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Wonderful story from NPR about trying to figure out global ocean temps through the 19th century. One of the weird things is that the Pacific reads pretty cool through the 1940s. Why? Because the Navy seized a huge trove of meteorological data from the Japanese after WW2, and then digitized the document in the 1980s. The Navy wrote every single measurement be it 15.1C or 15.9C as a whole number(15).
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Aug 19, 2019 21:52
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I haven't actually read his essay, but surely this counts for the idiot thread, right? https://twitter.com/jkass99/status/1163507261378977792?s=19
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Aug 20, 2019 00:31
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King of Bees posted:I just got around to watching They Shall Not Grow Old and what struck me was just how much of a children's war WW1 was. The second thing was how they were treated when it was over. Initially at least, it was far less so than the Second World War. Go through a British Empire or French cemetery and you will see a shocking number of privates and corporals in their late 30s.
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Aug 20, 2019 00:44
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A White Guy posted:Wonderful story from NPR about trying to figure out global ocean temps through the 19th century. One of the weird things is that the Pacific reads pretty cool through the 1940s. Why? Because the Navy seized a huge trove of meteorological data from the Japanese after WW2, and then digitized the document in the 1980s. The Navy wrote every single measurement be it 15.1C or 15.9C as a whole number(15). God that owns, and double owned is the people going to have to go back through all the records to correct it
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Aug 20, 2019 01:32
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A White Guy posted:Wonderful story from NPR about trying to figure out global ocean temps through the 19th century. One of the weird things is that the Pacific reads pretty cool through the 1940s. Why? Because the Navy seized a huge trove of meteorological data from the Japanese after WW2, and then digitized the document in the 1980s. The Navy wrote every single measurement be it 15.1C or 15.9C as a whole number(15). 
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Aug 20, 2019 01:35
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https://www.npr.org/2019/08/19/750778010/how-much-hotter-are-the-oceans-the-answer-begins-with-a-bucket Amazing. It wasn't even rounded, just dropped the decimals
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Aug 20, 2019 03:16
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Fearless posted:Initially at least, it was far less so than the Second World War. Go through a British Empire or French cemetery and you will see a shocking number of privates and corporals in their late 30s. Those were the pros who got wiped out early. quote:These, in the day when heaven was falling,
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Aug 20, 2019 03:23
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canyoneer posted:https://www.npr.org/2019/08/19/750778010/how-much-hotter-are-the-oceans-the-answer-begins-with-a-bucket That’s actually a legitimate rounding method, though.
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Aug 20, 2019 03:29
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Platystemon posted:That’s actually a legitimate rounding method, though. 
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Aug 20, 2019 03:48
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Platystemon posted:That’s actually a legitimate rounding method, though. That isn't rounding. It's truncating.
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Aug 20, 2019 03:51
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If they’d used Fahrenheit, this wouldn’t have happened.
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Aug 20, 2019 04:30
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"What loving difference does it make?" 
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Aug 20, 2019 04:31
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Smiling Jack posted:Those were the pros who got wiped out early. They really weren't. A lot of recent scholarship has done a lot to overturn many old myths and popular misconceptions about precisely who it was that fought the Great War-- Tim Cook springs to mind in Canada, for instance-- and that work has shown that the war directly involved a lot of people often assumed to be outside of fighting age, and not out of sheer desperation like the Volksturm a generation later. Jingoism and war fervour is a hell of a thing.
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Aug 20, 2019 05:12
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canyoneer posted:The Pentagon is happy to use US Military assets, locations, and personnel in films that portray the military in a positive light. They have a strong preference for films that show actual personnel doing their actual jobs (mechanics in the background wrenching on planes, drivers, etc.) No no, those extras should be happy. That's a big $$$ bump from background/special skills to stunt performer. Unless it was shot non-union, then oh well enjoy your back injuries.
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Aug 20, 2019 05:22
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Fearless posted:They really weren't. A lot of recent scholarship has done a lot to overturn many old myths and popular misconceptions about precisely who it was that fought the Great War-- Tim Cook springs to mind in Canada, for instance-- and that work has shown that the war directly involved a lot of people often assumed to be outside of fighting age, and not out of sheer desperation like the Volksturm a generation later. Jingoism and war fervour is a hell of a thing. Learn something new every day
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Aug 20, 2019 06:00
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From They Shall Not Grow Old, a number of the old veterans they were interviewing said it was totally rad and they'd go back in a heartbeat. One guy said it was pretty much like a long, fun camping trip with all your pals where you were occasionally shot at. War is weird.
