Podcast appearances and mentions of bret devereaux

Dr. Bret Devereaux is one of the world's leading experts on the military history of Rome and on the Punic Wars. We discuss Rome's advantages, what made the Republic so formidable, and why it was able to accomplish so much in such a short period.Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge. And check out Patrick's new podcast The Pursuit of Dadliness! It's all about “Dad Culture,” and Patrick will interview some fascinating guests about everything from tall wooden ships to smoked meats to comfortable sneakers to history, sports, culture, and politics. https://bit.ly/PWtPoDListen to new episodes 1 week early, to exclusive seasons 1 and 2, and to all episodes ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/tidesofhistoryBe the first to know about Wondery's newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Man of the West bids farewell to The Nerd of the Rings, as they welcome everyone's favorite ancient and military historian back to the PPP: Dr. Bret Devereaux, author of A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry returns to answer an absurd number of questions that Alan and Matt have come up with from their last ten episodes. We get our 40k references out of the way early, discover Bret doesn't read Old Norse, get an expert explanation of weregild, and have our eyes opened to Helm Hammerhand's missteps. We also discuss peace through Black Death, wonder what the Quenya would be for “It's all yours, buddy”, and lament the fact that the tales, they are so unfinished. Also, the emperor's name is spelled Pupienus, just to be clear. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

HOO BOY this week Roman historians Dr. Sarah Bond and Dr. Bret Deveraux drop in to talk about Ridley Scott's ode to his first film, uh, ancient Rome, Gladiator II. We talk about the legacy of the first film, our impressions of the new release, and the actual history behind Gladiator II. This discussion is pretty epic. Stay tuned and subscribe.About our guests:Dr. Sarah E. Bond is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa. She is interested in late Roman history, epigraphy, late antique law, Roman topography and GIS, Digital Humanities, and the socio-legal experience of ancient marginal peoples. She earned a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011) and obtained a BA in Classics and History with a minor in Classical Archaeology from the University of Virginia (2005). Her book, Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professionals in the Roman Mediterranean, was published with the University of Michigan Press in 2016. Follow her blog: History From Below.Additionally, Bond is a regular contributor at Hyperallergic, a columnist at the Los Angeles Review of Books, and a section editor at Public Books. She has written for The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Washington Post.  Bond's latest book, Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire will be out on February 4, 2025. It is available for preorder here: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300273144/strike/Dr. Bret C. Devereaux is an ancient and military historian who currently teaches as a Teaching Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. He has his PhD in ancient history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MA in classical civilizations from Florida State University.Bret is a historian of the broader ancient Mediterranean in general and of ancient Rome in particular. His primary research interests sit at the intersections of the Roman economy and the Roman military, examining the ways that the lives of ordinary people in the ancient world were shaped by the structures of power, violence and wealth under which they lived and the ways in which they in turn shaped the military capacity of the states in which they lived (which is simply a fancy way of saying he is interested in how the big picture of wars, economic shifts and politics impacted the ‘little' folks and vice versa). More broadly he is interested in many of the nuts-and-bolts of everyday life in the ancient world, things like the production of textiles, the economics of small farming households, and the burden of military service.He is also a lifetime fan of fantasy, science fiction and speculative fiction more generally. Bret enjoys good music, bad jokes and writing about himself in the third person. He is also required, by law and ancient custom, to inform absolutely everyone that he has, in fact, beaten Dark Souls (and now also Elden Ring).

Len is joined by Aftermath's Luke Plunkett and Dr. Bret Devereaux to discuss Total War: Pharaoh's expansive Dynasties glow-up. We dig into the sources that are and aren't available for Bronze Age warfare, how the latest historical Total War feels now with all the bells and whistles, and whether or not Creative Assembly's grand apology tour might be a sign of things to come, or just a one-off PR move.

