Quotulatiousness

May 4, 2019

On the Ration | British Pathé

Filed under: Britain, Food, Health, History, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

British Pathé
Published on 13 Sep 2016

BON APPETIT – FOOD MONTH ON BRITISH PATHÉ (SEPTEMBER 2016): On the Ration.

A selection of films looking at food rationing during the Second World War.

(Film Ids: 1027.21, 1290.19, 1564.15, 1247.03)

Music:
The Show Must Be Go (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

A NEW THEME EVERY MONTH!
Each month, a range of new uploads and playlists tell the story of a particular topic through archive footage. Let us know what themes you’d like to see by leaving us a comment or connecting with us on social media.

BRITISH PATHÉ’S STORY
Before television, people came to movie theatres to watch the news. British Pathé was at the forefront of cinematic journalism, blending information with entertainment to popular effect. Over the course of a century, it documented everything from major armed conflicts and seismic political crises to the curious hobbies and eccentric lives of ordinary people. If it happened, British Pathé filmed it.

Now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world, British Pathé is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance.

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A VIDEO FROM BRITISH PATHÉ. EXPLORE OUR ONLINE CHANNEL, BRITISH PATHÉ TV. IT’S FULL OF GREAT DOCUMENTARIES, FASCINATING INTERVIEWS, AND CLASSIC MOVIES. http://www.britishpathe.tv/

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British Pathé also represents the Reuters historical collection, which includes more than 120,000 items from the news agencies Gaumont Graphic (1910-1932), Empire News Bulletin (1926-1930), British Paramount (1931-1957), and Gaumont British (1934-1959), as well as Visnews content from 1957 to the end of 1979. All footage can be viewed on the British Pathé website.
https://www.britishpathe.com/

QotD: Calorie-dense modern snack food

Filed under: Food, Health, Quotations, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

So what does cause this fattening effect? I think the book’s answer is “no single factor, but that doesn’t matter, because capitalism is an optimization process that designs foods to be as rewarding as possible, so however many different factors there are, every single one of them will be present in your bag of Doritos”. But to be more scientific about it, the specific things involved are some combination of sweet/salty/umami tastes, certain ratios of fat and sugar, and reinforced preferences for certain flavors.

Modern food isn’t just unusually rewarding, it’s also unusually bad at making us full. The brain has some pretty sophisticated mechanisms to determine when we’ve eaten enough; these usually involve estimating food’s calorie load from its mass and fiber level. But modern food is calorically dense – it contains many more calories than predicted per unit mass – and fiber-poor. This fools the brain into thinking that we’re eating less than we really are, and shuts down the system that would normally make us feel full once we’ve had enough. Simultaneously, the extremely high level of food reward tricks the brain into thinking that this food is especially nutritionally valuable and that it should relax its normal constraints.

Adding to all of this is the so-called “buffet effect”, where people will eat more calories from a variety of foods presented together than they would from any single food alone. My mother likes to talk about her “extra dessert stomach”, ie the thing where you can gorge yourself on a burger and fries until you’re totally full and couldn’t eat another bite – but then mysteriously find room for an ice cream sundae afterwards. This is apparently a real thing that’s been confirmed in scientific experiments, and a major difference between us and our ancestors. The !Kung Bushmen, everyone’s go-to example of an all-natural hunter-gatherer tribe, apparently get 50% of their calories from a single food, the mongongo nut, and another 40% from meat. Meanwhile, we design our meals to include as many unlike foods as possible – for example, a burger with fries, soda, and a milkshake for dessert. This once again causes the brain to relax its usual strict constraints on appetite and let us eat more than we should.

The book sums all of these things up into the idea of “food reward” making some foods “hyperpalatable” and “seducing” the reward mechanism in order to produce a sort of “food addiction” that leads to “cravings”, the “obesity epidemic”, and a profusion of “scare quotes”.

Scott Alexander, “Book Review: The Hungry Brain”, Slate Star Codex, 2017-04-27.

