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Cyrano4747 posted:Something to keep in mind is that the very notion of “government corruption” is an intensely modern one. The notion that you shouldn’t personally profit off your official position would be loving bizarre to most people in history. Note that this doesn’t mean you’re stealing from the state - that was taken very seriously indeed by many - but poo poo like bribes, kickbacks, running a business on the side that you give contracts to in your official capacity, etc was considered normal. Hell it was overtly the way the system was designed to work in poo poo like tax farming systems. Then you have things like government positions being bought and sold as a normal practice. As in you’d purchase the privilege to be Grand Lord of Cheese Measurements from the government. You did so because the expectation was that you were making an investment and would be able to recoup your expenditure and then some using the power of the office What exactly led to the change, then? Also in general it'd be interesting regardless to have a breakdown on ways early modern or medieval corruption actually worked. And on that note... Epicurius posted:It's not really what you're looking for, but read Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, which is George Plunkitt talking about New York politics. He does talk about corruption and what's ok and what's not. Here are his thoughts about honest and dishonest graft. This is interesting! One of the things I find striking about corruption is that despite it being generally reviled and considered a bad thing, when you break it down it's often friends doing favors for friends in a system of mutual reliance and dependence, which in any other context most people would probably consider to be a positive thing. Which ties in with what Cyrano was saying above about how it's generally expected prior to relatively recent times - so again, I wonder what changed exactly that "doing favors for friends" started being viewed as more and more unacceptable? I get the impression also that this ties into what makes corruption so hard to eradicate - exhortations to do better for the sake of the state falls on deaf ears when doing so means being kind of a dick to the people you know and work with, and who in the context of the existing system of graft would consider not participating in the graft to be sort of a dick move. Xiahou Dun posted:A 甓 is more like a paving stone at this point, not like a modern brick. How would you translate it, then?
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Aug 15, 2022 18:26
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Cyrano4747 posted:Something to keep in mind is that the very notion of “government corruption” is an intensely modern one. The notion that you shouldn’t personally profit off your official position would be loving bizarre to most people in history. Note that this doesn’t mean you’re stealing from the state - that was taken very seriously indeed by many - but poo poo like bribes, kickbacks, running a business on the side that you give contracts to in your official capacity, etc was considered normal. Hell it was overtly the way the system was designed to work in poo poo like tax farming systems. Then you have things like government positions being bought and sold as a normal practice. As in you’d purchase the privilege to be Grand Lord of Cheese Measurements from the government. You did so because the expectation was that you were making an investment and would be able to recoup your expenditure and then some using the power of the office Yeah the whole thing about the XYZ affair was that in Europe it was traditional for diplomats to give "gifts" to the foreign ministry that they were visiting and they'd make their money back by selling their access to the court to their countrymen. So when the American diplomats arrived in France to negotiate with France the local officials that controlled access to Talleyrand we're like, OK, where's our traditional bribe? And the American diplomats where so offended that they went home instead.
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Aug 15, 2022 18:27
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Tomn posted:
"When Kan lived in Guangzhou, every morning he would take 100 flagstones* out of the hall, and move them inside at night. People would ask him what he was doing and he'd say, "I'm going to be working hard in Zhongyuan**, so if I'm idle now I won't accomplish much later : I'm just keeping busy." It's not inaccurate on the meat of it for the most part, but it takes a very simple and straight-forward idea, expressed very directly, then it gussies it up with all this "Wherefore and lo and begat" that's not in the text, translates some stuff literally for no reason and also just adds in a bunch of weird details. All while not actually getting into any of the cool grammar poo poo, like how there's a cool contrastive co-ordinated VP juxtaposition across clauses, which might justify making the translation 8 times longer than it should be. It's just bad and comes from weird stylistic choices about how to translate old poo poo (i.e. it should be like how we badly translate Latin) while throwing in a bunch of weird othering of The Mysterious Orient. *Trying to translate a specific architectural word better than just "brick". ** "The Central Plains" is a proper noun, so actually translating it would be like saying "The Newer Shire of Hamp" or whatever.
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Aug 15, 2022 18:57
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One thing to consider is that the limiting factor in a lot of pre-modern (and even modern) armies is calories rather than exercise. Congress started the school lunch program in the US because so many recruits were malnourished when it came time to draft them for example. One reason for the enduring dominance of warrior aristocracy across much of history is that the people on top get fed better and are going to be larger and more physically powerful on average than the toiling masses. If you're recruiting from a well fed pool of men you can always get them whipped into shape within a few months of marching/drilling, if they're chronically undernourished then that's less effective. Societies that could create these large pools tended to do well militarily as they could draw from them when needed. I think it was the Janissaries who incorporated a spoon into their uniform, which among other things represented their right to be well fed by the sultan.
