During the height of the lockdown, I started doing virtual meetups with readers. They ran biweekly for over 6 months, but with vaccinations lifting and people getting busier, I'm going to scale them back to doing them more irregularly.
Our next meetup will be on Saturday, December 17th. As usual, we'll meet at 1 PM US Central (GMT-6) using Microsoft Teams. If you want email notifications of future meetups, email me at battleshipbean at gmail.
Comments
I like teams a lot. Handles any number of people, requires no signup (if you use the web version) and has good sound and video quality.
FWIW, I likely won't be able to make that time - it's my dad's 65th, so I'll be heading to visit them for a BBQ, weather permitting. (The joys of covid - if the weather doesn't permit outdoors, we'll be delaying instead of going inside).
But have fun, and I'll try to make the next one.
I also won't be able to attend, unfortunately. Nonetheless, I'm sure that after the recent 100+ comment open thread, it will lead to successors, giving me plenty of opportunities to join along in future.
Google Meet is also a possibility. It is free through the end of September
That's 4 am Sunday morning my time.
Err.... don't count on me.
I'm leaning towards Google for the moment, although Teams is also tempting.
@Doctorpat
Sorry about that. I had to pick between Europe and your part of the world, and for this one, I chose Europe.
I GM an RPG for friends and family at that time on Saturdays, so I'm afraid I'll be unable to attend.
Long-time lurker (and one-time guest poster) here - planning to join, and looking forward to it!
Long time lurker and recent new post - planning to join too!
The Google Meet link just takes me to my calendar; there's no entry or invite for this event that I can see.
That's weird. I've replaced it with a different link which I think works.
That one works; testing now.
I will be joining, though only for about half an hour. I'm actually at the room now, though nobody has let me in.
Is audio-only fine? I can switch to my tablet if need be.
That was fun. Thanks to everyone who came. We spent a lot of the time talking about rockets (so far, pretty much inevitable whenever John Schilling and I are in the same room) but still got some good stuff out of it.
There was some discussion at the end about formats. Video wasn't wildly popular, and I'm certainly not tied to it. If anyone has suggestions for a way to do something more like an in-person meetup, I'd be happy to entertain them. (I know about Mozilla Hubs, but my computer does not like it.)
I wish I could have made it, but I got distracted by housing stuff. Good news is that I now have a contract for my new place!
Congratulations. Hopefully we'll see you next time, which will probably be in two weeks.
I wanted to make it up but got hung up on some yard work.
I'll aim for the next one!
Video is nice to have, but audio only isn't the worst.
If you did audio-only, you could try streaming RtW2 at the same time, and make a collab game out of it?
Thanks for hosting Bean, the discussion was great fun!
Link for tomorrow's meeting is up. Hope to see you there.
Thanks, it was nice chatting with you both Ü
Only had three people (Alexander, John, me) this time, but it was a lot of fun. We'll probably do it again in three weeks (Sister Bean is getting married in two weeks) and I liked Teams better. Also, I'll be sure to specify time zones.
Agreed on the fun, and congratulations to Sister Bean!
Have fun with the wedding Ü
New timeslot for Saturday is up. Also, the wedding was very nice, and I'm home safe and (hopefully) healthy.
is there a standing link for the room?
There is not. I'll get one put up later today.
Meeting link is now up.
Not going to be able to make this one, unfortunately - will be airborne somewhere between here and northern California if all goes well. Have fun.
Well, despite John’s absence, an enjoyable time was had. We had 5 people this time, and discussed a bunch of stuff, from German ship design to a surprising amount on space warfare. Also, Alexander managed to send me after books about a dozen times. I think we may actually have to keep track during the next one. Which will be next week, BTW, because this one was delayed.
Well crap. I just went and downloaded the Teams app, logged into the call...and noticed it was yesterday. And I was looking forward to the topic, too.
Ah well, maybe next time.
I would miss the space-warfare virtual meetup :-(
On the other hand, I was 9500' closer to space than the rest of you all. And from the solid layer of smoke covering everything from Sacramento to Bakersfield, it certainly looked like a war zone.
Link for this Sunday is up.
And I had to miss this Sunday because of incredibly flaky internet; sorry.
We could have used you, and were sorry you had to miss. Orbital bombardment weapons came up.
Anyway, it was enjoyable to see the half dozen or so people who showed up. Various discussion topics, including RTW2, mine warfare, Taiwainese defense policy, and more space warfare stuff than you'd expect.
