The words “hype”, “fad” and “trend” were bandied about. As was my absolute favourite, “hipster fuckery”. What’s hipster fuckery, you ask? According to its utterer, it is the completely unnecessary addition of whimsical ingredients and brewing techniques, especially piled on top of each other. You’re left with a beer that is fighting itself.
Hipster fuckery is a great way to alienate potential craft beer fans.
So how about we all just agree to be innovative as hell, but stop well short of hipster fuckery? Excellent! But, umm, where is that line exactly?
Rebecca Whyman, “Beer gimmicks, pretentious nonsense and other hipster fuckery”, The Growler: Ontario Craft Beer Guide, Volume 1, Issue 3, 2018.
July 31, 2021
QotD: The dangers of “hipster fuckery” in the craft beer business
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July 30, 2021
The 100 Deadliest Days of the Holocaust Begin… – WAH 039 – July 1942, Pt .2
World War Two
Published 29 Jul 2021The extermination camps of Operation Reinhard are ready to start killing hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, starting the deadliest 100 days of the Holocaust.
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Modern vs. Vintage Plane Irons. Head-To-Head Test!
Rex Krueger
Published 28 Jul 2021This traditional woodland vise gives amazing hold and will set you up for lots of outdoor projects.
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The British government reaches deep into the bag of “nudge” tricks yet again
Britain’s public health boffins have got the government agitated enough to try major incentives to encourage British shoppers to buy healthier, lower-calorie foods. Tim Worstall explains that, because those shoppers are human beings, this suite of incentives won’t do at all what Nanny expects them to do:
Now consider how it has to work. You go shopping, you present your DimbleCard and gain points for the healthiness of that shopping basket. Lettuce and carrots galore, super, free ticket to London on the choo choo.
So, where are the chocco biccies? If you buy them when presenting your card then no choo choo for you. What happens?
The lettuce and the carrots are bought on the card, the chocco biccies are not. Everyone simply does two transactions, with DimbleCard and sans. Lots of free choo choo and no change, whatsoever, in diet.
Yes, of course people will do this. For that’s what people do. Survey the landscape of incentives in front of them then maximise their utility, the outcome, in the face of them. It’s a restricted rationality, restricted by knowledge, but it is there. Everyone will fiddle the system because that’s what it is to be human. Collecting the fire from the lightning strike is fiddling the universe, that’s just what we do.
This being why so many clever schemes to encourage or deter this or that just don’t work. This being why those detailed plans for men, if not mice, gang aft into idiocy. Because we out here, hom sap, will play whatever system there is to our benefit.
No, this will not work out like supermarket loyalty cards. Yes, it’s true, most of us do use them. But the incentive is for us to do so. The more we do use them then the more discounts we gain, the better off we are, even at the cost of that data. How does this new government one work? The less we buy of certain things the better off we are. So, less of those things will be bought using the cards.
It is not possible to insist that people must use the card to buy things. Well, not unless we’re about to descend into the dystopia desired by Caroline Lucas it’s not. There might be a card reader at the point of purchase but the supermarkets will not demand that a sale can only happen when a card is read.
Therefore there will be those sales which gain points which make prizes. There will also be those DimbleCardless sales which do not gain points, or even demerits, and are done without their being registered in the system.
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Imperial Roman army organization & structure
Military History Visualized
Published 16 Jan 2016Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/mhv
The Imperial Roman Army consisted of the provincial armies, the garrison in Rome and the Roman Navy.
The brunt of the forces was in the Provincial armies that were made up by the legions and their auxiliaries in total around 240k men. The Garrison in Rome was about 15k men, although few in numbers these units were the most powerful in political terms. Finally, the Navy consisted of about 45k men.
*Sources*
Le Bohec, Yann: The Imperial Roman ArmyWebster, Graham: The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries A.D
Nemeth, Eduard; Fodorean, Florin: Römische Militärgeschichte
Fields, Nic: The Roman Army of the Principate 27 BC – AD 117
Culham, Phyllis: “Imperial Rome at War”. In: The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World
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QotD: Bismarck on history
Otto von Bismarck
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July 29, 2021
In The Shadow of Napoleon – The 2nd French Empire Before 1870 I GLORY & DEFEAT
realtimehistory
Published 12 Jul 2021Support Glory & Defeat: https://realtimehistory.net/gloryandd…
After Napoleon I had conquered and then lost Europe, France went through multiple revolutions. In 1851, Napoleon’s nephew and French president Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte took control and in 1852 crowned himself Emperor Napoleon III. The new French Empire wanted to regain the glory of Napoleon’s uncle and together with his wife Empress Eugenie he ruled a state known for lavish balls and spending.