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Aug 15, 2022 19:42
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Xiahou Dun posted:"When Kan lived in Guangzhou, every morning he would take 100 flagstones* out of the hall, and move them inside at night. People would ask him what he was doing and he'd say, "I'm going to be working hard in Zhongyuan**, so if I'm idle now I won't accomplish much later : I'm just keeping busy." Thinkin bout how "The Lathe of Heaven" is such a great line and book and it results from James Legge not knowing that China did not even have lathes at all at the time of writing.
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Aug 15, 2022 19:48
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It is no lathing matter.
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Aug 15, 2022 19:55
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Tomn posted:What exactly led to the change, then? Also in general it'd be interesting regardless to have a breakdown on ways early modern or medieval corruption actually worked. And on that note... There's no single reason why it changed, but off the top of my head two of the big are the growing bureaucratization and professionalization of state administration (which are related but not the same thing). There's a fairly large literature out there on that. It's not specifically directed at the issue of corruption, though. I'm on a phone so not going to effort post, but search my posts in this thread and I think I've mentioned a few books on that and related subjects, usually re: the relationship between bureaucratization, the military, and the growth of modern taxation and administration to support all that.
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Aug 15, 2022 20:16
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Tomn posted:Which ties in with what Cyrano was saying above about how it's generally expected prior to relatively recent times - so again, I wonder what changed exactly that "doing favors for friends" started being viewed as more and more unacceptable? I get the impression also that this ties into what makes corruption so hard to eradicate - exhortations to do better for the sake of the state falls on deaf ears when doing so means being kind of a dick to the people you know and work with, and who in the context of the existing system of graft would consider not participating in the graft to be sort of a dick move. as systems of government became more complicated, it was increasingly non-viable to allow people to gain office because of nepotism and mutual favors than because of skill in the position. this was especially important in the modern era when people became increasingly reliant on complex systems, managed by government, to do things like make the trash disappear, keep water flowing in and sewage flowing out, make sure the electrical system stays on and won't kill you, etc in the united states, the "progressive era" was a social movement which aimed to bring science and rationality into societal reform, which had some pretty serious downsides (eugenics, prohibition, scientific racism) but some upsides as well (women's suffrage, professionalization of bureaucracy, elimination of political corruption and machine politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Aug 15, 2022 |
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Aug 15, 2022 20:53
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Tomn posted:This is interesting! One of the things I find striking about corruption is that despite it being generally reviled and considered a bad thing, when you break it down it's often friends doing favors for friends in a system of mutual reliance and dependence, which in any other context most people would probably consider to be a positive thing. Which ties in with what Cyrano was saying above about how it's generally expected prior to relatively recent times - so again, I wonder what changed exactly that "doing favors for friends" started being viewed as more and more unacceptable? I get the impression also that this ties into what makes corruption so hard to eradicate - exhortations to do better for the sake of the state falls on deaf ears when doing so means being kind of a dick to the people you know and work with, and who in the context of the existing system of graft would consider not participating in the graft to be sort of a dick move. A lot of the city machines, including, in this case, Tammany Hall of New York, got powerful because of the major waves of immigration. A lot of these groups, starting with the Irish, were victims of a bunch of discrimination and nativism, and didn't have a lot of chances to progress socially. The city Demicrats saw this and saw that there was a big pool of potential Democratic voters if they could be mobilized with the promise of decent jobs and social services. What killed Tammany and a lot of the other old urban machines were first civil service reform, which meant that potential government employees had to pass a test before hiring, limiting Tammany's ability to provide jobs, and second, the New Deal, which set up federal welfare and food programs, limiting Tammany's ability to give aid to voters in exchange for votes.
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Aug 15, 2022 23:34
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To give an idea of how recent that stuff was, the first US civil service act was in 1883. Before that, the federal bureaucracy ran on the spoils system, where everyone expected and openly stated they would give jobs to their friends, and fire anyone who didn't have connections to the current political leaders.
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Aug 16, 2022 21:01
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golden bubble posted:To give an idea of how recent that stuff was, the first US civil service act was in 1883. Before that, the federal bureaucracy ran on the spoils system, where everyone expected and openly stated they would give jobs to their friends, and fire anyone who didn't have connections to the current political leaders. Even more recently, the Hatch Act (limiting the ability of government employees to engage in partisan campaigning) was passed in 1939, after credible accusations that FDR made WPA employees work on the campaigns of his supporters in 1938.