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Aug 20, 2019 18:39
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canyoneer posted:From They Shall Not Grow Old, a number of the old veterans they were interviewing said it was totally rad and they'd go back in a heartbeat. When you've spent a lifetime blocking out all the images in your head of gas attacks, mangled bodies, and dead friends I'm sure it's pretty easy to think of WWI as a cracking good time
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Aug 20, 2019 18:47
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Well, if you're not the poor bastards getting shelled/gassed/shot at, WW1 was a cracking good time. 1917-1918 musta been a shitload of fun for American destroyermen in Rosyth and Ireland. Not so much for the poor sods in Scapa Flow proper. For some lucky dogs, war is a drat good time if you end up in some ancillary support role where chances of death were relatively low and you're surrounded by the recently single/widowed women of whatever nation you're in. Hell, even ending up in some godforsaken corner of the world ain't that bad in comparison. An American farmboy from the Midwest might not have enjoyed his stay in Greenland too much, but in hindsight 70 years down the line, he can appreciate what incredible natural beauty he got to witness firsthand and got paid to be at.
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Aug 20, 2019 22:50
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A White Guy posted:Well, if you're not the poor bastards getting shelled/gassed/shot at, WW1 was a cracking good time. 1917-1918 musta been a shitload of fun for American destroyermen in Rosyth and Ireland. Not so much for the poor sods in Scapa Flow proper. For some lucky dogs, war is a drat good time if you end up in some ancillary support role where chances of death were relatively low and you're surrounded by the recently single/widowed women of whatever nation you're in. You're the dude that sticks with a terrible job in the CCC right?
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Aug 20, 2019 22:54
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Kawasaki Nun posted:You're the dude that sticks with a terrible job in the CCC right? Not so terrible nowadays, but yeah.
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Aug 20, 2019 23:12
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My grandfather is still alive, and a WWII veteran. He was a school teacher, and spent the war in the army in Minnesota "flying a typewriter". Not exactly an exotic locale but definitely in the top 1% of cushiest possible assignments to be drafted into.
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Aug 20, 2019 23:19
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canyoneer posted:My grandfather is still alive, and a WWII veteran. He was a school teacher, and spent the war in the army in Minnesota "flying a typewriter". My grandfather had finished infantry training and was shipping out to fuckin' Burma when he did very well on an aptitude test and spent the rest of the war stateside doing math. I had a Jewish neighbor who described WW2 as a "good time" because he loved killing Nazis. He also went AWOL to Switzerland and fought Swiss cops, escaped back over the Swiss border and banged a bunch of "red Cross girls" after the surrender before being demoted and shipped home. He described WW2 as a good time because he drank booze, banged chicks and killed Nazis. ... he was fairly drunk when he told me this
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Aug 20, 2019 23:49
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I hope you bought him a bottle
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Aug 20, 2019 23:57
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My wife’s grandfather was an army reserve officer on orders in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor happened. He got activated and spent the entire war on a base above Pearl Harbor working with fleet movement tracking. He had 20 civilian women as his staff. Dudes a short Jewish dude and he did pretty drat good for himself. Ol’ Grammy was a tall blonde looker.
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Aug 21, 2019 00:00
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Smiling Jack posted:My grandfather had finished infantry training and was shipping out to fuckin' Burma when he did very well on an aptitude test and spent the rest of the war stateside doing math. That dude owns
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Aug 21, 2019 00:26
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canyoneer posted:From They Shall Not Grow Old, a number of the old veterans they were interviewing said it was totally rad and they'd go back in a heartbeat. For more stuff along this line, pick up Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel. It's the memoirs of a guy who signed up right when the war broke out, and it's mostly about him having a great time storming British trenches and being mildly inconvenienced by artillery barrages.
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Aug 21, 2019 00:26
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My grandfather flew a bomber over Germany and spent the last year of the war in a prison camp. As far as I know, he never talked about it and he had a dislike of Patton for some reason. Grampa probably firebombed civilians.  Edit A German prison camp, not an American one. Watching the new Catch 22 show brought a whole new light to what his experiences probably were.
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Aug 21, 2019 00:48
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breaking my lurk to say my great great uncle missed Gallipoli because he was in a hospital in England somewhere for extensive VD treatment. So he obviously enjoyed WW1.
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Aug 21, 2019 00:59
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Smiling Jack posted:I had a Jewish neighbor who described WW2 as a "good time" because he loved killing Nazis. He also went AWOL to Switzerland and fought Swiss cops, escaped back over the Swiss border and banged a bunch of "red Cross girls" after the surrender before being demoted and shipped home. 
