Quotulatiousness

July 29, 2020

How Freight Trains Connect the World

Filed under: Economics, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Wendover Productions
Published 5 Mar 2019

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Animation by Josh Sherrington
Sound by Graham Haerther (http://www.Haerther.net)
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster

Special thanks to Patreon supporters Alec M Watson, Andrew J Thom, Arkadiy Kulev, Chris Allen, Chris Barker, Connor J Smith, Daddy Donald, Etienne Dechamps, Eyal Matsliah, Hank Green, Harrison Wiener, James Hughes, James McIntosh, John & Becki Johnston, Keith Bopp, Kelly J Knight, Ken Lee, Kyle, KyQuan Phong, Manoj Kasyap Govindaraju, MyNameIsKir, Plinio Correa, Qui Le, Sheldon Zhao, Simen Nerleir, and Tim Robinson

Music by http://epidemicsound.com
Select footage courtesy the AP Archive
Select footage courtesy Bigstock: http://bit.ly/bigstock-videofreetrial

BNSF train clip courtesy Scott Hiddelston

Some fascinating and disturbing information on the Nova Scotia murders

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Once again, the Halifax Examiner provides information on the mass murder case in Nova Scotia that seems to be mystifyingly of little to no interest to the mainstream media outlets:

An annotated RCMP map shows the killer’s route from 123 Ventura Drive in Debert to 2328 Hunter Road in Wentworth. Insets of still images taken from different videos show the killer’s replica police car at 5:43am in Debert and passing a driveway on Hunter Road in Wentworth at 6:29am.

The most stunning revelation comes from one person who spoke with Halifax police. That person told police that the murderer, who the Examiner refers to as GW, “builds fires and burns bodies, is a sexual predator, and supplies drugs in Portapique and Economy, Nova Scotia.”

Moreover, the person said that GW “had smuggled guns and drugs from Maine for years and had a stockpile of guns” and GW “had a bag of 10,000 oxy-contin and 15,000 dilaudid from a reservation in New Brunswick.”

Another person who spoke with the RCMP gave information about GW’s properties, relating that it was known that there were secret hiding places at the properties. The person said GW had shown another person (whose name remains redacted) a “hidden compartment in the garage” [presumably in Portapique], which was under a workbench, and GW kept a “high powered rifle” in the space.

The person who spoke with the RCMP said that there was a “false wall” at GW’s Dartmouth residence. That information was echoed by another person who spoke with Halifax police on April 19, who said that “there is a secret room in the clinic in Dartmouth.”

Other information that is newly un-redacted confirms information that was widely known before.

What was TEKOI?

Filed under: History, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

CGP Grey
Published 28 Jul 2020

## Related Videos

Exploring Tekoi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABMV4…

Defeated by Tumbleweeds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeXP…

## Special Thanks

Gregory Waltz

## Crowdfunders

Steven Snow, Bob Kunz, John Buchan, Nevin Spoljaric, Donal Botkin, BN-12 , Chris Chapin, Richard Jenkins, Phil Gardner, Martin, Steven Grimm, سليمان العقل, Elliot Lepley, Colin Millions, David F Watson, Saki Comandao, Ben Schwab, Jason Lewandowski, Bobby, rictic, Marco Arment, Shallon Brown, Shantanu Raj, emptymachine, George Lin, Jeffrey Podis, Ben Delo, Henry Ng, Thunda Plum, Awoo, David Tyler, Fuesu, iulus, Jordan Earls, Joshua Jamison, Nick Fish, Nick Gibson, Tyler Bryant, Zach Whittle, Oliver Steele, Kermit Norlund, Derek Bonner, Derek Jackson, Mikko, Orbit_Junkie, Ron Bowes, Tómas Árni Jónasson, Andrew Bereza, Rebecca Wortham, Bryan McLemore, Bear, chrysilis, David Palomares, Emil, Erik Parasiuk, Esteban Santana Santana, Freddi Hørlyck, John Rogers, ken mcfarlane, Leon, Maarten van der Blij, Peter Lomax, Rhys Parry, ShiroiYami, Tristan Watts-Willis, Veronica Peshterianu, Dag Viggo Lokøen, Essa omar, Ryan Richards, Alex Simonides, Felix Weis, John Lee, Maxime Zielony, Melvin Sowah, Elizabeth Keathley, Christopher Mutchler, Giulio Bontadini, Paul Alom, Ryan Tripicchio, Scot Melville, Kyle Wayman, Julien Dubois

