An Ugly Tool That Does the Job

Yesterday was a tool-making day. I have been making punch and die set for making bolsters and end caps for a new knife design. It is similar to the one I have made previously. Here you can see them with the first batch of punched prefabricates.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

This time I have disposed of the shafts and I have made two other additions.

One addition is that I have made two punches for each die. The first is for thicker materials and for pre-punching thinner materials. The second one is then for better punching the final form on a thinner material (1 mm). I want to use this thin material as much as possible for several reasons – it is much cheaper than massive 5 mm sheets, it is easier to fit the hole to the tang, it is lighter, and a lot faster to work overall.

The second addition is an overlay from bakelite to hold the roughly cut sheet in place for the pre-form punch. And this is where the titular ugly tool comes into play. Cutting and filing that old bakelite was a huge PIA, it clogs up teeth like glue. But I did find a way to cut the holes quickly and easily, once I drilled out the corners.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

What you see here is probably the ugliest half-assed tool ever made to meet the demand on the spot. I have used an old broken bandsaw blade, wrapped one end of the piece with twine and duct tape to make a handle, and voila! I had a pull-saw that could be quickly inserted into the drilled holes and that cut the material without getting clogged up because it has reasonably big teef. It did not work perfectly, but it was still much quicker than fiddling around with a coping saw. I may make a better handle that allows me to quickly use broken saw blades, or perhaps even new ones, in this manner.

Teh “Remarkable” Russian Restraint

War is ugly. War is messy. In a war, there always are and will be innocent lives destroyed, civilians killed, civilian infrastructure damaged. Hitting an occasional hospital or a school is inevitable even if the soldiers are trying their best to not do so. Hitting several hospitals and schools already indicates either callous disregard with regard to what you are shooting at or gross incompetence and really poor aim/intel.

The Russians have so far managed to hit nearly two dozen health care buildings and several hundred schools. And these are only those that were confirmed with pictorial evidence, the real number undoubtedly will be higher.

The tankies very much like to argue that the Russian military is doing their best to not hit civilian targets, that they are indeed showing “remarkable restraint” in this regard and not “carpet bombing Ukraine like NATO would”.

Well, if this is really is the best that the Russian military can do, if they really, really, really hard trying to not hit any civilian targets, then there is only one conclusion possible – that the Russian military is incompetent, half the time does not know what they are shooting at and the other half keep missing.

I personally do not think that the Russian military is that grossly incompetent. I think that the Russian top brass and the tankies are just lying about that “remarkable” restraint.

No, “Tankie” Is Not Orwellian

When a tankie complained on Pharyngula -click- it was instantly funny – in a sad, sad way – but it was made even funnier – in an even more sad way – later on when this particular tankie openly condoned the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Tankie”, just like “TERF” is not a meaningless slur whose only purpose is to offend and insult. It is a descriptive term whose negative connotations stem entirely from context, i.e. from the repulsive, disgusting, and, frankly, downright evil attitudes of the person being described as such. If you are being offended by being called either of those two terms, the remedy is easy – stop displaying attitudes that fit the definition of the term.

True, “Tankie” originally meant leftists who supported the use of military force by the USSR government to quell popular reforms in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 50s and 60s of the last century. The reforms were simply deemed not in alignment with what USSR wanted so a military intervention was called in. Even though the Czechoslovakian Prague Spring was being entirely peaceful and democratic and above all socialist right until the tanks rolled in. Dubček was simply not the right kind of socialist for the authoritarian regime that had all the answers and did not need to reconsider anything, ever.

Applying the term to people who support current Russia’s use of tanks to subjugate a country when the will of its people strays from what Russia’s government thinks is in alignment with its interests is just logical evolution of its use.

And when a cheerleader for a brutal totalitarian regime invokes Orwell to criticize the spontaneous use of a term that aptly describes people cheering for a brutal totalitarian regime, it is just beyond ironic.

