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It sure isn't a thing everywhere. I mean, I think economics has a lot to do with that belief, but also peoples' expectations. Not everybody makes the big historical comparison between themselves and peasants from centuries ago, but the gap between their own expectations from when they were younger with how they're doing now probably has a lot to do with it. Edit: cute image: 
Tomoe Goonzen fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 21:52
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HEY GUNS posted:and five hundred years from now, will we care? Going by history... we won't care five months from now.
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Apr 7, 2019 23:00
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Kangxi posted:It sure isn't a thing everywhere. I mean, This kind of thing though really make me think, if we really were in a situation where everything was falling apart and getting worse, would we even know? How would we know? Looking at that chart I really have to wonder what most of those people were thinking. I mean a majority of Greeks said life was better in 1967 than 2017? 1967, the year the Greek junta seized power and began seven years of brutal military rule? I think the answers people are giving to this question are only very loosely related to the past.
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Apr 7, 2019 23:50
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Squalid posted:This kind of thing though really make me think, if we really were in a situation where everything was falling apart and getting worse, would we even know? How would we know? also speaking of the pulaski thing, can one of the skull-lookers here tell me what about his skull is "female" or "delicate"? like if i die and people poke around my bones 250 years from now, what are you looking for https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/americas-hidden-stories/the-general-was-female/1005729/3469173
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Apr 7, 2019 23:58
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Squalid posted:This kind of thing though really make me think, if we really were in a situation where everything was falling apart and getting worse, would we even know? How would we know? People often have a rose tinted view of the past. In the 60s, Mexico was de facto ruled by an authoritarian one party system where all dissent was brutally crushed, to the point that in Mexico that period is known as the start of the Dirty War, but a majority of people are saying that's way better than the present because I guess the economic growth and increasing inequality makes the repression bearable?
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Apr 8, 2019 00:18
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Don Gato posted:People often have a rose tinted view of the past. In the 60s, Mexico was de facto ruled by an authoritarian one party system where all dissent was brutally crushed, to the point that in Mexico that period is known as the start of the Dirty War, but a majority of people are saying that's way better than the present because I guess the economic growth and increasing inequality makes the repression bearable? Also because those people who just wanted to get on with their lives could pretty reliably avoid doing a "dissent", whereas these days if you accidentally look at a cartel member funny your whole family's heads end up in plastic bags.
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Apr 8, 2019 00:27
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I also wonder what the numbers would look like for China. How many people would look back on the Cultural Revolution positively? By 1967 there were armed groups of Red Guards and party militias shooting each other in the streets. edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_People%27s_Commune Tomoe Goonzen fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Apr 8, 2019 |
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Apr 8, 2019 00:40
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Kangxi posted:I also wonder what the numbers would look like for China. How many people would look back on the Cultural Revolution positively? By 1967 there were armed groups of Red Guards and party militias shooting each other in the streets. One of my Chinese teachers was a no-poo poo Red Guard during the 60s and he looked back at that period with a weird combination of nostalgia for the youthful idealism/the comradierie he had and "oh yeah it definitely sucked for those people I beat up". It was a kind of  moment in class when he casually brought it up, but he never went into much detail beyond some broad strokes.
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Apr 8, 2019 00:51
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HEY GUNS posted:lord give me the self-confidence and bellicose spirit of the 8% of vietnamese people who yearn for 1969 With the skull thing, I'm not a forensic anthropologist, but from what I'm seeing, at the back of the jaw, there's a part called the gonion. That's this part here, where basically two bones have fused together:  In men, the angle of the gonion tends to be close to 90 degrees. In women, it tends to be closer to 120 degrees. Men, apparently, also tend to have thicker skulls, brow ridges, their forehead recedes and so on.
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Apr 8, 2019 01:05
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HEY GUNS posted:lord give me the self-confidence and bellicose spirit of the 8% of vietnamese people who yearn for 1969 I know a few older expats who benefited quite well from the Republic who yearn for 1969. Anyway I generally agree its quite hyperbolic when people claim things are the worse ever. I mean, an artisan in Baghdad under Mongol siege, a farmer dying of Black Plague, or a peasant fleeing his village during the Taiping Rebellion could have a few words about “living in the worst of times”. Its why I’m trying to post less in D&D... With that said, our children’s generation is going to be in for a rough time as the environmental effects of overpopulation and climate change ramp up. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Apr 8, 2019 |
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Apr 8, 2019 01:28
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Another point to consider is how old were the respondents 50 years ago? Were they adults/teenagers with responsibilities or were they children who might have been insulated from the political realities?
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Apr 8, 2019 02:16
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Kangxi posted:It sure isn't a thing everywhere. I mean, This chart is darkly hilarious when you consider what was going on in Vietnam 50 years ago.
