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Ihmemies posted:About rents: Sure sounds like the landlords have formed a union.
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Oct 17, 2022 22:22
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Ham Equity posted:Sure sounds like the landlords have formed a union. Technically a cartel, but the point is taken
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Oct 17, 2022 22:24
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Failed Imagineer posted:Technically a cartel, but the point is taken very strange how people at the top always seem to organize into cartels or monopolies
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Oct 17, 2022 22:26
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AnimeIsTrash posted:very strange how people at the top always seem to organize into cartels or monopolies Yeah someone should really look into that in case it represents a fundamental flaw in the dominant global market ideology. Ah well, it's probably fine
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Oct 17, 2022 22:27
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Smythe posted:this looks loving sick I did some reading on the program today, did you know Petraeus asked for and carried one in Iraq?* The whole story from start to finish of SOCOM fighting with Big Army, different offices of the Pentagon, the Infantry School, the Infantry Centre all feuding and the end result was… they didn’t even buy the drat rifle. About 300-500 are out there in the world and 7000 in US Army storage somewhere. What a fiasco. * I’ve been to poo poo like this in Ottawa. What happens is when the Defence Contractors want the military to buy something they arrange “tests” for the Army leadership, where 60 year old executives and staff officers play with toys on the range and override the user reports or whatever else because they liked the gun. Contractors are smart like that. Petraeus has shot the XM8 sometime in the 101st or 82nd and years later was able to pull rank and have his own unicorn rifle shipped to him.  Why have civil servants and soldiers work in testing and procurement for months on a program when you can have a vibes-based process, depending on which contractor arranged the most fun shoot? Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 23:15 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 17, 2022 23:10
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Ham Equity posted:Sure sounds like the landlords have formed a union. Now that's class solidarity!
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Oct 17, 2022 23:17
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Other than looking like a space gun that folds flat to adhere to the magnets on my back (huge plus, it means I can carry four weapons, assuming they're all different, of course) what's wrong with the xm-8?
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Oct 17, 2022 23:45
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it is mechanically identical to the rifle its supposed to replace but with a different plastic shell
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Oct 17, 2022 23:54
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lazy itemization or just a cash shop skin?
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Oct 17, 2022 23:55
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HootTheOwl posted:Other than looking like a space gun that folds flat to adhere to the magnets on my back (huge plus, it means I can carry four weapons, assuming they're all different, of course) what's wrong with the xm-8? Nothing was wrong with it but the competing factions within the Pentagon wanted different things: - SOCOM wanted the SCAR, with the promise of modularity between 7.62, 5.56 and AK 7.62 ammunition. SOCOM was growing in power within the Pentagon at this time. - The Infantry Centre wanted an intermediate cartridge and were testing 6.8, this would become the M5. They had not been consulted on a new service rifle program and tried to sabotage XM8 in the hope that funding would be freed up for their own. - HK was a German company without a US factory at the time so there was a lot of pressure to have an American rifle, and even have it look "American", which led to this charming anecdote by a HK engineer: "The first guns contrary to most rumors were fully fitted with Picatinny rails on the receiver top and forearm and had a new sliding retractable stock. A kick-off program meeting was called in Germany at HK. All parties to include BG Moran were at the table when the rack of guns was brought in. Everyone was so proud what HK had been able to do in just a few weeks – except Moran. He said “Are you telling me I traveled all the way here for those?” What he meant was that the guns were G36’s for the most part and he knew and stated that there was no way he could “sell” a “German rifle in the US” to the US Army, especially considering at that time HK had no plans for a US factory. Folks on Capitol Hill and the rest of the rifle industry would cry foul and “Buy American”. " - Other arms makers were pissed and used the generals and politicians friendly to them to lobby on their behalf. SIG in particular is rumoured to have played a big role. "In the end the effort died after some $50M was spent due to political infighting within various parts of the Army, opposition from SOCOM and pressure from the rest of the industry. Once again the end user lost out due to petty politics."
