Quotulatiousness

March 4, 2019

Project Lightening Episode 05: Reload

Filed under: History, Military, Technology, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 28 Feb 2019

Want to see the last two parts right now, instead of waiting until next week? You can download the entire series right now and have a permanent copy to keep for just $6:

https://candrsenal.com/product/lighte…

Project Lightening is a collaborative series with Othais and Mae of C&Rsenal in which we test all seven light machine guns and automatic rifles of World War One and put them through a series of tests and evaluations. Each week we will be posting one video on Forgotten Weapons and one on C&Rsenal. Today we have the reloading comparison, and the TOTAL DAMAGE over on C&Rsenal:

https://youtu.be/xnKy_BSOZys

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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Irish Potato Famine – Black ’47 – Extra History – #3

Filed under: Britain, Food, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 2 Mar 2019

Watching the Irish suffer from the view of London, Sir Charles Trevelyan believed that the potato famine was part of God’s will. Inspired by the meritocracy-based philosophy of starvation that Thomas Malthus held, Treveylan created a relief plan with the sole goal of protecting the markets, and not the people. Thus the new year of “Black ’47” brought chaos and horror to the Irish people.

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Twitter’s vast latifundia of techno-serfs

Filed under: Business, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Quillette, Alec Cameron Orrell debunks the notion that the average Twitter user derives much benefit from time spent on the site:

Researchers of social media both in the Academy and in Silicon Valley have apprehended for a long time that social media prey on the dopamine rewards system of the brain. Some have used this knowledge to exploit users; others have used it to warn the public of a digital narcotic epidemic. The frisson of delightfully outraged purpose that courses through a user’s nerves as he reads or responds to a post arises from the same brain system that rewards a human being for consuming a healthy meal or organizing his sock drawer. The Hollywood actors who have done mighty work to support the Bolivian cocaine trade in the past can’t put Twitter down now, and that’s no accident.

Digital abolitionists grow more and more strident and numerous these days. Many — including early Facebook investor McNamee — hail from inside Silicon Valley. A raft of articles over the last few years have documented the wave of Silicon Valley techno-elites who, like savvy drug cartel bosses, forbid their own children from using the devices and social media platforms they build, while they encourage their employees to spend frequent periods “unplugged.” They know social media and mobile devices create users, and some have been brave enough to lobby the public for a shift in consciousness.

The slave reaps no substantial or real-world payment for his labor. Chemical slaves to drugs get nothing but misery and poverty in the end. Social media users subsist in an analogous trap, subtle and harder to spot. When it comes to social media, 99.9 percent of users will never see any substantial return on what stacks up to be an enormous longterm investment of time. Users will experience some fleeting stimulant sensations and a smattering of poorly organized — or incorrect—information. “I find out what’s happening on Twitter!” or “I get to promote myself on Twitter!” amounts to self-delusion on par with the vile Antebellum plantation saw that “Slaves get paid in the satisfaction of a hard day’s work and some are even taught how to read!” Such apologetics leverage false but presentable ends to cover horribly exploitive means — means the real ends of which are too embarrassing to admit. The average Twitter user might make the odd connection or get some attention for his business on Twitter, if he keeps at it day after day. In contrast, Jack Dorsey always gets paid handsomely for the user’s time on-site month after month by advertisers. The users work the platform with their attention, and Master Jack goes home with the check.

Unless already famous, the chances of reaping substantial reward from Twitter — such as income or significant growth of attention from others — roughly equal the chances of winning the lottery. And like the lottery, millions of average users chip in and hope, while just a few luck out and get a payout. Those few average users who get a mediocre reward — and even fewer who get famous with a lucky tweet or some such — keep the millions of average users coming back to try their luck every day. The little blue bird runs on the principle of the one-armed bandit and Powerball.

Virtually all users end up losing in the long-term. Most lose hours and hours scrolling through quips and posting burns, sifting through nonsense to find the odd bit of useful information, but mostly for distraction. Like their casino cousins cursed by fate with a gambling addiction, an unlucky minority of Twitter users lose everything on the platform without meaning to. A particularly ill-considered tweet brings down on their heads digital lynching, infamy, disgrace, loss of employment, loss of a spouse, libel lawsuits, and in some countries, criminal indictment for hate speech or threatening behavior. Uncounted thousands of users have operated their mobile devices under the influence of Twitter on the information superhighway, only to wind up with a digital DUI or in an online 25-car pileup.

The history-pedants’ guide to The Last Kingdom – episode one

Filed under: Britain, History, Humour, Media, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lindybeige
Published on 11 Feb 2016

The Last Kingdom – here I review the authenticity of episode one of this television series set in medieval England.

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The Last Kingdom is a television series, eight hours long, based on the books by Bernard Cornwell. Here, I give the first episode the Lindybeige treatment – that is to say I go through it and in smarmy way point out various things it gets wrong.

People have pointed out in the comments that one character, Uhtred father of Uhtred, whom I describe as a ‘king’, is technically not a king at this point in the story. This is true. I decided not to spend half a minute of screen-time explaining the distinction. He is of a line of kings, has hopes to gain the title ‘king’ again, and is the ruler of Bernicia, and commander of the main force that engages in the battle, and is a very senior nobleman, variously described as ‘king’, ‘earl’, ‘lord’, and ‘ealdorman’.

Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.

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QotD: Gandhi and the partition of India

Filed under: History, India, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Anyone who wants to wade through Gandhi’s endless ruminations about himsa and ahimsa (violence and nonviolence) is welcome to do so, but it is impossible for the skeptical reader to avoid the conclusion — let us say in 1920, when swaraj (home rule) was all the rage and Gandhi’s inner voice started telling him that ahimsa was the thing — that this inner voice knew what it was talking about. By this I mean that, though Gandhi talked with the tongue of Hindu gods and sacred scriptures, his inner voice had a strong sense of expediency. Britain, if only comparatively speaking, was a moral nation, and nonviolent civil disobedience was plainly the best and most effective way of achieving Indian independence. Skeptics might also not be surprised to learn that as independence approached, Gandhi’s inner voice began to change its tune. It has been reported that Gandhi “half-welcomed” the civil war that broke out in the last days. Even a fratricidal “bloodbath” (Gandhi’s word) would be preferable to the British.

And suddenly Gandhi began endorsing violence left, right, and center. During the fearsome rioting in Calcutta he gave his approval to men “using violence in a moral cause.” How could he tell them that violence was wrong, he asked, “unless I demonstrate that nonviolence is more effective?” He blessed the Nawab of Maler Kotla when he gave orders to shoot ten Muslims for every Hindu killed in his state. He sang the praises of Subhas Chandra Bose, who, sponsored by first the Nazis and then the Japanese, organized in Singapore an Indian National Army with which he hoped to conquer India with Japanese support, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship. Meanwhile, after independence in 1947, the armies of the India that Gandhi had created immediately marched into battle, incorporating the state of Hyderabad by force and making war in Kashmir on secessionist Pakistan. When Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist in January 1948 he was honored by the new state with a vast military funeral — in my view by no means inapposite.

Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.

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