May 3, 2019

Making a Router Bit Cabinet – Part 4

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Matt Estlea
Published on 2 May 2019

In this video I create the router bit holders and get the doors attached!
_

Support what I do by becoming a Patron! This will help fund new tools, equipment and cover my overheads. Meaning I can continue to bring you regular, high quality, free content. Thank you so much for your support! https://www.patreon.com/mattestlea
_

See what tools I use here: https://kit.com/MattEstlea
My Website: http://www.mattestlea.com
_

My name is Matt Estlea, I’m a 23 year old Woodworker from Basingstoke in England and my aim is to make your woodworking less s***.

I come from 5 years tuition at Rycotewood Furniture Centre with a further 1 year working as an Artist in Residence at the Sylva Foundation. I now teach City and Guilds Furniture Making at Rycotewood as of September 2018.

I also had 5 years of experience working at Axminster Tools and Machinery where I helped customers with purchasing tools, demonstrated in stores and events, and gained extensive knowledge about a variety of tools and brands.

During the week, I film woodworking projects, tutorials, reviews and a viewer favourite ‘Tool Duel’ where I compare two competitive manufacturers tools against one another to find out which is best.

I like to have a laugh and my videos are quite fast paced BUT you will learn a lot, I assure you.

Lets go make a mess.

The rarely used US Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA)

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ron Paul wonders why Russian national Maria Butina got a harsher sentence under the Foreign Agent Registration Act than an actual foreign agent who was paid millions of dollars by the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein:

Russian gun rights activist and graduate exchange student Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for “conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without registering.” Her “crime” was to work to make connections among American gun rights activists in hopes of building up her organization, the Right to Bear Arms, when she returned to Russia.

She was not employed by the Russian government nor was she a lobbyist on Putin’s behalf. In fact the Putin Administration is hostile to Russian gun rights groups. Nevertheless the US mainstream media and Trump’s Justice Department are treating her as public enemy number one in a case that will no doubt set the dangerous precedent of criminalizing person-to-person diplomacy in the United States.

The Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) was passed in 1938 under pressure from the FDR Administration partly to silence opposition to the US entry into World War II. While a handful of cases were prosecuted during the war, between 1966 and 2015 the Justice Department only brought seven FARA cases for prosecution.

Though very few cases have been brought on FARA violations, one of them was against Samir Vincent, who was paid millions of dollars by Saddam Hussein to lobby for sanctions relief without registering. He got off with a fine and “community service.”

Millions of dollars in unregistered payments from Saddam Hussein gets no jail time, while Butina gets 18 months in prison for privately promoting a cause most Americans support! How is this justice?

The US Justice Department is not even as tough on illegals who commit capital crimes in the US!

Unfortunately Maria Butina was in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the rise of the “Russiagate” hysteria, Butina’s case was seen as a useful tool by Democrats to push the idea that President Trump was put into office by the Russians. Plus, many of them are also hostile to our Second Amendment and to the National Rifle Association. So it was a perfect storm for Butina.

“The Lost Battalion” – The Meuse-Argonne Offensive – Sabaton History 013

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Media, Military, USA, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published on 2 May 2019

In the last months of the Great War, the Americans join the fighting on the Western Front in an effort to break through the German Lines for once and for all. The Americans launch their Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the fall of 1918. As part of the offensive, nine companies of the United States 77th Division under command of Major Charles White Whittlesey pushes through the German lines with remarkable ease. Little did they know that the German lines were not abandoned, but that they simply found a hole. The Lost Battalion was surrounded and the men had to fight for days, awaiting their rescue.

Support Sabaton History on Patreon (and possibly get a special edition of The Great War): https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Watch the Official Lyric Video of “The Lost Battalion” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSZtV…

Check out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShop

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski

Eastory YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.

Sources:
© IWM (Q 8986), IWM (Q 10317), IWM (Q 8842), IWM (Q 9080), IWM (Q 87923), IWM (Q 61038), IWM (Q 53524), © IWM (Q 45553), IWM (Q 81616), IWM (Q 9078), IWM (Q 9079), IWM (Q 8844), IWM (Q 56607), IWM (Q 55559), IWM (Q 55558), IWM (Q 87940), IWM (Q 85383), IWM (Q 23719), IWM (Q 23709), IWM (Q 42057), IWM (Q 115198), IWM (Q 8161), IWM (Q 10316), IWM (Q 7928) IWM (Q 61481), IWM (Q 57695), IWM (Q 9088), IWM (Q 9083), IWM (Q 47997), IWM (Q 79595)
USMC Archives through Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/6086806…

