Quotulatiousness

March 14, 2019

How Hollywood Helped Hitler | Between 2 Wars | 1926 Part 2 of 2

Filed under: Germany, History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published on 13 Mar 2019

The rise of the media superstar and the rise of Naziism had a lot to do with each other. The early death of one of the first media superstars, Rudolph Valentino in 1926 shows us exactly how and why.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson

Colorized Pictures by Olga Shirnina
https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com

Video Archive by Screenocean/Reuters http://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
2 hours ago
After a week of radio silence, we’re back with another Between Two Wars episodes. We’re continuing in the spirit of where we left off, and enter the crazy and hyped-up world of superstars. We hope that you like our video! If you do, please consider supporting us on Patreon or via our website timeghost.tv. We are still only just managing to cover the minimum that is required to produce this content. Every dollar truly counts. -> https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Tyler Cowen’s tips on visiting India

Filed under: Food, India — Tags: — Nicholas @ 05:00

Although the blog post is nearly a month old, I completely missed it when it was first posted. It’s called “How to travel to India”, but it’s really more about how to get the best of your visit while you’re there. I’ve never been to India (and it seems unlikely I’ll ever get to visit), but from reading the accounts of other visitors, Tyler has some excellent advice here:

4. Every single part of India is interesting and worth visiting, as far as I can tell after five trips. That said, I find Bangalore quite over-visited relative to its level of interest.

5. My favorite places in India are Mumbai, Chennai, Rajasthan, and Kolkaata. Still, I could imagine a rational person with interests broadly similar to my own having a quite different list.

6. India has the best food in the world. It is not only permissible but indeed recommended to take all of your meals in fancy hotel restaurants. Do not eat the street food in India (and I eat it virtually everywhere else). It is also permissible to find two or three very good hotel restaurants — or even one — and simply run through their menus. You won’t be disappointed.

7. Invest in a very, very good hotel. It is affordable, and you will need it, and it will be a special memory all its own.

8. Being driven around in the Indian countryside is terrifying (and I have low standards here, I do this all the time in other non-rich countries). If it were safer, I would see many more parts of India. But it isn’t. So I don’t.

I’ve posted this before, and it doesn’t really relate to Tyler’s travel tips, but I still find it amusing:

India as seen by a cool Bangalorean

Coping Saws Q&A | Paul Sellers

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Paul Sellers
Published on 12 Mar 2019

To push or to pull? That is the question. In this video Paul addresses some of your top questions surrounding the Coping Saw in hope to help others in their quest to get good results.

Pushing or pulling:
0:18 Does the type of wood and the work at hand affect the choice to push or pull?
2:23 Does the thickness of the wood affect the choice to push or pull?
2:56 When you’re cutting a tight curve or shallow curve, does that affect the choice of a push or the pull stroke?
4:22 Should you cut with the grain or across the grain?
4:37 Does the hardness of the wood, that is, hardwood vs. Softwood affect whether to push or pull?
5:48 It’s my understanding and experience that the coping saw blade should be installed to cut on the pull stroke. Is that correct?

Tension:
6:42 Should you slacken off the tension after use, will it prolong blade life?
6:49 Is there a good method by which proper tension can be achieved on a coping saw?
6:53 How tight is tight enough?

Dovetails:
8:43 Why not use a coping saw to clear the majority of the waste in dovetails joints?
8:47 How does one make such sharp turns when cutting out waste while making dovetails? See 3:10
8:55 When I try to cut out the waste dovetailing, the blade resists turning horizontal at the bottom of the cut. What should I do?

Difference Between a Fret Saw and a Coping Saw:
10:37 What’s the difference between a coping saw and a fret saw?

Buying a Coping Saw:
12:39 Do I need to buy one of the new, expensive, truss design coping saws?
12:46 Recommendations for purchasing a decent coping saw? Are there any contemporary brands worth considering? What to look for when buying a saw?

Buying Blades:
13:49 Most of the coping saw blades I can find are 14tpi but I think I saw you mentioning that you use one with more than that. What do you normally recommend?

