168 168 Never Quit

While Nicholas had been busy playing with his new best friend, tensions in Europe had been rising. It just so happened that in 1914, one Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hungary, went for a drive with the top-down in Sarajevo. One thing leads to another and suddenly Russia found itself at war with half of Europe.  A wave of patriotism swept through Russia. The capital was renamed to Petrograd because St. Petersburg sounded a bit too German. Even revolutionaries were getting on board. To them, World War One was a big stinky imperialist war by a foreign one. So pretty much everyone wanted Russia to win. I hope Russia loses. Geez, read the room Lenin.  Lenin hoped Russia would lose because that would help him over through the Tsar. As long as he did that, who cares if Germany blows up half the country. And blow up half the country they did. An inefficient Tsarist government, meant there were shortages of just about everything you need to fight a war.  And if losing a teen...

Get your new character pins and Russian revolution merch, available now. Hey Jimmy, it’s the 1800s, an exciting time to be alive. Why don’t you get out there and explore the world? Gee whiz mum, thanks. This place is amazing. Where am I? Why you’re in France, my boy. Liberty, equality, fraternity. Whoa! Welcome to the United Kingdom. Here, we invented the train. All aboard. Holy smokes. You’re in a German factory, my friend. Here, we harness fire and coal to create all these sexy lederhosen. This is incredible. I can’t wait to see where Ill end up next. Where am I? You’re in Russia. Have I gone back in time? No, this is just how it is. Are you a farmer? Worse, technically, my landlord owns me which makes me a serf. I’m scared. You should be because I haven’t eaten in four days and you look pretty tasty. Hey Jimmy, how were your travels? I hate you. Russia, in the 19th century. Feudal, underdeveloped and stuck in the past. While the rest of Europe had been modernizing and improving thei...

Frankly it's exhausting, but we gotta do it. We gotta explain how furnaces work! And soon, we'll talk about what will replace them. I'll try to remember to put a link here when that time comes! Whelp, winter heating season is quickly  approaching (in the northern hemisphere anyway) which means that many of us are firing up our  heating systems for the first time in many months and hoping for the best.  And how come it seems to work in  distinct steps? What’s a heat exchanger? Why do we use furnaces at all? Great questions!  So great that I’m making a video to answer them. Now first, we’re gonna be talking about the  typical forced-air gas-fired North American  heating system in this video because that’s what’s  common where I live and what I have access to.   Pretty much every small to medium-sized  building over here constructed in the last  half century or so in a winter climate has at least one  of these providing it wi...

 I’m going to give you 10 rules for profitable self-discipline. These are rules are of my own making, they’re very homely some of them but there’ll be very helpful.  And number one , is keep cool when other people get hot. I know you can agree with that one. But am not so sure that you will always live up to it. Were inclined all of us to get hot when the other fella gets hot. Say angry things when the other fellow starts saying angry things. I was in the home of the president of a big electric power company one evening, when there came a storm and he called up one of his hetman to go out.  And I never heard a man get such a tongue lashing in all my life as this president of the electric power company did. Says you blanket-blank, blank you think because you’re the friends presidents company blanket-blank, mine is just as good as you are blank the bank but Oh, it was terrific. I only heard one side of the conversation because there was only one side of it. One man was doin...