#LateGothicArchitecture Brunswick, Cathedral of St. Blaise, 1469-1474, Germany. Love the columns twisting in different directions with wild multi-pronged capitals. Their rhythm is entirely different from the stately piers across the nave.

What if beauty isn't simply a matter of taste, but a glimpse of something fundamental? An encounter at Lastingham led me from photography and art to Paul Dirac, quantum mechanics, and the ancient idea of aletheia - an unveiling of hidden relationships. 👉 digest.andymarshall.co/andy-…

A moment of silence also for Norway, Australia, Japan, Italy, Estonia and, in lesser measure, Poland and Germany which are seeing this absolute, sad, miserable clown show of incompetence and dishonesty from a key partner in major projects and/or defence arrangements.

Today, in a new free post over on ‘All Old Strange Things’, I recall the heart-stopping moment last month when I *thought* I might have discovered a post-Roman inscribed stone in Pembrokeshire… (link in next tweet)

excellent and important post

Europe’s range is unmatched. Name a continent as scenically dense as Europe You can take a 2-hour train and go from a hidden coastal paradise and end up in the center of Rome.

Noted.

If America Leaves NATO, the Bill Lands in Washington “NATO wasn’t there for us. We send billions of dollars to them every year to protect them. We would have always been there for them. But based on their actions, I guess we don’t have to be, do we? Why would we be there for them if they’re not there for us?” That argument sounds airtight. It also gets almost everything backwards. The Industrial Logic No One Wants to Say Out Loud. For decades, NATO membership has functioned as the world’s most effective arms sales platform. When a country joins the alliance, it buys American. F-35s, Patriot batteries, HIMARS, Javelins. It becomes structurally dependent on American spare parts, software updates, and maintenance contracts. It is the most sophisticated captive market in military history. Poland alone devotes 4.7 percent of its GDP to defense. These are not abstract trade figures. They are jobs in Fort Worth, Orlando, and East Hartford. They are the economic foundation of entire congressional districts. A US exit from NATO does not preserve this arrangement. It ends it. Canada and Portugal have already signaled reservations about F-35 commitments worth up to $19 billion, citing political unpredictability in Washington. When two countries walk away from an American platform, others begin running the same calculation. EU member states spent 343 billion euros on defense in 2024, a 19 percent rise from the year before. The political momentum behind “Buy European” is real and growing. The market will remain. NATO gives the United States something no defense budget line can purchase: forward positioning, intelligence integration, and political legitimacy across 30 countries. These are the operating system of American global influence.Without them, the United States becomes alone. The Indo-Pacific pivot is not wrong on its merits. But forward positioning in Europe is not a drain on Pacific readiness. It is the network that makes global power projection coherent. Cut one node and the whole system degrades. The Quiet Withdrawal Already Underway. A formal exit has not happened. But the functional retreat is well advanced. The Trump administration has told European allies the US will no longer serve as NATO’s primary conventional defense provider after 2027. Joint force commands are being transferred to European generals. Intelligence-sharing arrangements built over decades are being quietly renegotiated. Each move is individually defensible. Collectively, they produce the same outcome as a formal withdrawal, without the legal fight or the Senate vote. The irony is considerable. The administration that views NATO as a bad deal for America is dismantling the mechanism that made American arms exports dominant in global defense markets. The alliance was never just a security arrangement. It was the most durable commercial advantage in the history of the defense industry. So back to the question. Why would America be there for allies who aren’t there for America? Because “there for us” included $343 billion in European defense spending flowing toward American suppliers. It included 30 countries hosting American bases and intelligence networks. It included the political architecture that let Washington call itself the leader of the free world and have other governments agree. Not a subsidy to Europe. A return on investment that took 75 years to build. The bill for dismantling it will not arrive in Brussels. It will arrive in Fort Worth.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Stay connected, Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1

In deepest, darkest Essex, sitting isolated on the wonderfully titled Dengie peninsula, lies a 1,400-year-old hidden gem. 1/n

Timely reminder of when this guy reviewed that guy... Iggy Pop on Gibbon's Decline and Fall (Classics Ireland, 1995): Caesar Lives by Iggy Pop In 1982, horrified by the meanness, tedium and depravity of my existence as I toured the American South playing rock and roll music and going crazy in public, I purchased an abridged copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dero Saunders, Penguin). The grandeur of the subject appealed to me, as did the cameo illustration of Edward Gibbon, the author, on the front cover. He looked like a heavy dude. Being in a political business, I had long made a habit of reading biographies of wilful characters — Hitler, Churchill, MacArthur, Brando — with large profiles, and I also enjoyed books on war and political intrigue, as I could relate the action to my own situation in the music business, which is not about music at all, but is a kind of religion-rental. I would read with pleasure around 4 am, with my drugs and whisky in cheap motels, savouring the clash of beliefs, personalities and values, played out on antiquity’s stage by crowds of the vulgar, led by huge archetypal characters. And that was the end of that. Or so I thought. Eleven years later I stood in a dilapidated but elegant room in a rotting mansion in New Orleans, and listened as a piece of music strange to my ears pulled me back to ancient Rome and called forth those ghosts to merge in hilarious, bilious pretence with the Schwartzkopfs, Schwartzeneggers and Sheratons of modern American money and muscle myth. Out of me poured information I had no idea I ever knew, let alone retained, in an extemporaneous soliloquy I called ‘Caesar’. When I listened back, it made me laugh my ass off because it was so true. America is Rome. Of course, why shouldn’t it be? All of Western life and institutions today are traceable to the Romans and their world. We are all Roman children for better or worse. The best part of this experience came after the fact — my wife gave me a beautiful edition in three volumes of the magnificent original unabridged Decline and Fall, and since then the pleasure and profit have been all mine as I enjoy the wonderful language, organization and scope of this masterwork. Here are just some of the ways I benefit: I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there were others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day. I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins — military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial — are all there to be scrutinized in their infancy. I have gained perspective. The language in which the book is written is rich and complete, as the language of today is not. I find out how little I know. I am inspired by the will and erudition which enabled Gibbon to complete a work of twenty-odd years. The guy stuck with things. I urge anyone who wants life on earth to really come alive for them to enjoy the beautiful ancestral ancient world.

200 years ago, in 1826, Nicephore Niépce took the oldest surviving photograph in the world.

The Normans weren’t French. They were Normans - a people formed from Viking settlers who took land in northern Frankish territory under Rollo in the 10th century. They adopted the local language and some Frankish customs, but that didn’t change where they came from. Their roots were Germanic, Viking at the base, mixed with the Franks - the same wider Germanic stock as the Anglo-Saxons across the Channel. By 1066 they were known as Normans, literally Northmen. Not French, but a distinct people shaped by both sides of their origin. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 ᛟ