Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 4h

Everyone assumes that Crouchback is Evelyn Waugh’s surrogate character in Waugh’s “Sword of Honour” trilogy, but it’s really Apthorpe in “Men of Arms”, then Ludovic in “Officers and Gentlemen” and “Unconditional Surrender”

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 21h

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 3d

I spent some time on planes this week, so I got to read two entries for #histbookchat and #photofriday - “The Dawn of Everything - A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow, and “British Infantry Battalion Commanders in the First World War” by Peter E Hodgkinson

Two paperback books sitting on a wooden coffee table - “The Dawn of Everything - A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow (Orange cover, title in red print) and “British Infantry Battalion Commanders in the First World War” by Peter E Hodgkinson (Blue cover, title in black print, black and white photo of six British Army officers in WW1 uniforms)

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 15d

Age yourself with a film you saw in the cinema as a kid

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 16d

When people were shooting back and I would have had to go to boot camp first and submit to some actual discipline l? Oh, no, I couldn’t serve THEN.

But now I can *serve* by terrorising unarmed women and kids with funny-sounding names and I get to cosplay as an operator? Count me in!

A quote from an applicant at an ICE job fair, explaining how he “always wanted to serve” just like his friends who went to Iraq (he didn’t)

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 17d

Pretty happy with this Grand Final result, especially that a couple of blokes who missed last year’s Grand Final got to play in a winning Grand Final side.

Brisbane Lions AFL player Charlie Cameron celebrates after scoring a goal.

Underneath is the score of the 2025 AFL Grand Final (Brisbane 122 to Geelong 75)

A picture of the 2025 Brisbane Lions AFL team superimposed on the outline of the AFL trophy, with a label at the bottom saying “Back-to-Back Premiers 2025”

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 17d

I was thinking of Reform as the Maple MAGA Trojan horse equivalent

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 17d

Maybe it’s the UK that’s the Australian First Republic? Post-imperial decline, loss of institutional confidence, collapse of old institutions, violent unrest…

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 17d

“As it turns out, you can’t sell your soul to Trump and keep your spine; they’re a package deal.”

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 18d

It’s a bit broad-brush (to be fair, there’s a lot of ground to cover) and a bit more emphasis on *great* personalities with spots of local colour than military, economic or policy detail, but I did learn a few interesting things (I never knew the Gulf States, Oman and Aden were part of the Raj) 2/2

Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 18d

This week’s entry for #histbookchat and #photofriday is “Shattered Lands” - quite a readable popular history (by William Dalrymple’s son, Sam) of the winding down of the Raj and subsequent events through to Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 1/2

The cover of the book “Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia” by Sam Dalrymple.

The book has a green cover with a faint outline map of the Indian subcontinent, covered with a stylised red handprint.

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 18d

Okay, how’s this for a spicy take:

the Boer War was actually the best Victorian-era imperialist war because the Boers were awful and a harsher postwar settlement would have (maybe) meant no apartheid South Africa

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 18d

Or little bits of the WW2 reading, anyway

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 20d

Share your favorite black and white movie

The Battle of Algiers (1966)

A black and white scene from the 1966 movie The Battle of Algiers. A bemedalled French paratroop officer wearing sunglasses leads his men on parade in front of an enthusiastic French-Algerian crowd waving French flags.

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 20d

Is it that much stranger than all the fawning over ex-Wehrmacht generals in the 1950s for their alleged brilliance by US and British officers?

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 22d

technologically advance a band

Midnight Solar

Splitcoil @splitcoil.bsky.social · 22d

technologically advance a band

The B-2s

Xina @ciw.bsky.social · 22d

technologically advance a band.

OK GoPro

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 22d

The alt texts on these things are works of art.

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 23d

@sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com - thanks for bringing this bit of brilliance to my attention

SPOOKY Mistress Usili (Sage) 🏳️‍⚧️ @usili.bsky.social · Aug 6

woman crying:

"babe please stop you're not a 1950s vital center realist"

man in trench coat smoking:

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary..."

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 23d

In some good news, the Brisbane Lions are playing in the AFL Grand Final next week.

And even better, Collingwood isn’t.

A photograph of Brisbane Lions player Cam Rayner celebrating at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Brisbane had just defeated Collingwood by 100 points to 71 in the Australian Football League Preliminary Final to win a spot in next Saturday’s Grand Final (against Geelong)

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 25d

“do what you like to them, boys, we’ve got your backs no matter what”

Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 25d

I’m assuming some combination of 20 years service and promotion gets you an element of social advancement. How much better off is a centurion at retirement age compared to his mate who never made it out of the ranks?

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 25d

With the Roman Legionary, isn’t there also the long term deferred benefit of “you aren’t getting paid too much now, but do your 20 and you are set for life” to consider?

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 25d

I met McMaster a couple of times in Afghanistan and at the time - and for a long time after - I thought he was the real deal.

More fool me, I guess.

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 27d

If you are in all these meetings, YOU are the sacrifice to the meetings god

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 28d

Sicario and the sequel are both examples where two sequences brilliantly capture the tension and uncertainty of “is this actually going to pop off? Is today the day the guy in the Ranger with the 240 does a green-on-blue?”

..and once the shooting starts it’s all cartoon SF-operator violence.

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 28d

An annoying thing about a lot of movies these days set in purportedly some version of the real world is that they go all in on ‘tactical realism’ in terms of showing off that they did their homework, getting details right, etc., then operate by cartoon logic. It’s an inconsistent level of realism

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Pete Monks @petemonks.bsky.social · 29d

The Sixth Sense
Seven Samurai
The Hateful Eight

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