Quotulatiousness

June 28, 2021

Colt R75A: The Last Commercial BAR (With Shooting)

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Mar 2018

The R75A was the last version of Colt’s commercial BAR, with 832 made between August and December of 1942 for the Netherlands Purchasing Commission. It was a derivative of the commercial R75 BAR, with a pistol grip, magazine well cover, and ejection port cover. The R75A added on a folding bipod and a detachable barrel functionality, albeit not of the most elegant sort. To remove the barrel, one first used the lever under the muzzle to detach the gas block from the barrel by sliding it rearwards. Then a tool or cartridge tip was used to pry open the barrel locking lever at the front of the receiver, which then allowed the barrel to be rotated about 60 degrees to unlock its interrupted threads and remove it.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons​

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

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

June 27, 2021

Fall Blau Starts … or Does it? – WW2 – 148 – June 27, 1942

Filed under: Africa, Australia, Britain, Germany, History, Japan, Military, Russia, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 26 Jun 2021

Fall Blau, the huge Axis summer offensive in the Soviet Union, is supposed to being this, but is postponed to next. The smaller Operation Fridericus II does begin though, and what does Josef Stalin make of that and the intelligence he’s received? Meanwhile in North Africa, after the fall of Tobruk, the British 8th Army gets a leadership change, but Erwin Rommel is still on the move eastward into Egypt. Where will the Allies try to hold him? Half the world away, the Allies begin to establish a base at Milne Bay, New Guinea. It’s a start, a small one, but a start.
(more…)

June 25, 2021

The Birth of the Manhattan Project – WW2 Special

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, Science, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 24 Jun 2021

When nuclear fission was discovered, scientists theorized it could be used in an atomic bomb. Thus, the American Army sets up one of the biggest research projects in history: The Manhattan Project.
(more…)

June 24, 2021

First Arab-Israeli War 1948 – Political Background – COLD WAR

Filed under: Britain, History, Middle East, Military, Religion, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Cold War
Published 31 Aug 2019

Our series on the history of the Cold War period continues with a documentary explaining the political background of the First Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

To learn about the military events of this conflict, go to the Kings and Generals channel

Consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thecoldwar

“[M]any of the woke genuinely do not understand why anyone finds their politics, or their political tactics, threatening”

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

In The Line, Joseph Heath tries to explain why many adherents of the wokist ideology fail to understand why anyone could possibly be against their policies or their tactics:

Godfrey Elfwick’s disturbingly accurate summary of free speech support among the woke.

After several years of creeping illiberalism under the guise of progressive politics, American liberals are finally getting their act together. They are pushing back, creating several organizations committed to combating the influence of “woke” politics and ideology. They have momentum, not just because many woke mantras like “defund the police” have proven spectacularly unpopular, but also because there is genuine growing alarm about the intolerant and authoritarian brand of politics that has become associated with the woke left.

Unfortunately, many of the woke genuinely do not understand why anyone finds their politics, or their political tactics, threatening. In particular, the accusation that they are being authoritarian, or that “cancel culture” is a threat to freedom of expression, is one that they are simply unable to process.

There is a reason for this — and one that’s worth understanding. There are several key phrases that play an enormously important role in woke politics (e.g. “safety”, “mental health”, “microaggression”, “bullying” and even “human rights”) which they use to deflect the accusation of authoritarianism. If you adopt the right words, it’s easier to convince yourself that you’re the good guys even as you’re acting like the bad ones.

I want to take a shot at explaining how this works.

The most important thing to understand about woke politics is that it is not a conventional form of illiberalism, it is better thought of as a type of “illiberal liberalism”. It involves making a set of political demands that are fundamentally illiberal, but then articulating them in a way that fits the conventional structure of liberal political discourse. Because of the way that their complaints are packaged, the woke are able to brush off criticism of their tactics.

Take an issue like freedom of speech. There are various versions of this traditionally liberal virtue; predominant among them, is that those who hold this belief are opposed to content-based restrictions on speech. In the old days, lots of politicians didn’t really believe in freedom of speech, as many among the ruling class maintained straightforwardly illiberal views.

