Quotulatiousness

March 18, 2025

Getting rid of Houthi and the Blowfish

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

It has been alarming just how long the west — and especially the United States — have been willing to put up with Houthi attacks on shipping going through the Red Sea. President Trump has indicated that American patience has run out, as CDR Salamander discusses:

The Houthi Ansarullah “Al-Sarkha” banner. Arabic text:
الله أكبر (Allah is the greatest)
الموت لأمريكا (death to America)
الموت لإسرائيل (death to Israel)
اللعنة على اليهود (a curse upon the Jews)
النصر للإسلام (victory to Islam)
Image and explanatory text from Wikimedia Commons.

… in the almost 18 months since the Houthi rebels have been attacking Western shipping in the Red Sea, we have mostly been playing defense.

Why have we been playing defense? The Biden Administration, like the Obama Administration, was worm-ridden with Iranian accommodationalists. The Houthi, like Hamas and Hezbollah, are Iranian proxies.

After the murder, rape, slaughter, and kidnapping from Gaza into Israel on October 7th, 2023 by Iranian proxies, the Houthi started their campaign of support — as directed by Iran — by attacking shipping in the Red Sea.

It could not be ignored, but we never took the needed action. We did not even do half-measures. At best we did quarter-measures.

The attacks continued and our credibility on the world stage degraded in proportion to that.

As we have discussed often here, we have a few thousand years of dealing with piracy and bad-faith actors on the high seas. It has direct costs in commerce, treasure, and lives.

This cannot be allowed to continue.

Over the weekend, the new Trump Administration put down a marker. We seem to have ratcheted things up a bit. Not much available on open source, but over the weekend, CENTCOM put out a few things;

    CENTCOM Forces Launch Large Scale Operation Against Iran-Backed Houthis in Yemen On March 15, U.S. Central Command initiated a series of operations consisting of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen to defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation.

[…]
Where is all this going? Well, let’s establish a few things first.

  1. Clearly what we were doing was not working.
  2. The Houthi are a 4th rate non-naval power. We like to tell everyone that, though we are the world’s second largest navy, we are the most capable. If we can’t keep the Houthi away from shipping through a major Sea Line of Communication, then why should anyone expect we could do more.
  3. Europe won’t/can’t help. They not only lack the capability to project power ashore against the Houthi to any reasonable measure, they lack the will.
  4. China does not care. It does not impact them. They benefit from this chaos against the West.
  5. Russia thinks this is wonderful.
  6. Iran can’t believe we are letting this go on. The Houthi are the last significant proxy, so they will do all they can to keep them going.

The lines are fairly clear right now. Not much room to maneuver. Looks like we will be at this for awhile. More extended range time.

QotD: Lester Thurow and the other cheerleaders for “Industrial Policy” in the 1980s

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

The late Lester Thurow was quite popular in the 1980s and 1990s for his incessant warnings that America was losing at the game of trade with other countries. Most ominous, Thurow (and others) warned, was our failure to compete effectively against the clever Japanese who, unlike us naive and complacent Americans, had the foresight to practice industrial policy, including the use of tariffs targeted skillfully and with precision. Trade, you see, said Thurow (and others) is indeed a contest in which the gains of the “winners” are the losses of the “losers”. Denials of this alleged reality come only from those who are bewitched by free-market ideology or blinded by economic orthodoxy.

And so – advised Thurow (and others) – we Americans really should step up our game by taking many production and consumption decisions out of the hands of short-sighted and selfish entrepreneurs, businesses, investors, and consumers and putting these decisions into the hands of the Potomac-residing wise and genius-filled faithful stewards of Americans’ interest.

Sound familiar? It should. While some of the details from decades ago of the news-making proponents of protectionism and industrial policy differ from the details harped on by today’s proponents of protectionism and industrial policy, the essence of the hostility to free trade and free markets of decades ago is, in most – maybe all – essential respects identical to the hostility that reigns today.

