Quotulatiousness

May 8, 2020

Soldier of Three Armies Pt. 3 – Vietnam War – Sabaton History 066 [Official]

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

Sabaton History
Published 7 May 2020

Crossed the water a new start, war still beating in his heart, a new legend has been born.

Arrested by the Finnish secret police and tried for treason, war-hero and living legend Lauri Törni realized that his home country held no more future for him any longer. Törni made a run for it. Towards a new country, a new life and a new name. And a new war.

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to “Soldier of Three Armies” on the album Heroes:
CD: http://bit.ly/HeroesStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/HeroesSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/HeroesAppleMusic
iTunes: http://bit.ly/HeroesiTunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/HeroesAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/HeroesGoogleP

Check out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShop

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory

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

Sources:
– Helsinki City Museum
– KANSALLISARKISTO
– Lauri Törni in 1951 from Forum Marinum, CC BY-ND 4.0
– Cricket sound by damonmensch from freesound.org
– Photo of Lauri and Marja courtesy of Hillevi Kops

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

May 6, 2020

What’s on your bookshelf?

Filed under: Books, Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The self-appointed censors of righteousness demand to know!

Plenty of people like to be filmed against the backdrop of their bookshelves to convey the message or at least create the impression that they are smart. This has become even more common during the current extraordinary conditions of self-isolation, where virtually all the media interviews are conducted from home rather than in studio. Ditto for all the Zoom and other teleconferences. This, in turn, has given some people the opportunity to nose around and check out just what exactly others have on their shelves – presumably having read it and not just for decoration. It should be a fun exercise, but these days of perpetual outrage no fun goes unpunished.

By contrast, the picture of a bookshelf belonging to a Tory minister Michael Gove and his wife Sarah Vine was unsolicited, which probably adds to the regret right about now.

[…]

Books, like other human artifacts, are historical records and documents of our past. You might not like the course that the history took, but it’s important to know it and remember it.

And hypocrisy, because of the double standards.

Sure, Nazis, Nazi sympathisers, Holocaust deniers and assorted other apologists are mad, bad and dangerous to know. But what about communists? How many of those having a go at Gove and his wife for owning an Irving book have on their own shelves works by Marx, if not Lenin, Mao, Che and numerous related others? Those who have been inspired by and followed Marx’s idea (whether you think correctly or not) have been responsible for some 100 million premature deaths in the 20th century and other untold misery and devastation. Mao, the author of the little Red Book, accounts for up to 60 million of those (I happen to have a copy; does that make me a Maoist and a genocide fan?). But socialism is cool and you can’t blame Marx because to do so would be to delegitimise the whole socialist project. And of course the socialist ideals are all beautiful – equality! solidarity! community! dignity! – and, in any case, everyone has had good intentions. So all good, guys.

Read and own whatever the damn you like – and don’t let the fascists of any kind dictate your bookshelf. Except for 50 Shades of Grey. We’ll all judge you for that.

The main picture: some of my shelves – feel free to judge me.

I thought to take a picture of my own shelves, but Arthur Chrenkoff appears to have a broadly similar selection of books (more heavily weighted to British politics than mine), so I just nicked his photo to save the effort. (Thanks, Arthur! Hope you don’t mind!)

May 5, 2020

The perverse incentives of the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak

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

David Warren has clearly taken his cynical pills today:

The daily count of deaths from the Red Chinese Batflu is among the prized, scare-mongering features of our mass media. I am among those who consider these numbers to be significantly overstated, for a reason that Nikolai Gogol would understand. Each corpse is worth cash to some public authority, usually from a higher authority; and as always, finally from the taxpayers. Each also saves money for government programmes, that can be reallocated to the purchase of new votes. As the corpse providers from this virus are very old, and suffering from other life-threatening conditions, in almost every case, this statistical inflation is easy to perform. Death certificates are issued for any who died with “Covid-19,” whether or not they died from it, and more are then added of those who were never tested. Anything respiratory will do. It’s all judgement calls — on which side of the bread is buttered.

