Things are always happening. Whether and when we read about them is a different issue entirely. And of course, they take a long time to happen, longer than we expect the news cycle to run.
What we should try to remember is that just because we’re reading about it now doesn’t mean it just started happening now. I can’t understand why, when there’s literally hundreds of channels on cable and satellite and so many fragmented niches in sports, music, television, and movies, there is only One Thing In the News at a time. But that’s the way it seems to be.
Iran-related example: toilets on the USS Gerald Ford. It had been reported for several years that there were problems with the toilets, but somebody decided a few weeks ago to re-report the problems in the context of the Iran war, which made millions of people think this was a new problem happening because of the war (perhaps sabotage by sailors unhappy about the deployment). But it wasn’t a new problem, it dated back even to 2009 on other ships with the same toilet system. (Why more than ten years later we persist in using the same toilet systems that didn’t work before is part of the mysteries of procurement.)
We were just hearing about it now, because it was related to the One Thing In the News, and that created the false impression that it was caused by the One Thing In the News.
Sure hope it wasn’t those $3,000-a-piece ones…(or whatever).
@Barry Meislin: it wasn’t those $3,000-a-piece ones
Those were $600 ($1900 in today’s money) toilet seats, and I don’t even know how real that issue was. The media did not start misrepresenting things to us just now.
The Ford’s toilet problem stems from a design choice to save water by moving waste with vacuum pressure through smaller pipes. They’ve chosen to try and deal with the failed design with increased maintenance and education but they’re just throwing good money after bad. The obvious solution to redesign and replace the system throws another massive wrench in carrier availability which is already poor. That’s why the known 10 year problem persists.
Thanks Niketas. I’m feeling a lot better….
Just finished new book by Palantin CTO Shayam Sankar, Mobilize!..about the need for America to recover the need to do big important things, fast, and the fact that this requires leadership by exceptional individuals who have at least a touch of the Heretic in them.
One of the people profiled in the book, along with Kelly Johnson of Lockeed and Hyman Rickover of the USN, is Bernard Schreiver, who ran ballistic missile development for the USAF. There’s a great biography of Schriever and his program, ‘A Fiery Peace in a Cold War’, which I revered several years ago…just posted an updated version:
Queen Elizabeth the First’s tomb has been sealed for four hundred years, and it is unlikely that any researchers will be given permission to open it to study her remains.
There is an apparent explosion of recent YouTube videos which discuss the results of an attempt by computer experts, historians, and genetic researchers to get around this situation by using a combination of AI, genetic analysis of skin cells from three objects the Queen was known to have continually worn or used, genetic analysis of her relatives, plus medical and deep historical research, and, if true, the results are quite startling.
(I viewed one specific report, but can’t find that particular one again amid what look like dozens of such reports about these spectacular findings now on YouTube.) *
Genetic analysis—piecing together her Genome–the particular report I read claimed with supposed 90% certainty–indicated that Elizabeth suffered from a rare genetic defect and that genetically she was a male, had no uterus and, therefore, could obviously bear no children. (Even though she continually dangled the possibility of marriage to her, of alliance–and obviously of potential royal offspring–as part of her statecraft.)
This analysis also indicated that she was not the child of Henry the Eighth i.e. meaning that Anne Bolyn was indeed an adulteress as Henry charged, which led to her execution.
The standard cause of Elizabeth’s death has been thought to be the very harmful toxic effects of the lead based cosmetic paste she applied to her face every day for decades, and that lead compound did indeed have very harmful, very debilitating effects.
However, these researchers believe that a very careful reading of the bizarre symptoms Elizabeth displayed during the last few days leading up to her death actually indicates that she was finished off, was poisoned by a deadly combination of Belladonna and Wolfsbane, which would act together to create those very specific bizarre symptoms.
They mention several candidates for who might have poisoned her, but have found no evidence pointing to any specific candidate.
So, is this genuine, solid, legit investigation, or just sensationalism?
P.S. There are many such supposedly revelatory AI-based findings which reportedly overturn the current paradigms/narratives/ certainties in archeology and other fields being reported on Youtube, new, spectacular findings supposedly “changing everything.”
Again, real solid research, or just sensationalism?
@David Foster:Palantin CTO Shayam Sankar
The Palantir CTO wants the government spending money on giant projects? Knock me over with a feather…
Geez Niketas. Do you always take statements so literally that you have to immediately throw a criticism at it? Your “know it all ism” gets to be tiring.
