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I want to be clear--I've been enjoying the show. Many people who know their stuff have very reasonably objected to this that and other aspect of it, notably the business of sending Space Shuttles all the way to Lunar orbit to rendezvous with the LSAM. (The LSAM itself is also pretty...

I think though that if someone is a media mogul who finds his "product" has a market on the right, that either the reason for that is that the product leans right in content because that is what the mogul is pushing, out of personal conviction, and this is why the right wing media consumers buy...

This seems down to the ATL's more hard-line Cold War mentality. Japan was most definitely a CW ally of the Western bloc--in that US effective occupation gave Japanese government and corporations no choice in the matter--nor do I doubt that the officials of both and the major stockholders in...

I binge watched Season 1 and half of Season 2, or more like 2/3 of it actually. So I might have missed it--but is there ever any positive mention of any disease that seems to actually be HIV at all? As some have noted, in 1983 it was a pretty new thing. But I was there--I graduated high school...

You Are Not Alone, Michel! I actually think the Pathfinder is where the series goes full on ASB; we seem to have a magic spacedrive that scorns all known physics, a la Shuttlecraft on Star Trek. The trouble with holding that Pathfinder has an engine that is any kind of rocket whatsoever starts...

Failures of Soviet command economy definitely caused the collapse of Communist legitimacy all right--but in the context of Gorbachev's "Peristroika" ("restucturing") that failed to make enough useful difference, and "Glasnost" ("transparency") that allowed journalists to expose the bad news...

Not quite caught up to the thread end yet, this is from page 45. But I quite agree. Even granted Marines are trained to react fast, I'd think some careful indoctrination of Rules of Engagement apply here. I didn't notice that the 1967 space treaties were repudiated when binge watching the show...

OTL Nixon lived on for decades. It is possible this episode of neglected health and compounded anxiety and frustration shortens his life a lot, and if he drops dead within days, weeks or months that would hardly be crazy. But the way to bet is that the USA has Dick Nixon to kick around--and...

I think the fundamental problem is that Ireland just isn't very rich, and thus it is difficult for the island, even united, to sustain land and sea power sufficient to keep the nearby English wolf at bay. Here's a scenario of sorts, not offered as amazingly plausible alas: I rely for much...

Posing the question as "Is Arab expansionism independent of their adopting Islam" I think ignores materialist cause and effect. I believe Islam was a system largely called into being by the general discontents of the age and place Mohammed lived in. I think it is quite likely that if Islam...

The Triple Succession is pretty brilliant, it sidesteps a lot of the civil war plaguing the West in particular OTL. I presume the two Emperors remaining when one dies reach consensus on who to name as the Western Imperator, so illustrious generals across the entire Empire are hoping for this...

I had similar thoughts. A "fair" division would be more at the East's expense somehow. But how? Dividing Greece might be one answer, the Center gets mainland Greece, the East island Greece, perhaps the Peloponnesus is a swing district to make the adjustment exact--regard it as practically an...

It is a bad plan for long term Imperial viability as the OTL 2-part division left each section with a highly rich developed zone to pay for the defense of the frontiers. In the eastern part, the rich zones were right up against the contested borders, generally, while in the west, the core of...

I'd think the best insight into the process of Futhark giving way to the Latin Alphabet (with peculiar carry-overs in English being flensed out by printing) would come from considering its trajectory in England. The English among Nordic (more or less) peoples adopted Christianity fairly early...

Responding cold to the OP alone: The big problem Russian colonization had OTL along the exact lines they followed--using their appropriation of the far northwest Pacific coast to get a sideline in Alaskan fur trading--was that they had terribly slow and tenuous communications between the...

It does not help me fully appreciate this post that I have no idea what or who a "Reggie Lawson" is. But certainly it is in the spirit of the TL to have an ATL production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that hews more closely to the OTL version with Gene Wilder--perhaps there are two...

The conventional narrative OTL I believe is that the fall of Constantinople inaugurating a surge in power of the Ottomans was catalytic of the oceanic expansion of western European power several ways; one being greater impediment of trade with the East over traditional overland, Indian Ocean and...

Simple does not equal simplistic. I am very tied up in a home crisis right now but I would reply in more depth when I can. I'm saying Valentinianism seems by your description to start with a very complex esoteric position as the elevator speech--and then presumably it gets wonkier.

And it is pretty complicated it seems. Probably no accident the two greatest Abrahamic successor-branches both center on a fairly simple cosmology--in "orthodox" Christianity, taking that very very broadly (so broadly I'd be including Arianism and Gnosticism as I understand it alike) Jesus...

Thing is, OTL demonstrates a third way. It is not very much justified (a little bit but offset by a lot of downsides) from an idealistic-humanist perspective, but it has proven eminently practical from a cynical point of view: 1) agree in principle early on that full legal independence is on the...