[October 17, 2026] Unpredictable events, good or bad, hit people, organizations, and whole societies harder than anyone planned for. After the fact, someone always calls the outcome destiny. That is hindsight talking. We cannot predict these events. But we can build habits and systems that let us absorb the bad ones and use the good ones. Nassim Nicholas… Read More »
[October 16, 2026]. The recent video on AI Sees Western Civilization and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech got me thinking about the origins of the “rights” we enjoy. Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, produced one of the clearest statements of those rights. What did he mean by them? The answer sits at the… Read More »
Hero: Seaman Doug Hegdahl [October 15, 2026] Douglas Brent “Doug” Hegdahl III is a former U.S. Navy sailor and Vietnam War POW known for an extraordinary act of intelligence gathering while imprisoned at the Hỏa Lò Prison (the “Hanoi Hilton”). Today, I’m calling him a hero. He enlisted in the Navy in 1966 after high school. On the… Read More »
[October 14, 2026] I first saw this AI-generated video on Asmondgold. By yesterday afternoon, it had garnered 15 million views since its original posting on September 24. For some reason, I liked it. And now it’s here for your enjoyment, too. This is a roughly 2-minute-16-second stylized video (posted by @IterIntellectus with the note that he asked Claude… Read More »
[October 13, 2026] I finally decided it was time to review my time in the Iraq War, during the most contentious and most successful part during the war: late 2006 to 2007. Today, my subject will be the organization called MNSTC-I. “One advantage of hindsight is being able to pull current historical documents and align them with what we… Read More »
[October 12, 2026] Today, another of our favorite childhood stories that enthralled us: The Boy Who Cried Wolf. My interpretation of the story might just get my readers to pull that old book of Aesop’s Fables off the bookshelf and reread it. The story never gets old. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a short fable about what… Read More »
[October 11, 2026] As a kid, I was always enthralled by stories. One of my favorites was (and still is) The Ant and The Grasshopper in Aesop’s Fables. I don’t know why I was so attracted to it; I still don’t. As everyone who reads my website articles knows, I use this space to show how to be… Read More »
[October 10, 2026] The fool is the humble beginner willing to look stupid, make mistakes, and start anew. It’s the predecessor to mastery, transformation, and the hero/savior; the opposite of hedonistic avoidance. Be willing to look stupid. “[The trickster] is a forerunner of the saviour… He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief… Read More »
[October 9, 2026] One advantage of hindsight is being able to pull current historical documents and align them with what we thought we knew in the past. I am compiling a collection of notes on the Iraq War “Surge,” and I’ll later publish them as a manuscript. That publication is targeted for next year, 2027. In the meantime,… Read More »
[October 8, 2026] Victor Davis Hanson’s September 28, 2026 commentary for The Daily Signal, “If Iran Cracks, the World Will Never Be the Same,” has a number of interesting ideas about our war with Iran. And, yes, it is a “war.” Because of its length, his core ideas and my analysis will run in two parts. Today, in… Read More »