@Snow on Pine:Again, real solid research, or just sensationalism?
Just “asking questions”, are we?
There isn’t really anything in Elizabeth’s history that requires such sensational explanation. For example, she died at age 69, which in those days was pretty old, lead-based cosmetics or not, lots of monarchs didn’t last as long as she did–and lead-based cosmetics are NOT the “standard explanation” for her death. She was old, and medicine and sanitation were primitive, and lots of people died younger than her without cosmetics being involved.
Some women are childless for reasons that have nothing to do with being “genetically male” or not having a uterus. They didn’t have genetic testing in her day and no one would have known she was “genetically male”, if she was, so that couldn’t have been the reason why she never married. She might have had good reason to think she might never have children given the science of her own day, for example if she never menstruated. But she did menstruate, according to the people of her own day, who commented in their letters whenever her menstruation was absent or irregular, which can happen from time to time in otherwise healthy women. (Her period was not private. Nothing she did could be private. Her staff checked her laundry and reported on it to her ministers.) Her Secretary of State did a lot of work to establish the likelihood of her having children because of the extreme importance of her having an heir, and he didn’t find anything that would indicate she couldn’t bear children, which wouldn’t be slam-dunk proof given the limitations of their science and technology of course.
I think the most likely explanation is the “standard” one that Elizabeth liked being a ruling Queen and did not want to share power with a husband, nor did she wished to be shunted aside for an heir, and the older she got the less patient she was with questions about her successor. There’s just no need to reach for these explanations because it’s not very mysterious.
@physicsguy:Do you always take statements so literally that you have to immediately throw a criticism at it?
Do you always need to interpret an observation as a criticism? Certainly wasn’t intended that way. Text doesn’t convey tone very well and it’s easy to misinterpret.
I took your observation as a hook on which to hang my own. Sorry you thought that meant I was criticizing you.
How many of the One Thing can they put into a story about Queen Elizabeth?
Start with little new or available data to be checked to falsify the various hypotheses (so it isn’t a scientific process), add the trans angle, the illegitimatcy angle (Anne Boelin), the environmental bad poisonous product angle, the evil murderous conspiracy angle. Sounds like a fantastical click bait. All you need is UFOs and Unicorns.
@Snow on Pine
It all seemed interesting and even believable until I read this load of it.
Genetic analysis—piecing together her Genome–the particular report I read claimed with supposed 90% certainty–indicated that Elizabeth suffered from a rare genetic defect and that genetically she was a male, had no uterus and, therefore, could obviously bear no children. (Even though she continually dangled the possibility of marriage to her, of alliance–and obviously of potential royal offspring–as part of her statecraft.)
Niketas thankfully did a lot of the yeoman’s work addressing the rest of this, but I figure this deserves a special amount of burn. But suffice it to say, this is the kind of thing written by grifters and spread around by people who really underestimate people in the past, or the implications of what “possibility of marriage, alliance, and offspring” really meant or what people would do on its behalf.
We know Elizabeth subjected herself to MULTIPLE physical, publich-ish (subject to notables and VIPs) demonstrations to confirm her virginity and later on health, seen by multiple foreign dignitaries. It is hard for me to understate just how invasive these things could be, but they absolutely involved taking a look up “there”, and suffice it to say any absence or abnormalities with the uterus would have been seen and noted VERY VERY LOUDLY and gone across the world, and it is worth noting that literally nobody – including the Habsburgs that repeatedly accused her of being an accursed heretic – alleges she does not have a uterus, in spite of how explosive this would be.
And yes, I did consider the alternative explanation of bribing or hushing. After all, Elizabeth had a dutiful and ruthless spymaster, multiple pirates/privateers, and a period of history and time that was remarkably corrupt. But I considered that for about five seconds so I could address it with the obvious of “Do you have any fajorking idea how many people would have to be bribed HOW MUCH, multiple times, in order to get away with this, with literally nobody spilling the beans”? Especially since for foreign dignitaries failing to report this would literally be treason that would likely get your head chopped off or some other extravagant punishment. It also raises more medicinal questions than it in any way answers, especially given the periodic periods. And I note that the people involved here rarely specify WHAT the name of said genetic condition would be.
