Quotulatiousness

October 8, 2024

Hats off to the brilliant negotiators of the Mauritian government

Filed under: Britain, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At The Critic, Yuan Yi Zhu salutes the negotiators who managed to get an amazing deal from the British government for the Chagos Islands (which contain the strategic US naval base of Diego Garcia):

In the middle of that map is Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory and home to one of the most strategic airfields and anchorages on the planet. […] The red circle is 2,000 nautical miles from the island. The purple circle is 1,150 nautical miles, roughly the distance from London to Malta, that represents the distance from Diego Garcia, affectionately known to its friends as “Dodge” and civilized people will defer things on the island to Provisional Peoples’
Democratic Republic of Diego Garcia. That circle is also the distance from Diego Garcia to the island of Mauritius.
Caption and image from CDR Salamander.

Donald Trump likes to brag about his prowess as a negotiator, but he has nothing on the government of Mauritius, which pulled one of history’s great diplomatic heists yesterday, when it announced that the British government had agreed to give it the Chagos Islands, which have been sovereign British territory without interruption since 1814.

To add insult to injury, not only will Mauritius gain a new colony, but it will collect large rents from the Americans for the military base on Diego Garcia, while the British government will pay hefty financial support to Mauritius (Africa’s third richest country on a per capita basis) for the honour of handing over to Mauritius one of the world’s most strategically valuable territories.

In other words, not only is Mauritius having its cake and eating it too, it has also extracted from the British taxpayer a new cake, to be savoured while it smugly lectures the world about the importance of decolonisation.

Never mind that Mauritius sold the Chagos Islands to the United Kingdom in 1965 for the-then astronomical sum of £3 million and a valuable British security guarantee. Its prime minister had described the islands as “a portion of our territory of which very few people knew … which is very far from here, and which we had never visited”, so it was no big loss.

In the 1980s, a new government changed its mind and decided to get the islands back. It alleged the British had threatened to withhold independence from Mauritius unless it agreed to sell the territory. The small problem was that every single surviving Mauritian negotiator cheerfully admitted that they didn’t care about the Chagos, whose inhabitants they regarded as half-civilised savages.

And the blackmail thesis suffered from the fact that Britain in the 1960s could not get rid of its remaining colonies fast enough — Mauritius had to wait a few more years for independence because part of its population wanted it to remain a British territory.

Mauritius then decided to wave the bloody shirt of the Chagossians, who had been callously expelled by the British to make way for the air base and dumped on Mauritius. The fact that the Mauritian treated them terribly — so terribly, in fact, that thousands of them left for the UK, the country which had deported them in the first place — was but a minor detail.

In 2019, Mauritius managed to get the International Court of Justice to say that the islands should be given to Mauritius. The ruling was not even legally binding, but Mauritius was somehow able to convince gullible Whitehall functionaries that Britain had no choice but to give the islands to Mauritius.

So far as I am aware, there is no truth to the rumour that Spain and Argentina are in negotiation with Mauritius to take over their respective territorial claims on Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.

For progressives, “freedom” means getting to choose who rules over you

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

Chris Bray reacts to an Anne Applebaum podcast hosted at The Atlantic which certainly demonstrates that progressives have a very different definition of the word “freedom” than most people:

Opening the discussion, Applebaum and co-host Peter Pomerantsev “explain” that there are two competing models of freedom in the American past. One model is adherence to American political norms, centered on submission to the authority of the federal government. Read this carefully:

    Pomerantsev: Anne, the common conception — the one that I have, anyway — is that freedom is meant to be a good thing. Freedom is meant to be the same thing as democracy. Those two words — I hear them used interchangeably. Freedom means the Bill of Rights, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, the freedom to choose who rules you.

Freedom is choosing who rules you. “Freedom is meant to be a good thing.”

There’s a scene in The Forty Year-Old Virgin in which a bunch of young men sit around drinking beers and talking about sex with their slightly odd older co-worker, and he starts trying to agree with them about how hot it is to touch a woman. “Yeah, man,” he says, fidgeting in his chair. “It’s so hot! It’s like … touching a … bag of sand.” They instantly realize that he’s never done the thing he’s describing.

So. Just a few days ago, I argued that whole layers of high-status American political and cultural figures are “no longer culturally American”. They don’t see the country, they don’t like the country, and they don’t have the most basic American instincts. Peter Pomerantsev thinks that living in America is like touching a bag of sand.

