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"Imperial Japan was good because they opposed the Communists, who are bad because they assassinate people. The February 26 Incident? Whuzzah?"
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Jul 31, 2015 18:58
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Well, now that you mention it... This really is a delightful web of craziness I guess it's not that unexpected, when you think about it, that if you're going to take on the libertarian-conservative-isolationist position and be against both the war against Japan and also fervently anti-Communist, that you would wind up in this Japan apologist position. But it's really still pretty ridiculous, and then the cult stuff takes it to another level. Fantastic.
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Jul 31, 2015 19:26
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Klaus88 posted:
Well for starters they might give that fuckhead the vaguest shred of a clue about trans issues, which he has made it manifestly clear he desperately needs.
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Jul 31, 2015 19:28
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Thanqol posted:Can someone tell me about flamethrowers? I'm looking to do a bit of writing about them and want to know all I can. Do you want the history, technology behind them, legality, etc.?
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Jul 31, 2015 20:08
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Well, now that you mention it... "Private fetishes" Uh, friend, I think you might derive some benefit from this diversity training thing.
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Jul 31, 2015 20:15
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GreyjoyBastard posted:"Private fetishes" He has more important things to do 
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Jul 31, 2015 20:19
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Bro Enlai posted:"Imperial Japan was good because they opposed the Communists, who are bad because they assassinate people. I'm sure that if pressed hard enough the guy would defend the 2-26 Incident as patriots engendering more aggressive action against the Commies.
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Jul 31, 2015 20:22
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Splode posted:Chinese Romanisation systems are probably a big part of why hardly anybody outside China knows any Chinese history. Pinyin is a train wreck. This is a weird place to ask this, but does anyone know where the Western (at least American) idea of the "ow" in certain old Romanised Chinese words rhyming with the "ow" in "growl" came to be? There are so many other English words that use "ow" that don't sound like that, and as far as I can tell Chinese doesn't sound like that either. It's just this weird cultural thing and I'm curious as to where it might have originated.
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Jul 31, 2015 21:24
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There's some truly amazing poo poo on that Liberty Web cult site.
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Jul 31, 2015 21:36
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Never was this more fitting 
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Jul 31, 2015 22:08
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cheerfullydrab posted:This is a weird place to ask this, but does anyone know where the Western (at least American) idea of the "ow" in certain old Romanised Chinese words rhyming with the "ow" in "growl" came to be? There are so many other English words that use "ow" that don't sound like that, and as far as I can tell Chinese doesn't sound like that either. It's just this weird cultural thing and I'm curious as to where it might have originated. Like the orthography? Lots of English words have that. (Bow, sow, cow, wow, how...) Yeah, there are words that have a different vowel but are written like that (mow, grow), but that's just English having dumb spelling what else is new. Meanwhile Chinese has a lot of words that end in that coda (or well, close enough). Does that help?
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Jul 31, 2015 22:18
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100 Years Ago Special Bonus Update I've now finished uploading material to the blog to fill that big gap at the start of the war. The gap is no more! There's now a continuous narrative from June 1914 to July 31 1915. (Handy links: this one will take you to the start of the July Crisis, and this one to August 1 1914, after diplomacy comprehensively failed.) Even better, the ebook preorder is nearly ready to go, assuming y'all still have some money spare after you've spent $17 on the Kindle version of Margaret Thatcher's Miraculous Message! I'm still not entirely happy with it, and there's still work to be done, but there's now something where there was nothing. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 22:20
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cheerfullydrab posted:This is a weird place to ask this, but does anyone know where the Western (at least American) idea of the "ow" in certain old Romanised Chinese words rhyming with the "ow" in "growl" came to be? There are so many other English words that use "ow" that don't sound like that, and as far as I can tell Chinese doesn't sound like that either. It's just this weird cultural thing and I'm curious as to where it might have originated. In Cantonese, the phoneme represented in pinyin as "ou" (a long O) is pronounced closer to the "ow" in growl. The earliest Chinese immigrants were all from Guangdong province, and were mostly illiterate. American immigration officers didn't speak Chinese either, and I assume they just did the best approximation they could of their last names. Chow, Chou, Cho, Chiau, and so on are all attempts at romanising the surname "Zhou". It's also probable that individual immigrants spoke in a dialect that may have shifted the romanisation in a different direction.
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Jul 31, 2015 22:24
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Yes, I was under the impression that most Chinese words transliterated as ending in "ow" were pronounced like the "ow" in "window" and that somehow Americans had just come up with this idea that Chinese was full of "ow" as in "growl" sounds. Like it was a cultural thing that got started somehow.