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Aug 17, 2022 11:07
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Here's a bit of an interesting story about weapons caches made at the end of 1944 when Finland was demobilizing and a bunch of officers were sure that USSR wouldn't respect the interim peace so they would have to prepare for an occupation and guerrilla warfare. This place is sparsely populated and not far from the Russian border.quote:A family secret about a cache of weapons lasted almost 80 years - more than 30 sturdy grenades unearthed in North Karelia with the help of family lore https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-12578168   quote:In the Lehikoinen family, it has always been known that grandpa had once been convicted of arms concealment. The location of the cache remained a mystery for decades until it was unearthed. I do wonder what happens to TNT when stored like that for 70+ years? The boxes and grenades appear to be in great shape, would it be possible that they're still just as potent? Without fuses in place they probably wouldn't go off randomly, or would they? Bonus picture of coffee grinding: 
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Aug 20, 2022 19:24
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HE as a rule becomes more unstable with time and as it degrades. The answer to those is to blow them in place.
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Aug 20, 2022 19:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:HE as a rule becomes more unstable with time and as it degrades. According to the story, the army took them with them. Maybe they will end up in Ukraine?
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Aug 20, 2022 19:53
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I think TNT is pretty stable for long periods? Dynamite absolutely is not. It depends a lot on the physical and chemical characteristics of the explosive - like for dynamite the issue is that the explosive chemicals separate out over time and then you get a bunch of shock-sensitive HX sitting at the bottom of your jug, which is bad. I know some of the higher nitrogen explosives (not like TNT high, TNT is 3:7 N:C, I'm talking like 1-diazidocarbamoyl-5-azidotetrazole, with its utterly hideous 7:1 N:C ratio) are so sensitive that if you don't continuously stir them they explode. Unsurprisingly that one is not practical for use as a weapon.
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Aug 20, 2022 20:26
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Didn't some German chemists make some horrible nitrogen chemical that was so sensitive you couldnt measure how sensitive it was, because turning on a light in the same room made it explode
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Aug 20, 2022 22:33
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MikeCrotch posted:Didn't some German chemists make some horrible nitrogen chemical that was so sensitive you couldnt measure how sensitive it was, because turning on a light in the same room made it explode Yes. There's an entire thread for that kind of chemistry: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3602006
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Aug 20, 2022 22:44
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ponzicar posted:Yes. There's an entire thread for that kind of chemistry: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3602006 O gently caress you. I had poo poo to do this ever. 435 pages of cool explosion discussion : this is gonna take weeks! (But actually thanks a mill)
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Aug 21, 2022 03:13
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From what I remember, the usual procedure for WWII UXO found in Germany is also to transport it to a designated facility where it'll be cut into smaller pieces which are then burned/detonated one at a time. That is if the fuse can be removed safely, which is mostly the case for dud impact fuses. For chemical delayed/timed fuses they usually prefer to explode in place as those tend to be incredibly unpredictable.
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Aug 21, 2022 14:47
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Anybody remember high level orders written to a maybe a Master Sergeant in the Army during WW2 at NY ports authorizing them to take whatever they needed, which was essentially a licence to steal whatever they wanted?
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Aug 21, 2022 17:15
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Don’t have it on hand but yeah. The photo attached to it was also the most stereotypical 1940_Italian_NYC.jpg ever.
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Aug 21, 2022 17:27
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Reminder that there was a ship in the Pacific theater whose primary responsibility was making ice cream for the troops. And another one that was responsible for providing plates, cups, and silverware. Twilight of the Gods mentioned how in 1944 at the giant Ulithi atoll every ship in the fleet got a new movie every night and there was a calendar to track the destroyer that kept hundreds of films on board to rotate between the ships.
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Aug 22, 2022 23:06
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"Grandpa what did you do in The War?"
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Aug 23, 2022 01:42
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Reminder that there was a ship in the Pacific theater whose primary responsibility was making ice cream for the troops. And another one that was responsible for providing plates, cups, and silverware. quote:The craft, a concrete barge acquired from the U.S. Army and worth $1 million, was able to create 10 US gallons (38 l) of ice cream every seven minutes, or approximately 500 US gal (1,900 l) per shift, and could store 2,000 US gal (7,600 l).
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Aug 23, 2022 01:50
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ice cream barge make the ice cream large keep folks happy with the folks in charge
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Aug 23, 2022 01:54
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It was fascinating reading about the absurdly nice recreational facilities the Seabees were putting on places like Guam with baseball fields, 50 basketball teams, four movie screens, and five bowling alleys planned until they had to cut back as the war was ongoing and resources were needed for B-29 runways.
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Aug 23, 2022 05:47
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Hyrax Attack! posted:It was fascinating reading about the absurdly nice recreational facilities the Seabees were putting on places like Guam with baseball fields, 50 basketball teams, four movie screens, and five bowling alleys planned until they had to cut back as the war was ongoing and resources were needed for B-29 runways.
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Aug 23, 2022 06:07
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Twilight of the Gods mentioned how in 1944 at the giant Ulithi atoll every ship in the fleet got a new movie every night and there was a calendar to track the destroyer that kept hundreds of films on board to rotate between the ships. Ulithi in general and its development was an incredible achievement of fleet logistics and engineering.
