Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 24 Jun 2022I’m pronouncing Mycenaean & Mycenae with a hard “K” sound because that’s how it sounds in Greek, and I would not be so impolite as to mispronounce the name of the first Greek-speaking civilization in history. (The name of “Mycenae” can be spelled Μυκῆναι or Μυκήνη, and I’m using the first one: mee-KEE-neh)
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October 28, 2022
History Summarized: Mycenaean Greece & the Bronze Age Collapse
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September 30, 2022
History Re-Summarized: The Roman Empire
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 16 Sept 2022
The plot twist of Rome is that it was always a mess, now sit back and enjoy the marble-covered mayhem.This video is a Remastered, Definitive Edition of three previous videos from this channel — “History Summarized: The Roman Empire”, “History Hijinks: Rome’s Crisis of the Third Century”, and “History Summarized: The Fall of Rome”. This video combines them all into one narrative, fully upgrading all of the visuals and audio, with a substantially re-written script in parts 1 and 3.
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September 22, 2022
QotD: In my 20s … and in my 40s
Me in my 20s: Falls down flight of stairs. Brushes self off and gets on with life as usual.
Me in my 40s: Sleeps with head at slightly different angle than usual. Spends 3 weeks taking painkillers for neck pain whilst sobbing and wondering if my life will ever be the same again.
Amanda (@Pandamoanimum), Twitter, 2022-06-13.
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September 19, 2022
“… the Royal Family has always seemed less like a business enterprise than a giant open-air prison”
The editors at The Line have a rather unusual view of the monarchy, or perhaps more accurately, of the Royal Family itself:
The Royal Family at Buckingham Palace for the Trooping of the Colour, 30 June, 2015.
Photo by Robert Payne via Wikimedia Commons.
We have a soft spot for the monarchy, here at The Line. We believe that as an organizing principle of our system of government, the Crown provides a decent balance between effectiveness and accountability. And while the idea of our head of state residing in a foreign country seems perverse, as a practical matter the physical distancing of the sovereign in London, and the institutional distancing via the Governor General, helps Canada sidestep what would otherwise be yet another occasion for national recrimination.
So, call it two cheers for the monarchy.
That the Queen was a model of duty, decorum and discretion throughout her long reign is undeniable, and there’s not much to add on that front that hasn’t been spread over square miles of newsprint over the past week. By the same token, she and her husband raised a rather problematic set of boys, of whom the best (Edward) that can be said is that he’s a nullity. But again, there’s been more written on this than one could safely consume in a lifetime.
But we’d like to say a few things about the Royal Family itself. The Royals have long described themselves not as a family, but as The Firm — a corporate entity and business enterprise that has extensive land holdings. It pokes its fingers in countless pies, and employs an army of secretaries and assistants and advisers and servants. It has been described as an enormous, bureaucratically organized machine that dictates and determines the lives of its members.
Yet to us, the Royal Family has always seemed less like a business enterprise than a giant open-air prison. A well-funded and nicely appointed prison to be sure, but a prison nonetheless.
What’s the difference between a complicated overbearing bureaucracy and a jail? Where does the line between compliance end and incarceration begin? It can be hard to say, but the key difference can be found in whether or not you have the right of exit. As Harry put it in his infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey: “My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave.”
But beyond that, it is found in how you treat those who try to change things, or more importantly, those who try to escape. Diana tried to change things, and got destroyed for her efforts. Her second son has attempted an escape, and he’s paying an enormous price.
Diana was no saint obviously, and Harry is a dim fellow who married poorly and has not always exercised the best judgment. But who could, under the circumstances? How could any human be reasonably expected to behave properly, to act normally, to judge wisely, given the insane combination of internal pressure, public expectation and media scrutiny that is a non-negotiable part of the royal package? A panopticon is no less carceral for being well-funded.
With the accession of Charles to the throne as King Charles III, there have been a number of articles published running through the main plot points of his life, with a great deal of focus on his romantic life, his marriage to Diana, and ultimately his reunion with the great love of his life, Camilla. What is remarkable is to read about the number of women he proposed to, prior to Diana, who saw the monarchy for what it was, and turned him down. It’s a testament to how much Camilla must really love the old fart that she prefers a life imprisoned with him than free without.
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City Minutes: Crusader States
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 13 May 2022Crusading is one thing, but holding your new kingdoms is a much trickier business. See how the many Christian states of “Outremer” rolled with the punches to evolve in form and function over multiple centuries.
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September 17, 2022
QotD: Parenting
“It’s amazing that you’re strong enough to escape the crib I confine you to. Your burgeoning independence is a marvel to behold. Keep fighting the dying of the light at bedtime, darling.”
“I hate you!”
