Notices by Infoseepage (infoseepage@mastodon.social)

@evan As a small nation, you probably can't reach MAD status, but you can make any action against you come at too high a cost. Think NK with their ~50 nukes. That is your target as a nation that doesn't want to get pushed around in this era in which the big powers are trying for imperial conquest once again.

@evan You wait to announce your status as a nuclear power once you've got an assortment of delivery options and enough bombs to ensure serious retribution if one of the great powers tries for a forcible end to your program, regime change, etc.

@evan You're not going to keep a nuclear program secret, so what you do is develop capacities under guise of civilian use while building parallel facilities very deep underground and allow no inspections. You keep a degree of non-declarition and ambiguity of what you are doing and what milestones you've hit. You don't try and use it as political leverage.

I'll leave you with some last scenic photos of Elcho Castle. Hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

#castles #scotland #perth

This one has been restored and a glass window put in place to seal the oculus the circle cut in the top so that the pigeons could come and go. There would have originally been a central post and ladder for collecting eggs/birds from out of the nesting boxes. The projecting courses around the edge of the structure are to try and prevent rats and other varmints from climbing the sides and getting at the birds. Those birds belong to Lord Wemyss, yo!

Another neat feature of the castle can be found just off-site. It isn't technically part of the castle today, but would have belonged to it back in the day and it's just a stone's throw away. It's a "beehive" style doocot, a structure for keeping pigeons for harvesting their eggs and meat. Dirleton castle has a similar one and I visited one at Manorbier castle in Wales which is a bit different.

It was very gusty/windy when I visited, but I did go out onto the parapets, which are about as much as a trip hazard as Huntingtower, which I visited the other day. The parapet isn't high, so a stumble could legit send you over the side. These are unlikely to have been fighting battlements, just a place to take in the view and the necessities of keeping drains clear and the roof maintained.

Several routes, which get a little confusing due to missing floors forcing you to take circuitous routes, lead up to the parapets which have more living spaces in the attics and cap houses. These are not as nice, being small awkward spaces, but some do have small fireplaces. Likely these were for servants.

The master bedroom is extra nice and has a large garderobe with a lockable door, so you could secure your clothing and other valuables.

There is a grand staircase leading up from the ground floor to a large hall, which also has a discreet back servants staircase leading to it. There was definitely an upstairs downstairs aspect to this place and living arrangement were well separated, with guest bedrooms isolated and reached by a dedicated turnpike stair. The bedrooms were pretty nice for their day, with fireplaces and en suite pooping arrangements and also had integral wall niches for storing belongings. Nice!

Inside, on the ground floor you have vaulted kitchens and store rooms with a huge walk in fireplace and a nearby ladder. One thing I noticed while wandering around the castle was that the majority of doors appear to have been lockable for extra internal security, a rarity in that age.

There is only one entrance to the castle, which is guarded by both a stout door and a Yett. The Yett has two sliding pins to lock it in place with padlocks and the holes in the frame are iron reinforced, making it all the more difficult to chisel your way around the locked gate. No idea if this is original or not, as I've never seen that before. All the other ones I've seen have had pins going directly into stonework.

Pretty much all the gun loops are well sized and functional, with adequate space behind them to stand and fire a firearm. These are not ornamental like the little "holes beneath a window" you see on many tower houses, which really weren't usable in practice, unless you simply wanted to fire randomly to scare someone off.

There is also a round tower which formed one corner of the enclosure of walls and buildings which created a sort of courtyard in front of the castle. There was likely an outer gate and a second round tower, though nothing of either survives. The existing round tower had a cap house atop it, though only the corbels which supported it survives. There are two gun loops in the tower as well as a bread oven of all things...

It's a fairly unusual structure, which straddles the kind between mansion architecture and defensive engineering. The castle is a modified Z with a large square corner tower off the main block and then three towers on the north side, where the land drops off towards the river. There are fully seventeen gun loops in the main castle and it was also surrounded by a Bamarkin wall which enclosed several outbuildings including a likely brewing house.

it has both been maintained unusually well by the family over the years, without adding heaps of more modern additions. There are some newer windows and the glass is mostly modern float glass, but there are some original window bars left and mostly what you see is how the castle was when it was built. As I understand it, it's considered one of the best preserved tower houses in Scotland.

I then headed out to Elcho Castle about six miles outside of Perth. You drive through some farms to get to it and the property used to extend down to the Tay River where there was a small landing for use of the castle. It was owned by the Wemyss family when it was built in the 1560's and it is still owned by them today, though maintained by Historic Environment Scotland.

@wdlindsy For a guy who talks up his deal making, his legacy has been to utterly spoil the US as a country that nations can engage with for long term partnerships and treaties of all kind. We're a rabid frothing dog now and even if the US returns to saner governance, countries are going to realize that not only were we willing to elect the guy once, but even after seeing all the damage he'd done, we were willing to elect him again. It's cash on the barrel from here on out.

I asked about the Murray coat of arms I'd seen referenced, but the desk guy said he'd never seen the stone and thinking it might have gotten covered up in a kitchen remodel.

I also poked my nose into the the ballroom where David Bowie once played a gig.

I checked out of the Salutation Hotel and they were kind enough to check my bags for the day so I could have a wander without my pack on my back. I checked out the Stuart Room at the hotel. I'm not sure they genuinely know which rooms Bonnie Prince Charlie used while at the hotel, but this one seems a likely candidate, as it is in the main central block (the Murray house which formed the basis for the coaching in) and has a fireplace with the date 1699 on it.