If freedom is “the Bill of Rights” and “the freedom to choose who rules you”, then no human being on the planet was ever free before the Bill of Rights was ratified, and no one outside the United States currently has freedom. You become free only with the promulgation of formal governmental rules on the existence of your freedom. Freedom is a federal document. “Freedom is meant to be democracy”, and those words are interchangeable. Freedom is voting. A stateless society without authorities who rule over the people is unfree: they don’t vote. You have to be ruled to become free.

This man is a dangerous idiot.

But then, incredibly, Anne Applebaum outdoes him:

    Applebaum: Not quite. There’s another equally old American version of freedom, which is freedom to defy the federal government — you know, the freedom to go out into the Wild West and make up your own rules.

Applebaum begins a discussion with a history professor, Jefferson Cowie, who “explains” that this sick and dangerous idea of American freedom centers on the freedom to dominate others. “He describes how white settlers in the 1830s refused to abide by treaties that the federal government had signed with Native Americans and, instead, would repeatedly steal their land.”

    Cowie: And so you have this really explosive moment where white settlers were promised, in some broad sense, access to land. They were denied it. And they took their claims of freedom against the federal government that was denying them the ability to take the land of other people — their freedom to steal land, basically.

Applebaum and Cowie go on to make other comparisons in which, for example, George Wallace argued for the freedom to impose racial segregation against the federal insistence on equal rights. Cowie winds up for the big finish:

    We allow the word freedom to work in the political discourse because it appears to be a kind of liberal value, but underneath it is actually a very powerful ideology of domination. And that’s what he’s really talking about there, because it’s at that moment that the federal government is coming in to take away their freedom to control the political power of Black people.

So in every conflict over this model of freedom, a relentlessly emancipatory federal government — benevolent, respectful of minority rights, committed to justice for all — slams into state and local knuckle-draggers who say they want freedom, but are only using that word to mean that they want to hurt and dominate other people. The federal government is social rules, fairness, decency; resistance to federal authority manifests a sick conception of freedom at the inherently unfair lower levels of American society. State officials are mean; communities are vicious; the federal government is nice. Unclear how the mean locals turn into angels when they move to hold office in the District of Columbia, but there’s somehow a magic process of transformation in which a cruel people have a wise and decent central government. Power always makes people much kinder and more restrained.

This is derangement, and an assault on the most basic American history. It’s madness, but deliberate madness.

QotD: The competitive instinct

Filed under: Gaming, Quotations, Soccer, Sports, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I once saw an interview with basketball player Charles Barkley, in which he discussed his retirement. Barkley was a Hall of Fame player, and like most of those guys, he hung on a few seasons too long. Even having lost a step or three, Sir Charles was still a decent player, but that’s all he was — a decent player, but getting paid like a superstar and with a superstar’s reputation. A few seasons after retiring, he admitted as much. He said something like (from memory) “I’d guard a guy and think, ‘this is going to be easy, this guy is terrible’. And then he’d beat me, and I’d realize I just got beat by some guy who’s terrible, and then I knew it was time to hang it up.”

One thing chicks of both sexes and all however-many-we’re-up-to genders don’t realize these days is how competitive men — actual biological males — are hardwired to be. Things like World of Warcraft and fantasy football only exist because the genius who invented those figured out a way to tap into that heretofore-unexpressed male competitiveness. And indeed, it’s the guy who’d never even dream of putting on shoulder pads who’s the most insanely competitive guy in a fantasy football league or (I’m certain) a whatever-they’re-called in World of Warcraft. Even the uber-dorks in the Math Club and the Speech and Debate Society went after each other like Mickey Ward and Arturo Gatti. It’s just how guys are … or, at least, how guys used to be.

[…]

When it comes right down to it, that’s why men of a certain age simply don’t get “women’s sports”. Few will be as crustily chauvinistic as yer ‘umble narrator, and come right out and say it, but here goes: Women’s “sports” are just a shoddy knockoff of the real thing, because women just aren’t wired that way. That’s not to say that there aren’t competitive women, or athletic women — obviously there are, some very athletic and very competitive — but the female of the species just isn’t wired to put in the work the way males are. When faced with the prospect of three straight hours in the batting cage, swinging at curve after curve until your blisters have blisters and your shoulders feel like they’re falling out of their sockets, most women will quite sensibly ask “why bother?” Competition-for-competition’s-sake, even when it’s only against yourself in those long, long, looooong hours in the cage, just doesn’t motivate them the way it does us.