There is literally 0% chance this is in any way true whatsoever. The other claims are another question, but that alone is enough to indict whoever put this together of probable fraud and to undermine even the possibility of credibility for the other claims.
I think the most likely explanation is the “standard” one that Elizabeth liked being a ruling Queen and did not want to share power with a husband, nor did she wished to be shunted aside for an heir, and the older she got the less patient she was with questions about her successor.
— Niketas Choniates
Yeah, as a rule the simplest explanation should be the starting point. The possibility of marriage alliance was one of the most valuable tools in her locker, after all. Also, even in her own time the ‘virgin Queen’ line was widely questioned (if quietly). She had several male favorites over the course of her reign that rumors circulated about.
Those were $600 ($1900 in today’s money) toilet seats, and I don’t even know how real that issue was. The media did not start misrepresenting things to us just now.
— Niketas Choniates
While I’m sure procurement corruption (at various levels) was and is a real thing, and I also know that sometimes such outlandish-seeming costs have practical reasons for them, part of me has always also suspected that some of the money for these outlandish costs goes to ‘black’ projects of one sort or another, too, or is otherwise diverted to fund this or that.
@HC68:I’m sure procurement corruption (at various levels) was and is a real thing
The $450 hammers that were singled out back then were an accounting convention, not actually spending $450 on a hammer, and was the particular hobbyhorse of a Congressman who rode it to getting his name in the papers for free. I don’t know that was operating with the toilet seats. Too much noise and too little signal, especially 40 years later.
In the case of the hammers, the contract accounting was done in such a way as to be impossible to know what was really being paid for what, which was a problem in itself, but not one that lends itself to sound bites.
This Elizabeth I speculation sounds like the same kind of thinking that recently led to a headline claiming that Shakespeare was actually a black woman. Umm, no.
Anti-drone shotgun shells from Ukraine, by way of Norway and battleswarm blog. Seem appropriately low tech and effective
@Kate:This Elizabeth I speculation sounds like the same kind of thinking
Been around a long time though, at least since the 1980s. I think the original motivation was just anomaly-hunting: the first mention I know of it was in Medical Hypotheses, a journal dedicated to speculation, by someone who seems to have a medical background but not a historical background, and might not have known (for example) that queens couldn’t keep their periods private and that their courtiers would discuss them in letters.
These things tend to break containment and because people have heard something like them before it’s easier for riders of current hobbyhorses to pile on…
There do seem to be a lot of people who like to explain an extraordinary individual in terms of extraordinary biology. Even as queens go Elizabeth I is in the top 1%. I’m sure she’d be delighted that at least we’re still talking about her. But I imagine she would laugh at our movies and dramas about her.
I saw that a recent historical drama tries to make out Queen Anne as a lesbian. It’s more plausible if you don’t know about her 17 pregnancies.
Bob,
I believe canister shot loaded in Civil War cannons was an effective anti personnel weapon. Seems like the same thing could be scaled up to modern armaments against drone swarms. Probably someone’s already done such.
5.56 mm rotary machine gun with a laser sight system seems pretty effective. YouTube mattsimus
Effective range of your weapon vs lethal fragment/blast radius of the drone ordnance is a consideration though.
Niketas…”The Palantir CTO wants the government spending money on giant projects? Knock me over with a feather…”
Unless you are an absolute pacifist, surely you would agree that the US needs weapons development and production…is it not better that these programs be conducted as effectively as possible? Which is the theme of Sankar’s book.
Poor Queen Anne. Seventeen pregnancies, only five live births, and none survived into adulthood.
I found the Mount Rushmore video amazing, considering the primitive conditions, minimal financial input, and “blood, toil, tears and sweat” involved. To take an ugly side of a mountain and transform it into an artistic masterpiece in such a way is, to me, awe-inspiring.
Speculation about why some ultimately relatively inconsequential queen did what she did is, to me, a real waste of time in comparison.
I predict that there will be a modern version of flak, a redevelopment of the old WWII ‘Ack-Ack’, that was so effective in knocking down bombers, but in smaller calibers and with deployed high-tensile strength fibers that blow out radially like starbursts, to entangle drones. The Ukrainians have been driven by self-preservation to develop these shotshells to save their own lives in the front lines. Arms manufacturers can do much more. And drone waves, as we recently saw in Louisiana, are a thing, now.
