The Tank Museum
Published on 10 Feb 2018Welcome to the first in the Tank Chat Funnies mini-series!
In Tank Chats #45 David begins a series on one of his personal interests, the Funnies of the 79th Armoured Division. However the 79th and its Funnies would have been nothing without its inspirational leader Major General Percy Hobart, so David starts with the man and we promise will follow very shortly with his machines.
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April 3, 2019
Tank Chats #45 Major General Sir Percy Hobart | The Funnies | The Tank Museum
March 24, 2019
Major Fosbery’s Automatic Revolver: History and Mechanics
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 9 Aug 2017http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
George Fosbery, V.C., was a decorated British officer with substantial combat experience in India when he decided to design a better sidearm in 1895. True semiautomatic handguns were in their very early stages of development at that time, and Fosbery thought that one could have a more durable, more powerful, and simpler weapon by using a revolver as a foundation. He began experimenting with a Colt SAA, but soon moved to using Webley revolvers when he found the Colt internals insufficiently durable for his conversion.
What Fosbery did was to relocate the barrel and cylinder into an upper assembly which could move independently of the grip and trigger of the gun. Upon firing, the energy of recoil would push the upper assembly rearwards, re-cocking the hammer and indexing the cylinder to the next chamber. This gave the shooter the rapid fire of a double action revolver with the excellent trigger pull of a single action revolver.
The gun was introduced at the Bisley shooting matches, where it proved quite popular as a target gun. By the time production began in the early years of the 20th century, however, semi-auto handguns had improved significantly, and the opportunity for the Webley-Fosbery to be a big seller had already passed. Still, British officers were required to provide sidearms chambered for the .455 service cartridge, and more than a few opted to purchase Webley-Fosberys.
Thanks to Mike Carrick of Arms Heritage magazine for providing this Webley-Fosbery for this video! See his regular column here: https://armsheritagemagazine.com
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
March 3, 2019
QotD: Four ways to corporate monopoly
1. Proprietary technology. This one is straightforward. If you invent the best technology, and then you patent it, nobody else can compete with you. Thiel provocatively says that your technology must be 10x better than anyone else’s to have a chance of working. If you’re only twice as good, you’re still competing. You may have a slight competitive advantage, but you’re still competing and your life will be nasty and brutish and so on just like every other company’s. Nobody has any memory of whether Lycos’ search engine was a little better than AltaVista’s or vice versa; everybody remembers that Google’s search engine was orders of magnitude above either. Lycos and AltaVista competed; Google took over the space and became a monopoly.
2. Network effects. Immortalized by Facebook. It doesn’t matter if someone invents a social network with more features than Facebook. Facebook will be better than their just by having all your friends on it. Network effects are hard because no business will have them when it first starts. Thiel answers that businesses should aim to be monopolies from the very beginning – they should start by monopolizing a tiny market, then moving up. Facebook started by monopolizing the pool of Harvard students. Then it scaled up to the pool of all college students. Now it’s scaled up to the whole world, and everyone suspects Zuckerberg has somebody working on ansible technology so he can monopolize the Virgo Supercluster. Similarly, Amazon started out as a bookstore, gained a near-monopoly on books, and used all of the money and infrastructure and distribution it won from that effort to feed its effort to monopolize everything else. Thiel describes how his own company PayPal identified eBay power sellers as its first market, became indispensible in that tiny pool, and spread from there.
3. Economies of scale. Also pretty straightforward, and especially obvious for software companies. Since the marginal cost of a unit of software is near-zero, your cost per unit is the cost of building the software divided by the number of customers. If you have twice as many customers as your nearest competitor, you can charge half as much money (or make twice as much profit), and so keep gathering more customers in a virtuous cycle.
4. Branding. Apple is famous enough that it can charge more for its phones than Amalgamated Cell Phones Inc, even for comparable products. Partly this is because non-experts don’t know how to compare cell phones, and might not trust Consumer Reports style evaluations; Apple’s reputation is an unfakeable sign that their products are pretty good. And partly it’s just people paying extra for the right to say “I have an iPhone, so I’m cooler than you”. Another company that wants Apple’s reputation would need years of successful advertising and immense good luck, so Apple’s brand separates it from the competition and from the economic state of nature.
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Zero to One”, Slate Star Codex, 2019-01-31.
February 9, 2019
HMS Dreadnought – Guide 001
Drachinifel
Published on 12 Dec 2018HMS Dreadnought, the first dreadnought battleship and game changer for the British Royal Navy, is today’s subject.
