Personal listen-later podcast feed. https://potspicks.com/ en-us Personal listen-later podcast feed. David Pots David@songnotes.net false https://potspicks.com/episodes/the-art-of-flanking/ An AI-generated conversation between two old soldiers at a bar, Hank (an American) and Arthur (a Brit), about flanking, the oldest good idea in war. Why cover only works in one direction. Epaminondas stacking his wing fifty men deep at Leuctra in 371 BC. Hannibal's double envelopment at Cannae. Frederick the Great at Leuthen, Stonewall Jackson's twelve-mile march through the Virginia woods at Chancellorsville, the flankless stalemate of the First World War, MacArthur's landing at Inchon, the 1991 left hook, and mouse-holing through Fallujah. Then the practical part, aimed at War Dogs: on a big three-team map, a support player working reconnaissance and medium-to-long range should approach on an angle, flank the fight when the other two teams engage, shoot and scoot, watch his own back, and always keep an escape route.

Chapters:
00:00 — Intro — David on flanking and War Dogs
00:36 — What flanking is: hit them where they are not looking
01:46 — Leuctra, 371 BC: Epaminondas makes one flank a sledgehammer
02:15 — Cannae: Hannibal's double envelopment
03:01 — Leuthen and Napoleon: the old trick returns
03:25 — Chancellorsville: Jackson's twelve-mile march through the woods
04:00 — Dead ground: wilderness flanking and the 1991 left hook
04:40 — World War I: the war with no flank
04:59 — Inchon: flanking them with an ocean
05:25 — The city: flank through the buildings, never the street
06:11 — The drone era: hide your intention, not your body
06:59 — War Dogs: five rules for the support player
09:09 — The fixing force: somebody has to be the noise out front
09:51 — The one-sentence version Thu, 15 Oct 2026 02:32:56 GMT 10:22 the-art-of-flanking https://overcast.fm/+ABQnv5eWvGs Marco Arment says he is done apologizing for using AI — and he does not think the rest of us should either. In this five-minute stretch from Accidental Tech Podcast, Marco argues that AI is genuinely great at the parts of programming most developers find miserable — the tedious forms, the gnarly debugging — and genuinely bad at the parts humans are actually good at: ideas, taste, design, knowing what to build. His point: the skill did not disappear, it moved up a level. You are directing the AI now, and what an experienced developer can produce with AI is categorically better than what a novice can make with the same tools. "I am past the point of apologizing for using AI," he says. "The goals speak for themselves." Thu, 08 Oct 2026 21:10:00 GMT 6:26 stop-apologizing-for-using-ai https://overcast.fm/+AAb0znjtV6s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan dig into the Manchester City scandal — the Premier League’s independent commission found the club guilty on 114 of 115 financial charges, and nobody knows what the punishment will be. They trace the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008, the decade of suspicious sponsorships, and why Financial Fair Play never caught them, then rank the possible penalties from a forced sale to a multi-year ban to expulsion from English football entirely. Plus the political fallout for England’s new prime minister, what happens to Haaland, and whether the club is simply too big to fail.

Chapters:
00:44 — Guilty on 114 of 115 charges
01:04 — The 2008 Abu Dhabi takeover
02:36 — Financial Fair Play, explained
04:15 — The inflated sponsorships
05:58 — Penalty scenarios: points, bans, expulsion
07:08 — England’s new prime minister steps in it
09:48 — “Lance Armstrong times fifty”
11:58 — Too big to fail?
14:48 — Ranking the possible punishments
16:08 — Do you vacate the titles?
22:18 — What happens to Haaland?
31:58 — A subversion of the competition
Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:10:00 GMT 32:55 bill-simmons-man-city-punishment-primer https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/2106404568401682468 An AI-generated deep dive into three studies on the cognitive side of racing — what race car drivers' brains do differently, whether the gains depend on the type of game, whether racing mastery is special compared to other disciplines, and what makes sim racing distinct. Prompted by <a href="https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/2106404568401682468">this Bryan Johnson post on X</a>.