Markets in which prices, profits, and losses guide the decisions of producers and consumers were then – as they are today – asserted to be stupid, akin to a drunk donkey, while government officials (from the correct party, of course) alone have the knowledge, capacity, willpower, and power to allocate resources efficiently and in the national interest.

Nothing much changes but the names. Three or four decades ago protectionism and industrial policy in the name of the national interest was peddled by people with names such as Lester Thurow, Barry Bluestone, and Felix Rohatyn. Today protectionism and industrial policy in the name of the national interest is peddled by people with different names.

Don Boudreaux, “Quotation of the Day…”, Café Hayek, 2020-03-12.

March 17, 2025

America’s modern Triumvirate

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

Last month, I posted John Carter’s amusing riff on Trump, Musk, and Vance as the American Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar, the original Triumvirate. Apparently John isn’t the only one struck by the similarities, as David Friedman also considers the three as America’s modern Triumvirate:

Trump, Vance, and Musk as America’s Triumvirate – Grok

Trump is the most important at present, since both Vance and Musk have political power only to the extent he gives it to them. He is a very competent demagogue, as demonstrated by his winning a series of political conflicts that almost everyone expected him to lose. So far as I can tell from his history he has no political views of his own, uses ideology as a tool to get power, attention, status. Conservatives were a substantial faction unhappy with the state of the nation, with what they viewed as the political and cultural domination of the country by their opponents, hence a potential power base for him. Progressives had overplayed their hand, pushed woke ideology too far, due to face a backlash, useful as enemies. He adopted the role of conservative champion, destroyer of wokeism, borrowing details of his program most recently from Project 2025, a detailed conservative plan for how a conservative administration could restructure the federal government.

Trump’s Ukraine policy is to produce a peace for which he could claim credit, a deal that holds until at least 2028. To force Zelensky to accept he had to make it believable that he was willing to drop US support for Ukraine if Ukraine refuses to go along, and he did. To force Putin to accept he will have to make it believable that the US is willing to continue, even expand, support for Ukraine if Russia refuses to accept a peace plan.

[…]

Assuming no rupture with Trump and no failure of their administration extreme enough to break Trump’s control over his party, Vance will be the Republican nominee in 2028. He is young, handsome and smart with a beautiful and intelligent wife, is playing a minor role now but could be a major political figure in the post-Trump world. Unlike Trump he has political views of his own, not merely the desire for power. What are they?

I devoted two of my earlier posts to trying to answer that question, Vance and Revising the Republican Party. My conclusion:

    The conservative movement of Bill Buckley rejected the New Deal. Vance does not. The past he wants to return to is an idealized version of America in the fifties, perhaps the sixties. The movement he wants to build rejects both the pro-market economics of the pre-Trump conservative movement and the cultural program of current progressives. He wants an America of stable marriages, views parents as more reliably committed to the future than the childless — hence the much-quoted line about childless cat ladies. One of his more intriguing proposals is that children should get votes, cast by their parents, giving a family with three children five votes.

    …

    The Republican party Vance wants to build looks, economically, like the Democratic party of the fifties and sixties, culturally like the inverse of the progressive, aka woke, movement.

[…]

The project the three of them are attempting is a full scale revision of the federal government. Of the three, Musk is the one who might be competent to do it. Trump’s skill is charisma, the ability to get people to pay attention to him, admire him, want to please him. That is how he got to a position from which to revise the government but it is not the skill needed to do it. Vance has demonstrated even less of the relevant abilities; his accomplishments so far are writing a very interesting book and winning a senate election

Musk, in contrast, has created two very successful firms, taken over and revised a third. None were projects on the scale of what he is now attempting but they are smaller projects of the same sort. Hence it is at least possible that, with the authority Trump has so far been willing to delegate to him, he can convert the federal government into something smaller, less expensive, better functioning, judged at least by the standards of Trump and his supporters.

QotD: Myths from Norman Rockwell’s America

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Politics, Quotations, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’ve seen complaints on X that a factory worker’s single income used to be enough to raise a family on but isn’t anymore. It’s true; I grew up in those days.

