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Reading Blog - January 2026



Tags: bookshistoryseries

I finally put aside some time to get past the halfway mark in my Spanish Civil War book. While I was reading on Amtrak I had a conversation with someone reading The Wretched of the Earth about Algeria and decolonization, which is also meeting the moment.

Taiwan's Former Nuclear Weapons Program: Nuclear Weapons On-Demand (David Albright and Andrea Stricker, 2018)

This book is available for free online. Albright and Stricker are also co-authors on books about South Africa's program and "illicit trade networks".

Surprisingly quick and readable review of the rise and fall of Taiwan's covert nuclear weapons program. It's an interesting case because the US has produced so much information as a supplier, inspector, and regulator of Taiwan's peaceful program, and the authors were able to talk to Chang Sen-i, a CIA informant who resettled in the US. CNN did a story about him in 2025.

The US position was that Taiwan shouldn't produce nuclear weapons, because it would escalate the conflict with the mainland. Whichever side acted first, the mainland/PRC could eliminate Taiwan's nuclear program and devastate the country, and Taiwan had no ability to disable the PRC's arsenal. Due to restrictions on missiles, it wasn't clear how Taiwan could even deliver a nuclear weapon (they designed a system for a domestically-produced fighter jet which took flight only afterward; Wiki suggests nuclear artillery from the Matsu Islands).

The US and Canada remained open to partnering with Taiwan on supplying reactor fuel and collecting waste. From early on, the Taiwanese / ROC military was manipulating the Atoms for Peace and US partnerships to build nuclear capability. In a program visiting the Oak Ridge laboratory, Chang Sen-i focused on computer simulation of nuclear meltdowns / runaway reactions. After Taiwan agreed to bans of atmospheric and underwater testing, their program relied heavy on computer simulation, even getting a professor to validate their results on a UC Berkeley supercomputer. They also reached out to other countries - primarily Israel and South Africa- with similar covert programs, but also looking into purchasing a reactor from West Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. The US repeatedly intervened to break up deals with European companies, as Taiwan had no business model justifying a peaceful enrichment or reprocessing facility.

The program accelerated in the late 1970s. Taiwan's position was rocked by the US and UN recognizing the PRC, withdrawing nuclear missiles from their territory, and forcing safeguards agreements, including planning a transition to low-enriched uranium (LEU). The military had second thoughts and found directors who were willing to continue the covert program. Leadership wanted a pipeline where if needed, they could build weapons in 3–6 months.
Shortly after Chang Sen-i defected with his family in 1988, the US presented evidence to Taiwan that testing programs had gone past their agreed safeguards. The reactor was permanently shut down, and heavy water and fuel was soon exported.
Not totally coincidentally, the 70s and 1988 inflection points occurred around the death of Chiang Kai-shek and his son. The future of Taiwan's military strategy, democratic stability, and connection to the US was in flux at these times, so the US felt a need to intervene.

The conclusion of the book mentions a few incidents where Taiwanese government and media discussed resuming their nuclear program. The IAEA continues to monitor Taiwanese facilities and imported equipment.

The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom, and the Spanish Civil War (Giles Tremlett, 2020)

This is a gigantic book from my original move-in book list. The author Giles Tremlett is an English historian based in Madrid. His most successful book on Spanish history prior to this was Isabella of Castile. For the 50th anniversary of Franco's death in November, he just released a biography El Generalísimo.
One thing I'll praise up front is that Tremlett covers a lot of fighters who went by a nom d'guerre, spread rumors about their past, had legends told afterward, and he is able to keep all of that straight plus dig up real facts.

The book opens with the People's Olympiad, Barcelona socialists' counter-programming to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The athletes find themselves in the middle of a military coup, which is rebuffed and replaced by a civilian uprising. We see the roots of the International Brigades in the gathered leftist athletes and artists, deciding whether to take up arms.

Unlike typical coups, the military expected no support in Madrid and started in other parts of the country. A foothold in Seville allowed an unprecedented airlift of Franco and the Army of Africa (Spaniards, legionnaires, and Moroccans) from North Africa and Canary Islands. In republican-held regions the government struggled to regain confidence and credibility from the activists, who were drawn to anarchist and communists.
Italy and Germany provided support to the fascists, and Stalin's USSR recruited and armed members from Socialist parties from around Europe, though at a lesser pace. This led to Spaniards often calling all brigades 'Russians', though their Russian officers were being given fake names or referred to as 'Mexicans'.