Chapters:
00:00 — Intro — David on the Bryan Johnson post
00:55 — The three studies
01:30 — Study 1: NeuroRacer — 12 hours, older adults beat 20-year-olds
04:30 — Do game genres matter? Shooters, strategy, puzzles
07:30 — Study 2: Pro race drivers' neural efficiency
09:30 — Is racing mastery special vs chess, music, etc.?
11:00 — Study 3: Real racing vs sim racing physiology
12:30 — What makes sim racing distinct: spatial maps, rhythm, haptics, flow
14:30 — Conclusion Sun, 04 Oct 2026 18:45:01 GMT 15:05 racing-and-the-brain-full-picture https://x.com/Brammflakes/status/2104937869634662749 Audio from Joe Brammer's video — the Wardogs CEO reacts to a YouTuber's take on the game's balance complainers, talking through sandbox balance across three competing teams, the easy \"fixes\" armchair designers propose, and what his studio is working on ahead of their season 2 refresh. Wardogs launched in early September 2026 and drew 400K peak players against hopes for 30K. Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:35:10 GMT 48:43 wardogs-joe-brammer-dev-reacts https://overcast.fm/+AAB7NDxHylI Before they get to the products, John Gruber and Andru Edwards talk about the Apple event itself — and how much the crowd in the Steve Jobs Theater has changed. Prompted by Mark Gurman's complaint that Apple now favors influencers who post glowing "reviews" in exchange for free devices and travel, they take the idea apart: iShowSpeed did backflips in front of John Ternus and livestreamed the hands-on area to nearly a million people, and Keke Palmer and Kid Cudi were in the building — but almost nobody leaves with a free iPhone, the domestic press gets "cookies and coffee," and the reporters who ask hard questions haven't been displaced. Apple made room for the new crowd by inviting fewer of its own employees.

Gruber tells the story of running into Gurman at the 2017 iPhone X event — "I'm thinking X, not 10" — and remembers being the odd blogger out at Moscone, where Walt Mossberg, waiting on Steve Jobs, came over to say he loved his work. He also makes the case that the pre-recorded keynote films everyone calls boring are only half the story: event day itself is still a live, electric, movie-premiere scene. Plus: whether the format will evolve around new CEO John Ternus the way it evolved around Tim Cook, why the September iPhone event is "their Oscars," and why Apple would double the size of the Steve Jobs Theater if it could. Wed, 30 Sep 2026 03:20:15 GMT 33:48 gruber-apple-keynotes-talkshow-455 https://sharptech.fm/member/episode/three-weeks-of-meta-momentum-the-ultimate-muse-upside-a-king-kong-vs-godzilla-aggregator-war A snippet from the end of the SharpTech episode, where Ben and Andrew have a round of AI show and tell. Listeners write in describing some of the novel things they've built to solve the software-sized holes in their lives. Includes a helpful app built by a wedding planner, a guy who revived a college project from the obsolete confines of SunOS, and a solution for tracking a 33 year old fantasy football league. Sat, 26 Sep 2026 13:29:17 GMT 20:12 sharp-tech-meta-momentum-muse-upside https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEOvfStFSvM Audio from the Vanity Fair video — Wes Anderson explains every one of his movies. Sat, 26 Sep 2026 04:04:03 GMT 55:53 wes-anderson-every-movie-vanity-fair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-r63JyWmDs Audio from the Chris Williamson video — Why Women Hate Sydney Sweeney & Love Sabrina Carpenter. Sat, 26 Sep 2026 04:03:03 GMT 11:45 chris-williamson-sydney-sweeney-sabrina-carpenter https://overcast.fm/+ABPDx2A-53w Audio from the People vs Algorithms episode — The AI Interface Shift, on Muse, Meta's AI push, and why the next platform battle is over the interface itself. Sat, 26 Sep 2026 03:17:42 GMT 1:20:00 the-ai-interface-shift https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPFIipborbY Audio from the Peerless Cinema video — Bret Easton Ellis on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Fri, 25 Sep 2026 22:48:23 GMT 28:08 bret-easton-ellis-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood https://sharptext.net/2026/some-of-all-fears/ Audio narration of Andrew Sharp's essay "Some of All Fears," from Sharp Text. Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:50:25 GMT 20:55 some-of-all-fears-andrew-sharp https://x.com/wkuksaturday/status/2102775666903015567 Audio from the IT'S SATURDAY! video — Zach Cregger and Resident Evil. Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:35:08 GMT 3:12 wkuksaturday-2102775666903015567 https://x.com/danmall/status/2103152478657434023 Audio from Dan Mall's video — a junior designer DM'd him to ask if they're still needed in the design industry. Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT 13:18 dan-mall-2103152478657434023