Aggie,
The Italian OTO Melara 76 mm Naval gun has one type of ammo designed for air defense that uses a controlled direction blast of balls to defeat missiles.
“Then they came for the theater kids, and I said ‘make sure you get all the theater kids’”
I’ve been chuckling off and on for a while over that one.
@vv:ultimately relatively inconsequential queen
Lol.
She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all…
But what’s that compared to carving a mountain into the glorious visage of Teddy Roosevelt? (I’ve always felt that one of those heads was not like the others.)
@Kate:Poor Queen Anne. Seventeen pregnancies, only five live births, and none survived into adulthood.
And that’s how we got the Georges…
But poor Queen Anne, for lots of reasons. Anne loved her husband very much. There doesn’t seem to be a wifely equivalent for “uxorious”. Not everyone thought as much of Anne’s husband as she did. Her uncle’s (Charles II) comment is too good not to quote, even if unfair:
I have tried him drunk and I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him.
When he died at age 55
His death has flung the Queen into an unspeakable grief. She never left him till he was dead, but continued kissing him the very moment his breath went out of his body, and ’twas with a great deal of difficulty my Lady Marlborough prevailed upon her to leave him.
And she wrote,
…the loss of such a husband, who loved me so dearly and so devotedly, is too crushing for me to be able to bear it as I ought.
That’s one reason the “lesbian” drama was so silly, the other being that her supposed lover Sarah Churchill was equally in love with her own husband, John Churchill (ancestor of Sir Winston). After his death, she rejected an offer of marriage from the Duke of Somerset:
If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never share the heart and hand that once belonged to John, Duke of Marlborough.
Though not lesbians, Anne and Sarah Churchill were very attached to each other for many years, and their husbands were friends and colleagues who commanded armies together. It didn’t end well. I think Sarah Churchill got too used to making use of the Queen to further her various schemes, and forgot about the friendship. Anne made other friends who were enemies of the Churchills, and it worked out badly for everyone.
Borglum is an alum of Omaha Creighton Prep; my alma mater.
The Mount Rushmore video was really great, thanks for sharing.
Open Thread: Mine Your Own Business or Dire Straits?
Short Guide to IRAN’S NAVAL MINES in the Strait of Hormuz – H I Sutton
Not surprisingly, the climactic chase scene at Mount Rushmore in “North by Northwest” was not filmed at Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock used a full-scale mockup in Culver City.
However, Hitchcock intercut shots of the real Mount Rushmore for verisimilitude. The whole effect is stunning.
Sadly, the eyebrows didn’t happen. Still one of my favorite films.
@om: Open Thread: Mine Your Own Business or Dire Straits?
You could have been writing for “Rocky and Bulwinkle.” 🙂
The historic site we spent two summers at as volunteers generally saw a constant stream of visitors once school was out. We would usually ask people what brought them to our location, which commemorated both the Mormon Handcart Pioneers and the historic, and amazing, Sun Ranch.
A lot of people were there on purpose, but many of them claimed that they just saw the sign on the highway and decided to turn in.
Among both groups, I venture the guess that 80% were either on their way to Mount Rushmore, or on their way home from there.
We have been to the monument twice, and it really is stupendous.
@ huxley in re om’s punny statement: thanks for reminding us of the best subversive video of our childhood, which we made sure to propagandize our children with.
“Nothing up my sleeve….”
Reading about a local No Kings protest, the article said at least one vehicle was seen “rolling coal.” A quick search revealed that means
…the practice of modifying a diesel engine to deliberately emit large amounts of black or gray diesel exhaust […] Rolling coal is used as a form of anti-environmentalism protest. […] Some drivers intentionally trigger coal rolling in the presence of electric and hybrid vehicles (a practice nicknamed “Prius repellent”) […] Coal rolling may also be directed at foreign vehicles, bicyclists, protesters, and pedestrians.
physicsguy’s mention of “Mr. Knowitall” got Rocky and Bullwinkle in me reawoken.
The Russian drone war on Ukraine has brought Ukrainian expertise in defensive tactics against Iranian, Russian, and Chinese drones to worldwide attention. Ukraine has been using small caliber anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) from machine guns to radar guided autocannons (30 mm Gephard system from Rhinemetal). As well as guys with small arms in helicopters and prop planes. And then they also use spendy modern Patriot and other SAMs, but those are >>>$$$$ and reserved for defending against ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, and such that target really important things.