An Ukrainian Civilian Perspective

I have checked on one Ukrainian YouTuber whose videos I have occasionally enjoyed, although I was not a subscriber. Here is his extensive take on the conflict, accompanied with some first-hand information about the “not targeting civilian targets” lie, the “NATO expansion is the problem” canard, “denazification” misinformation, the victim-blaming, whataboutism, and others. For example – Russian tanks are shown to fire into apartment buildings. That is not an imprecise airstrike, that is a deliberate war crime.

I did not enjoy this video at all, but I watched it all all the same.

Content warning: war, violence, explosions. Video cannot be embedded thus -click-.

Video has hard-coded English subtitles. I do understand enough Ukrainian to confirm that they are correct.

Ay Maid Some Knives Again – Part 2

Now for the remaining three sets. I won’t be posting all pictures here, there will be more on Instagram and sometime today or tomorrow on the Shoppe if someone is interested to see both sides of the blades and all kinds of angles for the blocks.

So first a set of black locust wood.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I did not originally intend to make this with the “leaning tower” design bloc, but when I have seen how it looks on the other set, I have decided to make this one in the same fashion. The handles have a hexagonal profile for a very secure but still comfortable grip. I have decided on the hexagonal profile for the two-wood design to accentuate the angled boundary between the dark and light wood, and I thought it would look well on pure black locust too, due to its very visible annual rings.

Next is a set from oak. The wood is reclaimed from an old church Jesus stick, a fact that I probably should not advertise on the shoppe or on Instagram. For me, it is an improvement since now the wood is made into something actually useful and beautiful, whereas having a depiction of a mangled corpse hanging from it in a shrine to a sadistic god is just a gross waste of resources, but some people have a different opinion and might take this as a sacrilege.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Anyhoo, I still have enough of the cross left to make more sets, either more two-knife sets like this or some three-knife sets. I shall decide in the future, but ultimately, all of that wood will go into knife handles and blocs and what can’t be used as such will heat the workshop.

BTW, his is seasoned, old oak, so it is a very hard wood. But let me tell you – after working with jatoba and black locust, it feels like a sponge.

And thus we come to the last set, made from jatoba. It has the same design and an overall feel as the oak set – rounded bloc, ergonomic handle.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I have enough jatoba wood to make several dozens of these, which I, unfortunately, can’t. I just love how this wood looks and I am still incredulous that I have bought it as firewood expecting to get enough for maybe a dozen knives tops and getting enough to be able to even make knife-blocs, end-grain cutting boards, and maybe even presentation boxes in the future instead.

Ay Maid Some Knives Again – Part 1

The weather was no longer so cold that I could not heat the workshop at a reasonable price and work there, whilst not warm enough to be able to do some meaningful work in the garden. So I have finally finished four two-knife sets that were mostly done since the end of last year. Essentially the wood needed to be buffed and the blades sharpened. And now to take photos and upload it all to the interwebs.

Today I present the probably most original set of them all, a set where I tried to combine jatoba and black locust wood. I think the colors match together really well and I will definitively continue making sets with this color combination. The woods have contrasting colors but very similar grain and hardness, so they work together beautifully both in the figurative and the literal sense. They are unfortunately also extremely hard, so they eat abrasives.

I have accidentally made the bloc section for the smaller knife way too short, demonstrating my ability to diligently measure more than twice and then cut once and wrong at the same time. As a result, I could not lean the stand forward enough for it to be stable without the blae sticking out at the bottom, so I have leaned it slightly to the side too. I have named the design “The leaning tower” and I think I saved it nicely.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

More pictures below the fold

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Please shove your biking advice where the sun doesn’t shine

Gas prices are exploding around the globe, and as far as I can see, the only reason for this is pure speculation, as nobody’s stopped buying Russian oil or drilling. The amount of oil on the market is the same as 4 weeks ago. This of course causes a lot of issues and once again, several things can be true at the same time:

  • People whose car price would pay off my mortgage complain about gas prices
  • Combustion engines are bad for the environment anyway
  • Our cities have been planned for cars over the last 50 years
  • Some people could bike to work or use public transport but don’t do so for stupid reasons
  • Not everybody can reduce the use of their cars
  • Small incomes are disproportionately affected
  • Gleeful “just use a bike” advice is classist, ableist and sexist

Huh? I hear you say. How is the advice classist and sexist?

