patrick.net

RC2006 says

I've started listening to audiobooks. At first I wasn't sure about the format but gave it a try since my eyes get a bit strained now reading. I still need to have complete silence and usually set or lay in the dark while listening and feel it's pretty comparable to reading The narrator makes or breaks it for me if it sucks I switch to reading.

Data rate is agonizingly slow - even on 2x speed. People generally speak at 100-150wpm, JFK was an anomaly at 200 WPM. Decent readers can do 400 WPM, my wife is like 800.

rocketjoe79 says

RC2006 says

I've started listening to audiobooks. At first I wasn't sure about the format but gave it a try since my eyes get a bit strained now reading. I still need to have complete silence and usually set or lay in the dark while listening and feel it's pretty comparable to reading The narrator makes or breaks it for me if it sucks I switch to reading.

Data rate is agonizingly slow - even on 2x speed. People generally speak at 100-150wpm, JFK was an anomaly at 200 WPM. Decent readers can do 400 WPM, my wife is like 800.

That explains why books seem to take longer. If I'm reading something I really love I'm pretty sure I'm reading 3-5x faster than if I read it out loud.

“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. — A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.” - Schopenhauer

Wow. I'll have to order a copy from overseas. They don't want you to see this book, despite it going through at least 5 (FIVE) English editions in half a century

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=The+Pink+Swastika+%3A+Homosexuality+in+the+Nazi+Party&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313

This is almost as bad as "Camp of the Saints"

BTW, I'm on to Livy's "Early History of Rome" now.

Pretty good once again, like Plutarch and Suetonius. Lots of politics, murder, good and bad people. Every politician should read all that ancient history.

Have you gotten into the whole Livia-Julia Agrippina (the Younger) conspiracy yet?

It's wild.

That might be in Tacitus or Cassius Dio though.

I have not hit that.

I read that the entire set of texts which have come down to us from the ancient world would fit in one bookcase not taller than a man. Maybe I'll finish them all eventually.

Patrick says

I read that the entire set of texts which have come down to us from the ancient world would fit in one bookcase not taller than a man.

Yep, that fire at Alexandria.

I finished Livy's "The Early History of Rome" and was amused by his description of the Gauls who sacked Rome:

- "wine, a pleasure new to them, drew them to cross the alps"
- too numerous in Gaul, so they needed to migrate to new land
- "the religious sentiment is very strong in them"
- tend to anger quickly ("the uncontrollable anger which is characteristic of their race")
- were defeated partly because they were "a people accustomed to a wet cold climate, the heat stifled them"
- individually brave, but not as well organized as the Romans ("a people whose very life is wild adventure")
- often got drunk and were easy to kill when sleeping it off ("soused at night they lie at night like animals")

You could say a lot of that about the Irish.

Just finished Caesar's "Gallic Wars". Mostly quite tedious, a litany of battles and tribes, but some fun points, such as when the Gauls make fun of the Romans as "pygmies" because they are so much shorter. The Gauls ultimately lost because they were not unified, and the Romans were.

Now I'm on to "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by Shirer. Learned that Hitler's family were basically hillbillies from the countryside, lots of illegitimacy, not a lot of education. Hitler's father Alois was illegitimate himself, and so grew up with his mother's maiden name, Shicklgruber, until his own father Johann acknowledged him. Had Hitler's grandfather Johann not acknowledged Alois Shicklgruber as his son, Adolph would have grown up as Adolph Shicklgruber as well, and everyone would have had to say "Heil Shicklgruber!" without laughing...

Wow, exactly like the current propaganda about the mRNA death jabs, the 2020 election fraud, and Jan 6th.

Patrick says

Wow, exactly like the current propaganda about the mRNA death jabs, the 2020 election fraud, and Jan 6th.

yep, also modus operandi of Woke jihadists

.

This book, Rise and fall of the Third Reich, was written in 1960, and has 4 million total dead, including the Jews.

I'm getting close to halfway into the book, so going to watch this 1977 German documentary now:

Hitler: A Career

https://www.imdb.com/es/title/tt0191182/

First half was very good, all the footage is original from back then. Will watch the second half tomorrow.

Agrees with the book's story of Hitler's rise pretty exactly.

From from a speech by Hitler in 1938 or 1939 which he points out that the English were oppressing the Irish (even using the Irish word for their prime minister) and that the English were occupying Palestine.

Patrick says

From from a speech by Hitler in 1938 or 1939 which he points out that the English were oppressing the Irish (even using the Irish word for their prime minister) and that the English were occupying Palestine.

Churchill drew up secret plans to exterminate the Irish with poison gas if Ireland gave up its neutrality to side with the Nazi's in WWII.

This is consistent with Churchill's initiation of saturation bombing of German civilians in WWII. He did this to divert the German bombers which were decimating RAF fields along the Southern coast of England. Hitler took the bait and started the Blitz, sparing the remaining RAF forces.

stereotomy says

Patrick says

From from a speech by Hitler in 1938 or 1939 which he points out that the English were oppressing the Irish (even using the Irish word for their prime minister) and that the English were occupying Palestine.

Churchill drew up secret plans to exterminate the Irish with poison gas if Ireland gave up its neutrality to side with the Nazi's in WWII.

This is consistent with Churchill's initiation of saturation bombing of German civilians in WWII. He did this to divert the German bombers which were decimating RAF fields in Sothern England. Hitler took the bait, and started the Blitz.

Certain baleful numerologies of the "H" variety attributed to Hitler served the purpose of demonizing him above and beyond, ostensibly to cover up the many atrocities committed by the Tavistock besotted Churchill and Eisenhower. Not the least of the atrocities was the purposeful starving to death by Churchill and Eisenhower of over a million prisoners of war after WWII. Before WWII, wars were fought largely on fronts that wobbled back and forth. Tavistock came up with the bright idea of bombing civilian workers, not factories, because the Royals and the western bankers investors in Hitler did not want their infrastructure and factory investments damaged.

Albert Speer pointed out in WWII that the war would have quickly ended if the Allies just bombed the ball bearing factories in Germany. Not only did they not bomb the ball bearing factories, they continued to sell the Germans ball bearings and Ford supplied the Germans with military vehicles.

WWII was a Tavistock depopulation agenda as one facet at least.

Also interesting is that Hitler consistently made peace proposals to Britain. Even captured internal documents show that he really did not want to fight them, seeing them as Germanic cousins.

But Britain had a mutual defense treaty with Poland, and Germany had invaded Poland, causing Britain to declare war on Germany. Then Hitler invaded Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, bringing additional complex alliances into play.

Hitler was willing to leave his conquests at that for a while at least, but Britain insisted on continuing the war.

Hitler claimed that Britain tried for centuries to prevent any power on the continent of Europe from becoming strong enough to rival them, and this seems to be true.

If Russia had remained allied with Germany, Germany likely would have kept those territories. But after Russia turned against Germany, everything changed. It was not Britain or even America that defeated the Germans. It was primarily Russia, and at an immense cost in Russian lives lost, something like 20 million.

Patrick says

But Britain had a mutual defense treaty with Poland, and Germany had invaded Poland, causing Britain to declare war on Germany.

Funny how that did not apply to Britain declaring war on the USSR when the USSR invaded Poland also in 1939.

Patrick says

You could say a lot of that about the Irish.

Also, a good sense of humor and fun in life.

HeadSet says

Funny how that did not apply to Britain declaring war on the USSR when the USSR invaded Poland also in 1939.

Thanks, that's very interesting! Never thought about it, but it's true.

I'm back on Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Some interesting bits:

Lots of Russians absolutely loathed communism, so when Germany first invaded Russia, those Russians thought they were being saved from communism, and there were mass surrenders to the Germans. But then as the Russian prisoners were simply killed by the Germans via deliberate starvation and the civilian population enslaved and worked to death, they figured out that the Nazis were actually worse than the communists, so Russian nationalists made common cause with the communists for the duration of the war. About three million Russian prisoners of war were deliberately starved to death in camps. The camp commanders forbid the surrounding populations from giving the prisoners food.

Hitler also forbade his commanders for ordering mandatory vaccination of Russians, because he wanted the Russians to die of diseases. Silly Hitler! He could have conveniently killed them with injections just like Bill Gates has been doing to the world with the mRNA.