Youtube comments of bakters (@bakters).
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@gilmer3718 "So, I am unsure why people think the Hussars get all the credit."
They stole the show. Simple as that. (And they were past their prime, there is no doubt about that at all.)
BTW - Before everyone was committed to this final charge, Sobieski had to be absolutely sure it wasn't a suicide, so he sent one banner to try it out. One banner was at best 100 men. There is a source which states, that when those guys attacked, both sides stopped fighting for a while, just to observe this feat.
The attack was a success, dispersing Turkish forces in its way, though the Poles suffered significant losses in return. It bugs me I don't remember who led them, let me check [...] Zbierzchowski. I love the name. You guys will sooner learn how to lance then how to pronounce it! ;-)
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@MrReco12 "opened up her own successful newspaper"
She co-founded a newspaper, which was a strictly political organ of her party. Her whole adult life revolved around politics. From what I can see in a quick search, she really never worked a proper job. Maybe as a tutor, that could work, but a quick search does not even mention that, so I suspect she didn't do much of it.
""not truly capitalist" because they have a central bank"
Is it, though? If the currency is controlled by the government, if they can (and arguably do) hyperinflate it at will, thus robbing everybody of their savings, how does it relate to the central tenant of capitalism, which is the private ownership of the means of production?
How much do you really own, if all the numbers on your account can be made worthless at will? What's going to happen if you can't pay all the taxes, which can also be administered at will?
Your property will be taken by those who actually already own it, that is the government.
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I'm not sure what to make of it, but I read once that Lorica Segmentata was a sort of a stop gap measure. That Roman army expanded so much in such a short period, that they simply could not make enough mail armor to meet the demand. It was very labor intensive (plates for punched rings, plus wire for riveted rings, plus rivets and riveting, and weaving it all). You could cut the time by riveting whole plates together, without bothering with all the rest of the process. Less wasted metal too? Probably?
Then I read also, that the development of medieval plate armor coincided with Black Death plague. The cost of labor went up by a lot, which made mail armor significantly more expensive than plate, so essentially the process of plate adoption had the same roots in both cases. Cheaper and quicker to make, not necessarily better.
I don't know what to think of it, but personally I would probably prefer to wear mail while doing typical legionnaire duties, and even in combat. In medieval context, I probably could quite easily and cheaply make my grandpa's mail fit me well. I don't think I could wear his plate armor, though.
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I'm glad that two of my counterarguments ended up in the Top 5, but since there will be a follow up, let me reiterate those you didn't address yet.
1. Military argument.
Encircled army is still dangerous, possibly more so, since they can't fall back, but only as long as they didn't run out of supplies. You reduce the pockets of resistance with patience, that's the cheapest way.
2. Gambling argument.
You don't make risky moves if you are obviously winning already. An all out assault was risky. The Germans could be pushed back and suffer unnecessary losses. It just was not necessary in order to win.
And overall, I remain unconvinced, obviously. While your theory may not be too complicated to work, it's still more complicated than the alternative. The alternative is, that the Germans tried to avoid unnecessary losses and simply made a mistake. Not a huge one! It wasn't a big mistake. British army was soundly defeated, whether they evacuated some soldiers or not. As long as the Germans followed up with an invasion quickly , they could still occupy Britain.
So that's what they tried to do with the Battle of Britain. And yet again they overestimated the capabilities of Luftwaffe.
This approach is demonstrably simpler than what you propose. Does it mean that Hitler never considered your line of reasoning? Of course not, so your theory is still valid and potentially useful in explaining some aspects of WW2.
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@ReySkywalker2 "Anakin is basically Force Jesus. Or, in other words, a Mary Sue"
That's not true at all. Anakin is established as a wonder child, but because of that he's deeply flawed. Calling him Mary Sue is total BS. Rey is a textbook example of a Mary Sue, though. She can do everything without even trying, everybody loves her for no good reason, she never makes a mistake, she never lets negative emotions take over. Always compassionate, brave, collected, perfect in every way possible.
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"you have to be vastly respected for anyone to take a look at your unconventional ideas (Einstein-grade respected)."
Einstein was a third rate clerk in some office, not a scientist, when he published his theory of relativity. Nobody respected him before that, yet his voice was heard. Milankovitch cycles were discovered by a janitor (James Croll). Granted, Milankovitch stole his idea, expanded on it and made a career out of it, but just the fact that he stole an idea of a janitor means that at least sometimes actual ideas matter more than where you are placed in the pecking order. Faraday had very little education as well, etc., etc.
This whole book as reviewed here strikes me as a big pile of nonsense. Yes, actual science is not done in perfect accordance to the musings of some philosophers. The vast majority of scientists never read any philosophy to begin with, so no wonder they don't follow their recipes on how to cook a meal no philosopher ever managed to cook.
Still, it does not mean that there is no difference between science and pseudoscience. It exists. And yes, institutionalized science sometimes is pseudoscience too, but that's maybe beside the point here.
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@peterlynch1458 "Handguns were effective at longer ranges than bows."
If they hit, sure they were, but many and much historical accounts from actual battles tell stories, which are not coherent with the picture you present.
For example, they often mention a bowshot range and a musket range. Bows shoot only that far, but we know that muskets will shoot out to mile, so what do they mean is most probably a range of more or less accurate fire. And it wasn't very far. Limited by accuracy, not by how far the projectile would go, which is the case for archery.
Also, we have accounts from battles, when a unit of infantry fired at the enemy at laughably close ranges, and the typical outcome were casualties on the order of at best several percent, usually less.
How can you miss firing at a closely packet unit of infantry from within throwing range? Yet they did.
Archery? The accuracy was there, so outranging the opponent was much more important. Limited by range, not by accuracy.
Think about it - What's the point of gaining high ground if range is not a problem, but accuracy is? You can shoot uphill or downhill just as accurately, so why downhill units were at a disadvantage? It wasn't (as much of a) case for musketry, was it?
Also, sometimes they were loading extremely inaccurate projectiles. That obviously decreased accuracy, but it had to be at least somehow acceptable, or nobody would be allowed to do it. Those projectiles are likely to miss a man-sized target at throwing ranges. They were in use!
With that said, carefully loaded early handgun will shoot quite accurately.
"spread by mass produced for profit pop history."
Or they are correct.
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Oh my, I'm afraid to watch it. On one hand, I love that people get interested in the Winged Hussars, on the other hand, the information is usually so inaccurate. Here we go... [...] Damn! You quoted Mackiewicz! Sorry man, I can only give one like. And then you mention the actually effective countermeasures! Field fortifications and intelligent use of cavalry! Well, I was not prepared to see something like that. I really mean it.
Congratulations.
Minor corrections, literally, minor :
1. You are correct in at least mentioning, that The Winged Hussars could be qualified as medium cavalry, but you shouldn't be so careful with that statement, because they really were medium cavalry. Heavy cavalry at the time had more complete plate armor and heavier horses. The Winged Hussars were medium shock cavalry.
2. The horses they used weren't "crossbreeds". They were a domestic breed, so called "Polish noble horse", currently extinct.
3. The primary weapon of the Hussars was the lance, that includes cavalry engagements. The effectiveness of the lance against the pikemen seems like an accidental benefit.
4. Bows and pistols were the weapons which were used at the same time. Pistols did not replace bows. If anything, they replaced shields.
5. It's quite likely that the odds at Klushino battle were even worse. I know, it's hard to believe, and the detailed research is still new. Just a nitpick.
6. A minor inaccuracy in the Klushino battle segment. The Western mercenaries were defending the fence, fairly safe behind it. Then the Polish-Lithuanian infantry arrived and managed to throw them away from this cover. Out it the open they didn't feel like facing the Hussars, so they retreated into the camp. That piece is fairly well reconstructed from the numerous sources. The moral of the story is, that they didn't feel safe protected only by the pikes. Not on this day.
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+Graff_Zitel - Actually, most people stopped by blocking detachments were not even sent to penal battalions. They were sent back to their own units. Very few were shot, just as you wrote, but almost none were shot without trial. Sure, it was a quick deal, but there was a trial and execution, not gunning down your own retreating units.
Penal battalions could be additionally motivated with a machinegun behind their backs, but those machineguns also served as a reserve force, and were sent into battle when needed.
The funniest part of it all for me, is that the reality of war meant that capable fighters were rarely used in blocking detachments who were not expected to see the enemy eye to eye too often. Invalids, halfwits that sort of stuff. And Soviets wanted to use them for something, so they were often sent to do the mundane tasks like digging latrines and that sort of thing.
Not particularly nefarious picture, all in all.
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@gerardsotxoa The Polish names are the original names, in continuous use for a millenium. It makes zero sense for us to use the German mispronunciation of them. You can do whatever you like in your own language, we have no say over it.
Regarding the supposed "genocide", nothing like that happened. We asked for evidence and the Germans came up with literally nothing.
For the most part, Germans left out of their own free will. It may seem surprising, but they didn't want to live under Soviet control. It was the same story with the Poles in Soviet Union, who also left on mass, while the Ukrainians in Poland didn't want to move there, even despite multiple incentives.
Anyway, some German communities stayed and they are still around. At worst they can be witnesses of the supposed abuse, not? I never heard of them raising this issue, and they do have parliamentary representation.
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@peterthepeter7523 "1.8 long spear. [...] Also this "spear" is butt heavy so you don't have to leave that much length behind your hands to balance the front. "
- Most of the weight is in the barrel, which makes this "spear" front heavy, not butt heavy. The actual range of a saber and a bayonet is similar, though the cavalryman can extend the saber and still be capable of quick defensive actions, while the infantryman can't do this. He has to keep his weapon closer to deflect anything.
One-on-one or in lose malee, there is no comparison. A lance is formidable, a saber simply better than the bayonet. Tightly packed deep formation is a different story, but is such case the infantry simply enjoys serious local numerical advantage. A saber might be a better weapon, but not better enough to fight against several bayonets (a lance still can do this, though).
Square formations were attacked on the corners, where this local superiority was not present. They were attacked in sequence, small units of cavalry attacking the same spot one row after the other. It could be done, but it could also be costly and since square formations were very slow it was rarely worth it. Why not wait a bit till supporting infantry can form a line and obliterate the square, or some cannons arrive?
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" romance is actually a poor man's game "
Is is really true, though? The premise presented here is that a woman should always prefer a "Salomon", because he's got resources. That would be the case, if she could get a fair chunk of those, but realistically all she can expect is 1/700th part of those, and she'd need to fight for every little scrap of those too!
Suddenly a dedicated startup dude does not look all that bad, does he?
It's like, what is better? Owning a minuscule share of a big successful company, or having a small company of your own? Which one is actually yours?
" invented by [poor] men FOR [poor] men "
So, even according to this dude, who invented romance? The highest status men of the era. The knights, the courtiers, the creme de la creme elites.
If there was anybody in the whole state who could pick and choose the absolute best females, if were them.
" only recently in modern times been sold as something for women "
Recently? Even he talks about a thousand years old tradition, and I believe romance is much older than that. It simply makes evolutionary sense for a woman to demand early investment, because if she's pump-and-dumped, she will risk childbirth (the main female killer), then even if she survives, she might be stuck with trying to raise the child alone.
That's why they are choosy. That's why they demand dedication. That's why we fall in love and are (un)willing to do it all. It's for her, not for us.
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@rottenmeat5934 " ale that was brewed overnight, more like a strong tea "
I seriously doubt they drunk such weak drink and did not invent a separate word for it. I"m Slavic, and we do have traditional sweet, carbonated drinks with very mild alcohol content, and yes, they are called differently (kvas, podpiwek, etc).
For what it's worth, the weakest historical beer recipe we still have happens to be the Polish Grodziskie Beer. Yes, it's weaker than regular beer, but not by all that much.
In my personal opinion, they simply drunk a lot of beer, and it was real beer. Royal Navy sailors drunk about a galon per day, and they also flogged people for drunkenness there. The idea was, that a strong, healthy, active man can easily drink that much alcohol spread out through the day and hardly even show it. Only those who wanted to get drunk managed to do it. That behavior was not tolerated.
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Great video, though of course I disagree with some ideas put forth here.
First, I do not think that the parallel between Marshal and Stalin goes very far. Peacetime army is dominated by guys skilled at internal politics, wartime army rewards skilled fighters. As you mentioned yourself, Red Army was at war pretty much all the time. They already had fighters on top, but Stalin ended it with the purge, and replaced fighters with apparatchiks. Marshal did the opposite.
Second, there is this idea that the old staff was not capable of fighting a modern war, which differed hugely from earlier wars. I disagree, on many levels. Like, the cavalry was not outdated, especially its tactics, if you wanted to do mobile warfare without huge amount of trucks. Put those guys on tanks, they'll do just fine. Infantry not so much. And also I do not think that WWII differed much from earlier wars, but that's another story.
Then, Stalin removed Tukhachevski and other military theorists who figured out how to end the trench stalemate. Old guys they might have been, but somehow they figured it all out. Their replacements were careful to forget all that in fear.
Finally, Wehrmacht was led to battle by old men...
USA had practically no war experience. It's obvious that their ranks were dominated by professional paper-pushers and ass-lickers. This "they are just too old" rhetoric is simply an euphemism, so they can feel better, while incompetence was the real reason.
Big and crucial difference between Marshal's and Stalin's "purges".
Still, wonderful video.
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@peterthepeter7523 "That's what makes me think that musket with bayonet had more reach than spear of same length."
- You are wrong. A spear of this length can be held by the end (one hand at the end, the other wherever), because it's light. But reach is only a part of it. A spear is going to be significantly quicker. No comparison. One spearman should be able to fight two bayonetts. And usually win.
"Spear cavalry was used but cavalry with sabers was far more popular. I wonder what problems spears had."
- They required more training and lances can't be worn. You have to carry them. But because Polish lancers were so effective, lances were reintroduced later on despite their drawbacks.
"attacking square formations with cavalry is extremely hard risky and almost suicidal"
- Of course it wasn't. The infantry can't do anything against cavalry in motion. Very few guns can be pointed toward the attackers and if we consider friendly fire risks, even fewer. Bayonets were an effective *deterrent*, but not particularly lethal weapon.
It was simply a waste of valuable resources. What's the point, if you can use either a cheaper weapon (infantry), or a weapon which could demolish the square with no risk to themselves (artillery)?
It rather makes sense to use cavalry in order to force the enemy into square formation, then use your own line infantry and artillery to weaken them, then eventually use cavalry again against an already weakened enemy.
"In Russian field tactics manual of 1862 the author even proposed that cavalry should mostly be used in battle being simply present and menacing the enemy. Therefore it will force enemy infantry to use tighter and slower formations which will make friendly artillery and infantry fire much more effective."
- Just what I wrote, isn't it?
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@lisamirako1073 " Middle Ages, there were no nation states "
There was always a huge difference between Slavic and Germanic dialects. The borders reflected that difference quite well.
" since the 13th century "
Wrocław existed as a city for 300-350 years already. They minted coins, for example.
" it was inhabited and developed almost exclusively by Germans "
Even in the XVIIth century there was a divide line in Silesia, between dominant German and dominant Polish language. Wrocław was on the Polish side of the said line.
You see, very many cities in Poland were developed by the Germans. They all Polonized very quickly. Wrocław was not that different, even if technically it belonged to the HRE.
" no direct connection to the modern history of Poland "
Why did you use two qualifiers, the "direct" and "modern"? It's hard to know what they mean.
" Breslau has always been part of German history "
Oh, that's why? No, it wasn't.
I obviously agree, that at the end of WW2 it was a German city. It was that for at least a hundred years already, likely some more than that. But what you write is simply not true. Not my fault.
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@VT-mw2zb "land wars have a tendency of screeching to a halt" - Have you seen the map of Poland? If you speed up a bicycle, you can coast through half of it. And not because it's so small, it's just so flat. ;-)
"That's when guerrillas become effective." - We do have traditions in underground resistance. You guys probably bested us, but we weren't half bad. I mean it.
"High school students are taught basic things like first aid, how to crawl, field strip of an AK, how to throw a grenade, etc ..." - I went through all of that in high school, except stripping an AK. Now it's out of fashion. I think we need to come back to it. Europe will weaken, the only question is how much and how quickly. Then it's time for Russia to lay their claims once again.
Damn, it's going to be difficult to do this in current climate of offended pussies everywhere... But without it we may fall again, so not much of a choice, really.
At least patriotism is on the rise. Upwards of 250k people marched on 100th anniversary of Independence. We have the will and we still have the time. We'll survive, like we always do.
Best to you guys too. Keep your country safe.
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@Sealdeam " convert to Orthodoxy, I doubt such a thing would had sit well among his polish and lithuanian subject "
First of all, there was freedom of religion in Rzeczpospolita. Polish nobility was primarily Roman Catholic, but in Lithuania the nobility switched from Orthodoxy to Arianism and Kalvinism.
Then, they were not subjects of the king, they were citizens. The name here is misleading, since this guy was more like a prime minister than a king. He was considered to be the first among equals and could be dismissed at any time. Which did happen several times!
Rzeczpospolita is a literal translation of Respublica, and that's how it should be translated into English too. It's just that they cry a river if there is a person called king at the head of the state. Regardless if he's an electoral king, not a hereditary one. Regardless if his power was very limited and he could be legally released from his office. It's all about the name itself, but it's their language, so we have to accept their choice, even if it's incorrect one.
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" With more than 100 tanks lost I bet the day of the tank was well and truly over after this battle. "
It kinda was, at least this type of tank. Renault FT, on the other hand, was crewed with two people only, couldn't cross a decent trench, painfully slow, yet it had two important advantages.
1. It could see and shoot all around, so waiting for him to pass by was of little value.
2. It was cheap, so high losses were both expected and accepted.
In light of that, I consider the opinion of German generals presented here to be misrepresented. They didn't say that tanks were useless. On the contrary, they seem to be aware of their advantages.
It's just that this battle has proved beyond any doubt, that a tank was not a silver bullet. And Renault FT follows up with this concept. It's not a superweapon, by any means. It's just a weapon.
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@JarlFrank "light infantry. Their role was to scout and harass the enemy"
That's true. Jaeger regiments.
"So why didn't the entire armies fight in that manner? Cavalry."
That's one reason, for sure, but I wouldn't say it's the sole reason. First, even tightly packed line infantry was still very vulnerable to cavalry attack. We know it, because they formed into squares when caught out in the open. That means that they intentionally lowered their firepower in exchange for flank and rear protection.
Second, I don't think that a skirmishing regiments is capable of holding ground against line infantry. They will simply advance until they get to wherever they want to get, a village, a hedge line, a hill, whatever, and skirmishers can't do much to stop them.
"cavalry remained a threat up until the late 19th century."
It's weird that nobody remembers that cavalry was a thing in WWI. Not on the Western Front, but elsewhere it worked. Also, the Polish-Soviet war of 1920 was largely fought with cavalry forces. The tactics revolved around machine guns.
Oh, whatever. That's not important here.
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"Swedish bullets stopped the onslaught"
"their mounts were too slow to catch the small and fast Polish breeds"
Those statements are simply not correct. The bullets were a deterrent, which posed a constant threat to anybody within range and no threat at all to someone outside of it. The horsemen were not able to win, because the infantry was fortified. The fortifications stopped them, not the bullets. (How do you even do that? You fire your one shot and then what? You laboriously reload, while they cut you down?)
The second statement is just wrong. The Polish breeds were actually taller than what the Swedes had, and yes, generally much faster. Higher quality mounts, that's all. No rock-paper-scissors.
(I know there are conflicting accounts about it. The trouble is, you have no access to the newer research, because it's in Polish. It's solid, though. Swedish horses were overall definitely worse. Cheap army, cheaply armed, supremely lead and trained. Their equipment was worse, though.)
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@duongngole4785 Youtube blocked my previous, more verbose answer. Possibly due to me linking some sources? Quite likely. So you won't get them. Maybe because this topic confused some AI? Quite likely both.
Anyway, the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising reports multiple times on various ways in which Soviets agitated for the uprising. Since at least May 1944. In very unambiguous ways. Which I won't quote, due to the reasons stated above.
Stalin was obviously behind it. It benefited him. There are quotes from him being glad all the mayhem happened.
Bór-Komorowski is obviously guilty of giving the order, but it was not his sole decision. The representative of the Polish Government in Exile was in close contact with him, there were talks with the Soviets ongoing, so he had reasons to believe the uprising will be a success, even if a costly one.
Scapegoating him makes no sense. If he knew Soviets will do what they did, his decision would be very different. We know that, because he wrote about it earlier. He considered Soviet help and frequent airdrops to be absolutely necessary for the uprising to have any chances at all.
As we know, those conditions were not met.
No sources, no links, no quotes.
Blame Youtube. I tried.
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Just a comment, about why the charge of lancers became less common during later middle ages.
I've heard that it became supposedly ineffective with the introduction of pikemen formations and gunpowder, but as it happens we can prove that it was not so. In Poland armored lancers survived for a very long time with a string of victories, often against incredible odds, which undoubtedly shows that a lancer charge remained a viable tactic for a long time.
Then we have Napoleonic period, with heavy cavalry and lancers too. No heavy lancers, due to cultural reasons, but both formations were considered elite and very effective.
So, it's just not possible that a lancer charge was ineffective earlier on. No way. There must be some other reason why they stopped appearing on the battlefields of Western Europe.
In Poland, for example, they disappeared when nobility decided they no longer care. Training and equipping an elite lancer was hugely expensive. As long as people believed that serving your country is something to be proud of, we had them. When morals changed, people simply stopped doing it.
So I propose an economic reason for the decline of heavy cavalry in the west. For as long as knights were duty bound to serve in the field, they equipped themselves and trained themselves to the best of their ability simply because they wanted to survive the battle. When the power shifted toward wealthy tradesmen in the cities, they started hiring people for war, and it's not economical to equip a heavy lancer out of your own pocket. It makes much more sense to hire and equip 15 infantrymen.
Probably there were other reasons too, but I would say that shifting of power from land to the city was the main cause of shifting battlefield tactics from cavalry based to infantry based.
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@Entropy67 First of all, I remember reading about neural networks capable of learning when they first appeared. I was in highschool then, so it's hardly a new thing. We've had this type of machines for three decades already.
" We don't need to train the AI for all the flaws, it can figure it out itself. "
So why the sentry AI couldn't figure out that a walking Christmas tree was an intruder?
It never encountered such a pattern, so it couldn't "train itself" (if you insist on that) to recognize it. Of course, it's possible to patch up this exploit, so to speak, but it takes a human to do that.
" This literally is the distinction between general and specific AI. "
You can define words however you like, but I refuse to call a machine with no understanding of what it does to possess "general intelligence".
It matches patterns. Very well, and very many patterns, yet it doesn't know, and what's worse, even we don't know what kind of patterns it matches.
Therefore silly exploits and equally silly false positives are always a possibility.
For example, it might let in a motorcyclist, or a horse rider, yet it might rise the alarm because of a fog, a rabbit, a rainbow, whatever happens rarely enough, that it wasn't trained to recognize.
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+CreatorUser - Assuming the fall of Soviet Union, especially early on, without the drain of the protracted war, it's hard to imagine how USA could have won.
Sure enough, Soviet Union wouldn't fall totally. There would be some remnants of them behind Urals. Americans could have supported them, but Germans wouldn't have to do much to keep those forces at bay.
With the full might of Axis forces defending Europe, there would be no hope for serious invasion.
A-bomb is a game changer, because it allows destruction of a full city without committing huge resources to the task. Sure enough, that's a lot of advantage, but how many cities would need to be destroyed? Hamburg or Dresden were flattened with conventional means, and it mattered little overall. It's hard to win by killing civilians. Actually, it's just more food and resources which can be diverted to the frontlines.
You are not proposing to nuke Paris, are you? If not, then German armies don't even need their own civilians to support them.
Hard to tell, but I think that Nazis would have kept their empire for a while if they won in Russia.
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@AncientAmericas "I think that there would be much stronger evidence if it were true. "
While I'm also not a believer in the Solutrian hypothesis, not yet at least, I do believe that the evidence for it is strong enough to warrant serious consideration.
