Hakeem Jeffries' speech
The other part of the House elections last night was that Jeffries finally officially became the first non-White leader of a congressional party. And, along with that, he delivered a hell of a speech.
Here is the excerpt when he ran through the alphabet (a small excerpt of his larger speech,) with the bolded parts being my favorites:
House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, ‘yes, we can’ over ‘you can do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation.
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The Laconia Incident during World War II
Found via Reddit, here is the title it was submitted under:
TIL In 1942, German submarines sunk a British passenger ship. They surfaced to collect survivors, announced their presence to the allies and sailed under a Red Cross flag. The U-Boats were attacked by allied planes, forcing the submarine to throw all the survivors back into the sea and crash dive.
The top comment, posted by yeaheah, added further insight:
Rescueing survivors of submarine attacks by the submarine itself was actually pretty common in WW1 and early WW2 until there was an incident that forced them to stop doing it (not sure if it was this exact incident)
It would also be common to just hit the ship a couple of times, then wait till everyone was in the rescue boats, and then sink the ship when it was empty. Provided the ship would not fight back
A reply by DuckDockDank:
It was exactly this incidents that resulted in the Laconia order by Donitz that said to take no quarters as it was already too risky. Basically they shot a British ship that was at the time transporting Italian POWs guarded by Poles so they surfaced, opened their radios to any nearby ships, and flew a red cross. But along the way they were strafed by a US aircraft. They loaded the sub with as much POWs and submerged to escape. Probably one the reasons Donitz wasnt hanged for his crimes since the Allies werent taking any quarters either and even if Donitz didn't order it the Allies at that late of the war didn't exactly made it easy to do so.
By atsinged:
Originally German subs operated under a set of rules (I think it was called cruiser rules) which involved approaching and allowing the crew of the target ship to get to the lifeboats then destroying the target. Providing provisions, directions to shore and even occasionally towing the lifeboats part of the way was common. In WWI the introduction of Q ships, which were armed ships that looked like merchants put an effective end to it. They would lure a submarine in close with a false surrender then blast it as it got close.
I think some German captains tried to operate like that in the beginning of WWII but it was extremely dangerous for them.
Surprise attacks, on the surface, at night became the standards for U-Boats pretty quickly in WWII. It is actually best to think of U-Boats as torpedo boats that could submerge to escape, they were reasonably quick and nimble on the surface and quite slow underwater.
Check out the Convoy attack scene on Das Boot for a fantastic illustration of how a whole lot of attacks were conducted.
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"Kansas research shows reintroducing bison on tallgrass prairie doubles plant diversity"
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