Len, Ian, and Jon are joined by our official unofficial historical consultant, Dr. Bret Devereaux, to discuss Manor Lords. We clear up what it is and what it isn't, how it portrays the historical realities of medieval burgage, and how Early of an Early Access game it really is.

Dr Bret Devereaux joins us to discuss all things military and the development of the army in the early years of Ancient Rome. How did Rome go from raids to world domination?

Ancient historian Bret Devereaux is back on the Remnant to provide a definitive answer to the year's biggest question: Why do men really think about the Roman Empire? He also gives an overview of Israel's history and the origins of today's conflict, and examines whether Donald Trump could really become the next Caesar. Prospective dictators in need of career advice are strongly encouraged to tune in. Show Notes: -Watch the episode on YouTube -Bret's pedantic blog -Bret's previous Remnant appearance -The Remnant, hosted by Brother Stirewalt, with Mike Duncan -The Remnant with Russell Moore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why no Roman Industrial Revolution?, published by jasoncrawford on July 26, 2023 on LessWrong. Why didn't the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution? Bret Devereaux has an essay addressing that question, which multiple people have pointed me to at various times. In brief, Devereaux says that Britain industrialized through a very specific path, involving coal mines, steam engines, and textile production. The Roman Empire didn't have those specific preconditions, and it's not clear to him that any other path could have created an Industrial Revolution. So Rome didn't have an IR because they didn't have coal mines that they needed to pump water out of, they didn't have a textile industry that was ready to make use of steam power, etc. (Although he says he can't rule out alternative paths to industrialization, he doesn't seem to give any weight to that possibility.) I find this explanation intelligent, informed, and interesting - yet unsatisfying, in the same way and for the same reasons as I find Robert Allen's explanation unsatisfying: I don't believe that industrialization was so contingent on such very specific factors. When you consider the breadth of problems being solved and advances being made in so many different areas, the progress of that era looks less like a lucky break, and more like a general problem-solving ability getting applied to the challenge of human existence. (I tried to get Devereaux's thoughts on this, but I guess he was too busy to give much of an answer.) As a thought experiment: Suppose that British geology had been different, and it hadn't had much coal. Would we still be living in a pre-industrial world, 300 years later? What about in 1000 years? This seems implausible to me. Or, suppose there is an intelligent alien civilization that has been around for much longer than humans. Would you expect that they have definitely industrialized in some form? Or would it depend on the particular geology of their planet? Are fossil fuels the Great Filter? Again, implausible. I expect that given enough time, any sufficiently intelligent species would reach a high level of technology on the vast majority of habitable planets. Devereaux asserts that there is a "deeply contingent nature of historical events . that data (like the charts of global GDP over centuries) can sometimes fail to capture." I see this in reverse: the chart of global GDP over centuries is, to my mind, evidence that progress is not so contingent on random historical flukes, that there is a deeper underlying process driving it. So why didn't the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution? Consider a related question: why didn't the Roman Empire have an information revolution? Why didn't they invent the computer? Presumably the answer is obvious: they were missing too many preconditions, such as electricity, not to mention math (if you think ENIAC's decimal-based arithmetic was inefficient, imagine a computer trying to use Roman numerals). Even conceiving the computer, let alone inventing one, requires reaching a certain level of technological development first, and the Romans were nowhere near that. I think the answer is roughly the same for why no Roman IR, it's just a bit less obvious. Here are a few of the things the ancient Romans didn't have: The spinning wheel The windmill The horse collar Cast iron Latex rubber The movable-type printing press The mechanical clock The compass Arabic numerals And a few other key inventions, such as the moldboard plow and the crank-and-connecting-rod, showed up only in the 3rd century or later, well past the peak of the Empire. How are you going to industrialize when you don't have cast iron to build machines out of, or basic mechanical linkages to use in them? How could a society increase labor productivity through automation when it hasn't ev...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why no Roman Industrial Revolution?, published by jasoncrawford on July 26, 2023 on LessWrong. Why didn't the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution? Bret Devereaux has an essay addressing that question, which multiple people have pointed me to at various times. In brief, Devereaux says that Britain industrialized through a very specific path, involving coal mines, steam engines, and textile production. The Roman Empire didn't have those specific preconditions, and it's not clear to him that any other path could have created an Industrial Revolution. So Rome didn't have an IR because they didn't have coal mines that they needed to pump water out of, they didn't have a textile industry that was ready to make use of steam power, etc. (Although he says he can't rule out alternative paths to industrialization, he doesn't seem to give any weight to that possibility.) I find this explanation intelligent, informed, and interesting - yet unsatisfying, in the same way and for the same reasons as I find Robert Allen's explanation unsatisfying: I don't believe that industrialization was so contingent on such very specific factors. When you consider the breadth of problems being solved and advances being made in so many different areas, the progress of that era looks less like a lucky break, and more like a general problem-solving ability getting applied to the challenge of human existence. (I tried to get Devereaux's thoughts on this, but I guess he was too busy to give much of an answer.) As a thought experiment: Suppose that British geology had been different, and it hadn't had much coal. Would we still be living in a pre-industrial world, 300 years later? What about in 1000 years? This seems implausible to me. Or, suppose there is an intelligent alien civilization that has been around for much longer than humans. Would you expect that they have definitely industrialized in some form? Or would it depend on the particular geology of their planet? Are fossil fuels the Great Filter? Again, implausible. I expect that given enough time, any sufficiently intelligent species would reach a high level of technology on the vast majority of habitable planets. Devereaux asserts that there is a "deeply contingent nature of historical events . that data (like the charts of global GDP over centuries) can sometimes fail to capture." I see this in reverse: the chart of global GDP over centuries is, to my mind, evidence that progress is not so contingent on random historical flukes, that there is a deeper underlying process driving it. So why didn't the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution? Consider a related question: why didn't the Roman Empire have an information revolution? Why didn't they invent the computer? Presumably the answer is obvious: they were missing too many preconditions, such as electricity, not to mention math (if you think ENIAC's decimal-based arithmetic was inefficient, imagine a computer trying to use Roman numerals). Even conceiving the computer, let alone inventing one, requires reaching a certain level of technological development first, and the Romans were nowhere near that. I think the answer is roughly the same for why no Roman IR, it's just a bit less obvious. Here are a few of the things the ancient Romans didn't have: The spinning wheel The windmill The horse collar Cast iron Latex rubber The movable-type printing press The mechanical clock The compass Arabic numerals And a few other key inventions, such as the moldboard plow and the crank-and-connecting-rod, showed up only in the 3rd century or later, well past the peak of the Empire. How are you going to industrialize when you don't have cast iron to build machines out of, or basic mechanical linkages to use in them? How could a society increase labor productivity through automation when it hasn't ev...