Which is why a person’s reaction to Simone Biles, or the USA Women’s soccer team, or the WNBA, or what have you is an almost perfect predictor of their age, not just their “gender”. I judge sports as sports. I don’t care about soccer, but if I did, I’d care about it as soccer — meaning, I’d want to see the best possible players, playing at the highest possible level. Women’s Olympic teams — that is to say, all star teams, the very best players — routinely get smoked by teams of 15 year old boys. Sir Charles is pushing sixty, but he could dominate the WNBA right now, in street clothes. Obviously this doesn’t apply to Pee Wee or rec leagues, but if you’re going to take a paycheck for doing it, then I want to see exactly what I paid for.

In estrogen-drenched, synchronized-ovulation Clown World, it’s all about appearances. Sure, she let her team down and wussed out (while still talking up how great she is), but can’t you see that it gave her the sadz? Sure, Megan Rapinoe et al keep getting smoked by 14 year old boys, then choking in international competition, but can’t you see her out there, with her pink hair and her tats and her Strong, Confident Empowerment? The “competition”, such as it is, is an excuse for the display. Michael Jordan ought to give baseball another shot. We know he can cry. These days, that’d get him a first-class ticket to Cooperstown.

Severian, “On Competition”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-08-02.

October 7, 2024

Handguns in the US Army in World War Two

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published Jun 28, 2024

Was the 1911 an emotional support totem or a viable combat weapon? Or both? American soldiers had a bit different take on handguns than soldiers of many other armies, and I think it stems from the American identity with the frontier — the Wild West was well within memory for many people when World War Two broke out. So today, let’s look at the American take on handguns during that war …

https://utreon.com/c/forgottenweapons/
http://www.floatplane.com/channel/For…

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.forgottenweapons.com

October 5, 2024

Scary words of 2024 – “Luckily, FEMA is on the case”

Filed under: Environment, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

As I recounted a few days back, I was relieved to hear from my friend in the Asheville NC area after the region absorbed the damage from Hurricane Helene. Tom Knighton had a similar experience:

A friend of mine lives at the edge of where Helene did her worst. He just got power back on yesterday and was finally able to let me know he was OK. I was worried for obvious reasons.

In the deepest, worst parts of where the storm ripped things to shreds, they’re trying to just make it to the next day. They’re struggling to find clean drinking water, food, shelter, the works.

Luckily, FEMA is on the case.

They took to social media yesterday and posted this crap.

That’s right. People who don’t have internet, phone service, or electricity should call, download an app, or log onto the FEMA website.

I won’t ask how stupid can the federal government be, but I’m worried they’d take it as a challenge.

Back in the day, FEMA would roll into a disaster area with paper applications and facilitate all of that right there. While the internet and smartphones are glorious things, this is a prime example of when they’re a terrible option for people.

Right now, American citizens are struggling. They’re thankful to be alive and are working their butts off to keep themselves alive. They’ve paid taxes their entire lives, and now that they need some of theirs back, their federal government is telling them to do what is physically impossible for many of them.

I can’t help but see this and think that their claims of having enough money in spite of spending hundreds of billions on illegal immigrants ring a tad hollow.

If they have the money, why not put boots on the ground getting people signed up for any assistance they may be entitled to?

Honestly, while I’ve commented before about the gross incompetence of the government in disaster response — and I’ll agree that maliciousness is most definitely a possibility, if not a probability in these instances — this is just weapons-grade … whatever, be it stupidity, meanness, or a combination of both.

Heads should roll.

Update: David Warren notes that it’s not merely FEMA incompetence, it’s active deterrence for private relief efforts by all federal agencies.

From the Internet (for instance updates from Elon Musk), we note that non-governmental charitable efforts are not merely “discouraged”. The government is seizing and impounding desperately-needed local goods and services. The rest of the federal bureaucracy is also “chipping in”, to stifle relief efforts. The FAA, for instance, is restricting private aircraft with supplies, and making it almost impossible to fly drones, demanding that flights be individually approved by their slothful trolls. Those who wish to bring help to the survivors have both the wreckage of the storm, and government agents to block them.