1. We have evidence that the travel across Atlantic with similar level technology was possible. The Inuits visited Shetland islands during the Little Ice Age.
2. The lithic tech between Europe and America is similar enough (while it differs a lot from East Coast tech). The Clovis and Solutrian blades are not the same, but that's what you'd expect by the time people moved further East from the areas which are currently under the sea surface.
3. There was a find of a mammoth skull with two associated very solutrian looking blades in it. Until it's all fake, that alone would pretty much prove the hypothesis correct.
Yes, we all would much prefer stronger evidence, which either confirms or dismisses this hypothesis, but it's not like we have any reasons to expect much more, is there? All the early sites are flooded.
I mean, it's called a hypothesis for a reason. If there was more evidence supporting it, it would be called a theory.
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@kevinmote2369 I can dispute his narrative with regards to the northern Slavs.
Early Slavic slavery was a thing simply because there was a market for it. The Vikings setup a bunch of trading outposts and exported the slaves to the Islamic states. The Slavs at the time were barely civilized, divided into many tribes, at constant war with each other. Slavery made those wars profitable.
Very simple, really. Anyway, those wars eventually lead to political unification, and Christianity put the definite stop to Slavs being sold by other Slavs.
Enslaving Slavs did not end, though. Slavs were at the border of the civilized world, in constant danger of an attack from abroad. Initially by the pagan Prussians, later on by the Mongols and Tatars. Those people also engaged in Slavery only because it was profitable. And that was obviously, because there was a market for it.
Nothing else is needed to explain this phenomenon. If Celts, Goths or whoever else was in the same spot at the same time, they'd suffer accordingly. Which actually was the case in Italy and Spain, for example. It just didn't last as long.
Regarding serfdom, it also is not such a one-sided deal. First of all, it emerged because in order to encourage settlement, the landlords allowed the peasants to settle on their lands for a long period with no obligations . Villages called "Wola" and similar are extremely common where I live. "Wola" meant freedom. They got land without payment or work in return.
After this say 20years period the landlords expected to finally get something back. Obviously, it didn't work if the farmer ran away, but that was akin to defaulting on a contract.
Even later serfdom was not obviously better than a rent based system. There are many reasons for it, but let's just say that while serfs did not run into the rent regions, it did happen the other way around. That means, peasants ran away from this supposedly superior rent system into the lands of serfdom. On mass.
So this video is really not a very good summary of the problem. Still, it's good for the people to realize, that Slavs were enslaved on a scale far and above that of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
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@ungeimpfterrusslandtroll7155 "What is it that i'm propagating"
Pony riders with cute wings getting almost crushed, if not for the glorious German infantry.
That's total fantasy.
"My source was in german. Can you read that?"
Many people can. I chose to write my degree in English, so my German went to the backburner. I couldn't make myself like it. Nothing personal, I just prefer Russian or such. Soft, flowing melody and so on.
"Turks and polish" sources
you emotionally challenged grifter. Without access to sources from all sides, it's impossible to be unbiased.
If a Turk writes how they valiantly repelled an attack of 100 hussars, I repeat, one hundred. Apparently they almost cut them to pieces, but they "repelled" them, which means that those guys really managed to get out. That is quite unlikely to be false, because a Turk wrote it.
Do you understand now, that your idea of "overstretching" and being in grave danger because of that is pure fantasy?
"Harry Potter"
That's one of your sources?
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" nieces that ask me about men/dating "
My nephew recently complained to me, that because of my influence, he started telling the straight truth, when directly asked. Now he has a problem. Not of being shunned and ostracized, mind you. He has a problem with all the ladies desperately wanting his opinion on other guys!
Unsurprisingly. They simply want to know.
" Women do NOT take criticism well if at all "
Who does? But when they directly ask your opinion, you might as well tell it to them. You still remember how hard it was to be young and naive? I mean, at the time it felt fine, but then it hurt, a lot, did it not?
If they ask you, tell them.
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+Death OfTime - "he is putting one religions above another" - Exactly. I am putting some religions above others. And I'm positive you are too.
Some quick examples:
1. The soldiers of Cortez, when they first climbed up the pyramids of Mexico, have found the priests drenched in rotting human blood. Terrible stench, piles of bones, thousands of victims.
2. Koran is absolutely clear about child rape. You see, it's fine. No joke. You need to follow some rules about how exactly can you do it and be OK with Allah, but plenty of guys can fulfill those without much trouble. And they do! It's endemic.
3. The hymn of love.
The people? Sure, we differ, but those three examples of ideas are not equal. Two of them are a piece of shit, only one of them is godlike.
Now look into my virtual eyes and say to me straight and true, without squinting about, that you actually think all of those are "equal"...
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+DynamicWorlds A hunter from stone age case happened and still happens often enough. We communicate very easily. For example, there are tribes living in Amazon forest which are essentially a stone-age people. They are being left alone, because it's known 2/3 of them will die of diseases once the contact is made.
But we know it, because it happened so many times in the past. There was no barrier in communication, only language. We are essentially the same, just unimportant details differ.
Anyways, I agree that alien language would probably be based on sounds. Maybe it would consist of inaudible whistles, maybe it would use tonal information requiring much finer musical ear, maybe it would code the information in the rhythm, but we would be able to figure it out eventually.
It's just way too useful (even crucial) to convey information to someone who does not even pay attention to you at the moment. Most animals use this channel of communication, with each other or even between species. A dog barks at you assuming you will understand what he means, and he is not mistaken most of the time.
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@peterthepeter7523 "I can't think of any battle when infantry with bayonets would fight spearmen, it would show how these weapons compare."
- It was discussed in the sources at the time when musketeers supported by pike formations were encountering pure musketeers formations equipped with plug bayonets.
From memory, pike formations were considered much superior morale boosters to bayonets. The main deal was that when under threat of close combat musketeers supported by pikes keep on shooting and hold their cohesion much better. When they are on their own, there is much higher risk for them to rout under pressure.
"wall of bayonets and sheer mass of squares packed with people makes it hard."
- That's true, but separate squares can't give support to each other, while cavalry could attack one corner on one square over and over again, until it finally broke. One row attacks, moves to the side, another follows, then another and so on.
"officer who sent light cavalry to attack infantry that did not lose formation would be arrested."
- That's light and Prussian cavalry. Probably the worst there was at the time. A waste in any case.
Anyway, the balance of power between cavalry and infantry was discussed in at least one source. Some Yomini guy? I forgot. A Frenchmen hired by Tzar after the war wrote it.
Anyway, the most telling example I remember considered the failure of Dragoons. On paper Dragoons were perfect, because they could do infantry job on foot and cavalry job while mounted. The problem was, how would you train those people?
Well drilled infantry fight with the conviction they can hold up to the worst that cavalry can throw at them.
Well trained cavalry attacks with the conviction that no matter what, they can break through.
The Dragoons were required to believe in both of those mutually exclusive concepts, so they tended to fail at both jobs. Which leads us to believe, that the balance of power was more or less equal and better men tended to win.
What follows is, that infantry squares were not invulnerable to a determined attack, but they significantly increased the chances of mounting a successful defense.
"was stopped by groups of fracnc-tireur defending forrest patches or buildings."
- That's a much better way of totally canceling almost all advantages of cavalry. Hide behind fences, trees, building and so on. Use the terrain to your advantage.
Much better than squares in the open.
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Regarding socio-economic changes, I often put out an argument about the relative balance of power. During the medieval period almost all the power was centered around the control of the land. Whoever had more land was more powerful. Later on the trades and crafts became significantly more important, since the food production improved and there was more surplus. The power of Venice was not centered around land, just for example.
The knights were fighting in person, in order to keep their top position in the society. Why would they want to fight in order to keep some wealthy merchant in business? They wouldn't.
So it's not a surprise, that the Winged Hussars phenomenon happened in a country which prosperity was based on food production and where cities and fortresses were relatively weak. The landed knights had all the reasons in the world to go out there and fight. They considered themselves to be equal to a king himself. It's also not a surprise, that Western cavalry fared much worse against pike formations.
What I'm trying to say here, is that without sufficient motivation, there was less training going on, less money spent on equipment and also much less determined performance during the actual battles. Those changes in military prowess are attested in period sources. No matter how effective a heavy lancer can be, if you simply do not have those people any more.
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@cabman5972 "Mörner relies on misinterpretations of scientific data"
That's impossible. All you need to refute the "acceleration of sea level rise" claim is a single good tide gauge station. Only one is needed (though we have more, obviously), because water seeks a level surface .
Regardless if the station shows a rise or lowering of the sea level (tectonics), if the trend is linear, there is no acceleration. If the trend would curve upwards, there would be acceleration, but they do not.
In order to show that the overall trend in the world is not strongly positive, meaning a slow sea level rise, all you need is a single stable coastal region. If the waters do not rise up there, they simply can't rise up anywhere else, because water seeks a level surface . We have several coasts like that and there is no significant rise observed there.
Sea level rise hoax is so absurd, that it genuinely fills me with both disappointment and fear. I'm disappointed with our intellectual elites, who were so easily subverted, and I fear for us, because those who orchestrated the hoax are obviously in power.
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@kimberlywalker_ Well, I looked into it a little bit. Musashi is all about swords, and dueling with swords specifically. He was good at it, but to some extent he kinda "cheated", since he used both swords at once.
Swords are primarily sidearms, so it's like defeating a rifleman in a pistol duel. Not too hard if you try to excel at shooting pistols, while he trains for war. Add to that your ability to shoot with both hands, and the outcome of a duel is quite easy to predict.
Anyway, he apparently defeated a "lancer" once. I write in quotes, because they fought on foot, none of them wanted to fight, then they were extremely courteous in exchanging niceties between each other, and it seems like they pretty much agreed that a student will not challenge the master.
In my opinion, a competent spearman has huge advantage over a swordsman even on foot. On horseback, he's almost unbeatable.
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@Tassadar606 " I'm thinking even earlier would be worse "
Exactly. No matter how awful the conditions of early industrial workers had been, they actually agreed to suffer them, so the alternative, by necessity, had to be worse.
I'm not sure what caused the situation, because it seems it wasn't universal across Europe, but at least in Britain and Germany people simply didn't have enough food. In order to buy it, they had to produce something.
For what it's worth, I've read that about a decade of mild weather allowed for the population of the peasants to expand, and that's what caused the near-famine conditions when the weather eventually worsened.
But I don't buy it, not fully at least. The thing is, if that was the case and they avoided famine by buying food abroad, they should have simply exported their famine out there.
Which does not seem to be the case. Maybe in Austro-Hungarian Empire there was something bordering this situation, but not too bad, practically resolved by migration.
So I don't know.
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" semi-competent commander "
I happen to believe Monty was the best W. Allied commander. I don't mind Goodwood or Market Garden much. Both seemed like a risk worth taking, and despite all the bad press, they weren't total disasters.
I mean, what was the cost of Market Garden, actually? I just looked it up, and it was on the order of 15-17K, but that includes POWs and wounded, so the loss of life was much smaller. The Germans lost about half as much.
It's almost worth it from the "war of attrition" point of view, considering the paras were lightly equipped troops. And it could have worked. In high stakes poker, if you don't bet favorable odds while you can afford to lose, you are a bad player.
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@jannegrey "It was Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth"
Actually, it was not. No such thing existed in history. This name is a XIXth century invention.
The political entity that did exist was called Rzeczpospolita, which is a direct translation of Res Publica. It consisted of the Crown, with Poland and many other areas*, and The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was also comprised of many areas.
*) - It's interesting to note, that Mazovia with Warsaw was considered to be a separate entity from Poland proper.
As far as ethnic make up goes it obviously varied, but in 1618 it was roughly 4.5 mln Poles, 5 mln Rus and 0.75 mln Lithuanians, with some smaller minorities.
So as we see, Lithuanians were a minority, not only in the whole Commonwealth, but also in the Grand Duchy itself.
"nobility spoke Polish is not a surprise - it was the language of the court"
That's of no importance. The court was in Krakow or Warsaw, the correspondence in Rus was accepted. Not in Lithuanian, though. Because they couldn't write.
"calling him "Lithuanian Commander" or something similar would also not be wrong, since he spent most of his life in Grand Duchy"
But it may be misleading. People already think that the Grand Duchy was mostly a Lithuanian state. They teach this nonsense in their schools.
It was not the case. It never was.
"lots of Polish nobility living in Lithuanian part"
That statement can also be misunderstood. Polish nobility didn't move to the Grand Duchy (until you count the ladies who married local lords). Some guy recently did a genetic research and all the nobility is of local stock.
Polish culture and language expanded, but mostly through the alcove and schools. (Interestingly, Adma Mickiewicz wrote a funny ballad about it.)
"Lithuanian nobility was kind of diminished, since they had to speak Polish and act Polish to get the same treatment"
That's total nonsense. No such requirement ever existed, whether in letter or day-to-day practice. They married Polish ladies. Those ladies raised their children according to Polish culture. Unsurprisingly, I'd say.
"let's not pretend that Commonwealth was perfect when it comes to parity between nations"
Latvia joined us, the Prussians paid our king so he'll be willing to fight the Teutonic Order. They taxed themselves in order to become a second rate citizens?
Of course not. (Strangely enough, Bogusław Radziwiłł of Lithuanian ancestry is often credited with restoring the economy of Prussia.)
"Hetman Sahajdaczny tried to push for Ukrainians"
Push for what? Kievan Rus was older than Poland! The place I live in belonged to the Kievan Rus way before it became a part of Poland.
Ukrainians were Rus people. They had great civilization when we were still illiterate barbarians.
"Sejm later cut the amount of "nobility" allowed from Ukraine"
Not from Ukraine but specifically from Cossacks! The Ukrainian nobility didn't like the Cossacks being nobilitated on mass either. Because Cossacks were rough people, frankly speaking. Illiterate, unruly, wild.
Great fighters, though.
"they were able to resist full on polonization"
What? The children resisted being polonized by their mothers? What kind of nonsense you speak of?
I recognize this lie. It's being used as an excuse for "reversing" this trend right now. Since Poland was so awful and "polonized" all those people, the Lithuania is excused for doing the same...
But it's still a lie.
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@jannegrey "But you said it yourself - that in King's court Lithuanian language was not recognized."
The correspondence in Lithuanian was not accepted, because they couldn't write !
That simple. The Rus people were literate, so they wrote the letters.
"So they had to adopt Polish language and culture"
Nonsense. First you complain I misunderstood your message, but then you repeat it again...
At fist plenty of Lithuanian nobles adopted Rus culture and customs. They conquered Rus, so who forced them to do so?
"50% of the land"
Lithuania conquered Rus. Rus was very weak because of Mongols, but it still was a huge country. Lithuanians knew they couldn't keep their conquest, not without help, at least.
So they united with Poland, Rus people were fully accepted as first class citizens, and they never rebelled against their Lithuanian conquerors.
Lithuanians finally civilized, the Rus people rebuilt their country and the Poles entered the golden age. Everybody gained.
"calling him "Polish King" might be misleading, since he was Lithuanian?"
Actually, yes. When I was a kid, that's what I thought, that he was actually Polish.
Jogaiło was a Lithuanian king of Poland, just like Sigismund Vasa was a Swedish king of Poland. I don't know why, but everybody knows that Batory was Hungarian, yet Jagiełło is being portrayed as a Pole... Maybe the movie? He speaks perfect "high polish" there.
"you only see one side"
Tell me a Polish lie, I'll fight you tooth and nail. I promise.
"This kind of forces you to be a bully at least to some extent."
We were not a bully, forced or unforced. Polish culture was an international success, not just our military. People joined us, out of their own free will .
Lithuania with Rus, Prussia, Latvia even Moscow had a pro-Polish faction, which tried to do the same. Why? Because we didn't bully people .
"Lithuanians were treated worse than Poles. Though better than Ukrainians."
Nonsense. The nobles were treated the same. Jeremi Wiśniowiecki was of Ukrainian Rus background, was he mistreated? Maybe, but definitely not because he was Ukrainian.
Czartoryski family can trace their ancestry to Gedymin. I live on their lands. How were they mistreated? Huge property right next to Vistula and all?
When it comes to commoners, Ukrainian people had more freedom than the Poles.
What are you talking about?
Isn't it some kind of neo-woke history? "We were such bad "colonizers", we need to repent and feel guilty" kind of a spiele?
I think it is, and it's nonsense.
"Cossack register to be expanded. Poland basically told him "We will think about it, you're a hero" and did the opposite."
Cossacks were not the Ukrainian nobility. Although, they still had a chance for mass nobilitation, which nobody in Poland (or anywhere else) could dream of!
Do you understand what I wrote? No other commoner group had a 'register'.
With that said, I agree that Cossacks were betrayed. They were promised more than they received.
Well, if they didn't constantly attack the Khanate, which prompted various revenge wars, it would be easier to push toward strengthening them even further, don't you think?
"Sahajdaczny as a "Polish hero""
Who does that? That sometimes he's called Piotr instead of Petro? I never heard of him being portrayed as a Pole.
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@michaels4255 It's natural for humans that they want to survive more than they want to win. For example, during WWI they had to rotate the units, because if left in the same place for longer they tended to strike a deal with the enemy. Not what you want in a war of attrition, especially if it's your side which has more men.
Men need to be led into attack, and that's why the officers die more often than the enlisted. They get up first. On the defense, the officers tend to stay behind. Why? So they can prevent their soldiers from retreating. During the age of sail the captains were heavily incentivised into aggression, both positively and negatively, meaning they could expect high monetary rewards for being aggressive, and harsh punishment for avoiding action.
Why such measures were implemented and kept?
So, this attitude appears to be universal and goes up the ranks. Chuikov in Stalingrad always wanted to retreat, once he simply ran away. Paulus didn't want to attack, he'd rather wait for supplies and build up his forces, but obviously, that would strengthen the opposition he was facing too. Many Soviet commanders were unwilling to continue the fight during the Barbarossa. Vlasov even switched sides.
We have this idea of idiot commanders recklessly sending their men into the grinder. That's also true, but it's partially because those men were pre-selected for this particular capability. Often with disregard for other crucial capabilities.
It's not easy to make men kill and die. That includes the generals.
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@UC7ebTUSo36SF7hXhOBTBLbw "2. To give back a German city to Germany is not detrimental to honor. This is called justice. To steal is not honorable. "
The Free City concept was created in order to guarantee Poland will have access to international trade through this port. No more and no less! Yet, the Germans still blocked us from it, so we were forced to build another port nearby, which eventually exceeded Danzig in trade.
Then Hitler figured out how to stop it. We were supposed to resign from any claims to Danzig and we were supposed to grant them a land bridge connecting East and West Prussia. That would totally cut us off from international trade.
Danzig alone? They already had it, so not much loss in granting them that. A land bridge? In exchange for vogue promises that that's the last thing they'll ever ask? That's a different story altogether.
Dishonorable part was yielding to a bully in possibly vain hopes of avoiding conflict. France and Britain did that, and look how much peace they got out of it... So they have lost all this respect for almost no gain.
"Gdynia was already serviceable in 1938-39. That is there was no basic need to retain Danzig. "
It was serviceable a decade earlier and much bigger than Danzig right before the war. But it wouldn't last if it was cut off from mainland Poland, would it?
"Poland as a state was reinstated by Germany."
That's simply not true. They promised the'd do something about Poland, but only if they won and only on former Russian lands. Poland was created, because Germany has lost the war . Mostly through diplomatic efforts of Dmowski and Paderewski in Versailles, but also thanks to Wielkopolska Uprising.
Germany on the other hand placed their spy (Piłsudski) at the head of the government, mostly because they needed someone who could guarantee free passage for their troops, which at the time were still deep in Russia. They also did what they could to prevent Poland from including any land under their control. That included Wielkopolska (Polish heartland), Warmia (Polish majority areas in East Prussia) and Upper Silesia (Polish majority highly industrialized area). It took three uprisings for those people to finally join Poland!
"until you are ripe for full independance"
Ripe for independence? Don't tell such stuff to a Pole IRL. That'd be dangerous.
Who are you, anyway? Some merc? Upstart bastard, barely able to grow a mustache, figuratively speaking? Too young to understand how it is to win it all, then to lose it? Our civilization is over 1000 years old. Grow up some, gain some wisdom, then we'll talk like adults.
Oh, wait. You won't survive for that long. Forget it, then.
"Poland was satellised anyway, later by the Soviets and now by the EU. Where is the honor, right now ?"
EU can't do squat about us. All they do is complain that we've milked them, and are all about leaving all of a sudden. They can get stuffed for all I care.
Regarding Soviets, you must have no concept of honor if you are asking such questions. Losing is not dishonorable. Running away might be, giving up the fight too easily might be too. We've done nothing of the sort, though. There was civil war in Poland for at least 20 years after ww2. Nobody else have shown similar levels of resistance.
Especially not Germans... 1/3 of them in Stazi.
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@alexbeau348 How many Russians lived in this "Russian territory"?
Do you know that "Polish robbers" resigned from some areas offered by the Soviets, like Minsk, for example? That's some sophisticated robbery, isn't it? They give you stuff, and you don't take it!
And why have the Soviets signed, then violated the peace treaty if they still wanted those places? Germany still wants parts of Poland, no peace treaty. Japan wants their islands, no peace treaty with Russia.
Soviet Union signs a peace treaty, even offers more than Poland takes and then suddenly decides otherwise and attacks "no one" (10 OOO casualties in this not-an-attack against nobody).
BTW - Do you know that recently Russia wanted to get rid of Ukraine with the help of Poland? We take Lviv, they "liberate" the rest. I'm sure they'd attack nobody and simply regain their lost territories, like always... (We know of it, because our foreign affair guy became offended and spitted it all out.)
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+__ __ - Every system has its inefficiencies. In capitalism money talks, so you can simply buy the most advanced jet engine in the world. I read a book on how industrial espionage worked back in the Cold War era. It was based on greed. Did it work? Make your own guess...
BTW, I'm from Poland, raised under their rule. No, I'm not a Rusophile. I like the people, all of us do, but their "vlast" is a different story altogether.
Anyway, stuff like that happened before. Two superpowers in eternal struggle, one based on trade, the other on discipline. One was the cultural capital of the world with loads of money on disposal, the other had better soldiers.
You know who eventually won? Not Athens, not Sparta, but Thebes. Who were promptly beaten by yet another even younger and hungrier power.
In essence, stop worrying about Russia. If they could beat you, they would already. Worry about who is new Thebes, and even more who is about to become the new Macedon.
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@Megarenegade666 "Bohdan Khmelnytsky"
He claimed Polish roots. His coat of arms is Polish. Rus mother, and I think grandmother too. Nobody cared one bit about that. When he was attacked, his enemies told stories about his father being an infamus (and a high ranking official at the same time? silly talk).
"At Tanenberg they bringed victory."
By running away? Yeah, I know it was a "tactical retreat". Unfortunately, one of those tactical retreaters didn't stop before Vilnius, where he told everybody the battle was lost.
With that said, without Lithuanian help we wouldn't win. It's just annoying that those who actually failed in battle try to lap up all the glory after somebody else had to clean up their mess.
"Troops from Grand Duchy always were most combat ready, when polish nobles always had rokosz."
That's absolute nonsense. When the Crown was weakened during Cossack rebellions, you guys couldn't defend yourself against Moscow any more. And then there were Cossacks to deal with too.
As far as military potential goes, the Crown was significantly stronger, simply because it was richer.
That's the truth, whether you like it or not.
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Before the industrial revolution there wasn't much of an economic divide between the Western and Eastern Europe. Then the difference was mostly in population density, but it had much more to do with wars and raids than with anything else.
Also, while necessarily brief in this context, nonetheless the sentiment that paying rents was superior to servitude was repeated enough times to sink in. Therefore I feel the need to point out, that servitude had its advantages. For example, it prevented the outbreaks of famine, which were quite common in the West. No matter how bad the year was, the peasant could always spare some work, while he simply might not have the money, so the lord was always receiving his payment. When the crops failed, when the Tatars attacked, so forth, he was expected to fulfill his end of that social contract and protect his people.