We're on again for this coming weekend, Saturday at 10 AM my time. Looking forward to seeing you guys.
I should be able to make this one. And "your time" is central daylight time, UTC-5:00, right?
Cool. Glad to have you. And yes, my time is UTC-5.
that's awful y early saturday morning for those of us in DC
One thing that came out of the discussion. A new answer to the question of "who would you go back in time to kill?" Specifically, we suspect Fritz Haber, of the Haber process, would make a huge difference. We don't need to stop the process being discovered, just delay it a couple of years. Then, Germany runs out of explosives in 1915 and has to capitulate. That massively changes the geopolitical landscape by 1918. The only holdout was cassander, who wanted to find a way to kill Woodrow Wilson, too.
Would it have been such a problem if Germany had won WW1? Europe would probably be better off overall. No Hitler, possibly no Communism in Russia, and yeah a hegemonic Germany, which is what happened anyway.
So, I'd take out Kaiser Willie. If he doesn't build the High Seas Fleet, Britain probably stays out and WW1 is a repeat of 1870.
I think even with no Anglo-German dreadnought arms race, you'd need significantly more competent diplomacy to keep Britain on side, probably precluding invading Belgium. Looking at their historical performance, Germany could probably have held France at bay on their border while forcing Russia out of the war, but you don't really want to fight WWI on home soil if you can avoid it, and the French territory seized in 1914 contained significant industry.
Well, the Germans were the only ones whose major offensives succeeded in the West for all but the last 100 days of the war, so I think they could have smashed the French in 1914 even without crossing Belgium. Which they'd have been less inclined to do anyway, if they'd stayed friends with the British. Basically, the Battle of the Frontiers 10x worse, then a German counterstrike. Without the British blockade and (begging Bean's pardon) without wasting resources on their fleet, they might have had a decent chance to break through.
Or they could have made Russia their main effort, but Russia's strategic depth is simply on another level.
I imagine they'd be looking to get a Brest-Litovsk style peace in the east (set up a heavily Anglo-German influenced Poland as a buffer?) and then a status quo ante bellum settlement in the west. I think that going for more would both risk involving other countries, and be potentially very costly. Britain won't stay quiet and cooperative while you conquer Europe, no matter how small your navy. A stalemate against France is good enough if there is no blockade, and I can't see the French public supporting a war that's getting them nothing but casualties if Germany didn't invade, and Russia is out of the war.
Of course, I can't imagine who you'd have to kill off to get this sort of alternate German strategy.
I'm not sure that's enough. I go back and forth on Germany in this era. Part of me thinks something was fundamentally broken when Bismarck built Germany, and that it wasn't going to be a healthy country until it was broken and remade (as after WWII). Depending on when you kill him, who takes over and what are their views? Also, if you want to target the HSF specifically, go after Tirptiz instead. He was very integral to the whole process, and might be a better weak point.
I don't think this is a good characterization. The Germans had some success in 1914, but if they'd not gone through Belgium, they would have run straight into the teeth of the French Army, and they wouldn't have had more roads over which to pass supplies. Probable stalemate. The next three years were indecisive on both sides, with the notable failure of Verdun for the Germans. The biggest victory in the 1915-1917 period is probably the Russian Brusilov Offensive. And then you have the Spring Offensive, which worked because the Russians were gone and the Americans weren't there yet. And then the Germans just fell apart.
Bismarck?
Was Karl Marx considered and rejected? He seems like an obvious target, to hopefully pull the fangs of most of the worst atrocities of the 20th C.
Wilson's an interesting choice as well, though.
I'd worry that following their defeat in WWI, Russia would be a fertile ground for a radical break with tradition, and I'm not sure that Marxism is necessarily worse than other routes they could have gone down. Think of how the violence in Iraq and Syria spawned Islamic State. I think that you'd be better off trying to mitigate the damage caused by world wars, so that existing governments retain more credibility, and there is less appeal in revolution.
This wasn't a full discussion of the question. Somehow, the Haber process came up and it was suggested that Haber himself was a good candidate. I wanted to make sure it was written down somewhere.
"Of course, I can’t imagine who you’d have to kill off to get this sort of alternate German strategy.
Bismarck?"