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https://realtimehistory.net/podcast – interviews with historians and background info for the show.» LITERATURE
Arand, Tobias: 1870/71. Die Geschichte des Deutsch-Französischen Kriegs erzählt in Einzelschicksalen. Hamburg 2018Arand, Tobias/Bunnenberg, Christian (Hrsg.): Karl Klein. Fröschweiler Chronik. Kriegs- und Friedensbilder aus dem Krieg 1870. Kommentierte Edition. Hamburg 2021
Gouttman, Alain. La grande défaite de 1870-1871. Paris 2015
Herre, Franz: Eugénie. Kaiserin der Franzosen. Stuttgart, München 2000
Rieder, Heinz: Napoleon III. Abenteurer und Imperator. München 1998
» SOURCES
Bonaparte, Prince Napoléon-Louis: Des Idées Napoléoniennes. London 1839Marx, Karl: Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Napoleon. Hamburg 1869
Maupassant, Guy de: Bel-Ami. Paris 1901
N.N. (Hrsg): Fontane, Theodor. Aus den Tagen der Okkupation. Eine Osterreise durch Nordfrankreich und Elsaß-Lothingen 1871. Berlin (Ost) 1984
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Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Cathérine Pfauth, Dr. Tobias Arand, Jesse Alexander
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All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2021
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Buster Keaton, British Imperialism, and the Era of Spectacle | B2W: ZEITGEIST! I E.23 Spring 1924
TimeGhost History
Published 28 Jul 2021There’s no business like show business and in the spring of 1924, you can see why. Buster Keaton and Hollywood as a whole are producing some iconic films, the British Empire is putting on a massive exhibition, and there is even talk of a death ray.
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Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, the Mecca of free speech
In Tuesday’s NP Platformed, Colby Cosh pays tribute to one of the holy places of free speech, Speakers’ Corner:
“Speakers’ Corner – Hyde Park – London” by Manolo Blanco is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
We detect a slightly surprising absence of international media commotion over a dreadful event that happened Sunday: a woman giving a critique of Islam at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park was slashed in the face by a fanatic. The victim, 39-year-old Hatun Tash, is said to be a familiar figure at the Mecca of free speech. And, yes, NP Platformed uses this geographic metaphor intentionally.
Probably every country has sites consecrated to its distinctive political ideals. Speakers’ Corner is different: it represents the ideal of absolute free speech for, and to, the entire world. A non-American visiting the Lincoln Memorial is there to honour the memory of a great man; if he visits the Washington Monument, it’s probably for the purpose of making phallic-themed jokes. But for 150 years, non-Englishmen visiting Hyde Park, from Lenin to Bishop Tutu, have been awestruck by the freedom that radical speakers enjoy at the original among the world’s many Speakers’ Corners.
Few Londoners pay it much mind anymore — not since the 19th century, when the nigh-inviolable freedom of speech enjoyed on the corner actually served to endanger governments and give impetus to liberal social change. Since about 1900, it has mostly been a place, almost a rehearsal space, for the tireless cranks of any given moment: dietary Savonarolas, village atheists, suffragettes, Trots and syndicalists and Maoists. They have been joined by generations of Muslims preaching various Islamic doctrines or far-out varieties of the faith.
Foreigners, however, have often been astonished to discover that Speakers’ Corner mostly lives up to its ideals, or that any place could. The British state really lets those people say those things in public without locking them up. The park has seen plenty of affrays in its time, but fights have become rare as the ritual purpose of the space has become universally understood.
Rare, too, are the United Kingdom’s infringements on its inviolability. After the Bloody Sunday shootings of 1972, three Irish republicans were arrested under the Treason Felony Act of 1848 for having proposed war against Britain in Hyde Park. They were found guilty of lesser charges, sentenced to time served and sent back across the Irish Sea, but Irish nationalists rightly dined out on the incident for many years, and the criminal offence of “treason felony” has never since been heard of in any English courtroom.