The worst peasant uprising happened in lands controlled by Austria, where they abolished servitude. Why would that happen, if the system was obviously superior?
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Re: The rate of fire argument, and the conclusion that a "machine gun" analogy is flawed.
I disagree, because if we followed up with the same reasoning, we are forced to conclude that the rate of fire is of no consequence for actual machine guns too. If you keep on shooting at max rate beyond mere minutes, you will not only run out of bullets, you will burn through all the barrels for the gun too.
That's not how it's done, obviously. Machine gun is largely an area denial weapon. If the enemy is out of it, there is no point in shooting at all. Maybe a burst or two, or the equivalent arrow sent out once in a blue moon, just to make them know this piece of land is under your control. But once they decide to enter this area, you absolutely need to shoot as fast as you can, since they don't plan on setting up a camp in there. They will try to go through this death zone as fast as humanly possible.
With a crossbow, you have one shot. With a bow, several at least. Maybe more than 10, if the terrain is difficult. It may last a minute or two all told, but that's *a lot" of difference!
Apart from that, I mostly agree with your analysis, yet I want to comment on the skill requirements. Usually people vastly underestimate the amount of skill required to operate a crossbow. Tod may not be an especially skilled shooter, but he's an expert fabricator, so for him operating and maintaining a crossbow is easy.
I wasn't easy for the average soldier. Crossbows are much more complex mechanical devices than early guns, and they require quite a lot of knowledge in order to keep them working.
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+dernwine - "You are right, in English soldier means someone in the army." - Actually, according to the dictionary definition, it means someone especially, but not exclusively in the army. It very well may be an outdated definition, so I'm just doing my research here, so to speak.
Unfortunately, so far it appears that only people in the military consider this definition to be incorrect.
Regarding my "special snowflake" comment, that's how you guys behave. Not may fault. You do exactly the same thing as various trans-gender people who demand that the whole society would reflect their ideas about their sexual identity in the common speech, no matter how inconvenient it may be.
No matter how impractical too, simply because common people can't tell the difference between various branches of the military, just as they can't tell the difference between various kinds of queers out there.
Don't believe me? How about your proposal to replace a single word with a bloody five word phrase! Because that's how you guys "feel" about yourself...
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+dernwine - "People who do not know the military use the term incorrectly it's true" - I don't think you understand how language works. For common words, "people who do not know" have the final say.
For example, if "people who do not know" decide that a sheriff is a "cowboy", he becomes a "cowboy". Or to put it another way, the meaning of "cowboy" gets expanded to the point it includes a sheriff, even if he never herded a single cattle in his whole life. Them's the rules.
Regarding "military personnel", you wouldn't say "I met one military personnel in the bar the other day." You'd have to say "I met one memeber of the military in the bar the other day.", which is five words indeed.
Finally, contrary to my hobbies, I have a science background. BTW - In my language sciences include humanities. I always preferred the Western distinction, but you know what? I had no say!
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+Alice Black - It's a long post, but I will address some points you made.
In order of appearance:
"Do not act on unproven assumptions" - It's impossible. I bet you can't prove that spring follows winter, but you assume it does and act upon it. Science can't prove that physics is the same in the whole Universe and acts upon it.
Yes, he compares atheism to religion and he understands what it means very well. Not all atheists do, though... ;-)
So you believe in empirism? That's a branch of philosophy. Philosophy in general does not rely on observations...
Why shouldn't we question what happens to dead animals? Is there a proof that nothing happens? If not, we just speculate (or assume...) that nothing happens and we act upon it. Besides, some believe in reincarnation and nirvana, the same for humans and animals. Not all religions consider humans to be special in the soul department.
What's the difference between Big Bang and Resurrection of Christ? Both are weird happenstances beyond our understanding, both can be arrived at with evidence based logic. Which one makes more sense is a judgement call, and of course one does not exclude the other.
Science used to consider meteorites to be total bollocks, because they were "supernatural". How do you know what is natural and what is supernatural?
Gravity was not directly observed until last year. It was inferred from what we observed, though. We could also observe "miracles" (like lightning) and infer gods. That's valid reasoning.
Reason leads to good outcomes - so when are you planing to eat your children? They should taste good and on top of having a meal, you'll save huge amounts of effort in feeding them. That's perfectly reasonable, I think.
Yes, faith is a belief without sufficient evidence. We all do that all the time. Only because it works.
You wrote more, but that's way too long already.
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@jankoodziej877 "I find it impossible to believe that they simply charged well trained, steady formation of pikes frontally."
How did they win at Klushino? The intervals in the fence behind which the pikemen took position were so small, that they could only attack with very small forces. Numerous source accounts of that.
"because even if you kill the first soldier there are several more next to him and the horse can't stop in place."
So it will get you in, won't it? And the first guy in the rank knows that no matter what, regardless of how well trained he is, he's gonna get hit and likely killed, until his armor holds up.
The horseman is in no immediate danger, though. He's protected by his horse and armor. Much smaller and movable target.
Anyway, I do think that they attacked at an angle and veered off before their precious horses were even scratched. At least sometimes, if not often.
"infantry must have lost its morale and rout when the charge happened"
11 times? That's how many charges some units performed at Klushino. Besides, if high morale would nullify all the advantages of Winged Hussars, why Carolus Gustavus told to his troops before the battle, that since Hussars are practically unstoppable, his units should let them through? It's a quote in English, actually. The source is in England too.
He won this battle and many others. He was an accomplished military commander. If your hypothesis is correct, he must have been extremely lucky. All his life... ;-)
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@doomsdaybro8290 " going after a criminal wouldn't be coercion "
That's a neat trick. It never occurred to me, that we can simply redefine coercion in such a way, that prisons are places of voluntary confinement.
Respect! ;-)
" they're stopped from being able to argue for their own rights "
Trouble is, he says you attacked him first and caused damages. He simply helped himself to whatever was lying around to cover the costs.
Now you are the criminal, maybe both of you are, so nobody can argue anymore.
Problem solved, I guess. ;-)
Anyway, "stopped" by whom?
" unjustifiable acts "
How do we know which acts are justifiable or not? Say, I caught the rapist and did him "justice", according to how I felt at the moment. Then I even dumped his ashes into the gutter, which accidentally clogged it, but whatever.
How do we know if I had rights to do it?
BTW - His family says he dindu, since he was studying at the library at the time. They have three witnesses who confirm their story.
How do we solve this conundrum?
I assume that "innocent until proven guilty" approach does not work in this case, since it requires a working system of justice, based on coercion, authority and other anathemas.
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" desire for chivalry is but a modern day manifestation of entitlement "
That's not true. Women desire chivalry in men, because they desire actual men. Whether they know it or not, whether they feel guilty for it or not, they still do desire that. And that's very simply because, being in presence of such a man makes them happy.
And they want to be happy.
I mean, how can I hold it against them, if I also want to be in company of chivalrous men. They are calmly confident, courageous, compassionate, socially skilled, effortlessly well mannered, yet you are sure that if you overstep your boundaries, they will confront you.
Everybody likes such men. Women, other men, children and even pets.
Now, compare it with the soyboys of today. Emotionally unstable, physically weak, vulnerable, egoistical, unwilling to take responsibility and so forth. Women may be willing to say that's what they want, but that's where it ends.
BTW - his "reason" for chivalry is false. If it was true, the less rights women had, the more chivalrous the society would be. That's not the case, for absolutely sure , if you look at more than one culture at one specific time. Which is what he did.
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@kimberlywalker_ I think that the differences in metallurgy were blown a bit out of proportions, because people got fed up with various myths surrounding katana.
No, it wasn't special. Yes, it's shallow hardened steel, but apparently quite a few European weapons were made out of similar material.
Similar carbon content, similar slag content, etc.
The main difference would be, that while Europeans developed better steel later, once Japan entered Edo period it kinda froze in time. Europe was trading, so you could gett better raw materials, better intermediate products and finished goods, while Japan had to use whatever they had locally available, and that stuff wasn't the best quality.
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+__ __ - I just want to comment on rape accusations and Lend-Lease impact.
Starting with this rape thing - I did not study the problem too much, but I'm sure it happened, simply because I read accounts of people I trust. Still, how much and how bad is questionable.
What I know for sure, is that both Germans and USA wanted to paint a different picture after the war was over. Germany were allies, Soviets the enemy, so Orwellian 1984 kicked in, and you "had always been at war with Eastasia".
And I know one other thing. There was this movement of refugees from post-war Poland, who constantly cried a river about "atrocities". Once we became an independent country, we went to them to apologize, but we asked first for documents and testimonies.
They didn't come up with anything! It was all empty blame-shifting.
While of course on the other side there are *tons*, literally, of documents and testimonies of unimaginable atrocities.
So, take that into the account.
Oh, screw Lend-Lease. My post is already long enough.
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Alex M "the same proportional strength"
Men still have an advantage there, but it's more complex. First, it's much easier to achieve high relative strength for small people. They are shorter hence have shorter levers and obviously do less total work (force*distance). So you have Wilks scores to compensate for that, etc, etc.
Anyway, the existence of Stefi, even if she's not juicing much, does not prove that this antagonist "woman" could possibly happen by random chance. She's not 114lbs like Stefi. By the look of her, she's at least 75kg (165lbs) or so, lots of it pure muscle.
Women can't get there without the "help" of some very weird mutation, or most commonly, hormonal stimulation. So she does not look believable at all. If they chose her to look like that, that could work in the story, if she was artificially prepared to fight zombies, or something. A mere mention would work, but I'd prefer a proper background, because stuff like that is likely to influence a person for life.
From what I've seen here, that's not what we got.
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@Asterix958 First, big thanks for a view from the other side. Extremely appreciated!
"They probably killed some captives because they couldn't take with yourselves."
Slavery was forbidden in Christianity, so only high value prisoners were worth the effort. On the other hand, everybody had heard stories of Ottoman and especially Tatar prisoner trains, which were not pretty, so understandably, people were not particularly keen on granting pardon.
"65.000 Ottoman soldier + 25.000 camp follower"
That'd be a very low numer of camp followers. For the army of that size, the number of camp followers should be at least twice higher. Three times higher wouldn't be a stretch either.
It's always hard to come up with a ratio, simply because lots of servants needed weapons to do their job, yet not required to face the enemy or perform military duty, so it's hard to know for sure.
Still, that number is very low.
"they didn't prepare proper field fortifications even"
Classic Sobieski here. Attack when and/or where they think the attack is impossible. Under his command, the vast majority of soldiers died during rapid marches through impassable terrain, not in combat. That's how he fought. He even drawn the cannons himself at Vienna, to raise morale.
You guys almost got him at Parkany. He barely escaped, but won the battle the next day. This time he underestimated the enemy. Nobody's perfect.
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I just wanted to say that I'm really impressed with this vid, and a bunch of others I have watched this night, since I've discovered your channel. Important topics, doubly important since people often have a flawed perception of them, and absolutely great presentation.
Regarding this one, I want to thank you for answering the question I had for a long time. Was Sosabowski really guilty of some part of the total failure? I tried to read on what he did, and I never could find anything damning, apart from his lack of respect to his superiors. The quote from Frost, that "they fired the best general we had" finally cleared it for me.
One more comment. The reason Sosabowski accepted the whole plan probably had something to do with the fact, that it was the last and only semi-realistic chance for independent Poland. That's why they faught in the first place. Even if it was risky, even if it was costly, he'd still go with it as long as there was a decent chance of success.
And this chance actually existed. It all could have worked. It should have worked. What a pity.
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" you end up with [...] comfortable half-truths "
If she admits she cheated, because he was so bla-bla, and she was so bla-bla as a result of that, you still know she most likely cheated.
If he admits he hit her, because she was so bla-bla, and he had to bla-bla, you still know he most likely hit her.
So despite of all the coloring, you did manage to establish those events as quite probable, at the very least, if not simply as facts.
Coloring is just a seasoning which makes the harsh truths more palatable. They still remain under there, though.
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@usaisthebestiockdownpoiice816 What's the problem with you guys? Aren't you able to follow a plain and simple argument, or what? Let me put it in as simple terms as I absolutely can:
1. Metal armor couldn't have been abandoned because it didn't work, if it still is being used today!
Do you get it now? It's still in use, so if it works now, it must have worked during black powder era ! Simple enough?
2. No armor is perfect, which does not mean it's not worth it. Which is illustrated by the first reintroduction of metal armor on mass . That would be the metal helmets of the Great War.
Imperfect armor is still armor! Partial armor does work!
That is my main argument against a very common myth , that gunpowder made armor obsolete. *It, simply, did, not, happen. *
Most of your questions are nonsense "whattaboutism", but I'll address a few.
"Is it cost"
Now? Of course not. Steel is very cheap nowadays, so *if people still use it, it's because it works! * Got it? If it works now, it must have worked against black powder guns.
"would the weight be practical?"
You could always make armor so strong, that it would make you almost invulnerable, but people have never done it. Because it wasn't practical. Yet, they always wore some armor, as long as they could *afford it*. They started with a helmet. Just as The Great War soldiers.
"spalling isn't usually a problem"
Have you ever seen people shooting rifle rounds at a metal plate? If you get hit in the chest plate, the bullet explodes into a circle of tiny fragments, which slide along the plate. They hit your neck arteries and/or the arteries underneath your arms, if you happen to have them extended (shooting). Spalling is a problem. Not much of a problem against pistol rounds or shrapnel, but against rifle rounds a bare metal plate hardly protects your life. Thankfully, spalling can be controlled with relative ease by covering the metal with rubbery plastic. A lot of extra protection for a very minor cost in weight and money.
"The best body armour currently in use are not steel-only."
That was always the case. Nothing new here. "Metal armor" is simply a more convenient term to use, but it's imprecise.
"why do modern militaries spend so much"
They are small, highly trained forces. Like medieval knights. Their life is valuable, because of the training they have. Nobody cares about a grunt, who can be replaced within two months.
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Metatron Judo has this "do" thing too, and it's an Olympic sport. In sumo they don't just need to bow, they need to do a funny squat and wave their legs about before contest, and it's a sport. You can't boast too, so what? It's still a sport, and your status is very tightly connected to your achievements in the arena.
In snooker you are supposed to observe certain rules of conduct too, dress properly, behave like a gentleman, and it's still a sport.
I would say that kendo was not a sport, if it retained a broad range of traditional techniques, not just some rituals and pseudo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Then I would buy it. Then they could convince me that winning is not everything, because they actively cultivate techniques which are not worth keeping in a sporting environment. But according to what you said, it's not what they do. HEMA does it, for example. Kendo does not.
In the end, it's not what they say that matters, it's what they do!
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@simplicius11 Obviously we mostly agree, but I take an issue with "Wehrmacht didn't have big fuel problems" statement.
Not a big issue, mind you. It depends on what you precisely wanted to say, but it can be read as "Wehrmacht had enough fuel", which I think wouldn't be true.
At this time most fuel in the world came from Venezuela, apparently. This trade was obviously blocked, so in order to conduct huge military operations, like the invasion of Europe or Soviet Union, Germany had to save fuel in advance. That slowed them down significantly.
But of course they could dig in and defend without as much fuel, so you are correct. I just thought I'll throw it out there, just in case.
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@gabrielinostroza4989 "zero sum"
That's not true. Even if we disregard a bug which drives the whole economy down over time, there is still an intended in-game mechanics of trading villagers. If they can't reach the city they go for, both the village and the city suffers. Sieges also have negative impact on economy, so it's not a zero-sum. The sum total is negative.
"map painting game"
That's also not true. All that counts is the number of lords in a kingdom, and if there are many of them, they will respawn in their last castle, create a big army (nothing else to do for them) and often rebound. Map painting counts for less that it "realistically" should.
"no strongarming a foreign population or state"
It's not worth the effort, but it's in-game. Maybe in a mod? Diplomacy is a mod I considered crucial, due to bugs in vanilla, so I might have forgotten how it is to play without it.
Anyway, it's there. One way or the other.
"punitive actions across a porous border"
It's there. Too much of it, actually. A lord can and will travel across the whole map, just to raid your useless village. Then another one. And yet another one. Until you manage to successfully lose it and never claim it back! ;-)
I concur, no game is or can ever come close to reality. Obviously. With that said, I do believe that M&B managed to somehow reflect a few important factors. You do have to defeat the army in order to go for sieges. You do have to siege the fortresses in order to capture the territory. Once you do that, the enemy grows weaker, while you (at least have a chance to) grow stronger.
I hardly played Total War. Just enough to figure out that's not my thing. I can't comment on this game, but it seems to me, judging from some YT videos, that it's a game not attempting to reflect the reality of warfare very much. I mean, they have elves, rats, dinosaurs and even some sex cult in there, don't they?
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@saintsone7877 " You have now moved the goalposts "
I literally just chimed in. How could have I "moved the goalpost", that is change the view I'm defending?
" EXPERT at memorisation yet somehow they now make at worst some inconsequential substitutions. "
That's what I read. They were presented with a page of prose , which is much harder to memorize than rhyme.
You could substitute some original words for their synonyms and still pass the exam.
Where did I read it? I think in Richard Burke, somewhere.
" If so, why did you move the goalposts? "
Which goalpost?
" Unless you can present such a person in a properly conducted random test I call it BS. "
There are people nowadays who can do it. There were some schools who claimed to improve memory and they really worked. It's just that it takes a lot of work, while carrying a notepad does not, and both methods accomplish more or less the same goal.
BTW - do you think people could memorize multiple epics? Well, the consensus on Homer's work is that it was composed without scripture. The bards would then earn a living by reciting those epics for money.
Iliad is (funny, I already forgot, I need to check again) 52 000 words, Odyssey is (recheck...) 134 000 words.
Do you think that people with such capabilities were able to recite lengthy fragments of a play they just seen? It would be weird if they were not, that's my stance.
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@gabrielaaugusto4972 " I suspect they were smarter. Imagine how many of us would survive "
That's a legit argument. They definitely went through a much harsher selection process, and since intelligence is highly hereditary, we could reasonably expect that people back then were more intelligent than us.
However, it's not so simple. For example, height is just as strongly influenced by genetics, shorter people are selected out (ask any lady...), so we could expect that under harsh selection the survivors would grow taller.
Yet they didn't. We are taller than them. Because genetics is not everything, nutrition does matter too.
So it's all quite complex. My personal take is that we are smarter on average . Not by very much, mind you, but our ability to feed all the calories the developing brains require manages to outweigh more lax selection we are currently going through.
In a nutshell, we don't really know.
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@Serge Rambert "poisoned present of Danzig"
It's a port at the Vistula estuary. Germans closed it anyway, so we had to build a new one nearby. It was so crucial.
Piłsudski died in 1935 (as a clinically mad person). Hitler studied his coup in 1926 and admired him too. I don't. Both those guys were monsters, as far as I'm concerned.
"He could have prevented the war with Germany"
I believe that to be likely. Poland under Piłsudski would likely become a satellite of Germany, but we'd still end up fighting in a war. The losses wouldn't be so bad, though.
"I would like to understand what happens as regards Beck in 1938-39, why he stubbornly rejected the German demands, and pushed his own country into war against both Germany and the Soviets !!"
He says it in his speech. It was a matter of honor. That simple.
It's like, it's hard to understand how come Japanese women would jump off a cliff with children in their hands instead of surrendering, but they did it.
Well, we have our own crazy and we feel rather attached to it. Sad part is, that currently we are in a very similar situation, and I'm afraid it may end up just as badly.
But what other choice do we have? Bend over and pretend we kinda like it? No, sorry, we aren't good at that stuff. And you never know for sure when is the perfect time to bet or to fold, only in hindsight. Beck didn't know either.
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@Member_zero " I would put the beginning of actual democracy in America "
Why there? Because they were big? Roman Republic was huge for the time, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was big too.
" untill 1920 (!) for women "
Oh, you mean "representation"? Well, in that case, we never had "real" democracy, because a lot of people have no vote. Prisoners, children, teenagers?
Anyway, since we are keeping scores, women could vote in Poland since 1918, when we finally got our state back.
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@johnpeate4544 " Goodwood was a success "
In all honesty, I think so too. It's just that I was willing to count that one on the side of failures. (Only because if they knew what's gonna happen, they'd totally demolish the Germans there. Hindsight, like always.)
" similar distance, taking 3 months and 3x casualties "
There's the rub, really. If you slow down to catch a breath, you let the enemy prepare too. Even if you do nothing and simply sit there, your troops will still melt from under you. War is hell, so the saying goes: "If you find yourself going through hell, keep on going !".
Simplistic, but kinda accurate.
" He received a ‘Secret’ cable "
That's another area where hindsight works best, meaning the intelligence reports. First of all, your intelligence is always fragmentary and conflicting, even if the enemy is incompetent in this regard. I mean, your own troops often end up confused about what they are supposed to do, so why would you expect that intercepting all this info would give the other side military omniscience? It simply doesn't.
However, the enemy isn't always incompetent and they do interfere.
I wrote this in the context of "there were reports of Panzer divisions in the area" before Arnhem. Gavin also had such reports, he believed them, and that's what doomed the whole operation in the end.
(With that said, he still effed up. There was no reason for him not to capture the bridge first and dig in later. It's always easier to defend a town.)
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@88porpoise I had to check what I wrote, because your response is so unrelated.
Anyway, the "status quo" was, that there was no Poland for 150-ish years. Of course we didn't want that to be maintained.
Regarding your actual accusation, I'm not going to defend the Sanacja regime or Piłsudski. They were the reason why Poland was subdued so easily and so quickly. But of course, they couldn't do it without outside help. Money talks, and they had the finances and other resources available, in order to try and seize the power. Over and over again, until it finally worked.
TL:DR - It's complicated. Kinda tragic too. In short, life.
But even with all that taken into account, even considering that the regime I absolutely despise made plenty of mistakes, Poland did not do anything particularly damning.
The people simply would not accept it.
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@Asterix958 "European armies tend to have 25% ratio for camp followers."
That would be low, according to Radosław Sikora, whom I read currently. 1:1 ratio is more reasonable, or you have to count armed servants into soldiers.
Actually, recently I watch Stalingrad battle series and it was the same for Wehrmacht. The ratio of combat to support troops was roughly 1:1, until the losses mounted and then it became even worse. The only difference was that all those people were on the paylist, while in the XVIIth century only combat troops received pay for their service.
"They massacred capitulated Ottoman garrison."
You guys did the same. If the capitulation was agreed upon, there was no massacre. Otherwise everybody was either killed or enslaved.
Why would you expect any other treatment?
With that said, our side sees this encounter very differently. I'm not claiming that we are correct and you guys are wrong, I just note the differences.
Polish forces were about equal in size with the allied forces. The two opposing armies were also about equal in size. 15 000 Poles, 16 000 allies, 32-36 000 Turks.
1500 Turks were taken prisoner. No mention of the massacre of the garrison, only of the fleeing enemy.
Regarding lack of discipline or ethics, it's not like anybody else was that much better. What I assume you mean by the lack of discipline was considered the usual way of procuring provisions. It's not my fault, that's how it worked. That's why the servants were armed. Lisowczycy were employed all over Europe to do this type of warfare. We were not special, neither were you guys. The times were rough.
Finally, regarding Sobieski, the first day of Parkany was his only defeat. He fought his whole life... And of course, on the second day he orchestrated the final and total destruction of the enemy forces. (Polish horsemen cut of the retreat and Polish artillery destroyed the bridge, those are facts.)
Even the mistake at Parkany is somewhat understandable, because it was a gamble. He thought he knew where the enemy was, so he wanted to surprise them. That's why not many patrols were sent. The gamble backfired badly, but he turned it around. Also, the gamble would have worked, if the commander of the front guard listened to orders.
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@Asterix958 "1:1 ratio for actual army + camp followers shouldn't be true"
Roman legion paid for one servant for five lowest rank soldiers. They were already counted into "regular army", centuria was actually 80 combatants. That's before anybody else joined in, that's the absolute lowest possible ratio.
You argue that for the Ottomans it was only slightly worse (65-68 to 20). I find it doubtful and numbers in historical sources are always doubtful too.