The complaint generally continues that we were robbed of this by bad policy choices. But that is at best only half true.

World War II smashed almost the entire industrial capacity of the world outside the U.S., which exited with its manufacturing plant not only intact, but greatly improved by wartime capitalization. The result was that for about 30 years, the US was a price-taker in international markets. Nobody could effectively compete with us at heavy or even light manufacturing.

The profits from that advantage built Norman Rockwell’s America — lots of prosperous small towns built around factories and mills. Labor unions could bid up salaries for semi-skilled workers to historically ridiculous levels on that tide.

But it couldn’t last. Germany and Japan and England recapitalized and rebuilt themselves. The Asian tigers began to be a thing. U.S. producers facing increasing competitive pressure discovered that they had become bloated and inefficient in the years when the penalty for that mistake was minimal.

Were there bad policy choices? Absolutely. Taxes and entitlement spending exploded because all that surplus was sloshing around ready to be captured; the latter has proven politically almost impossible to undo.

When our windfall finally ended in the early 1970s, Americans were left with habits and expectations formed by the long boom. We’ve since spent 50 years trying, with occasional but only transient successes, to recreate those conditions. The technology boom of 1980 to 2001 came closest.

But the harsh reality is that we are never likely to have that kind of advantage again. Technology and capital are now too mobile for that.

Political choices have to be made within this reality. It’s one that neither popular nor elite perception has really caught up with.

Eric S. Raymond, X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, 2024-07-08.

March 16, 2025

Female sexual predators

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

Every civilized person rejects the notion that male sexual predators should be tolerated, yet few are willing to accept the notion that female sexual predators might even exist. They absolutely do exist and they do commit terrible crimes against their — often very young — victims, as Janice Fiamengo shows:

Even when we are aware that women prey on children, many of us can’t really believe it. When Florida Congresswoman Anna Luna, a Republican elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, proposed three new bills last year that would impose harsh penalties, “including the death penalty”, for various forms of sexual abuse, child pornography, and child sexual exploitation, it is impossible to believe that Luna thought any number of women would be executed for child rape, and nor will they be given the leniency that is shown to women in the criminal justice system (see Sonja Starr’s research).

Yet similar crimes to Ma’s are easily discovered. In the same month that Ma pled guilty, a Martinsville, Indiana teacher was charged with three counts of sexual misconduct against a minor, a 15-year-old boy who has alleged that as many as ten other students were raped by the same woman. The month before that, a New Jersey primary school teacher was charged with aggravated sexual assault against a boy who was 13 years old when she bore his child; it is alleged that she began raping the boy when he was 11. The month before that, a Tipton County, Tennessee teacher [pictured below] pled guilty to a dozen sex crimes against children ranging in age from 12-17 years old. It is thought that she victimized a total of 21 children.

In the same month, a Montgomery, New York teacher pled guilty to criminal sexual assault of a 13 year old boy in her class, whom she assaulted over a period of months. In the previous month, a San Fernando Valley teacher was charged with sexual assault of a 13 year old male student; police believe she victimized others also. Earlier in the year, a substitute teacher in Decatur, Illinois was charged with raping an 11 year old boy. These are just a few recent cases, and only those involving female schoolteachers. Female predators are also to be found amongst social workers, juvenile detention officers, and sports coaches.

The feminist position on male sexual abuse of women and girls has for a long time been that it is about power. Men rape and abuse, according to Susan Brownmiller [quoted above] and others, because they believe it their right as men to keep women subordinate. Rape compensates for male inadequacy and allows for the expression of men’s hostility toward women: it is not about lust but about men’s need to humiliate and degrade. As Paul Elam once noted in a Regarding Men episode, the theory is fatally weakened if even a single woman does the same thing. Feminists have responded by saying that female sexual abuse is fundamentally different from male, less dangerous to society, less hurtful to its victims.

While I was doing research for this essay, I happened upon a recent podcast discussion between Louise Perry, British author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and Meghan Murphy, Canadian Substack author and editor of Feminist Current. The podcast was called “What Happened to Feminism?” and I tuned in because I have enjoyed their perspectives on other issues.