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Apr 8, 2019 02:19
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Yes, I think things are much better than when we were being bombed and napalmed, and the housing shortage is much better now than it was then,
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Apr 8, 2019 02:25
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polling is always a weird exercise in the intent of the question writer meeting the intent of the answerer. I assume most people read that question, in the context of them as poll answerer trying to get their viewpoint across, as 'do you want to send a message that things have gotten better, or worse?', ignoring the actual years and parameters that were so important to the question writers I'd guess that every poll question, without exception, is received differently by question writers, answerers, and the press/public
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Apr 8, 2019 05:05
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polls are generally a pretty garbage way of getting any reliable info
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Apr 8, 2019 05:35
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Don Gato posted:Late-war reconnaissance pilot. The enemy has no meaningful way to shoot you down and you're just taking photos. Me262's often hunted Photo reconnaissance Spitfires. Granted, they were one of the few planes that could catch them to do it.
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Apr 8, 2019 09:56
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Assuming that you have to be completely blind as to which side you will be fighting on (winners obviously have it better than losers) and you can't just join the war after it's already been won, and it has to be a 'frontline' position: fighter pilot. Everyone else in WW2 has to stand where they are told and is under perpetual risk of random death from shell or mortar, at least if you are flying your own plane then you have some autonomy and you dying is likely your own fuckup from not paying attention. If we're chucking out the above caveats then RAF Naval Bomber command. The most boring job in the world but sub hunting is still sub hunting and it's almost impossible to get hurt.
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Apr 8, 2019 10:17
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Naval airship wasn't without risk of getting shot down but they stayed aloft for the most part.
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Apr 8, 2019 11:15
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Carth Dookie posted:I remember reading somewhere that IL2s had women rear gunners in a lot of instances, but they stopped because they kept getting killed and it was bad for morale. Does anyone have a source on that or did I just imagine it? Not sure how widespread it was, but I'll try to quote the source later. Yeah it happened from time to time. And the reply about women pilots... you didn't have to be a pilot to be a gunner.
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Apr 8, 2019 11:40
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Alchenar posted:Assuming that you have to be completely blind as to which side you will be fighting on (winners obviously have it better than losers) and you can't just join the war after it's already been won, and it has to be a 'frontline' position: fighter pilot. Plus usually the best treatment by your captors.
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Apr 8, 2019 11:50
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HEY GUNS posted:like if i die and people poke around my bones 250 years from now, what are you looking for Alchenar posted:If we're chucking out the above caveats then RAF Naval Bomber command. The most boring job in the world but sub hunting is still sub hunting and it's almost impossible to get hurt.
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Apr 8, 2019 11:53
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Neophyte posted:Sticks of small bombs may have been ineffective against tanks and somewhat (to one degree or another) against other military vehicles. But I'd bet they were depressingly effective against the horses the Nazis depended on. Regarding the shaped charges the il2s carried, here are some counteepoints. 1. The "sticks" they dropped were long, precisely because they had 200 bombs. It was an explosive carpet. 2. Shaped charges punch above thwir weight 3. The top armor on tanks wasn't particularly great. 4. A mobility kill or burning engine is good enough
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Apr 8, 2019 11:58
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HEY GUNS posted:lord give me the self-confidence and bellicose spirit of the 8% of vietnamese people who yearn for 1969 Going by the Copenhagen history museum, just make sure you're buried with a knife. If they can't tell if you're male or female they assume having a knife means you're male. It's a very silly museum.
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Apr 8, 2019 11:59
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Lemony posted:I have a question for everyone here. Has your interest/study of military history impacted how you view war and/or violence? Late but might as well throw my own hat into the ring: I'm a lot like HEY GUNS in that although I've definitely grown to have a better grasp of the costs of war etc. I can't say it's made me meaningfully more of a pacifist beyond a greater understanding of the hopefully self-evident "It's really awful how many guys got killed/really hosed up". Ironically just like HEY GUNS I'd say that it's actually made me less pacifist, at least w.r.t. "military action is sometimes the only recourse". I'd also concur with TK-42-1 in that what probably fascinates me about military technology is the engineering problems and the necessity of designing right at the corner cases, even if I acknowledge the ultimate aim of said tech. You could probably say that it was the technology that first drew me into milhist and everything blossomed from there. My first milhist books were probably the usual fare, though I think what really jumpstarted my interest was the IL-2 series of flight sims. Originally I only read up on WWII milhist and latterly the Cold War, but I've expanded my horizons into WWI and to an extent the 18th-19th centuries (sorry HEY GUNS I'm not yet ready to dip my toes into your era  ). Helps that I have a buddy who's really into medieval milhist to the point he does re-enactment.I'd say the biggest positive impacts milhist has had on me are that it's made me much better at critical analysis (as well as ensuring I don't fall for classic Wehraboo bullshit), as well as having a greater appreciation for engineering design and how complex situations and systems interact with each other. I guess I could say that I have a vastly better understanding that logistics wins wars, but I'm still far more interested in the pointy end of the spear and how it was wielded. What can I say, I like seeing things go boom. v  vThough on that note, are there any cases where the side with superior logistics lost? I suppose that to my gut it just feels a little too pat to assume that the side with better logistics will "automatically" win and I want to test that assumption. Soup Inspector fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Apr 8, 2019 |
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Apr 8, 2019 12:47
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LatwPIAT posted:they assume having a knife means you're male. What if you are buried with a half-pike?