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Oct 17, 2022 23:56
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Malleum posted:it is mechanically identical to the rifle its supposed to replace but with a different plastic shell Subjunctive posted:lazy itemization or just a cash shop skin? It's much funnier: The US general it was demonstrated to was furious when the initial rifle looked like a G36 (because that was what the specs the Americans asked for were). The HK team was taken aback, because who cares what it looks like? It far outperformed the M4 in early tests. The Americans dug their heels in regardless and so: "At the end of the meeting with the Army Ernst Mauch, HK’s Technical Manager then, had a meeting with his design staff and decided what they had to do. Save the best parts of the G36 (barrel, bolt, magazine, controls) and design a new rifle around it. They did just that using the Udelhoven Design Studio who did work for Audi to develop the final streamlined shape and look. 7 design concepts were drawn up and Moran picked what you see today. The first real XM8’s were designed, fabricated, tested, redesigned, rebuilt, etc., etc. and delivered to the US Army in the US within 120 days! That process normally takes no less than 12 months, usually 18-24 or more. A superhuman effort by the guys at HK in Oberndorf." They rushed to design an acceptable exterior to impress the US project manager.
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Oct 17, 2022 23:59
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Subjunctive posted:lazy itemization or just a cash shop skin? it's a smart design because the crappy cosmetics all but ensure that no enemies will want it so you can run out and pick it back up it when you respawn
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Oct 18, 2022 00:00
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The end user didn't lose out, the end user got to use the M4 or an M16 of some description and was probably better off for it. The 50 million dollars got to go to Northern Virginia mansions where it belongs.
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Oct 18, 2022 00:02
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skooma512 posted:The end user didn't lose out, the end user got to use the M4 or an M16 of some description and was probably better off for it. The 50 million dollars got to go to Northern Virginia mansions where it belongs. Sure, but it comes back to my earlier point, and the point in Weapon of Choice, that the MIC used to extract profit while still ultimately delivering weapons, now, there's they don't even do that. From the 60's through now you saw this happen starting with the most large scale, experimental and complex systems, which are understandably cancelled all the time, through missile systems, aircraft, armoured vehicles and now programs to deliver a rifle, truck or boots - the basic tools of soldiering - are blowing budgets and timelines as if they're trying to revolutionize land warfare. Canada took 10 years to develop a combat boot, failed, and now soldiers can (or must!) buy their own while boots slowly trickle into the supply system. That would not be possible without the graft that has been injected into the process . I simply cannot see how the Infantry School, professional public servants (not contractors) and known boot manufacturers could fail to deliver a boot in say, 1980, or 2000, when the preceding two series were introduced. Do you see what I mean? 8 inch leather boots are not new technologies, or ones that require 10 years of development, experimentation and testing. That is very clear sign of the times. Rifles, for all the small manufactures want to say, are a solved problem as well. Weapon of Choice lays it out better than I could, but they've gotten very good at dazzling politicians and selling them on the need for radical new technology, and this gives them the leeway to gently caress around trying to "innovate" where Sergei Simonov, Fedor Tokarev and John Garand had independently figured it out by 1930. Obviously, that's not true for systems like missiles, sensors, new munitions, electronic warfare etc. where they are on the cutting edge, but obscuring the difference between military equipment means that all programs have converged in the direction of the F-111. A military truck should really not take more than a year or two to make slight modifications to a commercial truck - it's how all previous military trucks and gun tractors were developed - but we're going into iirc year five of the medium truck program. Why? Because they have sold, and the politicians signed off on, "features" that rely on technologies they know will be finicky, have no commercial parts available and so on, so they "need" to develop a new suspension, new cabin, new steering systems. What I'm trying to say is I would begrudge the $50M less if they actually made boots, trucks and rifles.
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Oct 18, 2022 00:25
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HK has the smoothest salesmen in the world. Saddam? gold plated mp5k with the briefcase. petraeus? prototype much leaner and younger than his wife, I mean the m4/m16 platform.
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Oct 18, 2022 00:32
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the white hand posted:HK has the smoothest salesmen in the world. Saddam? gold plated mp5k with the briefcase. petraeus? prototype much leaner and younger than his wife, I mean the m4/m16 platform.
