World War Two
Published 11 May 2021She is much more than the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and once she tasted political life, she soon followed her own interests, changing what it means to be a politician’s wife.
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May 12, 2021
The World’s First Lady – Eleanor Roosevelt – WW2 Biography Special
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Looking at a highly influential document among progressive groups
Matthew Yglesias on Tema Okun’s “The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture” and its role in furthering progressive emotions over what they consider to be the most racist society in human history (that is, the modern west but especially the United States):
Click to see full-size image.
Debating abstractions is difficult and frustrating, and the discourse about “wokeness” and “cancel culture” has become a snakepit of semantic debates, bad-faith actors, and people of goodwill talking past each other.
So I want to talk instead about one specific document, not because I think it’s the most important document in the world, but because I don’t really see anyone who I read and respect talking about it even though I’ve seen it arise multiple times in real life.
I’m talking about “The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture” by Tema Okun, which I first heard of this year from the leader of a progressive nonprofit group whose mission I strongly support. He told me that some people on the staff had started wielding this document in internal disputes and it was causing big headaches. Once I had that on my radar, I heard about it from a couple of other nonprofit workers. And I saw it come up at the Parent Teacher Association for my kid’s school.
It’s an excerpt from a longer book called Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups that was developed as a tool for Okun’s consulting and training gigs.
But today, even though it’s not what I would call a particularly intellectually influential work in highbrow circles — even ones that are very “woke” or left-wing — it does seem to be incredibly widely circulated. You see it everywhere from the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence to the Sierra Club of Wisconsin to an organization of West Coast Quakers.
Which is to say it’s sloshing around quite broadly in progressive circles even though I’ve never heard a major writer, scholar, or political leader praise or recommend it. And to put it bluntly, it’s really dumb. In my more conspiratorial moments, I wonder if it’s not a psyop devised by some modern-day version of COINTELPRO to try to destroy progressive politics in the United States by making it impossible to run effective organizations. Even if not, I think the document is worth discussing on its own terms because it is broadly influential enough that if everyone actually agrees with me that it’s bad, we should stop citing it and object when other people do. And alternatively, if there are people who think it’s good, it would be nice to hear them say so, and then we could have a specific argument about that. But while I don’t think this document is exactly typical, I do think it’s emblematic of some broader, unfortunate cultural trends.
H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.
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Why a band saw is BETTER than a table saw for some rip cuts
Stumpy Nubs
Published 6 Feb 2021We identify the times when a band saw is the better choice for rip cuts, and how to get the best results with it.
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QotD: The true artist
Being an artist means knowing you’re right when everyone is telling you you’re wrong — but even more, it means knowing you’re wrong when everyone is telling you you’re right.
Christopher Shinn, Twitter, 2018-10-04.
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May 11, 2021
Wheellocks – Real or Fake? And What is “Fake”, Really?
Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Aug 2016http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
When someone makes a “fake” historical gun, they can do so with the intent to deceive or be up-front with the gun’s new manufacture. Those acknowledged reproductions are a great option to have — guns like Uberti reproduction revolvers give us an excellent opportunity to shoot antique designs without the cost of true originals and without the risk of damaging them. On the other hand, creating “antiques” fraudulently to deceive someone into believing they are actually originals is a reprehensible practice.
What about when you don’t know, though? In the Victorian era, it was popular to have fancy antique guns — like these wheellock pistols. Just like today, not everyone could afford to actually go buy a 300-year-old ornate gun, though. So, many people would commission new replicas made (and I’m sure plenty of fraudulent copies were created as well). Fast forward a hundred years or more to the present day, and we have a bit of a conundrum for the potential buyer. Is a gun 100 years old or 400? It takes some substantial experience and knowledge to be able to tell the difference — and yet an acknowledged Victorian copy is still a potentially fantastic piece of workmanship and collectible in its own right.
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QotD: The (disappointing) sex lives of the rich and famous
Severian, “Junkies”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-01-18.
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May 10, 2021
They don’t make politicians like Lyndon Johnson anymore … thank goodness
Another of the reader-contributed book reviews at Astral Codex Ten considers the personal history and astounding political career of LBJ, as told by biographer Robert Caro:
2: LBJ’s guide to amassing power
(i) Seduce older men
(Eww, not like that.) LBJ had a gift for becoming a “professional son” to any powerful man. At college, LBJ sat at professors’ feet and stared at them as if they were God’s gift to the educational system. LBJ constantly ran errands for the college president, Prexy Evans, and wrote glowing editorials about him.
