Quotulatiousness

September 5, 2020

History Summarized: The Viking Age

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, History, Humour, Religion, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 4 Sep 2020

The Vikings are enjoying a new wave of enthusiasm in popular culture, but these seafaring Norsemen are still quite clearly a misunderstood force in medieval European history. So let’s take a wide look at the European world during The Viking Age!

Check out Yellow’s livestreams over at https://Twitch.tv/LudoHistory

SOURCES & Further Reading: The Vikings by Walaker Nordeide and Edwards, Vikings: A Very Short Introduction by Richards, Age of the Vikings and The Conversion of Scandinavia by Winroth, The Vikings By Harl via The Great Courses, The Viking World by Graham-Campbell, The Viking Way by Price.

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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From the comments:

Ludohistory
23 hours ago (edited)
Thanks so much for having me on and letting me help out! It was a lot of fun (even if I talked a little too fast sometimes)! To clarify a piece that I know I did cover too briefly — missionary trips to Scandinavia occurred in Denmark around 823, on the orders of Louis the Pious, and in Sweden in 829, when Ansgar, a Frankish monk, traveled to the town of Birka, where he found a very small Christian community, probably mostly enslaved or formerly enslaved people, and converted a couple of Norse people, including the town prefect. (The graveyard for that town, incidentally, is where the 10th century “female warrior” that made waves a few years ago was buried).

There’s a lot we didn’t get a chance to talk about about the diaspora and its ending, so if there’s anything you all are curious on or find unclear, let me know here or on twitter 🙂

Finally, if you liked this, all the VODs for my personal streams (where I try to ramble about history in games) can be found by clicking on my name, and tomorrow I’ll be streaming CKIII on twitch (link in the description)!

Beginning the transition from personal rule to the modern bureaucratic state

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Anton Howes discusses some of the issues late Medieval rulers had which in some ways began the ascendency of our modern nation state with omnipresent bureaucratic oversight of everyone and everything:

… the bureaucratic state of today, with its officials involving themselves with every aspect of modern life, is a relatively recent invention. In a world without bureaucracy, when state capacity was relatively lacking, it’s difficult to see what other options monarchs would have had. Suppose yourself transported to the throne of England in 1500, and crowned monarch. Once you bored of the novelty and luxuries of being head of state, you might become concerned about the lot of the common man and woman. Yet even if you wanted to create a healthcare system, or make education free and universal to all children, or even create a police force (London didn’t get one until 1829, and the rest of the country not til much later), there is absolutely no way you could succeed.

King James I (of England) and VI (of Scotland)
Portrait by Daniel Myrtens, 1621 from the National Portrait Gallery via Wikimedia Commons.

For a start, you would struggle to maintain your hold on power. Fund schools you say? Somebody will have to pay. The nobles? Well, try to tax them — in many European states they were exempt from taxation — and you might quickly lose both your throne and your head. And supposing you do manage to tax them, after miraculously stamping out an insurrection without their support, how would you even begin to go about collecting it? There was simply no central government agency capable of raising it. Working out how much people should pay, chasing up non-payers, and even the physical act of collection, not to mention protecting that treasure once collected, all takes substantial manpower. Not to mention the fact that the collecting agents will likely siphon most of it off to line their own pockets.

[…]

It was not until 1689, when there was a coup, that an incoming ruler allowed the English parliament to sit whenever it pleased. Before that, it was convened only at the whim of the ruler, and dispersed even at the slightest provocation. In 1621, for example, when James I was planning to marry his heir to a Spanish princess, Parliament sent him a petition asserting their right to debate the matter. Upon hearing of it, he called for the official record of parliamentary proceedings, personally ripped out the page with the offending vote, and promptly dissolved the Parliament. The downside, of course, was that James could not then acquire any parliamentary subsidies.

Ruling was thus an intensely personal affair, of making deals and finding ways to circumvent deals you had inherited. Increasing your capabilities as a ruler – state capacity – was thus no easy task, as the typical ruler was stuck in an essentially medieval equilibrium. Imposing a policy costs money, but raising money involves imposing policy. Breaking out of this chicken-and-egg problem took centuries of canny leadership. The rulers who achieved it most would today seem hopelessly corrupt.

To gain extra cash without interference from Parliament, successive monarchs first asserted and then abused their ancient prerogative rights to grant monopolies over trades and industries. They eventually granted them to whomever was willing to pay, establishing monopolies over industries like gambling cards or alehouses under the guise of regulating unsavoury activities. They also sold off knighthoods and titles, and in 1670 Charles II even made a secret deal with the French that he would convert to Catholicism and attack the Protestant Dutch, all in exchange for cash. Anything to not have to call a potentially pesky Parliament. At times, the most effective rulers even resembled mob bosses. Take Elizabeth I’s anger when a cloth-laden merchant fleet bound for an Antwerp fair in 1559 was allowed to depart. Her order to stop them had not arrived in time, thus preventing her from extracting “loans” from the merchants while she still had their goods within her power.

