Quotulatiousness

November 12, 2020

Vise Squad #2: The Plastic Meyer Vise

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

Rex Krueger
Published 11 Nov 2020

Is this plastic vise just a gimmick, or does it really work?

More video and exclusive content: http://www.patreon.com/rexkrueger
Build your own vise and bench! (Scroll down for videos)
Build a Leg Vise from pine: https://youtu.be/eiwtBs-9Dco
Do you even need a vise? https://youtu.be/kzv27STMnvY
Build this amazing, inexpensive, and easy bench: https://youtu.be/zcq1LQq08lk

Watch all the bench and vise videos I’ve ever made: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

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Wood Work for Humans Tool List (affiliate):
*Cutting*
Gyokucho Ryoba Saw: https://amzn.to/2Z5Wmda
Dewalt Panel Saw: https://amzn.to/2HJqGmO
Suizan Dozuki Handsaw: https://amzn.to/3abRyXB
(Winner of the affordable dovetail-saw shootout.)
Spear and Jackson Tenon Saw: https://amzn.to/2zykhs6
(Needs tune-up to work well.)
Crown Tenon Saw: https://amzn.to/3l89Dut
(Works out of the box)
Carving Knife: https://amzn.to/2DkbsnM
Narex True Imperial Chisels: https://amzn.to/2EX4xls
(My favorite affordable new chisels.)
Blue-Handled Marples Chisels: https://amzn.to/2tVJARY
(I use these to make the DIY specialty planes, but I also like them for general work.)

*Sharpening*
Honing Guide: https://amzn.to/2TaJEZM
Norton Coarse/Fine Oil Stone: https://amzn.to/36seh2m
Natural Arkansas Fine Oil Stone: https://amzn.to/3irDQmq
Green buffing compound: https://amzn.to/2XuUBE2

*Marking and Measuring*
Stockman Knife: https://amzn.to/2Pp4bWP
(For marking and the built-in awl).
Speed Square: https://amzn.to/3gSi6jK
Stanley Marking Knife: https://amzn.to/2Ewrxo3
(Excellent, inexpensive marking knife.)
Blue Kreg measuring jig: https://amzn.to/2QTnKYd
Round-head Protractor: https://amzn.to/37fJ6oz

*Drilling*
Forstner Bits: https://amzn.to/3jpBgPl
Spade Bits: https://amzn.to/2U5kvML

*Work-Holding*
Orange F Clamps: https://amzn.to/2u3tp4X
Screw Clamp: https://amzn.to/3gCa5i8

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Puritans let no pandemic go to waste

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Annabel Denham illustrates how the ongoing Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic has enabled and encouraged nanny state thinking:

Not actually the official symbol of Britain’s National Health Services … probably.

Over the course of the past seven months, we have seen every indulgence come under fire for its supposed role not just in transmitting coronavirus but also in causing any excess deaths. Cast your mind back to the start of the crisis, when the World Health Organisation launched its #HealthyAtHome campaign, advising us to shun butter and sugary drinks, despite there being little evidence such a move would serve to limit the spread or impact of Covid-19.

Then there was the dismally weak Chinese study, which found smokers were more likely to become seriously ill from Covid, which was warmly received by the public-health establishment. It handed them their smoking gun, until it became clear smokers were significantly less likely to actually contract the disease in the first place.

Now we have the destruction of the pub industry. First there was the 10pm curfew, imposed with little regard for the fact that it would encourage house parties held in far less safe environments than heavily regulated pubs or restaurants. Advocates seemed to gloss over the evidence suggesting that less than five per cent of infected individuals contacted by NHS Test and Trace had been in close contact with another person in a hospitality venue. Then there was the clampdown on households mixing, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s indoor booze ban, and the bizarre insistence that pubs in Tier 2 could only serve alcohol if food was dished out at the same time.

This pandemic has triggered renewed fervour among nanny-state obsessives – no more so than among those determined to take down the food industry. You can bet that with hospitalisations and deaths on the rise again, there will be a commensurate increase in one-sided agitprop from celebrity supporters like Henry Dimbleby or Jamie Oliver. Just last month the latter called on the government to market water – yes, water – to young people as more attractive than soft drinks and proposed an “eat well to stay well” scheme modelled on the government’s Eat Out to Help Out initiative. Meanwhile, this week the government announced that advertising junk foods like sausage rolls and fish fingers would be banned online.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then the public-health lobby’s mental wellbeing is surely in doubt. According to a collection of essays by Dolly Theis, long-term advocate of anti-obesity measures, 700 policies have been proposed in Britain over the past 30 years. In reality, these are the same policies renewed, repackaged and ramped up by fanatical single-issue pressure groups, the sort who claim obesity is an epidemic when hundreds of thousands are dying by Covid’s hand.

The General Relativity of Revolution | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! | E.03 – Spring 1919

Filed under: Architecture, Germany, History, Media, Russia, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 11 Nov 2020

It is a springtime of revolution throughout the world in 1919 and not just the political kind. Era-defining advances in science and technology and iconic cinematography are made this season.

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

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Michał Zbojna
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations:
Klimbim
Mikołaj Uchman
Wayne Degan
metacolor.org

Sources:
Library of Congress
Bundesarchiv
Icons from The Noun Project:
– retro computer By Tinashe Mugayi, MY
– audio sound recorder By Vectors Point, PK
– Radio by Bill Denk
– Old TV By Pascal Heß, DE
– Radio Tower by Iris Sun

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “British Royalty” – Trailer Worx
– “Flight Path” – Cobby Costa
– “Deflection” – Reynard Seidel
– “Flight Path” – Cobby Costa
– “A Single Grain Of Rice” – Yi Nantiro
– “Trapped in a Maze” – Philip Ayers
– “Symphony of the Cold-Blooded” – Christian Andersen
– “Rainy Landscapes” – Farrell Wooten
– “Ancient Saga” – Max Anson

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 day ago
J’accuse is one of the many iconic films we’ll explore in this series. The interwar period is when European cinema really starts to hit its stride again after some serious setbacks during the Great War. In those years, American cinema rocketed to the mainstream both at home and abroad, with revolutionary filmmaking techniques being developed that we still see today such as close-ups, huge cast lists, and realistic set design.

The post-Great War is set to be a great era in the history of cinema and not just because of the films themselves, J’accuse and other films are important as historical movers in their own right! They shape public perceptions, influence political change, and inspire whole social movements, so make sure you stay tuned to find out.

And in the meantime, are there any iconic interwar films you think deserve to be in this series?

The party of the Lucky Winners

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

Brian Micklethwait sends some thoughts from his sick-bed on the (still in question) outcome of the US election:

“Polling Place Vote Here” by Scott Beale is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Democrat electoral cheating is not a new story. I’ve been reading stuff about America and American politics all my life, off and on and mostly off, and like a thread through it all is the fact that in big cities that they run and are determined to go on running, Democrats cheat in elections. So Democrats cheating in elections this time around is not the big change.

The big change is a Republican refusing to retreat in the face of it. Why? Why is Trump being so unpresidential, so undignified, so … just so ghastly? The answer is that the big political picture has been transformed, partly by him, but partly by him responding to the fact that it has already changed so much.

Time was when Republicans were the party of the Lucky Winners. Country clubbers, corporate executives, yacht owners, owners of houses with several garages, presided over by perfectly manicured wives, in charge of several well behaved children and subservient servants. The Democrats, meanwhile, were the party of the workers, of people struggling to do work or even to get work. Any plutocrats who were attached to the Democrats, like the Kennedys or (FD) Roosevelt, were numerically insignificant oddities. (Whether that was true, I don’t know. But this was the dominant narrative, as people say now.)

But that’s all changed. The Democrats are now the party of the Lucky Winners, and also of the unlucky losers at the very bottom of the heap who can only now depend on the crumbs of comfort bestowed upon them by the Lucky Winner class. The Republicans have become the party of the workers in the middle, the middle class, as Americans accurately describe them. The Republicans are the party of the people who still struggle to work and to stay working, and who hate the whole idea of giving up and becoming dependant upon the Lucky Winners.

Not all “workers” voted for Trump. A lot of workers, especially in things like IT, are still solidly Democrat. But the heart of the Trump vote was workers of a certain sort. The heart of the Trump vote was no longer the Lucky Winners class. They have migrated over to the Democrats.

Okay, now for the key bit of what I’m saying.

In olden times, if you were a member of the Lucky Winners class, and your guy lost an election, complaining about cheating was frankly a bit, well, undignified. You and your pals controlled almost all the levers of power in society. You owned the big corporations. Your children were creaming off most of the expensive education. The world was yours. Were you going to bitch about electoral corner-cutting by a few machine politician Democrats in big cities who had enough clout to say boo to you, every once in a while? This was not a good look. And on the whole, Republicans took their defeats, and if Democrat cheating cost them a win or two, well, that was how it crumbled, cookie-wise. Legally, that may not have been the rule, but actually, that was the rule. Noblesse oblige. Let the people picked by the struggling class have their turn. Suck it up. Go play golf.

But now? Now, what is happening is that the Lucky Winners class is telling the class definitely below it in the pecking order that this subordinate class now has to just lie back and let it happen, when the electoral cheating happens all over them.

This is not a good look either, but it’s what the Lucky Winner class now think they can do, and get away with. Maybe they can, in the sense that they may well get their guy over the line this time around. But if they do, but if it then becomes clear that they did this by cheating on a large scale in this election, then the words “reap” and “whirlwind” spring to mind.

The history of Canada explained in 10 minutes

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Cancon, France, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Epimetheus
Published 19 Jan 2019

The history of Canada explained in 10 minutes

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Canadian history from the discovery of the Vikings to the French and English colonization until modern times.

Tags:
Canadian history documentary, Canadian history crash course, Canada history, history of Canada documentary, history Canada summarized, Canada, history, Canadian history, Canadian American history, animated history of Canada, canadian history in a nutshell, canadian history for kids, educational, Canada Indians, Canada great Britain, English Canada, Quebec, French Canada, French English Canada,

QotD: It’s impossible to plan the economy

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

So, government is this all knowing, all seeing, entity which can plan, in detail, what should be produced, by whom, where, at what price. That’s what we need to be true if we are to have an interventionist government which tries to plan the economy.

Government is so ill-equipped to judge the future that it sold €6 billion’s worth of property off for £1.6 billion – that’s what we need to be true for that £4.5 billion loss, no? This is not a world in which we can trust government to plan our economy, is it?

And which government exists in reality? Well, the complaint is that second. And the people complaining are largely those who insist that we should act as if we’ve government of the first type. No, they don’t note the discord in that logic either. Governments aren’t very good at economic decisions therefore governments must make more economic decisions for us all. If you can manage to believe that you too can join the Labour Party.

Tim Worstall, “That Ministry Of Defence Housing Deal Proves It’s Impossible To Plan The Economy”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-07-13.

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