Perry and Murphy are both critics of feminism who remain, as their conversation confirmed, staunchly feminist and anti-male. At one point in the podcast (at about 50:00), the conversation turned to #MeToo, and especially to allegations against teachers. Having already agreed that 95% of MeToo allegations were true, or at least based on something real, the pundits went on to agree, with disconcerting laughter, that there was no comparison between a “crazy” woman who “had sex” with a male student in her class, and a “dangerous” man, a “predatory rapist”, who went after under-age girls in his power.

Murphy even trotted out the old chestnut that abused boys were “stoked about the situation” in getting with “the hot teacher”. After all, she chuckled, “Men are gross predators. Men are perverts. They can’t keep it in their pants.” Perry, seeming taken aback by Murphy’s vulgarity, nonetheless agreed that the sexual abuse of boys is in an entirely different category from that of girls: “It is so annoying to me,” she said, “when people will go around claiming that these are exactly the same”.

Indifference to the victimization of boys, and lack of shame in admitting it, could hardly have been more stark. I mention the podcast not because it was singularly outrageous but because the attitudes expressed in it are still so much the norm, even amongst women who claim to have rethought other feminist beliefs.

George Hyde’s First Submachine Gun: The Hyde Model 33

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Mar 2018

George Hyde was a gun designer who is due substantial credit, but whose name is rarely heard, because he did not end up with his name on an iconic firearm. Hyde was a German immigrant to the United States in 1927 who formed the Hyde Arms Company and started designing submachine guns. His first was the Model 33, which we have here today. This quickly evolved into the Model 35, which was tested by Aberdeen Proving Grounds in the summer of 1939. It was found to have a number of significant advantages over the Thompson, but also some durability problems. The problems could probably have been addressed, but Hyde (who had gone from working as shop foreman at Griffin & Howe to later becoming chief designer for GM’s Inland division during WWII) had already moved on to a better iteration. His next design was actually adopted as the M2 to replace the Thompson, but production problems caused it to be cancelled. The M3 Grease Gun was chosen instead, and Hyde had designed that as well. He was also responsible for the design of the clandestine .45 caliber Liberator pistol.

The Hyde Model 33 is a blowback submachine gun which obviously took significant influence from the Thompson — just look at the front grip, barrel ribs, controls, magazine well, and stock design. However, it was simpler, lighter, and less expensive than the Thompson. It fared better than the Thompson in military mud and dust tests, probably in part because of its unusual charging handle, a long rod mounted in the rear cap of the receiver. This was pulled rearward to cycle the bolt, a bit like the AR15 charging handle. Like the AR15, this setup eliminated the need for an open slot in the receiver. Apparently, however, the handle had a disconcerting habit of bouncing back into the face of the shooter when firing.

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

March 15, 2025

Trump’s actual goal in Ukraine

Filed under: Europe, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

David Friedman posted this a couple of days ago, considering what President Trump’s real goals may be in the Russo-Ukraine conflict:

There are two possible interpretations of Trump’s policy. The pessimistic one is that he plans to give Putin what he wants, force Zelensky to accept peace terms that give Russia substantial amounts of Ukrainian territory and leave Ukraine disarmed and defenseless against future Russian demands. On that theory the clash with Zelensky was a pre-planned drama intended to provide an excuse for the US withdrawing support, make it less obvious that Trump now supports Putin. As of Monday that looked like a plausible reading of the situation.

The optimistic reading was that Trump wanted to force an end to the war on compromise terms, use the withdrawal of support to force Zelensky to agree. Tuesday’s news, Zelensky agreeing to a proposed cease fire and Trump responding by resuming US support for Ukraine, is evidence for that reading. The ball is now in Putin’s court. If he rejects the proposal Trump will be under pressure to continue, perhaps even increase, US support. That is a reason for him not to reject the proposal. My guess is that Putin will agree to a temporary cease fire, at least in principle, although he may haggle over details, try to push for a version more favorable to him.