Compare if you will the Hong Kong Flu of 1968 and 1969. I was just reading a memoir, from down that memory hole. The death toll was actually higher then, than ours is now, and from within a smaller population; the victims included children and the young. Yet there were no interruptions in economic life; no public emergency theatricals; and at the height of the second wave of that scourge, we had events like Woodstock. (Those were the days, my friend.)

A neat way to correct for all our “judgement calls” might be to look at overall death rates, and see if they have risen or fallen. It is too early to get a clear view, but soon it may be too late, for vested interests will have tampered with them. All my life I have been learning to trust statistics, less — especially from those who dress in labcoats and affect that earnest look. Sometimes an exception must be considered, however. An unpredictable minority may be honest; some others might get numbers right by mistake.

QotD: Social media encourages autistic behaviour

Filed under: Education, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Nothing like that happens today, as far as I can tell, and I spent a lot of time in a wide variety of ivy-covered halls. Part of it, of course, is the general, catastrophic decline in reading comprehension among today’s student body — Lenin was a wonderfully effective polemicist in his day, but for the modern kid it might as well still be in Russian — but a lot of it isn’t. A much bigger part of it is that modern kids can’t overcome the genetic fallacy, and a large part of that, I argue, is the autism spectrum-like effect of social media.

The genetic fallacy, you’ll recall, is the inability to separate the idea from the speaker. Or, if you’re under age 40, it’s simply “communication,” as our public discourse nowadays proceeds in very little other than genetic fallacies. Try it for yourself. We all know what kind of reaction you’ll get in respectable circles if you say “You know, Donald Trump has a point about …”, but you can do it on “our side” of the fence, too. Watch: Obama was right about Race to the Top. No, really: Compared to W’s No Child Left Behind bullshit, pretty much anything short of letting kids be raised by wolves would’ve been better (and hey, even being raised by wolves worked out ok for Romulus and Remus). Even with the qualifier attached, almost everyone on “our side” instinctively bristles — we’ve been so conditioned by the words “Obama” and “race,” especially in close proximity, that we can’t help ourselves. Even I do it.

It’s especially bad for the younger generations who, as I keep arguing, have been effectively autismized (it’s a word) by social media. Twitter, especially, is so constructed that “replies” can come in hours, days, months, years later. Blogs too for that matter — one of the reasons we close the comments here after a few weeks is to prevent drive-by commenters clogging things up trying to re-litigate something from years ago. Modern “communication” must take place in discrete, contextless utterances. That being the case, understanding a statement in context is impossible — I repeat, impossible. So Lenin (or Hitler, or Mao, or William F. Buckley, or the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man) didn’t have a point about ___; because that requires understanding how his point fit into the larger context of his thought, his times, his culture, his world. None of that shit fits into a tweet, so we’re trained to respond to the name — Lenin (etc.) is either a good guy or a bad guy, full stop, so anything he says about anything must be good or bad, automatically.

I hardly need to elaborate on the effect this has on our public culture. If Our Thing really wants to get serious, the first thing any “organization,” no matter how loose, must do is: Ban social media.

Severian, “Education, the Genetic Fallacy, and the Spectrum”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-01-27.

May 3, 2020

Slaying Gladiator

Filed under: Europe, History, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Over at Steyn Online, Kathy Shaidle tag-teamed someone else on staff (it probably rhymes with Dark Time) to put the caligulae to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator with Russell Crowe in the leading role:

Germania, 180 AD. Rome is at war with the, er, Germaniacs, who stand around in the Black Forest grunting like Brits on the piss who’ve nutted themselves in one pub fight too many. You need a cool head to take on the Roman Army, and the only one the barbarians have belongs to Caesar’s emissary, whom they thoughtfully decapitated before sending back. They wave the old noggin around like a treasured footie ball, grunting, “Ug Eugh Blug” or, translated from the original gibberish, “Over ‘ere, mate.” It’s a scene that rings oddly contemporary in the age of Isis, although when I first saw it, a year before 9/11, it gave me the giggles. But then barbarians always seem funny from a distance, don’t they? Here they scratch their pelts and grunt some more, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that the Roman legions are lighting up their blazing arrows and fireballs, the smart bombs of the day. The ensuing battle, whose outcome would seem never to be in doubt, is apparently the final bloody act in a twelve-year war.

