Quotulatiousness

October 15, 2026

Nearly half of Cornell students report being “harassed”

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

William M Briggs discusses the most recent sexual harassment survey results from Cornell, where — if you take the numbers at face value — the situation is dire:

You may have heard of the depressing contretemps at Cornell of late (written in the lady’s (a hotelie) own words here, but I cannot recommended reading it). It is not a coincidence that Cornell recently asked all students about how much sexual assault and harassment they enjoyed. It is that survey which interests us, because it so closely matches the breed and we need to understand their shortcomings.

Don’t put too much blame on Cornell. New York has a law that makes them give this survey every two years. This allows bureaucrats and rulers to think that they have done something good, which is the main reason for their existence, regardless how silly the results are.

Cornell gave the “instrument” — toot, toot — to 6,000 students, but only had “757 full completions”, which is a return rate of just over 12%.

How would the missing 88% have answered? This is a key question. The assumption sociologists make is: exactly the same. Yet, as we’ll see, it is far from impossible that those who blew off the survey would have responded differently than those who did answer, especially on the questions I’ll highlight.

Naturally, a lot more ladies than men answered, because women like to “play quiz” more than men. They also had a handful of students who, it seems, were unable to identify their sex; non-science majors, one supposes. All the extra ladies would have been fine if Cornell had broken the results out by sex, which they always didn’t. It will make a difference.

Cornell reported 49% of the students claimed that they “experienced any form of harassment”. My guess, since I am an arch sexist, is that the great bulk of that 49% were female reports. We never learn, but never mind. Let’s take the number as given.

If we extrapolate the survey results, as all good sociologists and rulers do, we would announce that half of all students were harassed. Half. Half, my dear readers, is an enormous number. Half would suggest that a small army of mouth-breathing harassers, likely from the Poetry Department, skulk around campus hiding behind bushes waiting for their chance to harass. Who could tolerate such an environment where half of all students are so abused?

I’ll tell you who: students. They can tolerate it. Because similar numbers of harassed were also reported in 2021 and 2023. Which can only mean one of two things. One: students come, they get harassed, then they come back for more of that rousing hands-on experience. They must be loving them some harassment to stick around when half get the business.

Or two: the survey and its results are, to use a technical word, bullshit.

I favor the second explanation, though I don’t entirely dismiss the first.

1980s gun myths from TV shows

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

On Substack, John Van Stry discusses one of the myths about guns that were commonplace in 1980s cop shows on TV:

Okay, so he’s talking handguns, but this is still kinda on-topic.

Decades ago, and I do mean decades, on one of the many police drama TV shows that existed in the 70’s, there was one about cops (of course there was!) where they followed a different set of officers (not detectives, street cops — kinda1) each week.

So in that particular episode we had these guys (I think it was two? It was more than one) going around and robbing banks and they were shooting (and of course killing) people at the banks. They were using “HIGH POWERED WEAPONS” (emphasis theirs) of some sort. I don’t remember if it was rifles (AR-15’s weren’t the boogie man back then) or pistols. I think it was pistols though, Magnums perhaps?

Anyway, cutting to the chase, we’ve got two officers “staking out” the bank that they believe is going to be next and all they’ve got are their wimpy-wimpy-wimpy (emphasis theirs) .38 revolvers. Because everyone knows being shot by a .38 is no more dangerous than being shot by a B-B gun!2

So, before the “big shootout” one officer comes up to the other and offers him a Special Bullet.3 He tells the other “I thought maybe we should have a little something to even the odds”.4

The other officer is of course duly horrified because this is NOT “regulation ammo”!

So what was this “special ammo”? Were they .357 magnum rounds? (which you might be able to shoot from some .38’s back then, if you could get them to fit, just once). Were they +P’s?5 Oh no no no no no! They were (Dun dun DAAAA!)

HOLLOW POINTS!!!!

Yup, their first bullet in their revolver was a .38 hollow point.

When the robbers attack, oh the things that happen! One officer blows one of the robber’s heads Clean OFF!! Yes, that’s right! The dreaded hollow point is so powerful it took off the guy’s head! Completely!!! I don’t recall exactly what the other robber had happen, but I think it was a hole blown throw him you could see through.6

But wait! There’s More!7

  1. I forget the details exactly, it was a long long time ago.
  2. In this episode at least — consistency from the anti-gun lefties who wrote this dreck in the 70’s was not to be expected.
  3. I ain’t making this part up.
  4. Or words that effect. Again, 50 years ago, I don’t remember the exact line.
  5. A lot of .38 ammo was ‘+P’ back then, because they hadn’t created the designation yet, look up the specs in the old reloading manuals if you don’t believe me.
  6. Props to these officers however for their first shots in each case being killing ones!
  7. Of course there is!