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

From the comments:

Sabaton History
1 day ago
We met up with Indy in the Argonne to film Sabaton History’s episode for “The Lost Battalion”. As it happens, our new album is about the First World War as well. We have published a video earlier today presenting the “History Channel Edition” for the upcoming Sabaton Album The Great War. This is a special edition of the new album that is an exclusive reward for people who generously support us on Patreon as a Hussar or higher. If you want to check out the video in which Joakim and Indy explain the contents of the special edition, click here: https://youtu.be/Nk-VN_PjZyg If you want to support this channel on Patreon, go here: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Thanks for your time and cheers! 🤘

The power of the patriarchy

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As we are often told, men have distinct advantages in modern society that women are still struggling to achieve for themselves. Daphne Patai doesn’t seem to have got the memo, however:

In contemporary America, women and men still act out ancient roles. From the point of view of the men, the society is a matriarchy: Women have physically less demanding jobs — with the sole exception of childbirth, by now a rare event in the average woman’s life. Women sustain far fewer injuries on the job, are not required to go to war, take better care of their health, and for these reasons and many others enjoy a lifespan significantly longer than that of men.

In this society, men use their physical strength, when necessary, on women’s behalf. Women claim to be equal partners when that suits them and claim to be entitled to special consideration when that suits them. They insist on autonomy in maintaining or aborting pregnancies, but at the same time, they determine the fathers’ duties-and rights, if any. Women claim child support. They can either demand or impede fathers’ continuing involvement with their offspring, as the women see fit. The result is that women have advantages over men in child custody suits, just as they have learned to use charges of child sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Though dozens of studies show that women, by their own account, initiate violence against their domestic partners as often as (if not more often than) men, and cause as much injury when weapons are involved, somehow the social mythologies of this country keep that fact from gaining broad public attention, let alone credence.

But worst of all, in terms of the interactions of daily life, are women’s emotional demands on men. At home, men routinely sit through harangues that demonstrate women’s greater verbal skills and emotional agility. Men, inarticulate, try to figure out what is required of them in a given situation. Not by accident, verbal therapies in this society archetypically began with men listening and women speaking. Even as little boys, males learn to be in awe of girls’ verbal fluency. The feeling of ineptness, of being no match for females at the verbal and emotional level, is the common inheritance of all but a few exceptional males.

The matriarchy here described, structured to protect women’s interests as against men’s (and, ironically, having conned men into defending such a set up) puts a premium on women’s special social and emotional skills. Everywhere, women engage men and one another in personal conversation, offering and receiving disclosures, demanding commiseration, giving advice, spreading censure. Men, trained to keep to their workhorse style, are uncomfortably cornered by women, in the workplace, and at home, demanding that they speak from the heart. When asked “How are you?” women give a detailed and precise accounting. In offices, they spend valuable time discussing personal matters.

Musgrave 9mm: A Gun for the Black Market

Filed under: Africa, History, Law, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 27 Mar 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

In the brief couple of years between the election of a new black-majority government in South Africa in 1994 and the dissolution of the Musgrave company, it attempted to produce a new 9mm pistol to sell to the burgeoning market of black South African citizens buying handguns. Ownership of pistols by black citizens had been legal under apartheid, but was (not surprisingly) quite uncommon – this began to change in 1994. The most popular pistol at the time was the Norinco 213 Tokarev in 9x19mm, which was available in large numbers and at very low cost.

To compete against this, Musgrave designed a simple blowback, polymer framed pistol chambered for 9x19mm using Beretta 92 magazines (which Musgrave had a large supply of, being the licensed Beretta distributor in the country). The gun was extremely simple, held together with a handful of screws and using a single-action-only hammer-fired mechanism. It was a commercial flop, however — unable to match the quality and price combination of the Tokarev and only about 500 were made in 1995 and 1996.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

QotD: The key difference between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged

Filed under: Books, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Reading Goddess of the Market much later in life, I finally met the woman behind the philosophy. Rand doesn’t start out so bad, at least in Burns’ telling. Who can blame the Russian-born Rand, watching helplessly as Communists seize her father’s pharmacy, for growing up to be a furious foe of collectivism (and realpolitik compromise), whose übermensch heroes fight back against the “parasites, moochers and looters“, and win?

