No One Is Competent

Governors are an often overlooked part of the American political landscape. One can make a fair argument that the lives of most Americans are more directly influenced by the actions of their governor than those of their president, yet many would struggle to describe their state governor beyond simply naming what party they belong to. On this episode we're taking a look at tenure of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who's currently up for reelection this November.

As a warning, this is our most directly political episode to date - as in, we're delving into party and electoral politics here, and we have our own opinions. This won't be the norm for us going forward, but we believe this episode was worth making for reasons that we cover throughout its duration.

The War of the First Coalition was fought over a course of 5 years and involved almost all of Europe's great powers. The events of this conflict shaped the course of the French Revolution and set the stage for the future Revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts. Yet few today know much of this war, allowing for misconceptions to make their way into the popular understanding of it. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering the entirety of the War of the First Coalition from 1792 to 1797.

Few events in western history are as well-studied yet commonly misunderstood as the French Revolution. In this episode we hope to clear things up and lay the groundwork for future episodes by covering both the political developments within France from 1789 to 1794 and the military campaigns of the War of the First Coalition from 1792 to 1794. 

The French Revolution is arguably the most studied event in western historiography alongside the World Wars. Perhaps no other upheaval has had so much of an influence on the way we think about politics and society. Yet the Revolution was not a predestined affair, instead it was the result of both the structural problems of the Ancien Regime and the decisions of the Bourbon monarchs who failed to address the issues facing France. Today we are looking at life of the most infamous Bourbon of them all, King Louis XVI.

The story of military history is full of brilliant technological innovations. From the recurve bow to the main battle tank, humans have continued to come up with increasingly efficient ways of killing one another. Yet for every great invention there are dozens of duds - technological dead ends, creations ahead of their time, and all-round bad ideas. Today we're looking at one of those more ignominious creations, a submarine that killed more of its own crew than the enemy: the Confederate States of America's H. L. Hunley.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 remains one of the most famous events in naval history, yet the fate of England's equally disastrous attempt at seeking revenge on Spain the year afterwards has largely faded from popular memory. In this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering we are covering the English Armada, one of the greatest defeats in the history of England's navy.

While history is full of famous battles and campaigns, only a few naval actions have managed to remain widely known long after they took place. The Spanish Armada of 1588 ranks near the top of that select group of events. In England it's cast as a critical moment in the development of the Royal Navy, the institution that more than any other would be responsible for asserting the might of the British Empire across the globe in the subsequent centuries. Elsewhere the defeat of Spain's "Invincible Armada" is remembered as a prime example of military failure. In reality, the events of 1588 were arguably less decisive and certainly far more complicated than what is commonly remembered. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering the history of the Spanish Armada and its fateful voyage.

Prohibition is perhaps one of the strangest and most misunderstood episodes in American history. The entire nation turned their back on their most beloved vice - or at least, that's what was supposed to happen. Instead, the 18th Amendment, brought about by intentions both good and bad, led to 13 years of organized crime and lawbreaking on vast scale and an increase in police authority that remains with us to this day. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we're talking about the rise and fall of the failed experiment that was prohibition.

Rome at the dawn of the first century AD was an empire on the rise. As the civil wars of the late Republican period faded into the past, the new government of Augustus Caesar looked set to assert its will on an ever-growing amount of territory and peoples. Yet in 9 AD the Roman Army suffered a defeat so total that it permanently altered the fate of Roman expansion on an entire frontier. On this episode of No One is Competent we're discussing one of the most important battles in European history, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

According to many of Silicon Valley's brightest minds the "cloud" is the future of just about everything. So why not let consumers use it to play console video games, freeing them of the need to actually buy those bulky devices themselves? That certainly was a part of the thought process behind Google's Stadia service... but as it turns out, it seems as if the market quite wasn't on the same page as Google itself. On this slightly more light-hearted episode of No One is Competent, we're taking a look at Google Stadia and the history of cloud gaming.