When your political establishment is controlled by globalists

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

On Substack Notes, Spiff responds to someone decrying the British media’s concerted efforts to ignore the political protests across the channel:

Britain’s traditional media have long since chosen their side on the culture wars. They have embraced the establishment and their disgust at patriotism and national loyalty. They are globalists.

That is why they are becoming more extreme over time. They have to. They are a crucial part of the establishment narrative machine along with nudge units, elaborately funded NGOs and charities, and the civil service.

A Nuremberg-style trial would likely convict them of treason given how anti-immigration the British public is. We may not know the details but all these institutions point in only one direction; more immigrants, more diversity, the managed decline of the country, the condemnation of its people.

We often have to step back and look at screenshots like the one below to remind ourselves the media class are making a series of conscious decisions to damage and diminish Britain and the British people. It is not an accident. They know what is happening in France and their choice has been to downplay the enormous social changes that were avoidable and are not working in favour of the French people. Mass immigration of North Africans is destroying France. These riots reflect the alliance between immigrant groups and the hard-left who hate the West.

A similar process is now destroying the UK. They have to keep that observation away from the public for as long as they can. But time is now running out.

Prime Minister Burnham will probably follow Mark Carney’s example and start subsidizing the non-state media to ensure that the propaganda is more closely co-ordinated to the establishment’s preferred narrative. After all, it’s working quite well to keep malinformed Canadian elbows up.

Why is it called Welsh Rabbit (Rarebit)?

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

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 21 Apr 2026

Buttered toast with a rich cheese sauce made with mustard and ale

City/Region: England
Time Period: 1861

Is it Welsh? Maybe. The Welsh certainly had a reputation for loving toasted cheese that precedes “Welsh rarebit” as a dish, so it’s possible, but we’ll likely never know if that’s where it originated. There were recipes for English rarebit and Scotch rarebit, the main difference between them and Welsh rarebit being the addition of mustard. It’s no wonder that the mustard-containing Welsh rarebit is the one that we see today, because it’s delicious.

This recipe is so simple, but so good. The combination of the crunchy toast and silky smooth cheese sauce is phenomenal, and the addition of the ale and mustard are just enough to bring out the flavor of the cheese. It’s one of the simplest and one of the best dishes I’ve made on the channel, and is one that I look forward to making again.

    Toasted Cheese, Or Welsh Rarebit
    Ingredients — 1/2 a lb. of Cheshire or Cheddar cheese, 1 oz. of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of either milk or ale, 1 teaspoonful of made mustard, hot buttered toast.
    Method — Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the cheese cut into small pieces, stir until melted, then add the milk or ale gradually, mustard and season to taste. Have ready some hot-buttered toast, pour the cheese preparation on to it, and serve as hot as possible.
    — Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management by Isabella Beeton, 1861

Ingredients:

A loaf of bread, like French or Italian, enough for 6 slices
1/2 lb (225 g) good quality cheddar cheese*, or something similar
2 tablespoons (30 g) butter, plus some more for the toast
2 tablespoons milk or ale
1 teaspoon mustard
Seasonings**, to taste, optional

*Don’t use pre-shredded cheese as they usually add starches to keep it from sticking that make it harder to melt.
**Seasonings they’d add to this dish at the time include salt, cayenne pepper, garlic, and horseradish. Feel free to use any that you like.

Instructions:

  1. Slice 6 slices of bread. How thick and what size you cut the bread is up to you, just keep in mind you want about 2 slices per serving.
  2. Toast the bread either in a toaster or under the broiler. If you use the broiler, a couple of minutes on each side should do the trick. Spread a little butter on each slice.
  3. Chop the cheese into small pieces or grate it.
  4. Melt the 2 tablespoons (30 g) of butter in a saucepan over medium heat. When it’s melted, add the cheese and stir constantly as it melts.
  5. Once the cheese has melted, stir in the milk or ale a little bit at a time. You want to make sure that the cheese doesn’t get so hot that it starts to bubble or burn. Lower the heat if necessary. Stir in the mustard and any of the seasonings you like to taste.
  6. Dish the hot cheese sauce over the prepared toast and serve it forth right away for the best texture.