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Jul 31, 2015 22:28
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cheerfullydrab posted:Yes, I was under the impression that most Chinese words transliterated as ending in "ow" were pronounced like the "ow" in "window" and that somehow Americans had just come up with this idea that Chinese was full of "ow" as in "growl" sounds. Like it was a cultural thing that got started somehow. I'm not really familiar with any romanisation system besides pinyin, so I only know of Chinese "ow"s within the context of family names. It's not really pure ignorance though, it's just that Cantonese isn't really a very good approximation of Mandarin.
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Jul 31, 2015 22:38
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Splode posted:Chinese Romanisation systems are probably a big part of why hardly anybody outside China knows any Chinese history. Pinyin is a train wreck. What's wrong with Pinyin?
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Jul 31, 2015 23:14
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Fangz posted:What's wrong with Pinyin? I assume it's because Pinyin was created by Modern Standard Mandarin speakers for Modern Standard Mandarin speakers. If you try to pronounce Pinyin words as if they were English words, it just ends up being a total mess. I assume Cantonese isn't much better.
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Jul 31, 2015 23:31
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The Happy Science people have created an anime and for that I forgive them anything.
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Aug 1, 2015 00:14
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago Special Bonus Update Yesss! The July Crisis is fascinating to me for whatever dumb reason. I love all the ads for trips to Germany or whatever from that period, and all of the other signs of life just kind of continuing as normal even as the world lurched towards disaster. EDIT: Plus the way that everyone in France spent most of July obsessing over the Caillaux trial! Empress Theonora fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Aug 1, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2015 00:40
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golden bubble posted:I assume it's because Pinyin was created by Modern Standard Mandarin speakers for Modern Standard Mandarin speakers. If you try to pronounce Pinyin words as if they were English words, it just ends up being a total mess. I assume Cantonese isn't much better. Yeah, this. A great example is how pinyin uses c and x. If someone has to go and look up how a romanisation system works before they can use it correctly it has failed. Contrast pinyin with Romaji and you'll see what I mean.
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Aug 1, 2015 01:04
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I want that guy to get murdered. gently caress it, I know I'm a few pages too late, but this got me riled up. If I show this bullshit to some Chinese students at my university they'll probably become so enraged their ancient Chinese martial arts super powers will kick in and they'll teleport straight to him to get your wish granted. That fucker. Also that bit about the diversity training is just showing how deranged this guy really is. And he got to be a Ph. D. Candidate with this kind of stupid in his head? The university he went to should be forced to have some sort of shaming flag for that disaster. "Morgan Was Our Fault, We Are Truly Sorry"
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Aug 1, 2015 01:12
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Splode posted:Yeah, this. A great example is how pinyin uses c and x. What actually is the point of romanisation? Even with a system like romaji, you can't just start reading it like English and expect to be understood. I always understood that romanisation served to let English-language texts print words in other languages without making them implacably foreign. Wade-Giles is like a constant stream of apostrophes and numbers in subscript, it breaks up your reading like a bad fantasy name.
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Aug 1, 2015 01:35
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Splode posted:Yeah, this. A great example is how pinyin uses c and x. Eh, that's not such a great example as you think. The official government form for Romaji is Kunrei-shiki romanization, which has the exact same problems as Hanyu Pinyin. The main difference is that Hepburn romanization (the main Japanese transliteration) is still very popular in Japan, whereas Wade-Giles romanization (the main Chinese transliteration) has fallen out of favor with the people of China.
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Aug 1, 2015 01:35
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chitoryu12 posted:Do you want the history, technology behind them, legality, etc.? The history and, if possible, contemporary opinions on them. I'm very interested in hearing what people who used them or came up against them thought if that's available. Thank you.
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Aug 1, 2015 01:55
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100 Years Ago posted:Meanwhile, it’s certainly not too late for Sir Edward Grey to try to diplomatically wriggle out of this fine mess. He’s also today come up with a rather, ahem, novel suggestion: France and Germany should mobilise, declare war, and then stand on either side of the border casting dirty looks at the other’s army. The idea lasts only slightly longer than it’s taken you to read this, and has served only to excite historians. His communications with the German ambassador were deemed so confusing by Berlin that no reply was given.  Yeah, these July Crisis posts are definitely worth reading.
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Aug 1, 2015 01:58
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:What actually is the point of romanisation? Even with a system like romaji, you can't just start reading it like English and expect to be understood.
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Aug 1, 2015 02:31
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"So how about this: Both sides launch their nuclear missiles, but they, like, aim for sparsely populated areas, like Alaska and central Siberia. Everyone cool with that? Hello? Is this thing working?"