Yet the sprinklings of patriotic, almost Capra-esque populism that softened The Fountainhead’s unavoidable elitism are absent entirely in her follow-up, Atlas Shrugged, replaced by an almost hallucinatory misanthropy. What happened, Burns wonders, in the intervening thirteen years?

The answer seems obvious to me now, rereading her book in my 50s:

Menopause.

Ayn Rand, the avatar of adolescence, was going through The Change.

“Now in her forties,” writes Burns of the author between novels, “Rand struggled with her weight, her moodiness, her habitual fatigue.” Already dependent on the crazy-making Benzedrine she’d been popping to help her meet her Fountainhead deadline, Rand was hurtling toward what we’d now recognize as a midlife crisis.

Enter Nathaniel Blumenthal. He’d begun corresponding with Rand while still a high school student, but unlike her thousands of other teenage fans, he’d even memorized The Fountainhead. At UCLA, he’d coauthored a letter to the campus paper, declaring that a professor with suspected Communist ties who’d killed himself deserved “to be condemned to hell.” Then he changed his surname to “Branden” because it had “Rand” in it.

So, basically a nut.

Kathy Shaidle, “The Danger of Ayn Rand”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-04-18.

May 2, 2019

Natural Edged Bowl with Bronze Powder | Turning Tuesday #14

Filed under: Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Matt Estlea
Published on 30 Apr 2019

In this video, I begin by making a natural edged bowl but then kind of lose my mind and start adding metal, and fire, and more metal….. and more fire.
_________________________________________________________________

Support what I do by becoming a Patron! This will help fund new tools, equipment and cover my overheads. Meaning I can continue to bring you regular, high quality, free content. Thank you so much for your support! https://www.patreon.com/mattestlea
_________________________________________________________________

See what tools I use here: https://kit.com/MattEstlea
My Website: http://www.mattestlea.com
_________________________________________________________________

My name is Matt Estlea, I’m a 23 year old Woodworker from Basingstoke in England and my aim is to make your woodworking less s***.

I come from 5 years tuition at Rycotewood Furniture Centre with a further 1 year working as an Artist in Residence at the Sylva Foundation. I now teach City and Guilds Furniture Making at Rycotewood as of September 2018.

I also had 5 years of experience working at Axminster Tools and Machinery where I helped customers with purchasing tools, demonstrated in stores and events, and gained extensive knowledge about a variety of tools and brands.

During the week, I film woodworking projects, tutorials, reviews and a viewer favourite ‘Tool Duel’ where I compare two competitive manufacturers tools against one another to find out which is best.

I like to have a laugh and my videos are quite fast paced BUT you will learn a lot, I assure you.

Lets go make a mess.

NASA to export bullying off the Earth to small, harmless objects in the solar system

Filed under: Space, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh on NASA’s latest plan for “nudging” an asteroid out of its orbit:

NASA has a plan — a serious plan, which it intends to carry out pretty soon — to smash a spacecraft into an object in the solar system and intentionally change its orbit. I confess I don’t quite know why this act of awesome American techno-hubris hasn’t been bigger news. I think partly it is because the mission comes under the heading of “planetary defence” against small natural objects straying into the path of the Earth. Science reporters on that beat are easily distracted by apocalyptic fantasies, and by smirking anthropology about the actually-quite-numerous band of researchers trying to deal with this arguably-quite-important subject.

Part of the problem may be that NASA’s mission to mess with the asteroid Didymos B is hidden under a mountain of technical jargon about “kinetic impactors” and “xenon thrusters.” And part of it is surely the hard-earned professional knowledge that NASA ends up implementing about one plan for every 10 it makes. Accountants have a way of showing up with an axe at the last minute.

Still, the idea is pretty neat, and not just because it appeals to everyone’s natural appetite for destruction. The basic premise of the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is that our planet may one day face the asteroid/meteor/comet collision scenario outlined in a vast corpus of books and movies (Lucifer’s Hammer, Armageddon, Deep Impact). If that day comes, we as a species don’t want to just be winging it — so let’s go out now, find some innocent chunk of rock that isn’t bothering anybody, and see if we already have the technological capability to change its course.