People who advocate for biking and public transport (and there are many great and thoughtful people doing that, but also a bunch of loud and privileged people, usually male, who annoy the fuck out of me) will usually point to our fucked up city planning, lack of public transport and accessibility and then propose to solve this by simply making cars very expensive and inconvenient. They will point to a past where we all had streetcars and no individual cars, or to colleges as “walkable communities” and keep forgetting that neither the past nor college are adequate models for our current societies. Back in that glorious past, people worked close to home and by people I mean men. Even though many women still held jobs, their needs were never prominent in public discourse.

If I go back to my grandparents, my grandfathers brought home money, my grandmothers made it last. My maternal grandma’s mornings were spent running errands: walking from small shop A to small shop B, all present in the small village they lived in, taking in small sewing jobs from better off relatives, taking in orders and doing deliveries for a seed merchant, and so on, and so on. The afternoons were spend doing chores and gardening. My grandparents never needed a car because my grandma would do all these things while he was at work.

Times changed. The small shops vanished for the supermarkets, the local supermarkets vanished for the huge departments stores outside of town. But not only that, society changed as well. More women started to participate in the workforce, leading to a higher demand of childcare. And also people were required to be more flexible and take up jobs that are not within an easy distance. Whenever I bring up that argument, people tell me folks should just move closer to the job. When I ask them which job we should move closer to, mine or my husband’s, they often get angry, because they notice that they haven’t thought about this. Women’s job are often worse paid, they work shorter hours and they have to still juggle all the things grandma had to do. They have to take the kids to daycare/school, do their doctor’s appointments, get them to sports… Quite often, this is only possible with the convenience of a car. This also means that women are disproportionally affected by measures that make cars more expensive and less convenient. At some point, the cost is higher than the earning, the workload just gets too much, and once again women find themselves pushed out of the workforce. So yeah, insisting that commuters fix the problem individually punishes women for living ion a sexist society. It’s a great example of how something can be sexist without anybody ever having consciously thought a sexist thought, but by having failed to consider how something would affect women differently  than men.

On to the classism. This seems even less intuitive than the sexism. After all, a bike is cheaper than a car, right? That is true, and in the long run it may be a good alternative for people with short commutes. I’m all in favour of building good biking infrastructure, not just painting lines on the road. Bikes are amazing. I just bought one last year, after not having one for several years. And do you know what? It costs money. A decent city bike that can take small potholes, has working brakes, and is safe in traffic costs a couple of hundred Euros. If your commute is longer and reachable by an ebike, add a thousand Euros*. Telling people who are currently struggling with paying for heat, electricity, food and transport that they can just spend that amount of money in order to save some in the months to come is classist. People need help now. It’s all good and fine for you to decide that you’d rather freeze and put on two sweaters instead of buying Putin’s gas, but please, don’t tell the parents of a newborn that 15°C are enough.

Personally, I’m just annoyed. I have zero control over my workplace, 90-95% of my driving is for my job, and I’m currently taking a paycut of 100€  a month just for increased gas prices that others don’t have to spend. It doesn’t put us into trouble, and I probably wouldn’t mind if that money was going towards something good, like reshaping infrastructure, or helping refugees, but it’s going directly into the pockets of the oil industry who have zero interest in making any of that happen.

*Oh, and getting back to sexism: it’s a problem for women who work more often in customer facing jobs to arrive at work “presentable” when biking for 10 km

Evolution of the “No Concripts in Ukraine” Narrative

These are the stages so far:

  1. There are no conscripts in Ukraine and saying there are and some of them were KIA and some captured is just western propaganda.
  2. OK, there were some conscripts in Ukraine, but they were pulled back and none died. Some were sadly captured. Saying otherwise is just western propaganda.

