Poon Lim's Raft: A WWII Survival Story

Poon Lim's Raft: A WWII Survival Story
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Funny about the number of merchant marine sailors killed.  All the stories I've heard up till now kind of implied that not many sailors died, that most of them managed to board life boats and were later rescued. But History Guy says 36,000 sailors died and 3,500 ships sunk. That's like ten men per ship. Since by the time of WW2 most ships were burning oil instead of coal, so they wouldn't have needed a black gang of a dozen men to shovel coal, so I'm thinking ten men was probably the whole complement, which means most sailors on ships that were torpedoed died. Makes the War of the Atlantic much grimmer.

Route of the Ben Lomond

The route from Port Said to Cape Town is barely visible, so I tried plotting it on Google Earth, but after it crashed for the third time I gave up. Probably crashed because I'm still using Windows.

Other stories about people adrift in the middle of the ocean:

• Airplane of the Day - Vought Kingfisher
• Eddie Rickenbacker's Raft
• Sailboat Rescue
• Lost at Sea

Hell for You - Netflix Series

Hell for You

This is the worst show in the world. I only sat through all ten episodes because my wife thought it was okay. The episodes were only 20 minutes, so the torture only lasted for three hours. Never again, mind you. 

We've got two budding female concert pianists. One is a nice girl, the other is the 'most popular girl in the school' who also happens to be a complete psychopath. Anyone who irritates her, she kills, and if it is convenient, she finds someone else to take the fall. She's been doing this for I dunno how long, maybe 20 years. The heroine, the nice girl, has been plotting her revenge for the last ten years or so, but she is no match for our psycho-killer. I mean nobody in this show shows the least ability to defend themselves when psycho girl comes after them. Now at a first encounter that might be plausible, after all psycho-girl does a good job of acting like a good girl, so when she suddenly picks up a pair of scissors to stab you, you might get taken by surprise. But all the attacks that happen in the show happen to people who already know how crazy she is and they still show absolutely no sense. Effing idiots, the lot of them.

Anyway, we sat through all ten episodes fully expecting the story to be resolved and psycho girl crushed to a pulp or at least arrested and taken to jail, but nothing happens. The series ends and all we have to show for it is a bunch more dead bodies and psycho girl is still out running around loose. Oh, and she's dragging her baby around with her. Fully expect her to kill the kid, but it hasn't happened so far and after this I don't care what happens to any of these characters.

Lindybeige Goes To Sheffield

Ancient power-hammers and the city that put steel in the world
Lindybeige

Lindybeige is a character. I like the way he ties multiple subjects together: history, geography, economics, technology and even working conditions. From 6:55 to 11:20 he talks about his sponser. It's a little long, but entertaining. At 11:55 we have this line:

"gravity is kept switched on at all times"

Map of the Don Catchment showing the River Don, the city of Sheffield, and the distribution of weirs.

European Leaders are Dogshit

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery

Good summary of what's going on in Europe:

Europe Goes Full Totalitarian And Puts The Entire Western World At Risk by Brandon Smith

Introduction: 

It’s happening again. Europe is once again going totalitarian and this time there’s a decidedly familiar communist stench. The outcome was predictable for many of us in the alternative media and the situation is only going to get worse in the next few years, but what does this mean for the rest of the world? With the European elites casting off their humanist masks and going outright Orwellian, what kind of chaos can we expect to unfold?

First and foremost I want to point out a key piece of irony here – For decades in the US we heard the tiresome argument that our 2nd Amendment gun rights are meaningless because they are “unnecessary in maintaining our freedoms”. Anti-gun rights activists and politicians commonly used Europe as their sterling example:

“If gun rights are so important for freedom, then what about the Europeans? They have strict gun laws and they’re not losing their rights…”

As Americans who understand what it means to fight a rebellion against tyranny and win, our response to this claim has always been the same: “Just give it time…”

Of course, we were right and they were wrong. I’m sure a large number of people among the 95% of EU and UK citizens that are disarmed are probably wishing desperately for firearms right about now. The reasons why are numerous and horrifying.

He goes on about how European governments are crying for war which reminded me of a couple of memes I saw recently:

Why is it always you three?

March through Poland

I was thinking the other day that the USA should evaluate potential allies on the basis of how well they have implemented the rights we have in our Bill of Rights, and how well their culture follows the Ten Commandments.

Space Adventure

Adrift in the Stratosphere - A.M. Low

Saw this on According to Hoyt and just had to steal it. From Good Reads:

A 1937 space adventure written for young people by Prof. A.M. Low, then-president of the British Interplanetary Society. The occupants of a spaceship launched from a stratosphere balloon discover a hostile civilization.

You can buy a copy from Amazon.

 

Lunacy on Parade

SWAT team at CIA Headquarters - Andrew Harnik / Getty Images

I just had to laugh when I saw this headline:

SWAT Team On Scene At CIA Headquarters Over ‘Barricade’ Situation by Ryan Saavedra

I mean, WTF?  CIA headquarters, bastion of National Security, has got loose screws running around, um, er, loose? You don't suppose this has anything to do with Trump releasing the JFK assassination files yesterday, do you? No, it couldn't possibly be, could it? I dunno, we'll have to wait and see. It might be a really good show.

Island Hopping

INSANE final approach at St Barts airport
Car Girl TV