tomo,
I don't think Mr Cooper's problem is a lack of reading. He's just a bit too close to confirming Eisenhower's fears about the concentration camps:

... give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge allegations merely to "propaganda."

TIK History strikes me as far more sincere in searching for facts rather than tendentious fodder or clickbait, but even then I see the whole mission as rather Quixotic. Leafing through diaries and letters runs into what I said earlier about two people coming away from the one conversation with completely different ideas of what was said.

Somewhat apropos, about 30 years ago I was working for a company that failed. Rather a painful business at the time. I've subsequently discussed it with a number of people who worked there, senior and junior. While the actual failure is quite clear (out of money) the causes/errors aren't a neat thing that can be stated: the company failed because of x, y and z. What were the things we did that we shouldn't have done? What were the things we didn't do, that we should have? The different players have wildly different views how the failure might have been avoided.

My point is that the valuable lessons from that experience don't depend on those details. Who cares whether so and so was a villain back then? However, it has been worth knowing what might be at stake when seeing signs of time-wasting projects and political shenanigans.

Cooper (and Carlson) strikes me as being in a silly propaganda war: You say the Nazis were bad; I say the British were worse. I guess it's just to maximise views, but where on earth does it get anyone? It's milking or quashing grievances from a past that *can't* be changed.

tomo,
Yes, the Jonestown stuff was new to me, and interesting, but then Cooper's words on WW2 showed that objectivity was not his strong suit.

Given TC's endorsement, I wouldn't be surprised if a fair subset of the "squealers" you refer to were people who agree with TC on many items, but not this one. They have found their serious commentator has turned into a shock jock. I think it was a blunder by TC.

FWIW, TC occupies a similar place in my esteem to Musk: they say many things I agree with, but I don't much like them (for somewhat different reasons: TC takes himself too seriously; Musk can't be accused of that, but he doesn't take his responsibilities seriously enough).

Mike Rowe earns an altogether warmer place in my heart. That was an enjoyable conversation. Trying to coax everybody to go to university has been a singularly daft policy. We end up with far too few people going into the trades. Meanwhile, the people who get their degrees find they *aren't* an express ticket to a great job. Still have to pay for them though.

Here's a longer version of that Netanyahu address, which includes questions from the journalists afterwards. Sound quality was pretty poor, and there weren't any great surprises (i.e. the journalists didn't cover themselves with glory).

tomo,

Strikes me you're right to doubt the merits of a hybrid plane. Hybrid cars have no benefit at all for highway cruising, and commercial planes are all about cruising. There would be some energy to recover during descent, but (as you say) you'd have to lift the recovery equipment at takeoff. No free lunch there.

I did listen to that whole interview with Darryl Cooper. Not favourably impressed. I agreed with him at the start: that one or two books isn't enough to get the real picture of any significant event. But we diverge when he describes how he reads all the books he can and then turns it into his histories -- essentially reduces it to one "book" written by him. Nope. It *can't* be distilled down to a simple story.

What he does is *filter* the books he reads. I'm sure I'd filter them differently. Reminds me of the Feynman story when he was reviewing textbooks for a high school physics course. The book companies offered assistants who could "help" him with reading. Huh?

Even after digesting all the books, I still wouldn't have the full story because the world's far too complicated. Never mind his take on WW2; Jonestown is already far beyond telling. Two people can come away from one conversation with very different opinions of what it meant.

Here's a snippet from around 44 minutes in which makes me think I'd come away from his source material with a *very* different view from the one he has come to:

They launched a war where they were unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners and so forth that they were going to have to handle. They went in with no plan for that. And they just threw these people into camps and millions of people ended up dead there.

You have letters as early as July/August 1941 from commandants of these makeshift camps that they're setting up for these millions of people who are surrendering or people they're rounding up.

So thats a month or two after Barbarossa was launched and they're writing back to the high command in Berlin saying "We can't feed these people. We don't have the food to feed these people." And one of them actually says "Rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn't it be more humane to just finish them off."

For one thing, the Germans generally did an ok job dealing with traditional prisoners of war (i.e. captured combatants). Cooper's "and so forth" covers a multitude of sins.

The other thing is the "wouldn't it be more humane" just screams "Milgram experiment" to me. This electric shock (even when it gets to "lethal") is for his own good.

I have no doubt that Cooper spins an entertaining yarn, but it's still just a his-story.

My initial accusation of clickbait was not because it impugned the good name of Churchill, but because it is (IMO) an abuse of history to go dredging through it picking goodies and baddies. What on earth is the point? If history is to be of any positive use it's by giving us an idea of things that have worked out ok, and things that have led to disaster: guidance for today's decisions.

Unfortunately it is far more commonly dredged through for grievances which just serves to perpetuate them.

Just prior to the above quote (~41 minutes) I had to laugh at Tucker Carlson's dishonesty when posing the Churchill question:

... I'm American, I'm not English, so I don't have any weird motive in asking this, but how would you assess Winston Churchill?

Accompanied by the expression of sweet innocence on his face. Delicious.

I assume Carlson is just reflecting his childhood indoctrination in the mythology of the American Revolutionary War, and the widespread American chip on the shoulder about things British we've discussed here before.

Had a >6 hour blackout on Monday. High winds at the time, so I suppose a tree downed power lines somewhere. And a large tree came down in my yard too, so I've been spending a bit of time with the chainsaw. Exciting trying to work out where the strains are, where to cut and where to stand. That and a few other commitments have kept me away from Bishop Hill duties. Back now.

£350m is indeed a lot. Unfortunately, from the perspective of the typical UK citizen it's −£350m, which is worse than worthless.

The Tucker Carlson talk is lengthy. Will see how much I get through. Boldly assuming the "Winston Churchill ruined Europe" headline is clickbait, since it's a bit of a stretch to believe that one man could have such power.

While I'm not a great fan of Netanyahu, I did like this statement from him, where he makes cruel use of the white male weapon of logic to explain why Hamas murdering six hostages should be blamed on Hamas, not Israel.