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Oct 18, 2022 00:46
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Frosted Flake posted:Sure, but it comes back to my earlier point, and the point in Weapon of Choice, that the MIC used to extract profit while still ultimately delivering weapons, now, there's they don't even do that. From the 60's through now you saw this happen starting with the most large scale, experimental and complex systems, which are understandably cancelled all the time, through missile systems, aircraft, armoured vehicles and now programs to deliver a rifle, truck or boots - the basic tools of soldiering - are blowing budgets and timelines as if they're trying to revolutionize land warfare.  very good points. And yeah the MIC seems to have just come off the rails and is the tail wagging the dog ever since like, the 80s. I like to contrast this problem with say, Russia. There, the local commanders just take poo poo or pocket money meant for maintenance, which ended up in the weird poo poo we saw in Ukraine. I don't know how their procurement works, but here the corruption isn't so grassroots and small time and is just baked in to the whole system from the top. Maybe one day it'll bite America in the rear end or they'll grift too hard and too deep and get a carrier sunk due to cut corners. There was a steel supplier, one of only like two in the US that could make the special steel, that sold the Navy a lesser steel for their submarines and the government just loving let it go lol. You would think that defrauding the military and potentially screwing over the nuclear triad would have dead serious consequences, but hey someone got a steak dinner, sinecure, and a 14 year old, so all is forgiven. Also IIRC the Army was making noise about just designing the new AFV in house like they did in WW2, and the current players who would otherwise have gotten fat stacks for the RFP were pissed and sued because they were cut out of the process by the people who the process is ostensibly for.
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Oct 18, 2022 03:08
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skooma512 posted:I like to contrast this problem with say, Russia. There, the local commanders just take poo poo or pocket money meant for maintenance, which ended up in the weird poo poo we saw in Ukraine. I don't know how their procurement works, but here the corruption isn't so grassroots and small time and is just baked in to the whole system from the top. It seems as if Russia is better able to surveil and intervene with top level stuff, while penny ante skimming like you said is a black box, whereas here obviously Captains and Majors are impeccable and wouldn’t think of it, but Generals dine with executives and politicians. We made corruption legal, basically, but limited who can participate. As for their system, they exercise more state control over industry. They’re able to demand what they want, force the use of common parts shared with competitors, start production runs quickly. It’s nice.   
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Oct 18, 2022 03:22
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Frosted Flake posted:What I'm trying to say is I would begrudge the $50M less if they actually made boots, trucks and rifles. On the other hand if they did that they would be supplying those objects to the US military, so maybe it's better that they just light the money on fire and then shrug at how boots are just too darn complicated to make these days
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Oct 18, 2022 04:15
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Shame Boy posted:On the other hand if they did that they would be supplying those objects to the US military, so maybe it's better that they just light the money on fire and then shrug at how boots are just too darn complicated to make these days I didn't make USA troops' boots, but I did at some point in the past make USA cops' boots (well, a part of them anyway). Also, French NATO dudes in North Africa apparently used these sometimes, too. They're... about as high quality as you can expect from a place where an attempt at a strike was crushed and penalized, and roughly a quarter of the workers are locked into the toilet for an hour or two when the owners get a heads up about labor inspection showing up. Completely unrelated, I loving hate the stench of heat resistant rubber, especially the finely powdered ex-surface-layer after being processed on... I can't remember the english word, rotating metal brush thing. e: tl;dr: you just end up outsourcing to the cheapest bidder if you gently caress up locally my dad has issued a correction as of 05:00 on Oct 18, 2022 |
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Oct 18, 2022 04:47
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I haven't read the book discussed in it, but I was listening to an old Radio War Nerd podcast talking about the same stuff regarding the US MIC. https://pca.st/episode/0ea97133-914e-4f80-8a55-594d881cacd5
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Oct 18, 2022 05:08
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my dad posted:I didn't make USA troops' boots, but I did at some point in the past make USA cops' boots (well, a part of them anyway). Also, French NATO dudes in North Africa apparently used these sometimes, too. They're... about as high quality as you can expect from a place where an attempt at a strike was crushed and penalized, and roughly a quarter of the workers are locked into the toilet for an hour or two when the owners get a heads up about labor inspection showing up. Heck I'll spend an hour or two locked in the toilet even when there's not a labor inspection to hide from
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Oct 18, 2022 05:42
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I've heard endless poo poo in my life about how when people own their own homes, they care about their space and the space around them, but when they live in a communal space like a housing project, things fall apart because no one owns any of the public spaces and no one is accountable, and no one cares But I never see this same logic applied to a privately owned business
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Oct 18, 2022 05:48
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given rising food prices the us military should be legally mandated to donate five MREs a day to the homeless, hungry, or SteveMRE
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Oct 18, 2022 06:31
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Shame Boy posted:Also for a while the USSR thought that vodka was a cure for radiation exposure so if you got dosed you were given a big ol' swig of vodka and sent home for the day The real answer is that light beer works for tritium exposure. 