Despite having had twelve years to get there, the Emperor’s son nevertheless shows up late. “Did I miss it?” he simpers. “Did I miss the battle?” The son’s name is Commodus. No, not Commodus, but Commodus, which sounds like he dates back to a Mel Brooks sketch circa 1962 but in fact goes all the way back to the real Roman Empire. Commodus is that old stand-by of the dynastic drama, the disappointing son. His father, Marcus Aurelius, is a noble philosopher-king, but Commodus is no chip off the old block. We can tell that from the moment we first glimpse Commodus, sprawled in his commodious caravan, but just in case we miss the point Joaquin Phoenix lays on the mincing like a trowel, and the make-up, too. He’s weak, vain, decadent, and has the hots for his sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Even the Bushes would think twice before running this guy for emperor.

Having spent 25 years waging war for the glory of Rome, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) senses there’s not much point leaving it in the hands of an emperor who’d be queen for a day. So he tells Commodus he will not succeed him. Instead, he is going to make his brave general Maximus a “trustee” until Rome is ready to become a republic again. Maximus (Russell Crowe) is a Colin Powell type of general: a nice fellow everyone respects who supposedly has no public ambitions. Commodus, though, has other ideas, and suffocates his father. As the old showbiz saying has it, dying is easy, Commodus is hard. The effete decadent mincer becomes emperor, and promptly orders the death of Maximus and the crucifixion of the general’s wife and child back in Spain.

But Maximus escapes, and what follows in Gladiator is the story of how he takes his revenge and becomes the eponymous Gladiator lui-même. It’s payback time, and, under Ridley Scott’s lean direction, that means there’s no room for sub-plots. Somewhere in pre-production, the archers lobbed their flaming shafts at the script and laid it as bare as those Germanic forests. Not only are there no sub-plots, there’s barely any plot for any sub-plot to be sub-. Once the wife and kid are dead, there’s nothing very emotional at stake. There’s no romantic interest, unless you count Commodus trying to get it on with sis. There’s a hint of backstory at the Senate, where the massed ranks of British Equity have gathered for a vast toga party (the Toga Party having a majority in the Senate at that time). But there’s no dialogue worth speaking of, except statements of the obvious. When the mob is being fickle, as mobs are wont to be, the Emperor is told: “The mob is fickle, sire.” All the lines have been pre-tested in earlier toga romps, and the only one that seems to have been specially written for this picture is Oliver Reed’s complaint that some crook dealer has sold him a pair of homosexual giraffes.

But none of that matters because Ridley Scott photographs the film so brilliantly and mesmerically that they could all be speaking Germaniac and it wouldn’t impair the storytelling. It helps that almost everyone in the movie is a pre-designated great actor, so you tend to assume there’s a lot of great acting going on, even though most of it’s just thoughtful reaction shots. The mob bays for blood. Cut to Derek Jacobi looking thoughtful. They bay some more. Cut to Connie Nielsen looking pensive from atop her fabulous neck. They stop baying. Cut to Russell Crowe looking thoughtful. What are they thinking so pensively? “Hmm. I wish I’d got the gay giraffe line”?

May 2, 2020

Saigon memories

Filed under: Asia, History, Media, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

I had no idea that David Warren had some brief journalism experience in Vietnam before the US pulled out their military forces:

A member of the CIA helps evacuees up a ladder onto an Air America helicopter on the roof of 22 Gia Long Street on April 29, 1975, shortly before Saigon fell to advancing North Vietnamese troops.
Hubert van Es photo via Wikimedia Commons.

An article in the New York Post (here) brings one historical event back into view, with a bitterness I haven’t yet overcome. It is only an aside on an old photo-caption, which like so many others from the Vietnam War was, shall we say, inaccurate. Taken for a symbol, it has passed into our electronic folk memory, as one of innumerable lies it contains. I wasn’t there, of course, but I had visited that country, and once, too briefly, lived in Saigon. The (very consequential) deceit, dishonesty, and faithlessness of “the mainstream media” was among the lessons I took from my apprenticeship. My ludicrous ambition, to “correct it” some day, will never be fulfilled. But to the link: my praise to one writer who did his homework. Let me be grand and say, the truth has set him free.