“Of course you do, precious. Hatred of the people who are keeping you alive is a necessary part of individuation. However, you lack the executive function to properly weigh the consequences of going to that all-night kegger in the field.”Jen Gerson (@jengerson), Twitter, 2022-06-14.
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September 12, 2022
History Summarized: Classical Warfare (Feat. Shadiversity!)
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 22 Jul 2017How did people fight in ancient times? Well that’s a good question! Step right up and I’ll learn you a thing or two about history.
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September 6, 2022
QotD: The fitness club
The second problem, though, is: What to do with the True Believers?
Let’s return to the metaphor of the
gymfitness club. As we noted yesterday, the real money isn’t in the hardcore people who actually do the exercising. It’s in all the lardasses who sign up, and keep paying the membership fee, but never actually go. This leads to the perverse-seeming conclusion that the best gym, from the gym-owner’s perspective, is one that stands empty — gleaming, never-used equipment that just sits there, one mute inglorious depreciation tax writeoff, un-maintained by no paid staff. See what I mean? The whole point of owning a gym — the cult dogma, as it were — is to get people in shape, but the optimal gym from the cult leader’s perspective is a group of perpetual fatasses, buying themselves workout indulgences at $75 a month.I trust that the analogues in the eco-scam are obvious, so let’s move on. Even the most optimal-for-the-owner gym, though, is going to have a few True Believers who are in there day after day, grinding out sets and jogging on treadmills and doing whatever those CrossFit freaks do.* If you let them, they’ll take over everything. Ever been in a gym and seen a piece of equipment designed to isolate one muscle that you’d never think could be worked out in the first place? Congrats, your gym’s got a True Believer. Just stake out the Urethra-cizer for a few hours; you’ll see her; she’s unmistakable. She’s pushing 50 but has the body of a 20-year old, except made out of beef jerky …
… anyway, the point is, savvy gym owners know how to handle True Believers. You don’t buy ’em off with new equipment; you buy ’em off with new exercises. P90X is for pussies. Do Ultra-Kegels, and in just 60 days you’ll be able to lift an entire can of paint with your …
* Obviously I can’t write about gyms and cults without taking a cheap shot at CrossFit. They’re probably chock full of lessons on how to business-optimize your cult without letting it go mainstream, but I’m too terrified to look. Honest to God, there are some days where the only exercise I get is dodging and weaving away from the CrossFit cultists at the office.
Severian, “If the UFO Actually Comes, Part II”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-09-26.
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September 3, 2022
QotD: The Severian Corollary to Hanlon’s Razor
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
A while back I wrote that this needs an update, and being a humble guy, I named it the “Severian Corollary”:
There’s a level of stupidity so profound, you actually hope it’s malice.
Severian, “Quick Take: The Severian Corollary”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-07-31.
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August 29, 2022
QotD: Refuting the “children want to learn” notion
“Progressivism rests on the idea that children want to behave and they want to learn, the teacher needs to step back and allow the child to explore their natural curiosity, which will motivate them and keep them engaged,” Mr Bennett said.
Isn’t that fun as an assumption? Because if it were true then we wouldn’t need trained teachers in schools, would we? The brats want to learn, they will learn therefore. Actually, we don’t even need schools. Just release them into the wild somewhere near a library and they’ll get on with it themselves. [Perhaps the best known historical exponent of this theory was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Émile, a treatise on education.]
Ah, you say, that wouldn’t work? Then and therefore our assumption about all just wanting to learn is wrong, isn’t it?
To approach the same point alternatively. If kiddies just thirst for that knowledge to be imparted then why do we monitor truancy? If the first assertion is true then there won’t be any of the second. If we have incidence of the second – and we do indeed have a system to both monitor and try to prevent it – then the first assertion cannot be true. Not of all, all the time that is. And that’s all we need to be able to insist that a teaching method based upon its universal existence is wrong.
Not for the first time Progressivism fails when applied to actual human beings.
Jacob Rosser, “When Progressive Teaching Meets The Reality of Human Children — Not A Pretty Sight”, Continental Telegraph, 2019-05-13.
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August 28, 2022
QotD: Hell’s inhabitants
[…]
I haven’t actually been to Hell, but I’m told it is full of surveyors and planners.
David Warren, “Esquesan”, Essays in Idleness, 2019-04-10.