What Trump wants, on the optimistic interpretation, which I now find likely, is to end the war. To do that he needs to find terms that both sides will accept. Zelensky will not accept terms that amount to surrender — even if the US abandons him, he has the option of continuing the war with increased support from the European powers, now moving to rearm. If they are sufficiently committed to Ukraine or sufficiently annoyed at the US they should be able to replace most, although not all, of what the US has been providing, if necessary with munitions purchased from the US; it is hard to imagine even Trump forbidding US arms manufacturers from selling to allies. Ukraine would be worse off than continuing the war with US support but, if Russia is willing to agree to terms Trump approves of and Ukraine is not, that will not be an option.

Putin was, despite American support for Ukraine under the previous administration, winning, although very slowly and at considerable cost. Unless Trump is willing to respond to Russian rejection of his peace plan by greatly increasing US support, which I think unlikely — no boots on the ground nor wings in the air — Putin has the option of returning to that, so will not accept anything much less. That suggests that the most likely terms amount to an extended cease fire. Ukraine does not disarm, Russia does not withdraw from territory it is occupying. Both sides stop blowing things up on territory controlled by the other, stop shooting at each other.

Judged by territorial control that is a win for Russia, since it ends up controlling most of what it wanted, the parts of Ukraine occupied by Russian speakers plus the areas that can block the water supply into Crimea, with Ukraine even further from recovering Crimea than before. That might be enough to let Putin present it to his population has a victory sufficient to justify the decision to invade Ukraine.

Seen from the outside, it would be an expensive victory, which might be enough to deter future adventurism or a renewal of the war. To get it, Russia has consumed a large part of the store of military equipment inherited from the Soviet Union, making it less formidable in any future conflict with Ukraine or anyone else. Worse still, the war has driven two neutral powers, both militarily substantial and one of them on the Russian border, into joining NATO. And between Putin and Trump they may have pushed the European powers into finally rearming. The population of the European NATO members is several times that of Russia, their economies as well:

    “It’s striking but it’s true. Right now, 500 million Europeans are begging 300 million Americans for protection from 140 million Russians who have been unable to overcome 50 million Ukrainians for three years.” (Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland)

What would be the effect of an extended pause in the war on the balance of power between Russia and Ukraine, the prospects for a renewed conflict? Both Russia and Ukraine will be able to rebuild what the war has destroyed; that will be a bigger benefit for Ukraine, since it has lost much more. One of Russia’s advantages in the war was that it not only had more munitions, it could build more, could fire far more shells at Ukrainian forces than Ukraine could fire back. An extended pause will give Ukraine and its allies time to build the factories they need. It will give states not involved in the war, such as South Korea and India, time to build up supplies of armaments and ammunition some of which can be sold to Ukraine when and if the pause ends. It will give US arms firms time to expand for a world where there is increased demand for what they produce.

If the European powers go through with their current talk of greatly increased military expenditure and continue to back Ukraine, there will be much more money bidding for arms on behalf of Ukraine than on behalf of Russia. That could shift the balance when and if the war resumes.

Eliminating “environmental justice” from the EPA

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

J.D. Tuccille suggests that you not take the New York Times coverage too literally as they wail about the Trump administration’s plans for the Environmental Protection Agency:

If you were to believe reporting from The New York Times — which is an increasingly unwise idea — the Trump administration is diverting the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from poor and minority communities that face “disproportionately high levels of pollution”. But if you scratch the surface even a bit, you find that what’s really being eliminated are “environmental justice” offices that infuse identitarian ideology into EPA enforcement efforts. Americans should welcome efforts to strip racial obsessions from the armory of regulators who already wield too much power.

Competing Takes on “Environmental Justice”

“The Trump administration intends to eliminate Environmental Protection Agency offices responsible for addressing the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities, according to a memo from Lee Zeldin, the agency administrator,” Lisa Friedman wrote for the Times. She added that the memo directed the reorganization and elimination of “offices of environmental justice at all 10 E.P.A. regional offices as well as the one in Washington”.

