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This is a goofy, and general history question, but I was lying in bed last night super comfortable on my memory foam mattress and long staple cotton sheets and I was wondering at what point in history would a king or emperor, the most priviledged and wealthy members of society, first have a bed that compares to my bed in terms of comfort?
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 22:22 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:10 |
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JcDent posted:Going by wiki, the Island underwend a series of "snake eating Gorilla" treatments that ended up with hunter-killer teams mercilessly chasing down the few rabbits not killed by (poisoned?) bait and biowarfare: this is what happens when you just try to wing it in ecology often people trying to restore islands have to do invasive species control in secret, because if PETA gets word they can swing huge pressure campaigns against the government agencies responsible for goat or rabbit removal. In at least one case they have directly caused extinction by successfully delaying remediation until it was too late for the local fauna.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 23:06 |
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feedmegin posted:Why do they need their own camo? It's not like it's more expensive to make. If it's objectively better camo, why doesn't everyone get it? It's the Navy's land camo, so it's been de facto only for SEALs. The Marines hold the rights to MARPAT jealously partially because it gave a distinctive look for recruiting. Also, more practically, MARPAT is a bit older, and the coyote brown and black that it uses stand out like crazy under IR, so enemies with night vision get to see someone who's dayglo with extra-dark spots. So the when the navy got to make a woodland camo, they took advantage of that knowledge and made one with a different color palette. (UCP was an early effort at that sort of thing, but the method of taking the best universal pattern and then throwing out all the colors from the test suite that were too bright under IR... only left greys. Later efforts use khakis and do a lot better) BalloonFish posted:There are a lot of very good reasons why you're considered an ace pilot with 'only' five kills. There are plenty of perfectly competent and courageous fighter pilots who flew in active duty for years and only downed one or two enemy aircraft. It was a game that had a massively high skill barrier just to enter, and then you needed both skill and luck to be successful at it. And, as has already been said, you needed to be lucky enough to survive long enough to get the experience to be really competent at the business of combat flying. You also need the enemy to be obliging enough to show up. Jimmy Thach, one of the best of the very well trained and practiced prewar cadre of USN fighter pilots (Not joking there, they flew a lot of missions and were just about the only WWII air force that was actually trained marksmanship in deflection shooting, which you can kind of tell from histories of their early fights. They make a lot of marginal shots stick against enemies that have an energy and maneuverability advantage on them) scored only five kills. Why is that? We know for a fact he's a good pilot and aerial tactician. It's simple. He only saw enemies on five sorties. Also, prewar cadres absolutely flew faux dogfights. I might try to summarize some of the stuff from The First Team next week when I'm not busy.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 23:27 |
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It's important to note in Thach's case that pretty much as soon as he became an ace he was whisked off to become an instructor, which is why he only saw 5 sorties. Some Luftwaffe/Japanese pilots accumulated so many kills because they were repeatedly sent out into combat until they died (also some pretty, ahem, loose confirming of kills)
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 23:59 |
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xthetenth posted:It's the Navy's land camo, so it's been de facto only for SEALs. The Marines hold the rights to MARPAT jealously partially because it gave a distinctive look for recruiting. The fact that they can do this seems so silly. It's not the biggest deal in the world but surely someone could say "gently caress you guys hand it over" if it was? Actually is there any particular story about how the US Marines became a full fourth branch in almost all respects (sorry coast guard) instead of being more subservient to the Navy? It seems like by World War 2 they're already doing they're own thing.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 00:36 |
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The fact that they can do this seems so silly. It's not the biggest deal in the world but surely someone could say "gently caress you guys hand it over" if it was? The SecDef has determined the Marines can't copyright something owned by the DoD, but are letting them keep the pattern as a distinctive uniform.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 00:45 |
The fifth Commandant of the Marine Corps started aggressively using Marines as a quick-response expeditionary force in the 1820s, because budget cuts after the War of 1812 were sapping funds away and he wanted to ensure the Marines had a mission.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 00:48 |
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The fact that they can do this seems so silly. It's not the biggest deal in the world but surely someone could say "gently caress you guys hand it over" if it was? Marines always did the expeditionary thing even as early as the Barbary Coast shenanigans, and they've always had just enough distinctiveness to stay separate. Plus they have a knack for doing relevant stuff at the right time to avoid drawdowns.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 00:50 |
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Ace Combat training:
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 01:25 |
I miss that webcomic.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 02:34 |
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Neophyte posted:Ace Combat training: You have to treat your airplane like your best girl, get inside her and take to heaven 3 times a day.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 02:55 |
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bewbies posted:(sidenote: flying a target aircraft was probably pretty high on the list of lovely wartime jobs) That's why they had women do it.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 03:05 |
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SimonCat posted:You have to treat your airplane like your best girl, get inside her and take to heaven 3 times a day. Woof!