LBJ’s fellow students were not amused. One said:
“Words won’t come to describe how Lyndon acted toward the faculty — how kowtowing he was, how suck-assing he was, how brown-nosing he was.”
But this flattery paid off. Evans put LBJ in charge of the financial aid program. Yes, really. And when other students wrote nasty comments about LBJ in the yearbook (e.g. the time he stole the Student Council elections), Evans ordered professors to cut out those pages with razors.
LBJ would repeat this flattery with President (Franklin) Roosevelt, Speaker Rayburn, and Senator Russell.
(ii) Treat your employees like dirt
LBJ wanted his staff to be absolutely loyal, so he could direct them like chess pieces. He found their weak points — their weight, their divorce — and mercilessly taunted them. I’m not going to describe the crude things he did.
Before his marriage, LBJ treated Lady Bird like an angel; once they were married, he treated her like one of his employees.
[…]
(v) Use money in new and exciting ways
LBJ funneled government contracts to Brown & Root, a construction company. In return, they gave his campaign gobs of money. During the 1948 election, two of his campaign staff ate at a cafe and then accidentally left behind a brown paper bag containing $50,000 in cash (more than $500,000 in today’s money). Luckily no one stole it.
Using all of this money, LBJ was able to make the media say whatever he wanted about his opponent, Coke Stevenson. He hired “missionaries” to hang out in bars and spread rumors about Stevenson. Thousands of federal workers also repeated LBJ’s talking points.
(vi) Cheat
But Stevenson was a storybook character, so money couldn’t defeat him. He simply told the people of Texas that he would continue to do the right thing, and they believed him. LBJ had lost the 1941 Senate election because Pappy O’Daniel had cheated better than he did. Now LBJ would cheat, and he would cheat big.
In 1940s Texas, basically every type of election fraud was real: Dead people voting, county bosses writing down whatever numbers they wanted, Mexicans being hired to cross the border and vote, etc. By buying tens of thousands of votes, LBJ was almost able to close the gap between him and Coke Stevenson. That wasn’t enough, so six days after the election, Luis Salas “found” 200 more votes for LBJ, giving him a margin of victory of 0.01%.
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Baelin’s Route – An Epic NPC Man Adventure
Viva La Dirt League
Published 9 May 2021Baelin (Rowan Bettjeman), a simple background NPC in the video game Skycraft has been walking the same route for as long as he can remember. However, his peaceful (and mindless) routine is violently shaken as a short-tempered Adventurer (Ben Van Lier) drags him off his path and into a dangerous quest to escort a mysterious NPC girl named Willow (Phoenix Cross) across the harsh world of Azerim.
ORIGINAL ‘BAELIN’S ROUTE’ SOUNDTRACK: https://mikenewport.hearnow.com/
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From the comments:
Young Dad Gaming
36 minutes ago
Okay, I know people keep talking about how good the choreography is … and we need to discuss that a little further. That was almost a full minute of a single take of a fight scene from guys who make comedy videos. That in itself is impressive and should be lauded as one of the best action scenes on YouTube.
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Seventeen years of undetected crime blogging
Last year, I said “Blogging may be a stagnant backwater of the internet these days” but something definitely changed since then as new platforms have blossomed, drawing many “mainstream” writers into blogging. They’re mostly careful not to call it blogging, of course. Mere “blogging” is tired and old-fashioned and so utterly Plebeian, so their shiny new Substack sites can’t be mere “blogs” … but if it walks like a blog and quacks like a blog …
I used to publish annual traffic statistics, but the plug-in I had been using since 2009 blew up spectacularly — knocking the site offline for more than 24 hours — so I no longer have anything like a continuous data series to draw on. Over the last few years, I was regularly clocking in between one and two million “hits” in a year, but as you’d expect a significant portion of those were automated bots rather than actual human beings. Other than visitors who come here from other blogs, most of my traffic these days comes by way of various social media sites like Gab and MeWe. I used to get a fair number of visits from Twitter, but my Twitter traffic has been dwindling down to almost nothing in recent years (perhaps reflecting the decreasing diversity of viewpoints allowed on that platform).