"I don't think a serious historian make mistake about such a basic informations."
History is a very politicized science. I'm not saying nothing like that massacre could've happened, but it wouldn't be the first time that history written by the opposing sides of the conflict differs by a lot.
Anyway, our guys write that we took 15000 prisoners at Vienna and about 1500 at Parkany.
"Poles also plundered Hungarian villages"
That's probably true. As Sobieski wrote "Prowiantów żadnych nie dają", which means that his army received no supplies from the Holy League. They knew that a starving army will find supplies elsewhere.
(Sobieski also complained, that he couldn't beg a single ship, to transport the wounded at his own cost. Austrians were not happy to be rescued...)
Also: " W Thökölym, moja duszo – pisał 28 września Marysieńce – ja się nie kocham, ale nad narodem węgierskim mam wielkie miłosierdzie, bo są okrutnie utrapieni”.
That means, the he disliked Thokoly, but he pitied the Hungarians, who suffered a lot. That's what he wrote in a private letter to his wife. Not some public declaration or whatever. And it's not an exception, that's what he often writes!
Koenigsegg: „Oby bogowie sprawili, żeby Jan III powrócił jak najprędzej do Polski, gdyż rujnuje nasz kraj i oszczędza buntowników [tj. Węgrów], zamiast pomóc nam ich wytępić”.
That's a Polish translation of a German letter, where the guy complains that Sobieski is a nuisance, because he ruins the country while sparing the [Hungarian] rebels, instead of helping the Austrians to eradicate them! The Austrian guy complains that Sobieski is too soft!
"Thökökly actually think to change side"
What kind of history is that? Written for children? "I considered switching sides, but since they treat me like an enemy, I got so angry! Bad, ugly, Poles!" ;-)
"massacred captives"
Captives, precisely? If so, I find it doubtful that any massacre happened. That was rare. Killing the surrendering enemy in battle was much more common, but also very easy to understand. First of all, he could decide to forget his surrender at any moment, so he needed to be guarded and/or restrained. Without it, you just let the enemy get behind your back. Not what you want...
Germans might have done it much less often, simply because they almost never achieved the total destruction of the enemy forces. Their style of warfare very rarely resulted in it.
"32-36.000 number for Ottoman army is wrong."
It always depends how you count. That's why the numbers in the sources need to be analysed carefully.
Anyway, Polish Wikipedia lists 10 000 vs. 15 000 for the first day and 30 000 vs. 36 000 for the second day. Mostly cavalry on the Ottoman side.
(In my opinion there got to be more soldiers than 17 000. 10 000 dead, 1 500 prisoners, almost everybody dead or captured? Possible against infantry, impossible against cavalry.)
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@Asterix958 "Yes, [nearly] Everybody dead or captured."
That would actually check out with our sources. The number of captured differs from source to source, but some claimed around 6000 "wounded or terrified". So that's good that this piece of info seems to be consistent on both sides.
Still, actions speak louder than words. If Kara Mehmet was hopelessly outnumbered (and outgunned too!), he should've behaved differently.
He did not. Therefore I doubt that the situation of the Ottomans was hopeless, until there are sources which explain how come such an incompetent commander ended up leading an army into battle.
"Sobieski behave like he won the battle"
Rightfully so. His leadership, plus Polish cavalry, was the main reason why Vienna survived.
(No, infantry action alone wouldn't have worked, even with huge advantage on the Holy Legue side, which they didn't have anyway.)
Von Staufenberg was incredibly impressed. That dude was all steel and fire, that one! He knew warfare. His opinion is worth quite a lot in my book.
"Emperor Leopold ordered that he will enter city first."
Where was he, when the situation looked bad? Nowhere to be seen...
If his talents came even close to his pride, he wouldn't need the Poles.
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@Sealdeam " were they, the people, his fellow citizens or were they his subjects both in reality as well as in paper? "
The commoners were subjects. Still, no problem with the king converting. All of Rus was Orthodox. That would include current Belarus in The Grand Duchy, and current Ukraine, in the so called Crown (of Poland).
" regardless of the religious freedom "
You guys don't seem to understand how much of it existed in Rzeczpospolita, not even taking into account the context of religious wars going on in Europe at the time. We did have plenty of towns with a catholic church right next to an orthodox church, which both were not far from a mosque and a synagogue.
The only situation you could somehow count as a case of oppression, was when Moscow outed Kiev as the head of the Orthodox church (with poison). Then the Rus nobility started converting to protestant religions, because they didn't want a patriarch in Moscow. Poland tried to solve this issue by switching the orthodoxy to the Roman Pope, with all the customs intact, mind you. It was intended as purely an administrative change.
This church still exist, and while it was in general more of a success than failure, it did spark some controversy.
" resist or rebel their ruler "
The only rebellions we had were in orthodox parts of the Crown, so having an orthodox king would likely help.
It's just, he wouldn't have been elected. The majority of nobles were catholic, the elections were held in their homeland, so they had superior numbers.
Anyway, no, the reasons for refusing to convert were personal. Apart from religion, the king was simply afraid his son will get killed in Moscow, and rightfully so. I mean, they did murder the wedding guests of False Dmitri already. (BTW - that was one of the reasons why the nobility decided to go after Moscow. They got royally p....d over that.).
" powerful magantes [...] all too willing to side with external powers "
As long as the core, middle class nobility was healthy, they held the reins of the state, not the magnates. It all went south when the middle class started disappearing and they were forced to serve the magnates in order to survive. Then the power balance shifted, up to and including foreign influence.
They recognized that this situation needed fixing, but instead of turning to tyranny, they voted in the first European Constitution.
Was it wrong? Well, the absolutist France went down in flames. Russia survived for longer, but when the spark was struck there, it was even worse. You make it sound like tyranny is more stable and harder to exploit than democracy - I think it's much more equal.
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@lukasvandervelden287 "nation of poland did not excist prior to 1919"
Poland existed since late Xth c. A.D. In late XIVth c. it created a union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the resulting entity was called Rzeczpospolita (a "republic of nobles" or a commonwealth, if you insist).
That was finally partitioned in late XVIIIth c, but the nation and culture still existed and even intensified, because in XIXth century all social classes were included into the nation. Previously only the nobles had national identity.
In 1918 we reappeared on the map of Europe, but that simply reflected the cultural reality, which was always present.
Nations, as we understand them right now, didn't exist prior to XIXth century. Poles were no different. However, even with this caveat, 1919 is much too late of a date for a polish nation to form.
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@lukas1392 "DeserTech MDR. They look almost identical (on the outside)"
The basic idea of a 7.62 bullpup makes them look similar, but MDR looks like a "quick hack" and a clever prototype in comparison to Grot. That's only my not particularly qualified opinion, but MDR has so many, tiny, little, bolts holding it together, that it's hard to not go there. You don't expect to need several different allen keys in order to disassemble a rifle any more...
Also, the ejection system in MDR falls dangerously close toward "too clever" engineering fallacy. A bunch of tiny little parts, which need to fit each other just right in order to work, for not that much gain. Switching Grot from left to right ejection is very quick. You could do it out in the field, no need to go to the armory. Making the operation slightly smoother at the cost of complex, experimental design seems like a risky bet.
The action itself differs. Grot is based on AR18, MDR on a modified AR15. Modified quite a lot. Again, a risky bet, but I suspect that in this case it's a winner. Meaning, it could be made to work in military environment, despite containing more tiny, easy to lose parts, but it's still no advantage over Grot, which does already work in the military environment. (Also, the bolt on MDR seems rather light for what it's asked to do. Chambering a round in addition to "chambering" an empty case and such a low mass thing to do it all? Maybe. I'm not an engineer. Who knows?)
Six settings on the gas system, easy to adjust with the tip of the round, after you take off the handguard, which requires an allen key...
Sorry, I stop here. MDR is not a military rifle, MSBS Grot is. Compare like with like. MDR to some other civilian rifles in similar price range, Grot to some other military rifles which serve the same purpose.
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I was correct in my former prediction. Because you guys do not understand cavalry, you also do not understand the bayonet.
Initially bayonets made no sense. The guns were very heavy. So heavy, you couldn't shoot them without support. Even with a spike at the end, it's not a real weapon. They carried swords, which are just better in melee than even the latest bayonets.
Later on they used plug bayonets, because they still had actual pikemen. Pikes are much better weapons than any kind of a bayonet. No comparison. Still, all those musketeers could be of some use, if they stuck something sharp at the end of a barrel. Who knows, but maybe they won't rout as often? (A period manual I read was very skeptical about it, though...)
Then, eventually, they got the hang of metallurgy and managed to produce relatively light muskets. Those were much more nimble, so they are fairly close to a battlefield weapon. So close, that it made sense to equip your troops with it.
But it was never a real weapon. It's heavy, the reach is shorter than that of a sword, it's crooked, it's not even in line with the barrel. Just something you could use in a pinch, so your guys wouldn't feel totally defenseless, once they discharged their one shot.
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@Lothar Nauth "The Nazis were not socialists."
Weren't they? What was the name of their party? The National Socialist German Workers Party...
"believed in prussian identity"
They were Nationalists, so obviously they believed in national identity, but Hitler hated Prussians anyway.
"traditional gender roles"
True that. They also didn't openly oppose religion, so they had their unique flavor of Socialism. Soviet Union started with an opposing view on gender roles and religion, but ended up exactly in the same spot as Nazi Germany. Women were expected to be virtuous mothers, while religion was replaced with secular cults based around state and state leaders.
"suppression of all individuality, strict order and hierarchy"
Anarcho-communists believed otherwise, but Soviet bolsheviks were very much the same.
"The reason why they added "Socialist" to their name was because they already had "WORKERS" in it."
Well, they also promised and realized state intervention programs which were directed toward improving the life of the common worker, like autobahns or armament. The industry technically remained in private hands, but only as long as the owners did what they were told.
How does it differ from Soviet Union, where you were a director of a factory, but only as long as the ruling party (CPSU or NSDAP) accepted you at this role...
Well, there was a difference, I admit that, but not a huge one. The main difference being that the Soviet Union has already worked through the economy collapse and they settled on something workable in the long run, while Germany was still waiting for the disaster to strike.
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@ComradeOgilvy1984 "caring about individual rights"
I wrote "individual freedom ", not rights. Rights are not freedoms. Rights need to be guaranteed by something, freedoms do not. Just leave them alone, they will be there.
Just for example, freedom of speech is not a right (though it's called that often). If there is no law which forbids you from speaking your mind, it's automatically present. Hate speech laws on the other hand, protect your right to not be offended, so they grant you a right which was not there before. As we can see, hate speech laws infringe upon freedom of speech.
The left tends to concentrates on rights (ironic pun not intended), while the right concentrates on freedoms.
Fascist were lefites also because they concentrated on rights. Germans, as a collective group, had a right to lebensraum. In order to guarantee this right, the freedom of others needed to be infringed upon.
Authoritarianism is simply an emergent quality of leftiest's ideologies. While authoritarian right is definitely possible (monarchists are right-wing, for example), libertarian left is not. Concentrating on collective rights necessitates organized coercion.
Italian fascism started as an offshoot of anarchist ideology, but it didn't matter in the end, did it? The worker's right to "fair" pay needed to be guaranteed by the state. That's how it always goes.
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+The Fake SecDef - There is no discrepancy between the leaked report and this Norwegian guy. The report is blunt, the Norwegian pilot is trying to make it all look nice, but the characteristics of the plane do not differ.
For example he writes "airplane that allows me to be more forward and aggressive" - That's consistent with the report. Since JSF lacks energy, she can't stay in a fight. She must be aggressive and hope for a quick kill. "it gives me the ability to reduce the airspeed quicker than in the F-16." - Of course. She bleeds energy like a stuck pig.
And of course it's a PR spiel. Lots of money at stake. Well, they even said she could take on a Tiffy at some point, but guys in RAF weren't having any of it, so it backfired a bit.
Regarding your argument that the plane does not need to fly well any more, I don't believe it, yet. Missiles miss, the more energy the aircraft has, the more often they miss. And you could put all those wonderful future weapons on a plane which can fly, or is at least cheap.
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Metatron If you are into anthropology, I'm sure you know about Malinowski. He was the first to realize, that rituals have real meaning. I'm sure that rituals in sumo or kendo also have real meaning, and I bet they have something to do with social status... Don't they?
Anyway, my condescending tone was used on purpose, to emphasize that whatever ritual people use, it's just that. A ritual. All sports have rituals and code of conduct. All of them have moral ideals toward which competitors should at least strive. Since the very beginning, since Olympia, sports were not only about winning, but about winning while manifesting certain ideals.
Kendo is no different. Or, if kendo is really different, I can't understand how.
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" Heraclitus' emphasis on change and contradiction profoundly impacted philosophy, despite some notions being logically flawed. "
They were not flawed. When Schliemann have found Troy, it was in ruins. Was it "the same" Troy as that of Iliad? No, it was different, yet still the same.
TiK claims that it's a false contradiction, because it's the same city. Well, it was just a mound of dirt by then, so not even a city. How can something be considered to be "the same city", when it's not even a city anymore?
The contradiction is real, if a statement can only be either true or false, with no in-betweens. That's not true, though. We've known that truth can be a function with possible values from 0 to 1 only for a relatively short time. TiK still doesn't seem to understand it.
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@JaM-R2TR4 "TIK got his videos refuted in a quite detailed manner"
I've looked through this publication and I can't see how TIK's main premise was refuted there. TIK claims that when Barbarossa started, Axis forces outnumbered Soviet forces which opposed them. The author does not refute this claim with anything more than hand waving.
For example, he attacks Russian sources (used by TIK) for not doing absolutely everything and focusing on irrecoverable loses, then just adds an arbitrary number to those loses (subtracting from recoverable losses figure), because K/D ratio doesn't favor Wehrmach enough!
I mean, seriously... K/D ratio? What is it, a Call of Duty game, or what?
As far as front strength goes, he does a very similar trick too. He just adds more to whatever is already published for the Soviets, just because. He even advises the reader to do just that whenever he reads Glantz...
Based on what? On his so far unpublished analysis, which I'm sure is going to recover precious K/Ds in the future. That's just grand!
Then he finishes with "but they were still outnumbered" chapter, which adds nothing. Everybody knows being outnumbered sucks. The thing is, Germans claimed to be heavily outnumbered, like 5:1 or even 10:1 ish and still do well.
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Re: "the wall of spearhead, that proved to be absolutely deadly"
That's not true. Without field fortifications to break the charge, the cavalry could and did go through. The pikes were a deterrent, they made the charge more costly, but usually not because the infantry killed so many riders, but rather because they could wound the mounts.
And that was expensive.
So more costly, but not "absolutely deadly". That statement can be shown to be simply incorrect, as long as the cavalry were trained lancers. Much harder to do with swords. Extremely difficult without armor.
Re: Paraphrasing: "The charge was deadly for the riders, as long as the infantry kept their formation".
That's also untrue. The cavalry was trained for hit-and-run tactics, so they could repeat the attack many times. Which did happen. We have fairly detailed accounts of many battles from that era, where they listed all the casualties. Names and all.
Failed charges were not costly.
Get it in your head, somehow. It's well attested. It's true. It's a fact.
Re: "More guns = better army"
I'll just keep on disagreeing with most of this summary, sentence by sentence?
You guys just don't get cavalry. And because of that, I bet your ideas about the bayonet are most likely faulty as well. Let's see...
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@m.s.8927 " *It was longer in german hands than the polish ethnicity itself existed * "
I'm not sure what you mean, but let me sketch a rough picture, so we know where were are, alright?
So, the heartland of Poland is Greater Poland and Lesser Poland. Silesia lies right beside both of those regions. There was never a Silesian king of Poland, but at least one of them came pretty close.
Yes, they floated their grain down the Odra river, so it made more sense for them to become friends with people who controlled the estuary, but ethnically speaking, they were us.
In light of that, what do you mean?
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@tollictollic3610 " the city itself had a German population "
It was like that all over XIIIth century Poland, and those people Polonized on mass. Why should Wrocław be any different? Even Thorn (Toruń) was largely Polonized by as early as XVth century, and this city had absolutely no Slavic roots and no original Slavic population.
Let me paint you a picture. The German settlers were craftsmen and tradesmen. The absolute majority of the population back then were peasants, who all spoke Polish, and they were pretty much their sole customers.
You are a german carpenter, for example. If you are not hired by the Poles, you got nothing to feed your family. What do you do, when you see your son playing with Polish kids?
Well, a considerate father would rather encourage it than discourage, wouldn't he? He's gonna take over your business at some point, and you want him succeed, so he needs to speak the language of his customers.
I have absolutely nothing against those German settlers. They taught us a lot. We needed them. But they needed us too!
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@HingerlAlois "the lance would most likely be destroyed once you hit the first guy."
Yeah. Those lances were designed to break. Still, it wasn't so easy. Usually only some percentage of the troops managed to connect, so at least a few charges could be performed at full force. A "reload" was also possible if the supply train was near by.
Then there was also the koncerz. At Klushino 1610 some units charged over 10 times.
"15.000 could try to envelop an army of 3.000 [...] possibility of being destroyed."
It didn't work at Klushino, though. During the initial stages of battle, the Russian strategy was based around the idea of isolating and enveloping the charging units. It mostly worked, because the charges were eventually stopped and the units cut out. Yet they managed to hack their way back. Every time.
I mean, how do you stop an armored rider who's desperately trying to get out? His horse is trained to make space, even if there is none. If infantry had a hard time of enveloping and destroying units which penetrated too deeply (for which we have many sources), the cavalry would have even harder time. They can't pack as many weapons into the same space as infantry.
Like I said before. Win or lose, the destruction of either force was unlikely.
Actually, it seems to work similarly for pure infantry combat. To the point that Jomini wrote: "An army deficient in cavalry rarely obtains a great victory, and finds its retreats extremely difficult."
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You are such a smart guy, that it genuinely boggles my mind when you have troubles following what I would consider to be a very basic reasoning.
Let's consider late war war 2.
Q: Are Germans capable of offensive operations?
A: Only to a very limited degree.
Q: So why are you surprised that they preferred to use their tanks defensively instead of offensively?
A: ????
Regarding spear and shield. - It's not used the way you seem to think it was used. You do not hold it out, you keep it close in, in an overhand grip, sometimes even with the point hidden behind the shield itself. Then, you do not "poke" at the enemy. You throw at them, but "catch" the spear before it leaves your grip. Spear and shield combat is done at a fairly close range. Sure, you'd still have a reach advantage over sword and shield, but late republic / early empire legions carried thrown weapons to diminish this disadvantage. Both legions also worn swords, so that did not change.
You can carry either a javelin or a spear into battle. Take your pick.
In other words - Early legions had better reach due to throwing weapons, late legions sacrificed this advantage for a more effective close combat weapon. Exactly the opposite to what you have suggested.
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@Asterix958 "Poles reached Battle of Vienna very late in 4 p.m."
That's how long it took to get those guns over Khalenberg. Yes, the German infantry fought a containing action up to this point, but they had no hopes of victory, and especially no hopes of a decisive victory, if the plan failed.
It didn't fail, though.
"They didn't fight very well as well. In fact, books I read say this way."
I happened to read (a translation of) one of your letters, which described the first preliminary attack of Zbierzchowski banner at Vienna.
So, I couldn't believe, that both sides stopped fighting for a moment, just to have a look at how one , company strength banner attacks the whole might of the Ottoman empire.
It checked out. You guys confirmed it happened, you guys confirmed they broke through into the camp...
Most of the letter is about how you guys "valiantly prevailed" against those "horrible odds". How people were surprised that trying to cut a cuirass with a saber was no good, so you came to your senses very quickly, gathered some warhammers and axes, then repelled the unbelievers.
That was one banner ... Just to see if the charge was feasible in this terrain.
In other words, while reading various accounts, one must concentrate on facts and mostly ignore all the chestbeating.
"If they did have modern vehicles, this ratio would be smaller."
How about the Germans at Stalingrad? 1:1-ish. Later worse, since combat troops die more often (always true, though). 25% is just silly. Roman Legions paid for one servant per five infantrymen. Who's going to patch up all the clothes, repair boots, feed the wounded, bake bread, water the horses, guard them on pastures, go out and buy or rob the food? All those mundane tasks, without which no war machine can function.
I do not buy your numbers.
"Yes, Ottoman commander was idiot that much. It is surprising but it is true."
Yeah, and Kara Mustafa another one... Impossible? No. Improbable? Very likely.
"Thököly thought changing side. I don't understand why do you oppose this information."
Our sources confirm he tried to strike some sort of a deal. That he was some not very likable person, not very capable either.
I precisely oppose this emotional spiel, that he was so heartbroken about the Poles ravaging the country, that he decided to stay with the Ottomans.
Wrong kind of guy, methinks. And the Poles behaved decently in Hungary. (War is war, so I don't expect miracles, but they did try.)
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@kajus1402 "by the 1600s it was less of an issue"
Less of an issue, but still an issue. The schools were either Rus or Polish, so those were the languages of correspondence (Polish only later on).
"Yeah but it always was clear to point out it was an multiethnic state"
At least some of you guys claimed that while there were many nations within the Duchy, you guys still ruled over them. The example given was like Spanish who ruled over Mexicans, or Macedonians over Persians.
That was not the case. The nobility had the same rights, regardless of their ethnicity. Lithuanian nobles landed in Rus areas took local wives and their children were already Rus, so in the end Rus people ruled themselves.
"Ironically it only because somewhat forced onto the people only during the tsarist era."
Poles did that? How? I rather think that in this era the concept of nationality fully matured, so it became apparent for you guys that you are losing something of importance.
So what was not an issue before, became one. That's how I see it.
"Lithuanian(or more fittingly Ruthenian)"
I was told he was pure Lithuanian, because his property was in Samogotia...
Anyway, Chodkiewicz's ancestry is easy to find. His grandfather was Rus and married a Polish lady, his father too. Chodkiewicz was of Polish nationality (and Rus ancestry).
"don't think its very fitting to use modern ideas regarding nationality"
When it comes to nobility, I believe it's warranted.
"having two ethnicities"
Just like it is today, isn't it?
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I wouldn't dismiss Monty so quickly. I'm sure he was aware of the situation around Antwerp, and if he considered the immediate push to the west incorrect, I suspect there were reasons for it. Ike also was capable of pretending to "know it all" from the start, especially with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
What I mean by all that, is that the defense of Rhine estuary did not require huge amounts of supplies being shipped constantly. Clearing it would still be a difficult task, whether the German troops were totally cut off, or not. Does it really make sense to spend your troops to do so, while you have an easier target right to the East? More profitable target too, since defeating it allows you to poor more reinforcements into the vital bridgehead.
Regarding push towards Rhur and Berlin, I think it was on the cards. Maybe not before Christmas, but who knows? There is a big difference in the amount of required strength between winning a battle in the open against uprepared enemy, and brute-forcing a highly contested and well prepared defences on the Rhine.
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@ihaveachihuahau " large army was why Rome lasted "
I remember I disputed this idea at some point, that Roman armies were uncommonly large. First, the numbers they quote include everybody (apart from servants), that is the shoemakers, bakers, engineers, smiths, so forth. Later on those people were called "camp followers" or "non combat servants".
Then, in general the percentage of people involved in military service wasn't crazy, especially for antiquity.
Let's take the Gauls. All able bodied men were warriors and could be expected to take part in a military operation.
Well, I'm not too sure about it all, but it does not seem to me that Rome was "all that" militaristic. Apart from "Hannibal ante portas", obviously, but that's nothing special either, since even women and children were often expected to help defend a city under siege.
So, were they especially warlike, or not? I think not, but I"m willing to reconsider my position.
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@ihaveachihuahau I wouldn't say there was no standing army during medieval times. They had professional soldiers in garrisons, obviously infantry, but that would be just like what Rome did.
It's just that those guys got squashed out in the open by knights.
Then, I don't think that it takes that much unit training in order to have dominant cavalry force. Cohesion is paramount for infantry, especially in field battles, not so much for cavalry.
Finally, what is better? To have guys equipped for free and paid to fight, or to have people who are required to defend their privileged status, or they lose it?
