In 1908 Teddy Roosevelt noticed that the US military was getting flabby and he issued an executive order that all officers needed to be able to march 50 miles in less than 20 hours 🧵 "Many of the older officers were so unfit physically that their condition would have excited laughter, had it not been so serious, to think that they belonged to the military arm of the Government."

HOW TO ROB A TRAIN IN THE OLD WEST.

If you're a bored cowboy earning a couple of dollars a day looking for a way to score $50,000 quick, but don't quite understand the mechanics of how to pull it off, then bookmark this thread: 🧵 1. Understand the basic train lineup.

Engine
Tender - carries the fuel
Baggage/Mail - low value, registered mail
Express - high value freight, safes, gold!
Passengers - you can mug them if you have time

This setup is almost never deviated from by the railroads.

The story of Tom "Blackjack" Ketchum, one of the West's most proficient train robbers, who after several successful hits, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, thought he could rob a train singlehandedly and got his arm blasted off by a shotgun as a result: The Raton Mesas area in northeast New Mexico around Cimarron was a perfect place for a cowboy turned outlaw to operate in during the 1890s. Vast empty wilderness, small isolated towns, lonely train tracks, countless canyons to hideout in after the heist.

Powell's 1869 expedition down the Colorado isn't remembered in the American Pantheon of Exploration because of the distance travelled, or hardships survived, or Indians fought. It's remembered because of the sheer amount of balls it took to pull it off.

I'll try to explain: 🧵 The whole country in the late 1860s was talking about exploring the Colorado River and Grand Canyon. The Colorado Plateau, the high desert of the four corners region, was the last blank spot on the map, and this was an affront to American pride. Powell aimed to be the man.

Aristo is absolutely correct in noticing that none of this is happening organically.

Here's a very high-level summary of the mechanics of how money flows through the Immigration Industrial Complex, and perhaps a partial answer to the very relevant question - who benefits? 🧵

https://twitter.com/Aristos_Revenge/status/1825373558790320426

To start at the top, taxpayer money is used at federal, state, and local levels to fund "programs" that are used to resettle immigrants inside the United States.

In fed lingo, all programs that provide grants or other forms of assistance are called "Assistance Listings".

A multi-day whitewater rafting trip down the Grand Canyon is a highly sought after experience, with only 27,000 people allowed down the canyon each season, a number that has stayed mostly constant for over 50 years.

A few pictures and thoughts from my week on the Colorado: Every trip starts at Lee's Ferry, just below Glen Canyon Dam. This is the official starting point of the Grand Canyon, a bouy marks the spot in the water. The water comes out the bottom of Lake Powell at a frigid 48°, and only warms up to around 54° after 200 miles of river.

When I was in Eagle Pass last month, I was somewhat surprised to find what was clearly an Anglo-Texan town on the Rio Grande that is now 95% Hispanic. It got me thinking about the demographic waves that have surged and ebbed across the southwest throughout our country's history: People forget that America in 1800 had a Total Fertility Rate above 7, the highest in the world at the time, and a feat rarely matched anywhere in history. An average of 7 births per woman is insane. These kids all had to go somewhere. Lots went to Texas.

Despite being fully integrated as a state in the USA, Hawaii suffers from a set of intractable problems that I don't think will ever be solved due to its geography and isolation. And this manifests itself in actually very bad local governance and real pain for the population.

https://twitter.com/VanDiemen_/status/1795726147847848087

The entire local voting base has been house-poor for generations. Median house price to annual income ratio is approaching 10. Anything above 5 is generally considered "severely unaffordable".

All sorts of distortions to normal, healthy society happen under these conditions.

Custer's Last Stand - Part III

The date is June 25th, 1876.

The Lakota are on the warpath, gathering strength somewhere beyond the horizon.

General Custer's task is to find them, defeat them, and bring them in.

The United States has never won a war against the Lakota. 🧵 General Sheridan has planned a three-pronged assault to smash the Indians like a hammer on anvil.

General Gibbon is to march east from Fort Ellis. General Crook to march up the Bozeman Trail from Fort Fetterman. And Terry and Custer will leave Fort Lincoln and march west.

Part II - Lakota vs United States

Having become the undisputed masters of the Northern Plains, the Lakota were confident in their position going into the 1850s.

We'll go over the US-Sioux Wars up to 1876 in this thread.

(Part I can be found here 👇)

https://x.com/VanDiemen_/status/1803547933197152564?t=gFzJiBDvVVrzxuOYn5YrZQ&s=19

Sioux ruled either directly or through allies a vast area of the United States, from Kansas to Canada, and between the Rockies and the eastern woodlands. And they were generally on good terms with the US.

But a series of monumental changes would change their world forever.

