The Latest Generation

On the four year anniversary of start of "Special Military Operation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, I thought I'd repost a couple of my relevant episodes from back then.  A look at Leo Tolstoy's Sevastopol Sketches, and what we can learn from them about recent activity in Crimea and Ukraine. Can't say for certain that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has a lot to do with this, but it is recent enough t...

Originally intended to point out what a Crisis looks like, in the futile hope that maybe people in the USA would recognize when they were making them. Alas, this was not the case, and so we have a real peak Crisis happening.        Can we tell the start of a Fourth Turning by noticing the frequency and intensity of nation-level unforced errors? A look at the Soviet Union during the 1980s, when in...

Because the Countdown episodes were short and were 5 years ago, they likely aren't showing up in most podcast services. Here they all are at once...again. A consolidation of the half-dozen Countdown episodes from 2020, starting in October and ending on Election Day, with an epilogue from Inauguration Day, 2021. There was a lot happening in those couple of weeks.  The observations range from the im...

Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut" was similar to "Forty Years" in that it was a look back at how the goals of World War II had worked out. Which means it's been on my mind in a similar way, so I felt like redoing it as well.  But the bit about  "...you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears And what's more No-one ever disappears   You never hear their standard issue Kicking in your door" That s...

Redoing this one because it's the forty year anniversary of the recording of the song Forty Years.  A quick note from Joe Jackson's website - where, incidentally, you can't listen to his music any more. (You could when I first published this podcast episode, and I wanted to include the notes that were here before, but that particular one isn't true any more. Or at least, not right now.) http://joe...

A look at the last year, starting from jigsaw puzzles.  

Found myself thinking about how 200 years is seen as a limit for how long countries remain viable, and remembered that Egypt's 18th Dynasty lasted just about that long - most were noticeably shorter. It ended quickly after the boy-king Tutankhamen died young without an heir. Maybe a notice for what it takes for such a thing to end. 

Something about November just makes it difficult to get episodes done. So re-doing, here, a Thanksgiving episode, in its way, from a few years back. This is the second Redux with it - last time was two years ago. I thought I had written about this elsewhere, but this appears to be the closest I had done: https://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/06/plague.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osarseph...

A few final thoughts on the Summer of Trinity.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_B._McVay_III Walter Griffith, the commander of USS Bullhead, who had departed the ship just before its final voyage that summer, also committed suicide, two years...

While this was originally posted in the fall of 2019, for the third year in a row I'm reduxing it.  It is, again, an appropriate meditaion for this quiet time of year, as the football games are starting to pass us by even if their music is still in the air. The warmth of the summer is still around, sometimes, but mostly it's cooling down, and it's a time for comfort food and old memories and peopl...

    Sunday, August 26,1945 - 41 Days After Trinity   Huaiyin–Huai'an Campaign   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlord_Era   Monday, August 27,1945 - 42 Days After Trinity  https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2006/february/destroyers-tokyo-bay   Tuesday, August 28,1945 - 43 Days After Trinity U.S. occupation of Japan begins.   https://www.kirtland.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/200011...

This is Summer of Trinity - a daily description of events in the summer of 1945,    This episode has daily events for the week ending Saturday August 25, 1945. I've endeavored to have new episodes out every Monday, the same day (80 years later) as the last day of the weeks described in each. This week is the latest one yet, going out Saturday instead. My initial thought was that "it wasn't a very...

This is Summer of Trinity - a daily description of events in the summer of 1945. This episode has daily events for the week ending Saturday August 18, 1945.   Sunday, August 12,1945 - 27 Days After Trinity 3 days after Nagasaki, 6 days after Hiroshima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smyth_Report Dr. Bine notes the unexpected arrival of the ending of the war. https://www.dearfolksies.com/august-12-19...

This is Summer of Trinity - a daily description of events in the summer of 1945, touching points around the world but centered (as that summer was) on the Trinity nuclear test.   This episode has daily events for the week ending Saturday August 11, 1945. This is an update, edited to fix some extraneous noise in the original version. Sunday, August 5,1945 - 20 Days After Trinity Pictures of the sur...

