It’s hard to believe that a year ago, we were gearing up for a presidential election. Now Trump is back in office—woooooot!—and he has a worthy successor in the wings.
It’s going to be tough sledding in the years ahead, but it’s reassuring to know that we have a legitimate successor ready to roll in 2028. Vance’s incredible speech to the various heads of Europe’s governments earlier this year was a call to government accountability—and for Europe to wake up. It was not an attack on Europe, per se, but a powerful plea for its leaders to do something to improve the lives of their people.
I’m excited to see more from Vance in the years to come.
Every summer for the past three summers I’ve taken a trip to see my older brother, who lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. I go the week of the Fourth of July, when everything slows down and we can enjoy some quality time together.
As part of my visits, we always spend a day or two in Chicago. We will drive a couple of hours north from Indy to Hammond, Indiana, where we catch the South Shore Line train to Chicago’s Millennium Station.
Every visit is different, as Chicago contains multitudes of everything: museums, restaurants, public artworks, parks, libraries, theatres—and a Dunkin’ Donuts on every block. It is also a wonderland of architecture, as various Gilded Age magnates competed with one another following the Great Chicago Fire to build the biggest, tallest, most ornate buildings in the world. I love how every nook and cranny of Chicago seems to possess some beautiful architectural flourish and Gothic ornamentation.
This trip, we decided to spend the morning of our second day to visit the legendary Field Museum of Natural History. The Field Museum is most notable for Sue, the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil, a replica of which is on display deep in the bowels of the museum. Her actual skull is displayed nearby, as well as this impressive Triceratops skull:
An old fossil—and a triceratops skull!
I love museums, and while I love art and historical museums, I think natural history museums are my favorites by far. There is something mind-blowing and humbling about witnessing the breadth and depth of God’s Creation, from ancient beasts to exquisite gemstones to human artifacts (the last of which, really, is an extension of God’s Creative Power, that small sliver with which he endowed us humans, made in His Image).
The Field Museum had all of that—and more!—in glorious abundance.
It is wild looking back at the past year’s posts, and seeing how liberty keeps rallying to victory every time it seems near to death. A year ago, the future seemed uncertain; today, it seems as though a light is shining through the fog. Yes, America still has problems—lots of them—but we’re finally experiencing competent leadership that—gasp!—puts Americans first.
So it is that, at 249-years-old tomorrow, it seems that, at long last, America is back.
Before I dove headlong back into Civilization VII, I spent a solid two or three weeks playing Sid Meier’s Colonization on Governor difficulty (the penultimate difficulty level). I finally won a game as the Dutch, with a strong colonial basis in modern-day Argentina and Chile:
I first played this game in the mid-1990s when I was a kid. I was hooked immediately, and this game is largely responsible for sparking my interesting in teaching American history. It also ignited a lifelong interest in the American Revolution.
So, how does it hold up thirty-one years after its release?
Back in January 2025 I subjected the longsuffering Dr. Fiancée (then still Dr. Girlfriend) to an excited and probably tedious explanation of Sid Meier’s Colonization, the game that was probably most responsible for me becoming a history teacher. Since then, I started a few games, but never finished them. Like many Civ and Civ-adjacent games, Colonization drags a bit in the middle, becoming at times a laborious economic management sim (which, essentially, is what the game is).
However, the end of the game is exciting, and is essentially an entirely different game from the rest. The goal is to declare independence from your mother country, which becomes possible only after building up a self-sufficient economy in the New World. A major part of that economy is the ability to produce massive amounts of muskets and horses, as well as populating your colonies with immigrants and natural-born settlers who will use those muskets.
Late Monday night—far too late to be up before heading to work—I finished up a game as New France, successfully gaining independence from the mother country after a tough fight for independence.
Yours portly recently dug into his Drawer of Forgotten Technology and found some unusual bits of ancient alien (well, human) technology. I’m currently trying to sell them on eBay (here and here). In writing their listings, I made short little videos and uploaded them to YouTube; I want to share those videos today.
I wrote extensively about this technology on Wednesday in my post “Ancient Alien Technology“; now, here are the promised videos.