Want to support the channel? – https://www.patreon.com/Drachinifel
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February 8, 2019
QotD: Sex toys and sexbots
The global market in these abominations is currently valued at more than £12 billion, and that’s not counting the monstrous regiment of aforementioned sex dolls, the ‘high end’ of which began in Japan in the 1980s. Also coming soon will be sex robots, beginning with a robot ‘Fellatio Café’ in Paddington, due to open later this year. Even though I describe myself as a feminist, I can’t wait to mock the self-appointed spokeswomen for my gender slamming this set-up after years of bigging up broads bringing themselves off using battery-operated devices. As the rather rabid David Mills, an atheist activist and admirer of sex dolls, ranted to Vanity Fair: ‘Women have enjoyed sex toys for 50 years, probably 5,000 years, if the truth be known, but men are still stigmatised! We have to correct that! I want to be the Rosa Parks of sex dolls! Men are not going to sit in the back of the bus any more!’
Indeed, you could argue that a blowjob from a humanoid sexbot is far more indicative of a healthy desire to be connected to humanity than a quick once-over with a gilded pebble or a faceless phallus. But that won’t stop the lady columnists from penning predictable screeds about the woeful immaturity of men, and their willingness to risk having their tackle snagged in a faulty man-trap rather than ‘commit’ to a living, breathing female.
So can I (for once) put my head above the parapet and say that I totally get the appeal of sexbots in the current climate? Sex is, generally, a rather basic thing. Yet somewhere along the line some women have adopted the notion that it should be akin to a trip to Disneyland on gossamer wings for a playdate with Barbie and her pet unicorn. Some women seem to think sex should be about communicating, sharing, scented candles, two-hour massages, three-hour role play, kissing, cuddling and then… that other thing, if you must… whereas men generally tend to believe that sex is about having sex, the rotters. So can you blame them for wanting to keep it short and simple with a sexbot? And if it’s OK for women to pleasure themselves with friends electric, why not men?
Julie Burchill, “The other sexual double-standard: Why is self-love for women so cool and feminist? For men it’s seen as sad and sleazy”, The Spectator, 2017-03-23.
January 3, 2019
The ship that revolutionised naval warfare
Lindybeige
Published on 13 Dec 2018Thanks to World of Warships for sponsoring this video. Follow the link https://wo.ws/2Pp7LgQ and use the code “LINDYBEIGE” to receive the Premium Soviet Ship ‘Diana’, 500 Doubloons, and 7 Premium days of game time. For new accounts only.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige
Many thanks to the helpful staff at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne. Here is the museum’s website:
https://discoverymuseum.org.uk/Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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December 14, 2018
Dreadnought: The Battleship that Changed Everything
Historigraph
Published on 24 Nov 2018So it’s probably worth noting here that when Dreadnought made all other battleships irrelevant, it didn’t do so equally. For example, Japan had constructed two ‘semi-dreadnoughts’ a couple of years earlier, with more 10-inch guns than was standard at the time. The Americans too were moving towards building an ‘all-big-gun’ battleship, but they were much slower at getting them built than the British.
If you enjoyed this video and want to see more made, consider supporting my efforts on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/historigraph
Sources:
Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War
Ben Wilson, Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy
December 7, 2018
QotD: Why did our grandparents adopt “mass market” foods?
If those authentic old foods were so great, how come our ancestors were so eager to switch to processed foods? The culprit most often identified is the power-mad food scientists of yesteryear, who convinced the housewives of previous generations to give up the good stuff in favor of tasteless packaged foods. The people who write these theories have apparently not spent much time observing today’s food scientists in their tireless quest to get people to stop eating the junk they like to eat now. If they had, they might have asked why yesterday’s food scientists had so much more power to alter dietary habits. And after they asked that question, they might have come to the conclusion that our ancestors switched because they liked the new foods better than whatever they were eating before.
That’s because so much of what we eat now as “authentic” is mostly some combination of peasant special-occasion dishes and the rich-people food of yesteryear, fused with modern technology and a global food-supply chain to become something quite different from what our ancestors ate, or the ancestors of people half a world away ate. And that’s OK. The baguette is delicious, and so is that pricey “peasant” loaf. But they are no better for having been invented decades ago than something that was invented last week, nor would they be better still if Caesar’s legions had been carrying them across Europe.
Megan McArdle, “‘Authentic’ Food Is Not What You Think It Is”, Bloomberg View, 2017-02-24.
October 11, 2018
Steyr StG 77, aka the AUG
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 21 Sep 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Today’s rifle is not quite an Austrian military StG-77, but it is virtually identical. This is one of the commemorative rifles sold by Steyr, which has been rebuilt with military parts and is a registered dealer sample machine gun (which is why I can show you the complete full-auto functionality in the trigger group.
The AUG (Armee Universal Gewehr) was one of the wave of bullpup-style military rifles developed and adopted in the 1970s, along with the British SA80 and French FAMAS F1. The AUG embodied a number of very forward-looking elements in its design, including extensive use of polymers (including the entire fire control group), a completely modular barrel, and standard integrated optical sight (albeit one considered obsolete today). Mechanically, the rifle’s operating mechanism is a derivative of the Armalite AR-18, as are many other service rifles from this period.