QotD: The “political object” in war

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

Political Object is a key concept from Clausewitz, a term reflecting the state’s actual interest in a conflict which is one component of his “trinity” and indeed, the foremost of the three. The political object is what a state (or the leader or leaders of a state) want to get out of a war. This can, of course, change as the conflict continues. As Clausewitz notes (drink!) the role of political leadership in war is to tailor the methods and means employed to obtaining the political object they have set. Clausewitz supposes the political object to be rightly ruled by reason and calculation, rather than emotion or instinct. One way to compel an enemy to cease hostilities is by so altering the political calculus that the enemy leadership concludes that continuing the conflict is no longer in their interest.

Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-25.

October 14, 2026

He really is the model of a modern Major-General

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

InfantryDort reacts to a retired US general’s opinions on public executions on X (that is, the post is on X, not the executions … but now that I think on it …)

Why does it consistently appear that the criteria to be a General officer is historical illiteracy, suicidal empathy, and being toxically egalitarian? How did we get here?

This one thinks its “fundamentally unamerican” to publicly execute people. Well I guess George Washington is unamerican too. Or Abraham Lincoln.

You know what’s “fundamentally unamerican”, General? Simping for terrorists.

I hear this guy talk and I can’t help but think: no wonder GWOT didn’t end the way we wanted it to. The militarily crucial act of killing people disgusts this type of leader.

No wonder why it was so easy for guys like him and Stan McChrystal to make us practice “courageous restraint” on the battlefield. Letting the enemy gain the upper hand in every engagement, on purpose.

Out of what? Some wayward sense of nobility? That we’re the “good guys”?

No, General. Being the good guys doesn’t mean allowing our enemies to have a monopoly on violence. WE MUST HAVE THE MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE.

Why am I constantly explaining this to Generals? Especially of the retired variety? Why am I having to explain that killing people is not only important to our profession, but for protecting western civilization itself?

The bar for General officer has been so low it’s practically in the basement. And no matter what institutional changes we make, these types always choose themselves to replace…. themselves.

So it’s more of the same. Same bad experience, same bad channel. Same feckless worldview. Incapable of victory. Incapable of common sense. Incapable of doing their jobs. But completely capable of making Instagram videos about how mean and cruel we’ve become.

BEING MEAN AND CRUEL TO OUR EVIL ENEMIES IS THE ENTIRE POINT!

Pathetic filth.

To which Tom Kratman responds:

Did I ever … hmmm … maybe not. Wait a sec …

Not only will you be rated or senior rated by about 100 people, in 30 years in the Army, but you can never have pissed one of them off. These men, however, will range from the bright to the ignorant, the moral to the immoral, and will have vastly diverging experiences which will drive their judgment. And you cannot disagree with them if you want stars. It would be one thing if they were all the same and you learned to echo just one theme. But when they are all different, and you still agree with every trivial thought they ever had, it can only be because you lack any center of your own, any moral compass whatsoever, since everything in the military has a moral aspect to it. In other words — with only very rare exceptions; I thought well of Foss, LeMoyne, and Petraeus, for example — the man who rises to stars usually has nothing, no values of worth, inside him.

Which is worse than contemptible; it’s absolutely pathetic, given how useless it is to become a general.

True story: Some people thought there were stars in my future. There came a day, early 1988, I was on my second company command, of three, and I was shooting the crap with the brigade commander in his office. I’d been ambivalent about stars for some time by then, but it was a very amorphous thing. I couldn’t have told you why. Eventually, I realized that my brigade commander (Annapolis, oddly enough) was trying to mentor me into stars. “You need to do this, Tom, then you need to do that. Then you need to …”

And it all came clear, an epiphany, a blinding flash of the obvious, and I said, “Sir, I don’t want to be a general.”

“Wha … what … WHAT?”

So I stood up, walked across the office to his LCE tree, and took his helmet in hands.

“Sir, do you remember General Meyer?”

“Shy Meyer? Chief of Staff?”

“Yes, sir, him.”

“Sure.”

“Sir, Meyer was a reformer. He had a bag full of good ideas for improving the Army. I counted thirty-seven once, about half and half trivial and important. I may have missed some.”

“Yes, so?”

Then I turned the helmet around to point at him the two silly bits of glow in the dark tape on the camouflage band around the helmet. “Sir, of all that, this is all that’s left of Meyer. Everything else is gone. In a matter of a few years it’s as if he never existed. So what, sir, would be the point of becoming a general, if, even if I rose to be Chief of Staff of the Army, I could not possibly have a good and lasting effect?”