July 29 to August 4 This is Summer of Trinity - a daily description of events in the summer of 1945.This episode has daily events for the week ending Saturday August 4, 1945. Sunday, July 29,1945 - 13 Days After Trinity   https://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/Recent/Article-View/Article/2686164/navy-lessons-learned-from-sinking-of-indianapolis/   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_Mayfield - f...

This is Summer of Trinity - a daily description of events in the summer of 1945, touching points around the world but centered (as that summer was) on the Trinity nuclear test.   This episode has daily events for the week ending Saturday July 28th, 1945. Sunday, July 22,1945 - 6 Days After Trinity From Stimson's diary, excerpts on http://www.doug-long.com/stimson8.htm   Monday, July 23,1945 - 7 Da...

This is Summer of Trinity - a daily description of events in the summer of 1945, touching points around the world but centered (as that summer was) on the Trinity nuclear test.   This episode has daily events for the week ending Saturday July 21th, 1945.   Sunday, July 15,1945 - 1 Day Before Trinity 12th Army Situation Map (Germany and surrounding areas) https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-proj...

This is Summer of Trinity - a daily description of events in the summer of 1945, touching points around the world but centered (as that summer was) on the Trinity nuclear test.   This episode has daily events for the week ending Saturday July 14th, 1945.   Sunday, July 8,1945 - 8 Days Before Trinity It is two months since the surrender of Germany. The Utah prisoner of war massacre occurred just af...

A daily description of events in the summer of 1945, touching points around the world but centered (as that summer was) on the Trinity nuclear test.   This episode has daily events for the week ending Saturday July 7th, 1945. Sunday, July 1,1945 - 15 Days Before Trinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_C4-class_ship http://ww2troopships.com/crossings/1945b.htm https://history.army.mil/books/wwii...

This is Summer of Trinity, for the week ending Saturday June 30th, 1945.   Sunday, June 24,1945 - 22 Days Before Trinity https://stanislavs.org/victory-parade-in-moscow-on-june-24-1945/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Moscow_Victory_Parade Monday, June 25,1945 - 21 Days Before Trinity Let There Be Light - assigned to John Huston on June 25 1945 https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24480-LET-THEREBELIGH...

This is Summer of Trinity, for the week ending Saturday June 23, 1945.   Sunday, June 17,1945 - 29 Days Before Trinity It's the 78th day of the Battle of Okinawa. https://archive.org/details/FirstBoxingMatchesOnOkinawa Monday, June 18,1945 - 28 Days Before Trinity It's the 79th day of the Battle of Okinawa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bolivar_Buckner_Jr. The American submarine USS Bonefish...

June 10 to June 16, 1945   This is Summer of Trinity, for the week ending Saturday June 16, 1945.   Sunday, June 10,1945 - 36 Days Before Trinity It's the 71st day of the Battle of Okinawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_William_D._Porter_(DD-579) Monday, June 11,1945 - 35 Days Before Trinity It's the 72nd day of the Battle of Okinawa   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Miles_McCool Tuesday,...

Summer of Trinity is a daily look at the summer of 1945, when the Second World War ended.  June 3, 1945 . Sunday.   It is the 64th day of the Battle of Okinawa. June 4, 1945. Monday. It is the 65th day of the Battle of Okinawa. Churchill's Gestapo speech June 5, 1945. Tuesday It is the 66th day of the Battle of Okinawa. June 6, 1945 . Wednesday It is the 67th day of the Battle of Okinawa. It is th...

A look at each day between Memorial Day and Labor Day, 1945 - the six weeks on either side of the Trinity test on July 16.  (For future weeks, we'll have an entry for each day, but we already did May 1945 in the previous episode.) May 30, 1945. Wednesday. Memorial Day. It is the 60th day of the Battle of Okinawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day...

A introduction to the state of the world in May 1945.  FDR is dead. Truman is President, only three months after he became vice-president. The Battle of Okinawa is ongoing - it had started on April 1st. USS Indianapolis is in San Francisco for repairs from a kamikaze attack in the waters around Okinawa, just before the invasion began. The USSR has just ended its non-agression pact with the Empire...