Leftists forced out of Germany and Italy joined with French and English veterans of the first World War. The influence of anarchists and communists spooked the crumbling Republican government. The leaders fled Madrid and allowed newly formed, poorly trained Brigades to battle things out on a college campus. WW1 veterans did their best to keep volunteers alive, but frequently they were outmatched by machine guns and artillery in ways they'd never seen in battle. There's some discussion of how this might be the true introduction of modern warfare compared to the World Wars.

The communists and anarchists are quick to attack Catholics and burn churches since they had associated with and sometimes hosted meetings for fascist militias. It is reminiscent of the conflicts 65 years earlier during the Paris Commune.

Women were a significant share of the volunteers, but early on they were redirected from battle into medical, support, training, and journalist roles. The author profiles a few women, though often with a tidbit of gossip around their personal lives.

The International Brigades and Republican army worked on different stretches of the front line into 1937, preventing the fascists from crossing the river to access Madrid. This eventually failed.
One recurring theme is the International Brigade wiring a bridge to explode and then failing to destroy it at the crucial moment. I don't read much military history, so is this a 1930s technology thing, a sabotage thing… why don't they destroy the bridge in advance? I was remembering pontoon bridges being a big part of other conflicts.

The coup's chief plotter, Sanjurjo died in a plane crash, propelling Franco to become the leader.

Tremlett puts significant blame on Henri Dupré for infiltrating the Brigades' supply chain and sabotaging weapons. Dupré boasted about this in a book published in occupied France in 1942. A 1994 history book Fallen Sparrows mentions this skeptically, noting that it was taken as truthful by a French journalist in the 80s. But it's not mainstream (search results generally point to this book).

A naval communications officer received word of the coup, arrested his commanding officer, and warned others. After the war he lived in Mexico: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjam%C3%ADn_Balboa

An article on Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish volunteers https://albavolunteer.org/2024/08/returning-home-sephardim-volunteers-in-the-spanish-civil-war/

1938 travel brochure by the Nationalists: https://www.vscw.ca/en/node/273

Belfast commemorated their soldiers in International Brigades https://bsky.app/profile/spaincivilwartours.bsky.social/post/3lmujmcemuc2d

Progress in exhuming war dead from the International Brigade in Catalonia as of 2024: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/29/new-research-raises-hopes-of-exhuming-foreign-spanish-civil-war-dead

An episode of "This Day" with the author of Spain In Our Hearts mentions the importance of de-segregation in the American volunteers. I should mention another book, Franco's International Brigade, which is on my list but I wanted to prioritize the cool kids first.

I was reminded of the 2025 British series Outrageous about the Mitford sisters.

In 2018 I saw the last statue of Franco in Melilla - this was allowed as honoring his early military service and defense of the colony. It was removed in 2021.

Did Forrest Mars Sr. get the idea for M&Ms during the Spanish Civil War? Wikipedia cites MoMA, that Mars "visited Spain during its Civil War" and saw volunteers with a British chocolate candy (Smarties). The Acquired podcast, which does a ton of research on these things, was not sure. For example, since Mars was working in Britain at the time, maybe he saw the candy and/or volunteers while he was there?

Previous Reads

I started listening to Kafka's The Trial in audiobook format. There was significantly more characterization of the narrator than I expected, as all I knew going in was 'oh no it's bureaucracy'. This may be a bleak and unpopular take, but I thought of K's trial as representing courting someone and having to win the family's approval and avoid other temptations. K thinks it can be dismissed for someone with his wealth, but quickly discovers there are a myriad of unwritten rules and he cannot get around them. There is more political satire / anti-police angle later on.

Interesting thoughts from an iNaturalist co-founder https://kueda.net/blog/2026/01/06/why-i-left-inat/

Sweet story about a family tradition https://www.pbump.net/o/finding-a-tradition-inside-of-a-tradition/

Tailwind discussed that they let go a lot of staff as their docs are how they get paying customers, and more people are going to LLMs https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#issuecomment-3717222957

After all of the preparation for the 2020 or 2024 election to be manipulated by AI deepfakes, the news of 2026 have been exceptionally bad for AI media. Not to invent a false event or change history, but because someone wanted to be first with a dramatic Maduro arrest photo, or they made a movie poster like image of Renee Good [or her classmate] in the car. Basically "but I wanted a photo like this". Then the next person who logs on will repost this high-res on-message image over the less perfect, authentic images. There was also a wave of people defending manipulated photos of the ICE agent as an "AI estimate" or "AI unmask".