Which is, in any case, why I turned to writing. My brigade commander didn’t get it; he still tried to stick me as the incoming CG’s Aide, but I wanted nothing to do with that.

The Korean War Week 121 – America Has Had Enough! – October 13, 1952

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

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 13 Oct 2026

The UN delegation walks out of the Panmunjom Peace Talks this week, after the Communist side refuses all of their proposals to solve the POW repatriation issue. A major naval training exercise off the coast comes to its end, with disappointing results, and in the field the Battle of White Horse Hill, the deadliest battle so far this year, rages all week long.

00:34 Recap
00:57 Naval Training Exercise
04:31 Harrison Walks Out
06:41 White Horse Hill
13:47 Operation Showdown
14:34 Summary
14:50 Conclusion
16:39 Memorial

There’s nothing preventing the Canadian government from using propaganda

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

And now that the majority of the relic media are addicted to government subsidies, the propaganda efforts are that much more effective:

Here’s something that not many Canadians both know and understand in Canada. There are currently zero laws in place regarding our Government’s ability to use propaganda against it’s citizens.
Not only can they do it, but they have teams of behavioral scientists & psychologists figuring out how to do it effectively.

In 2016 there were only 6 federal employees in the role. Since 2021 there are now over 70

In the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) there are over 16

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada there are over 5

Treasury Board Secretariat over 3

Environment and Climate Change Canada over 2

And there are more working in the Privy Council Office

During Covid they admitted to using these individuals to push COVID-19 compliance up amongst the population, They ran research surveys & experiments to test messaging and interventions, and designed choice architecture or communications to drive desired behaviours.

These ghouls manufactured consent amongst the population & nudged people to make decisions they didn’t want to.

Fast forward to today and what we are witnessing in regard to the U.S. and Europe. They are using the same tactics to convince people that the U.S. is our enemy & the EU is our savior. Stop falling for their propaganda, step back and think for a moment, why are they bombarding you daily with anti-U.S. rhetoric, climate fear, pro EU messaging. Are you being manipulated to accept their plan’s & decisions.

Star Trek: Yesterday’s Progressivism

Filed under: Economics, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Feral Historian
Published 12 Jun 2026

Star Trek has always been a progressive cultural phenomenon, but that was in the last century. Now, Star Trek is older than most of its fan base and in some ways has started to look fairly conservative. This not only reminds us how relative those terms are, but also makes us ask, is Star Trek still relevant? Or perhaps more relevant than it ever was?

00:00 Intro
01:42 TNG, Discovery, and the Orville
04:16 Auroville
06:52 History Didn’t End
08:59 Social Cohesion as Technology
13:40 Step Back to Go Forward

🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian
🔹 and Merch! | feral-shop.fourthwall.com

QotD: The rise of the Reform Party of Canada

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

A rejection of the new Canada, especially the largesse and overreach of the federal government into economic matters, was the perfect match for importing the new kind of libertarian-infused conservatism that became dominant in the 1980s with figures like Reagan and Thatcher. “Small government” conservatism provided a solid ideological foundation on which to build a new kind of conservatism to oppose aspects of the new regime, and it was also one that didn’t require nostalgizing for the old Dominion.

This small government conservatism wasn’t a homegrown ideology, it was adopted and imported from elsewhere. America especially. The dominant paradigm in postwar American conservatism became the fusionism that was associated with publications like National Review, and eventually became a dominant political force in Ronald Reagan. The success of this fusionism also made it appealing, and ready-made, to be imported to Canada and fused with this rejection of big government Liberal nationalism. In the process, Canadian conservatism begins to sound more American.

I’m not using this pejoratively and I don’t see this so much as a form of cultural imperialism. The adoption of this kind of conservatism made sense in response to the new Liberal nationalism. But it does present some serious problems for Canadian conservatism. This anti-nationalism and small government conservatism will appeal to some, especially in the West, but it’s not something that a national movement could be forged around.

This is what I mean when I say lots of conservatives don’t like Canada all that much. In adopting small government American conservatism, this kind of conservatism sounds like an American critique of Canada. Canadian healthcare looks “socialist” to American conservatives, and small government ideologues in America look at Canada and see big government “Soviet Canuckistan.” This is what Canadian conservatives adopting this kind of ideology sometimes sound like, and you can see why this has limited electoral appeal.

