History, Politics And Current Affairs

Good to read, and thanks Micael! Yes I am reminded somewhat (past euro-neolithic lang survival candidates like Basque) of how an austro-asiatic substrate survives to some degree in the Dravidian languages (that of course flourish today unlike their neolithic counterparts in scandinavia)....but that...

There was some indication that the Nordwestblock showed similarities with Aquitanian. But that's believed to be much later and an influence on West Germanic to Inguaevonic (North Sea Germanic). But this is quite interesting in adding to the number of pre-indo-european languages. Of which only Basqu...

Takes this with a fair bit of salt but there’s reporting in a ”paywalled” article in the Daily Mail today that Trump will hold a disclosure speech. Per a ”source” elsewhere this is supposedly what will be stated: If Trump announces anything like that, it will be the best announcement of its kind ev...

Currently the strongest evidence, both in terms of linguistic analysis and DNA modelling of population movements, point to a likely origin of the Germanic language branch of Indo-European as being in current day southern Sweden. The jury isn’t all the way out yet, but it’s getting pretty close now. ...

Takes this with a fair bit of salt but there’s reporting in a ”paywalled” article in the Daily Mail today that Trump will hold a disclosure speech. Per a ”source” elsewhere this is supposedly what will be stated:

Seconded, Rest in Peace to your mom. Cancer is a terrible thing.

Excellent news out of Spain. A team at the Spanish Cancer Research Centre led by oncologist Dr. Mariano Barbacid reports that they’ve achieved complete removal of all tumors of the most common type of pancreatic cancer in trials on rats, by way of a targeted therapy. The results appear to be much mo...

The patch/gausse type variants are common in modern battlefield medicine now. This spray thing sounds very interesting, and probably with a better effect than the earlier ones. The patch ones do tend to be fairly expensive which is probably why you don’t see them a lot in the first aid kits of ”regu...

Interesting. BREAKING: Bank of England told to prepare for a market crash if the United States announces Alien Life. Helen McCaw who served as a senior analyst in financial security at the UK’s central bank sounded the alarm. She has now written to Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s governor, urging him to ...

Demon Lord Razgriz wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 6:35 am ...Why would say that, Mrs McCaw? What do you know?

I did a brief look around and on LinkedIn there’s a Stuart McCaw that’s listed as being a civil servant at the Ministry of Defence. I wonder if that would happen to be a close family member.

Micael, are you thinking that long term the Swedish navy would benefit from developing the infrastructure for nuclear propulsion, regardless of the difficulties in the short term? I can see the need for that, with the USN no longer looking like a reliable ally and the security situation with Russia...

Lots. That sounds very big for a submarine reactor, and it will have serious issues with 135-Xe poisoning when changing power. Silencing the rest of the plant is non-trivial, and the benefits of a nuclear plant in the Baltic are very minimal. Well the size includes the external housing for land bas...

So traditionally nuclear submarines tends to cost a whole lot, and tends to need to be fairly large, or as in the case of the French Rubis class which isn’t as large there tends to be some associated drawbacks. I have been pondering a bit if there could be a feasible way that Sweden could acquire nu...

Interesting. BREAKING: Bank of England told to prepare for a market crash if the United States announces Alien Life. Helen McCaw who served as a senior analyst in financial security at the UK’s central bank sounded the alarm. She has now written to Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s governor, urging him to o...

So I had a look around to try to figure out a bit more about what it is that we’re buying this time around. With the SAR satellites from ICEYE it seems pretty straightforward since they mentioned 16 centimeter resolution in the press release. This would mean that it’s their new Gen4 satellite. Here’...

Here’s the press release from the other of the two satellite suppliers, Planet Labs: Planet Signs 9-Figure Deal with Sweden January 12, 2026 Marks Third Major Satellite Services Contract in 12 Months, Solidifying Market Leadership SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Planet Labs PBC, a leading provider ...

A bit more technical detail from an ICEYE press release. A SAR resolution of 16 centimeters seems pretty good. ICEYE to deliver sovereign space-based intelligence capabilities to the Swedish Armed Forces ICEYE to deliver sovereign space-based intelligence capabilities to the Swedish Armed Forces The...

An update now, ~10 satellites in initial plan, first to be delivered in 2026. This batch will have SAR and electro-optical sensors to support long range strike capabilities. FMV orders satellites for the Swedish Armed Forces FMV has signed agreements with suppliers Planet Labs and ICEYE regarding sp...

Saw that as well, interesting both in how the new cafeteria style messing and lacking amount of hygiene spaces seems to have been key issues, and also how the King intervened personally and granted extra leave days.

LabCoatz has managed to reverse engineer the modern (current) coke recipe using a lot of chemistry and mass spectrometer analysis. He’s arrived at a recipe that’s chemically identical to coke and appears to pass blind tests. He managed to crack the issue with coke’s use of coca leaves which is a pro...