed so you stay warm in them, either by curtains, in wall niches or with wood. There's also a type of bed that's inside a chest (like a coffin) so you can stuff your stuff inside during the day and put down the lid to use it as a bench. That's also another reason for people to always sleep in groups. Depending on the era, one of the jobs of a lady's maid or a retainer might literally be warming their master's bed. In early times and among servants, people also sleep in large groups in rooms together in general even outside a farming context, often with animals like pet dogs, too, which further warms everything up.
Walls are not bare, cold stone, but covered with a layer of plaster or cob, tiles or wooden panels, sometimes layered, and believe me, this makes such a difference. Source: I lived in a Ye Olde German Farmhouse with 70 cm thick stone walls and flag stone floor and all that converted to modern flats for a while.
On top of that you hang tapestries on the wall, which are not like modern printed cloth but basically wall rugs, sometimes several inches thick, and rugs or rushes (like a light cover of hay) on the floor on top of stone, tile, wooden panelling or a cob floor cover that goes over the heave flag stone. Pillows and blankets on all sitting surfaces, often on top of panelling (in the case of benches build into the stone). The roof of a room is also tiled, panelled or plastered. Upper stories will generally have wooden floors. Stories in a tower heat each other upwards, so the nicer rooms are further up.
The inner stone walls of a castle, even if stone and very thick, will heat up a few degrees in comparison to the outside walls if the castle is continually heated/lived in, and also trap heat inside, and this will make a difference. Inner walls might also be thinner and made of wood, cob or brick. You're defending against the outside, after all.
You put stuff in the windows. Holy shit. Screens of wood, horn, cloth or leather/hide, often treated for extra insulation. Why are these fantasy castles all so drafty.
Like, idk, I know Americans especially can't pop down to their nearby castle museum to have a look around, but even with people who can and do: The castles you'll see, even the ones who aren't 'ruined' are ruins. They're stripped down. I remember touring Norman towers in England, and those places do look dire and are cold because even if they're still standing, they're ruins. It makes such a difference to get to look at a castle that is still lived in, has been inhabited until recently, or has been historically restored where these amenities are preserved. The exact amenities will depend on the era, of course, but they'll be there. The publicly accessible parts of Burg Eltz are a great example to google, especially since I promise you, you have seen this specific castle before. They have pictures on their English language website here, and the German National Geographic has a few further inside pictures here. Seeing a place like that that isn't a ruin with bare, stripped walls, nothing in the windows, no decorations and furniture etc. makes you realise that yeah actually. My characters are probably just gonna go grab a pillow if their ass is cold on the window's stone bench. Blankets are a pretty old technology, humans (elves, dwarves, whatever) can figure that one out.
From a 9th century Irish manuscript, the phrase ‘massive hangover’ (Latheirt) written in the ancient Irish text Ogham. The monk must have been having a very rough day…..
Source