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Aug 1, 2015 02:33
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So I'm slowly making my way through this thread and have a paper to write on the 30 Years War. Can someone recommend some books for me? Some Goons gushed about Hey Gal's knowledge. I've got a cursory knowledge of the War and the events leading up to it, but most of the books I've read so far have somehow given me an English Nationalist perspective on it, if such a thing is possible. Onto the topic at hand, what was stopping the US nuking Russia at the start of the Cold War before the Nukes were developed? Couldn't they use the evii Commie rhetoric of later times and claim they needed to strike first before Stalin got them?
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Aug 1, 2015 02:35
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Splode posted:Yeah, this. A great example is how pinyin uses c and x. Romanization isn't Anglicization? Pinyin has its own set of pronunciation rules that are similar to English for the most part but it's not English. You may as well be complaining that French or Vietnamese don't sound like the original language when pronounced using English rules. Wade Giles isn't inherently worse than Pinyin because it also isn't English either and has its own rules.
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Aug 1, 2015 02:37
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Hazzard posted:Onto the topic at hand, what was stopping the US nuking Russia at the start of the Cold War before the Nukes were developed? Couldn't they use the evii Commie rhetoric of later times and claim they needed to strike first before Stalin got them? I'd say it was basic human decency, and not being genocidal maniacs. Just a guess.
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Aug 1, 2015 02:44
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Thanqol posted:The history and, if possible, contemporary opinions on them. I'm very interested in hearing what people who used them or came up against them thought if that's available. Thank you. I'm by no means an expert on flamethrowers, but I think I can cobble together an effortpost on this and someone more learned in them can correct any mistakes I make. Flamethrowers date back way, way before their famous usage in World War I. Greek fire dates back to at least 672 AD, with the formula a closely guarded secret (guesses at its composition include just about any ingredient in the "sticky incendiary chemical" line like sulfur, naphtha, pine resin, potassium nitrate, etc. and most modern scholars figure petroleum was involved). Whatever the recipe was, the Byzantine formula was fired from tubes of varying size (from small handheld projectors to massive ship-mounted tubes) or packed into earthenware grenades and thrown. Much like modern flamethrower fuels like napalm, Greek fire was a burning liquid squirted out under pressure. It was even able to burn on water and required dousing with sand or chemicals like strong vinegar or urine. Similar incendiary weapons were used throughout history, but the Byzantine formula is the famous forerunner. The modern flamethrower is the Flammenwerfer, and the English name for them is simply a translation of the original German term for the device. The Flammenwerfer was accepted by the German Army in 1911, a massive crew-served weapon that wasn't exactly a superweapon when it showed up. It was used in hundreds of battles, but as you can see it was quite cumbersome and the operators are totally vulnerable. The flamethrower came into its own with the Flammenwerfer 35 and later update Flammenwerfer 41, still large but able to be man-portable. It used a mix of gasoline and tar, ignited by a hydrogen torch and had 10 seconds of continuous usage; the flamethrower was meant to be fired in short bursts rather than the continuous spray often seen in Hollywood, so 10 seconds will last fairly well for most usage. The British had the No. 2 "Lifebuoy" and the Americans had the very famous and recognizable M2. That's only a sampling, as all the major belligerents had them. The US, Germany, Italy, and USSR I all know for sure also used tanks or APCs with flamethrowers replacing one of the machine guns. During their heyday, flamethrowers were specialized weapons. The operators were highly vulnerable due to the need to waddle out of cover wearing a heavy (several dozen pound) backpack full of fuel and propellant gas, and they often only got a few good bursts of flame before running dry. The soldier going out with a flamethrower was wearing such a bulky and heavy weapon that he usually couldn't carry a gun bigger than a pistol for self-defense. Flamethrowers were used by the Americans heavily in the Pacific Theatre for emptying bunkers and tunnels of Japanese. They kept seeing use up through the Vietnam War and the IRA got some during their terrorism, but flamethrowers have gradually fallen out of favor over the 20th century and it's incredibly rare to see the traditional backpack-mounted fuel sprayer today. Public relations are also kind of terrible when it comes to incendiary weapons, to the point where the Geneva Convention prohibited most usage of them. That hasn't stopped incendiaries from being used at all, though. The US is infamous for its heavy use of napalm, made by mixing petroleum with gelling agent to create a very sticky and hot-burning substance. Napalm bombs were dropped in mass amounts by the US in World War II and Vietnam, and Mark 77 bombs filled with a similar substance were dropped in Iraq. There's also incendiary rocket launchers, like the American M202 FLASH and the Russian RPO-A Sheml. Incendiary weapons against military targets remain legal, but still subject to a hell of a lot of scrutiny and public disapproval for the horrible injuries and slow deaths they're known to cause. Portable flamethrowers have continued -- surprisingly enough -- in civilian hands. The [ur;=http://throwflame.com/]X15[/url] is marketed to civilians (as flamethrowers are not federally regulated, though state regulations differ) for agricultural or ice-clearing use. Propane torches simply use an ignited spray of propane gas for burning weeds. Powerful gas flamethrowers are also the kinds used in Hollywood, as the flame isn't as hot and is much more controllable.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:00
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chitoryu12 posted:That's only a sampling, as all the major belligerents had them. The US, Germany, Italy, and USSR I all know for sure also used tanks or APCs with flamethrowers replacing one of the machine guns. In a lot of cases they swapped the main gun for the flamethrower rather than a machine gun. 
Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Aug 1, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2015 03:11
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Throatwarbler posted:Romanization isn't Anglicization? Pinyin has its own set of pronunciation rules that are similar to English for the most part but it's not English. You may as well be complaining that French or Vietnamese don't sound like the original language when pronounced using English rules. If you want to Anglicize, there's Yale Mandarin. It was developed in WWII to help US soldiers who didn't know Chinese and needed to convey basic messages to Chinese soldiers or civilians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_romanization_of_Mandarin
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Aug 1, 2015 03:11
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Throatwarbler posted:Romanization isn't Anglicization? Pinyin has its own set of pronunciation rules that are similar to English for the most part but it's not English. You may as well be complaining that French or Vietnamese don't sound like the original language when pronounced using English rules. Ok, good point. Keep in mind all I wanted from Pinyin was the ability to pronounce the names of places, historical figures, and some of my class mates without sounding like a complete idiot. Just reading Pinyin without spending a couple of days learning and practising it is a bad, bad idea. You're right though, that's not what Romanisation is actually for. P-Mack posted:If you want to Anglicize, there's Yale Mandarin. It was developed in WWII to help US soldiers who didn't know Chinese and needed to convey basic messages to Chinese soldiers or civilians. Oh man this is great.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:16
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Hazzard posted:Onto the topic at hand, what was stopping the US nuking Russia at the start of the Cold War before the Nukes were developed? Couldn't they use the evii Commie rhetoric of later times and claim they needed to strike first before Stalin got them? It couldn't pull off a "turn all targets into ash" kind of bombing. It could hit maybe one to three cities before serious retaliation, if it could even get through soviet air defense. USSR would certainly retaliate and they had some substantial long distance capability at the time. Would the nukes help in the long run? Maybe(don't forget, the hydrogen bomb hasn't been developed). The U.S. was capable of producing maybe 2 nukes every 3 months, but they'd probably increase capability. They certainly couldn't wipe the USSR off the map, although maybe they could use it to assist Chiang Kai-shek and influence other critical areas in Asia, africa, and europe. Also it would probably have gone over very badly with the american public. Someone who knows it better than a university of wikipedia alumni like me might be able to explain Operation Unthinkable. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Aug 1, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2015 04:15
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Keldoclock posted:Someone who knows it better than a university of wikipedia alumni like me might be able to explain Operation Unthinkable. "Well poo poo, Stalin has a lot of troops and he isn't a very nice guy despite being our ally. Better plan what happens if the unthinkable happens and he decides to keep going."
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Aug 1, 2015 04:46
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I've never been an FPSRussia fan, but this is a good video showing how the M2 series of flamethrowers works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9DkciMTsLI
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Aug 1, 2015 04:53
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:"Well poo poo, Stalin has a lot of troops and he isn't a very nice guy despite being our ally. Better plan what happens if the unthinkable happens and he decides to keep going." I meant the original, crazier first strike plan that everyone told Churchill was nuts. I wanted someone who had read the plans to really tear into them and explain why it would be suicide.
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Aug 1, 2015 05:12
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chitoryu12 posted:Portable flamethrowers have continued -- surprisingly enough -- in civilian hands. The X15 is marketed to civilians (as flamethrowers are not federally regulated, though state regulations differ) for agricultural or ice-clearing use. Propane torches simply use an ignited spray of propane gas for burning weeds. Powerful gas flamethrowers are also the kinds used in Hollywood, as the flame isn't as hot and is much more controllable. The important thing about military grade flamethrowers and civilian flamethrowers is that military grade uses a thick heavy fuel, that can be sprayed a long long distance, and distinctly arcs from gravity before being completely burnt. Hollywood and forest management flamethrowers don't want the burning fuel to stick around, so they use lighter fuels, that give just a short easily controlled jet that evaporates and combusts in mid-air. Because you don't actually want to hurt anyone with the stuff.
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Aug 1, 2015 05:36
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Warsaw street rhymes, late 1940s posted:Truman, Truman, spusć ta bania, quote:Truman, Truman, drop the bomb,
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