## Music

David Rees: http://www.davidreesmusic.com

Update: CGP Grey posted a corrected version of this video here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCeMCwxayp0
He also posted the Director’s Commentary video (originally intended only for his Patrons) here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufsYK3Eecw4
There is also a video explaining how the whole process worked and how the error was missed, if you’re interested.

The Equity, Inclusivity, and Diversity Industrial Complex

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Education, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Dominion, Ben Woodfinden comments on a Ross Douthat column on the “antiracist” demands of our modern protestariat (the hordes of un- or under-employed university-educated young liberals and socialists):

University College, University of Toronto, 31 July, 2008.
Photo by “SurlyDuff” via Wikimedia Commons.

… the most interesting aspect of this lockdown-induced outpouring of collective rage hasn’t been the protests, or the cancellations, but the woke job creation that is going on. The ideology behind things like “white fragility” is increasingly being transformed into what can be described as an equity-inclusivity-diversity (EID) industrial complex that might end up being the most significant long term structural change that emerges out of the protests.

One of the most common responses in elite institutions as they promise to address systemic racism has been the creation of new jobs and positions that will supposedly help to do so. For instance, the Washington Post created a set of new positions that will be focusing on racial issues. This included hiring a “Managing Editor for Diversity and Inclusion.” At Princeton, the administration announced, like many other elite universities, new courses (which means new teaching opportunities) focused on racial injustice, as well as new projects and funding for research to explore and address racial issues. Stanford has created a new Centre for Racial Justice at its law school.

This direct job creation is just the tip of the iceberg. The real EID industrial complex is in the creation of a vast number of new jobs dedicated to the promotion and advancement of the basic tenets of this ascendant ideology through the expansion of human resource departments to deal with these issues, the creation of new EID bureaucrats and administrators in universities, corporations, government departments, the rise of EID consulting and mandatory courses and workshops for employees, new jobs and potential litigation for lawyers, as well as courses and modules in law schools to teach aspiring lawyers about these things.

In the bestselling Ibram X. Kendi book How To Be An Antiracist, one of Kendi’s central solutions is to pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution and permanently establish and fund a Department of Anti-racism. This department:

    would be comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.

The radical tendencies of the bourgeois bolsheviks in the streets might make them seem like true revolutionaries, but what this movement seems to actually want to create, with remarkable success, is new employment opportunities for true believers in the new anti-racist creeds. Racism won’t so much be solved by tearing society down, but by massively expanding new professional and managerial jobs that can guarantee full employment for the credentialed class of true believers.

O’Boyle’s thesis is that the revolutions that swept across European cities in 1848 were because a large surplus of resentful and overeducated men felt society was denying to them what they were rightfully owed. O’Boyle looks at Germany, where university education was cheap, and was “emphasized as an avenue to wealth and power.” This ending up producing an excess of ambitious, but resentful and frustrated men who felt society was not allotting them the status and comfort they deserved. The same was true in France. But in Britain, the opportunities produced by industrialization that had yet to fully materialize on the continent kept this excess surplus of overeducated men much smaller, and helped insulate Britain from revolution.

What if the EID industrial complex actually helps to reduce the scarcity of opportunities in elite fields and institutions that will put a lid on the unrest that overproduction breeds? The EID industry is worth billions of dollars, and in a way it might be the solution liberalism offers to both the radical progressivism of this ideology, and to the challenge posed by elite overproduction.