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When one sees similar reports from both right and left news sources, with the usual slants, maybe something is actually happening:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/live-updates-iranian-protests-intensify-as-citizens-demand-end-to-ayatollah-rule?topStoryPosition=undefined&author=Daily+Wire&category=News&elementPosition=0&row=1&rowHeadline=Top+Stories&rowType=Top+Stories&title=LIVE+UPDATES%3A+Trump+Signals+Deal+With+New+Iranian+Regime+But+Brings+Oil+Into+Play
@physicsguy:maybe something is actually happening
Things are always happening. Whether and when we read about them is a different issue entirely. And of course, they take a long time to happen, longer than we expect the news cycle to run.
What we should try to remember is that just because we’re reading about it now doesn’t mean it just started happening now. I can’t understand why, when there’s literally hundreds of channels on cable and satellite and so many fragmented niches in sports, music, television, and movies, there is only One Thing In the News at a time. But that’s the way it seems to be.
Iran-related example: toilets on the USS Gerald Ford. It had been reported for several years that there were problems with the toilets, but somebody decided a few weeks ago to re-report the problems in the context of the Iran war, which made millions of people think this was a new problem happening because of the war (perhaps sabotage by sailors unhappy about the deployment). But it wasn’t a new problem, it dated back even to 2009 on other ships with the same toilet system. (Why more than ten years later we persist in using the same toilet systems that didn’t work before is part of the mysteries of procurement.)
We were just hearing about it now, because it was related to the One Thing In the News, and that created the false impression that it was caused by the One Thing In the News.
Sure hope it wasn’t those $3,000-a-piece ones…(or whatever).
@Barry Meislin: it wasn’t those $3,000-a-piece ones
Those were $600 ($1900 in today’s money) toilet seats, and I don’t even know how real that issue was. The media did not start misrepresenting things to us just now.
The Ford’s toilet problem stems from a design choice to save water by moving waste with vacuum pressure through smaller pipes. They’ve chosen to try and deal with the failed design with increased maintenance and education but they’re just throwing good money after bad. The obvious solution to redesign and replace the system throws another massive wrench in carrier availability which is already poor. That’s why the known 10 year problem persists.
Thanks Niketas. I’m feeling a lot better….
Just finished new book by Palantin CTO Shayam Sankar, Mobilize!..about the need for America to recover the need to do big important things, fast, and the fact that this requires leadership by exceptional individuals who have at least a touch of the Heretic in them.
One of the people profiled in the book, along with Kelly Johnson of Lockeed and Hyman Rickover of the USN, is Bernard Schreiver, who ran ballistic missile development for the USAF. There’s a great biography of Schriever and his program, ‘A Fiery Peace in a Cold War’, which I revered several years ago…just posted an updated version:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/76403.html
RE: Queen Elizabeth I—her life and death
Queen Elizabeth the First’s tomb has been sealed for four hundred years, and it is unlikely that any researchers will be given permission to open it to study her remains.
There is an apparent explosion of recent YouTube videos which discuss the results of an attempt by computer experts, historians, and genetic researchers to get around this situation by using a combination of AI, genetic analysis of skin cells from three objects the Queen was known to have continually worn or used, genetic analysis of her relatives, plus medical and deep historical research, and, if true, the results are quite startling.
(I viewed one specific report, but can’t find that particular one again amid what look like dozens of such reports about these spectacular findings now on YouTube.) *
Genetic analysis—piecing together her Genome–the particular report I read claimed with supposed 90% certainty–indicated that Elizabeth suffered from a rare genetic defect and that genetically she was a male, had no uterus and, therefore, could obviously bear no children. (Even though she continually dangled the possibility of marriage to her, of alliance–and obviously of potential royal offspring–as part of her statecraft.)
This analysis also indicated that she was not the child of Henry the Eighth i.e. meaning that Anne Bolyn was indeed an adulteress as Henry charged, which led to her execution.
The standard cause of Elizabeth’s death has been thought to be the very harmful toxic effects of the lead based cosmetic paste she applied to her face every day for decades, and that lead compound did indeed have very harmful, very debilitating effects.
