I’ve worn a pair of Red Wing Iron Rangers almost every day since October and I absolutely love them. If you are looking for some really well made shoes that haven’t been produced under atrocious working conditions, these are well worth the money. For one thing, I’ve never worn any boots this long without the sole even approaching to look like it needs to be re-heeled. One warning though: The nails in there tend to absolutely freak out airport security. Nobody is used to shoes actually being properly made anymore these days.
Well, can they?
Hey, Ars Technica… you should familiarise yourselves with Betteridge’s Law.
This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no.” The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.
I’ve switched over to using Buttondown for delivery services for my daily tech newsletter. Their service is exactly what I was looking for. It’s simple, I can write the content in Markdown (just like I do for the site), I can switch the tracking off and they’re a small, independent operation and not a startup backed by venture capitalists. Seems pretty perfect for me!
I’m just watching UFC 249 here and I can’t tell you how happy I am that Dana and the gang had the balls to provide us with some normalcy in these times. Even if those empty stadium fights are fucking weird. And not in a good way. But at least they made it happen.
This story… I dunno, man…
What made the U-boat seem so formidable in World War I was principally the blindness and obtuseness of the British Admirality. In the run-up to the war, it refused to accept the possibility of a submarine guerre de course and made no real preparations for one.
A close analysis of U-boat successes shows that they sank the overwhelming majority of Allied ships not by torpedo but by deck gun in British coastal waters and in the Mediterranean Sea where marine traffic was dense. Most of these deck guns in the early years were 88mm (3.4"). Inasmuch as the U-boat was seldom an efficient or stable gun platform and the hull was extremely vulnerable to counterfire, had the Admirality promptly armed British merchant ships with slightly more powerful 4" guns manned by trained gun crews, only the bravest of the U-boat skippers would have sought a one-on-one gun contest, and Allied merchant ship losses doubtlessly would have diminished significantly. Several merchant ships so armed sailing in concert would have rendered a U-boat attack by deck gun virtually suicidal, forcing the Germans to attack submerged with scarce, virtually handmade torpedoes from relatively stationary positions, which were easy to evade or outrun.
The most grievous British sin, of course, was the failure to promptly adopt large-scale convoying. By the time ocean convoying was fully in place, September 1917, U-boats had already sunk about 8 million of the total 12 million tons bagged in the war.
The Germans were also blind and obtuse. On the strategic level, the U-boat campaign was the chief factor in bringing the United States into the war, assuring the ultimate defeat of the Central Powers. Moreover, the Germans made the mistake of launching unrestricted submarine warfare before they had anywhere near sufficient U-boats to carry it off. This resulted in an undesirable piecemeal commitment of naval power, which the Allies were able to whittle down bit by bit. On the tactical level, the Germans failed to develop promptly any anticonvoy doctrine, such as group (or “wolf pack”) night surface attacks, massing force against force at the decisive point.
Importantly, the German high command relied completely on the U-boat to interdict the flow of fresh American troops from the States to French Atlantic ports. The U-boats utterly failed in this task. In a quite awesome naval triumph which is usually overlooked, Allied maritime forces transported about 2 million soldiers from the States to France, with the loss of merely fifty-six men due to U-boats.
The reality of the German U-boat campaign in World War I is that it failed. It caused much damage and hardship and created no little terror. However, contrary to the mythology, the campaign did not really come close to bringing Great Britain to her knees, thereby precipitating an Allied defat.
— Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939 - 1942
This is a great story.
Latvia’s skies have been closed to long distance flights because a military-grade drone is “uncontrolled and lost” somewhere above the eastern European nation – and nobody knows where it has gone.
“Freedom is a muscle. You have to exercise it.”
— Captain Nathan Hale Bridger, SeaQuest DSV
Collecting some links on getting Webmentions to work with Hugo and Netlify.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov — To the Un-Known!
- Bridgy Fed
- Max Böck — Static Indieweb pt1: Syndicating Content
- Max Böck — Static Indieweb pt2: Using Webmentions
- Webmention.io
- Webmention.app Documentation — How to integrate with Netlify
So here it is… The latest narrative from the obedient and the scared: If you’re actually even thinking about exercising your freedoms, you’re an anti-vaxxer. You’re anti-science. You’re killing us all!
Well, I have news for you: While vaccines work, contact tracing apps don’t. They don’t work. Oh, and don’t take my word for it.
Now on Netlify
I’ve migrated this site over to Netlify and we’re now deploying automatically with each git commit. Which is quite spiffy.
Bruce Schneier on contact tracing apps:
The idea that contact tracing can be done with an app, and not human health professionals, is just plain dumb.
The last time I managed to run 10 kilometres in one go was 15 years ago.
I guess there’s something good to be found amid this horrible lockdown situation after all. All that stress means I need a coping mechanism and no fun activities allowed outside means I cope by running a lot.
Corona Chronicles
A look back at some podcast episodes I released as this whole COVID-19 crisis developed.
ADVENT would like to remind you that the virus curfew is in place for YOUR protection. Trust in the wisdom of THE ELDERS, they know best. Stay at home while we are building the society of the future!
I’ve started playing XCOM again and the propaganda messages in the game just made me think of this.