The Founder | Based on a True Story

Filed under: Business, Food, History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Cynical Historian
Published 27 Jul 2017

This one is a contender for best historical film of 2016. The Founder is an amazing movie about the beginning of the McDonald’s food chain. Seriously, more films should take cues from this.
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references:
http://www.historyvshollywood.com/ree…​

http://time.com/money/4602541/the-fou…​

http://content.time.com/time/magazine…​

https://www.bustle.com/p/how-accurate…​

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert…​

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain…​

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/bu…​

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-24…​

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-real-…​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc​
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard…​
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contribute to my Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/CynicalHistorian​

LET’S CONNECT:
https://twitter.com/Cynical_History​
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Wiki:
The Founder is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by John Lee Hancock and written by Robert Siegel. The film stars Michael Keaton as businessman Ray Kroc, and portrays the story of his creation of the McDonald’s fast food chain. Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch co-star as McDonald’s founders Richard and Maurice McDonald.

The film premiered at Arclight Hollywood on December 7, 2016 and was released in the United States on January 20, 2017, by The Weinstein Company. It grossed $23 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for Keaton’s performance.
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Hashtags: #History​ #TheFounder​ #McDonalds​ #Review​ #BasedOnATrueStory​ #RayKroc

QotD: The fantasy world of Canadian geopolitical posturing

Filed under: Cancon, China, Government, History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

There are two basic things you need to know about Canada’s position in the world. The first is that we are bordered on three sides by ocean. The second is that we are bordered on the fourth side by the United States. That is a simple geopolitical reality whether we like it or not — and Canadians have expended a great deal of energy over the past half century or so making it clear just how much we dislike it.

Yet for all the reflexive anti-Americanism that has been the meat and mead of Canadian nationalism, Canada’s leadership class has usually been pretty good about understanding who is in charge. Over the course of the 20th century, from the Ogdensburg agreement of 1940 and the post-war establishment of NORAD to the Free Trade Agreement of 1988, we cemented that reality with a defence and economic alliance.

Paradoxically, what this continental defence and economic security arrangement has given us is the opportunity to let our internationalist pretensions run wild. One of the weirdest things about Canada is the extent to which we like to frame our place in the world in a-geographic terms. We imagine that we are as threatened as anyone by the mix of post-Cold War failed states, opportunistic terrorism, regional authoritarianism, and humanitarian disasters. By the same token, we like to presume that we are as well-positioned as any other country to do something about all of this.

As the dean of Canadian defence policy Kim Nossal points out in a recent paper, this a-geographic security fantasy is reflected in the official defence reviews that Canadian governments have released since the 1990s. Or take, for example, the 2017 Liberal policy statement, entitled Strong, Secure, Engaged, which rejects the idea that Canada’s privileged geographic location mitigates these global threats for us. As Nossal concludes, when you look at how Canadian governments actually talk about our security situation, you get little sense that, thanks to the Americans, Canada occupies “one of the safest spaces in contemporary global politics.”

You can see the logical leaps, then.

Once you’ve convinced yourself that Canada’s security is disconnected from the geographical imperative of the American security guarantee, it’s only a few steps to the conclusion that who we choose as our global strategic partner is actually a meaningful choice. And if it is true, as China’s president Xi Jinping has claimed, that the East is on the rise and the West is in decline, then why not throw your lot in with the new big dog on the block?

Andrew Potter, “Hedging our bets with China was a mistake”, The Line, 2021-03-23.

June 21, 2021

“… the GOP needs an inflammatory issue to rile their racist base, and so this entire foofaraw is really just an astro-turfed, ginned-up partisan gambit about nothing”

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

An excerpt from Andrew Sullivan’s most recent Weekly Dish looks at the burgeoning fight over the use of Critical Race Theory in public schools:

The stories in the mainstream media this past week about the broadening campaign to ban critical race theory in public schools have been fascinating — and particularly in how they describe what CRT is. Here’s the Atlantic‘s benign summary of CRT: “recent reexaminations of the role that slavery and segregation have played in American history and the attempts to redress those historical offenses.” NBC News calls it the “academic study of racism’s pervasive impact.” NPR calls CRT: “teaching about the effects of racism.” The New York Times calls it, with a straight face, “classroom discussion of race, racism” and goes on to describe it as a “framework used to look at how racism is woven into seemingly neutral laws and institutions.”