Jonah's unwashed historical nerdery is usually unparalleled, but on today's Remnant, he may finally have met his match. His guest? Ancient historian Bret Devereaux, who joins to discuss all things Roman. With topics including war and peace, political philosophy, and the cruelty of Spartan society, their conversation is sure to eliminate any misguided nostalgia you may have for the past. Show Notes: - Bret's pedantic blog - Bret talks Orc battle tactics on that niche legal podcast - Bret on Ancient Greece and Rome - Bret makes a correction on social conservatism - Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined - Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bret Devereaux writes here about the oddities of the academic job market. His piece is comprehensive, and you should read it, but short version: professors are split into tenure-track (30%, good pay and benefits) and adjunct (50%, bad pay and benefits). Another 20% are “teaching-track”, somewhere in between. Everyone wants a tenure-track job. But colleges hiring new tenure-track faculty prefer newly-minted PhDs to even veteran teaching-trackers or adjuncts. And even if they do hire a veteran teaching-tracker or adjunct, it's practically never one of their own. If a teaching-tracker or adjunct makes a breakthrough, they apply for a tenure-track job somewhere else. Devereaux describes this as “a hiring system where experience manifestly hurts applicants” and displays this graph: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-is-the-academic-job-market-so  

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Consider The Hand Axe, published by ymeskhout on April 8, 2023 on LessWrong. A long time ago, some primitive apes got addicted to rocks. The earliest stone tools were crude bastards, made by smashing large river pebbles together and calling it a day. José-Manuel Benito Álvarez Stone choppers like the one above took the prehistoric neighborhood by storm almost 3 million years ago. However dull the tools themselves may have been, this was the cutting-edge technology for literally more than a million years, a timescale I have no capacity of comprehending. Not until around 1.7 million years ago (again, no idea what this means) that someone got the bright idea of chipping away both sides of a rock. You can see what the (tedious) process looks like. The end result is the unassuming tear-drop shaped hand axe, by far the longest used tool in human history. There are no accessories here with the hand axe, its name comes from the fact that you use it by holding it directly with your hands: José-Manuel Benito Álvarez On top of being tedious and painful to make, you can imagine that it's not terribly comfortable to hold while using. Hand axes also have to be somewhat bulky because of the necessity of combining the sharp useful end with the blunt holding end. But what if — stay with me for a second — instead of holding the thing directly with our pathetic squishy hands, we held something that “handled” the tool for us? It took humans about another million years to discover hafting, with the earliest examples from around 500,000 years ago but the technique didn't really find its stride until the microlith era of stone tools around 35,000 years ago. Then humans found metal. "Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken." – Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Looking God in the Eye" The historian Bret Devereaux has an excellent and highly-recommended series on the history of iron. The popular depiction of iron being a rare commodity (typified within medieval and fantasy genre) obscures some of the reality. As a material, iron is extremely abundant — the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust, making up 5% of its mass. The hurdle with iron wasn't finding it but rather getting it out of the ground and into a useable form. It required a lot of dead trees and broken shins. One of the illustrations Devereaux cited is from 1556, and shows how workers wore shin protection as they crushed the ore into useable chunks: Think about how many mangled limbs had to accumulate before medieval OSHA cared enough about this hazard. After the ore is dug out of the ground, the next hurdle was figuring out how to reach the high temperatures needed for processing. Because of how finicky iron is about absorbing too much carbon, the only feasible avenue was charcoal, which is