brugroffil posted:

What are the threads' thoughts on Ordinary Men? Author popped back up in the news with his recent essay.

P-Mack posted:

I wonder how many papers out there hit all of Stanford, Milgram, and SLA Marshall.

quote:

The sole Valiant was retained by the School of Tank Technology, where students were treated to an inspection of it at the end of their course and invited to find fault. David Fletcher wrote of this: "One hopes they started early in the morning."

SeanBeansShako posted:

Isn't that the one the nazi kiddes are jumping on to dehumanize everyone loving sane?

V. Illych L. posted:

lol have they just invented the untermenschen approach to dehumanisation and used computer game terminology for it

jesus

chitoryu12 posted:

Basically, not a single person has ever complained that their gun is too accurate

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

I have heard second hand that an art history teacher taught that medieval people were unable to see things in 3 dimensions, which is why their art looks weird. Yeah idk man

Epicurius posted:

That's why they were all cannibals.

quote:

Dearest to my heart, a thousand times my darling, Hans Merten,
I wish you as many hundred thousand good nights as there are stars in the heavens between you and me, and I also send you as many hundred thousand good nights from my sister Osanna. She says you should also think of her, and no hour passes without her thinking of you. I also greet you from all my siblings, father, and mother, all together.

My dearest Hans Merten, the lock of hair which you sent me, I have sewn up with gold-colored silk and wear around my right arm. Otherwise I have no amusement other than your dog. When he thinks that it is getting to be evening, he runs into our room and lies down under my bed at the head. When morning breaks, he does not get up until we get up. My dearest-to-my-heart darling, I humbly beg you, for the sake of God, to kindly send me something. Then the burghers here will gossip without end about the 5 Hungarian gulden you’ve sent me. And so I ask you completely humbly to kindly send me something, me and my sister especially.

Phanatic posted:

That grab-the-blade trick doesn’t work as well in real life as it did in Rob Roy, I see.

Biffmotron posted:

The USSR threw up a bunch of these small cities centered around a factory which produced something for the Soviet economy, say camouflage netting or terrible transistor radios. The waste heat from the factory was used to heat nearby apartment blocks. When the USSR collapses in 1991, all these factories went idle. But the low level officials in these cities had to somehow keep the heating system up, lest the entire city freeze. Dense, but better than it sounds.

MikeCrotch posted:

This is not true in the slightest, the far-right always gains supporters in times of economic distress.

Halloween Jack posted:

These "race, not economic anxiety" articles always carefully scrub the fact that turnout is in the toilet and poor people, in particular, don't vote. These news outlets need to do this because they were the same ones angsting over the White Working Class as a political monolith for months.

feedmegin posted:

Can we please not do this particular derail again?

chitoryu12 posted:

Squalid posted:

I really dislike discussion of whether something is "true communism," or fascism, or democracy, or w/e.

Squalid posted:

I know totalitarian is a rather vague concept but its really stretching it to a apply it to a place like Venezuela, which --putting aside the rhetoric for a moment-- has what is in many important respects a very shallow state. In terms of how it actually functions it has as much in common with right-wing governments like the one ruling Honduras as it does with the Soviet Union.

Xiahou Dun posted:

O hey what was that awesome book on the 39Years War again

Squalid posted:

the appeal of central planning to them comes largely from their desire to emulate the economic and military successes of the Soviet Union, rather than deep ideological commitments.

aphid_licker posted:

Is there even a communist party that cracks a percent of the vote anywhere in Europe? I don't see how you get to communism from "minimum wage should be higher" and "welfare should be actually livable"

Libluini posted:

How strange then, that Britain immediately prepared to snatch up as much of all German colonies as they could, especially in Africa, where they had an agreement to not do this before the war.

feedmegin posted:

Yes, it's called 'war'. You don't want the German colonies threatening your own, or acting as friendly ports for your enemy's navy, or interdicting your shipping.

Cyrano4747 posted:

With regard to war in video games in general there is a key problem that comes from the media itself, namely the clash between narrative and gameplay. There’s a fancy word for this that I’m blanking on, but basically you frequently get dissonance between what the overt message of the story is - as indicated by cutscenes and in-game events - and what the gameplay itself is telling you.

Halloween Jack posted:

And then there's the double standard in how most people look at these things historically. There's no Victims of Liberal Democracy Memorial Foundation or a bunch of people on the news shrieking about Pinochet whenever someone extols the virtues of free markets.

Rockopolis posted:

Wasn't the point of colonialism explicitly for the latter to fund the former?
Robbing Zwarte Pieter to pay Leopauld?

Tunicate posted:

Isn't it more parsimonious to assume leopald was just super loving racist and didn't care what happened to subhuman browns?

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

To discount the resources of the Congo as something separate from its fame is also questionable.

Nebakenezzer posted:

I've started listening to the revolutions podcast and Charles the first is mighty impressive at creating disasters out of thin air

Reiterpallasch posted:

are we just tacitly agreeing to ignore the great leap forward

GotLag posted:

19th and early 20th century Britain was renowned for its cleanliness