How on earth could merely teaching students about the history of racism and its pervasiveness in the United States provoke such a fuss? No wonder Charles Blow is mystified. But don’t worry. The MSM have a ready explanation: the GOP needs an inflammatory issue to rile their racist base, and so this entire foofaraw is really just an astro-turfed, ginned-up partisan gambit about nothing. The MSM get particular pleasure in ridiculing parents who use the term “critical race theory” as shorthand for things that just, well, make them uncomfortable — when the parents obviously have no idea what CRT really is.

When pushed to describe it themselves, elite journalists refer to the legal theories Derrick Bell came up with, in the 1970s — obscure, esoteric and nothing really to do with high-school teaching. “If your kid is learning CRT, your kid is in law/grad school,” snarked one. Marc Lamont Hill even tried to pull off some strained references to Gramsci to prove his Marxian intellectual cred, and to condescend to his opponents.

This rubric achieves several things at once. It denies that there is anything really radical or new about CRT; it flatters the half-educated; it blames the controversy entirely on Republican opportunism; and it urges all fair-minded people to defend intellectual freedom and racial sensitivity against these ugly white supremacists.

What could be more convenient? NBC News “reporter”, Brandy Zadrozny, even decried parents’ attempts to discover through FOIA requests just what their children are being taught — and argued this week that, “for longtime ultra conservative activists, CRT is the opportunity of a lifetime.” CRT, she explains, is not a threat at all, and there is no proof that it is even being taught. It’s “just a catch-all term repurposed as a conservative boogeyman.” She goes on: “it harnesses pushback against 2020’s racial justice movement, covid denialism, and depends on a base still energized by Trump and misinformation, looking for political power.”

I’m sure the MSM will continue to push this narrative indefinitely. They are still insisting, after all, that “white supremacy” is behind hateful attacks on Asian-Americans, and that soaring murder rates are purely a function of Covid19. And you can see why: this dismissive take is extremely helpful in avoiding what is actually happening. It diverts attention from the stories and leaks and documents that keep popping up all over the place about extraordinary indoctrination sessions that have become mandatory for children as early as kindergarten.

Turner Semiauto SMLE Conversion

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Nov 2016

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

Russell Turner was a Pennsylvania gunsmith and inventor who developed this semiautomatic conversion of an SMLE bolt action rifle circa 1940. It was intended for trial and potential sale to the Canadian military, as it would allow them to retrofit existing rifles into semiautomatic configuration and still use existing supplies of .303 British ammunition. Rather than try to devise a reliable system to rotate the original Enfield bolt, Turner replaced the bolt entirely, using instead a side-tilting design much like what he used in his M1 Carbine trials rifle for the US military. This was coupled with a long stroke gas piston and a hammer firing trigger mechanism.

Reportedly the rifle was tested by Canadian authorities, and performed quite well, with the adjustable gas system allowing it to function reliably even in temperatures of 25 below zero (where the Garand, tested alongside, experienced problems). However, Turner’s rifle was deemed too complex for military adoption.

That decision against the rifle was probably the right one for Canada, although Turner’s conversion is one of the better semi auto bolt acton conversions I have handled. It was remarkably non-awkward — that may not sound like much to crow about, but it sets a pretty high standard for this type of rifle.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons​

QotD: The young Richard Nixon

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

As a schoolboy he hadn’t a single close friend, preferring to cloister himself up in the former church’s bell tower, reading, hating to ride the school bus because he thought the other children smelled bad. At Whittier, a fine Quaker college of regional reputation unknown anywhere else, he embarked upon what might have been his most humiliating job of all: learning to be a backslapping hail-fellow-well-met. (“I had the impression he would even practice his inflection when he said ‘hello'”, a reporter later observed.) The seventeen-year-old blossomed when he realized himself no longer alone in his outsiderdom: the student body was run, socially, by a circle of swells who called themselves the Franklins, and the remainder of the student body, a historian noted, “seemed resigned to its exclusion.” So this most unfraternal of youth organized the remnant into a fraternity of his own. Franklins were well-rounded, graceful, moved smoothly, talked slickly. Nixon’s new club, the Orthogonians, was for the strivers, those not to the manner born, the commuter students like him. He persuaded his fellows that reveling in one’s unpolish was a nobility of its own. Franklins were never photographed save in black tie. Orthogonians wore shirtsleeves. “Beans, brains, and brawn” was their motto. He told them *orthogonian* — basically, “at right angles” — meant “upright,” “straight shooter.” Also, their enemies might have added, all elbows.