This is how things work in this world, and have worked, since the Reformation, when the state took over welfare, hospitals, schools, and all other eleemosynary institutions. Rather than allow inspiring expressions of Christian charity, they became the means for cynical political posturing and control. And with “democracy”, we have detailed laws and policies, to prevent the people from helping themselves — as they would do, by laws of nature.

Did South Korea Provoke the Korean War?

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

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 4 Oct 2024

Was South Korea on the verge of invading North Korea in 1949? Today Indy looks at the bloody fighting across the Korean border in the years leading up to war. Then he asks the question, why did Kim finally decide to invade South Korea in the early months of 1950?
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David Friedman on falling birth rates

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

In the west, generally speaking, female employment and economic power has been rising and birth rates have been falling, except among religious minorities. David Friedman provides some explanations:

“Tetra Pak® – Housewife at the dairy counter in a Swedish shop” by Tetra Pak is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

One possible explanation is changes in norms and legal rules that make mate search more difficult. An example is a norm against dating fellow employees and a stronger norm against dating someone who has authority over you or you have some authority over.

For many people, their job is the only context in which they routinely interact with lots of other people, the best environment for mate search. The interaction often provides a way of evaluating someone for characteristics such as honesty and competence as well as compatibility, much harder to do in the context of dating, harder still in computer dating. It works better for people who not only are fellow employees but are actually working together, which often means one just above the other in the office hierarchy.

The same issue arises in the university context. Undergraduates are free to date each other — mate search is arguably one of the main functions of college. Junior faculty members, likely to be unmarried, are commonly not supposed to date students, even students not taking classes from them, certainly not students who are. I am not sure what current norms are for graduate student/undergraduate interaction, expect graduate student/faculty romance to be at least somewhat frowned upon, especially if the faculty member has some authority over the student which is likely if they are in the same field, the context in which they are most likely to get know each other.

Another cause for declining birth rates might be changing norms of courtship. I have not been part of that market for over forty years but I gather from what younger people say online that many men believe that making advances that do not turn out to be wanted is not only embarrassing but dangerous, that they risk being accused of harassment or some related offense. In the student context, many men believe that if a romantic partner changes her mind she can get him into a great deal of trouble by taking advantage of a college disciplinary process heavily biased against men. I do not know to what degree that belief is true but many men believe it is, which could be expected to discourage courtship.

Along related lines:

    Also, when I was working for a big time international consulting firm, they tried to come out with a formal rule that said that you were allowed to ask out a co-worker, but only one time. If they said no, you could never ask again. Apparently the Italians howled with laughter and insisted that if this rule was enforced in Italy, no one would ever have kids, as the typical Italian courtship approach involves like a dozen rejections before ultimately the woman finally gives in. (GoneAnon)

That cannot be the full explanation since Italian birth rates are down too. Since birth rates are down in all or almost all developed countries and many less developed ones, it is worth investigating how widespread the relevant norms are.

Housewife Becoming a Low Status Profession

For a very long time, the default system for producing and rearing children was a married couple, with the husband producing income and the wife in charge of running the household and rearing the children. Over recent decades, the woman’s role in that division of labor has become a low status activity, lower status than making a living in the marketplace, much lower than professional success.1 Being an unmarried adult woman used to be, in most contexts, low status, on the presumption that if she could have caught a man she would have. At present, in much of western society, that has reversed — being a married housewife is lower status than being an employed single woman.

    …arguments from the stay-at-home moms I know, who say people are constantly giving them grief about it, and who are often looking for some part-time make-work job they can take just so people will stop giving them grief about being a stay-at-home mother (Scott Alexander)

It is possible for a married woman to have both a job and children or for an unmarried woman to have children, but the former is more difficult than for a full time housewife, the latter much more difficult.

The Woodworker (1940) – Vocational training film

Filed under: Education, Tools, USA, Woodworking — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Charlie Dean Archives
Published Aug 10, 2013

http://archive.org/details/Woodwork1940

Woodworking in mills, construction and cabinetmaking.

CharlieDeanArchives – Archive footage from the 20th century making history come alive!