And just for not very funny fun, here is what I expect the next stages to be:

  1. OK, some conscripts may have died, but not many and not in engagements with Ukrainian Army, only in ambushes by neonazi paramilitary terrorists. Because this is not a war, this is a special military action. Saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  2. OK, many conscripts have died. Russian mothers, here are your letters and tin medals for your brave sons who died in a war defending mother Russia.

There are other narratives in the brewing, mind you:

  1. There are no plans to call in reserves to fight in Ukraine. Saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  2. Ok, we are calling in reserves and more conscripts…
  3. …to be continued…
  1. We are not bombing any residential areas. Saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  2. OK, we are bombing residential areas, but not many and not deliberately. Saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  3. OK, we are bombing residential areas, but we did not hit any hospitals.  Saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  4. OK, we have hit a maternity ward in a residential area, but it was empty and used as a base by the neonazi Azov Batallion. Thus we hit it on purpose. And that injured woman? Crisis actor. Saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  5. …to be continued…

I really do wonder where these will evolve, but I think I can make a guess – more troops, including conscripts and reservists, will be sent to the “not war”. And if Putin wins, some of the fallen and the survivors will be posthumously rewarded with “war hero” medals for their participation in this “not war”.

Why can I make such predictions? Because there is a narrative that has evolved to its final form in the past to be seen, and that is the annexation of Crimea:

  1. We do not plan to annex Crimea, we respect the treaties we signed.
  2. There are no unmarked Russian troops in Crimea taking over strategic points. Saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  3. ..crickets…
  4. Some soldiers received medals for the military takeover that did not exist.

The Russian top brass might be right about some of their counterpoints to the western narrative o the events, but they have lied so often and so blatantly that at this point even reading only their  “side of the story” should anyone make deeply suspicious of trusting them. Alas, many people who are heavily emotionally invested in believing lies will continue to believe said lies even after the liar themselves admits they were lying (viz. Trumpists and similar).

1170 Dead and Counting

If this is the “best to not kill civilians” that the Russian army is doing, then they are grossly incompetent. Over 1170 civilians dead in Mariupol, a maternity ward bombed to rubble. People are being put in mass graves because mortuaries are full. Those humanitarian corridors that were agreed? Don’t work, Russians keep shelling them with mortars.

Please note that I am not linking to anglophone media, nor is this particular medium controlled by Murdoch at all.

Further, what I did not know they only allow people to flee to Russia. Yeah, that’s right, a violent occupier allows the occupied people to escape only to the occupier’s territory.

I feel sick.

Not Even Botherign With Bothsiderism Anymore?

Wow. Just. Wow.

I know that the internet discussions are years being infested by pro-Russian trolls who are doing their best to disrupt any discourse, but I did not expect this. I have probably missed something, but I was taken completely by surprise when a long-time commenter on FtB went full fascist apologia. And these comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and I have to respond:

…According to the Russian General staff and Putin personally (assuming the subtitling was correct) there are no conscripts in Ukraine…

…They are doing their damnedest to keep civilian casualties and infrastructure damage to a minimum…

…Ukraine has lost but a lot of innocent Ukrainian citizens and soldiers and Russian soldiers will die because Kiev/Zelenski will not or can not surrender…

So first (paragraph) thing first – why should anyone believe anything that Russia’s top brass are saying at this point? One does not need to go too far back to demonstrate that they are absolutely unashamedly lying about anything with a straight face. These are their statements as they recently evolved:

  1. There are no significant troops gathering on the Ukrainian border with Russia for an invasion, saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  2. Ok, there are troops, but they are there only for exercises, they are not combat-ready, saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  3. We are pulling the troops back inland, we are not preparing for a full-scale invasion, saying otherwise is just western propaganda.
  4. OK, we did not pull the troops back inland, but it is not a war or invasion, it is just a peacekeeping mission.
  5. OK, our non-invading troops have met some resistance, but there are no casualties whatsoever.
  6. OK, there are some casualties, but only a few hundred, nothing serious.

And I could go on much further with the blatant lies. There are even videos where Russian diplomats lie even when confronted with actual evidence of their lies.