It will soon be fifty years since I first attended the “Five O’Clock Follies” at “MAC-V,” where the best hamburgers in South-east Asia could be obtained for the price of a chocolate bar. This press conference format — bluster and counter-bluster — has not changed in all this time. Everything in that vast sprawling compound of military administration was sprayed, swept, and polished; I always entered with wide eyes. There, and in bars along Tu-Do Street (the old rue Catinat, once an exquisite ribbon from the Cathedral down lines of fragrant tamarinds), was where I first fell in with “real professional journalists,” practising their trade.

Those I met were, by and large, pathological liars, and extremely vain. They were also coarsely disrespectful, much like our journalists today: rudely cynical and sarcastic. The only serious exceptions I came to know were a couple of religious weirdos — one a Lutheran ex-pastor from West Germany, the other a reject from a Catholic seminary in southern France. They, like me, had strayed into the field, from a misplaced sense of adventure.

At all levels, and on all sides, I was witnessing a freak show — there and wherever I wandered outside the Unreal City. I owned a reliable Nikkormat camera, that would sometimes earn me much-needed cash, but was quite unsuccessful as a print journalist. My earnest despatches, sent to newspapers on spec, were routinely “spiked” — not, I think, because I was so young (they didn’t know that), but because I kept, often unknowingly, writing things that contradicted what the New York Times and CBS were reporting.

Not only was I learning that the “mainstream” was all lies, but too, that it invariably followed an agenda. The self-appointed purpose of the press was to sabotage the American war effort. (That of the life-or-death desperate Viets was, at best, ignored.)

But then, I was deceitful, too. I was pretending to be over 18 when I was still only 17, in order to get a press pass.

Gabriel Over the White House – “the most unapologetic celebration of fascism ever put on film”

Filed under: History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Jack Cashill found this “gem” while watching Turner Classic Movies during the Wuhan Coronavirus lockdown and was amazed:

By now, I have seen most of TCM’s movies, but one aired this past week I had not even heard of. On a whim, I DVR’ed it. Good move. Called Gabriel Over the White House, this 1933 liberal wet dream proved to be the most unapologetic celebration of fascism ever put on film.

I watched it wide-eyed. The movie opens with the inauguration of Jud Hammond. A laissez-faire back-slapper, Hammond sees the White House as a way to enrich himself and reward his cronies, Depression be damned. The audience assumes Hammond is a Republican.

Out joyriding one day, Hammond crashes his car and lapses into coma. While still comatose, the Angel Gabriel visits Hammond and turns him into a committed and caring progressive. Is there another kind?

Upon waking, Hammond convenes his cabinet of corrupt self-servers and rejects their plea that the party must come first. Instead, Hammond insists their first priority be the American people. He refuses to use the U.S. Army against a marching mass of the unemployed and fires the secretary of state when he objects.

“I suggest you read the Constitution of the United States. You’ll find the President has some power,” Hammond warns his cabinet members. Some power? Fully indifferent to the Constitution, Hammond grabs all the power that can possibly be grabbed.

When the cabinet objects to his usurpation of power, Hammond fires the cabinet. When Congress threatens to impeach Hammond, he declares martial law and dispenses with Congress. When accused of being a dictator, Hammond argues that his is a dictatorship based on some imagined Jeffersonian principle of Democracy, namely the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Now with total power, Hammond enacts a national banking law, stops foreclosures, provides direct aid to some 55 million farmers, circumvents private industry and launches his own “Army of Construction.”

A young aide, Hartley Beekman, and his female counterpart, Pendie Molloy, serve as something of a progressive chorus. “The way he thinks is so simple and honest that it sounds a little crazy,” says Beekman of Hammond.

“He’s doing the things you wanted,” Molloy answers. “And If he’s mad, it’s a divine madness. Look at the chaos and catastrophe sane men have brought about.”