However, these researchers believe that a very careful reading of the bizarre symptoms Elizabeth displayed during the last few days leading up to her death actually indicates that she was finished off, was poisoned by a deadly combination of Belladonna and Wolfsbane, which would act together to create those very specific bizarre symptoms.
They mention several candidates for who might have poisoned her, but have found no evidence pointing to any specific candidate.
So, is this genuine, solid, legit investigation, or just sensationalism?
• Here is one such report at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KvYXrYHQp8
P.S. There are many such supposedly revelatory AI-based findings which reportedly overturn the current paradigms/narratives/ certainties in archeology and other fields being reported on Youtube, new, spectacular findings supposedly “changing everything.”
Again, real solid research, or just sensationalism?
@David Foster:Palantin CTO Shayam Sankar
The Palantir CTO wants the government spending money on giant projects? Knock me over with a feather…
Geez Niketas. Do you always take statements so literally that you have to immediately throw a criticism at it? Your “know it all ism” gets to be tiring.
@Snow on Pine:Again, real solid research, or just sensationalism?
Just “asking questions”, are we?
There isn’t really anything in Elizabeth’s history that requires such sensational explanation. For example, she died at age 69, which in those days was pretty old, lead-based cosmetics or not, lots of monarchs didn’t last as long as she did–and lead-based cosmetics are NOT the “standard explanation” for her death. She was old, and medicine and sanitation were primitive, and lots of people died younger than her without cosmetics being involved.
Some women are childless for reasons that have nothing to do with being “genetically male” or not having a uterus. They didn’t have genetic testing in her day and no one would have known she was “genetically male”, if she was, so that couldn’t have been the reason why she never married. She might have had good reason to think she might never have children given the science of her own day, for example if she never menstruated. But she did menstruate, according to the people of her own day, who commented in their letters whenever her menstruation was absent or irregular, which can happen from time to time in otherwise healthy women. (Her period was not private. Nothing she did could be private. Her staff checked her laundry and reported on it to her ministers.) Her Secretary of State did a lot of work to establish the likelihood of her having children because of the extreme importance of her having an heir, and he didn’t find anything that would indicate she couldn’t bear children, which wouldn’t be slam-dunk proof given the limitations of their science and technology of course.
I think the most likely explanation is the “standard” one that Elizabeth liked being a ruling Queen and did not want to share power with a husband, nor did she wished to be shunted aside for an heir, and the older she got the less patient she was with questions about her successor. There’s just no need to reach for these explanations because it’s not very mysterious.
@physicsguy:Do you always take statements so literally that you have to immediately throw a criticism at it?
Do you always need to interpret an observation as a criticism? Certainly wasn’t intended that way. Text doesn’t convey tone very well and it’s easy to misinterpret.
I took your observation as a hook on which to hang my own. Sorry you thought that meant I was criticizing you.
How many of the One Thing can they put into a story about Queen Elizabeth?
Start with little new or available data to be checked to falsify the various hypotheses (so it isn’t a scientific process), add the trans angle, the illegitimatcy angle (Anne Boelin), the environmental bad poisonous product angle, the evil murderous conspiracy angle. Sounds like a fantastical click bait. All you need is UFOs and Unicorns.
@Snow on Pine
It all seemed interesting and even believable until I read this load of it.
Niketas thankfully did a lot of the yeoman’s work addressing the rest of this, but I figure this deserves a special amount of burn. But suffice it to say, this is the kind of thing written by grifters and spread around by people who really underestimate people in the past, or the implications of what “possibility of marriage, alliance, and offspring” really meant or what people would do on its behalf.
We know Elizabeth subjected herself to MULTIPLE physical, publich-ish (subject to notables and VIPs) demonstrations to confirm her virginity and later on health, seen by multiple foreign dignitaries. It is hard for me to understate just how invasive these things could be, but they absolutely involved taking a look up “there”, and suffice it to say any absence or abnormalities with the uterus would have been seen and noted VERY VERY LOUDLY and gone across the world, and it is worth noting that literally nobody – including the Habsburgs that repeatedly accused her of being an accursed heretic – alleges she does not have a uterus, in spite of how explosive this would be.
