Dan Kurt: Again, the tyranny of the IQ curve raises its head. There is no magic amulet [one laptop per child] to increase objective success. One is the product of one’s genes.
Freddo: Bruce, Wikipedia has uranium centrifuges as a postwar technology, whereas the Manhattan Project used gaseous diffusion (as well as briefly the Calutron).
Handle: Ha, its like the trick when you play chess grandmasters unwittingly against each other on different boards.
Isegoria: In the public consciousness, TNT looks like red sticks of dynamite, not yellow blocks: TNT was first synthesized in 1863 by German chemist Julius Wilbrand and was originally used as a yellow dye. Its potential as an explosive was not recognized for three decades, mainly because it was so much less sensitive than other explosives known at the time. Its explosive properties were discovered in 1891 by another German chemist, Carl Häussermann. TNT can be safely poured when liquid into shell cases,...
Jim: Aluminum conductors must be larger than copper conductors because aluminum is about half as conductive as copper.
Bruce: You can see why ‘sunk cost fallacy’ drove the use of the bomb. (As well as the sensible Paul Fussell ‘Thank God for the Atom Bomb’ end the war stuff). I can’t seem to find the Greg Cochran stuff about how the Manhatten Project used the wrong process to get suitably pure uranium. Centrifuges and gas diffusion?
Jim: Yes, but then Germany’s onslaught was over. As well as loss of territories, industries and vulnerability of vital areas. And not just secure Caucasus, but access to Romanian oil. So your argument is that the United State, bristling with by far the most powerful war economy in the world and armed to the teeth with nukes and demonstrably willing to use them—a war economy which, by the way, the Soviet Union was dependent on—the world’s first and only Nuclear Power—was significantly less powerful, or...
Wanweilin: How dare Islam be exposed for its evil! /s
TBeholder: Jim says: The strangest part of the Second World War is how the United State’s military could’ve simply marched to Moscow in a few weeks, nearly uncontested Good one. Marched exactly from where and with what? Jim says: The Soviet Union survived Germany’s onslaught only with United State materiel. Yes, but then Germany’s onslaught was over. As well as loss of territories, industries and vulnerability of vital areas. And not just secure Caucasus, but access to Romanian oil. Then the United State...
Bruce: I wonder how far French and British government censorship of Islamic terror comes from being infiltrated by same.
Bruce: Jim, second-line Red Army troops fought with amazing toughness. Whether they’d have eventually all died without US help is not known. Manstein’s ‘Lost Victories’ recorded some extremely expensive victories. T. Beholder, the Party was always draconic about its spies and dead agents, but there was always some initiative. ‘Comrade Haldane is too busy to go on Vacation’ takes its title from Haldane’s refusal to go to Moscow and be killed.
T. Beholder: Bruce says: So Stalin had multiple sources giving him how-to on nukes. I’d thought it was one dramatic surprise, like in fiction. But it was military surprise, per General Erfurth. Multiple sources, building up a picture. Which fits what we knew about Stalin, especially where intelligence is concerned. Why would he not want maximal redundancy on something as potentially-important as this? The overseas Communist party always felt the US had a plain duty to give all possible military support...
Jim: [I]n May of 1983, he was arrested following a high-speed chase on the Bronx River Parkway in his 1981 DeLorean. He was charged with DUI, reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident after hitting four cars during the incident (luckily with no injuries). He spent two weeks in a hospital detox unit and was required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Boomers lived every fucking aspect of their whole goddamned lives on the IRL equivalent of God Mode.
Jim: If the new Arab ruler of the disputed territory formerly known as New-York is unable to reassign titles of real property or pass window guidance, he cannot suppress his subjects’ costs of living.
Bob Sykes: Evidently, the officers of the prewar US military were of rather high quality, both intellectually and ethically, more-so than today’s. Was that a result of serving in a very small, poorly funded, slow-promotion military? Marshall, King, Eisenhower, Nimitz… Everyone knew everybody One thinks, too, of the unusual (for today) group of regular army officers, many veterans of the Mexican War, that served in the Civil War.
Handle: That last paragraph is very well crafted with perfect tone of dry wit and gentlemanly light comedy. My esteem for Groves grows ever higher.
Bruce: Most well-off middle-class people in 2025 are D patronage hires. They vote for the D candidate who offers the biggest patronage expansion.
Bob Sykes: The median US family income in 2024 was $83,730.
Bob Sykes: The take away is that scientists always lie.
Seeing my generation’s reaction to this over the past months (Facebook, etc.) has been rather depressing…
Camp of the Saints-esque.
Look for, too, the leaked internal immigration report on the German Roma population effect on social peace in Duisberg.