Laying Out the Door Tenons | The Cabinet Project #14 | Free Online Woodworking School

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

Matt Estlea
Published 2 Sep 2020

In this lesson, I’ll show you how to transfer the measurements of the mortise components cut in the previous lesson, to the rail components that will be cut in the next lesson.

See the FULL lesson here:
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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

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My name is Matt Estlea, I’m a 24 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.

If you’re interested in studying at Rycotewood, view their courses here:
www.mattestlea.com/rycotewood

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. I discontinued this at the start of 2019 to focus solely on video creation and teaching.

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 also have a Free Online Woodworking School which you should definitely check out!

www.mattestlea.com/school

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.

Kareem Shaheen on the shame of mask-shaming

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, Kareem Shaheen — who is a mask-wearer and was one before they were made mandatory — explains why shaming anti-maskers is a terrible way to encourage compliance, but a great way to virtue-signal:

“Covid 19 Masks” by baldeaglebluff is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The mask shaming mirrors the way social media has warped our culture. The Twitter and ‘gram “in crowd” flaunt its mask use to demonstrate an ostensibly superior grasp of morals and science — and to bully those who don’t follow its cues. Those who perceive themselves to be on the outside of this circle can’t help but cringe at the manipulation and grandstanding behind these seemingly well-intentioned gestures.

Mask resistance, then, becomes a virtue signal of its own.

And, of course, Twitter itself has been a cesspool of counter-productive shame. Back in July, the hashtag #NoMasks trended, which gave the illusion of a groundswell of opposition against mandatory masking laws. But an analysis by First Draft, a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom, examined 8,000 Twitter accounts that used the hashtag. It found that the majority of people who tweeted #NoMasks were actually pro-mask. Their condemnation of the supposed anti-mask contingent actually boosted #NoMasks, bringing more people in contact with related conspiracy theories and arguments against wearing masks.

The moralizing is all the more galling because our own governments were forced to do an embarrassing about-face on their efficacy.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, health agencies in Canada and the United States recommended against wearing masks because there was insufficient evidence that they could prevent the spread of the virus, remember? They said that masks would provide a sense of false security, and suggested that we were all too dumb to know how to wear them properly.

This despite widespread use of masks in Asia, and while there was a growing consensus in hard-hit parts of Europe that they were effective and necessary.

With so much confused messaging, it’s no mystery that so many people are now skeptical about wearing masks. Sure, some of the most ardent mask-haters are also Q-Anon-spouting, anti-vaxxer crystal-healing masks-are-fascism conspiracy theorist kooks. But not all them fit that description.

And the problem with all of this is that if you’re actually trying to convince people to wear masks — as opposed to merely demonstrating your own superior morality via the veil — shame is one of the least effective methods of persuasion.

Chinese 7.62mm Sten Gun

Filed under: Cancon, China, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 May 2020

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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

During World War Two, Canada supplied some 73,000 Sten guns (made by the Long Branch arsenal) to Chinese Nationalist forces in an effort to help them fight the Japanese. These Stens were standard MkII pattern guns, chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge. However, many of these were eventually converted to 7.62mm Tokarev ammunition, especially after the victory of the Communist forces over the Nationalists. The conversion involved a new barrel and new magazine and magazine well. The 7.62mm barrels were typically longer than the original ones, and the magazine of choice was that of the PPS-43. Some were done by installed a magazine adapter into the original magazine well, and some (like this one) were done by cutting off the original magazine well and replacing it with a new one. In addition, some Sten guns were made domestically in China, both in 9mm and 7.62mm. The 7.62mm Tokarev cartridge was popular both from Russian pistols and submachine guns and also from China’s long military use of the dimensionally-identical 7.63mm Mauser cartridge in C96 pistols.

Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this interesting submachine gun! The NFC collection there — perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe — is available by appointment to researchers:

https://royalarmouries.org/research/n…

You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:

https://royalarmouries.org/collection/

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

QotD: Teenage girls

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Some years back when our daughter was navigating adolescence, my wife remarked that teenage girls don’t really have friends. They have allies. And those alliances tend to be of the Ribbentrop/Molotov variety and can shift in a nanosecond.

R. Sherman commenting at DavidThompson.com, 2018-06-05.

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