There was a post on the H5N1 subreddit by someone looking for "studies" about sprays or ointments to put up their nose to "trap and neutralize" the H5N1 virus. This sounded preposterous, first because there aren't human-to-human cases to test prevention of H5N1, second because you also have a mouth, and third WHAT.
There are antibiotic nasal sprays to kill existing infections and post-surgery, but I didn't see anything antiviral.
Eventually someone linked an article about a real study which shows an antibiotic activates your immune system, and based on animal testing that would be preventative for covid or influenza.
As best I can tell, these sprays are a trend in the continuing-to-mask / "zero covid" community, and there are also mouthwashes? This thread in their subreddit is skeptical that any of it is evidence-based. But weird that this might be its first appearance on a prepper-y H5N1 subreddit.
Also, one paper is a poor excuse to start a regular nose spray treatment for your family. I know that other unrelated decongestant nasal sprays can become addictive.

A YouTube video noted that Mohammed's life overlapped with a civil war in Persia so there was a lot going on in the region.

Someone told Congress that there's no hallucination or ambiguity in quantum ML? https://xcancel.com/DesFrontierTech/status/1991345277417009178

Taking Pause AI seriously enough to do a hunger strike, but how well does it work? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qWFq2aF8ZU

A video about walking over the Malaysia-Singapore bridge, and wow no https://www.reddit.com/r/malaysia/comments/1q64hq2/til_there_is_no_proper_pedestrian_walkway_in_jbsg/

Removal of a Minneapolis pioneer statue https://www.mynortheaster.com/news/mprb-takes-step-in-efforts-to-remove-monument/

In December, one drone strike was mentioned by Trump on a podcast and denied by Venezuela. In a return of "LuddAnon", a leading theory on BlueSky was that Trump had been confused by an AI video.

Someone lost an AirTag out of their carry-on bag (not anything valuable, and not clear why the bag got moved). Eventually it got to Guatemala and then has been in someone's vehicle for a while https://mathstodon.xyz/@dpiponi/115651419771418748

Joke-y Boston street name adopted by MBTA, tagged as loc_name on OSM https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/175660184#map=19/42.296886/-71.157385&layers=V

As part of research for a video, I added a historic_name tag to a downtown Milwaukee street. More to come.

Swedish / joint Nordic battalion in Bosnia story https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/9/20/trigger-happy-autonomous-and-disobedient-nordbat-2-and-mission-command-in-bosnia

TV

The "Dead Eyes" podcast guy Connor Ratliff has a parody talk show where he asks and answers questions as if he is George Lucas. Rachel Zegler made the recent Christmas episode. His cohost Griffin is also a cohost of the "Blank Check" movie review podcast. So now I have fixed gaps in my podcast universe.

I'm gradually watching episodes of Apple's Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars. They have a good level of access, but it goes through a reality TV filter, a lot of repetition. As part of depicting 'enjoying fine dining' they usually show alcohol. I understand that's high margin and a big part of fine dining experiences, and it's a cleaner visual than someone eating a meatball or something. When I went through corporate orientation with a bunch of Gen Z, there is definitely a generational shift in norms around drinking. That was also called out in a recent drama series (Platonic). I dunno just interesting.

I never watched an episode of Stranger Things or Game of Thrones, and generally avoided Avatar and The Hobbit trilogy. Not only was I surprised that there was this new season of Stranger Things, I've noticed that anything I have heard about the show - the title, telekinesis nosebleed, bikes, waffles, the upside-down, Barb, Christmas lights, I must know from late night, YouTube, and memes made after the first season. Wait, I guess I heard about a spinoff-y Chicago episode in Season 2. But when Reddit shows me people ranting about the finale I have never heard of these things!

GoT famously was the biggest thing ever and disappointed its audience, to the point people commented on how no one was rewatching it during 2020 lockdown.
Avatar is also an oddity which every n years is a billion-dollar movie, and the internet argues about whether it has a "cultural footprint". Jenny Nicholson did a video about Disney's Avatar land in 2018, and to my brain it's the ur-argument for Avatar lacking a typical fandom / cultural memory (7:18 in, plus later talk at 44:20 about bizarre merchandising, no one else in the park wearing Avatar ears).

Stranger Things knew that they'd faded - SNL last did a skit for Season 2, and the "IT" revival maybe eclipsed them - but maybe the creators thought it would rally. I'm seeing a burst of retail and insurance ads with Stranger Things tie-ins, made thinking the finale would be the biggest best thing ever.