Ben Woodfinden, “True North Patriotism and a Distinctly Canadian Conservatism”, The Dominion, 2020-10-20.

October 13, 2026

No wonder the wokies hate J.K. Rowling

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

The Harry Potter books used to be sacred lore to the woke generation until the author committed the unforgivable crime of defending the rights of women against the encroachment of trans-women. Yet, it doesn’t take a very close reading of the texts to discover so many things that appear to have slipped under the notice of the progressives and form the core beliefs of the fictional world she created:

Amelia crossing paths with Harry Potter and the gang seems much more appropriate than it might have in the past

    Potential is largely hereditary, family is most important, the media are lying parasites, the state can’t be trusted with education, and children should be taught armed self-defense.

These are not subversive readings. These are the plot.

The Harry Potter series was the most successful publishing phenomenon of the late twentieth century. It sold half a billion copies. Progressive parents handed it to their children as a parable about tolerance and the courage to stand against prejudice. The movies grossed eight billion dollars. The author became an icon of liberal cultural production and then, by a process that remains opaque to the people who made her famous, a figure of political villainy for holding positions indistinguishable from mainstream liberal feminism circa 2005.

Set aside the author. The books exist independently of whatever J.K. Rowling believes or is believed to believe. Read them for what they actually say. The worldview encoded in the narrative structure, the plot logic, and the moral arc is not the worldview the books were marketed as containing. It is considerably more interesting.

Blood Will Tell

Magic is inherited. This is the foundational premise of the entire fictional world and the premise from which everything else follows.

You are either born a witch or wizard, or you are not. No amount of study, effort, practice, or desire will make a Muggle magical. The reverse is also true: Squibs, born to magical families but lacking the gift, cannot acquire it. They are defective members of magical lineages, pitied and often hidden. Argus Filch, the Hogwarts caretaker, is a Squib. His bitterness and cruelty toward the students is the bitterness of a man who can see the gift in others but will never have it himself.

[…]

Family Carries Everything

Harry survives Voldemort’s killing curse because his mother died to protect him. Not a metaphor. A literal magical mechanism. Lily Potter’s sacrificial love created a protection charm encoded in Harry’s blood that made him impossible for Voldemort to kill directly.

[…]

The Press Are the Enemy

The Daily Prophet is introduced early and is corrupt throughout.

[…]

The State Cannot Be Trusted to Educate Your Children

Dolores Umbridge is a government administrator appointed by the Ministry of Magic to reform Hogwarts.

Her arrival at Hogwarts in Order of the Phoenix is the politicization of education made literal. The Ministry does not trust Dumbledore. The Ministry does not want students to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts. A student body trained in combat magic is a student body that might resist. Umbridge’s curriculum is therefore purely theoretical: no spellcasting, no practical application, only reading approved texts about defensive magic that the students are forbidden to practice.

[…]

The books contain other lessons that the progressive readership tended not to discuss.

House-elves are slaves. They are hereditary servants bound to magical families, forbidden to disobey direct orders, and conditioned to punish themselves for disloyalty. Dobby is freed and becomes a hero. But Dobby is the exception. Most house-elves, including the Hogwarts house-elves, do not want freedom. Hermione’s Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare is played for laughs. The elves reject her knitted hats. They are offended by the offer of liberation. Dobby is a weirdo.

The narrative does not resolve this. The house-elves are not freed after Voldemort falls. The epilogue does not mention them. The implication is that hereditary servitude is acceptable if the servants are happy, and these servants are happy. Whatever else this is, it is not an abolitionist text.

[…]

What The Books Actually Taught

The Harry Potter series is a fundamentally reactionary conservative text dressed in the aesthetic of liberal tolerance.

It teaches that ability is inherited and the argument is only about whether pedigree or demonstrated ability should determine status. It teaches that family is the highest loyalty and the source of the most powerful magic. It teaches that the press serves power and the only response is to route around it. It teaches that the state will capture education to produce compliant subjects and that the answer is to arm the children. It teaches that some people are born for greatness and others are born for service, and the main thing is to get the sorting right.

None of this requires reading against the grain. It requires only reading.

The Un-Coupling of Gen Z

Filed under: Britain, Health, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

One of the most obvious demographic shifts in recent years has been the ongoing decline in the birth rate in pretty much the entire western world. But it isn’t surprising in one respect: Gen Z people aren’t forming relationships at the rate of earlier generations and have fewer (if any) sexual partners:

Why are so many Americans not getting married — or not even dating, in the first place?