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From a 9th century Irish manuscript, the phrase ‘massive hangover’ (Latheirt) written in the ancient Irish text Ogham. The monk must have been having a very rough day…..
Source
The exact translation is “ale killed us” which is somehow better
John Blanche “Harry the Hammer” original cover artwork for the first edition of Warhammer (1983) Source
Following SellswordArts on YouTube is exposing me to 'book-tok' books, and... I am concerned.
I came across some of the BookTok stuff just through other YouTubers kind of exposing it, and I took a look at some of it, and that's kind of why I started my podcast. Well, not the only reason why, but I would say a big factor in why I started my podcast was BookTok. And now I'm looking at it and going, well, what I'm doing is better than that, I think, but yeah, most of it's just pure insanity.
It comes across as fantasy by people who don't really care that much about fantasy, world-building by people who can't really be bothered doing world-building, fight scenes by people who don't understand fight scenes... and all told, it's really just an overly complicated way to publish smut. Which has male characters that in no way at all come across as likeable.
And the worst part is, it's choking the wider fantasy genre like a weed. I swear, shit's either straight up romantasy, nu-D&D cutesy shit, or generic gamified isekai #1200000000.
Fortunately, I have a veritable ocean of older shit to keep me going, and the occasional current author who still writes styles I like.
I would hesitate to say it's 'choking' the genre... but it is a symptom of the wider problem for fantasy that there's less freak authors, male and female, that aren't just wannabe smut/sexual abuse writers or D&D fans that thought since they watched Game of Thrones and the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and read Percy Jackson that they think they can do the same.
I just envy the money some of those fuckers make.
Jake McNiece enlisted on September 1, 1942 and was assigned to the demolition saboteur section of what was then the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. This section became the known as the "Filthy Thirteen," and was first led by Lt. Charles Mellen, who was killed in action on June 6, 1944, during the Invasion of Normandy. Following Mellen's death, Private McNiece led the unit.
McNiece's deliberate disobedience and disrespect during training prevented him from being promoted past Private when most Paratroopers were promoted to Private First Class after 30 days. He earned his famous nickname, "McNasty," from the men in his unit due to his unorthodox, hell-raising leadership style. McNiece would act as section sergeant and first sergeant through various missions. His first sergeant and company commanders knew he was the man the regiment could count on during combat. His escapades are documented in his words in The Filthy Thirteen, Fighting With the Filthy Thirteen, and War Paint: The Filthy Thirteen Jump Into Normandy.
McNiece went on to make a total of four combat jumps, the first as part of the Invasion of Normandy in 1944. In the same year he jumped as part of Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands, and at the Siege of Bastogne, part of the larger Battle of the Bulge. During fighting in the Netherlands, he acted as the demolition platoon sergeant.
He would volunteer for pathfinder training, then in December, his pathfinder stick was called upon to jump into Bastogne to guide in resupply drops. His last jump was on 13 February 1945, near Prüm, Germany to resupply the cut-off 90th Infantry Division. In recognition of his natural leadership abilities, he ended the war as the acting first sergeant for Headquarters Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. McNiece would be kicked out of the military in February 1946 after one last fight with MP’s.
I met the old guy once. Toccoa, 2004.

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Cette image est tirée du film muet danois "Pax æterna" (ou Peace on Earth), réalisé par Holger-Madsen et sorti en 1917.
Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the wo
anyway yeah DELETE YOUR FUCKING ADVERTISING IDS
Android:
Settings ➡️ Google ➡️ all services ➡️ Ads ➡️ Delete advertising ID
(may differ slightly depending on android version and manufacturer firmware. you can't just search settings for "advertising ID" of course 🔪)
iOS:
Settings ➡️ privacy ➡️ tracking ➡️ toggle "allow apps to request to track" to OFF
and ALSO settings ➡️ privacy ➡️ Apple advertising ➡️ toggle "personalized ads" to OFF
more details about the process here via the EFF
It's like I wrote four novels about this.
Sin cgi pierde mucho
Sound on
It looks like it can't get any better, but I am begging you, turn the sound on
I don't know this sport.
Dudes being dudes.
At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.
The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.
It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.
The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.
This map required:
North and South Vietnam in it
All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated
Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)
Has Laos and Cambodia in it
Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it
So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'
I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.
Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.
The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.
The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc
At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"
My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond
good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map
That AI abomination makes me want to war crime a tech company.

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This is... a technique.
Военнослужащие 42-го морского разведывательного пункта СпН "Холуай" Тихоокеанского флота, вооруженные американским стрелковым оружием.
its interesting. The American special forces were often running around with soviet guns, for plausible deniability. Didn't know it was the same the other way around.
Real recognize real
can you imagine a gunfight between US and Soviet Special forces inside a neutral country and both sides deny they've been there, but the casings found, match to Soviet and US weapons anyways?
Enough current Russian SF have been seen carrying AR’s or using 5.56 AK’s where it’s not that far fetched. The real interesting part is if they’re sourcing or manufacturing the ammo. Imagine that same scenario but it’s all Lake City manufactured 5.56 casings everywhere. With how much of the supplies we send Ukraine/Israel/anywhere immediately hit the black market it’s entirely possible they have pallets of M855/M193