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August 26, 2022
QotD: The WARG rating – “Wins Above Replacement Goldstein”
Obviously that ain’t gonna work in Clown World, Cthulhuvious and Sasqueetchia being notso hotso on the STEM. They’ll always need a Goldstein, then, and that’s a real problem, because whatever else Bad Orange Man is, he’s also pushing 80 years old. How long would he have, even in a sane world? 10 more years, tops? And the candidates for Replacement BOM are generally a sorry lot … but even if they weren’t, they’re about to get purged, too. The WARG is already going negative …
For overseas readers (and those not conversant with “Moneyball”: Baseball has these weird “sabermetric” stats that purport to compare players from different teams and eras in terms of absolute value. It’s acronymed (it’s a word) WAR, Wins Above Replacement; “replacement” being an absolutely average player. Like all baseball “sabermetrics” it quickly gets ridiculous, but see here. According to this guy, then, Babe Ruth has a per-season WAR of 10.48 in right field. That means Babe Ruth, himself, personally, alone, was worth 10 and a half wins above your “average” player. If Ruth goes down for the season in a tragic Spring Training beer mishap, you can go ahead and take 10 wins off the Yankees’ record that season (assuming they replace the Bambino with some scrub just off the bus, which back then is what would’ve happened).
WARG, then, is Wins Above Replacement Goldstein. I’d say that Orange Man set the bar for Goldsteins, but that’s not statistically useful, since Trump Derangement Syndrome is so far the apex of liberal lunacy. To make statistical comparisons useful — to find a “replacement Goldstein,” as it were — we have to have someone the Left considered an existential enemy at the time, but who didn’t really do much in the grand scheme of things. So I nominate George W. Bush. If Bush is the “Replacement Goldstein,” then his WARG is a nice round zero. Trump would have a Babe Ruth-ian WARG.
This gives us a convenient measurement for looking at various Republicans, both current and historical. Richard Nixon would have a pretty high WARG — he drove them even more nuts than W. did — and Ronnie Raygun would be up there, too. Gerald Ford would have a slightly negative WARG, since not even the New York Times could pretend Gerald fucking Ford was a threat to the Progressive takeover. Your steeply negative WARGs would be those “Republicans” actively working with the opposition, like Bitch McConnell.
I’d argue that Ron DeSantis and maybe Greg Abbott still have positive WARGs … for now. But they’re going to get gulaged here in pretty short order. Who’s the next guy on the bench? Your Marjorie Taylor Greenes and whatnot drive certain segments of the Left insane, but she’s just too ludicrous to have a positive WARG. And then things start getting really pathetic …
The Law of Diminishing Returns makes the WARG problem even more acute. Freakout fatigue is a real thing. The Media will give it the old college try, of course, but you really just can’t convince people that a goof like Greene is some kind of existential threat to Our Democracy. Her WARG goes negative every time she opens her mouth.
Severian, “Salon Roundup”, Founding Questions, 2022-08-20.
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August 23, 2022
Progressives and the (always just-over-the-horizon) promise of fusion power
I was busy over the weekend, so I didn’t get a chance to post this from Severian at Founding Questions, but it’s still one of those things I wish I’d written:
Nuclear fusion breakthrough as “ignition” finally achieved
Woohoo. They’ve been promising us fusion power my entire life. I can’t even tell how many “breakthroughs” ago I stopped believing it. But since God has a sense of humor, this might actually be it. Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Finally we have pretty much limitless energy, for free… and there’s no fucking way the Left would ever allow it to come online. Because that would result in a massively increased standard of living for the average person, and that’s one thing the Left simply will not allow.
That was really the point of that “if I were rich” post the other day. I will admit up front that Envy has never really been a problem for me (for me, all the hit points that would’ve gone into Envy have been allocated to Gluttony, Sloth, and Lust). Nonetheless, I’ve never been able to understand the sheer pettiness of the Left. It doesn’t bother me that some people have more. Even if they don’t “deserve” it. Hey, them’s the breaks. And in fact, I even largely agree with the very old school Liberal idea of “progressive” taxation — the rich can afford to front their communities a little bit more money, provided it actually goes to the community.
But the PoMo Left is all-in on Envy. But it’s a weird kind of envy — like everything else in Clown World, it’s inverted. They don’t want to have more, themselves, personally — they want you to have less.
To the PoMo Leftist, the only possible point of being rich is to keep other people from having stuff. They don’t want you to eat the bugs because it’s better for the Earth. They want you to eat the bugs to keep you from eating steak. See what I mean? It’s not “you must eat bugs in order that they can have steak,” because of course they can already have steak. Rather: you also can have steak, and that’s bad. You shouldn’t be able to, you filthy prole. You don’t deserve to eat steak, because you’re not Enlightened like they are.
So with fossil fuels and all the rest. You don’t deserve to be able to fly places. If you must travel — you know, if they need your labor somewhere else — you should be down there in steerage. And so on, because that’s what you deserve, peasant. Free, limitless, clean energy would be nice … in the abstract. But since you people would just use it to run your air conditioners and whatnot, we’re going to store the Mr. Fusion machine in that big warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant.
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August 21, 2022
History Summarized: The Acropolis
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 29 Apr 2022They say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is …
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August 17, 2022
QotD: Larry Correia’s proposal for a DoFYJS
Depending on the department you could fire a ton of them and all it would do is free up parking spaces.