Contrast that with a press release from the EPA, which states “that EPA will immediately revise National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives to ensure that enforcement does not discriminate based on race and socioeconomic status (as it has under environmental justice initiatives) or shut down energy production and that it focuses on the most pressing health and safety issues”.

Whatever you think of the Trump administration in general, EPA Administrator Zeldin is on the right side of this debate. As I wrote in 2022 when the Biden administration formally introduced “environmental justice” concerns to the EPA, the term refers to “a decades-old school of thought that seeks to graft identitarian politics onto environmental concerns. That allows practitioners to wield civil rights law in addition to traditional environmental laws against perceived malefactors. It also makes it possible to slam offenders as ‘bigots’ if their actions affect one community more than another.”

There’s no need to read between the lines to figure out what is meant by “environmental justice” — its advocates are quite clear about their meaning. In 2021, the Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs published A User’s Guide to Environmental Justice: Theory, Policy, & Practice by Ken Kimmell, Alaina Boyle, Yutong Si, and Marisa Sotolongo.

The Ideology’s History of Racial Obsessions

“The demand for ‘environmental justice’ (EJ) has gained substantial traction in the last few years, as well it should,” the authors wrote in their introduction. “A key pillar in EJ will be widespread, community-designed and community-supported investment in neighborhoods that have been economically and environmentally burdened by a long history of racist government and industry decisions.”

“The environmental justice movement has evolved in parallel with and in response to traditional environmentalism to focus on the unequal distribution of environmental harms among different people and communities,” the authors add in summarizing the history of the movement. “Research revealing the whiteness of the environmental community elevated concerns that social justice and racial justice were not prioritized in mainstream environmentalism.”

“Applying the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin … frontline communities and others began to use the term ‘environmental racism’ to focus on the unequal (social and spatial) distribution of environmental burdens,” they continue.

March 14, 2025

Firefly and the Lost Cause

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

Feral Historian
Published 8 Nov 2024

I’ve often been questioned for making Civil War comparisons when discussing Firefly. Here I explain why Firefly not only reflects but is based on the Lost Cause mythology of the Confederacy.

For further background on how secession was framed at the start of the American Civil War, battlefields.org has plain text copies of several of the Confederate States’ declarations of causes for secession up at https://www.battlefields.org/learn/pr…. You can see how slavery is mentioned a lot, but often framed in terms of the second-order effects of Northern policy damaging their economy, infringing on sovereignty, etc. It varied by state of course, Virginia kept it vague with references to the Federal government “perverting said powers” granted it, while Mississippi was very clear about slavery being the cause.

00:00 Intro
01:12 The Lost Cause
03:27 Selling the Peace
05:28 Causes
06:59 Firefly as a Lost Cause

QotD: You can’t cut taxes without disproportionally benefitting “the wealthy”

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

[Responding to a Robert Reich post against tax cuts because they’ll aid the rich more than the average taxpayer]

Anybody who uses the phrase “tax cuts for the wealthy” to gin up opposition to lowering taxes is either a dupe or a villain.

How do I know this? Do some research. Find a graph of how income taxes paid segregates by wealth of the payer. I’d post one here, but X hates links.

The bottom 40% in income pay effectively nothing in income tax. The “rich” pay such a disproportionately high percentage of it that the tax take of entire states can be significantly affected by a handful of high-net-worth individuals moving out. In Europe this happens to small countries.

Because of this, it is effectively impossible to cut taxes in any way at all without disproportionately benefiting the “wealthy”.

When demagogues like Reich honk about “tax cuts for the wealthy”, what they actually mean is: taxes should never decrease. The state should confiscate and reallocate more and more wealth, forever and ever, amen.

ESR, rel=”noopener”>X.com, 2024-12-05.

March 13, 2025

This explains a lot … IRS employees aren’t issued personal computers (in 2025!)

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

You sometimes read a small item and the information in it is so unexpected, it’s like being suddenly dumped into icy cold water, like this little item from Reason‘s “Morning Roundup” email:

Everything’s computer! But not at the IRS.