This turns out not to necessarily involve Bruce Willis or Robert Duvall; mostly we just need Isaac Newton. The scheme of planetary defence now emerging from decades of speculation and effort emphasizes systematic tracking of near-Earth objects and early detection of potentially dangerous ones. If we can spot an approaching impactor soon enough, we don’t need to deliver a bundle of explosives: we can just nudge it out of the way.

Humanity has been pretty lucky that the asteroid impacts have been relatively rare since we started keeping track of important things like the planting calendar, the seasonal flooding of the rivers, and the ever-important (to the rulers) tax records. It wouldn’t take a particularly large object hurtling into the atmosphere at interplanetary speeds to ruin our collective day (year, decade, century, etc.). We think we know how to divert incoming dangerous objects … but we need to actually do it successfully before it becomes the last headline of all recorded history.

The French Char B Tank – WORLD WAR TWO Special

Filed under: France, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 30 Apr 2019

After the Great War was over, the French reconsidered their army’s function and the role that tanks would play in future warfare. On the brink of World War Two, the Char B tank is deeply embedded in the structure of the French armoured defences. David Willey from the Tank Museum in Bovington (UK) tells how French politics influenced how the Char B will be used if the Germans attack. To learn more about the technical details of the Char B, check out the Tank Chat that David Fletcher from the Tank Museum has done about the Char B-1 Bis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz8L1…

Check out the Tank Museum YouTube Channel right here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankM…

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

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
44 minutes ago (edited)
David Willey from the Tank Museum in Bovington (UK) explains brilliantly what impact French politics in the 1920s and 1930s had on the development and use of French tanks leading up to World War Two. On their own channel, the Tank Museums own David Flecher dives into the technical ins and outs of the Char B-1 tank. You can find that right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz8L1FU74Rs Make sure to subscribe to their YouTube channel too, as it perfectly compliments the content that we show here. Cheers!

“Wuv, twue wuv”

Filed under: Health, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Debra Soh talks about the neurobiology of “wuv”:

We all remember the first time we fell in love. No matter how strong or independent or free you thought you were, all at once, you became powerless in the face of feelings that, to others, seemed obsessive and irrational.

When you’re in that state, everything reminds you of the one you love. They become the center of your world. Friends say your face lights up when you talk about them. You can’t sleep, you can’t eat. The thought of being without them feels like losing a part of yourself.

There are biological reasons that explain why the experience of being in love feels so overwhelming. These emotions serve an evolutionary purpose. Specifically, they allow two people to bond in a way that increases the likelihood they’ll procreate and maintain an environment in which the resulting offspring survive.

Neurobiologists know that love usually occurs in three phases: lust, attraction and attachment. In the first phase, lust, sex hormones create physiological arousal; in the second phase, attraction, dopamine creates intense feelings associated with the object of one’s desire (often tipping into something that resembles real addiction); and in the third phase, attachment, occurring in established couples, oxytocin and vasopressin (the “cuddle hormones”) facilitate the long-term bonding required to raise children over a time span of years or decades.

Romantic love is an intangible state of mind. But we are coming to understand it more clearly through techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging. FMRI, as it’s known, measures brain activity by examining changes in blood flow and oxygenation. These studies typically have involved researchers showing study participants pictures of their lovers, and then contrasting the observed brain activity with the activity observed when the study subjects are shown pictures of friends of the same sex and a similar age.

One of the first fMRI studies in the field found a distinct network of brain regions associated with being, as described by the researchers, “truly, deeply, and madly in love.” These regions included the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, which are associated, respectively, with feelings of desire and happiness. Other regions included those linked to sexual arousal, such as the hypothalamus and amygdala.

Chicken Tikka Masala | Basics with Babish

Filed under: Food, Humour, India — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Binging with Babish
Published on 28 Mar 2019

Enter offer code “Babish” at Squarespace.com for 10% off your first purchase, or visit: http://smarturl.it/BWBsquarespace

One of my favorite curries is the beloved chicken tikka masala. You can make this dish at home by making your own curry powder and tikka masala sauce.