The Orthogonians’ base was among Whittier’s athletes. On the surface, jocks seem natural Franklins, the Big Men on Campus. But Nixon always had a gift for looking under social surfaces to see and exploit the subterranean truths that roiled underneath. It was an eminently Nixonian insight: that on every sports team there are only a couple of stars, and that if you want to win the loyalty of the team for yourself, the surest, if least glamorous, strategy is to concentrate on the nonspectacular — silent — majority. The ones who labor quietly, sometimes resentfully, in the quarterback’s shadow: the linemen, the guards, the punter. Nixon himself was exemplarily nonspectacular: the 150-pounder was the team’s tackle dummy, kept on squad by a loving, tough, and fatherly coach who appreciated Nixon’s unceasing grit and team spirit — nursing hurt players, cheering on the listless, even organizing his own team dinners, entertaining the guests on the piano, perhaps favoring them with the Orthogonian theme song. It was his own composition.

Nixon beat a Franklin for student body president. Looking back later, acquaintances marveled at the feat of this awkward, skinny kid the yearbook called “a rather quiet chap about campus,” dour and brooding, who couldn’t even win a girlfriend, who attracted enemies, who seemed, a schoolmate recalled, “the man least likely to succeed in politics.” They hadn’t learned what Nixon was learning. Being hated by the right people was no impediment to political success. The unpolished, after all, were everywhere in the majority.

Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, 2008.

June 20, 2021

QotD: Cargo cult thinking in education

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

There are a lot of things that set the groundwork for this, and I am not an expert on post-modernism and critical race theory. But one factor that is not often credited is a cargo cult mentality. Folks look at successful white people and observe they all went to college, and then infer that if we just get all the black kids into college, they will be successful too. Their resulting plan is to reduce or eliminate standards that are perceived to be keeping black kids out of college.

The problem of course is that college is not the cause of prosperity, but a marker (with prosperity) of other traits — focus on long-term goals, discipline, hard work, and yes knowing 2+2=4. This sort of woke BS just makes it worse, because it attacks the real roots of prosperity. There are real barriers to poor blacks achieving prosperity — eg how do you focus on long-term goals when you don’t know where you are sleeping tonight or when you have no role models who do so — but the purity and objectivity of math is not among these.

This sort of cargo cult thinking can be seen all the time in Progressive economic proscriptions. The government push for home ownership is another — middle class people own homes so if low income people owned homes they would become middle class. Now, this has a bit of accuracy in that, like the stock market, the elite have goosed the housing market to always go up. But leaving that aside for a moment, owning a home vs renting is a terrible decision for many people — it piles on a lot of financial risk but perhaps more importantly it limits geographic mobility which used to be critical to lower-income people improving their lot.

Warren Meyer, “Are the Woke a False Flag Operation of White Supremacists?”, Coyote Blog, 2021-02-16.

June 19, 2021

Proposed new firearms rules “… are ultimately unenforceable, and […] they are dangerous end-runs around due process that threaten fundamental rights”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

J.D. Tuccille reports on the latest US federal government proposals on changes to firearm regulations:

As expected, the Biden administration released proposed new rules for pistol braces and model legislation for “red flag” laws that make it easier to confiscate privately owned firearms. Also as expected, the proposals are ludicrous. On the one hand, they are pointless and nitpicky rules that are ultimately unenforceable, and on the other hand they are dangerous end-runs around due process that threaten fundamental rights. Taken together, they illustrate the unserious nature of gun regulations which are crafted more to appeal to political audiences than to achieve positive results.

The silliness inherent in this sort of rulemaking is apparent from the Department of Justice’s announcement of “a notice of proposed rulemaking that makes clear that when individuals use accessories to convert pistols into short-barreled rifles, they must comply with the heightened regulations on those dangerous and easily concealable weapons.”

For those new to this controversy, stabilizing braces were developed to help disabled veterans more accurately shoot pistols (usually those built around AR-15 receivers) one-handed. The “problem” is that many resemble shoulder stocks and can be used in that role. By no means does an attachment that lets a pistol be fired from the shoulder make it especially “dangerous and easily concealable.” Instead, it makes it less concealable since it has a brace sticking off the back. Braces do render pistols more accurate, which could be interpreted as dangerous if you’re upset by shooters hitting where they aim.

But a pistol that can be fired from the shoulder is arguably a short-barreled rifle under the National Firearms Act (NFA), and subject to special restrictions, taxes, and registration requirements that don’t apply to regular pistols or regular rifles, but do apply to (among other weapons) rifles with barrels shorter than 16 inches. These regulations are not evidence that short-barreled rifles are particularly dangerous, but that, like many laws, the NFA is thoroughly idiotic.

Braces have been treated as legal devices for years but have recently been targeted by the sort of people who see advantage in pretending that a firearm with a buttstock and a short barrel is more “dangerous and easily concealable” than stock-less pistols and long-barreled rifles. In compliance with White House direction, proposed rules from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) would impose new requirements to determine if braced pistols achieve Great Pumpkin-level sincerity, or are super-dangerous and concealable short-barreled rifles in disguise.

Among other tests, the rule would set the maximum length of a pistol at 26 inches (because 27 inches is super-dangerous and concealable). These tests add up to a four-point assessment, ranging from “1 point: Minor Indicator (the weapon could be fired from the shoulder)” to “4 points: Decisive Indicator (the weapon is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder)” with four points the ultimate sign that a firearm crosses the line into very naughty territory indeed.

[…]

But foolish stabilizer brace rules affect mostly disabled shooters and fanciers of a particular type of firearm. Red flag laws affect potentially any gun owner by allowing for property seizures and confrontations with law enforcement without due process.

Red flag laws “make it easier for states to craft ‘extreme risk protection orders’ authorizing courts to temporarily bar people in crisis from accessing firearms,” insists the Department of Justice. “By allowing family members or law enforcement to intervene and to petition for these orders before warning signs turn into tragedy, ‘extreme risk protection orders’ can save lives.”

Maybe such orders “can save lives”—all sorts of restrictions on personal liberty theoretically “can save lives” if that’s your only criteria. But the model legislation proposed by the Biden administration requires same-day issuance of orders that “prohibit the respondent from possessing, using, purchasing, manufacturing, or otherwise receiving a firearm” with a hearing to be held only after the fact. That certainly deprives those affected of their rights without due process of any sort before cops show up on their doorsteps to search the premises and confiscate property.

The context for Confederate general Patrick Cleburne’s proposal to arm slaves to fight the Union

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

On YouTube, Andy of Atun-Shei Films responds to a social media post that presented Cleburne’s proposal without context, which appears to show Cleburne as an anti-slavery advocate:

Confederate army Major General Patrick Cleburne.
Painting by M.D. Guillaume (1816-1892) via Wikimedia Commons.

I recently came across a pro-Confederate Facebook post featuring this quote from Confederate major general Patrick Cleburne, written on January 2, 1864:

    It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.

Now, I’m not going to share the post itself, as that would inevitably lead to doxxing and bullying. However, this is a teachable moment, a classic example of the beloved Lost Causer past-time of divorcing quotes from their important contexts.

You need to keep a couple things in mind when considering a historical quote. Who is the speaker? Who are they talking to? Do they have an objective in mind? What events surrounding this person, if any, have inspired them to say this particular thing at this particular time?

Quotes by themselves are useless in historical education and can often be misleading. I see y’all making this mistake with the Cornerstone Speech [Wiki] all the time – it’s not the mic drop you think it is. You can’t just shove it in someone’s face and call it a day. If you really want to change minds, you need to present it in its proper context and alongside other evidence. Only then can you craft a complete and compelling argument.

Now as it happens, Alexander Stephens was totally sincere when he called late 18th century notions of racial equality “wrong,” and he spoke for the overwhelming majority of Confederate true believers in the Spring of 1861 when he said that “our new government is founded on exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the [black man] is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” But without context, how would I know that? When making an argument, the onus of proof is on you.

This particular pro-Confederate post presented the Cleburne quote by itself in meme format without any context whatsoever, so allow me to provide one. At first glance, it seems like Cleburne is espousing anti-authoritarian values. It seems like he is declaring, clearly and definitively, that the Southern states did not secede to preserve slavery, but rather to uphold their regional self-determination.