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Aug 21, 2019 01:01
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Chichevache posted:he had a dislike of Patton for some reason. Was he in a camp near Hammelburg? If so he might have been through “liberation” by Task Force Baum, an ill planned operation Patton kicked off for the express purpose of freeing his son in law. Most other prisoners who escaped, if they did escape, did so in spite of the raid rather than because of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_Baum
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Aug 21, 2019 01:07
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Smiling Jack posted:I had a Jewish neighbor who described WW2 as a "good time" because he loved killing Nazis. He also went AWOL to Switzerland and fought Swiss cops, escaped back over the Swiss border and banged a bunch of "red Cross girls" after the surrender before being demoted and shipped home. Do what you love and you never work a day in your life. The way things are going he might get the chance to relive his glory days! 
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Aug 21, 2019 01:10
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Scratch Monkey posted:Was he in a camp near Hammelburg? If so he might have been through “liberation” by Task Force Baum, an ill planned operation Patton kicked off for the express purpose of freeing his son in law. Most other prisoners who escaped, if they did escape, did so in spite of the raid rather than because of it. I'm not sure where he was. That's possible, but if so he didn't leave the camp that way. The story I always heard from my father was that he was at a camp that Patton was involved in the liberation of, and when Patton went through shaking all the PoWs hands mu grandfather chose to avoid him because he wasn't interested. That doesn't sound like the events at Hammelburg, but maybe he heard about it and it colored his perception when he was liberated. Either way, cool story.
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Aug 21, 2019 01:28
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Both my grandads were part of the Normandy beach landings, don't know which beach though. Grandpa on dad's side was at some speech or other that Patton have, too; said he was a crazy sonuvabitch. That's all I got.
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Aug 21, 2019 01:54
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Malachite_Dragon posted:Both my grandads were part of the Normandy beach landings, don't know which beach though. Grandpa on dad's side was at some speech or other that Patton have, too; said he was a crazy sonuvabitch. That's all I got. It's a good thing your paternal grandpa didn't storm your maternal grandpa's pillbox!
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Aug 21, 2019 02:01
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My grandfather sailed around the Pacific during Vietnam, eventually returning home with a Japanese prostitute married to another enlisted man. Eventually that fell through. But my grandmother hated him the rest of her life. They were married almost 60 loving years. I'm the grandchild of enlisted.txt.
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Aug 21, 2019 05:24
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My Great-grandfather spent the armistice in a hospital with a court-marshal pending for bullying a guards officer at leicester square tube station. He was acquitted a week or two later.
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Aug 21, 2019 05:38
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My paternal grandfather was an artillery man during WWII. Went through all of the African campaign, up through Italy, and somehow ended up in the middle of France or something. My maternal grandfather was something like 17 at the time and somehow survived getting shot four separate times while fighting Russians. From what little I know he spent most of his days siphoning diesel with lung power. Sometime after the war He smuggled himself, my pregnant grandmother, and three year old aunt across the Berlin Wall in a milk truck. Some 6’3 black American staff sergeant put them up for six months and even gifted them a cradle when my mom was born. Then they hopped on a ship to the US. He died in his 50s well before I was born. My grandmother was unsurprisingly still super racist for the next 40 years. Because my mom and dad both spoke German they had a blast being stationed in Germany during the Cold War. They would trade BX cigarette cartons for cases of wine. Also bartering to have the locals use the on base auto shop to fix cars for profit. My mom drove a bright orange Porsche to her job bartending at the O club on base every day and every day they would have the drug dogs sniff it because they thought my parents were smuggling the devils lettuce to fund themselves. Then whatever German nationalists it was at the time bombed the O club at 3am. And because they spoke German my dad got tasked with getting stencils for the admin parking lot from a local shop. In classic enlisted.txt fashion he had all 100 something spray paint stencils made and a piece of paper telling the workmen where to paint them. Needless to say the order went ‘base commander, XO, Wing commander 1 through whatever, some fancy title for my dad (an E-5 at the time)’ and then on to rest. He had prime parking for about four months before anyone thought to question it. M_Gargantua fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 05:48
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For real though working in the facilities department just about anywhere is effectively a superpower.
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Aug 21, 2019 05:53
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i too have ancestors who did things and stuff during eras
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Aug 21, 2019 05:55
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EBB posted:i too have ancestors who did things and stuff during eras That’s very German of you.
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Aug 21, 2019 06:02
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