made from wood, which is cut from many many trees. As Devereaux notes: To put that in some perspective, a Roman legion (roughly 5,000 men) in the Late Republic might have carried into battle around 44,000kg (c. 48.5 tons) of iron – not counting pots, fittings, picks, shovels and other tools we know they used. That iron equipment in turn might represent the mining of around 541,200kg (c. 600 tons) of ore, smelted with 642,400kg (c. 710 tons) of charcoal, made from 4,620,000kg (c. 5,100 tons) of wood. Cutting the wood and making the charcoal alone, from our figures above, might represent something like (I am assuming our charcoal-burners are working in teams) 80,000 man-days of labor. For one legion. To understate it, much has changed since. A stainless steel spoon t...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Consider The Hand Axe, published by ymeskhout on April 8, 2023 on LessWrong. A long time ago, some primitive apes got addicted to rocks. The earliest stone tools were crude bastards, made by smashing large river pebbles together and calling it a day. José-Manuel Benito Álvarez Stone choppers like the one above took the prehistoric neighborhood by storm almost 3 million years ago. However dull the tools themselves may have been, this was the cutting-edge technology for literally more than a million years, a timescale I have no capacity of comprehending. Not until around 1.7 million years ago (again, no idea what this means) that someone got the bright idea of chipping away both sides of a rock. You can see what the (tedious) process looks like. The end result is the unassuming tear-drop shaped hand axe, by far the longest used tool in human history. There are no accessories here with the hand axe, its name comes from the fact that you use it by holding it directly with your hands: José-Manuel Benito Álvarez On top of being tedious and painful to make, you can imagine that it's not terribly comfortable to hold while using. Hand axes also have to be somewhat bulky because of the necessity of combining the sharp useful end with the blunt holding end. But what if — stay with me for a second — instead of holding the thing directly with our pathetic squishy hands, we held something that “handled” the tool for us? It took humans about another million years to discover hafting, with the earliest examples from around 500,000 years ago but the technique didn't really find its stride until the microlith era of stone tools around 35,000 years ago. Then humans found metal. "Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken." – Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Looking God in the Eye" The historian Bret Devereaux has an excellent and highly-recommended series on the history of iron. The popular depiction of iron being a rare commodity (typified within medieval and fantasy genre) obscures some of the reality. As a material, iron is extremely abundant — the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust, making up 5% of its mass. The hurdle with iron wasn't finding it but rather getting it out of the ground and into a useable form. It required a lot of dead trees and broken shins. One of the illustrations Devereaux cited is from 1556, and shows how workers wore shin protection as they crushed the ore into useable chunks: Think about how many mangled limbs had to accumulate before medieval OSHA cared enough about this hazard. After the ore is dug out of the ground, the next hurdle was figuring out how to reach the high temperatures needed for processing. Because of how finicky iron is about absorbing too much carbon, the only feasible avenue was charcoal, which is made from wood, which is cut from many many trees. As Devereaux notes: To put that in some perspective, a Roman legion (roughly 5,000 men) in the Late Republic might have carried into battle around 44,000kg (c. 48.5 tons) of iron – not counting pots, fittings, picks, shovels and other tools we know they used. That iron equipment in turn might represent the mining of around 541,200kg (c. 600 tons) of ore, smelted with 642,400kg (c. 710 tons) of charcoal, made from 4,620,000kg (c. 5,100 tons) of wood. Cutting the wood and making the charcoal alone, from our figures above, might represent something like (I am assuming our charcoal-burners are working in teams) 80,000 man-days of labor. For one legion. To understate it, much has changed since. A stainless steel spoon t...