Now, there are some government employees who work their asses off. Good. There are some government functions which are necessary. Great.
A great many don’t work, or the work they do is utterly pointless.
Ask any honest gov employee. They will admit this to you in private.
If they say no, everything we do is vital and everyone here is vital, they’re a liar protecting their budget, or one of the useless ones.
Most places, if there are 5 employees, 2 do 90% of the work.
Pournelle’s Iron Law says that as it grows over time any bureaucracy’s purpose will change from its original mission, to a new mission of protecting and growing the bureaucracy.
So now our Department of Labor by itself is bigger than LBJ’s entire federal government. This stuff never shrinks. It only grows. It’s an endless Leviathan.
The Leviathan needs to grow and protect itself against all threats, which is how you get super evil shit like the CIA and FBI meddling in US elections …
Or constantly expanding its powers into new places, like the #MinistryOfTruth
This Leviathan will find allies which help it expand in size and power. The more power/money you give it, the more it can bribe and co-opt other institutions. Academia, media, corporations, etc.
Whichever political philosophy is the most unprincipled will rock this arrangement
As the Leviathan grows in power, it will become more malicious, spiteful, and controlling. Dissent is crushed. Freedom dies.
@elonmusk is currently a speed bump in this, which is why the control freak contingent is super pissed at him.
The big question is, do the people own their government, or does the government own its people? If we are just assets of the gov, we can be spent freely, and bad assets get eliminated.The Leviathan is compelled to own EVERYTHING.
Slowing the Leviathan down isn’t enough. If you concentrate on stopping one part, others keep growing. Then when our bipolar country elects a new leader, those parts start growing again. Repeat forever. And it just keeps getting bigger.
So we’ve got to shrink the whole thing
If the GOP had a brain/spine (lol) they’d slash the shit out of everything. They’d starve the beast. They usually don’t, because they are total chickenshits. They’ll pay lip service to this, do nothing, or feed their favorite parts.
The DNC gleefully feeds the whole thing.
Trump’s biggest weakness was he surrounded himself with people who loved government, and loved expanding government. Of course all of those fucked him at every opportunity.
We need somebody who actively HATES the government to run it.
If I was President (ha!) I would only create a single new executive branch entity. The Department of Fuck Your Job Security.
The DoFYJS would consist of surly auditors, and their only job would be to go into other government agencies to figure out-
A. do you fuckers do anything worth a shit?
B. which of you fuckers actually get shit done?Then fire everyone else.
Right now it is pretty much impossible to fire government employees. The process is asinine. It is so bad that the worst government employees, who nobody else can stand, don’t get fired. They get PROMOTED. It’s easier, and then it’s somebody else’s problem.
But the DoFYJS don’t care. If your job is making taxpayers fill out mandatory paperwork and then filing it somewhere nobody will ever read it?
Fuck you. Gone. Clean out your desk.
We need to get rid of entire agencies. Gone. WTF does the Department of Education improve? NOTHING.
Gone. Fire them all. Sell the assets.
Any agency that survives this purge, move it out of DC to an area more appropriate to its mission. Do we need a Dept of Agriculture? Okay. Go to Kansas.
This will also cause all the DC/NOVA powermonger set to resign so I don’t have to waste time firing them
Oh, and right wing pet causes, you’re not safe. I worked for the Air Force. We all know that we could fire 1/3 of the GS employees tomorrow and the only noticeable difference would be more parking available on base.
Cut everything. We never do, because somebody might cry. Too bad. They’re called budget cuts because they’re supposed to hurt. Not budget tickles. Fuck you. Cut.
Shutting off the money faucet will also destroy the unholy alliance between gov/media/academia/tech.
Right now there is a revolving door, government job, university job, corporate board, think tank, the same crowd who goes to the same parties and went to the same schools and all that other incestuous shit just take turns in the different chairs.
Sell the fucking chairs.
Every entity that gets tax money inevitably turns into a pig trough for these people. Cut it all off. All of these money faucets ALWAYS cause some kind of financial crisis later anyway.
See the student loan crisis caused by the government, here is free money, oh college has become expensive and useless, so now we need more government to solve it. You dummies get to pay for it. Have some inflation.
It’s all bullshit.
Quit pretending any of this makes sense.
The only way the Leviathan shrinks is we elect people who actively hate the government to the government, and then only let them stay there long enough to fuck the government without getting corrupted by it.
The instant you see the small government crusader you sent to DC going “Oh, well maybe an unholy alliance between the state and OmniGlobalMegaCorp to develop a mind control ray is a good thing” FIRE HIM.
So there you have it. That’s my platform if you elect me president. Fire fucking everybody. And only give me one term. Thank you.
Larry Correia, portion of a Twitter thread reposted at Monster Hunter Nation, 2022-05-11.
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