Thread on how the Lakota Sioux created an empire on the northern Great Plains, attained a nearly mythological status in American history, inflicted a string of stunning victories on the US Army, and how they were eventually defeated. 🧵

(Part I) The Sioux tribe originally came from the area around Lake Superior, and the Lakota were only one of seven sub-tribes. This is why you often see them called Lakota Sioux, to distinguish them from other Sioux like the Dakotas or Yanktons.

Utah might have the most hostile American geography outside of Alaska.

For most of its history, the geography of North America pushed people north and south of Utah as they headed east and west, leaving it relatively isolated, an effect which persists to this day. 🧵 "Utah" as a place fit for human habitation is really only a sliver of land on the edge of the Great Basin that benefits from the orographic precipitation of the Wasatch Mountains. This is what locals call the Wasatch Front. It wasn't much of a destination.

Though a work of fiction, Blood Meridian is meticulously rooted in real geography and accurate history.

I've put together a list of a few of the real life places that you can visit today if you'd like to follow in the footsteps of the Glanton Gang: 🧵 Nacogdoches, Texas

Where the kid met the judge and burned down the tavern. Nacogdoches was the frontier gateway into Texas. A short rebellion against the Mexican government occured there in 1825, with some locals declaring the Republic of Fredonia.

It's 1875 and Mexican warlords have overrun South Texas with their personal armies, stealing cattle with impunity and driving them back to Mexico.

One man named Leander McNelly and his Texas Rangers decide to do what the US Government refuses to do and stop it themselves. 🧵 The Nueces Strip is the part of Texas between The Rio Grande and the Nueces River. After the Civil War Anglo-Texans had moved into the area to take advantage one history's great arbitrage opportunities - local longhorn worth $2 could be sold up north for $40.

Blood Meridian is based on a first hand account of scalp-hunters found in a book called My Confession by Samuel Chamberlain.

Reading through it highlights for me how little of Blood Meridian was dramatized by McCarthy.

Here are a few excerpts I thought were interesting: Samuel Chamberlain was a young man from Boston who ended up riding with the Glanton Gang. Some think that the Kid in Blood Meridian is loosely based on him. Here he is meeting Glanton for the first time.

Part 2 of a thread on the Comanche, their reign as the horse lords of the Southern Plains, and how they were eventually defeated by the Anglo-Texans. 🧵

(Part 1 👇)

https://twitter.com/VanDiemen_/status/1773921657331253373?t=gYMKZJrlCk6y3mfW5jgW5Q&s=19

The southern edge of Comanchería was the Balcones Escarpment, or what Texans today generally call the Hill Country, which ran in an arc from roughly Dallas to Austin to San Antonio, and is the point at which the Great Plains fall down into the more fertile Coastal Plains.

Thread on what made the Comanche the most brutal and feared American Indian horse warriors, how they halted European expansion for generations, and how the Anglo-Texans eventually learned to defeat them. 🧵

(Part 1) If North America had a geographical "Womb of Nations", like Mongolia or Scandinavia in the Old World, it would be Wyoming. It was a cold, bitter, liminal place that forged peoples into the hardest forms of homo sapiens. The Comanche are a Shoshone speaking tribe from Wyoming.

In order to understand the history of North America, it's good to review the three very different approaches each of the major colonial powers took with regard to the Indians:

1. French - Trade
2. Spanish - Assimilation
3. English - Land Ownership

Let's go over each: 1. French

The French were the greatest traders with the natives. Obviously they envisioned the fleur-de-lis flying over all of North America, but this was to support their primary interest which was mercantile. French trappers and traders wandered the furthest as a result.

A lot of people don't know that it's entirely legal to general contract the construction of your own home. It used to be very common, but doesn't happen as much anymore.

Here's a step-by-step guide for how to save 20% of the cost of your new home by building it yourself. (🧵) This is totally possible without any construction experience. You shouldn't have to self-perform any of the work yourself. You won't need to swing a hammer. All you're going to do is put together the team and hire the subcontractors yourself.

Many dream of building their own custom home someday, but those who get the opportunity often launch into the endeavor with very little training as to what makes a home beautiful and timeless. I've got three book recommendations that I think every future builder needs to read: Failing to follow the rules of good architecture leads to "McMansions". The objection to the McMansion isn't that it's mass produced, it's that it is large without being tasteful, that the builder of the home had a layman's lack of understanding in what makes a home attractive.

The Jews have been a diaspora people not since the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, but since the Babylonian exile in 586 BC.

Most Jews lived outside Palestine during the life of Christ.

I think there are several important insights from remembering this historical context: The Jewish diaspora began in 586 BC when the Babylonians conquered Judea and took most of the population back to Mesopotamia.

Small groups started returning to Jerusalem in 538 BC (Ezra, Nehemiah), but 586 BC was really the last time that a majority of Jews lived in Palestine.