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Oct 18, 2022 07:10
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tokin opposition posted:given rising food prices the us military should be legally mandated to donate five MREs a day to the homeless, hungry, or SteveMRE but none for MREs georeg
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Oct 18, 2022 22:32
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Oct 19, 2022 00:07
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Shame Boy posted:Also for a while the USSR thought that vodka was a cure for radiation exposure so if you got dosed you were given a big ol' swig of vodka and sent home for the day sounds like red-baiting propaganda tbh
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Oct 19, 2022 03:31
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Jokerpilled Drudge posted:sounds like red-baiting propaganda tbh Could also be one of those "we really can't do anything for the poor sod, might as well get them drunk and some bed rest" type things. Especially if morphine was in short supply.
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Oct 20, 2022 09:34
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Coolness Averted posted:Could also be one of those "we really can't do anything for the poor sod, might as well get them drunk and some bed rest" type things. Especially if morphine was in short supply. The reasoning was it was thought that alcohol would flush the system (I assume since it makes you piss) and was more generally seen as "purifying". I highly doubt it's propaganda, the author spent years in Russia getting things first hand from people who were there.
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Oct 20, 2022 09:59
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Jokerpilled Drudge posted:sounds like red-baiting propaganda tbh people in the USSR did dumb poo poo too. Nobody's perfect
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Oct 20, 2022 13:26
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-05-22-mn-7006-story.html posted:L.A. TIMES ARCHIVES
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Oct 20, 2022 13:54
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The vodka as treatment stuff happened in the late 40's and early 50's. By the time Chernobyl rolled around, they actually shipped the people working at Mayak to Chernobyl since they had first-hand experience dealing with a nuclear disaster (which they weren't allowed to mention at all because it was still secret). And the book makes it clear that America wasn't really any better or anything, both sides basically thought "As long as the radiation doesn't immediately kill you, you can more or less just sleep it off". e: Like here's the relevant part:  Cite note 20 is "Author interview with Anna Miliutina, June 21, 2010, Kyshtym". It's mentioned other times too, with different cites going to other interviews or news articles. e2: Oh yeah and here, where it's far more horrifying: 
Shame Boy has issued a correction as of 14:37 on Oct 20, 2022 |
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Oct 20, 2022 14:28
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Oh and also while the vodka thing might have been what they did in the early days, due to the labor shortage after the war the USSR actually spent a bunch of money figuring out why everyone working around the reactor but not getting high enough doses to become acutely sick were still all getting sick over time, and as a result they were in fact the first country to recognize chronic radiation syndrome as a thing. Meanwhile the US consistently chose to ignore or minimize it, and what little money actually went to health research at Hanford in the early days pretty much all went into creating datasets DuPont and GE could cherry pick from to use as evidence against workman's comp and liability claims.
Shame Boy has issued a correction as of 15:06 on Oct 20, 2022 |
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Oct 20, 2022 15:04
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Yeah the USA still treats black people living around coal plants, etc. getting cancer as some kind of mystery.
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Oct 20, 2022 17:09
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evilpicard posted:Yeah the USA still treats black people living around coal plants, etc. getting cancer as some kind of mystery. Hanford was several months behind schedule because the contractors just couldn't fathom hiring black people or immigrant workers for construction, despite even the military eventually telling them "guys you need to hire them, all the white dudes are overseas fighting the war" and later flat out ordering them to do it. They went to absurd lengths to avoid it too, like building an entire prison camp and hiring a bunch of guards just so they could use prison labor instead, which wound up costing way more and taking much longer because they weren't trained construction workers. But you see black people according to DuPont executives couldn't be trusted with working on the manhattan project because they'll spill the beans to the germans. Meanwhile, prisoners (most of whom were conscientious objectors and draft dodgers and other people with an overt dislike of the US being at war) are clearly perfectly trustworthy.
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Oct 20, 2022 18:54
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Shame Boy posted:The reasoning was it was thought that alcohol would flush the system (I assume since it makes you piss) and was more generally seen as "purifying". I highly doubt it's propaganda, the author spent years in Russia getting things first hand from people who were there. Didn't they use to call spirits like vodka "aqua vitae"?
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Oct 20, 2022 21:08
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skooma512 posted:Didn't they use to call spirits like vodka "aqua vitae"? "Aqua vita" translates into Irish as "uisce beatha" and then that Irish "uisce" gets translated back into English as "whiskey". Similar with akkevit or however you spell it
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Oct 21, 2022 02:40
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 oh ok thanks facebook
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Oct 21, 2022 03:20
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Coolness Averted posted:
oh they are doing their china media treatment on america
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Oct 21, 2022 03:22
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