The share of 40-year-olds who have never been hitched has quadrupled since 1980, as Americans get married later, or not at all.

It’s not just marriage that’s declining but rather all forms of cohabitation. An analysis by John Burn-Murdoch found that “coupling” has declined steadily in both the UK and the U.S., especially for those without a college degree. The declining popularity of dating apps suggests that these trends are likely to continue.

I care about the decline of coupling and marriage not because I consider myself a strict evangelist of matrimony — I think people should do what they can to enjoy themselves without hurting others — but rather because I think it bears on two of the most important questions about the future: (1) How many people exist, and (2) how happy are they? The relationship between romance and births is practically linear. Since 1990, Burn-Murdoch has shown, the decline of births traces the decline of relationship formation across many countries. Fewer relationships mean fewer people, and accelerating population declines around the world are, somewhat like climate change, a slowly accumulating phenomenon that will almost certainly shape the future of economics, technology, and the texture of human existence.

Then, there’s the mushy yet momentous question of whether people actually enjoy their existence. Self-reported happiness is declining in the west, and particularly in the U.S. Reviewing several decades of General Social Survey data, the economist Sam Peltzman came to the conclusion that “most of the overall downturn [in life satisfaction] is attributable to decline in marriage post-2000”. Reviewing Peltzman’s work, The Atlantic‘s Olga Khazan provided some useful context:

    One paper alone might be easy enough to dismiss, but this is a fairly consistent finding dating back decades in social-science research: Married people are happier. Period.

If the decline of coupling is upstream of both falling births and falling happiness, then the most important question is what’s happening at the source. In his new book Generation Uncoupled, Daniel Cox, a public opinion researcher and director of the Survey Center on American Life, considers a range of causes that span technology, culture, media, economics, and politics.

British beer vs. “modern audiences”

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

In The Critic, Henry Jeffreys sings the praises for some of the greatest names in British brewing … while waving goodbye as they disappear one after another into international beverage behemoths who care nothing at all for history and tradition if it doesn’t add value to the stock price:

Beer Street, from Beer Street and Gin Lane by William Hogarth. The picture is a counterpoint to the more powerful Gin Lane — Hogarth intended Beer Street to be viewed first to make Gin Lane more shocking — but it is also a celebration of Englishness and depicts of the benefits of being nourished by the native beer.
Wikimedia Commons.

Burton-on-Trent was once the brewing capital of the world, home to such famous names as Bass, Allsopp’s and the famous “Burton snatch”. Stop giggling at the back, Jenkins! I’m talking, of course, about the refreshing sulphurous tang imparted by the high levels of calcium sulphate in the town’s water. By the 1890s, it boasted thirty-one breweries producing over three million barrels a year, providing a quarter of Britain’s beer. Sadly, it has fallen a long way from there.

While Burton’s most famous beer, Bass, is enjoying a modest revival at the moment with increased distribution and marketing, things aren’t looking so rosy for the brewery that makes it, Marston’s. For those not familiar with the Byzantine ways of big beer, a little explainer. Bass the brand is owned by AB InBev, the corporate behemoth behind Budweiser. But the beer is brewed at Marston’s Brewery, owned by Carlsberg Britvic, which has now announced plans to close the historic site, with around 310 jobs at risk.

Carlsberg has a woeful record as a custodian of English beer. In 2024 it removed the traditional wooden Burton Union system from Marston’s, switching to stainless steel for fermentation. In the past 15 years, it has closed Tetley’s in Leeds, ending nearly 200 years of history, Jennings in the Lake District, Ringwood in Hampshire, Wychwood in Oxfordshire, and Banks’s in the West Midlands. A roll call of shame. But Carlsberg is no outlier. The British beer industry has been cannibalising itself for years. Regional breweries were gobbled up by national companies, which in turn were swallowed whole by multinationals. Great names either disappeared or were kept as brands, like Bass, to be shunted around, unloved, on the spreadsheets of companies headquartered in America or Belgium. In 2023 Molson Coors “paused” production of another Burton classic, Worthington’s White Shield, perhaps the greatest of all bottled beers. This year it announced that it will close Sharps and move production of Doom Bar Cornish ale to Hartlepool.