This quote is from a letter Cleburne wrote to Joseph E. Johnston, his commanding officer in the Army of Tennessee, proposing that the Confederate government emancipate and arm the South’s enslaved men to bolster the thinning ranks of the army. As you may remember from Checkmate Lincolnites, this proposal was met with shock and horror from the Confederate leadership, who quickly rejected it.

But Cleburne saw further than them. He believed – correctly – that unless something drastic was done, the Confederacy was doomed to destruction. As he writes in the proposal, “Instead of standing defiantly on the borders of our territory or harassing those of the enemy, we are hemmed in to-day into less than two-thirds of it, and still the enemy menacingly confronts us at every point with superior forces.”

“If this state continues much longer we must be subjugated,” he continues, arguing that achieving victory would require immense sacrifice, including “the loss of all we now hold most sacred — slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride, manhood.”

QotD: Living in Alaska

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

Do you know what the funny thing is about mixed signals, OCC? In most instances mixed signals are actually one loud, clear, unmistakable signal: “I’m a fucking mess! Run! Run! Run!” The reason you can’t decipher the singular signal Alaska Boy is sending you, OCC, is because you’re suffering from a bad case of Wishful Thinking Syndrome (WTS). This man is damaged goods, OCC, but you’re so in love with him that you can’t see him for what he is.

So how do we know he’s damaged goods? Let’s count the ways: For starters he’s a single man who chooses to live in Alaska, which should be renamed the Alaskan National Damaged Goods Refuge.

Dan Savage, Savage Love, 2005-03-23.

June 18, 2021

Feeding “the masses”

Filed under: Economics, Food, Government, Health, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Sarah Hoyt looked at the perennial question “Dude, where’s my (flying) car?” and the even more relevant to most women “Where’s my automated house?”:

The cry of my generation, for years now, has been: “Dude, where’s my flying car?”

My friend Jeff Greason is fond of explaining that as an engineering problem, a flying car is no issue at all. It is as a legal problem that flying cars get interesting, because of course the FAA won’t let such a thing exist without clutching it madly and distorting it with its hands made of bureaucracy and crazy. (Okay, he doesn’t put it that way, but I do.)

[…]

But in all this, I have to say: Dude, where’s my automated house?

It was fifteen years ago or so, while out at lunch with an older writer friend, that she said “We always thought that when it came to this time, there would be communal lunch rooms and cafeterias that would do all the cooking so women would be free to work.”

I didn’t say anything. I knew our politics weren’t congruent, but really the only societies that managed that “Cafeterias, where everyone eats” were the most totalitarian ones, and that food was nothing you wanted to eat. If there was food. Because the only way to feed everyone industrial style is to take away their right to choose how to feed themselves and what to eat. And that, over an entire nation, would be a nightmare. Consider the eighties, when the funny critters decided that we should all live on a Russian Peasant diet of carbs, carbs and more carbs. Potatoes were healthy and good for you, and you should live on them.

It will surprise you to know – not — that just as with the mask idiocy, no study of any kind supports feeding the population on mostly vegetables, much less starches. What those whole “recommendations” were based on was “diet for a small planet” and the bureaucrats invincible ignorance, stupidity and assumption of their own intelligence and superiority. I.e. most of what they knew — that population was exploding, that people would soon be starving, that growing vegetables is less taxing on the environment and produces more calories than growing animals to eat — just wasn’t so. But they “knew” and by gum were going to force everyone to follow “the plan”. (BTW one of the ways you know that Q-Anon is in fact a black ops operation from the other side; no one on the right in this country trusts a plan, much less one that can’t be shared or discussed.) Then the complete idiots were shocked, surprised, nay, astonished when their proposed diet led to an “epidemic of obesity” and diabetes. Even though anyone who suffered through the peasant diet in communist countries, could have told the that’s where it would lead, and to both obesity and Mal-nutrition at once.

So, yeah, communal cafeterias are not a solution to anything.

My concern about the “automated house of the future” is nicely prefigured by the “wonders” of Big Tech surveillance devices we’ve voluntarily imported into our homes for the convenience, while awarding untold volumes of free data for the tech firms to market. Plus, the mindset that “you must be online at all times” that many/most of these devices require means you’re out of luck if your internet connection is a bit wobbly (looking at you, Rogers).

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