Comments by "Peter Lund" (@peterfireflylund) on "History Debunked" channel.

  1. Remember "clock boy"? A black Muslim kid in the US had created a "clock" and got in trouble in school due to "racism". It turned out that he (or his dad, more likely) had found an old clock radio and taken it apart (which is easy, just turn a few screws) and then put it inside a pencil case that looked like a suitcase. Unfortunately, he (or his dad) had not paid proper attention to live 120V wires, so the thing was actually dangerous when plugged in. This somehow turned into a story about "racist teachers" who thought all brown people were "terrorists with bombs". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Mohamed_clock_incident
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  2. Yes, it is ridiculous to talk about the Sharpville “massacre”. The police defended themselves against a huge angry and violent mob that attacked a police station. Some of the attackers died. Good.
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  3. Well, neither can the Chinese. China is nowhere near is rational and well-educated as your fantasyland version. Students there still have to pretend Mao was great and never killed anyone, that China was (and is) poor because of foreigners, that China invented everything, etc.
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  4.  @melindak.21  yes, she acquired the gun and brought it in so her boyfriend could spread some lead around. Great gal :(
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  5. We now have genetic proof that some Polynesians did visit the Americas, as had been suspected.
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  6. Yes, on the non-black side of the Sahara. The desert was pretty hard to cross. The Nile wasn’t much of a help as the upper parts were also hard to go through (waterfalls, white water parts, ...)
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  7. Actually, doctors are usually not particularly smart. Smarter than the average guy? Sure. Smart? No.
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  8. This is not about diversity but about soft power abroad. It’s foreign politics. The BBC has pages in other languages spoken in the former empire as well and there is nothing new about it. I think there have been pidgin english pages for a decade or so... and it is an actual language with its own grammar and not just bad English, There are many pidgin englishes... I don’t know how they chose which one to use.
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  9. Were they ever any good? The Paris Commune of 1870 wasn’t great, the revolutions of 1848 were terrible, the French Revolution was a disaster, etc.
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  10. Or “Fachkräfte”, as the Germans euphemistically call them.
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  11. So? Russia borders Norway, Finland, the Baltics, and Poland as well. 5 of those are NATO countries. NATO was never a threat to Russia -- what Putin didn't want was neighbours that could defend themselves.
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  12. It would destroy NATO + still not turn Russia into a non-aggressive nation that was safe for its neighbours. So, not a good idea. (And, no, Russia did not try to become a NATO member.)
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  13. No, not for the Chinese. They got to East Africa but no further.
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  14. Actually, there is plenty of doubt regarding Burt’s culpability.
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  15. They had iron ore that was easier to work with (at least for simple iron). Impurities lower the melting point, some impurities affect the strength less than others. Occasionally, you end up with something you could call “steel”.
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  16.  @comradedyatlov2227  They spend a lot of time on "Mao is Great!", "Xi Jin Ping is Great!", "The Party is Great!", "China! China! China!" that they don't get to spend on real subjects. Also, lots of true things are dangerous to teach because they can get the teacher or the school in trouble when they conflict with the current Mao/Xi/CCP/China is great story du jour. The Chinese students you see might perhaps be above average... remember that education is still unusual in China. Still, they are probably less inquisitive and curious than Euro students because they were brought up in a system that was just as crazy as our woke stuff but with much harsher consequences if you stepped out of line AND with an ever changing list of craziness and taboos. I can't personally see any of that as an advantage.
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  17. @ian x You're funny. How good was your Chinese? 你会说中文吗？
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  18. ​@ian x Of course I know the 70-30 thing... and that they left unspecified which things are included in which category ;) You come across as an old Socialist who believe the rest of us are idiots. A modern-day Walter Duranty, perhaps. And, no, they absolutely do not have an informed view of Mao. Jeez, the sheer arrogance of writing such crap! Frankly, I even doubt your claim of being able to read Chinese.
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  19. They took 5% blacks this time. It’s still 5x more than they should.
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  20. No, they did not. Moreover, Russia signed treaties explicitly allowing NATO to expand eastwards.
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  21. Not. They have some cooperation where they have had people study defense in NATO countries and NATO people have been in Ukraine to train soldiers. There have also been some NATO+Ukraine exercises. There's also been non-NATO cooperation with EU countries, such as three EU battlegroups (Balkan and Visegrád Battlegroups + a British-led one). And NATO has been sending lots of defensive weapons to Ukraine + is almost certainly sending real-time info about Russian planes, helicopters, missile batteries, and troop movements to Ukraine at the moment. So why the "not" and why does it matter? Because the Ukrainian defense is still not up to NATO standards and because attacking Ukraine does not constitute a redline that would lead to the invocation of article 5 of the NATO treaty (the mutual self-defense article). Russia would not have dared an (unprovoked!) attack on a NATO member... and we dare not defend Ukraine properly, because it is not a NATO member.
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  22. Not a coup. The Russian puppet was "elected" through election fraud. He ran off to Russia. The chairman of the parliament became acting president and called a new election (both in accordance with the constitution). Then a new president was elected (in accordance with the constitution). Then Russia invaded parts of Ukraine. Then there was a new election (in accordance with the constitution). Another guy won, the new guy became president (in accordance with the constitution). Then Russia launched a full scale invasion. You have listened to much to Russian propaganda.
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  23.  @pablocortando1  why are you using a VPN from Russia?
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  24. Yes, if you are talking about outright malnutrition: iodine and iron deficiency. Probably also other kinds of nutritional deficiencies. Luckily, it is cheap and easy to fix — and has been fixed a long time ago and most of the world. And yet, there are still individual and group IQ differences...
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  25. The Victorians measured them for good reasons. To establish what was normal and what was not, to seek patterns (to what degree is head size/shape heritable), and to see if it correlated with personality. It didn’t, except for a small correlation with intelligence (which is just the result of a bigger correlation between brain size and intelligence).
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  26. We know that IQ tests can be practiced to a certain extent — but we also know that they can’t be practiced much, the improvement is fleeting, it is a lot of work, and it doesn’t transfer to other IQ tests or improve life outcomes. (There is a century of research on this. Some of those IQ researchers were pretty smart...)
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  27.  @ScragNath  which was 100% against the UN charter and lots of other UN related treaties.
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  28. Our host is gravely overstating the facts. We don’t actually know that Burt made up the twin result — and his result match modern twin results with many, many more twins. We also don’t know that the unknown coauthors didn’t exist. It could have been a case of protecting people writing pseudonymously.
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