These things are not a matter of opinion, these are facts on public record over just a few recent weeks. I mean, how fucking broken must your moral compass and your reasoning capabilities be to believe anything that Putin and his stooges say at this point? Sure, they might say the truth occasionally, just like a broken clock shows the right time twice a day.

I am sure that the Ukrainian side also lies for propaganda and after the war ends, if there still are historians, it will take them a lot of work to untangle where the actual truth lies. But right now any Russian in a position of power in the current regime is so trustworthy that when they wish you a “Good Morning” you should assume it’s night until proven otherwise with independent evidence.

The second paragraph flies in the face of actual pictorial and video evidence of residential areas being deliberately shelled and bombed. Further, I have a friend who worked with unguided earth-to-earth rocket launchers similar to the BM-30 Смерч that Russians are using in Kyiv. No matter what the current Russian propaganda says, those are not precision weapons for a precision striking of military targets, especially not in urban warfare. Those are scorched-earth weapons designed to stomp an area into nothing but craters and rubble. Using them on a military airport or convoy or some barracks in the countryside could be legitimate military use (as far as the word legitimate can be applied). Using them in a crowded city is a deliberate war crime intended to kill and terrorize civilians.

Sure, Russians say otherwise, but if anyone is inclined to believe them, I refer back to the first point.

Now for the last paragraph which actually got my blood boiling.

I do not like using rape in analogies because I have seen it used by dudebros to trivialize issues they deem unimportant and to trivialize rape at the same time, but in this particular case, I think the analogy is apt – saying this is analogous to blaming a rape victim for injuries because they did not submit to the rapist without a fight.

So let me stress this point – Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are not dying because Zelenskyy will not or cannot surrender, they are dying because Putin invaded Ukraine and is too power-hungry, too arrogant, and too proud to stop. In any conflict, it is the assailant who bears all the moral responsibility for damages incurred on the assaulted, never the other way around.

Further, this stinks of “ifonlysm“. The current conflict shows a striking resemblance to what has happened just before WW2, so we can actually look at what might have happened ifonly Ukraine gave Luhansk and Donetsk to Russia willingly and ifonly Zelensky went into exile and left Putin to install back his puppet Yanukovich. So let us do it.

The Sudeten Germans did face some discrimination in Czechoslovakia, there is absolutely no doubt about it. It could be argued that it was less than the discrimination Czechs and Slovaks faced in the former Austria-Hungary, but it was still discrimination and the Sudeten Germans did not like it. Solving such societal issues takes time and patience, with the occasional strike or civil disobedience thrown into the mix to wake politicians from their stupor and complacency, but they can be solved peacefully as long as you do not believe in quick fixes, which do not exist.

Hitler’s Germany did however offer a quick fix. With his guidance, instead of working to reach mutual agreements on a way to equality, the SdP fomented animosity between Germans and Czechs and always escalated demands to a level they knew cannot be reasonably met. At first, SdP lied about their connection with the Nazis. Then they lied about their intent to secede Sudeten from Czechoslovakia. Then they lied about receiving military support from Germany and forming paramilitary Sudetendeutsches Freikorps. Then they lied about said paramilitary performing terrorist actions within Czechoslovakia, intentionally provoking a forceful response from the Czechoslovakian government.

And then international powers that be decided to give them what they said they wanted and without consulting the Czechoslovakian government, they gave Sudeten to Germany. Not many people actually know that this was immediately followed by the Sudetendeutsches Freikorps actually escalating, not stopping, the violence. Most people probably do know that this did not stop Hitler from eventually annexing all of Czechoslovakia, directly governing Bohemia, and installing a puppet fascist regime in Slovakia, killing and enslaving scores of thousands of innocent civilians even when they did not even try and put up a fight.

This is because when a tyrant says they want this or that or they will have to resort to violence, they are always lying. Their stated goals are only seeking plausible deniability, a fig-leaf casus belli in order to expand their power. Violence is the goal because being able to inflict it without consequences demonstrates the tyrants’ power. And once they think they can get away with it, they stop bothering even with that pretense.