[…]

While we shouldn’t let Carlsberg, Molson Coors and others off the hook for their cavalier attitude to Britain’s great brewing heritage, we are to blame as well. We’re letting a unique beer style die out. Maybe it’s already too late and real ale is already a specialist drink. But there are still great brewers who care, from newer names like Gadds in Ramsgate to historic independents like Harvey’s of Lewes or Timothy Taylor of Keighley. Go to the pub and drink their beers regularly, because if you don’t they will go the way of Worthington’s White Shield and countless others.

MAC 34T Aviation: Interwar French Turret-Mount Aircraft Gun

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 15 Jun 2026

During World War One France used the Lewis gun as a flexible aircraft armament, and it was replaced by the Darne in 1922. This was an adoption of convenience, and by 1926 the Chatellerault Arsenal was working on adapting the new Mle 1924 light machine gun for aircraft use. Initial efforts were directed at a wing-mounted model with a high rate of fire and a large (300 rounds) drum magazine. This led in turn to a “turret” model for use in manned flexible mounts.

This gun was designated the Mle 1934 T, and used in several different mounts. Today we are looking at one in the Type 29 mount. It is a sheet metal carriage to enclose the gun, providing a spring counterbalance system for easy maneuvering of the gun and a mount for an early collimator sight.
(more…)

QotD: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wokester avant la lettre

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

He invented it. Every premise of contemporary progressive ideology traces directly back to one man who had never met a “noble savage”, never raised a child, and never lived according to a single principle he preached.

1. His foundational claim: man is naturally good and civilization corrupts. This sounds compassionate. It is the most dangerous idea in Western political thought. Because if man is naturally good, then every failure, every crime, every inequality is caused by the system – never by the individual. Responsibility evaporates. The oppressor is always external. The victim is always pure. This is the complete architecture of Woke in one sentence, written in 1755.

2. The “Noble Savage” is Rousseau’s Form – his version of Plato’s ideal. The uncorrupted man, untouched by property, competition, and civilization, living in natural harmony. Rousseau had never met one. He invented him from an armchair in Paris, extrapolating from travel accounts of peoples he had never visited. The Noble Savage is not an anthropological observation. He is a political weapon – a club to beat civilization with, wielded by someone living comfortably inside it.

3. The “General Will” is the most dangerous concept in modern political philosophy. Not the actual expressed will of actual people – but the deeper will, the will people would have if they were “properly enlightened”. Whoever claims to know it can do anything in its name. Robespierre knew it. Every revolutionary vanguard since has known it. Today’s progressive institutions know it – which is why they can override democratic majorities, suppress dissent, and compel speech, all while insisting they represent the people’s true interests. The General Will is the intellectual license for every tyranny that calls itself a liberation.

4. The chain from Rousseau to today is unbroken. Rousseau to Robespierre and the Terror. Robespierre to Marx, who secularized the General Will into historical necessity. Marx to every “liberation” movement that ended in a gulag. And today: replace civilization with white supremacy, replace the Noble Savage with the marginalized community, replace the General Will with lived experience – and you have the complete operating system of contemporary progressivism. The software is the same.

5. Voltaire, his contemporary and rival, saw him quite clearly: Rousseau made primitivism intellectually respectable. He gave the comfortable classes of every generation a way to signal virtue by denouncing the civilization that produced them, from inside it, without cost. The French Left Bank intellectual denouncing capitalism from a café. The Harvard professor deconstructing Western civilization from a tenured chair. The hedge fund billionaire funding the abolition of meritocracy. All of them are living in Rousseau’s armchair.

6. He sent all five of his illegitimate children to a Paris orphanage. Then wrote Émile – one of the most influential books on education in Western history, a detailed guide on how to raise a virtuous child in harmony with nature. He did not find this contradictory. This is not hypocrisy in the ordinary sense – this is obłuda [hypocrisy] (remember the obłuda of communism👇🏻). The defining structural feature of the ideology he invented: the sermon is inversely proportional to the practice. The performance of virtue replaces the exercise of it. Naming the oppressor substitutes for personal accountability. Rousseau didn’t just invent Woke – he lived it, in every detail, before anyone had the word.

7. The original Woke was woke about a fiction he invented – and spent his life performing outrage about a civilization he depended on and never left. Two and a half centuries later, the performance is the same. The noble savages have been updated. The General Will has new names. The orphanages are metaphorical. But the man who sends his children away and then lectures everyone else on how to raise theirs – that man is everywhere.

Krzysztof Szczawinski, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2026-07-10. (Auto-translated from the original Polish by X)

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress