Quotulatiousness

February 5, 2021

Where Hitler’s Moustache Came From, Kurds in WW2, and Germans in Italy – WW2 – OOTF 020

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Italy, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 4 Feb 2021

Where is Kurdistan and how were its people involved in World War Two? Did Germany try to annex South Tyrol from Italy? And why did Hitler have that Moustache? Find out in this episode of Out of the Foxholes.

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Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Lewis Braithwaite, Ian Irungu, Timothy Smith
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: Lewis Braithwaite, Ian Irungu, Timothy Smith
Edited by: Michał Zbojna
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory​)

Colorizations by:
Klimbim https://www.flickr.com/photos/2215569…​
Mikołaj Uchman

Icons from The Noun Project:
noun_Helmet_25216 Helmet by Daniel Turner
X by Richard Kuná

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
“When in Bavaria” – Trabant 33
“Dawn Of Civilization” – Jo Wandrini (1)
“Ancient Discoveries” – Gabriel Lewis

Sources:
Bundesarchiv, Bild 137-055690
Bundesarchiv, Bild 137-055691

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

The 369th Infantry Regiment in WW1 – the “Harlem Hellfighters”

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Military, USA, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Lawrence W. Reed remembers the US regiment that spent the most days in combat during WW1 and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for the unit’s incredible fighting efforts:

“Some of the colored men of the 369th (15th N.Y.) who won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action.” Left to right. Front row: Pvt. Ed Williams, Herbert Taylor, Pvt. Leon Fraitor, Pvt. Ralph Hawkins. Back Row: Sgt. H. D. Prinas, Sgt. Dan Strorms, Pvt. Joe Williams, Pvt. Alfred Hanley, and Cpl. T. W. Taylor.
Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs via Wikimedia Commons.

Formed from a New York National Guard unit, the men of the 369th learned basic military practices at Camp Whitman, New York, before being sent to Camp Wadsworth in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for combat training. They were not welcomed by many of the locals there, and some were subjected to discrimination and vile epithets for no more reason than their color. In December 1917, they were shipped to France where they expected to see action on the front lines.

Their high spirits were quickly dashed when it became apparent the Army did not want to deploy them for anything other than manual labor, far from the fighting. Even the rifles they brought with them were confiscated by US Army officials.

The commander of the American Expeditionary Force, General John J. Pershing, was reluctant to commit any US troops to the front until he felt he had assembled them in sufficient numbers to ensure victory. The French, meanwhile, were desperate for manpower. Finally bowing to French pressure, Pershing gave them the 369th. While some regarded black troops as expendable, they ultimately proved themselves indispensable.

Consider this amazing record of the Harlem Hellfighters: No American unit experienced more time in combat than they did — no less than 191 days under fire. They never lost an inch of ground. The enemy never captured a single of their number. They suffered the highest casualty rate of any US regiment. None deserted. The grateful French bestowed their highest military honor, the Croix de Guerre, upon the entire regiment. Many individuals of the regiment received the US Army’s second-highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross. Posthumously, Henry Johnson received America’s Medal of Honor in 2015. The 369th ended up as the most decorated US regiment of the war.

Another distinguishing feature of the Harlem Hellfighters was their band, the largest and best-known of any regiment. Its leader was James Reese Europe, whose enlistment in 1917 proved to be a boon for recruitment. He was one of America’s best-known black musicians and others like Noble Sissle, who became Europe’s lieutenant and lead vocalist, were eager to serve with him.

Europe’s band was extremely popular with the French, even when Europe introduced his own arrangement of La Marseillaise, France’s national anthem. The Hellfighters’ band brought both jazz and ragtime music to France, where nobody had heard either before.

Tank Chats #93 Humber Hornet | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Australia, Britain, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 24 Jan 2020

Here David Fletcher takes a look at the Humber Hornet, a specialised air-deployable Armoured Fighting Vehicle. It was designed to carry the Malkara, an anti-tank guided missile developed by Australia and the United Kingdom.

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QotD: Misunderstanding the threat/promise of robotics and AI

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

So, start with the very basics. Human desires and needs are unlimited – that’s an assumption but a reasonable one. There’re some number of people on the planet. This provides us with a lot of human labour but not an unlimited amount. Thus labour is a scarce or economic resource – and we’ve not enough of it to sate all human desires and wants.

OK, so, now we use machines to do some jobs that were previously done by humans. Imagine that this new technology actually required more human labour – that it created new jobs in greater volume than those it destroys. Say, the tractor and combine harvester industry needs more people in it than we used to use to cut the crops by hand. We’ve just made ourselves poorer. We used to have some amount of grain through the labour of some number of people. We’ve now got that grain but by using the labour of more people. We’ve used more of our scarce resource and we’re now poorer by the loss of what they used to make when not hand cutting grain but now no longer are by making tractors.

What makes us richer is if the tractor industry has record production statistics while using less labour than the hammer and sickle. That means that some human labour is now free to go off and try to sate a human desire or want for something other than grain. Ballet dancing for example. We’re now richer – tractors and combine harvesters have made us richer – by whatever value we put on more ballet dancing.

The entire point of any form of automation is to destroy jobs so as to free up that labour to do something else. The new technology doesn’t create jobs, it allows other jobs to be done.

The only point at which this fails is if human needs and desires aren’t unlimited. Which means that we might be able to provide everything that everyone wants without us all working. Which doesn’t really sound like much of a problem really.

Tim Worstall, “As Usual, World Economic Forum Gets Robots And AI Wrong Over Jobs”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-09-18.

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