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MAT 49: Iconic SMG of Algeria and Indochina
Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Jan 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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The MAT-49 was developed by France after World War Two to satisfy the need for a more modern submachine gun to replace the MAS-38. The military had come around to standardizing on the 9x19mm cartridge for its pistols and subguns, and the 7.65mm MAS-38 was not feasible to convert. All three state arsenals and the Hotchkiss company submitted designs, and the Tulle arsenal won out with a gun that borrows substantially from the American M3 “Grease Gun”.
About 700,000 MAT-49s were produced between 1949 and 1979, when it (along with the MAS 49/56 rifle) was replaced by the FAMAS bullpup rifle. During that time it saw substantial combat in France’s colonial wars, notable Algeria and Indochina. Despite being a relatively heavy weapon, it came to be well liked by all who used it for its durability and reliability.
Many thanks to the anonymous collector who let me take a look at this piece and bring you a video on it!
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QotD: An opera called Margaret
Dominic Sandbrook, The Great British Dream Factory, 2015.
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July 28, 2021
How Hitler Created the World’s Worst Traffic Jam – WW2 – 152B – July 27, 1942
World War Two
Published 27 Jul 2021“I said DAMN, this traffic jam … How I hate to be late, hurts my motor to go so slow. Time I get home my supper be cold. Damn, this traffic jam.” (James Taylor, the Eastern Front, 1942)
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Possible relic from the 1917 Halifax explosion discovered by scuba diver
If you’re not familiar with the Halifax explosion, I collected some information about it here. One of the lesser-known ships involved in the disaster was the schooner St. Bernard, which was completely destroyed in the explosion of the cargo ship SS Mont Blanc after it collided with the Belgian relief ship Imo in the Narrows:
The schooner St. Bernard, which was destroyed when the Mont Blanc exploded nearby.
Photo from the Nova Scotia Museum.
A Halifax scuba diver has found something that could shed a little new light on one aspect of a dark chapter in Nova Scotian history.
Bob Chaulk has explored Halifax harbour from the Bedford Basin to Chebucto Head with hundreds of scuba dives over the last 30 years. But this spring, a routine dive in a small cove in the Narrows between Halifax’s two bridges led him to a big find.
Amid the usual assortment of scuttling crabs, polished bottles and bits of plastic trash, he came upon a huge, heavy object in Tufts Cove.
“When I first saw the anchor, I thought, OK, there’s a wreck here, some old derelict came in here. But there’s no way a ship that size could have gotten in here,” he said.
He explored until his air just about ran out. He estimated the anchor was about two metres long and weighed 135 kilograms. A ship that needed an anchor that size could not have sailed into shallow, rocky Tufts Cove, he thought.
So how did the old anchor get there?
He looked across the Narrows and found himself staring right at ground zero for the Halifax Explosion, which killed nearly 2,000 people. On Dec. 6, 1917, the vessel Imo and the Mont Blanc, a ship carrying explosive cargo, collided. The Mont Blanc caught fire and drifted into Pier 6, a space occupied today by the giant Halifax Shipyard building. The St. Bernard, a lumber schooner, was also at the dock.
“So now you have two ships side by side with a dock in between them. Here’s the Mont Blanc, here’s the Imo,” Chaulk said, showing the ships’ positions with his hands. “This one blows up, destroys this one, and I contend the anchor [of the St. Bernard] went through the air and landed right here.”
A modern day view of the Narrows, showing Tufts Cove to the north and the huge Halifax Shipyard complex on the south side of the channel.
Google Maps.
I suspect that the paved area to the right of the cove proper is largely landfill and the shoreline of 1917 probably followed much closer to the railway line.
H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.
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Tank Chats #117 | Stridsvagn 103 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 5 Feb 2021Curator David Willey discusses the Cold War era Swedish Stridsvagn 103, also known as the ‘S-Tank’. Developed in the 1950s, the S-Tank was the first production tank to be powered by a turbine engine and it was also the only mass produced tank since the Second World War to not have a turret. A truly unconventional tank.
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QotD: Lawrence and the Hejaz railway
Christian Wolmar, Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways, 2010.
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