Yours portly recently dug into his Drawer of Forgotten Technology and found some unusual bits of ancient alien (well, human) technology. I’m currently trying to sell them on eBay (here and here). In writing their listings, I made short little videos and uploaded them to YouTube, and may start uploading bits of old and/or weird technology on Fridays.
When I was a nerdy child in the late 1990s, I desperately wanted a laptop computer. At that time, I dreamt of being able to play Civilization II on family road trips, in the way that I would play my Gameboy. To me, that seemed like the peak of human advancement: conquering the world in the back of an Astro van.
The late 1990s and early 2000s were a fascinating time of oddball technology. Remember, these years were before Facebook and, even more consequentially, YouTube (I learned about YouTube from an article in Newsweek, of all places; at the time, it was touted as a place to watch old public domain television shows and movies). It was also the time before the iPhone came along and totally transformed the world. As such, every computer company was trying to create “the next big thing,” or at least were attempting to explore where technology was heading next.
These two devices represent two possible paths along the tree of technological evolution that were either dead-ends or, perhaps more generously, stepping stones to technology to come. The first is the iOmega ZIP drive, which promised a disk comparable in size to the classic 1.44 MB, 3.5″ floppy disk, but with a whopping 100 (and, later, 250) MB of storage; the second is the HP Jornada 680, one is a series of “palmtop” computers that attempted to bridge the gap between full-fledged laptop and palm assistants (PDAs, or “Personal Digital Assistants,” like the once-ubiquitous Blackberry).
I’m getting into the Mongols in the next unit in World History, but our current unit on the Byzantines, Russians, and Turks has already run into the Khanate of the Golden Horde.
The vast Eurasian steppe is one of those parts of the world that seems like a big, open, empty area in which nothing of substance really happens. However, the exact opposite is true: it’s a virtual spawn point for nomadic, horseback-riding invaders. Long before the Mongols, groups like the ancient Aryans (the historic people, not the mythologized Nazi ones) and Scythians drove down from the steppe into Europe, India, the Middle East, and even China.
History YouTuber WhatIfAltHist posted a video earlier this week covering the “anti-civilization” of the steppe, and how various invaders have shaped civilizations around them.
At the time of writing, I have two full playthroughs of Civilization VII under my belt, albeit on the relatively easy “Governor” difficulty. I’ve finished one age at the “Viceroy” difficulty, which feels like it might be the standard difficulty.
That’s all to say that, while I am still no pro at the game, I have learned some things since writing my first “Initial Reactions” post two weeks ago. One thing I will note is that the game has only gotten better and become more enjoyable as I have played it. Even the notoriously clunky-yet-minimalist UI, while not improved (although that is coming in March) has gotten easier to read as I know what to look for on the map.
Part of that, I am sure, is that I am getting used to the game. Every Civ games undergoes some visual changes, as well as changes to core systems, that can be daunting for veteran players at first, but repeated sessions breed familiarity. In this case, that familiarity has not bred contempt, but a certain fondness. Indeed, part of my concern with the upcoming UI patch is that it will change too much—but then I’ll get used to those changes, and so on.
It is a perennial rule of the Civ series that the games are not truly complete until a couple of expansions are released. Then, with all the core gameplay elements finally in place two or three years after release, players have a complete game. What makes Civ VII remarkable is that, in spite of its troubled release, it actually feels like a full game. Yes, the game is incomplete in one sense—it needed much more polish before it hit the world—but the actual gameplay feels very satisfying.
I sometimes pine for Civ VI, but I also have zero desire to open it up now that Civ VII is out. That’s not a knock against Civ VI, which is an incredible game, but a testament to Civ VII‘s appeal.
On Wednesday I noted that Dr. Girlfriend surprised me with the Founders Edition of Civilization VII. The Founders edition granted users early access to the game starting Thursday, 6 February 2025.
I installed the game early that morning so that I could dive right into it after work. I was slated to have a long evening of lessons, but my last student had to cancel, so I found myself that much closer to gaming goodness. It was around 6:30 PM EST that I finally got to sit down and dig into the game.
Five hours later, I sleepily but reluctantly stepped away from the game. It is good—really good. It has some flaws, and feels a bit unfinished—but so does every Civ title at launch. In some ways, it is very different from any other civilization installment. But it still retains that addictive essence at the heart of every Civ game: the need for “just… one… more… turn.”
The Portly Politico 