Unfortunately, I must respectfully oppose this proposition due to the risk of great-great-great-grandfather paradox by proxy. The Schilling family sword (currently held by one of my cousins) was awarded to one of our ancestors for saving Bismarck's life after a riding accident. I expect our family's fortunes would have followed a different path without the favor of a Bismarck in high places. Plus, it's a cool sword.
Sorry about that. If we'd known, we'd have chosen different heroic deeds. Haber is still fair game :-)
New link is up. This time, we're trying to get those from the Pacific instead of the Atlantic.
And Teams link is up. Hope to see you guys tonight.
Conversation last night was fun, even if it was just John and CatCube. We also have a new record for book-fetching. All three of us went for a book. Even more amusing, it was at the same time, and for the same book. (Space Mission Analysis and Design, if you're curious.)
I think we'd get better attendence if we had a better system of notification than continually editing a pinned topic. I completely missed that we were doing one because my eyes glazed over the announcement. We could set up an email list, facebook group, or a standing google calendar.
That's a good point. I'll probably use an email list, unless the google calendar turns out to be much easier to manage. Facebook is definitely out due to pseudonymity concerns.
Meeting is on for Saturday at 1 my time (GMT-5). Link will be up in a bit.
I apologize for missing this one. I forgot it was the meetup Saturday, and didn't look at the website until 1400 PST, so it was well over by then.
It's time once again for the meetup, this one for the 24th. 1 PM Central, as usual. See you there. Teams link will be up soon.
Link for the 11/7 meetup is up. I've pushed it back to 4 PM Central this time, so hopefully some of those who have conflicts at 1 can make it. Sorry to European readers, who may find that a bit late.
For this coming weekend's meetup, let's do Sunday at 3 Central (I think we're GMT-6 now).
Note that it is highly confusing when the meetup is.
post is from "July 14, 2020", mentions meetup on "Sunday meetup. 3 PM (GMT-6) on the 22nd" while comments seems to be talking about subsequent meetups.
Ah. Good point. The answer is that we've been meeting about every 2 weeks since June. The last one was November 22nd, and we'll do one probably next Saturday.
Meeting link is up for tomorrow, 12/4, at 1 PM.
It would be good if you consistently named the timezone when stating a time. I accidently checked in an hour early before I realized you're not on eastern time.
Sorry. I'm usually good at that, but I forgot this time. Hope to see you there.
I've set up this weekend's meeting. 1 PM central, hope to see you there.
Next meetup is set for 1 PM Central tomorrow (January 2nd).
@bean: I'm subscribed to Naval Gazing via RSS. Since November there was no new update in my feedreader. As such I missed the last two months updates. Something seems wrong with your blog.
Your blog advertises two different feeds with different URLs, one for RSS Autodiscovery in the web sites head, the other linked in the sidebar. Both URLs are different to the feed URL I subscribed years ago.
But I can't subscribe to any of those three different URLs. Neither in Feedbin, nor in desktop software like Reeder or NetNewsWire. What I can do is download a feed in a shell tool like curl - but only after an enormous waiting time. If I try to validate one of the feeds in the W3C's Feed Validator I'll get an SSL error.
That may be an explanation: Something seems wrong with your hosts SSL configuration, but only for feeds.
That's a Said Achmiz matter, but hopefully we can get it sorted out.
Details for the next meetup are up. January 17th at 3 PM Central.
Link for Saturday the 30th is up, as is the time (1 PM Central, as usual).
Sorry I missed the meeting. I thought it was on Sunday for some reason. :(
Sticking with our usual slot for the meetup on the 13th. 1 PM Central (GMT-6).
Apologies for the late notice, but we're going to do the next meetup at the usual slot tomorrow at 1 PM Central.
Having trouble with MS Teams; not sure whether it's the link or something on my end. Will try rebooting to see if that helps.
New link is up. We're doing it tomorrow at 2 PM Central (GMT-6).
We're on for tomorrow/Saturday, as usual, at 1 PM Central.
Have any of you guys ever played DEFCON?
Was wondering if it might make a fun meetup "background activity", since games can last as long as you want.
I played quite a lot of DefCon back in college. It's fun! Especially the mode that lets you point-buy your forces. I only wish there was a more sophisticated version.
I have plans this weekend (finally!), so the meetup will be pushed to next weekend.
We're on for this Saturday at 1 PM Central.
On for tonight? Ü
We are. Looking forward to seeing everyone.