The Roman Republic went from a regional power ruling over Italy to master of a Mediterranean-wide empire in under 50 years, warring against powerful states like the Carthaginians and the Hellenistic kingdoms, yet always coming out on top. Dr. Bret Devereaux joins the show to discuss the Roman military and analyze the various factors that enabled their rapid expansion into the Hellenistic East, and eventually the downfall of the Republic itself. Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2023/04/07/interview-the-roman-republic-at-war-with-dr-bret-devereaux/) Dr. Bret Devereaux A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (https://acoup.blog/) Twitter (https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux) Social Media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod) Facebook (www.facebook.com/hellenisticagepodcast/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hellenistic_age_podcast/) Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/hellenisticagepodcast) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Redbubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/HellenisticPod/shop?asc=u) Donations: Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

Len and Ian are joined once again by our official unofficial historical consultant, UNC Chapel Hill's Dr. Bret Devereaux, to discuss a couple of interrelated topics: Snowballing in strategy games and the process of industrialization. We take a wide-ranging trek through games and history that touches on different ways developers have tried to put checks on snowballing, what factors prevented real societies from hitting that exponential growth until the 1800s, and which games portray it best. There's also a lot of chat on our exploits in the recent 1.2 patch for Victoria 3, because of course there would be.

The forces of Mordor begin their assault on the city of Minas Tirith, as Alan and Matt begin their assault on your patience. Join us as The Heathen Kings of Old open for us in today's episode, and we finish The Siege of Gondor! Denethor seeks an end to his despair, Pippin seeks Gandalf's help, and Grond seeks a door to smash. We are joined one more time by Bret Devereaux, who reminds us that war elephants are “hmmmmm… yikes.” We review The Fall of Númenor, say farewell to the Nerd of the Rings, and bring you a very special treat from Jordan's ‘A Long-Expected Soundscape'.

Len and John are joined once again by UNC Chapel Hill's Dr. Bret Devereaux to finally, at long last, discuss Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. We have some mixed feelings about it. What did we love and what did we really not? How do the systems and battles stand up to a military historian's eyes? And at the end of the day, is it actually good?

/u/Steelcan909 talks with Bret Devereaux and our own Roel Konijnendijk about public history, the changing role of historians both inside and outside of the academy, and of course on proper ditch digging tecninques. 82m,

The long-awaited steel and steam macroeconomics simulator from Paradox has finally graced us with its presence, and we've assembled a League of Extraordinary Lady and Gentlemen to discuss it. Len and Jon are joined by Kotaku's Luke Plunkett, PCGamesN's Ian Boudreau, and our good friend from UNC Chapel Hill, Dr. Bret Devereaux to analyze this absolute behemoth of a game from every angle. Hold on tight and keep your arms and legs completely inside the podcast. We're about to leave the station for an epic episode.

In this episode, Bret Devereaux (the blogger behind "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry") discusses the relationships between fantasy and ancient history - and why historical accuracy matters.

Really thrilled to have Bret Devereaux and Ed Watts on the podcast together. We looked at Gladiator as a film (two thumbs up!) and also unpicking some of the history. Ranging far and wide we covered the battle scenes, gladiators, the role of an emperor and lots, lots more. Ed argues that Commodus was doing okay until stabbed in the back by his sister and Bret gives a masterclass in how not to name a Roman. I lower the tone by bringing the nazis into it.Bret's superb blog is here. Ed's latest book is here.And check out Ed's brilliant YouTube channel.

Len and Jon are joined again by UNC Chapel Hill's Dr. Bret Devereaux to discuss Farthest Frontier, a survival city-builder with an uncommon level of historical authenticity. From clearing brush to crop blights, the attention the devs have given to inflicting realistic suffering on our villagers captured our imagination. But does it hold up at this early stage of early access?

Bret Devereaux is an ancient and military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is here to discuss military tactics of some of fiction's biggest battles from The Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones. Can David contain his excitement? Does Sarah understand anything being said? Show Notes:-A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

In this episode, Prof. Bret Devereaux (@bretdevereaux) talks about the ways in which historical video games can form players' thinking—for better and for worse. Find his blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, here: https://acoup.blog/Beyond Solitaire is proudly sponsored by Central Michigan University's Center for Learning Through Games and Simulations, where learning can be both playful and compelling. Check them out here: https://www.cmich.edu/colleges/class/Centers/CLGS/Pages/default.aspxBIG NEWS: CLGS is now doing online game design classes that you can take from home, and they will have several new offerings this year. Keep an eye on this page:  https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/centers-institutes/center-for-learning-through-games-and-simulations/certificate-in-applied-game-designAll episodes of my podcast are available here: https://beyondsolitaire.buzzsprout.com/Enjoy my work? Consider supporting me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/beyondsolitaire or getting me a "coffee" on Ko-fi! https://ko-fi.com/beyondsolitaireContact Me: Email: beyondsolitaire at gmail.comTwitter: @beyondsolitaireInstagram: @beyondsolitaireFacebook: www.facebook.com/beyondsolitaireWebsite: www.beyondsolitaire.net

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Ukraine Post #9: Again, published by Zvi on April 5, 2022 on LessWrong. This is once again a ‘sources and information on everything happening' post. In the last few days after Russia's retreat from the Kyiv area, focus has shifted from military and other issues to the atrocities discovered in Bucha. This covers both. Military Progress and Conditions The Battle of Kyiv is over, Russia has withdrawn, not entirely smoothly. Here is a claim that sabotage of railway connections with Belarus forced Russia to withdraw. This is in contrast to previous reports of Russia digging in around Kyiv and more in line with earlier reports from late March they were destroying bridges. The entire Kyiv front is now back in Ukrainian hands, including Chernobyl. The Russians may or may not have been playing chicken with nuclear power plants, but they do not seem inclined to use them as hostages as some originally feared. It appears they are indeed instead going into some sort of Phase Two, with more limited war goals involving claiming territory in the east. The primary effort looks indeed to be in Donbass. The goal appears to be to encircle Ukraine's forces. If Russia's efforts to do this fail, there does not appear to be another path to success even in the east beyond grinding down over a long period. That does not mean this was ever the plan. It wasn't, although the encirclement aspect was. Bret Devereaux points out in this thread that Russia's attacks are entirely consistent with trying to encircle the Ukrainian army and capture Kyiv with a quick knockout punch to achieve a fait accompli, and complete massive overkill for the goal of taking the rest of Donbass. Also there are any number of other things Russia could attempt to do instead, including something outside of Ukraine. Here is the new map as of 3 April. And here's April 4 from a different source, for contrast Here is a third source from April 5. Yellow is reclaimed territories. Russia will attempt to use what remains of the withdrawn invasion forces in the Donbas, where they will try to claim a victory that much more urgently. Ukraine will be able to free up a lot of its own resources to do the same. At one point there were 80,000 defenders in Kyiv, many of which are now unnecessary. According to some reports, Russia then made preparations to attack Kharkiv (4 April). They had a ‘covert mobilization' starting on 3 April but the covertness level leaves something to be desired. I also have no idea how they think this is going to work. Previously Ukraine had been actively making progress in the area and should now have far more forces locally available. Metaculus did not adjust. Russia claims some Mariupol defenders surrendered, which those defenders then denied. Given what we know, and the likelihood anyone surrendering would be tortured or simply be killed, I would not expect a surrender. Thread of some things not going so well for Russia on the war front. From 27 March: Russian soldiers often steal civilian phones to communicate with, which is rather poor operational security as it is very easy to listen in on the calls. War Crimes Now that Russia has withdrawn from some areas around Kyiv, it looks like Russian troops did some rather horrible things. Images of mass murder in Bucha are appearing on televisions around the world. Is it possible they do not indicate what they seem to indicate? Perhaps, but it seems very unlikely. As always, there are reasons to claim such things happened when they didn't, so treat all claims with skepticism, especially extreme ones. Some false claims inevitably slip through, at least at first. With that disclaimer out of the way, still seems like things are at the level where it is worth highlighting some of the claims of what happened – which again, I am not in position to verify. Wall Street Jour...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Ukraine Post #9: Again, published by Zvi on April 5, 2022 on LessWrong. This is once again a ‘sources and information on everything happening' post. In the last few days after Russia's retreat from the Kyiv area, focus has shifted from military and other issues to the atrocities discovered in Bucha. This covers both. Military Progress and Conditions The Battle of Kyiv is over, Russia has withdrawn, not entirely smoothly. Here is a claim that sabotage of railway connections with Belarus forced Russia to withdraw. This is in contrast to previous reports of Russia digging in around Kyiv and more in line with earlier reports from late March they were destroying bridges. The entire Kyiv front is now back in Ukrainian hands, including Chernobyl. The Russians may or may not have been playing chicken with nuclear power plants, but they do not seem inclined to use them as hostages as some originally feared. It appears they are indeed instead going into some sort of Phase Two, with more limited war goals involving claiming territory in the east. The primary effort looks indeed to be in Donbass. The goal appears to be to encircle Ukraine's forces. If Russia's efforts to do this fail, there does not appear to be another path to success even in the east beyond grinding down over a long period. That does not mean this was ever the plan. It wasn't, although the encirclement aspect was. Bret Devereaux points out in this thread that Russia's attacks are entirely consistent with trying to encircle the Ukrainian army and capture Kyiv with a quick knockout punch to achieve a fait accompli, and complete massive overkill for the goal of taking the rest of Donbass. Also there are any number of other things Russia could attempt to do instead, including something outside of Ukraine. Here is the new map as of 3 April. And here's April 4 from a different source, for contrast Here is a third source from April 5. Yellow is reclaimed territories. Russia will attempt to use what remains of the withdrawn invasion forces in the Donbas, where they will try to claim a victory that much more urgently. Ukraine will be able to free up a lot of its own resources to do the same. At one point there were 80,000 defenders in Kyiv, many of which are now unnecessary. According to some reports, Russia then made preparations to attack Kharkiv (4 April). They had a ‘covert mobilization' starting on 3 April but the covertness level leaves something to be desired. I also have no idea how they think this is going to work. Previously Ukraine had been actively making progress in the area and should now have far more forces locally available. Metaculus did not adjust. Russia claims some Mariupol defenders surrendered, which those defenders then denied. Given what we know, and the likelihood anyone surrendering would be tortured or simply be killed, I would not expect a surrender. Thread of some things not going so well for Russia on the war front. From 27 March: Russian soldiers often steal civilian phones to communicate with, which is rather poor operational security as it is very easy to listen in on the calls. War Crimes Now that Russia has withdrawn from some areas around Kyiv, it looks like Russian troops did some rather horrible things. Images of mass murder in Bucha are appearing on televisions around the world. Is it possible they do not indicate what they seem to indicate? Perhaps, but it seems very unlikely. As always, there are reasons to claim such things happened when they didn't, so treat all claims with skepticism, especially extreme ones. Some false claims inevitably slip through, at least at first. With that disclaimer out of the way, still seems like things are at the level where it is worth highlighting some of the claims of what happened – which again, I am not in position to verify. Wall Street Jour...