Earlier anniversary postings:
- Sixteenth anniversary
- Fifteenth anniversary
- Fourteenth anniversary
- Thirteenth anniversary
- Twelfth anniversary
- Eleventh anniversary
- Tenth anniversary
- Ninth anniversary
- Eighth anniversary
- Seventh anniversary
- Sixth anniversary
Unfortunately, the first five years of postings — when I was merely a freeloading tenant on Jon P’s site … and eventually consuming some 90+% of his paid bandwidth and storage — aren’t accessible any more, at least I haven’t been able to get access for quite some time:
- (Very belated) Fifth anniversary
- (Premature) Fourth anniversary (a few days later, I welcomed my 150,000th visitor)
- Third anniversary
- (Belated) Second anniversary
- First anniversary
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How to use a Scrub Plane | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published 5 Feb 2021Tricks of the trade were at once, hidden from others, even within the trade itself. Paul is passing on many of those tricks as he can to ensure they get used by those that matter the most; those who love woodworking as much as he does can keep these tricks alive.
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Want to learn more about woodworking?
Go to Woodworking Masterclasses for weekly project episodes: http://bit.ly/2JeH3a9
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http://bit.ly/2BXmuei for Paul’s latest ventures on his blog
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QotD: Against the notion of the “Social Contract”
In all of his political writings, Scruton takes on the Left for scorning existing norms and customs, and for promoting a “culture of repudiation.” The Left is “negative.” It dismisses “every aspect of our cultural capital” with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of “racism,” “xenophobia,” “homophobia,” and “sexism.” Like 1984‘s “two minutes of hate,” this language tears down, intimidates, and can never build anything humane or constructive — it is nihilistic to the core. At the same time, Scruton wants to reach out to reasonable liberals who eschew ideology and who still believe in civility and the promise of national belonging. His conservatism can discern the truth in liberalism (another Aristotelian trait) while the partisans of repudiation see half the human race as enemies.
Daniel J. Mahoney, “Beyond the Culture of Repudiation”, Claremont Review of Books, 2018-06.
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May 9, 2021
Carrier vs. Carrier – The Battle of the Coral Sea – WW2 – 141 – May 9, 1942
World War Two
Published 8 May 2021This week sees a major clash between the naval forces of the Japanese and the Allies. Both sides take big damage, though on the tactical level it is a victory for the Japanese. Operationally, however, they must postpone their attacks towards Port Moresby. They are busy making plans all the while, though, for their upcoming attack against Midway Atoll in the Central Pacific. They also finally have success ending an offensive this week with the conquest of the Philippines when Corregidor falls. Japan’s ally Germany begins an offensive of their own this week on the Kerch Peninsula. The Allies, for their part, launch an offensive of their own this week against Vichy French-held Madagascar, and they take the main port, Diego Suarez.
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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss
– Mikołaj Uchman
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/Sources:
– IWM A 9471
– Narodowe Muzeum CyfroweSoundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
– Rannar Sillard – “Easy Target”
– Jo Wandrini – “Dragon King”
– Jo Wandrini – “To War!”
– Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
– Brightarm Orchestra – “On the Edge of Change”
– Reynard Seidel – “Rush of Blood”
– Craft Case – “Secret Cargo”
– Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”
– Edward Karl Hanson – “Spellbound”
– Johan Hynynen – “One More Thought”
– Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 4”
– Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
– Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
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“The PMO and senior defence officials knew [about the sexual assault allegations]. For three years. … No one cared.”
The federal government collectively and individually (in the person of Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff) continues to do their vastly unconvincing Sergeant Schultz imitation, “I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!”
John Banner as Sergeant Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes, 1965.
CBS Television promotional photo via Wikimedia Commons.
We at The Line ended a long week staring agog and aghast at Katie Telford, the prime minister’s chief of staff, who was interviewed by members of the Standing Committee on National Defence over her knowledge (such as it was) of the sexual misconduct allegations made against now-retired Army general Jonathan Vance.
Vance, until recently the chief of the defence staff, the highest position in the Canadian Armed Forces, was accused of sexual misconduct by a female subordinate in 2018, but nothing came of it because, well, hey, Telford explained. Life is complicated. Right?