So no, ifonly Zelenskyy or Ukraine did or did not do this or that would probably have very little impact on what Putin would do. Ukrainian people were not given a choice between forceful invasion and peaceful lives, they were given a choice between forceful invasion and submitting to being second-class citizens licking Putin’s boot while it is crushing their necks nevertheless. Blaming them for putting up a fight is blaming the victim, pure and simple.

Teh Inscrutable Market Forces

You may remember that I did not plan to make three Santoku knives, they were just an afterthought for the most effective use of offcuts, and that I did not plan to make more. Well, when I wrote that, I did not expect that these three knives will be the first that get sold since I got my license. One was sold before Christmas and two through the shoppe in January. The upside is that I now know how to make customs paperwork for the USA. The downside is that whilst this is a small sample, it does indicate that making more of these knives might be good business sense. I can sit on that thought for a while because I won’t come round to making blades for several months at least, but it does leave me with some head-scratching.

Київ

In case you are wondering why Putin is so hell-bent on capturing Kyiv, here is a very, very short summary for you.

Kyiv is not only the capital of the current Ukraine. That in itself would still make it a very important military target, but still not worth the fervor with which it is being attacked.

I grew up as a child with Slavic fairytales and Slavic mythology. And many of those fairytales and myths are centered around Kievan Rus’. A lot of literature that young Slavic people, especially East Slavic, read during their formational years are thus centered around this city. It is, in a very real sense, the cradle of East Slavic culture.

None of that of course excuses current atrocities being perpetrated by Путiн хуйло, but it does explain why he is throwing so many other people’s lives away in order to capture the city asap. If he succeeds – and I fear that is only a matter of time, alas – his propaganda could – and would – play it up way beyond and above its strategic importance.

Brown vs. White Refugees and Poland

This article might be misunderstood as an apologia for racism or a misdirection, so I must start it with a statement:

Please do not mistake an explanation for an excuse.

There is a lot of racism towards non-white people in all of Europe. It is strong in the Slavic nations and it is indeed very strong in Poland, which is currently ruled by a racist covert clerical-fascist party (which luckily does not have overwhelming majority support yet I might add). This does no doubt play a significant role in Poland’s willingness to accept Ukrainian refugees readily, whilst it was refusing Syrians staunchly for the last few years. A policy that I find abhorrent and which should never be in place. Czechia is guilty of the same thing and I oppose that too. I criticize my own government for this and I shall continue to do so.

However, that is most definitively not the sole reason and it might not even be the main reason in this particular case. In my opinion, the main reason here is not that Ukrainian refugees are white, but that the aggressor they are fleeing is Russia and the refugees are Slavs.

There is a lot of panslavic sentiment still floating around (I have written about it before). Slavic people do have a shared identity and they do feel some connection with each other. One of the reasons for that apart from some intelligibility of our languages is that most Slavic nations were oppressed minorities pretty much everywhere for several hundred years, many gaining independence from an oppressive regime only very recently.

But wait, you might say, aren’t Russians Slavs? Yes, they are.

And they are probably the single exception to the rule since they were mostly the oppressors, certainly for the last few hundred years. Poles do not like Russians specifically that much. Russia played for example no insignificant role in destabilizing and partitioning the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in a way that eerily resembles current events in Ukraine. And they did not rule their part of Poland exactly kindly afterward either.

Poles and Ukrainians thus share not only a generic common Slavic identity but also a relatively recent common history. They were both compatriots and allies as well as enemies and rivals in that history, but not very recently and those differences pale with one thing they have common very recently indeed –  a ruthless oppressor, Russia. Ukrainians did not forget the Holodomor, Poles did not forget the Katyn massacre and both definitively remember the forty-something years of being dictated what to even think from Moscow afterward.

It is all of course much more complicated than I can ever hope to describe in a short blog post even if I knew everything there is to know about it. And motivations on an individual level always vary wildly. It definitively is not as simple as “Poles think brown people bad, white people good”, although a lot of (not only) Poles are no doubt like that.