“The upheaval at the IRS is already having real impacts,” reports The Washington Post, referring to plans (already underway) to reduce the workforce by half. “Sources familiar with the agency report that its level of phone service is falling, in part because employees are spending their time waiting to use shared computers to respond to [the Department of Government Efficiency’s] requests for weekly emails detailing their work. (Not all IRS employees are issued their own computers.) And they report that taxpayer behavior is already adjusting to the reality of a diminished IRS workforce: IRS receipts — taxes paid already and taxes the agency is scheduled to receive from those who have already filed — are significantly lower than they were at this point last filing season.”

Wait, back up. They don’t have their own computers? And they’re sitting in a queue like schoolchildren in the library, waiting to use a single shared computer to respond to Musk’s five-things-you-did-last-week emails? How long does it take to write those emails? And why don’t they have computers?

Look, I’m worried by the slapdash approach Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has taken. But the continued federal employee freakout over being asked to justify their jobs by detailing what they’ve done at work makes no sense to me.

I know a girl from college who is a “Work-Life Specialist and Mindfulness Facilitator” at the U.S. Department of Transportation. She leads yoga sessions and “meditation made simple” workshops for federal employees, per her LinkedIn. This is a job I don’t want my taxpayer dollars funding. For Musk to apply scrutiny to this type of thing is a huge win for the American people.

There are lots of legitimate criticisms to make about whether cuts in staffing will actually lead to a better IRS. Taxpayer services will surely suffer if there are fewer people available to answer phone calls and emails; refunds might be delayed, which comes at a real cost to people. Worse tax collection means less revenue for the government, and it’s not like spending is under control — expect the fiscal hole we’re in to get worse if this continues. But “we just can’t figure out how to ration computer use in the year 2025 to craft a bullet-pointed email” is an absurd line that elicits no sympathy, and just leaves me confused about what the hell they’ve been doing all this time. Everything’s not, in fact, computer in the federal government.

March 12, 2025

The Korean War 038 – The US President is Angry! – March 11, 1951

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

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 11 Mar 2025

Operation Ripper kicks off this week, and gains plenty of ground … but the enemy is almost nowhere to be found. Douglas MacArthur gives what becomes known as his “die for a tie” speech, which could have a serious negative effect on UN troop morale. But the Chinese are building up their forces for an eventual counterstrike, and the North Koreans even have a new Chief of Staff.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:50 Recap
01:15 Plans for Operation Ripper
04:45 Die for a Tie
06:34 MacArthur Won’t Toe the Line
08:17 The KPA Build-Up
10:38 Nam Il
12:31 The Chinese Build-Up
14:01 Ripper Begins
15:33 Summary
15:45 Conclusion
(more…)

Colt Sidehammer “Root” Dragoon Prototype

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Nov 2016

During the development of the 1860 Army revolver, Colt did consider mechanical options other than simply scaling up the 1851 Navy pattern. One of these, as evidenced by this Colt prototype, was an enlarged version of the 1855 Pocket, aka “Root”, revolver. That 1855 design used a solid frame and had been the basis for Colt’s revolving rifles and shotguns, and so it would be natural to consider it for use in a .44-caliber Army revolver. How extensive the experimentation was is not known, and I believe this is the only known surviving prototype of a Dragoon-size 1855 pistol. It survives in excellent shape, and is a really neat glimpse at what might have been …

March 11, 2025

Could even William Shakespeare rescue Hollywood?

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

Ted Gioia laments the apparent death of creativity in Hollywood over the last few decades:

They need somebody like Bill Shakespeare in Hollywood today.

That’s not as crazy as it sounds. We know very little about the Bard of Avon, but these facts are indisputable:

  • He worked successfully in the entertainment business for 30 years.
  • He mastered the art of the deal — all six of his surviving signatures come from legal documents.
  • He handled money wisely, as entrepreneur, grain merchant, property owner, money lender, etc.
  • He still sells tickets today — more than 400 years after his death.