Special thanks to Bear Arms in Scottsdale, AZ for providing this rifle for video!
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
October 6, 2018
Development of the Panzer Arm to 1939
The_Chieftain
Published on 28 Sep 2018Synchronising in with the World War Two channel as they go over the German invasion of Poland, a discussion of how the Germans went from “Bad Germans, no tanks!” to “What hit us?” in the period between 1918 and 1939.
The written article on Panzerjager referenced: https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chie…
To be clear, Wargaming/WoT is not involved in this video, I just mention them for background.
Selected sources:
The Challenge of Change: Winton & Mets (Chapter by Corum)
Storm of Steel: Habeck
Frieser: The Blitzkrieg Legend
Panzer Tracts: Jentz & Doyle
Interview with Panzermuseum Director Raths. (Upcoming video)
September 24, 2018
QotD: Entrepreneurs
We need entrepreneurs to decide what to do.The only alternative is governmental bureaucracy, which is good for national defense and a few other things, but very bad at most of what we do, from room rental to rock music. The entrepreneuseonly succeeds if people like what she does, and agree voluntarily to pay for it. A free society is one of choice. Entrepreneurs give choice, bureaucrats crush it.
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, “Why We Need to Admire Entrepreneurs”, Peace Love Liberty, 2018-09.
September 19, 2018
QotD: The “generations” of jet fighters
American warplanes like the F-22 and F-35 are often called “5th generation” fighters. This leaves many wondering what the other generations were and what the next one will be. The generation reference is all because of jet fighters, and the first generation was developed during and right after World War II (German Me-262, British Meteor, U.S. F-80, and Russian MiG-15). These aircraft were, even by the standards of the time, difficult to fly and unreliable (especially the engines). The 2nd generation (1950s) included more reliable but still dangerous to operate aircraft like the F-104 and MiG-21. The 3rd generation (1960s) included F-4 and MiG-23. The 4th generation (1970s) included F-16 and MiG-29. Each generation has been about twice as expensive (on average, in constant dollars) as the previous one. But each generation is also about twice as safe to fly and cheaper to operate. Naturally, each generation is more than twice as effective as the previous one. Increasingly it looks like the 6th generation will come without pilots. That’s because producing fifth generation fighters has proved difficult as well as very expensive. So far only the United States has managed to get 5th gen fighters (F-22 and F-35) into service. The Russians are still trying as are the Chinese, even though one of their stealth fighter designs (J-20) is technically in service (even though production has been suspended after less than a dozen were produced).
The Russians have said they will keep working on their 5th generation Su-57, although some of the derivatives of their Su-27 are at least generation 4.5. One of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed was the realization that they could not afford to develop 5th generation warplanes to stay competitive with America. The Russians had a lot of interesting stuff on the drawing board and in development but the bankruptcy of most of their military aviation industry during the 1990s left them scrambling to put it back together ever since. At the moment the Russians are thinking of making a run for the 6th generation warplanes, which will likely be unmanned and largely robotic. As of 2018 they don’t have much choice because their answer to the F-22, work on the Su-57 was canceled (“indefinitely paused”.)
“Murphy’s Law: The Impossible 5th Generation”, Strategy Page, 2018-08-20.
September 13, 2018
Mind Your Business Ep. 2: Aceable in the Hole
Foundation for Economic Education
Published on 11 Sep 2018Believe it or not, parallel parking is not an impossible task. Meet Blake Garrett, the entrepreneur who is using VR to teach people how to drive, without actually getting behind the wheel.
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Produced & Directed by Michael Angelo Zervos
Executive Produced by Sean W. Malone
Hosted by Andrew Heaton
Original Music by Ben B. Goss
Featuring Blake Garrett
September 12, 2018
How Do Light Bulbs Work? | Earth Lab
BBC Earth Lab
Published on 1 Nov 2013James May explains one of the most important inventions to modern life: the lightbulb.
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All the best Earth Lab videos http://bit.ly/EarthLabOriginals
Best of BBC Earth videos http://bit.ly/TheBestOfBBCEarthVideosHere at BBC Earth Lab we answer all your curious questions about science in the world around you. If there’s a question you have that we haven’t yet answered or an experiment you’d like us to try let us know in the comments on any of our videos and it could be answered by one of our Earth Lab experts.
September 5, 2018
Mind Your Business Ep. 1: Breaking the Mold
Foundation for Economic Education
Published on 4 Sep 2018Join host Andrew Heaton as we profile the stories of interesting entrepreneurs from around the country for FEE’s newest series, Mind Your Business.
In this episode, we’ll meet Jeremy Umansky. He’s a chef with a true passion for unusual food and his unique brand of cuisine is making a big splash in the culinary world.