I don't know, but if a Roman army was supposed to face a medieval army, I'd bet on medieval army.
With one caveat. Romans had superior command structure and therefore superior commanders, so they could win, despite being at a disadvantage.
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@theeggtimertictic1136 "I was fifteen when Chernobyl happened and I'm now 48 and we're still living with the effects "
- Yes, you do, but the effects you are dealing with are purely psychological , not somatic.
There were various studies after the disaster and they discovered a whole bunch of weird effects in people who were not exposed to any radiation at all. Like, their nails would come off, for example, and nothing else would be wrong with them.
They suffered from stress induced hysteria or a massive placebo effect (they are related). Actual confirmed victims of radiation exposure were few. You are not one of them.
(Inb4 someone mentions studies which put a number of victims into the thousands region, they are bogus and based on unconfirmed hypothesis, with no effort given to verify its validity.
1. They assume and take for granted , that any exposure to radiation is bad.
2. They assume and take for granted , that bad effects are directly proportional to the dose.
Both of those assumptions are unlikely to be true, because people living in areas with high level of background radiation do not show any excessive health problems. If those assumptions were true, those health risks must be detectable. They aren't. Done deal.)
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+the vu - I read through your link and nothing I found there contradicts the proposals I made. Apparently, they do not violate known physics of electromagnetism. Good to know that people who paid me for doing it didn't waste their money. ;-)
Anyway, yes, you could run the signal of "noise spots" or however you want to call them through some stealth defeating logic to compare and aggregate various data assigned to those "noise spots". Is it practical? I think yes, provided that some form of stealth becomes common. So far it makes no sense. There are no real truly operational stealth aircraft as of today.
"even without stealth, F-35 still has very impressive SA"
- Does it? With the worst cockpit out there? Maybe it will, some day, when this magic helmet will eventually work, and work well. As of today, it's just bad.
I mean, the design of JSF was started in mid nineties. That's "Duke Nukem 3D" era, for crying out loud. There was no Internet back then (not really, at least).
So the question remains, does the concept of F-35 still hold up? I'm not asking if stealth is viable, it probably is. But does it make sense to create a one-trick-pony of an airplane with practically no other virtues?
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+AudieHolland - Actually, cavalry as an effective fighting force survived for much longer. Since you mentioned machineguns, how about a horse-drawn mobile machinegun? It's been used during and after WW1 in the East Europe. It's been called tachanka, and I remember this name only because it was so effective.
Horsemen move quicker than footmen, get there less tired and in more of a fighting shape, and they can bring artillery and machineguns with them for support. Cavalry was used like that throughout the WWII by all sides, and it's usefulness was limited by the supply of horses, not any tactical limitations.
So you see, it's not the machinegun which obsoleted the cavalry, but a truck and the road network on which trucks can drive.
Similarly, it may appear that gunpowder obsoleted heavy cavalry, but if so, why Napoleonic cuirassiers? That's heavy cavalry in the era of light and quickly firing smallarms, light and powerful field artillery, with capabilities waaay above of those early firearms which apparently defeated much better trained and equipped knights.
And the same goes for armor. People still use armor nowadays, more and more with every decade. WWI has seen the first mass adoption of the most important piece of armor, that is the helmet. Armor was never obsolete.
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+Girrawaa - So you say that the Christ was a good person with great teachings, but later it was all somehow wasted by his faulty followers?
First, we don't know him all that well. The books which describe his life were written quite late, several generations after his death, when he already became a cult focus, so it's expected that his story would change at least a little. Besides, various accounts differ, so we are sure they are not perfectly accurate.
Then, at the time of writing those stories the Christianity already spread among non-Jews. It used to be just a small Jewish sect with a charismatic leader, now it spread among the most powerful, educated and sophisticated people of the world. Mostly because of St. Paul, who never met Yeshua.
Where I go with it all, is that we can't be sure if Yeshua was as perfect as he's being pictured, if early Christianity was at all better than any odd sect nowadays, and finally, that it all went downhill with time.
Actually, I happen to believe that neither Jesus nor early Christianity were especially harmless. Only later people refined it all into something great. Of course it all went astray many a time, due to human nature, but if you want to blame the followers for the bad, credit them for the good too.
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FawfulDied All this convoluted narrative with sinks and all boils down to one single very simple statement - The rate of CO2 absorption does not depend on concentration. Therefore, if humans add extra 5% on top of natural emissions, the excess will accumulate over time.
That's very simple, but very important to understand. I insist.
Can we test this statement? Yes. We can have a look at 14CO2 absorption. If the rate of absorption does not depend of concentration, we expect to see linear decay, and if anthropogenic CO2 accumulates, we also expect to see very slow decay.
But in reality we observe exponential decay function, not linear!, which shows that the rate of absorption does depend on concentration. We also see very short half-life. Exactly contrary to our expectations!
Regarding climate sensitivity - It is true that without high climate sensitivity we have nothing to worry. CO2 alone, even if it accumulates over time, is not capable of raising temperatures to catastrophic levels. If we define safe warming to be about 2.5 deg, then we need at least 1600 ppm to get there! That's a lot!
Finally, contrary to what you wrote, doubling of CO2 will not lead to a much larger increase in temperatures. Estimates vary, but all newer papers show lower and lower values of climate sensitivity. Arguably the best estimate up to date is found in Lewis and Curry paper.
The overall feedback turns out to be very slightly positive (1.33 deg instead of 1.2 for doubling), which is not "much larger" by any means. Careful statistical analysis of the data lowers this number even further.
And we didn't even touch the data itself, despite many people having serious doubts about those. It's possible to argue that actual feedback is negative!
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@SoMuchFacepalm " The old stuff is still there. [...] No contradiction "
What if I borrowed a car from you, then returned it crashed?
Would you still maintain with similar zeal, that it's the same car, bro!
I know I would... ;-)
More seriously, apparently there are objects which are exactly identical. Like, each electron is exactly the same as another electron. There is no such thing as a "broken" electron. If I borrowed one electron from you, there is no way I could cheat you, by returning a similar but different electron.
Then there is no contradiction (and Heraclitus was incorrect, since some things do not change).
Otherwise contradiction exists, but it's caused by our imprecise language and logic that we use. We say "the same", when we mean "so similar, that it makes no difference".
Honestly, I think I solved it.
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@stuglife5514 " T-34 reliability rates were roughly as bad as Panthers "
That's total nonsense. Like a really bad cope.
People usually quote this pre-war Soviet test, where most tanks could not finish due to their air filters being clogged with dust. For all we know, it could have been intentional test, trying to figure out how far you can push those machines without regular stops for cleaning, which was generally required. Those tanks were not broken. They needed scheduled maintenance.
BTW - filter is one of a very few upgrades they focused on. They had like three versions of it.
There is a declassified T-34 American test available online from Korea time. They were very much impressed with the vehicle, its build quality (where it mattered) and reliability.
While we can't even tell how bad Panthers were, because they were unable to even finish the test. Post war production, no bombs, no rush, the same highly qualified people putting it together.
Panther was a disaster.
" 30% of a unit would have tanks out of action due to mechanical failure "
If that even was the case, under the same metric, Germans had to overcome way more obstacles to achieve this number.
Parts availability alone was a nightmare. Germans were fighting in a prototype still under development, so parts from a Panther leaving the assembly line would no longer fit into those under construction.
Let me repeat. Panther was a disaster.
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@Gőzpöfögészeti Tovalöködönc " King Matthias "
That's much later. I'm not saying you must "believe" the source I'm quoting, but you definitely must address it. If it's wrong, untrustful, biased, whatever, you should say something about it, only then you can dismiss it.
What you can't do, is simply ignore it.
BTW - It's not the only source which mentions Serbian banners serving in Poland. It's just the most verbose and I happen to have it quoted in a bigger book of sources.
Anyway, thank you for contesting my viewpoints. Thanks to that I dug deeper, and it seems that the term hussar was used as early as Xth century A.D. in Eastern Roman Empire. There they are called cursarii or chonsarioi, and they are recruited from Serbs for scouting duties.
I can't find the publications for free, and the only excerpts I have are in Polish, but it seems there might be something to it. Then the roots would go several centuries deeper than we are accustomed to.
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@Schmidty1 "Where does it say anything about political parties owning the means of production"
Every Socialist country that ever existed was constructed this way. For a reason. I guess, Socialists figured out that the only way of keeping the wealthy capitalists out of it, was to restrict the rule to the Socialist party. Which they could keep "clean". Somehow...
"The government doing stuff isn't socialism."
By itself, not necessary, but if the government is busy with "production, distribution, and exchange" and it's been elected by or at least claims to represent the "community", then it's Socialism. Under Socialism, government makes all the decisions, regulates everything, and makes black markets grow huge.
But of course, government is supposed to do at least something. I'm not saying that until they do exactly nothing, we are still suffering from Socialism. ;-)
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With that said, I don't think he presented the merits of the weaker, "semi-aquatic" or coastal ape hypothesis.
Almost all animals living in the tropics and subtropics do have fur. It provides very useful insulation during cold nights, which are very common on dry savanna. The competing idea, which is also an untested hypothesis, proposes that humans evolved there, but other primates living in those environments are fully quadrupedal and do have fur.
Personally, I find it much easier to imagine a coastal ape, which is still arboreal, but supplements its diet by smashing shellfish with a rock, than a bipedal ape on the savanna. Even humans with advanced bipedalism are the slowest animals out there. Without advanced weapons, we are also the weakest ones.
Savanna hypothesis makes no sense to me.
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@gabrielaaugusto4972 " median=average "
You are a smart lady. (Actually, we kinda assume it's true, but we are not really sure. If you squeeze my arm, I'll admit I think it can't be exactly true.)
" there are other independent factors "
Not necessarily independent, since most of them positively correlate with health.
" high IQ is inverselly related to major success factors like strengh, health, empathy "
It isn't. The correlation is either positive or neutral.
So, what's the downside, an inquiring mind might ask? Calories. Active brains burn through those at a crazy rate. Even if you sleep, but that's peanuts considering how bored active brains tend to get. Then they really burn through a lot of calories.
" I say IQ is not decisive "
Nobody says it is. It's just an advantage you are mostly born with, or not, depending on your luck.
" I thought catholics were more prone to value the poor and the meek... "
Yes, it's true. Try to attain salvation while being rich and proud. Kinda hard, when the only thing stopping you from indulging in all your vices is your "strong will".
The poor have it much easier. So there is a pride in being poor. The God loves you, no matter how hard life is, you have a chance of attaining salvation, while all those proud and rich? Well, good luck...
I really like Catholicism. No joke.
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@darkoneforce2 " virtually anything moving towards the front "
Soviets did that. To a lesser degree, but the scale W. Allies did it was of questionable value.
Basically, instead of the dream of destroying the enemy forces before they reach the frontline, you simply limit their mobility. They have to camouflage, hide, move at night, drag some defenses with them, but once they do that, it's very ineffective. People keep making YT videos trying to puzzle out why anybody would do it at all, THAT ineffective!
With that said, Soviets did such missions. Apart from bombing Frenchmen. They weren't any good at it, apparently.
" The sacrifice of bombers didn't change the fact that the US achieved total air superiority. "
But at what cost? You risk a heavy bomber in exchange for a chance to get a fighter? That's a really bad trade.
One could argue, that it would be better to use those assets more carefully, and simply deal with some enemy air presence, but that would make way too much sense...
" The american planes were simply better "
Nah. You guys simply had more of a much better aviation fuel. That's the whole difference.
" boom and zoom tactics "
That's "hit and run" in common lingo. Meaning, you take a potshot and scram, leaving the assets you were expected to protect unprotected.
Brilliant!
" german planes when they had to land due to running out of fuel "
While they were defending Germany ? Right on top of their airbases?
Okay, that's enough. I stop here.
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@WastedEfforts "Nah, most of Rus people were part of Muscovy Tsardom."
Damn, if was hard to find. Rusyn people in PLC made up from 40-45% of the population, depending when exactly and how you count, but let's just say 5 mln all told in 1618.
Muscovia in mid XVIIth century had a total population of 6.5 mln, according to Boris N. Mironow of the Slavic Research Center. That's the total, so you'd expect not all were Rus.
So it was very close. Whoever held Smolensk, how you gonna count nationality, was there famine or war recently and so on.
"PLC didn't gobble up"
True. PLC didn't gobble up anything. The Great Kievan Rus and Lithuania joined in out of their own free will. The only militarily contested area was Smolensk.
"Besides, Rus subjects of PLC had no say in it's politics."
That's total nonsense. First, nobles were citizens , not subjects, and they had their own state, where Poles had little say! Official language was Rusyn. They had their own Sejms and Sejmiks and participated in the election of the king on equal rights. All nobles considered themselves to be equals, regardless of nationality and religion.
They could speak whichever language they wanted, they could believe however they wanted too. Usually they spoke Rusyn and Polish, due to marriage, schools and overall cultural influence. The religion, oh my, it all depends when, but let's say that various protestant religions and later orthodox.
You know when their role became markedly less important? When Muskovites attacked them in 1648 and totally ruined vast and well populated areas. The Tzar simply murdered them. They never truly recovered from this and then Polish culture started to be visible to a larger degree.
It's not like PLC depopulated Muscovy, did they? Because we were civilized people! We wanted you guys to join us, not to conquer you and force your submission.
It could have worked too, if not for religious differences.
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@BauboTV "commonwealth (or, Republic of two nations)"
This term, the republic of two nations, is a XIXth century invention. It was not used in Rzeczpospolita. Anyway, the Poles were the majority (barely), then there were Rus people (close to the Poles in population), then Lithuanians, Germans, Jews, Tartars and a few more.
I mean, if you want to consider Rzeczpospolita a Republic of only two nations , then it had to be the Poles and the Rus people. Them's the numbers, sorry. But of course, we don't need to exclude anyone. All nobles had equal rights, regardless of nationality.
"Up until WWI people in Lithuanian and Polish lands identified them selfs as sitizens of Commonwelth."
We still do. What happened to you guys?
"superior culture does not have to state the fact of its superiority it just have to be..."
Well, I for example I'm much less convinced about this superiority that what you could read in my posts. Sometimes I simply want to be challenged, because maybe I'm wrong? I'd change my views then.
Anyway, what's so wrong in discussing cultures and their various advantages and disadvantages? If we refrain from doing that, we may face the fate of Rzeczpospolita too. That would be kinda bad, wouldn't it?
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@daviddavies3637 " stirrup "
I think the influence of this device is overvalued. The Comanches were very effective mounted warriors without the use of it, at least that's how they established their dominance.
People may think that it's always helpful to have stirrups, but if that's so, how come the most common occurrence among novice riders is to lose them, once the going gets any sort of challenging? If they are so useful, you'd assume that novices would rely on them especially when the going gets tough.
But that's not so. They rather rely on their knees, balance and the sense of rhythm, which makes them forget about the stirrups, that slip off their feet in short order.
Obviously, there are many advantages to having it, and that's why almost everybody uses stirrups nowadays, but it's not like you need to be a circus trained rider to manage without them. Even if the going gets tough. Even if you are not such a great rider yet.
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Saying that coconut island is a pure hypothetical, without any bearing on the real world, is demonstrably incorrect since many insular societies did face a fairly similar dilemma.
And yes, under those specific conditions sharing was indeed considered obligatory and property rights were optional.
So, trying to dismiss this analogy as a pure fantasy serves the same purpose as inventing and invoking it, and that purpose is to protect someone's political ideology. Socialists want to show that property rights are evil, while capitalists want to pretend that free markets can solve scarcity in almost every situation.
Imagine a city under siege with free market on food. The rich eat as much as they want, while the poor starve to death. Imagine the attacking army offering rewards for opening the gates. All it takes is one desperate enough individual to go for it and the city falls.
And even that isn't necessary, if weak population and bad sanitary conditions cause a plague to spread. Then even the rich may die. That's what happened to Pericles, btw.
Therefore no, free markets can't solve every problem, the suspension of property rights might be beneficial sometimes , and coconut island is not a pure hypothetical with no bearing on the real world.
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@seanmac1793 " the object of the narrow front [is to go] through there and into Germany "
Yes, eventually . The immediate object was to cut off the ports and clear them.
The irony of the whole situation was, that regardless if you like the narrow or the broad front strategy, you still need the ports. So you must attack in the North first , no matter what.
The obvious advantage of the narrow front approach was that they could do it immediately, when the enemy was weak.
" You don't put an army group commander over another army group commander "
Of course, those petty little narcissts would totally flip out if you'd do that...
I'm so bitter, because I'm from Poland, and that was the last chance for us to become independent. The W. Allies could have taken Berlin. For two reasons:
1. They'd be faster if they took the ports half a year earlier.
2. What was the alternative for the losing Germans? Soviet occupation, and they really didn't want that.
With the W. Allies right around the corner, we'd be able to keep Poland free. There would be a nation wide uprising if necessary. It already almost happened. The armed resistance against the commies went on for the next 20 years, and there was practically no chance for a successful resolution. If there was a chance, we'd go for broke.
All of that at stake, much different shape of the Cold War, because the West is much stronger while the Soviets are weaker.
But you can't make one narcisst bend the knee to another narcisst. Well, of course you can't. If they weren't narcissts, they wouldn't be able to do this job at all. Normal person would end up broken when every mistake and every success results in people getting killed.
It is what it is.
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@HingerlAlois "Of course infantry has a hard time trying to encircle enemy cavalry"
No. Did you read what I wrote? They did it. At least several times. They just couldn't keep them pinned. And they were supported by cavalry, so in case that's the magic bullet, it didn't work either.
"15.000 cavalry attacked (instead of just defending its position)"
Cavalry isn't very good at holding ground, which is the main tactical reason for "infantry revolution". Cannons needed protection, cavalry couldn't do that, hence infantry became a necessity.
Honestly, I thought it was worse to be surrounded by infantry than by cavalry. Those guys had huge two-handed axes as melee weapons (which doubled as musket barrel supports).
"hard time trying to resupply themselves with new lances"
Not too hard, though. Those guys had servants. As long as the lances were near by, they'd be handed new weapons quickly.
Aaanyway, I'm not sure you picture the battle in anything resembling source accounts. You simply couldn't command such huge forces effectively, which meant the commander would issue his orders beforehand to several units at a time, then those units would engage and he could not command them any more. Another units would join in and so on.
Yeah, if you could give every officer a mobile phone, those 3000 guys stood no chance, but that wasn't the case.
That's (partially) how small units of elites could sometimes win against big odds. They were about as good in actual combat as a larger enemy force, but their smaller numbers allowed for much better control over them. That's how they won at Kircholm, for example. They managed to achieve a local numerical superiority, despite overwhelming odds overall.
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I came back to comment again, after I've listened to Sławomir Menzen, who is a Polish politician from Konfederacja:Wolność party, which is the absolute extreme right, the most pro free market party in Parliaments of Europe right now. Nobody comes even close. Law and Justice party, which is considered to be far right in the West, is center-left in comparison to them.
So, he's a wise guy and he offered several insights, which I consider to be worth propagating further.
1. The country can't be ruled by economists, because economy is incapable of establishing truth. The lead economists disagree with each other on absolutely fundamental issues. In other words, they don't know squat.
2. He compared Classical Economy to Classical Physics. Newtonian physics worked perfectly well on usual scales, but when the velocities became very high, the masses very big, the distances very small and so on, it failed us. He suspects (he's still working it out), that it's quite possible that Classical Economy will fail us when the scale of events becomes extreme.
The example he considered here was immigration. It's obvious that small scale immigration has positive impact on the economy, but just because that happens, we should not assume that large scale immigration will be even better. One does not guarantee the other.
3. Free market has limitations. The two obvious examples, which we know to be true, because we have observations of it happening, are armament and food production. Investing in armament is extremely wasteful. During peace, nobody needs weapons, and especially nobody needs factories which are capable of producing huge amounts of them, but once the war starts, you can't simply buy arms outside. You either produce those weapons internally, or you are badly armed.
The same goes for food. It may not be economical to keep producing food locally, but once the cannonballs starts flying, it's too late and you face starvation.
4. There is no way of making money on Science. The only difference between us and Dark Age Europe is what we know. Scientists did not earn a dime on what they discovered. Inventors often do not, scientists have no chance. Yet, the whole world benefited from their discoveries immensely . Nothing ever has changed the world as much as Science. Maybe agriculture, but I doubt it.
Why did I bother writing all of that? Because I got the impression, that from Socialist you switched into an Anarcho-Capitalist, which means that you totally flipped to the other side. Menzen is an extreme far right, yet he recognizes the limitations of the philosophy he considers to describe the world the most accurately. Philosophy! Economy is not a hard science. Only empirical sciences are hard, the rest is just running your mouth a lot.
So I simply hope you will keep on thinking and keep on developing your understanding further. Don't just flip from one side to the other. You are way too wise for that.
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@ExternalThreat There are exceptions like awards, but otherwise science is a non-profit activity. Galileo, Copernicus, Gauss, Ampere, Volta, Darwin, Newton, etc, the list is endless. None of those guys was able to market and sell their ideas.
Since there is no profit associated even with the most beneficial and useful scientific discoveries, capitalism is incapable of funding science. Science initially was funded by scientists themselves, and that's why they were always wealthy to begin with. It was a hobby of the rich. Later we figured out that's it's so useful, that it actually makes sense for the society to fund it.
Transistor which made it possible for You to read my post, was funded by the state. Internet was funded by the state. It's quite likely you used an ARM processor to send your post. The earliest projects were funded by the state. So on, and so forth. Open up and examine your smartphone. I bet you'll find a state funded project at the root of most, if not all, of important technologies which make it useful.
Capitalism is an evolutionary system. You have a nerve which starts in your head, goes around your heart and goes back to your head. Why such nonsense? Because evolution is incapable of insight, so a complete redesign is simply impossible. Humans are capable of insight, though. That's why we sometimes decide to do what makes "no financial sense", because we are able to foresee that it might lead to large scale benefits in the future.
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You are British, so you must be aware of how many various, and extremely differing, nations this conglomerate was originally composed of. It was the same for every nation ever . They start as a "multiethic" conglomerates, then they agree on a set of values and become a nation.
Hence, every "mono-ethnic" state is a result of a successful multi-ethnic experiment. Like Britain, France, Germany, China, India, Italy, Poland, Russia, USA, Greece, and even Spain.
Hence, if you try to oppose the one with the other, it's like trying to oppose small business with big business. If you are good at what you are doing, you gonna grow. It's like trying to oppose children and their parents. Yes, they differ, but without a parent, there would be no children.
What I mean by that? People are conformist not because they are "incapable of thinking". This strategy, of becoming a part of a team, and working toward a common goal, was proved extremely successful over and over again.
Actually, it's what differentiates us from apes. They can do it too, but they aren't even closely as good as we are at this game.
Maybe those "unwashed" and "unthinking" crowds do something right, after all?
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"You said it correctly: 2% of the USA war effort. It was however the total Soviet GDP several times over."
The estimates start at 4% and end at 14%. I haven't seen anyone remotely sane claiming anything above 20% of Soviet GDP.
Which means, you don't count as a remotely sane person.
"It was during the crucial times of late 1941 and 1942 that lend-lease was at its most important."
Almost nothing has reached the destination at this time. 2% in 1941 and 14% in 1942.
So your claim is, that 2% of 2%, which is 0.04%, of the total war effort of the USA has won the war.
How is it in lala-land? The weather is splendid, I presume.
"The UK and US dropping by and going "Oh, that stuff at which you fail hard?"
In general Soviets didn't like Lend-Lease equipment very much. It didn't suit their doctrine, it wasn't metric, supply chains were stretched and so on.
When high amounts of good products, like Jeeps, Studebacker trucks or Aircobras, reached their lines, they liked them all right, so it's not like they were biased.
4 000 Shermans were meh. Not bad, but not good enough or plentiful enough to make much of a difference.
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+Kirothe Avenger - My god, you really believe it! Okay. Throw into google "From the Vault: British Report on Captured Panther Tank" and you'll see how "great" the Panther was, and since you mentioned gearbox problems in T-34, please note that the Panther was tested to be very slow, and the 3rd gear was broken.
Inb4 "That's just one captured vehicle", throw into google "From the Vault: Post War British Report on Panther". That's 5 brand newly assembled AFVs. All of them terrible. Not bad, terrible!
And that's not even half of the problem. Any crappy vehicle can be dealt with by systematic effort to work around its inherent weaknesses. Not so in the case of Panther. They all differed . The parts were not interchangeable. Constant modifications made it into a logistical nightmare.
IOW - if there was such a thing as "the Panther tank", then it could be used, even though it was very bad. Extra care here, more spare parts in stock there, the lot. But there was no such thing. There was no "Panther tank", until post-war. (And even then it sucked...)
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@Asterix958 "(Magyars) and Tatars will come for help with their army. They didn't."
That's just hopes. If you have inferior forces, you fortify! They did not. Hopes don't explain why you accept the pitched battle.
[Nothing else you have said makes any difference.]
If they knew that at the moment their forces were insufficient for a pitched battle, they should've adopted a defensive stance and then hope for reinforcements.
Walking out to be slaughtered makes no sense whatsoever. If you can't run, dig in, skirmish, attack the enemy supply lines, all and any of the above would have made sense.
That's not what they have done!
[Nothing further makes any difference as well.]
Yeah, you don't like how the Poles fought. Let me guess why, because they were victorious? ;-)
(But they never captured Kamieniec Podolski! I'll mention this, that will curb him all right, won't it? ;-))
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@Sealdeam " it sound like that potential convertion would not only would had been politically viable but maybe even beneficial "
It almost surely was the case. For example, the Moscow Patriarch was agitating against Poland in Ukraine, that resulted in Chmielnicki's rebellion becoming much bigger than it would otherwise have been (the only thing approaching religious conflict Rzeczpospolita ever witnessed). Having some level of control over this dude would surely help.
The first mistake they ever did in Rzeczpospolita, was allowing Moscow to oust Kiev as the head of the Orthodox church. That was a grave mistake, but we only see it in hindsight. They were tolerant and did not actively oppose the schism, but helping them was apparently beyond them.
We know they were wrong in that, because we know what happened later. They didn't.
" it was not politically viable for him to try to win a new land "
He wasn't a hereditary king, so why would he even try to win this land? Just to remind you, the first False Dmitri organized a private army, which had to avoid the forces of Rzeczpospolita on their way to Moscow.
Only after the "red wedding" in Moscow the nobles decided to actively go after Muscovites and funded some military efforts to at least take back Smoleńsk. Taking over Moscow happened as a sort of accident. They didn't really try to achieve that, but since it laid wide open? Hard to resist.
" potentially alienating the majority of the population "
No, they wouldn't have cared. How can I illustrate it? Well, I read Pasek the other day. They were busy protecting protestant Denmark against the Swedes, so their Polish catholic priest advised them not to go to the Luteran churches there, but they did anyway, in such numbers, that the masses were held in Latin, especially for them. Then they pranked the ladies inside, to the point that the preacher had troubles finishing the mass, because he wanted to burst out laughing.
Does it look like a religious war to you?
And it was right after the Deluge, when Luteran Sweden absolutely ruined Rzeczpospolita, including robbing churches and besieging sanctuaries. Huge loss of life too. If they ever had any inclining to hate the Luterans, it was then!
You really do not understand those people.
" Sigismund's fanaticism "
I didn't write that yet, but it's true. You see, he always wanted to be the king of Sweden, and if he converted to Luteranism, he would be that. He refused to do so, so he lost his throne.
Also, we could have placed him on the throne of Sweden regardless of that, but they didn't care. That was a mistake, obviously. Again, we know it because we know what happened later. They didn't.
Just imagine a personal union between Poland, Lithuania and Sweden? How could they resist? But they did. It would be cheap, too.
Absolutely fascinating people.
" I think you broaden the subject beyond that "
No, I simply disagree with the core of your reasoning, which stems from imagined religious tensions. As long as you were Christian, nobody cared. If you were not christian, they still didn't care much.
All the Jewish people from all over Europe came to live in Rzeczpospolita and praised her as paradise. Muslims lived there and still do.
" you deliberately choose to ignore the weaknesses of the system "
Well, I just criticized them for two grave political mistakes, namely allowing Moscow to take over the Orthodox church and refusing to help Sigismund in regaining the throne of Sweden.
You see, if they were religious fanatics, they would want to help a Catholic king against Luteran heretical usurper. They just didn't care.
With Orthodoxy it was sorta similar. If they really wanted to convert everybody to become Catholic, they would definitely want to control the Orthodox church, wouldn't they? They just didn't.
That's how they were, for better or worse.
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@pavlovsdog2551 " Red Army was NOT destroyed "
4.5 mln casualties, more than 2 mln prisoners. The Red Army was not just destroyed, it was destroyed twice over.
" if the Germans HAD invaded in May, despite the weather, and allowed the front to stagnate along the border for a few weeks "
The answer is very easy. The Germans wouldn't have been able to inflict those staggering losses.
" allowing the Soviets to fully commit their reserves "
The Soviets wouldn't have done that, simply because they weren't able to supply more soldiers on the front. Actually, they might have pulled some of their units back, and deploy the defense in depth, simply because a stationary unit is not using as much resources, while a fighting unit needs a lot of those.
At the same time they'd surely train their reservists. No advantage for the Germans.
" BEFORE unleashing the blitzkrieg beast in June "
So they'd train the Red Army in combat for a month, before trying to totally humiliate it? They'd let them build fortifications, fire incompetent commanders, quite likely get rid of the "double command" of the political officers, so forth?
I mean, they'd likely win the early battles even against a better prepared Red Army, but their victories would be much smaller in scope and they'd likely never be able to even reach Moscow.
Their strategy was correct. Hit them hard and hope they'll collapse soon after.
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@dovkaupas "Chodko Jurewicz"
I'm looking through your source. He's described as a "Ruthenian noble", his coat of arms is Polish, the Chodko family is said to have had possessions in Hrodna, Gródek and Supraśl, which are in Eastern Poland or Western Belarus. He was also of Eastern Orthodox faith.
There is nothing Baltic about this man. He appears to be more Polish than ethnic Lithuanian (though most probably Rus).
"Lithuanian identity (by that I mean GDL as a whole)"
That's weaseling the issue. I was told he was an ethnic Balt, whom he was not. And that's likely because somebody, not unlike you, did stress his "GDL identity".
That's misrepresentation of the truth, not at all unintentional. Which is an euphemistic expression for a common lie.
"opposed union of Poland [...] why and how would he consider himself to be 'fully Polish'?"
Copernicus' family from his mother side strongly opposed the Teutonic Knights, so should we consider them to be Polish instead of German?
Anyway, on your source there is the (citation needed) thing, so I looked on the Polish side. Apparently he personally signified the Union, became the Field Marshall and fought with the enemies of Rzeczpospolita, not against her.
If he was such a strong oponent, how come he became a marshall?
Regarding "fully Polish", it's probably related to his faith. He switched from Calvinism, popular among Rus nobility back then, to Catholicism, popular among Polish people. I bet he spoke the language already, since his mother and wife were Polish, so that did it.
"Could anyone give me any examples of this, I'm just curious?"
You just said that Chodko Jurevich was "possibly" Lithuanian and that Jan-Karol's father was against the Union, so he couldn't have been Polish.
That's misrepresenting the truth, I suspect not unintentionally.
"(even knowing facts about him I'd say it's not unfair to call him Lithuanian)"
See what I mean? You know "facts" about him... Your "facts" aren't!
"due to bad Lithuanian-Polish relations over the last century [...] tried to shake off as much of our Shared history as possible"
So you see that part? Okay, maybe you are not aware of being lied to. But you were.
"documents in GDL had to be written in Chancery Slavonic"
Yeah. Thanks for admitting the truth.
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Oh, my... I'll be correcting you. Brace yourself.
1. The first false Dmitri was not supported by the king of Rzeczpospolita. They had to try and avoid the forces of Rzeczpospolita in order to get to Muscovy.
2. Frost is wrong. No way in hell there were 5000 men on our side.
In total, Polish forces amounted to 4230 salaries . We must subtract 10% for the so called "ghost portions", and some more for attrition would makes sense too.
That's surely less than 4000 and it coincides with Maskiewicz very well, if we consider realistic attrition rates confirmed in many sources.
Meaning, Maskiewicz does make sense. 3830 worn down to 2700 over the course of the campaign? That's very reasonable. Could be a bit more, but not much more.
For example, many sources say that there were more mercenaries than us. 2500 of them joined us after the battle, 700 dead, some who went their own way, several hundreds all told. That's below 4000.
And they outnumbered our guys. According to all sources!
You guys do not know all that, I understand. Well, what can we do about it?
I'm serious. It's hard knowledge that we possess, no stupid "narratives" and propaganda (it was always against the Winged Hussars since I was a baby anyway). So we do know. What can we do so you guys will listen to our arguments?
As far as the Muscovy side goes, it's much harder. More leeway there.
3. Lisowczycy were not even a part of the Polish army in 1610. Frost is demonstrably ignorant.
4. The attack of Andrzej Firlej's banner through the field fortifications , not pikes, almost certainly did happen. It's well attested in the sources. From what I gather, they managed to jump over the fortifications, which is likely, since the fortified camp was not expecting to be besieged. De la Gardie was sure of victory, and boasted he will outdo Żółkiewski in kindness when he will take him prisoner (Żółkiewski captured De La Gardie on some earlier date and gave him a fur coat). Total victory expected.
So it makes sense their fortifications were not too well made.
Once Firlej got there, he was repelled by pikemen and had to retreat. At best he could have had 100 men with him (more likely 50), so no shame in that. It's actually a wonder he got there in the first place.
In summary, it was not a miracle. De la Gardie was in command, but not in total command. The Muscovites wanted the mercenaries to do the dirty work for them, while the mercenaries were not too keen on dying, since they were not paid as they were due.
Our guys weren't paid either, but Żółkiewski admitted to that and personally asked the troops for help. He was not below that. They listened.
Then they defeated the enemy forces piece by piece. Surely, a very hard job, but not impossible, since the enemy was not cooperating very effectively.
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@domenik8339 " AKM is by far the more reliable weapon day to day "
I shoot a bit, and the only rifle which jams almost every time I see it, is the AR15.
It's usually squeaky clean, then drenched in oil. AKs look neglected in comparison. They never jam.
What I actually heard: "ARs don't jam if you clean them. Americans are so lazy, that they have a spray-on butter. That's why their ARs jam."
And I've seen this very guy carefully disassembling an AR that jammed!
" Maybe in the mud test the AR would win "
That depends on the design of the test. If you just drop a rifle in the mud, pick it up and even think you could safely shoot it, AKs do just fine. They shoot. If they initially cycle slowly, they clean themselves after a few shots.
Yes, ARs do better on the tests which totally cover every moving part in mud, while keeping the muzzle clear !. That rarely happens in the wild, though.
BTW - Obviously, AKs are much easier to clean after the test.
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@shacklock01 " Rome grew and survived on predatory acquisition "
If that was so, how come Hannibal's plan failed?
Because he invaded Italy in order to convince the provinces to abandon Rome and join him. That did work in Cisalpine Gaul, but failed everywhere else, despite him achieving a string of victories never witnessed before and (arguably) later.
The provices simply refused to abandon Rome, and not because the Romans were entirely fair with them, since later on they waged war against her themselves (bellum sociale, war of the allies) and won.
If they wanted to get rid of Rome, they could have easily done it with the help of Hannibal.
But they did not want to do it. Simple as.
" Defending a static empire is a lot less profitable than constant, enriching expansion that pays for itself. "
I do not believe it to be true. Peace is much more profitable than war. Pax Romana is what made Rome great, not the wars.
" Ripping off greeks "
How come the Greeks insisted on being Romans for a whole millenium after the fall of the Western Roman Empire?
" Defending the Danube "
...was hard work, but it had to be done, if they wanted to survive.
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I still think that the Lybians at the flanks were crucial for victory. Yes, it's true they couldn't just turn in place, as abbreviated in the sources, however they could detach their rear ranks, form up on the flanks at 90deg to the whole line and push their immediate adversaries toward the center. That created a wave of congestion, which made it difficult for the Romans to fight, so forth, as you described.
In this model the cavalry was needed in order to prevent a rout. Every soldier who tried to run would be picked off by them, maybe helped by the slingers. Those guys were good at herding, so I see them helping.
The thing which this video made me realize, was that the whole maneuver was based around the shear scale of this battle. The center couldn't have known what was happening at the flanks. Even if they did know, there was very little they could have done.
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" You would have to go back to hunter/gatherers to have any semblance of the autonomy he identifies. "
Even that seems to be a stretch. Hunter-gatherers live on the brink of survival, and in such societies there is no place for "individuality". If you don't fit in, the shaman might try to cure you, but if that doesn't work, you are on your own, or more likely dead.
It's also funny, that he considers religion, the pursuit of arts or knowledge to be the products of our civilization, and essentially a wasted effort. The thing is, that peoples who supposedly live the "perfect" life on the very edge of survival do invest heavily in all that stuff.
At least partially because it binds them together into a more coherent society (partially because they are bored, just like we are).
Kaczyński is like Marx. He got a more or less correct picture of his present, predicted the very immediate future to some extent, but he's just as likely to fail in the long term.
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@poopymcmonke " * justify ecological destruction* "
The assumption that technology inescapably leads to ecological destruction is unfounded.
For example, whales were hunted to the brink of extinction, because early industrial societies needed oil for lamps, but technology fixed it. We have lots of whales nowadays.
The same with European bison, beaver, moose, deer, eagles, bears, even wolves.
So it's not a one-to-one correlation. Far from it, actually.
" requires extremely dense (therefore ecologically and socially unsustainable) populations to function "
That's also untrue. I live in a rural area, and more and more city folk move in almost each year. Because they can afford to do so.
When I was young, there was no sewer system here, you had to dispose of your own trash, the road was bad, almost impassable at times.
Nowadays we have fiber network. Many people can afford to do lots of their work out of home, and even if they have to travel to work, it doesn't take any more time than your typical commuting time while living in a city.
" Convenience culture disgusts me "
I'm not a fan either, but it's not like I'm forced to live it, is it?
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What a horrible babbling! I mean Marx, not you TIK. Even with clarifications provided, which do make it more comprehensible, it's still horrible babbling.
(Edit: Regarding evolution of human "sub-species", I can't write the word, it's being shadow-banned. Anyway, it's pseudo science. Human "sub-species" definitely do exist and saying that this idea has no basis in genetics it utter idiocy. Sorry, there is no other way of putting it. Genetics determines those very obvious phenotypical differences, like melanin levels, the shape of the nose, eyes and many others.
It's not my fault that current science is so broken. I wish it was different.)
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@aleksander5279 "could have been far more decisive [...] did not worry as much about the outcome"
Easy to say, isn't it? For all they knew about warfare, it looked very suspicious. I do not blame them one bit for staying cautious. What if it really was a trap?
Anyway, Sikora writes it was Chodkiewicz's decision.
"Chodkiewicz responded by sending about 1,000 Winged Hussars"
You are wrong on that. While I don't remember the exact number of troops which took part in this action, I do remember that the brunt of the Turkish attack was born by the reiters. They had it rough for a while, so it wasn't just Hussars.
And that the total number was smaller than what you say here. 4 or 5 banners? That's like 400 in total, if you merely include the customary "ghost portions"? Closer to that, I guess.
Oh, I think Sikora discussed the force disproportion, I just recalled that. I think he claimed it was 48:1? Damn, It bugs me I don't remember.
I have the books on another hard drive, but I recently lent the whole computer to someone, so I can't easily check what the research says.
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+Ninjamanhammer - You always believe in something, it's impossible to simply know stuff, because all our knowledge is uncertain. "God does not play dice" was said by Einstein, while Bohr opposed him. Bohr believed in quantum mechanics, Einstein did not, none of them believed in God.
I can define anything as god and believe in it, but as long as the act of faith is not required, I'm holding a secular belief, not a religious one.
For example, the notorious "Clapton is God" was probably written by an atheist, who actually believed it to be true. That's why he wrote it. But it's a secular belief, because you do not require the act of faith to consider this proposition. It's a different story with people who claim that Elvis is still alive, has magical properties and so forth. You will find people who believe in Elvis the way others believe in gods.
Not all of them, though. But it's a shady area, sure enough.
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+The Fake SecDef - I don't claim to know much about this whole issue. I just started to think about how I would try to defeat stealth with whatever we have available today, mainly vastly improved computers and data exchange technology.
Now, I don't expect that stealth will be totally defeated. Just that the detection and lock-on ranges will improve, once stealth becomes common enough to warrant some serious attention. I consider it to be a very reasonable assumption. That's what usually happens with any new weapon.
Nonetheless, even this partial success of anti-stealth measures vastly affects the capability of a plane like JSF, which hardly has any other advantages. It pretty much solely relies on its ability to remain unseen, while it can see the enemy. It's not cheap, it has poor range, it's not fast, it does not climb well, it can't turn, it has few weapons, poor visibility and so far abysmal reliability and resistance to damage.
I can't see how such a plane is a good choice for most combat tasks, especially if its stealth is partially compromised. But I may be wrong, so I don't say it's impossible, just that I can't see how.
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+the vu - What you write here is technically true, but total BS nonetheless, and since you must know it, I'm forced to conclude that you are trying to lie to me, to yourself, or both.
Let me refresh your memory:
"Overall the noticeable characteristics of the F-35A in a visual engagement was its lack of energy maneuverability." - Not excessive EM loss in high AoA maneuvers. She doesn't have much EM, and that's it.
"Though the aircraft has proven it is capable of high AoA flight, it wasn't effective for killing or surviving attacks primarily due to lack of energy maneuverability. " - See? She's already not bad at high AoA. But since she's starved for EM from the beginning, burning it all in high AoA does not help much.
What it all actually means, is that F-35 is shit in a dogfight, and high AoA maneuvers won't help her much, even when eventually perfected. Not because of faulty software, but because she's heavy, has small wings and weak afterburner. Crappy cockpit doesn't help either.
She can't defend herself up close. Not very well, that for sure.
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+purpleanex - A trained horse will do whatever it was trained to do. If charging pikemen was part of its training, it will charge pikemen.
No, you will not kill such horse with a long spear. All you can do is wound it (maybe even mortally), at the last moment. The rider has a lance, and this lance is pointed at your belly button, while you are trying to stop the charge with a sharpened stick. The rider is fairly safe, since you are not even trying to hit him, so...
Polish cavalry in ww2 was neither anachronistic nor stupid, though it appears you are, and frankly if I was so stupid I'd be keeping quiet about it. But, how would I know I'm a moron if I was one? I probably wouldn't ask this question? ;-)
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+purpleanex - I don't "think", I simply know that charging machine guns was a German wartime propaganda piece. I even happen to know how exactly it happened, since this bullshit surfaces so often.
So the thing happened at Krojanty. Polish forces, mainly infantry, were retreating under fire. To make this retreat a bit easier the high command ordered an attack on German infantry forces which were surprised in the open terrain. Nobody had any delusions about it being particularly good idea, but the situation was desperate. (After being advised how to conduct the attack, the commander said: "Young man, I know myself how to fulfill an impossible order.")
Anyway, the first charge of WW2 was a *success*. The German infantry was *routed*! The only problem was, that the German armored column appeared on the road, unknown to exist beforehand, and simply mowed down so far victorious cavalrymen with heavy machine gun fire. They were out in the open, turkey shoot.
Then the Germans used it to make it into a propaganda piece, which lives to this very day. "A lie repeated a thousand times..." and all that.
Edit: I forgot to add, that despite heavy losses, the whole deal worked. It delayed German progress for a while and strategically crucial river crossings remained under Polish control for one day longer. The commander of the attack survived and was awarded on the spot with Virtuti Military.
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+Michael McCabe - Sorry to say that, but the information about Piłsudski on badassoftheweek.com is not correct. It's the version of history Piłsudski liked to spread about himself, and managed to do so while he gained absolute power in Poland after his putsch.
For once, he's being portrayed as a great military leader, while he had no military education. He was a professional spy and a politician, not a military leader. We know that for sure. It's not a speculation, them's the facts.
Then it's written that he lead Polish forces during this battle. He didn't. He resigned just before the battle and went AWOL, doing other stuff, and took back his resignation letter only after the battle was already won. We are absolutely sure that happened, because his resignation letter was copied and couldn't be wiped out from historical record after Piłsudski usurped power in Poland. Though they tried.
People who actually lead Polish army were Rozwadowski and Weyand. Rozwadowski was later murdered by Piłsudski.
Sad, but true.
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+Abdullah khaled - You want the story?
"Atgaa, 10, and her sister Reemya, 8, are about to be married to men in their 60s. Atgaa will be her husband's fourth wife. Their wedding celebrations are scheduled for this week and will take place in the town of Fayaadah Abban in Qasim, Saudi Arabia.
The girls are getting married because their financially struggling father needs the money that their dowries will provide: young girls of this age can fetch as much as $40,000 each." - Ten seconds Goggle search - "saudi arabia child marriage" phrase.
You are in denial. There is a page of some organization which fights this shit, and they say about 15 mln underage girls gets married every year. That's every two bloody seconds. How can you insist that it's impossible, while I presented you with a bunch of evidence that it's happening?
You are in denial. Get hold of yourself and face the truth. Hurts, for sure, but it's worth it.
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@unnaturalselection8330 "I've beaten the game with every faction"
On what difficulty? I play on the hardest available, and I do often get the majority of kills. The only way to prevent your own losses is to hide your army from the enemy, so I do that.
It's not just about me getting shot, it's often more about my mount, since they nerfed horse' health, while you can get good armor and are a smaller target.
From my experience, changing directions requires riding straight at the enemy, be it just for a moment, which is an alternative spelling of "bad idea".
"one of those musketeers"
How about fifty of those? High level too. I try to personally kill most, if not all of them. This way my army suffers no losses, which is practically a requirement on the hardest campaign difficulty. Those lords respawn with lots of top level troops.
"Once it's a mixed scrum, I tend to ride in"
Another bad idea. Sooner or later you hit something and stop, which is a death sentence. Much better to methodically kill the enemy, then stay out of it, while very carefully managing the aggro of hopefully high level enemy cav. Killing their horses is almost as good as killing the riders. Killing the distracted stragglers makes sense too.
"custom two-shotter"
Useless. Your DPS is awful, not much ammo. That low level Tatar bow with 99 accuracy is objectively loads better if you pack your baggage full of arrows. If you can find and use a high level composite bow, then we are really talking.
"despite any little glancing hits"
No such thing on the highest difficulty.
Not gonna brag too much, but at some point I was the best at Warband singleplayer in the world. I rather think I know what I'm doing in this game, no matter how stupid it feels to dive so deep into a silly game. At least it was a really good game, albeit faulty, so that's my excuse. ;-)
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Black powder does not react like smokeless. The speed of combustion does not increase with increased pressure, so overloading a gun was not much of a problem. The pressure would be very similar, even if you quadrupled the charge. (For an experiment, people loaded a full barrel and the gun did not explode.)
Also, while it is very hard to load a rifle for accurate fire, it's much easier to load a musket to the military standards of the era, which were centered around sustained firepower. Because the barrels foul, the ball must be very undersized and initially fits in easily.
So yeah, loading on the run could be done. By an expert and on a military musket, but since we've literally seen a guy doing it, it was obviously possible.
Edit: Re - No army would allow their soldiers to leave on certain terms.
I expected more from a, nomen omen, History Buff. Such agreements were common earlier on. People were expected to serve on previously agreed terms. If they weren't paid, if the campaign took to long, if they were not treated properly, they could leave and simply go home.
That's why conscripted armies were more effective*. Probably the only major reason for it, since people serving voluntarily tended to equip themselves about an order of magnitude better, and they also invested some time in training themselves too. The economy of personal survival is much different from that of, what amounted to, a slave soldier. If it's your hide on the line you'd spare no expenses, both in terms of money and time.