The divine madness includes the creation of a Federal Police force, a subset of the Army, with young Beekman at its head. When the nation’s chief racketeer refuses to go back to his unnamed home country, Hammond warns him that the government is about to “muscle in on his racket” and federalize the sale of alcohol.

The racketeer fights back, and Beekman employs a legion of tanks Waco-style against the racketeers. When captured, the racketeers are all hauled before a three-man court martial headed by Beekman, promptly declared guilty, and executed en masse by a firing squad.

Several years ago, the movie was brought to my attention and I found this clip on YouTube that I suspect captures the essence of the film:

James Lileks describes it as “a remarkable movie. And I don’t mean ‘astonishingly good, technically superb, visually ingenious.’ I mean utterly insane.”

QotD: Today’s psychological epidemic

Filed under: Health, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I think that one of the things the web has done is enable people who have personality disorders to validate their particular pathology, because they find all sorts of people who are like them.

There’s an epidemic of self-diagnosis among young people, there’s a race to multiply pathology, there’s a glorification of disorders like borderline personality disorder, which is rare. When being the most oppressed victim gives you the highest status, then it’s a race to the bottom.

We’re not helping young people figure out a noble and difficult pathway forward, where they bear responsibility and march forthrightly into adulthood. Quite the contrary. We’re saying, “Well, the system is corrupt and there’s no point in taking part in it. You’re going to be victimized no matter what you do.” And so the race is on for who gets to play the victim card with the highest degree of status. And it’s really bad, it’s especially bad for adolescents because they’re trying to sort their identity out, they’re already a mess.

Jordan Peterson, “Christie Blatchford Sits Down With ‘Warrior For Common Sense’ Jordan Peterson”, National Post, 2018-02-07.

May 1, 2020

Soldier of Three Armies Pt. 2 – Continuation War – Sabaton History 065 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Media, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 30 Apr 2020

With a bounty on his head, the Red Army wants him dead, Soviet enemy number one. Second part of the Lauri Törni trilogy. The Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union was over, but the world was further tumbling down into war. Finland saw itself trapped between two power blocks. A new arrangement with Nazi Germany gave men like Lauri Törni an opportunity to train with the newly established Waffen-SS. But it was an opportunity with lasting consequences.

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to Soldier of Three Armies on the album Heroes:
CD: http://bit.ly/HeroesStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/HeroesSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/HeroesAppleMusic
iTunes: http://bit.ly/HeroesiTunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/HeroesAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/HeroesGoogleP

Check out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShop

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory

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

Additional video footage from Dennis Henson

Sources:
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bild 101III-Hoffmann-04-23/Hoffmann
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– sa-kuva.fi

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

QotD: Cynicism

Filed under: Books, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Somewhere around that same eighth-grade mark where we all experimented with being mean, we get the idea that believing in things makes you a sucker — that good art is the stuff that reveals how shoddy and grasping people are, that good politics is cynical, that “realism” means accepting how rotten everything is to the core.

The cynics aren’t exactly wrong; there is a lot of shoddy, grasping, rottenness in the world. But cynicism is radically incomplete. Early modernist critics used to complain about the sanitized unreality of “nice” books with no bathrooms. The great modernist mistake was to decide that if books without sewers were unrealistic, “reality” must be the sewers. This was a greater error than the one it aimed to correct. In fact, human beings are often splendid, the world is often glorious, and nature, red in tooth and claw, also invented kindness, charity and love. Believe in that.

Megan McArdle, “After 45 Birthdays, Here Are ’12 Rules for Life'”, Bloomberg View, 2018-01-30.

April 29, 2020

“The war on ultraviolet radiation because it might help Trump is an educational moment”

Filed under: Health, Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Arthur Chrenkoff on the sudden decision that the World Health Organization is the ultimate arbiter of what we’re allowed to say on social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube:

There is of course no evidence that the video represents any disinformation. It relates to legitimate scientific research by a medical company conducted in association with a respected hospital to develop a novel treatment of possibly crucial importance in the current conditions and into the future. The only problem with the video is that is indirectly supports Trump’s flight of fancy speculation about using light and chemicals to “disinfect” the body. Ergo, according to a NYT journalist it represents a problem and YouTube agrees. YouTube now has a standing policy of removing COVID information that goes against the World Health Organisation’s guidelines. Putting aside the question of the WHO’s credibility in the wake of the pandemic, we are not talking here about some guy in a tinfoil hat talking about 5G towers spreading the virus; this is a video relating to ongoing, respectable scientific research. Will it work? Probably not. But perhaps neither will any of the 150 or so COVID-19 vaccines being currently developed around the world. We won’t know until we know. But in the meantime, scientific news should not be censored, period.

[…]

Goldsmith and Woods are correct in pointing out not only the greater role that governments have been playing in regulating speech but more importantly how much of that effort has been embraced and driven by the big tech — and by the private individuals enabled and encouraged by the big tech — what I have previously called the “democratised censorship”. The difference is that people like Goldsmith and Woods think that’s a good thing.

The dirty little secret is that a great number of leftists, progressives and even centrist technocrats and activists look at China, with its authoritarian government, social credit score system, ubiquitous surveillance, and the ability to “get things done” and done quickly and supposedly efficiently (in China, bullet trains run on time, I hear), and pine for such a system to be applied in their own countries — as long as, of course, they are the ones in power and decide what is right, important and valuable. The left’s objections are rarely against authoritarianism and its means and methods per se, just with the possibility that someone else — like Trump — is the one behind the wheel, implementing their, not the left’s, agenda.

The war on ultraviolet radiation because it might help Trump is an educational moment. One could say, first they came for crazy conspiracy theorists and I said nothing because I’m not an anti-vaxxer or anti-5G activist — and so on. The problem with censorship is that it keeps creeping up on everyone else. And those who do the censoring — who decide what the ignorant masses should and shouldn’t be allowed to read — are not some detached and impartial spiritual beings but people with political agendas. People who think that ideas and beliefs of one half of the society are harmful and offensive. People who will censor news that doesn’t fit the agenda and support the narrative.

And then they came for ultraviolet radiation… You have been warned.

April 27, 2020

The NFL may have a problem … everyone seems to have liked the virtual draft better than the “real” thing

Filed under: Business, Football, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It is usually difficult to muster much sympathy for the National Football League, but the record-setting popularity of the 2020 draft is a huge surprise:

The unique presentation of the 2020 NFL Draft established new all-time highs for media consumption in every category. With over 600 camera feeds from homes across the United States, all telecasts of the 2020 NFL Draft reached more than 55 million total viewers across Nielsen-measured channels over the three-day event, up +16% vs. 2019. An average audience of over 8.4 million viewers watched all three days of the 2020 NFL Draft across ABC, ESPN, NFL Network, ESPN Deportes, and digital channels easily breaking the previous high of 6.2 million viewers in 2019 (+35%).

Each day of the 2020 NFL Draft established new highs as an average audience of over 15.6 million viewers watched Round 1 on Thursday (+37% vs. 2019), over 8.2 million viewers watched Rounds 2 & 3 on Friday (+40% vs. 2019), and over 4.2 million viewers watched Rounds 4-7 on Saturday (+32% vs. 2019).

All seven rounds of the 2020 NFL Draft were presented across ABC, ESPN, and NFL Network – the second straight year that The Walt Disney Company partnered with the National Football League to offer a multi-network presentation of the entire Draft.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the efforts and collaboration of our clubs, league personnel, and our partners to conduct an efficient Draft and share an unforgettable experience with millions of fans during these uncertain times,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “This Draft is the latest chapter in the NFL’s storied history of lifting the spirit of America and unifying people. In addition to celebrating the accomplishments of so many talented young men, we were pleased that this unique Draft helped shine a light on today’s true heroes – the healthcare workers, first responders, and countless others on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19. We are also grateful to all those who contributed to the NFL family’s fundraising efforts.”

“This year’s NFL Draft clearly took on a much greater meaning and it’s especially gratifying for ESPN to have played a role in presenting this unique event to a record number of NFL fans while supporting the league’s efforts to give back,” said ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro. “The success of this year’s Draft is a testament to the unprecedented collaboration across the NFL, ESPN, and The Walt Disney Co. in the midst of such a challenging time.”

The unique situation of having the vast majority of televised sports activities suspended clearly made a big difference — when you’re the only game in town, you can expect a wider audience — but the online draft seems to have been popular even among people who normally would have tuned in for the event anyway.

April 26, 2020

“Soldier of Three Armies” Pt. 1 – Winter War – Sabaton History 064 [Official]

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

Sabaton History
Published 25 Apr 2020

Started out as a reserve, soon promoted well deserved, and the legend has begun. Lauri Allan Törni, the soldier of three armies. Born and raised in Viipuri in Finnish Karelia, Lauri Törni grew up into a world of tensions, of class-consciousness and conflicting ideologies. Boxed in between the Soviet Union and Germany, Finland was preparing for war of survival. The Winter War would be the first place for Lauri Törni to see battle and begin his legacy as a born soldier.

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to “Soldier of Three Armies” on the album Heroes:
CD: http://bit.ly/HeroesStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/HeroesSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/HeroesAppleMusic
iTunes: http://bit.ly/HeroesiTunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/HeroesAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/HeroesGoogleP

Check out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShop

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory

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

Sources:
– Lauri Törni Perinnekilta
– Helsinki City Museum
– Finnish Heritage Agency
– sa-kuva.fi

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

From the comments:

Sabaton History
2 days ago
Hello everyone! We hope you all stay safe and healthy! Due to the current situation, the interview part had to be recorded via webcam and the quality is sadly not the best. We apologize for that. Still we try to keep to our weekly schedule and bring you exciting new episodes of Sabaton History!

April 22, 2020

QotD: Actors

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

Why waste a whole evening, once or twice a week, in a stuffy and over-red theater, breathing zymotic air, sniffing discordant perfumery, looking at idiotic scenery, listening to the bleeding English of ignorant and preposterous actors? Have you ever, in all your life, seen five leading men who actually looked like civilized gentlemen, or even like the authentic valets, head clerks or unburied corpses of civilized gentlemen? Have you ever sat through a whole performance without wishing it were possible to take at least one of the actors out into the alley, there to do execution of the lex non scripta upon him? Eheu, Postume, what all of us have suffered at the hands of such strutting mummers and mountebanks! How we have writhed and squirmed beneath their astounding outrages upon the vulgate! What is worse than an actor? Two actors? Three actors? A whole stage full of actors! An endless succession of actors! … How we have leaped and squealed under their broad a‘s, their fearful renderings of proper names, their obscene attempts at boarding school French! How our paws have itched to grab them by the collars of their advanced coats, and to strangle them with their futurist shirts, and to anatomize them with the razor edges of their superbly ironed pantaloons! …

There are, of course, such things as good actors. Let us be just and admit it. I have seen and known a few myself, and have heard of a few more. There are half a dozen in England and as many in France. In Germany, I dare say, the police have the names of twenty. (One memorable night, in that strange land, I saw two on the stage at once!) But is the good actor, either at home or abroad, the normal actor, the average actor? Of course he is not. He is the rare actor, the miraculous actor, almost the fabulous actor. Examine a hundred bartenders and you will find that fully sixty of them actually know how to tend bar: they can mix a cocktail that, whatever its faults, is at least fit to drink, and they have the craft needed to draw a Seidel of Pilsner and to beat the cash register. But in the allied art of acting there is no such general dispersion of talent. A handful of outstanding super-actors have it all. The rest of them not only don’t know how to act, but they don’t know that they don’t know.

H.L. Mencken, “Getting Rid of the Actor”, The Smart Set, 1913-09.

April 21, 2020

The Curator at Home | Film Review: Kelly’s Heroes | The Tank Museum

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

The Tank Museum
Published 19 Apr 2020

Join Curator David Willey at Home, as he reviews the classic film: Kelly’s Heroes.
https://tankmuseumshop.org/products/k…

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