Shopping List:
+ For the curry powder:
1 stick cinnamon
1 whole nutmeg
2 dried bay leaves
1 Tbsp whole cloves
2 Tbsp cumin seeds
3 Tbsp coriander seeds
1 Tbsp cardamom
1 tsp red pepper flakes

+ For the chicken tikka masala marinade:
1 cup full fat yogurt
2 inches ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, grated
1 Tbsp of the homemade curry powder (above)
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
Drizzle of olive oil
3 boneless, skinless, chicken breasts (cut into 1-inch cubes)

+ For the tikka masala sauce
2 inches ginger, grated
1/2 small yellow onion, finely minced
2 cloves garlic, grated
1 small bird’s eye chili, finely minced
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 heaping Tbsp homemade curry powder (above)
1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
Pinch of white sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream

Optional: serve with long grain basmati rice and cilantro garnish

Special Equipment:
Spice grinder or coffee grinder

H/T to Victor for the link.

QotD: The Global Pottersville

Filed under: France, History, Media, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Director Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, set during the Depression, was a divine counterfactual thought experiment designed to remind a suicidal George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) that his hometown, Bedford Falls, would have turned out to be a pretty miserable place called Pottersville without his seemingly ordinary presence.

Consider the Obama administration’s first six years as a prolonged counterfactual take on what the world might have been like for the last 70 years without a traditionally engaged American president dedicating our country to preserving the postwar Western-inspired global order.

The what-if dream seems to be working to show the vast alterations in a world that Westerners once took for granted. France, a perennial critic of America, is suddenly an unlikely international activist. For seven decades, the French harped about American hyperpuissance – on the implied assurance that such triangulating would be ignored by an easily caricatured, aw-shucks American George Bailey trying his best to keep things in the global community from falling apart.

But now the Johnny-on-the-spot American everyman is gone, and lots of things have filled the vacuum. An overwhelmed France nevertheless intervened in Mali to staunch Islamic extremism. It bombed Libya, and then discovered that the United States’ new policy of “lead from behind” meant that America was no more likely to clean up the ensuing post-Qaddafi mess than was France — especially given that the new Mogadishu-on-the-Mediterranean was not far from Marseilles, but an Atlantic Ocean away from New York and Washington.

[…]

The aim of Capra’s fable was to remind us that the easily ridiculed, so-so status quo often hides Herculean efforts by those whom we take for granted, and who, working in the shadows, guarantee civilization instead of chaos. In the movie, the guardian angel Clarence can make the dream go away and cure George Bailey of his suicidal melancholy, as normalcy returns with the old Bedford Falls. In our version, we will learn soon after November 2016 whether we awake from the temporary alternative universe of a new Pottersville or whether it proves to be a depressing and continuing reality.

Victor Davis Hanson, “The Global Pottersville”, National Review, 2015-06-02.

May 1, 2019

Bavarian Soviet Republic – 1919 Economy and Reconstruction I BEYOND THE GREAT WAR

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The Great War
Published on 30 Apr 2019

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Jesse Alexander takes a look at the short lived but historically important Bavarian Soviet Republic that existed for 3 weeks in April 1919. He also takes a look at the post armistice economy and reconstruction in the west.

» SOURCES
Deperchin, Annie. “Des destructions aux reconstructions,” in Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker, eds. Encyclopédie de la Grande guerre 1914-1918 (Paris : Bayard, 2013): 1063-1074.

Gerwarth, Robert. The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 (Penguin, 2017).

Jones, Mark. Am Anfang war Gewalt. Die Deutsche Revolution 1918/19 und der Beginn der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Propyläen, 2017). English edition: Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918-19 (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

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»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
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Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
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Channel Design: Alexander Clark
Original Logo: David van Stephold

A Mediakraft Networks Original Channel Contains licensed material by getty images

All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2019

From the comments:

The Great War
28 minutes ago
As a small production announcement: This was the last episode in the classical format where we answer questions directly. From May onward, every video we publish every other week will have one main topic: an important event from exactly 100 years ago. This will make it much easier to follow the channel and it will be more in line with our mission statement to cover the war in real time 100 years later. Of course, you can still ask questions. We will answer some of the directly in our Patreon podcast and we will use them as inspiration for our episodes. As an example: A lot of fans asked if we will cover the American “Polar Bear Expedition” and so that will be exactly what we will cover in our episode in late May. On top of that, we will do a small “time jump” and starting with our episode in June we will have a synchronized timeline again meaning: The episodes coming out in June 2019 will cover June 1919 and so forth.

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