We don’t really have the emotional wherewithal to summarize the entire proceeding at length. Suffice it to say that nothing new was learned. Telford’s defence continues to be the same as the ones offered by other Liberal officials — they knew there was an allegation of some kind, but not what the allegation was. And they were clearly content to leave it that way for three years. The problem for Telford, of course, is that Global News already obtained documents showing internal emails among senior staff openly discussing “sexual harassment” allegations against Vance. We accept that Telford and other high mucky-mucks didn’t know the details of the allegations, but if they didn’t know that they were related to sexual misconduct, their ignorance was a product of a deliberate, sustained multi-year effort.
Our official opposition wasn’t exactly draping itself in glory either, alas, which might explain why they remain a distant second in the polls. The Tory MPs on the committee clearly had their battle plan, and they were sticking to it: they wanted to know why Telford hadn’t told the PM that there had been allegations of some kind against Gen. Vance, or who had made that decision, if not her. We know that they wanted to know this because they asked her this 50 or so fucking times. And each time she just declined to answer, offering up some word salad instead. Yet the Tory MPs just kept going in again and again, like infantry marching into machine-gun nests in one of the dumber battles of the First World War. We assume their strategy was to create memorable soundbite moments of Telford refusing to answer, or maybe trip her up into a gotcha. But the Tories spent so much time repeating the one question Telford had already made manifestly clear she was not gonna answer that they didn’t ask a way better question: what the hell are women in the armed forces supposed to react to the fact that their government knew that there were sexual misconduct allegations against Gen. Vance, and that they just sat around and waited for him to retire three years later?
Look, we weren’t born yesterday. If we were, we wouldn’t be as exhausted as we are. (Though probably roughly equally as frightened of sudden loud noises.) We know that there is a political desire for the CPC to link Trudeau himself to the scandal. But there was a bigger, more profound scandal laying right before their eyes — everyone in the PMO and the senior levels of National Defence knew there were unanswered questions about Gen. Vance and they were all A-fucking-OK with that. For years. The right questions to ask weren’t what Trudeau knew, and when, or who chose to tell (or not tell) him this, that or the other thing. The only relevant question is how these people could dare look any female member of the military, or any of their loved ones, in the eyes.
The PMO and senior defence officials knew. For three years. They didn’t know everything, but they knew enough to know they should know more. No one cared. So Gen. Vance stayed in command, and oversaw the military’s efforts to, uh, root out sexual misconduct and end impunity among high-ranked abusers.
That’s what the CPC should have been asking about, and that’s what Canadians should be angry about. But they didn’t, and we aren’t. And that’s why nothing’s gonna change.
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Why Siege Towers are Wrong – History and Evolution
Invicta
Published 1 Feb 2021The depiction of siege towers as massed, glorified troop elevators in most modern media is completely a-historic. In this video let’s reveal the true history of the Siege Tower.
Check out The Great Courses Plus to learn about daily life in the past: http://ow.ly/DWyz30rsjSX
In this video we explore the history of siege warfare and in particular the siege tower. This begins with our earliest civilizations in the Fertile Crescent. It is here in ancient Mesopotamia that people like the Assyrians began to experiment with new siege technology such as the siege tower. We look specifically at the best example of Assyrian Warfare and the Assyrian army with the Siege of Lachish. From here, siege technology would spread to nearby Egypt and across the Mediterranean. The Greeks picked it up and helped push the technology forward with great application in the campaigns of Alexander the Great. The Roman Army then adopted the Siege Tower and worked to perfect its application. We then finally turn to the use of the Siege Tower in the middle ages. Along the way we cover lots of specific examples like The Siege of Alesia, The Siege of Jerusalem, the Siege of Masada and much more.
#History
#Documentary
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QotD: Boys
[ … ]
I admit to being a little more than angry and frustrated myself. Partially it is at a school system that won’t allow boys any physical activities where they can blow off steam. No football, soccer, hockey, baseball, dodge ball, or any other kind of game that “promotes aggression” or the “possibility of injury”. Volleyball and cross country running are all well and good but they are seasonal, and frankly, to a lot of boys; it blows. I do understand that not all boys are the “physical” sort but more are than not. While I realize no parent wants their child injured; it just seems that by denying that boys really do need a way to physically deal with aggression, you set them up for horseplay which eventually leads to fighting. How can anyone expect boys to spend all recess at the wall or standing around chatting about the weather?
Kate “The Last Amazon”, “When Biology is Destiny”, The Last Amazon, 2005-03-02.
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