Not even Harvey Weinstein can match that track record.

And — best of all—Shakespeare didn’t let business get in the way of creativity. He knew how to make a buck without compromising his Bard status.

Here’s another fact about Shakespeare: He never used the words “intellectual property” or “content” or “brand franchise”.

I was reminded of that recently when I encountered this headline in The Hollywood Reporter.

I’ve often accused the entertainment industry of abandoning creativity — and turning into boring IP [intellectual property] management companies run by lawyers, bankers, and accountants.

But they don’t even hide it anymore.

There was a day when they pretended to care about artistry — seeking out fresh talent and bold new ideas. But today it’s the exact opposite. They actually want content.

(This is where I concur with Barbara Broccoli, who had creative control over the James Bond films until last week. She forced Amazon execs to buy her out, after she called them “fucking idiots”. This outburst happened in response to the head of Amazon Studios describing the Bond films as content.)

So I read the Bain report and wept. So would Shakespeare — he would rage like King Lear on the heath if he saw a sentence like this:

    [Media] companies are essentially themselves converging to compete with the tech media platforms; they’re also acquiring to gain more evergreen IP that can be used across modalities. By owning these cross-sector assets and IP, they create fan communities and multimodal content …

I thought content was bad enough. But we’re now dealing with multimodal content.

That sounds like one of the seven plagues of ancient Egypt — a step above locusts, but definitely worse than frogs and hail. Somebody at the consultancy deserves to be smote down at bonus time.

QotD: Herbert Hoover wins the presidency

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

Finally, it is 1928. Hoover feels like he has accomplished his goal of becoming the sort of knowledgeable political insider who can run for President successfully. Calvin Coolidge decides not to run for a second term (in typical Coolidge style, he hands a piece of paper to a reporter saying “I do not choose to run for President in 1928” and then disappears and refuses to answer further questions). The Democrats nominate Al Smith, an Irish-Italian Catholic with a funny accent; it’s too early for the country to really be ready for this. Historians still debate whether Hoover and/or his campaign deserves blame for being racist or credit for being surprisingly non-racist-under-the-circumstances.

The main issue is Prohibition. Smith, true to his roots, is against. Hoover, true to his own roots (his mother was a temperance activist) is in favor. The country is starting to realize Prohibition isn’t going too well, but they’re not ready to abandon it entirely, and Hoover promises to close loopholes and fix it up. Advantage: Hoover.

The second issue is tariffs. Everyone wants some. Hoover promises that if he wins, he will call a special session of Congress to debate the tariff question. Advantage: Hoover.

The last issue is personality. Republican strategists decide the best way for their candidate to handle his respective strengths and weaknesses is not to campaign at all, or be anywhere near the public, or expose himself to the public in any way. Instead, they are “selling a conception. Hoover was the omnicompetent engineer, humanitarian, and public servant, the ‘most useful American citizen now alive’. He was an almost supernatural figure, whose wisdom encompasses all branches, whose judgment was never at fault, who knew the answers to all questions.” Al Smith is supremely charismatic, but “boasted of never having read a book”. Advantage: unclear, but Hoover’s strategy does seem to work pretty well for him. He racks up most of the media endorsements. Only TIME Magazine dissents, saying that “In a society of temperate, industrious, unspectacular beavers, such a beaver-man would make an ideal King-beaver. But humans are different.”

Apparently not that different. Hoover wins 444 votes to 87, one of the greatest electoral landslides in American history.

Anne McCormick of the New York Times describes the inauguration:

    We were in a mood for magic … and the whole country was a vast, expectant gallery, its eyes focused on Washington. We had summoned a great engineer to solve our problems for us; now we sat back comfortable and confidently to watch our problems being solved. The modern technical mind was for the first time at the head of a government. Relieved and gratified, we turned over to that mind all of the complications and difficulties no other had been able to settle. Almost with the air of giving genius its chance, we waited for the performance to begin.

Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Hoover”, Slate Star Codex, 2020-03-17.

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