*(With that said, large conscripted armies weren't practical before advanced road network. You simply wouldn't be able to feed them.)
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@missydavis6678 " I'm trying to understand your question "
I think that the soul is our mind, which resides in our brain. Once the brain dies, the soul dies too, like so happens to any other animal, good or evil.
" you believe he is evil "
I don't know. He's been diagnosed, so it's likely there was a reason for the diagnosis, but apart from that it's all statistics.
Who's fault is that? Oh, it's always somebody else's fault, isn't it? In practice we don't even ask this question. We simply ask if the person who's done something was aware of what they have done.
But no, not everybody in a high risk group ends up in jail, or even gets away with some bad deeds. Some people, despite the genes, despite their defective brains, don't do anything particularly bad their entire life.
They tend to be smart, it seems. Morals simply make sense, in the long run at least.
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@HessianLikeTheFabric Plunder vs. conquest.
I actually thought about it for a moment. It came to me that plunder alone, apart from rare cases, is usually not capable of paying off the expense of war.
Yet plunder did happen, so what made it profitable? Slavery, it seems. Even if you could sack a city, the high value goods were usually well hidden, so it was unlikely you could pay back all the expenses a siege would demand. However, the population was always there. As long as you could sell them off, you could make a profit. Caesar or Alexander did just that, at times.
Otherwise, war is a sort of investment, I think. You invest resources in hopes of profits you will hopefully gain for a long time after the war has ended. Hence it's based around conquest.
Those thoughts are not crystallized in my mind, I'm just thinking "aloud", so to speak. Feel free to engage in a discussion. I love those things.
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@phobics9498 "while the infantry was pushing and winning"
They actually stalled in their advance. It's very hard to win a decisive battle with infantry alone.
"broke the entire ottoman front line"
Yes, that's what apparently happened. From what I learned about Sobieski's style of war, the direction of the charge was as important as the mass of horses that executed it. It was a gamble, but he was fond of such gambles.
Since the discussion seems to be still going on, after "merely" a year, let me introduce my biased opinion. Poland and Winged Hussars truly deserve most of the praise for this battle. Yes, the siege took a long time and Staufenberg was a hero. No doubts about that in my mind. Still, Austria alone was simply doomed. Poland alone was not.
We proved it by winning the next, equally decisive but much less publicized, battle of Parkany. A two day struggle, where Sobieski nearly died. We won it, thought.
And since people are so willing to forget this, and many other battles we won against the Ottomans, I find it only fair that we get almost all the publicity for the Battle of Vienna.
(Though in reality, it was a joint effort.)
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@phobics9498 "there have been thousands of battles in history where the infantry won the battle "Decisively""
Marathon, Cannae, (arguably) Agincourt, what else?
Napoleonic battles should be excluded, since Jomini very clearly stresses the need for cavalry in order for decisive victories.
If anything, WWI meat grinders show, that without the element of mobility, achieving a decisive victory is definitely not easy.
"Cavalry was good at breaking the enemy infantry, but thats it"
Not true. Cavalry was always crucial for gathering intelligence. It's the only decisive way of countering the enemy cavalry. It can cover large distances quickly, especially if they choose to do so. Cavalry is good at gathering supplies, at attacking artillery, and can even be crucial in sieges.
Weird, I know, but it starts making sense when you realize, that your own army will starve before the besieged, until you have enough cavalry to feed them.
"make the army flee and thus not get mowed down by musket fire"
Musket fire was extremely ineffective in comparison to what people tend to imagine. I mean, seriously, laughably ineffective. It took hours and hours to deliver serious damage to the enemy.
However, one route, and most of them become casualties. That's what the sources I read tell me. Half an hour all told, thousands of casualties. Literally. War can be really awful.
"If decisive means to win the battle"
No. It means the destruction of the enemy forces. So they can't become a threat anymore.
"if decisive means inflict max casualties, infantry is better."
That's incorrect.
"Cavalry is not nearly as important as you make it out to be especially in the west"
Why then in the Napoleonic era everybody and their auntie started training Huzars and re-introduced the lance? Why would they do it, with all those fancy, quick-shooting muskets and extremely light artillery? Why Frederik the Great hired all those Poles into his army earlier on? Why Gustavus Adolphus reformed his cuirassiers and won a bunch of battles with them, after he experienced what a good cavalry is capable of?
Maybe the western way wasn't optimal, perchance?
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@phobics9498 I must have truly misunderstood your stance here, so if I overreacted, I apologize. It's just that it happens so often, especially from the people focused on the Western style of war, that I thought I knew where it's all going.
Regarding "decisive" term, yes, there are examples of decisive infantry battles, plenty of those in antiquity. Though some of them were more of a psychological defeat than anything else (Leuctra, for example).
"one cavalry contingent is not going to single handedly kill all the infantry of the opposite side once they route"
That happened at Klushino. The side becoming obliterated were Muscovites (Russians). At Khotyn a laughably small contingent of Winged Hussars and Reiters basically killed off the Ottoman elite cavalry. That's harder to do, but it made their sultan cry, so it was worth it.
"cavalry was a small part in every army"
That's incorrect. For quite a long time Rzeczpospolita (Poland-Lithuania) fielded cavalry focused armies, often with majority of them being Winged Hussars. Those armies could achieve "miracles".
But then I keep on hearing, that Vienna battle is their greatest achievement. It's like some kid tells you that the last record of Pink Floyd is their greatest work... I mean, it's good. But c'mon... ;-)
"you can see just how much infantry there is compared to the cav"
True. The main reason was that infantry was simply cheaper and easier to replace. They will die a lot, so what?
There are other reasons, I admit. But the main reason why cavalry in the West was so bad for a while, was because the nobility didn't care any more. And if you have to pay for it, it turns out that a competent cavalryman is mighty expensive.
Obviously, infantry based armies could sometimes defeat cavalry based armies. The Swedes figured it out eventually. So then paying through the roof for your "wunderwaffe" cavalry, which still can't guarantee the total destruction of the enemy force, doesn't seem like such a grand idea.
Hence the movement toward lighter and cheaper horsemen. Which persisted for a long time afterwards.
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The general trend might be there, but how this hypothesis confront the known facts?
Rome in the age of Late Republic and Early Empire was extremely rich, decadent and even degenerate. Yet it kept on expanding and survived for another four centuries !
What's more troubling for this way of thinking, the Rome which fell was Christian, with reasonably high morals and all that. Still, they fell.
Who outlived them? The Greeks... Who were long past their prime when Rome took them over, hundreds of years earlier. Were they degenerate? You bet! Selfish, narcissistic, Machiavellian, back-stabbing, you can hardly find a fault they didn't have. Yet they survived. For another millenium !
So it's not that simple. There is always a crisis, from which a civilization can bounce back and at worst simply survive, or they can get crushed and collapse. Those crises can come from outside causes too, and even if everything inside works more or less fine, you go down. Bad luck is a thing too.
The whole Bronze Age collapsed, not because they had bad morals and lacked the energy of the people mere 500 years younger than them. If decadency was the reason, why it all did not collapse 100 years earlier, 200 years earlier, and so forth?
As far as hypotheses go, this one isn't all that great at explaining the already known facts, is it? If so, why should we trust it has any predictive power at all?
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+fazole - Yeah, it's true that they tried to win a quick war, but that's mostly because a quick war was the only one they could hope to win. It's also the most attractive proposition, since it offers high rewards at potentially low cost.
Regarding "high level of strategic thinking", I just don't know. I simply doubt that people capable of high level of tactical thinking were totally out of their depths there. War is war. It's not like it changes into something totally different on higher levels of abstraction. You need supplies, reinforcements, medicare, food, clothes, fuel, ammo and what not whether you are leading a country to war or just a platoon.
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@ZarlanTheGreen Now you are just trolling, aren't you? Because it all has gotten so silly...
9 feet is not close to 3m, we can't compare the description of "perfect length" with a picture and arrive at 3m+ either, while at the same time you maintain that people would never come up with an improved quarterstaff profile, even if it costs them virtually no extra effort...
My stance is nothing special, it does not require strong evidence. Your is. Simply stating "No", implies it virtually never happened, which is simply impossible to prove.
"Nor does anything he writes, possibly support that notion."
"you shall stand upright, holding the staff upright close by your body, with your left hand, reaching with your right hand your staff as high as you can, and then allow to that length a space to set both your hands , when you come to fight"
And there is this picture, which shows that plenty of shaft extends above the top hand.
I interpret it to mean that you add the space which "sets both [of] your hands [apart]" in a usual fighting grip ("when you come to fight"). I believe he describes the position of both hands for a reason, and the illustration given seems to support this interpretation quite well. That's why I'm by no means alone in thinking that way!
9 feet is still close to 3m, even without allowing for possible height or standing reach differences.
(Which could be substantial. Other interpretations arrive at around 8 feet plus for current population, which is significantly taller with proportionally even longer extremities.)
"...meaning that his, so-called, "short staff", is actually a light spear."
With both ends "blunt", since regular spears often had metal reinforcements at their butt ends. Sometimes with spikes.
"the notion that a hit from a quarterstaff is more powerful, than the same hit, done with a spear"
Spearshafts tend to be thinner, so significantly lighter and much less stiff in a blow. The stiffness of a beam increases 8 times if you double the thickness, 25% thicker beam is twice stiffer.
Putting the weight at the end (ironshoding) with buttspikes, rings or other reinforcments, moves the center of percussion closer to the end. IOW, staves will hit harder close to the end of their reach.
It's complex, but if you optimize for thrusts, which makes sense on a spear, you won't be able to deliver good blows. But not the other way around. A stiff shaft will deliver good thrusts. They won't be able to penetrate though, so just blunt trauma.
And stop this nonsensical nitpicking about English Bill. I use common current nomenclature, not a historical one. It's just petty, really.
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@saintsone7877 Poetry has both rhythm and rhyme, so it's easier to memorize. Yes, I think that people specifically trained to memorize could remember quite a lot after seeing the play once, if they paid this special kind of attention required to do it.
If not, they'd be only slightly better than us.
" Do you honestly believe they read these classics and memorised them in one reading? "
No, because they couldn't read .
Do you understand it? Those classics were composed during Dark Age ancient Greece, performed for hundreds of years without ever being written.
So you couldn't just take a book home and study it, until you got it. Because there was no book. You had to be good at memorizing to have any chance at all at eventually being able to perform it.
Of course, nobody thinks they learned it at a single hearing. Iliad alone has 24 books, you can't even speak for so long, your voice would be destroyed.
" VERBATIM "
Mostly.
You see, if they couldn't do it, then Heinrich Schliemann couldn't have taken this book and find Troy just by studying the lay of the land as described by Homer a millenium earlier.
" *I would wager NO-ONE was.
NO-ONE would know if they recited it correctly or not* "
You would likely lose. The audience was almost as skilled as the bards at mnemonics. While no one knew all of the text, collectively they surely knew quite a lot, so the bards were checked.
Later they obviously had the books too, and since memorizing those classics was a high class hobby of sorts, the life of the bard din't improve by much.
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@yuribrito1504 Two of my uncles fought in Italy, one stayed there forever, on Monte Casino. It doesn't change the fact, that our leadership have failed. Poles fought well under foreign command, not that great during the defense of their own country.
The plan for defense was not realistic. There was no chance of stopping German attack from three directions. The only plan that could work was to let them take some land and prepare a defense in depth further in. That was too tough a decision to make, though... If you can't make tough decisions, how you could call yourself a military leader? Just about any schmuck can make easy decisions.
The defenses were not prepared. The bunkers were not built (even the easy and cheap stuff). The people were not trained. The leaders ran away after the inevitable collapse have happened, up to and including the top military leader. The soldiers were not prepared for a tough fight, they were lied to that a victory is more likely outcome, so when they were beaten, the morale collapsed.
I'm not saying that stopping Germany would be easy, or even likely, without Western help. But if we decided to stand and fight, we should be prepared for standing and fighting. Which we were not!
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@AlexanderSeven "Also, I think that nazi racial view on Hungarians and Poles was different"
Nazi Germany was an Orwellian state, they changed their views according to current political climate. Hitler admired and learned from Piłsudski (a pro-spy, who took over Poland by force). When he was in charge, Germany liked Poland fine. There were articles in press very favorable to Polish people, which suggested that we have what they lack, so a mix between the two would be theoretically even more powerful than separate nations. When Piłsudski died, Hitler visited our embassy and spent about an hour honoring his symbolic coffin. There are pictures of it.
Don't be fooled by what they started saying about us once it was clear we are going to be an enemy. Things would and did look much different, when they thought we could be swayed to their side.
Regarding alliance with Soviet Union, we had nothing we could offer to them, so a bad bargaining position, and once they were in, they would destroy our society, just as they eventually did.
Germany could gain from us. If they attacked from our pre-war Eastern borders, without being at war with the Brits and the French, they had good chances of actually winning against Soviet Union. A few years under Prussian command could make a serious threat out of Polish army too. And how about cryptography? They didn't even know how bad they were at it.
So, that could be our bargaining position. Either Western Allies commit to our defense, or we do what is good for us!
That did not happen. Because even our diplomacy was a total failure.
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@deankruse2891 " Do you expect them to set it up in an open field? "
That's what you kinda need, if you actually wanna use it. Otherwise you have no line of fire.
If you absolutely have to set it up inside the living quarters, you evacuate the surrounding buildings.
" hit civilian infrastructure with no military targets in sight "
That's a lie, because:
1. That's simply stupid. You alienate the civilians for no military gain whatsoever.
2. That's inconsistent with how the Russians behave in this war. Water, heating, electricity, even effing Internet is working. My nephew played Counterstrike the other day with a guy from Ukraine!
With that said, there was one , confirmed and Russian strike to the civilian infrastructure. They destroyed a TV antenna, probably because it spewed out nonsense like the ones you keep repeating.
" He has hit that city hardest "
The effing escape route is still kept open, for Eff's Sake! That's smart , because all the glorious defenders can get the eff outta there and there's no need for heavy fighting.
I'm losing it. I really do. You guys are not only ignorant, you are also stupid. I'm Polish, and we are so effed up! Once again!
Stupid, shortsighted, idiots. Always our allies! Why, for once, can't we get smarter and pick our allies more carefully?
Because our idiot is just as stupid as your idiot, and we have many of those too!
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I believe, what we are going through is a three pronged problem.
One is the innate human interest in danger and depravity. It's not necessarily because we like it, quite often it's because we fear it. Like in, we used to scare children with wolves and bears, because those were very real dangers, so if the kid ended up scared, it had a higher chance of survival. Nowadays drugs and crime are much more problematic than bears, so no wonder they appear in art.
The other problem is that our art is dominated by narcissts with psychopathic tendencies, and they write how they feel. Lots of money there, lots of fame, they obviously dominate in such environments.
And all of the above was always the case. Artists are narcissts by definition. Sophocles was likely a narcisst.
So, what has changed?
The third prong has changed. There is a real intent behind it all. The intent to change our culture to something weaker, because weaker people are easier to control.
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It's been tried. The citizens were rich, the government was poor and powerless. We were wiped out off the map !
One single province of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth was richer than the whole of Prussia. There were no roads, very few bridges, small and weak army, extremely low taxes, your ancap paradise. Yet it was the poor Prussia, even poorer (though bigger) Russia and Austria who took a piece each and the map looked quite different all of a sudden.
What's up with you and utopist ideas? First socialism, now this, the exact opposite? Grow up already. It's all gray.
"Imagine multiple police services competing in fighting crime."
I don't need to "imagine" it, it's been tried. You could hire a dude to execute the court order for you. There were private wars with private armies running into the thousands , regular sieges, the lot. The history of Rzeczpospolita should be a required reading for any ancap fanboi.
How would you fire a corrupt judge? They stayed in business, simply because there was no way of getting rid of them! You guys are so naive.
I could go on like that forever and find an actual example for every "imagine" of yours. Do some reading on Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I mean it.
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@ZIEMOWITIUS " AnCap practices only apply to a certain group of people "
We were asked to "imagine" what would happen if taxes were low, government was poor and citizens rich.
Well, that undoubtedly was the case.
The roads and bridges were supposed to "build themselves", by pure "free market" magic. It did not happen
Romans build roads, PLC build palaces.
Ancap position was proven incorrect.
We were told to "imagine" what would happen, if private security was more powerful than that of the government. The "free market magic" was supposed to create a safety paradise, with extremely efficient armies and what not.
It did not happen
Private armies resulted in private wars. While those armies were much more numerous and powerful than the state armies, their average quality was definitely lower.
Ancap position was proven incorrect.
The same with judicial system etc.
" It sure sounds like you're inventing it out of the blue. "
Wacław Potocki, a poem titled "Nierządem Polska stoi" (Poland is based on anarchy). Early XVIIth century.
" Non-nobles, who comprised well over 90% of the population "
That's not true for PLC. In some regions, like around Warsaw, the percentage of nobles was close to 30%. Somewhere around 15% overall.
" a lot harder to become a citizen "
You could buy a title from a pleb.
You could serve in the military and be granted a title.
Finally, and that did happen often, you could simply lie. The only guys they caught were those who lied about belonging to a powerful family. The family took offence and whipped the liar, so forth.
It follows, that if you were smart and lied about being from a poor family, nobody ever would catch you.
" The szlachta themselves were the state "
Nice denial tactic. I was told, that "less government = always better", and when we see that it wasn't always better, you run away into "it wasn't pure ancap" BS.
" it was a revolt against the szlachta "
Those were common in Middle Ages, while they never happened in PLC.
And the one in Galicia was after a "capitalist" reform, which we are told, was
"objectively" better and more fair to the peasants.
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insultedyeti " how do humans learn to correct flaws? "
We don't really know, do we? That's what I actually consider to be the core issue with our current AIs too, that is we do not understand how neural networks develop, specialize and communicate.
" so it will never amount to anything "
I never said that.
" AI doesn't have to be perfect just better than us at a given task and that will become a problem. "
I'm of the opinion that before we start worrying about the dangers, we need to see it becoming a viable tool first.
So far everywhere some sort of AI is needed, people write it.
Finally, I want to contest what seems to be quite prevalent opinion on technological development. People tend to think that technology develops at an exponential rate, some think it's linear, and both concepts are true in the early stages of technological development.
Once the technology matures, its development speed slows down significantly. For example, I have a "flagship" bike from 1992 with an engine you can lift yourself that produces 148 HP. The equivalent model from today produces 170, I think. Roughly the same weight too. That's 30 years.
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@ramodemmahom8905 " the natural sciences presupposes philosophy. "
I disagree with that.
Knowledge and learning is much older than philosophy. People were capable of observing the world and reasoning about it much earlier. That's how they figured out various tools, agriculture, masonry, everything.
Science has much more in common with those bodies of knowledge than it does with philosophy.
I mean, how Galileo figured out that Aristotle wasn't correct about his physics? He built stuff.
Yes, Aristotle could have been discarded on philosophical grounds. But he wasn't ! Democritus was correct with his ideas, yet he was discarded regardless.
Anyway, I don't claim to be an empiricist. I'm sure that math exists and it's not empirical in nature.
Logic was used before formal logic existed. Philosophers seem to have started that field, though.
Metaphysics is pure speculation.
Epistemology is the art of not knowing how to know and being smug about it. Show me a true non trivial statement, with which all decent philosophers will agree, and I'll change my mind.
(Inb4: I've read such a statement 30 years ago. It made no sense, so I can't remember how it went.)
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@Gvjrapiro I responded already once, but the post was blocked. Didn't know why? Too direct, though no insults, so it shouldn't be that. Then i got it.
I explained why Hitler was against comintern, and it had something to do with his racial views and the nation which at the time dominated those circles. Unfortunately I named them, which is not something you can allow on a YT channel.
Apart from that your "self-admitted righty" argument is pointless, because nazis were self-admitted socialists. Whether you believe them or not, you just can't use this line of argumentation. It's pointless.
Regarding "social views", I mentioned "Women who flew for Hitler." There were at least two high-profile female test pilots. Nazis used films produced by female director. Those king of things simply didn't happen in less progressive societies of Western Democracies.
But they did happen in Nazi Germany. So nazis were socialists not only on economy, but also with respect to gender roles.
Sorry for my post being long winded and boring, but a more direct one was blocked. Just what nazis would force people to do. Censorship and propaganda, very lefty thing, and it's the world we are living in.
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@Gvjrapiro "a right wing philosophy that called itself socialists"
That's false. Nazi 25 points program is easily searchable. Do it. There is a lot of socialism there (majority!), nothing is libertarian, some parts are nationalistic. Definitely not a "right wing philosophy". Not by a mile.
"I agree, there is no such thing as a right wing socialist... which means"
...That you are experiencing a cognitive dissonance. You have two, maybe three options here. Follow the reason and change your views, forgo the reason and keep your views, or simply leave it all alone for a while. But it will come back.
"It seems a hell of a lot more common for righties to be racist"
So, who founded KKK?
"why would they take down some random history channel?"
Because of censorship. Hate speech laws is censorship and YT plays according to those. Partly because they have to, partly because they want to. It's their "religion". Many people have been blocked, their channels deleted, just because they didn't conform to what Silicon Valley culture considers acceptable. It happens all the time. TIK is scared, and rightfully so. He does not share YT approved views, so he can be deleted, like so many people before him.
"Mate, that's capitalism."
I agree, I'm a centrist actually. My belief is that we have anti-trust laws for a reason so we should simply enforce them. YT has absolutely dominant position on the market right now, they should be held accountable for that. And it's a public forum, where free speech should be protected.
That's not what they do, though.
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I just watched the introduction, and I'm sorry to tell you, but it's both not very accurate and definitely not a very fair picture that you paint there.
1. You made it appear like the burdens on the peasants were growing beyond reason, out of pure greed, and without them being a partner in the social contract.
That's how I was taught in school, but I was educated under "Realistic Socialism", so obviously you might be inclined to expect that they were not interested in a balanced picture... The reality was that the Commonwealth never experienced hunger, which was a major killer all over Europe and elsewhere! The master of the lands was supposed to not only fight to protect his lands, he was also expected to open up the granaries when the harvest was lean and feed his people . And it worked! Even long after the Commonwealth was gone, peasants have fled from more "free" places into it, because they simply did not want to die of hunger .
I'm no nobleman. One of my granddads was a baker, the other one started as a peasant worker in the nobleman's holdings. I'm definitely not inclined to be biased toward the noblemen. But the truth is how it is!
2. Then you made it appear as if Cossacks were a new fighting class in the southwest of the Commonwealth.
That's just not true. The Ukraine and neighboring places were for a very long time controlled by Rus people. At first by The Great Kievan Rus, later by The Grand Dutchy of Lithuania. Rus people had their own nobility, so Cossacks were nothing new in that regard. At some point Polish king and supreme ruler of the Grand Duchy decided to give Ukraine to Poland, just as a safety measure, so the Union would survive.
Poland had way more people and much stronger power projection abilities than the Grand Dutchy, so Ukraine and surrounding voyevodships experienced huge growth. There was peace, not more war! Sure, Cossacks were very frequently drafted into the armies which protected that area, but they were paid for that service. The rest of them, who were not drafted, fought for themselves. Sometimes according to law, sometimes by totally ignoring it.
I mean, you can't just say that "the Cossacks protected the Commonwealth", because the opposite statement is at least equally true. Whether you frame it as "The Commonwealth protected the Cossacks" or as "the Cossacks endangered the Commonwealth". It's not like we couldn't have found anybody else to serve in the army, and the armies actually protected the borders. Not loose warbands of wild people, who sometimes differed little from common bandits. And we definitely sometimes suffered retaliation wars caused by Cossack raids . Common people suffered, Cossacks didn't care. War was their mother, as they used to say.
3. The reasons for Cossack rebellions you give are also very unfair. I feel, both to the Cossacks as to the Commonwealth.
Cossacks were not considered to be nobles, they had no noble privileges. They were capable fighters, and everybody respected them for it, but they were also very wild, uncultured people. They couldn't write or read, or speak Latin. The nobility of the Commonwealth did not want such people among their ranks, because then Cossacks would have to be considered their equals.