Technique:
15:42 Are there any “exercises” we can do to practice and become better at using a coping saw?
16:07 Do you have any helpful tips for keeping the saw 90 degrees perpendicular to the face of the board?

Bonus:
18:51 I would like to make some wood puzzles for my daughter using a coping saw. What maximum thickness of the material can a coping saw “cope”? I ask, because, I need rather thick puzzle bricks. What material could you recommend in my case?

Want to learn more about woodworking? See https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com or https://commonwoodworking.com for step-by-step videos, guides and tutorials. You can also follow Paul’s latest ventures on his woodworking blog at https://paulsellers.com/

Life in the modern academic paradise

Filed under: Education, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian recounts his time in the idyllic Ivory Tower of modern academia:

Imagine you’re some kind of Gulliver-type explorer, and you reach an island of perfect bliss. Clear air, gentle breezes, balmy temperatures, and all the delicious food you can eat. And the natives! They live to serve you, completely unconstrained by anything so antiquated as Western sexual morality. Limitless 5G internet. Anything you want to eat, drink, watch, read, do, say, insert, or have inserted, it’s all yours at the snap of your fingers. Got it?

Now imagine that the rulers of this little slice of paradise do nothing but sit on the side of the road all day, smashing their own toes with ball-peen hammers.

That’s life in a college town. The Left run everything. They set the admissions requirements. They have unlimited budgets, and since they do, the entire commercial ecosystem exists only for them. All cuisine is “fusion,” you have to drive to the next burg over to find milk that comes from cows, and every single item of public culture — from sidewalk graffiti to public radio to experimental theater troupe — does nothing but flatter them. There is no fetish so outre, no practice so bizarre, that you can’t find at least one other enthusiastic participant. It’s intersectional genderfluid heaven….

…. and every single person in it is miserable. I’m serious — if it’s not too far out of your way, drive down to your nearest college town, and just watch the faces. You might glimpse a grinning undergrad or two — they’re too young and dumb to know better; they’ll be fully reeducated by junior year — but you can spot the tenured faculty solely by their scowls. The only thing that temporarily alleviates the existential horror of their lives is getting outraged by something, which — since, again, they control everything — means tilting at windmills is their only sport; they play it with a cutthroat intensity the football coach can only dream of.

How can you not be fascinated by that? To utterly refute the view of man as homo economicus, all you have to do is watch the facial expressions of people who are “the 1%” by any measure that makes sense. It’s one hell of a show…

Half-lap Dovetail Layout Tip | Paul Sellers

Filed under: Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Paul Sellers
Published on 13 Feb 2019

How do you make sure you cut your half-lap dovetail within the lines. Paul shows a trick for getting crisp joints on your dovetails

Want to learn more about woodworking? See https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com or https://commonwoodworking.com for step-by-step videos, guides and tutorials. You can also follow Paul’s latest ventures on his woodworking blog at https://paulsellers.com/

QotD: The doubting of the experts

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

I think the generation of experts of the 60s looked around and realized that the accomplishments of their elders had bought them enough status as a class that people would just… believe them. And so they did what most people would do if they suddenly discovered the magic power to make people believe anything they said. They abused it.

And this magic power became an attraction for people to join the class. And so people who joined this class of “experts” who are now being told, “no, we don’t believe you” feel like they’ve been aggrieved. This wasn’t the deal they were promised. And, naturally, the reason isn’t because they don’t deserve it; it’s because we’re all inferior.

It’s the corruption of a priesthood, and nothing more. The assumption of moral supremacy, the hunts for heretics and their consequent public destruction, the appeals to authority, the diminishing virtue… it’s all happened before. “You must let us regulate all aspects of your life to fend off the Climate Gods” is only different from the Aztec demands for human sacrifice to ensure the sun would rise at the margins. The core concept is the same.

“Aaron M.” commenting on Glenn Reynolds, “MY USA TODAY COLUMN: The Suicide of Expertise”, Instapundit, 2017-03-20.

Powered by WordPress