America’s First Assault Rifle: Burton 1917 LMR

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Jul 2016

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
https://centerofthewest.org/explore/f…

America’s first assault rifle? Well, it does meet all the requirements — select-fire, intermediate cartridge, and shoulder-fired. It was never actually fielded, though.

The Burton Light Machine Rifle was developed during World War One, with the firing model completed in 1917. It was intended as an aircraft observer’s weapon for attacking balloons — a role which required incendiary ammunition. With this in mind, Winchester’s Frank Burton adapted the .351 WSL cartridge from his 1905 and 1907 self-loading rifles into the .345 WSL, with a spitzer bullet. He designed an open-bolt, select-fire shoulder rifle to fire it, which became known as the Light Machine Rifle.

Burton’s rifle was to be usable both in an aircraft where it could be fixed to a Scarff mount for a wide field of fire or used by an individual on the ground, fired from the shoulder. It weighed in at just about 10 pounds (4.5kg) and had a pistol grip and straight-line design to bring the recoil impulse directly into the shooter’s shoulder and minimize rise during automatic fire. The barrel was finned for better cooling, and infantry barrels were equipped with bayonet lugs.

The most distinctive elements of the design, of course, are the dual top-mounted magazines. Each one holds 20 rounds, and each has a pair of locking catches. One position locks the magazine into a feeding position, and the other holds it up above the cycling of the bolt. The idea here was to keep a second loaded magazine easily accessible for an aerial observer, so they could reload without having to find another magazine somewhere in the aircraft. Contrary to some speculation, there is no automatic transition between magazines. When one is empty, the shooter must pull it back to the second locking position (or out of the gun entirely) and then push the second magazine down into feeding position.

Despite Burton’s work — which was well ahead of its time — the LMR had been rendered obsolete for its primary role by the time it was ready. Synchronized, forward-mounted Vickers machine guns firing 11mm incendiary ammunition were being mounted on aircraft, and were more effective on balloons and airplanes than Burton’s weapon would have been. Only this single example was ever made, and it was not presented for infantry consideration as far as I can tell. It was lost for many years before being discovered in a Winchester building, and eventually ending up in the Cody Firearms Museum with the rest of the Winchester factory collection.

QotD: Grog in the Royal Navy

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

More generally, though, do we have any historical evidence of groups whose alcohol consumption was documented with any confidence, to see how they fared?

Actually, we do, at least as a floor: we know the quantity of the Royal Navy’s spirit ration, which until 1823 was based on half a pint of rum (284 millilitres in foreign) per man per day. We also know its minimum strength, since it was tested by trying to ignite gunpowder soaked in it: it had to be over 57% alcohol by volume (“proof strength”) to pass. That’s sixteen units of alcohol – not per week, but per day – or north of a hundred units a week, just for the issued ration before sailors bought any extra from the purser. (No wonder Jack Tar was jolly back in those days!)

But clearly, we would expect a body of men consuming such suicidally destructive quantities of booze to be physical wrecks, raddled by cirrhosis and disease? As Dr James Lind (he of the discovery that citrus fruits were a sovereign remedy for scurvy) put it,

    It is an observation, I think, worthy of record that fourteen thousand persons, pent up in ships, should continue, for six or seven months, to enjoy a better state of health upon the watery element, than it can well be imagined so great a number of people would enjoy, on the most healthful spot of ground in the world.

(For context, around this point the Navy won the battle of Quiberon Bay, with twenty ships – who had less than one man sick per ship).

The ration was halved in 1823, and again in 1850, but for a hundred and twenty years until Black Tot Day in 1970, the Navy still issued nearly thirty units of alcohol a week to everyone on the lower deck (junior rates got theirs diluted, seniors got neat rum). Either folk were hardier back then, or Britannia managed to rule the waves and keep her sailors reasonably healthy despite being a pack of hopelessly addicted alcoholics.

Jason Lynch, “How Much Is ‘Too Much’?”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-05-08.

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