October 4, 2024

You know the jig is up for “renewables” when even Silicon Valley techbros turn against it

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

JoNova on the remarkably quick change of opinion among the big tech companies on the whole renewable energy question:

Google, Oracle, Microsoft were all raving fans of renewable energy, but all of them have given up trying to reach “net zero” with wind and solar power. In the rush to feed the baby AI gargoyle, instead of lining the streets with wind turbines and battery packs, they’re all suddenly buying, building and talking about nuclear power. For some reason, when running $100 billion dollar data centres, no one seems to want to use random electricity and turn them on and off when the wind stops. Probably because without electricity AI is a dumb rock.

In a sense, AI is a form of energy. The guy with the biggest gigawatts has a head start, and the guy with unreliable generators isn’t in the race.

It’s all turned on a dime. It was only in May that Microsoft was making the “biggest ever renewable energy agreement” in order to power AI and be carbon neutral. Ten minutes later and it’s resurrecting the old Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Lucky Americans don’t blow up their old power plants.

Oracle is building the world’s largest datacentre and wants to power it with three small modular reactors. Amazon Web Services has bought a data centre next to a nuclear plant, and is running job ads for a nuclear engineer. Recently, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, spoke about small modular reactors. The chief of Open AI also happens to chair the boards of two nuclear start-ups.

October 3, 2024

Refuting one old myth about “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre”

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

In the visible portion of a pay-walled post, Andrew Doyle explains why we should stop using the hoary old anti-free speech cliché that was refuted nearly 50 years ago by the US Supreme Court:

There are few people who are courageous enough to openly admit that they oppose freedom of speech, and so we would be forgiven for thinking that the authoritarian mindset is rare. In truth, those who believe that censorship can be justified typically resort to a set of hackneyed and specious arguments. It doesn’t seem to matter how often these misconceptions are conclusively rebutted, they continue to be trotted out with depressing regularity.

Take yesterday’s Vice Presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz, in which one of these very misconceptions was parroted once again. This is how it happened:

    JD Vance: You guys attack us for not believing in democracy. The most sacred right under the United States democracy is the First Amendment. You yourself have said there’s no First Amendment right to misinformation. Kamala Harris wants to …

    Tim Walz: Or threatening, or hate speech …

    JD Vance: … use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That is a threat to democracy that will long outlive this present political moment. I would like Democrats and Republicans to both reject censorship. Let’s persuade one another. Let’s argue about ideas, and then let’s come together afterwards.

    Tim Walz: You can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme Court test.

The cliché that “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre” originates in the 1917 United States Supreme Court ruling against Charles Schenck, a socialist who had issued a broadside calling for young men to refuse military conscription and was convicted under the Espionage Act. These were the circumstances under which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the statement: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘Fire!’ in a theatre and causing a panic”. Note that the word “falsely” is invariably dropped when quoted by advocates for censorship.

Leaving that telling little edit aside, it should be remembered that this was never a legally binding statement. Walz maintains that this is “the Supreme Court test”, but Holmes merely used the analogy to justify upholding Schenck’s prosecution. In fact, the decision of the court in Schenck v. United States was overruled in 1969.

Do I need to say that I didn’t watch the debate? I don’t even watch the debates when I actually have a vote to cast, so I’m going on highly selective sources to at least pretend to care about the VP debate. I do like a waspish line on almost any politician, so Bridget Phetasy’s description gave me a mental image of the event that seems highly truthy: “The vibe of this debate is adult confronting the coach who molested him”. J.D. Tuccille has more:

To illustrate the contrast between the recent presidential debate and this week’s vice-presidential match, I’ll say that I dread either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris taking office as president, but I fear the policies of veep hopefuls J.D. Vance and Tim Walz. At the top of both party’s tickets are individuals of uncertain competence and shaky basic decency, while their sidekicks come off as the designated adults, ready to step in if the winning presidential candidate falters, and more than excited to implement their chosen programs, God help us. That said, Vance had a much better night than Walz.

From the very beginning, J.D. Vance gave us a glimpse of what Trump might be like minus a personality disorder and with focus. He looked cool and collected, with his arguments organized in his head. He was also able to quickly pivot to address — or dodge (this is politics, after all) — the CBS moderators’ questions.

By contrast, Walz appeared like he was sweat-soaking his notes into illegibility as he tried to remember which part of the previous night’s memorized cram session he should spit out. He eventually regained some of his footing, though he generally seemed nervous and unprepared.

“The vibe of this debate is adult confronting the coach who molested him,” quipped podcaster and writer Bridget Phetasy, who isn’t known for being merciful.