And yes, I did consider the alternative explanation of bribing or hushing. After all, Elizabeth had a dutiful and ruthless spymaster, multiple pirates/privateers, and a period of history and time that was remarkably corrupt. But I considered that for about five seconds so I could address it with the obvious of “Do you have any fajorking idea how many people would have to be bribed HOW MUCH, multiple times, in order to get away with this, with literally nobody spilling the beans”? Especially since for foreign dignitaries failing to report this would literally be treason that would likely get your head chopped off or some other extravagant punishment. It also raises more medicinal questions than it in any way answers, especially given the periodic periods. And I note that the people involved here rarely specify WHAT the name of said genetic condition would be.
There is literally 0% chance this is in any way true whatsoever. The other claims are another question, but that alone is enough to indict whoever put this together of probable fraud and to undermine even the possibility of credibility for the other claims.
— Niketas Choniates
Yeah, as a rule the simplest explanation should be the starting point. The possibility of marriage alliance was one of the most valuable tools in her locker, after all. Also, even in her own time the ‘virgin Queen’ line was widely questioned (if quietly). She had several male favorites over the course of her reign that rumors circulated about.
— Niketas Choniates
While I’m sure procurement corruption (at various levels) was and is a real thing, and I also know that sometimes such outlandish-seeming costs have practical reasons for them, part of me has always also suspected that some of the money for these outlandish costs goes to ‘black’ projects of one sort or another, too, or is otherwise diverted to fund this or that.
@HC68:I’m sure procurement corruption (at various levels) was and is a real thing
The $450 hammers that were singled out back then were an accounting convention, not actually spending $450 on a hammer, and was the particular hobbyhorse of a Congressman who rode it to getting his name in the papers for free. I don’t know that was operating with the toilet seats. Too much noise and too little signal, especially 40 years later.
In the case of the hammers, the contract accounting was done in such a way as to be impossible to know what was really being paid for what, which was a problem in itself, but not one that lends itself to sound bites.
This Elizabeth I speculation sounds like the same kind of thinking that recently led to a headline claiming that Shakespeare was actually a black woman. Umm, no.
Anti-drone shotgun shells from Ukraine, by way of Norway and battleswarm blog. Seem appropriately low tech and effective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7xHNrFN5mo
@Kate:This Elizabeth I speculation sounds like the same kind of thinking
Been around a long time though, at least since the 1980s. I think the original motivation was just anomaly-hunting: the first mention I know of it was in Medical Hypotheses, a journal dedicated to speculation, by someone who seems to have a medical background but not a historical background, and might not have known (for example) that queens couldn’t keep their periods private and that their courtiers would discuss them in letters.
These things tend to break containment and because people have heard something like them before it’s easier for riders of current hobbyhorses to pile on…
There do seem to be a lot of people who like to explain an extraordinary individual in terms of extraordinary biology. Even as queens go Elizabeth I is in the top 1%. I’m sure she’d be delighted that at least we’re still talking about her. But I imagine she would laugh at our movies and dramas about her.
I saw that a recent historical drama tries to make out Queen Anne as a lesbian. It’s more plausible if you don’t know about her 17 pregnancies.
Bob,
I believe canister shot loaded in Civil War cannons was an effective anti personnel weapon. Seems like the same thing could be scaled up to modern armaments against drone swarms. Probably someone’s already done such.
For this we have an energy crisis??
‘“WE ARE NOWHERE NEAR AGI”’—
https://instapundit.com/786260/
5.56 mm rotary machine gun with a laser sight system seems pretty effective. YouTube mattsimus
Effective range of your weapon vs lethal fragment/blast radius of the drone ordnance is a consideration though.
Niketas…”The Palantir CTO wants the government spending money on giant projects? Knock me over with a feather…”
Unless you are an absolute pacifist, surely you would agree that the US needs weapons development and production…is it not better that these programs be conducted as effectively as possible? Which is the theme of Sankar’s book.
Poor Queen Anne. Seventeen pregnancies, only five live births, and none survived into adulthood.
I found the Mount Rushmore video amazing, considering the primitive conditions, minimal financial input, and “blood, toil, tears and sweat” involved. To take an ugly side of a mountain and transform it into an artistic masterpiece in such a way is, to me, awe-inspiring.
Speculation about why some ultimately relatively inconsequential queen did what she did is, to me, a real waste of time in comparison.
