Thinking about August 23

• google maps is approximately as similar to paper maps of 20 years ago as paper maps of 20 years ago are to medieval maps of 500 years ago. their purpose was just fundamentally different, and the paper maps of 20 years ago are basically of a kind with the early modern maps of 400 years ago. the embedding of computational features has totally changed what "map" even means, forever.
• medieval maps did not try to be accurate in part because of technology: there was no easy way to copy a map accurately (no tracing paper) so people didn't make accurate maps. source

Things I thought about on Monday August 18 2025

• Fortifications have been a thing in human history for 8000 years but became useless by 1890 (torpedo shell crisis) and were recognized as out of date by 1950 (though ACOUP's point that e.g. Taiwan looks like a modern fortification is reasonable)
• This idea that there are spheres of human activity beyond this where offense is totally supreme and defense looks like retaliatory offense -- you can't actually guard your house that well, instead you have a retaliatory police. Nuclear defense is pointless, instead you have a retaliatory second-strike capability. Aircraft defense looks like 1) stealth 2) speed 3) killing them first (with better sensors).
• major deal in fortifications becoming useless was putting explosives inside shells, which was difficult because the explosive required a lot of weird qualities but was done at the same time as dynamite
• major advance in military explosives was picric acid -> tnt, because tnt is more stable which means it's more controllable -- picric acid explosives would explode upon hitting the shell of a battleship, tnt explosives would explode inside.
• back in the day they had both exploding gold and exploding silver
• "All slang comes from rap, 4chan or ballroom" -- weird thing is that rap has 10x more people than 4chan has 10x more people than ballroom. how was ballroom so influential? by being influential among gay people?
• "Early tea gowns were a European development influenced by Asian clothing" ... "Part of this European sense of fashion came from the Japanese kimono." source
• Dresses from Charles Frederick Worth cost up to $50,000 (adjusted for inflation) source
• cool painting
• Babe Ruth lived a really cool life. Grew up speaking German, went to "Saint Mary's Industrial School" which is a top-tier name (actually "Saint Mary's Industrial School for boys" which is weaker). "Ruth Sr. worked a series of jobs that included lightning rod salesman and streetcar operator."
• in the 1980s (?) the US developed the mythical technology to let men see in the dark, and then developed a doctrine to just attack at night so the enemy literally couldn't see them. This (among many other things) was responsible for us having a 100:1 kill ratio in tanks and artillery in the 1991 Gulf War. Presuambly this was then not effective when you are on the defensive and cannot choose when to fight (insurgency). As a technology this feels similar to air war that's fully about sensors and seeing the enemy and cloaking yourself.
• the NFL ("Professional Football Leagues") were explicitly exempted as a nonprofit by Congress in order to exempt it from antitrust laws. In exchange for Congress doing this the NFL put a team in New Orleans -- geaux Saints! They gave this status up voluntarily in 2015 because people were getting mad about it and the league itself had almost no income.
• The military calls explosives "Energetic Materials"