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Aug 23, 2022 13:16
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https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1560588731786137600 See, climate change isn't ALL bad
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Aug 23, 2022 15:25
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I seem to remember an anecdote. I was wondering if someone here knows of it. It was by a national guard pilot. It was during wargames, he and his squadron were armed with century series fighter and facing air force guys in f-16s or whatever. the air force guys were smug and arrogant, so the national guard guys decided to gently caress with them. the rules of the wargame said any weapon the fighters were rated for could be used. So the national guard pilot used a Genie and wiped out the squadron.
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Aug 23, 2022 15:47
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Mycroft Holmes posted:I seem to remember an anecdote. I was wondering if someone here knows of it. It was by a national guard pilot. It was during wargames, he and his squadron were armed with century series fighter and facing air force guys in f-16s or whatever. the air force guys were smug and arrogant, so the national guard guys decided to gently caress with them. the rules of the wargame said any weapon the fighters were rated for could be used. So the national guard pilot used a Genie and wiped out the squadron. I know the story you're thinking of, and I assure you it's better in your head. The actual story is a bunch of shallow macho bullshit about dick size. Also the story isn't any longer than what you wrote. It goes like: "Those cocky bastards thought they had bigger dicks than us, but we showed them. In the exercise I simulated firing a genie, therefore showing that my plane had the bigger dick"
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Aug 23, 2022 15:57
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Mycroft Holmes posted:I seem to remember an anecdote. I was wondering if someone here knows of it. It was by a national guard pilot. It was during wargames, he and his squadron were armed with century series fighter and facing air force guys in f-16s or whatever. the air force guys were smug and arrogant, so the national guard guys decided to gently caress with them. the rules of the wargame said any weapon the fighters were rated for could be used. So the national guard pilot used a Genie and wiped out the squadron. It's been reposted in the Airpower/Cold War thread a few times: mlmp08 posted:"DARTS vs VIPERS Two Air Defense Interceptor Pilots vs Two Tactical Fighter Pilots By S. Michael Townsend, LTC, USAF (Ret.) “Viper 1, Pierre, Bucko, Genie, FMO, Rafsob” Circa 1984 Source bit: https://issuu.com/f-106deltadart/docs/adc_darts_vs_tac_vipers
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Aug 23, 2022 16:23
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Uncle Enzo posted:I know the story you're thinking of, and I assure you it's better in your head. The actual story is a bunch of shallow macho bullshit about dick size. Also the story isn't any longer than what you wrote. It goes like: See also the blackbird speed check story
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Aug 23, 2022 18:55
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HookedOnChthonics posted:See also the blackbird speed check story They are both great stories and I will hear no argument to the contrary. 
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Aug 24, 2022 01:39
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Not really military history in the narrow sense, but it's got old boat stuff : How much caulk could a caulkers mate caulk? Like, what was their coverage on a daily basis in... square units of area? Volume? I get why you need caulking, that makes sense. And it's important enough to have a whole staff. But are they like, on deck/hand for emergencies and then, guessing, otherwise just normal sailors? Or is this like a Golden Gate Bridge situation where they're caulking constantly back and forth, never being "done"? Caulk caulk caulkitty caulk I have never typed that word this many times jesus.
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Aug 24, 2022 06:24
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not really military history in the narrow sense, but it's got old boat stuff : Which era/type of caulking are we talking about? I often talk with folks from the Viking Ship Museum in skuldelev (Denmark), if it's lapstrake or any similar germanic iron/viking age caulking method I can ask for you.
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Aug 24, 2022 07:32
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Tias posted:Which era/type of caulking are we talking about? I often talk with folks from the Viking Ship Museum in skuldelev (Denmark), if it's lapstrake or any similar germanic iron/viking age caulking method I can ask for you. I started with mid 1800's sail ship era, but it's an interesting enough topic that I'm not gonna turn down any other periods.
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Aug 24, 2022 07:34
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not really military history in the narrow sense, but it's got old boat stuff : My understanding (which I'm very happy to be corrected on) was that the planks that make up a ship shift so much and grind against each other so much that on a big ship you're constantly pounding bits of old rope into cracks that weren't there yesterday then applying pitch. None of the cracks are in themselves vital, but if you fall behind you'll have to work even harder to catch up.
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Aug 24, 2022 08:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:Don’t have it on hand but yeah. The photo attached to it was also the most stereotypical 1940_Italian_NYC.jpg ever. Late but for anyone who never saw it before - unfortunately don't have the name of the goon in question.  "ALL DOCK AREAS" for purpose of " DUTIES " during "ALL" hours 
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Aug 24, 2022 11:43
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Terrifying Effigies posted:Late but for anyone who never saw it before - unfortunately don't have the name of the goon in question. Dude's name is right on the pass. It's C. E. Di Sipio. His sig is also along the left edge. God that pass though. Literal license to steal 
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Aug 24, 2022 12:50
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