The Democrat’s discomfort probably came to a head when he was asked to explain why he long claimed to have been in Hong Kong in 1989, with front-row seats to the Tiananmen Square massacre, when news reports and photographic evidence showed he was at home in Nebraska. Much hemming, hawing and references to a small-town upbringing ensued, which was painful to watch. The closest he came to admitting he lied was conceding, “I’m a knucklehead at times” and that he “misspoke.”

D-Day 80th Anniversary Special, Part 2: Landings with firearms expert Jonathan Ferguson

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

Royal Armouries
Published Jun 12, 2024

This year marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of France which took place on 6th June 1944. From landing on the beaches of Normandy, the Allies would push the Nazi war machine and breach Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.

To commemorate this, we’re collaborating with IWM to release a special two-part episode as Jonathan will look at some of the weapons that influenced and shaped this historic moment in history.

Part 2 is all about the pivotal landings, including allied efforts to aid in its success.

0:00 Intro
0:25 Twin Vickers K Gun
2:03 Pointe du Hoc
2:45 Water off a DUKW’s back?
3:50 Magazines x3
4:07 Usage & History
5:50 Bring up the PIAT!
7:00 Dispelling (Or Projecting via Spigot) Myths
7:55 PIAT Firing Process
9:50 PIAT Details
10:31 Usage in D-Day
13:19 Pegasus Bridge
15:05 MG 42
15:41 Defensive Machine Gun
16:37 1200 RPM
17:35 Replaceable Barrel
19:08 Usage in D-Day
21:37 Sexton Self-Propelled Gun
21:33 Artillery in D-Day
22:15 Run-In Shoot
22:40 The Need for Mobile Artillery
23:25 Usage in D-Day
24:21 17-Pounder Gun
25:11 Function & Usage
26:05 Usage in D-Day
28:00 IWM at HMS Belfast
30:27 Outro
(more…)

QotD: Historical echoes in the American left and right

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

My initial impression is that the Juggs operate like the commies do/did. Fill in the boxes, even if nothing makes sense. Don’t take responsibility. It’s how one somehow gets a Brandon at the top.

The Trump movement does have some real [historical Nazi] characteristics. Many low-level people feel remarkably empowered to do things, to get creative to help the cause (and also make some coin; how many Trump medals, flags, and coffee cups does one buy?), and to get out there and just stir the pot for the Orange guy. Then we saw The Donald at the top not exercising real power, other than to exhort others to get shit done, whatever unnamed shit that needed doing.

My first run-through suggests that calling the Juggs and their minions “filthy commies” actually is not just a kneejerk response, but it lands mostly true, in the ways that matter. The Jugg argument that Trump and his people are a bunch of Nazis also has some real truthy elements to it as well (though the true elements are generally probably far afield from the Nazi stuff the Juggs have in mind).

Commies and Nazis gain traction when the basic job of governance is found lacking, and the caliber of people tasked with getting things back in line is not up to the task. Then the various totalitarian solutions become more popular. Even when the intentions are pure (I will give most of the Trump people that assumption), unfettered ambitions, allowed to flower, will go bad if the normal checks and balances of the system are all out of whack. It is just human nature.

Our systems are all out of whack. That is why AOC can call for impeachment of [six US Supreme Court justices] with a straight face, and there is no broadly based “hey, wait a minute, Bucko” response. Things might be too far gone, and there is no way to pull back into a system that actually well serves the average American (think of what constituencies the typical elected official actually serves — the deep state apparat, the ultra-rich guys, and the corporate lobbyists). It all means the Trump movement is a tool, not to restore something, but to accelerate the “get through it and start afresh”. With that in mind, the November results tend to be more of “six of one, half a dozen of the other” than people think they are.

“Dutch”, commenting on “How Juggs Think the World Works”, Founding Questions, 2024-07-02.

October 2, 2024

The Korean War 015 – The Liberation of Seoul – October 1, 1950

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

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 1 Oct 2024

My, how the tide has turned. Less than two weeks ago, US X Corps landed at Incheon, far behind enemy lines, and already this week they take Seoul, the South Korean capital. Not without a fight, however, and the result is serious tension in US High Command. There are more UN advances in the field, though, and troops of US 8th Army advance north, and link up with those of X Corps, making a solid, united front, trapping many thousands of North Korean soldiers in South Korea.
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How Gold Rush Miners Ate in the Wild West

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

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Jun 18, 2024

Biscuits topped with salt pork milk gravy

City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1881

Food prices skyrocketed during the Gold Rush. A single egg could cost $1 (in the mid-1800s!), and a barrel of flour went from $3 to a whopping $400, which equals about $16,000 today. Once you had some flour and a few other staples, including the newly invented canned evaporated milk, you could make these biscuits and gravy.