I predict that there will be a modern version of flak, a redevelopment of the old WWII ‘Ack-Ack’, that was so effective in knocking down bombers, but in smaller calibers and with deployed high-tensile strength fibers that blow out radially like starbursts, to entangle drones. The Ukrainians have been driven by self-preservation to develop these shotshells to save their own lives in the front lines. Arms manufacturers can do much more. And drone waves, as we recently saw in Louisiana, are a thing, now.
Aggie,
The Italian OTO Melara 76 mm Naval gun has one type of ammo designed for air defense that uses a controlled direction blast of balls to defeat missiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTO_Melara_76_mm
From a post over on Instapundit. So clever.
“Then they came for the theater kids, and I said ‘make sure you get all the theater kids’”
I’ve been chuckling off and on for a while over that one.
@vv:ultimately relatively inconsequential queen
Lol.
But what’s that compared to carving a mountain into the glorious visage of Teddy Roosevelt? (I’ve always felt that one of those heads was not like the others.)
@Kate:Poor Queen Anne. Seventeen pregnancies, only five live births, and none survived into adulthood.
And that’s how we got the Georges…
But poor Queen Anne, for lots of reasons. Anne loved her husband very much. There doesn’t seem to be a wifely equivalent for “uxorious”. Not everyone thought as much of Anne’s husband as she did. Her uncle’s (Charles II) comment is too good not to quote, even if unfair:
When he died at age 55
And she wrote,
That’s one reason the “lesbian” drama was so silly, the other being that her supposed lover Sarah Churchill was equally in love with her own husband, John Churchill (ancestor of Sir Winston). After his death, she rejected an offer of marriage from the Duke of Somerset:
Though not lesbians, Anne and Sarah Churchill were very attached to each other for many years, and their husbands were friends and colleagues who commanded armies together. It didn’t end well. I think Sarah Churchill got too used to making use of the Queen to further her various schemes, and forgot about the friendship. Anne made other friends who were enemies of the Churchills, and it worked out badly for everyone.
Borglum is an alum of Omaha Creighton Prep; my alma mater.
The Mount Rushmore video was really great, thanks for sharing.
Open Thread: Mine Your Own Business or Dire Straits?
Short Guide to IRAN’S NAVAL MINES in the Strait of Hormuz – H I Sutton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMXSDUj-dms
Re: Lincoln’s Eyebrows
Not surprisingly, the climactic chase scene at Mount Rushmore in “North by Northwest” was not filmed at Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock used a full-scale mockup in Culver City.
However, Hitchcock intercut shots of the real Mount Rushmore for verisimilitude. The whole effect is stunning.
–“North by Northwest (1959) – Mount Rushmore Scene”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPeH0w6ZXZM
Hitchcock began work on “North by Northwest” with only this image:
__________________________________________
I want to have one scene of a man hanging onto Lincoln’s eyebrows. That’s all the picture I have so far.
–Alfred Hitchcock
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rushmore-north-northwest/
__________________________________________
Sadly, the eyebrows didn’t happen. Still one of my favorite films.
@om: Open Thread: Mine Your Own Business or Dire Straits?
You could have been writing for “Rocky and Bulwinkle.” 🙂
The historic site we spent two summers at as volunteers generally saw a constant stream of visitors once school was out. We would usually ask people what brought them to our location, which commemorated both the Mormon Handcart Pioneers and the historic, and amazing, Sun Ranch.
A lot of people were there on purpose, but many of them claimed that they just saw the sign on the highway and decided to turn in.
Among both groups, I venture the guess that 80% were either on their way to Mount Rushmore, or on their way home from there.
We have been to the monument twice, and it really is stupendous.
@ huxley in re om’s punny statement: thanks for reminding us of the best subversive video of our childhood, which we made sure to propagandize our children with.
“Nothing up my sleeve….”
Reading about a local No Kings protest, the article said at least one vehicle was seen “rolling coal.” A quick search revealed that means
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
huxley and AesopFan:
physicsguy’s mention of “Mr. Knowitall” got Rocky and Bullwinkle in me reawoken.
The Russian drone war on Ukraine has brought Ukrainian expertise in defensive tactics against Iranian, Russian, and Chinese drones to worldwide attention. Ukraine has been using small caliber anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) from machine guns to radar guided autocannons (30 mm Gephard system from Rhinemetal). As well as guys with small arms in helicopters and prop planes. And then they also use spendy modern Patriot and other SAMs, but those are >>>$$$$ and reserved for defending against ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, and such that target really important things.