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 03:19 |
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zoux posted:This is a goofy, and general history question, but I was lying in bed last night super comfortable on my memory foam mattress and long staple cotton sheets and I was wondering at what point in history would a king or emperor, the most priviledged and wealthy members of society, first have a bed that compares to my bed in terms of comfort? Let's see what Wikipedia says: Early beds were little more than piles of straw or some other natural material (e.g. a heap of palm leaves, animal skins, or dried bracken). An important change was raising them off the ground, to avoid drafts, dirt, and pests. 23-5 million years ago, before the advent of humans, apes began creating beds composed of a sleeping platform including a wooden pillow Genetic analysis suggests that the human body louse, which lives in clothing, may only have diverged from the head louse some 170,000 years ago, which supports evidence that humans began wearing clothing at around this time. These estimates predate the first known human exodus from Africa, although other hominid species who may have worn clothes – and shared these louse infestations – appear to have migrated earlier. Sewing needles have been dated to at least 50,000 years ago (Denisova Cave, Siberia) – and uniquely associated with a human species other than modern humans, i.e. H. Denisova/H. Altai. The oldest possible example is 60,000 years ago, a needlepoint (missing stem and eye) found in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Other early examples of needles dating from 41,000-15,000 years ago are found in multiple locations, e.g. Slovenia, Russia, China, Spain, and France. So the technology for making comfortable beds existed about 50k years ago.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 08:22 |
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Squalid posted:this is what happens when you just try to wing it in ecology
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 14:28 |
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HEY GUNS posted:i will hear nothing against my plan to repopulate greenland, iceland, the maritimes, and northeast canada with walruses, good sir Sable Island will once again be walrus-y
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 15:34 |
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The MARPAT is getting really popular... uh, internationally, too. I wonder if it might start to lose some of its alleged recruiting power in the US. https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura/status/1180043501540655104
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 15:55 |
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Dude looks like a customized COD character from 2010.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 16:01 |
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Dude looks like a customized COD character from 2010. The guy has more likely than not, played CoD multiplayer and bases his aesthetic off of it
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 17:14 |
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The guy has more likely than not, played CoD multiplayer and bases his aesthetic off of it Postmodern warfare: Soldiers imitating hot video games and then recording and posting their battles to social media.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 17:33 |
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ponzicar posted:Postmodern warfare: Soldiers imitating hot video games and then recording and posting their battles to social media. I dunno about the former, but there's already plenty of battle footage on social media from Syria and Ukraine. Given the relative age ranges, it's probably pretty likely some subset of the recorders have played CoD and the like, so...
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 18:14 |
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Davin Valkri posted:I dunno about the former, but there's already plenty of battle footage on social media from Syria and Ukraine. Given the relative age ranges, it's probably pretty likely some subset of the recorders have played CoD and the like, so... It's absolutely already happening, even if the video game influence isn't as conscious or overt.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 18:41 |
I wonder how many guys have said 'F' when their comrades have come back as casualties
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 19:29 |
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The various propaganda videos from the Syrian civil war show that their propaganda departments have absolutely have played CoD and other modern FPSs. There are regular digitally edited flourishes that clearly ape western military media.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 19:35 |
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The fact that they can do this seems so silly. It's not the biggest deal in the world but surely someone could say "gently caress you guys hand it over" if it was? As has been said, they really couldn't enforce it if it came down to it. But in practice each branch of the service seems to like having their own distinctive uniforms, so there's no real chance of the army saying "let us use your pattern or else."
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 21:08 |
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an article is out, PM me for links. (Unfortunately it isn't free.)
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 23:26 |
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https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII/status/1180168490864562176
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 01:03 |
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zoux posted:This is a goofy, and general history question, but I was lying in bed last night super comfortable on my memory foam mattress and long staple cotton sheets and I was wondering at what point in history would a king or emperor, the most priviledged and wealthy members of society, first have a bed that compares to my bed in terms of comfort? Comfort is quite objective. Rich people in the 16th and 17th century (and probably much earlier) slept in very complicated beds with many layers of different materials, which cost far more in relative terms than your bed did, even before you get to the ornate wooden bedstead and rich canopies. Also, a huge amount of labour went into dismantling and airing the bed every morning (because mattresses stuffed with organic materials get gross if they are allowed to be even slightly damp) and cleaning the linens by hand. But were they more comfortable? Hard to say. I also have a vague memory that everyone slept sitting upright, but I don't remember the source for that.
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 01:15 |
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Rope weaved beds and hammocks were probably used by a lot of people.
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 01:18 |
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Anshu posted:Woof! It's a Black Adder joke.
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 02:26 |
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SimonCat posted:It's a Black Adder joke.
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 02:32 |
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Buddy, they won't even let me gently caress the planes
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 03:12 |
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i love you all but less jargon please
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 03:54 |
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Mr Enderby posted:I also have a vague memory that everyone slept sitting upright, but I don't remember the source for that. Well definitely not everyone, they slept lying down in East Asia. Although often while resting their head on a pillow that looked along these lines: Which have always seemed like they must be extremely uncomfortable to me, although I suppose I've never tried it out myself.
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 04:37 |
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Koramei posted:Well definitely not everyone, they slept lying down in East Asia. That poo poo makes me feel that everyone wasn't so much drunk as sleep-deprived
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 06:22 |
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Would you like... put something softer on top of it?
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 06:51 |
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Don Gato posted:It's meant to blend into the ship itself to make it harder on people to identify individuals, blending into the ocean is a Why? "We've spotted the enemy cruiser, but we aren't going to consider it a threat until we count how many people there are on the deck"? Or is it for the abundant cases of boarding followed by melee combat?
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 09:02 |
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steinrokkan posted:Why? "We've spotted the enemy cruiser, but we aren't going to consider it a threat until we count how many people there are on the deck"? Or is it for the abundant cases of boarding followed by melee combat? Snipers from shore while they're docked, making it harder for non-IR EO cameras to detect individuals on a ship from drones and ISR platforms, things like that. The actual fight is a minor consideration, it's all about before the guns are fired.
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 09:08 |
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iirc dazzle camo worked quite well at confounding the enemy ChubbyChecker fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Oct 5, 2019 |
# ? Oct 5, 2019 12:44 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:10 |
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Dazzle does work, but its purpose is not to obscure that there is a ship there, its to obscure how long that ship is and what way it is pointing in order to confuse optical rangefinders. E: Curse your edit
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# ? Oct 5, 2019 12:46 |