I love biscuits and gravy, and while the best biscuits and gravy I’ve ever had will always be my grandpa’s, this is pretty good. My biscuits turned out a little flat, but that’s just because I forgot the baking soda.

    Cream of Tartar Biscuits
    Mrs. Milliken
    One quart of flour, three heaping teaspoonfuls of pure cream of tartar, a piece of butter two-thirds the size of an egg, well worked in flour, one heaping teaspoonful of Babbit’s salaratus, dissolved in sweet milk. Make the dough as soft as can be kneaded conveniently; roll a half inch thick, cut in biscuits, and bake in a quick oven.
    — Los Angeles Cookery, 1881

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October 1, 2024

Devastation in the Carolinas

Filed under: Environment, Personal, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

My oldest friend moved to the United States many years ago, moving around the country as his job dictated, but a few years back he and his wife found their perfect house near Asheville, NC. We had emailed to see how they were doing, but got no answer. Yesterday, I got a call from my friend’s cell phone to say that he and his wife were fine and they’d taken in an elderly neighbour until things get back to normal, but they currently don’t have electricity, land line telephone, or municipal water, but they’re otherwise fine. Their house is well above flood level, and he has sufficient camping supplies to keep them going for a while. He loaned his chainsaw to another neighbour who was trying to organize work parties to cut away fallen trees and branches and get more of the local roads open again (my friend recently had lyme disease and doesn’t want to trust his hands doing something as risky as running a chainsaw). We kept the call as short as possible, as he’ll have to manually recharge his phone until power is restored.

Virginia Postrel is originally from that same area of western North Carolina and northwestern South Carolina and reports on how her family in the area is doing in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene:

One of the many examples of the “horizontal forest” on nearly every road in Greenville, SC.
Photo by Virginia’s brother Sam M. Inman IV.

If you read my autobiographical reminiscences, you may have realized that I have family in Upstate South Carolina and western North Carolina, which have been hit hard by the unexpected ferocity of Hurricane Helene. Power has been out in Greenville, SC, for days and roads are nearly impassable because of downed trees on nearly every block.

My brother Sam, who went out in a truck on Friday to buy gasoline for his generator, said only about half the stations that had working pumps and were running out of gas quickly. “Lines of cars around the block … reminiscent of the 1970s”, he texted. He went out again today and found a stark difference between local QuikTrip stations and others. At QT, the lines were longer but flowed faster because stations had closed all but a single entrance and exit. Elsewhere, stations were chaotic traffic jams. At one point, he found himself unable to exit after fueling up because the cars behind and in front of him left no to maneuver room. (He persuaded the one behind him to ease away from his bumper.)

The assisted living place where my mother lives has a generator and at first continued to operate its kitchen and elevators. By today, however, the generator had become unreliable, the lights were flickering, few employees could get to work, and the kitchen was offering dry Cheerios for breakfast. Sam brought our mom to his house, which has no power. He later realized that he needed to return to get her medicine, which usually is delivered daily. I can only imagine how residents who don’t have local family — or who are in the memory care wing! — are managing.

Even people who were prepared with generators, many bought after a blizzard 20 years ago, needed gasoline to power them and, they soon realized, adapters to connect them to household appliances. The adapter aisle at Home Depot was quickly depleted.

The good news is that food is available. Grocery stores are operating more or less as normal, assuming you can get to them. When you sell frozen food, you apparently install large, reliable generators.

Meanwhile, my cousin in Asheville finally got weak cell signal back today. We’d been unable to communicate with her before now. With her husband, pets, and 95-year-old mother, she’s evacuating to Winston-Salem through the weekend, hoping Duke Power will live up to promises that power will be restored by Friday but preparing in case it takes a few days longer.

Although terrible in some areas, the flooding isn’t as bad as it might be, thanks to the region’s many man-made lakes. They absorbed water that otherwise would have flowed into populated towns.

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