Len and Mike are joined once again by Dr. Bret Devereaux (@BretDevereaux), Visiting Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (acoup.blog). The topic this time around is Empires and Imperialism. What exactly makes an empire? How do strategy games model empires and the process of imperialism, and how could they potentially do better? Header Image: The "Ozymandias Collossus", Ramesseum, Luxor, Egypt by Charlie Phillips via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Len, Rowan, and Mike are joined by Dr. Bret Devereaux (@BretDevereaux), Visiting Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (https://acoup.blog/). The topic is The State in strategy games. What is a state? What are the advantages and disadvantages of making a game about states, and seeing history through a lens of state action? We talk in particular about how this question applies to Europa Universalis IV.

Historian Bret Devereaux of the University of North Carolina talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about our understanding of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Devereaux highlights the gap between the reality of Greece and Rome and how they're portrayed in popular culture. The conversation focuses on the diversity of ancient Rome and the military prowess of Sparta.

In this episode Murray, Jasper and Mark talk to Bret Devereaux. In 2020 Bret presented his paper 'Mail Armour in the Middle Republic: Adoption, Prevalence and Impact' to the Society for Classical Studies/Archaeological Institute of America Joint Annual meeting. Why not become at patron and get the magazine: https://www.patreon.com/ancientwarfarepodcast

An absolute joy to spend an hour and a half with history professors David Abulafia and Bret Devereaux. We started with the founding of Alexandria and travelled back and forth in time and all around the Mediterranean. The starting point for the discussion was David's magnificent book the Great Sea but Bret had plenty to add. (Check out his blog here).

Elizabeth and Roger discuss going to the office, university complexity, how look professional on Zoom, and what exactly is a promotion. Show notes: Bret Devereaux thread on university finances Chronicle of Higher Education article Andrew Ishak video Roger on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rdpeng Elizabeth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/elizabethmatsui Effort Report on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theeffortreport Get The Art of Data Science: https://leanpub.com/artofdatascience Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://pcr.apple.com/id1133375717 Subscribe to the podcast on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?authuser#/ps/Iz7gvpa3d6qro3btjmfk7g3l2gu Find past episodes: http://effortreport.libsyn.com Contact us at theeffortreport@gmail.com Podcast art by Maggie Matsui