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Apr 8, 2019 12:53
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Harold Godwinson executed a brilliant manoeuvre taking his army from one end of the country to the other in still a fit state to fight. William spent ages being delayed by bad weather and a bunch of ships were lost at sea. Then Harold got himself killed, and the rest is history.
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Apr 8, 2019 12:56
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Epicurius posted:With the skull thing, I'm not a forensic anthropologist, but from what I'm seeing, at the back of the jaw, there's a part called the gonion. That's this part here, where basically two bones have fused together: Huh. I am apparently a woman
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Apr 8, 2019 13:03
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Soup Inspector posted:
The United States in Indochina.
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Apr 8, 2019 13:04
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Milo and POTUS posted:Huh. I am apparently a woman can you feel that thing on yourself though? i tried to last night and then accidentally choked myself and stopped
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Apr 8, 2019 13:07
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Vahakyla posted:The United States in Indochina. In retrospect this was the obvious answer. I should've thought of that considering I read so drat much about the Vietnam War. 
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Apr 8, 2019 13:10
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That said, i wouldnt say the VC had bad logistics. They had a very resilient logistical system that withstood the full attention of the worlds biggest airforce that provided them with the resources that they needed to fight and win all over a massive field of combat. It was less impressive in its absolute scale, but the soldiers they had needed less resources.
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Apr 8, 2019 13:15
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HEY GUNS posted:can you feel that thing on yourself though? i tried to last night and then accidentally choked myself and stopped It's the corner of the lower jaw isn't it? If anything I'd guess there's too much overlaying soft tissue to really feel what angle it is.
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Apr 8, 2019 13:16
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FrangibleCover posted:Coastal Command wasn't easy or without risk. 6000 killed in combat and another 2000 in accidents means there's a considerable chance of you still not coming home. Aircrews on the anti-sub patrols had to deal with flak from the subs, German long-range fighters and the sheer challenge of flying a finicky 40s aircraft for tens of hours over water. Early war your plane is almost certainly really bad as well. Most of those casualties aren't from the sub hunting branch, they're from anti-shipping and coastal attack/recon.
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Apr 8, 2019 13:19
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A lot of those "accidents" are from a lovely boat capsizing time and time again before the Brits finally realized it was shite and binned it.
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Apr 8, 2019 13:23
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Polyakov posted:That said, i wouldnt say the VC had bad logistics. They had a very resilient logistical system that withstood the full attention of the worlds biggest airforce that provided them with the resources that they needed to fight and win all over a massive field of combat. It was less impressive in its absolute scale, but the soldiers they had needed less resources.
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Apr 8, 2019 13:24
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HEY GUNS posted:i'd say the ho chi minh trail was a great feat of logistics myself it was, but in absolute terms a US or ARVN unit had better access to more supplies and materiel than a VC or NVA unit
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Apr 8, 2019 13:35
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FAUXTON posted:It's the corner of the lower jaw isn't it? If anything I'd guess there's too much overlaying soft tissue to really feel what angle it is. It honestly seems like one of those things that could feel completely different from what it actually looks like.
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Apr 8, 2019 13:47
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Was it the Sheridan that was designed to be airdropped and amphibious but instead of doing something like making it more useful for the theater they slapped a honkin' caseless anti-armor rifle on it that basically broke everything including the commander's ribs when fired?
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Apr 8, 2019 13:54
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The Sheridan was designed to be airdroppable, ya. The (relatively low pressure) 152mm gun was added so that it could fire the MGM-51 Shillelagh. It was felt at the time that there was no way to add a good high-velocity antitank gun to the platform and meet weight requirements to remain air-droppable, so the missile was developed to ensure that the M551 could still go toe-to-toe with Soviet tanks. It wasn’t a bad idea; the Soviets later developed far more successful gun-tube-launches ATGMs, but the Shillelagh itself was pretty dismal. It was also used on the M60A2, which was also a failure, and almost immediately replaced.
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Apr 8, 2019 14:02
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Being a Finnish submariner would also have been a pretty safe bet. Harrowing, as they did see a lot of combat and the Baltic Sea isn't exactly calm, for most of the year, but none of the submarines were sunk. There were a total of 6, I think.
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Apr 8, 2019 14:19
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