The commonwealth used Cossack military services in exchange for promises of nobility for Cossack elites at least, but the promises were broken, so Cossacks understandably felt betrayed. There were two uprisings which resulted from that, but they were quickly thwarted. Then there was a king who planned a huge war against Ottomans and he promised a lot to the Cossacks in order to draft them for less money. He (un)fortunately died before he could realize his campaign or promises, so there was a lot of disappointment among Cossacks.
Finally, the actual and the most important factor in Chmielnicki uprising, was religion . The Commonwealth for a very long time was a very tolerant state, but that has changed in the decades preceding the wars. The Orhodox people of Rus states were forced to abandon their customs, so when Cossacks rebelled for yet another time, this time they were supported.
Religion was a major factor. The uprising was at least partially a religious war.
Sorry, I know it's a long post but that topic is simply a very complex one. I could have made it shorter, just like you've done, but then I'd risk someone claiming that my opinion is biased and incorrect, just like I've done. ;-)
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@1flash3571 " a long as sword which can be used to chop down a horse "
I've seen it tested with a halberd against a lance. The idea was to beat the lance out while chambering a strike, then hit.
Worked fine, as long as the mounted guy was going at a snail pace. Any faster than that, and the footman has practically no time to hit. He can only defend.
" dismount a knight. After that, it is a different story "
After that, they are at equal footing. Anyway, it's not easy to kill the horse on the spot. A strong hit to the head is practically your only option. Chopping off a leg might work, but it's not a given, and it's definitely not easy to chop through those bones.
If horsemen were easy to defeat, nobody in his right mind would invest so much money into their mounts. They were stupidly expensive.
" Nothing is called cheating during a fight to the death duels. "
That wasn't true in Europe. You had seconds which were there to insure honorable conduct, but usually they were not needed, because the people involved restrained themselves, even if they were drunk.
That's why only a nobleman had a right to challenge a nobleman. They were raised as honorable people, unlike other social classes.
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@sauerkrautlanguage I'm not sure where we disagree. You seem to accept, that the discussed weapons as used in actual practice had the characteristics I described, that the archers were in general capable of better accuracy at range, with obvious advantages in speed.
Yes, I know there is more to warfare than comparing the stats of the weapons. I agree with that.
Regarding a "vaguely defined super archer", while it's rather obvious that such units were rare at best, it's also certain that becoming proficient at long range archery required years of training. The weapon alone demanded that.
You would expect that years of training will in general produce a more effective soldier than mere months or even weeks. So, how would you replace those people, when they inevitably catch some fever, their feet go bad, or (which was rare) they get injured in combat?
Even producing bows alone could require several years, especially the composite type. So even if archers were initially better, in the long run they could lose due to inevitable attrition.
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@Gőzpöfögészeti Tovalöködönc " I'd say Winged Hussars were heavy "
They were shock cavalry, probably the best that ever existed, but were they heavy?
For example, you wouldn't expect heavy cavalry to be any good in pursuit. The Winged Hussars were very good pursuers.
You wouldn't expect heavy cavalry to be able to cover a lot of ground in short amount of days. The Winged Hussars could do it.
It's funny, but the amount of weight carried by the horse while entering battle was likely about the same as that of "light" Napoleonic cavalry. The trick was that a hussar's horse carried only the rider, his armor and weapons, while a Napoleonic era mount would carry his food rations, food for the rider, some blanket to sleep under, a cooking pot, so forth.
The Winged Hussars were not burdened by such stuff. They were very mobile.
The cuirassiers or reiters wore heavier armor and rode bigger horses. While they weren't capable of break-through charges of similar quality, they actually were heavy cavalry.
Because they were literally heavier.
At least, that's how I see it.
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Regarding cost, you seem to assume that mail is generally cheaper, yet I've read a convincing argument that it wasn't always the case. In case of Romans, they punched the rings out of plates, so creating mail added labor. We see a temporary switch to plate ("segmentata") at the time of rapid army expansion, which required cost saving measures. Similarly in Medieval Europe, plate seems to appear more often after the Black Death, when we can safely assume that the labor costs went significantly up.
So it's not so simple.
Then, regarding protection, you also seem to assume that plate offers better protection. I believe that's only true if the armor is closely fitted to the wearer. Mass produced plate armor ("segmentata" again) can't be tailored, so it's full of gaps. Because of all those gaps, you gotta carry a shield anyway, so what is the actual advantage of such plate? It wears badly, restricts your movement much more, so you are a worse fighter and, maybe even more significantly, a much worse engineer.
Finally, regarding technology required to produce a full suit of tailored plate armor, I believe it was always there. Since ancient times people were capable of producing sheets of metal and shape them into complex shapes. We absolutely know it to be true because of surviving helmets. If you can craft a very deeply dished Corinthian helmet, you can make every other piece of Milanese or Gothic suit. All those other shapes are significantly easier to do.
So, why everybody didn't use fully tailored plate since antiquity? I agree that the economy was the main reason for it, but I suggest that adapting existing pieces was the crucial part here. Mail is easily repairable, adjustable and extendable. Not so with fully tailored plate armor. The initial cost can even be higher for mail (depending on the circumstances), but you never lose this initial investment. Fully tailored plate fits only one person (though it needs two to even put it on...).
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The absence of evidence can not constitute the evidence of absence. Since our historical and archaeological records are extremely fragmentary, and heavily biased toward great civilizations of the era, we seriously can't tell what was or wasn't "typical" among the peoples who left no written sources and very little material remains.
Basically, we know very little about the steppe cultures of that time. However, we can and we should reason and at least postulate the logical ways those people would be likely to conduct warfare.
So, judging by the steppe and plains cultures about which we do have more detailed information, it's extremely likely that steppe warfare not only included mounted warfare, but was likely dominated by it. Everybody else simply done it that way. What would prevent the Bronze Age steppe lords from doing it that way too?
Until we find a compelling reason for that, I do think we should assume the default, almost regardless if we find any direct evidence for it or not.
(Regarding the Myceaneans, since they are reported to have chariots, it's also quite likely they had at least some mounted warriors, for specialty purposes, if nothing else. If you go to the trouble of bringing horses, it makes no sense to keep them idle, and chariots can't go everywhere.)
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@Tryputo404 " there is only Germanic (Western) Europe [and no, Czechia isn't Western], Slavic (Eastern) Europe, Latin (Southern) Europe and Balkans. "
If you divide by ethnic background that does make some sense, but that's not the only valid way. You could also divide by cultural background, where Western Europe was Roman Catholic while Eastern Europe was Orthodox.
And if we go further that way, it makes sense to separate Central Europe from the rest, because we stayed Catholic even during the Reformation. Then Central Europe would consist of Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland.
It all depends how you want to go about it.
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That's the problem with philosophy - It relies on surface level of understanding and sophisticated use of language way too often. For example, you say that "We sense reality directly through our senses. Our eyes do not change reality before it hits our brain."
That's factually incorrect. Our senses are a bunch of neurons, which become excited by stimuli, then send the electrical signal (done chemically, just for fun) into our brain. The brain creates a sensation. There is nothing direct about this process.
Anyway, yes, we can't know everything. Yes, it's impossible to prove that we know something, especially if the other side refuses to listen. However, we can know something nonetheless. And we can know it, because our ideas can be verified .
In history, it does not happen all the time, since new sources become available only when someone researches a new concept. Yet, still, newly discovered ancient texts do appear from time to time, so even that happens. Apart from that, we can verify history through non-historical means. Archaeology, chemistry, biology, genetics, everything we've learned since the original idea or narrative first appeared.
Then it's the "crossword puzzle" analogy. There is a crossword puzzle popular in my family, where you have to guess not only the words, but also where to put them. The beginnings are very hard and there is a lot of guesswork involved, but by the end, when it's all filled out, it's obvious that it's the only correct solution (with minor errors still possible).
So it's really possible to know something and history is not special. Every other branch of knowledge relies on the same mechanism.
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@BenTrem42 Re: philosophy of science
It seems rather obvious to me, that philosophy of science follows science, strives to describe it, instead of being the basis of the scientific investigation.
" rigorous experiments do not disprove [theories]. "
Well, scientists usually talk about verifying or testing theories, much less often about falsifying them. The difference is subtle, but meaningful.
The concept of falsification suggests, that all theories are "wrong", and it's just a matter of time before we are able to show it. That in turn suggests, that "truth" is just a momentary illusion, while I (and most scientists, I believe) think that the Sun is really at the center of the Solar System, electrons really exist, a heart is a pump, our mind is in our brain, etc.
In other words, I do believe that science discovers objective truths about reality, not just builds progressively more precise mathematical models of it.
If mathematical precision was all that mattered, Ptolemy was "correct", while Copernicus was "wrong".
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@Loehengrin " your own motivation in adopting Objectivism "
I can't say that I adopted it, at the very least because I don't really know what it is all about.
All I can say is, that I disagree with their premises, as outlined by TiK. Namely, I'm quite sure that our sense definitely are not a perfect representation of reality.
I might like where they end up, but it's really hard to adopt a worldview based on silly premises.
" Why adopt any school of thought "
A part of it would be convenience. It's extremely tiring to try to figure out every decision you make from ground zero, even if you have the capacity for it.
The other reason is necessity, because most of us simply do not have the capacity to think everything through at every step we take.
Therefore, it's useful to have at least a starting point, which is much further out along the way. It may not be the perfect way, but at least the direction is already predetermined. For better or worse.
" I find the road that looks most likely to take me to my destination "
You wouldn't need to make this choice, if the route was already pre-planned by a worldview that you adopted. What's more, once you adopt the worldview, you don't even need to choose the destination.
Beats the pants off the alternative, which is aimless wandering from "start to finish" of our short stay here. Definitely for most of us, I believe.
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@Waffleman00 You mean, attacking squares?
According to the manual I referenced, ideally you needed either lancers or cuirassiers for that. You attack one square at a time, at the corners. One rank at a time, veering off to the side, to make place for the next four horsemen, until the corner breaks.
So it's very far from this idea of "high risk, high reward" which is being pushed on us from all sides. It's more of a meticulous grind, until they had enough.
What is cheaper than that? Immobilize the infantry into squares, then demolish them with artillery, or even line infantry. In line formation no muskets face away from the enemy, so with equal numbers they have inherent advantage.
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@tollictollic3610 " who told you that only 2% of the region spoke German "
Before Germans settled in the city, everybody spoke Polish. That's XIIIth century, where you started.
" lower Silesia which was almost exclusively German speaking "
That's not true.
" for a long time "
Even in the XIXth century, during very aggressive germanization and laws which prevented the use of Polish, there are plenty of official documents in this language, simply because the Prussians were forced to use the language which people could actually understand.
Even then, people outside Breslau (which did become a German city), still spoke Polish.
In the XXth century, it's a different story. But that's not "a long time" before 1945.
" german spekaing city "
That's XIX-th century, when Breslau grew by an order of magnitude (predominantly due to German immigration). Yes, in the XIXth century it was a german speaking city. German was often used before that, but at the beginning of the XIXth century it was still a bilingual city .
There are documents which state just that. Do you understand that it's not just an opinion? We have evidence for it.
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@steenkigerrider5340 "The Germans lost an army 3 times the size of Stalingrad in Tunisia"
That's total nonsense. You are living in a la-la land. The total loses in Tunisia amounted to 250-350 K, while during the rather narrowly defined Battle of Stalingrad the Axis have lost 650-870 K. That's after the late August, which is a period TIK is just entering in his Battlestorm documentary. I don't remember how many episodes of heavy, really heavy, fighting he already covered, while he obviously ignored all the other operations on the (so called) Eastern Front.
That's easily over a million of casualties in the whole campaign, only in the Northern sector of Fall Blau. So it's actually almost exactly the other way around. That is, the Germans at Stalingrad alone suffered losses three times the size of the Tunisia disaster.
"considerable amount of troops to cover their whole southern European flank."
Sure. Still, one out of five (that's 80%) of their troops fought on the Eastern Front. Coincidentally, that's the percentage of Soviet troops which fought there too. 80% vs 80%.
"The concentration of panzer equipment was nowhere greater than in Normandy."
Remember to shout it very loudly, while covering your ears at the same time. I'm not sure it will work, but no harm in trying... ;-)
"Let's agree to firmly disagree on this one. :)"
I'm not giving up yet. So far you seem like a reasonable person, who was simply misinformed during all those years of Cold War. I mean, we'll see. Maybe agreeing to disagree is the best we can do, but I'm not giving up yet.
"in the early 70's Visited Eastern Germany"
I visited there in late 70s. It looks like we narrowly missed each other, or so it seems almost half a century later. Time's flying.
BTW - roughly at the same time three of my friends (all kids, of course) decided to run away to America. I mean it. They lifted some change from their parents and tried to get to you guys. Everybody had a laugh.
Well, you used to be great, while we were shit. Not so obvious any more, is it?
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"[Soviets] only lost three men for every casualty the Germans suffered"
That's not true. During the whole war, Germans have lost about 5mln dead, while Soviet losses amount to 11.5-ish mln of combat related deaths. To get any further than that, you must include civilian deaths. Leningrad, Stalingrad, famine, mass murders and so on. Do you really want to go that far to uphold your nazi-superiority myth? Well, you may, then 3:1 is possible.
Anyway, out of 11.5 mln soldiers about 3mln were POWs starved to death. So that's 8.5mln combat deaths. I doubt that starving people in POW camps is a mark of military prowess, but you are free to think what you want.
Then it goes further, because Germany wasn't fighting alone. The total Axis losses in the East claim up to 6.4mln dead, when you include non-German combatants.
8.5/6.4=1.31
I hope it's a hard pill to swallow. I'd gladly make it harder, if only possible. Just give me a hint how. :-D
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@HingerlAlois "Against 15.000 heavy well trained German/Austrian cavalry 3.000 Winged Hussars on their own would have no chance."
5:1 is long odds, but they'd still have a chance. Not a guarantee, not even a big chance of victory, but they could win. It was possible.
It's all about the lances. It's so hard to fight a lancer. You can't face him, until you are willing to die. Even if they ran out of lances, they'd still had an advantage of range due to koncerz.
When everything went right, laughingly small (several hundreds) Hussar forces could induce total panic in the army of tens of thousands. It happened at Khotyn, for example. According to sources, almost every lancer managed a double-kill, which could be an exaggeration, or not. We don't know. Though considering that a world record apparently was a hexa-kill (six men killed by one lance, at once), it could be true and it surely would explain the total panic.
However it went, win or lose, a massacre of either army was very unlikely. You can't massacre a cavalry force. They have horses...
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@glebkrawez5046 Yes, you guys do have very old sources in Russian (old slavonic), by about two centuries earlier than our sources in Polish, but I'm talking about this particular period.
The book imports were significant enough to warrant a ban (and 300 pages of loanwords). Usually it were calendars, with light hearted or practical writing in them.
Pulp fiction of the time, one could say.
I never claimed people wrote in Polish. I can read Russian fine, but I'd struggle with writing. I used to be able to do it, but I'm long out of practice. It's a separate skill, really.
I never claimed that having a patriarch would've solved all the problems, but it would solve a lot of problems. Even if we ignore Moscow and the possibility of integrating them into the Republic (what Rzeczpospolita actually means), it would likely prevent the loss of Ukraine, which eventually doomed us.
Regarding the poison, I don't remember all the context for it. The search engines spit out some irrelevant info about the recent separation, I'm not feeling digging through my library by hand. Sorry.
The Grand Duke of Lithuania was Polish king before the union. I simplified, but not oversimplified. It was the same thing.
Yes, I'm an atheist. It doesn't change the fact that the minutiae of either theology or even customs, with no direct meaning whatsoever, can be turned into a culture war issue, whenever there is a political will to do so.
Sometimes things go out of hand on their own. In case people go crazy, just tell them to not go crazy. Very simple, really.
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@Regis1995 Actually, we didn't disagree all that much. It's possible to establish facts, and once we came to that, our disagreements suddenly appeared much smaller than before.
And that's the sad part. Because I do believe that if you let people discuss freely, and if they somehow manage to keep it civil, they eventually get closer to the truth and also their stances become less extreme.
The Internet helps, probably more than anything before that apart from print, but just as people back then went through a painful and often violent process of coming to grips with this new medium, we may still experience the worst of our Brave New Medium.
Still, it's a great thing. Have a nice day and a civil discussion about non trivial matters somewhere else, because Youtube is apparently not the best place for it.
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@philgardocki5294 "In active service, the T-34 had a half life of 10 days. Not including combat losses."
What was the main failure mode and why didn't they fix it? I'm sure you have all the info to support your claim, don't you?
Aaanyway, I have found a declassified CIA report where they evaluate a captured T34. They think it's a good tank (by Korean war standards!). All parts in working order, unlikely to fail soon. Good quality of materials used (on par or even better than in American tanks), high quality of machining, despite very rough outside appearance, easy and uncomplicated maintenance, easy to fix, so on and so forth.
"ENGINEERING ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSIAN T34/85 TANK"
Detailed examination revealed that most parts were in excellent condition, with no likelihood of early failure.
[They do list possible failures, caused mostly by inadequacy of the design, but the engine is not one of those.]
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@LusciousTwinkle "Destriers were very rare"
That's partially why they claim that most horses were modern pony size, not all of them. That's precisely what the articles quote.
"NOT the sort of study that will tell us how big Destriers were."
Well, Metatron provided his own iconographic research. 14-handish, it appears. Despite him thinking he proved the articles wrong.
"It makes sense that they would be big because that is going to give you a major advantage in battle."
That's actually not obvious at all. Horses lose stamina with size very quickly. You need size primarily for strength and also for speed. Obviously, their carrying capacity will go up with size too, which became an issue with heavy armor and all that.
Anyway, the biggest horse ever bred were Shire draft horses. They can be above 20 hands, even over 2.4m at the withers. Those are huge animals. All sorts of plough and draft horses grow huge.
The breeds expected to carry a rider, especially for long periods of time, especially in rough terrain, are considerably smaller.
All of them warhorse breeds:
Arabian purebred - 14-15 hands.
Turkoman horse - 15-16
Pura rasa - 15
Appaloosa - 14-16
Mongolian - 12-14
So forth.
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+Kirothe Avenger - I'm not saying T-34 was perfect, but when compared to Panther it very nearly was.
Just read post-war British Panther tests. Somebody already posted a link here, and I don't want to bother the host with personally approving another one, so either find it here or directly in Google. Panthers were not bad. They were terrible. On so many levels.
Regarding T-34 flaws you mention, poor road-trip performance is related to inefficient air filters. That would highly depend on road conditions, basically how dusty it was, and we need a comparison with other tanks to know how it, you know, *compared*. The engine itself was rather brilliant, and I think its direct descendants are still in use.
Not so in Panther. They burned through head gaskets, the connecting rods broke, the oil-pump shafts broke, the fuel pump was just legendary, the pistons overheated - the list can go on.
Poor T-34 gearbox - yeah, that's true. They just exchanged it more often. Although not bad when compared to Panther, which was lucky to survive 150 km between rebuilds in post-war Frech army...
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+Kirothe Avenger - Oh, so early and late Panthers were junk, but the middle is the sweet spot now? Unfortunately, I gave you a test of a mid 1944 Panther with 500 miles on the clock. It was junk too!
Yes, it is possible that some Western or German tank could deal with weather conditions in Russia better than a Soviet design, but I'm inclined to believe it to be unlikely.
Anyway, there are American tests available online of T-34 and KV-1. (I argue against myself here!) I believe that your pitiful numbers for road-march performance of Soviet tanks can be traced to those tests. The thing is, those tests can only be considered as worst case scenarios.
For example, the early T-34 air filter when working in dusty conditions was scheduled to cleaning and oiling every 2-3 hours. The Americans never cleaned them or even oiled them. That the tank failed after 15-hour or so can be considered a success, not really a failure. Its filter was basically not working, and the tank still ran for that long.
There were other problems, but despite that the overall opinion seems very favorable. Even with the failures.
Not so with the Panther. It's great on paper, but junk in the real world. And that's because it was a paper tank pressed into service prematurely. As a result of that, it never matured.
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@chud1858 " I took the post to be a call to end the concept of war crimes. "
If so, then I disagree with it even more.
People always fought according to some rules, mostly unwritten, yet quite consistently upheld.
If you broke them, there were consequences.
" Whatever it takes to win should be 'moral and legal.' "
Well, let's say you negotiate with the besieged town to surrender in exchanged for their freedom. They surrender, they get to live, you don't have to spend lives and resources on the siege, both sides have something to gain.
But it only works if you can be trusted . If they don't trust you, they will never surrender. Even if they are doomed, every day they prolong the siege is one more day they get to live, and even harbor some hopes.
So while it's absolutely true that in a short term the most effective strategy might be to agree to favorable terms, then betray them, it does not work all that great in the long run, because reputation is a thing.
Morality is a very practical thing.
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@cabman5972 "Peer review [...] is fully open and transparent"
Definitely not. First of all, it's not open, because publications which oppose the dominant view are being actively shut down. Just based on the conclusions, not on merits. They admitted to this in Climategate emails, when one guy assured the others that he will block certain paper from publication, and so on, and so forth.
It's also not transparent, simply because without Climategate leak we wouldn't know about what's going on. Or at least we wouldn't be certain.
"the earth is round, [...], a flat surface doesn't exist."
That's why I wrote "a level surface".
"How can it be winter in one place and summer in another at the same time ?"
Axial tilt. Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn receive varying amounts of energy due to simple geometry. The same flux covers a larger area on the winter side of the globe, so the surface heats up less.
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@Sealdeam I do believe that we all need to plain old study Rzeczpospolita, since it was such an important state to emerge. Both her successes, and also her failures. It appears that every democratic state, to some extend, enjoyed similar advantages and suffered from similar weaknesses, so especially if we want to keep (cough, resurrect, cough) democracy in our civilization, it's better to be aware of what our forefathers went through.
For example, Rzeczpospolita was the very embodiment of libertarian "paradise", where all the citizens are rich, so as they profess, it should mean the state was powerful too.
The funny part? The whole of Prussia was poorer than Greater Poland alone (that's Poznań only). Yet it were the Prussians who won, and we lost.
Not so simple anymore, is it?
Sweden, Moscow, Austria - they were all dirt poor when compared to Rzeczpospolita - all of them enjoyed substantial successes against us.
Just something that came to my mind, but there are many more lessons to learn there.
" I respect your position "
I definitely do respect yours, if it wasn't obvious before. You see, we did inherit a lot of our culture from those times, and back then people were not used to beating around the bush. They spoke straight.
Despite all the misfortunes of communism, we thankfully, or regretfully, kept that tradition. People in the West are much more "considerate" when they voice their opinions, so sometimes we come off as hostile, while we are not. I apologize, if that happened. Not intended.
Czołem waszmości!
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@kinnellian " Socii were paid "
They were given grain for free, but otherwise it was the same system. Very minor compensation only, not an actual salary.
I'm not sure you understand how citizen based armies worked. You were supposed to show up for duty, or you lost your citizen status. Since you knew it's gonna be your own hide on the line, you invested in good equipment yourself. You'd also take some funds with you, in case it needed to be replaced or repaired.
No, you wouldn't show up with a scythe if you could afford real armor and weapons. Buy, beg or borrow, you'd make sure to be as well equipped as you physically could.
The absolute vast majority of the cost was covered by the soldier himself. There simply wasn't much in the coffers to go missing.
Re: What if the army needed substantial funds right now.
So I don't know how it worked in Roman Republic, but in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the field marshall was expected to pay for it out of his own pocket. He'd be hopefully compensated for it later.
Re: Fighting for a despot
That's the thing you seem to not understand. There was no despot. People were fighting for themselves. Like in, even if they served in a unit of the king himself, they didn't say they were serving "under the king", or "for the king". They served with the king. Together.
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@troyherschler4052 " ares isnt always treated with respect "
True that. He's your typical soldier boy. Brave, tough, but often cruel and rarely wise. For the symbol of war that was always seen in a positive light they required wisdom, so they got Athena, owl and all.
" He sides with paris, even though he despises him "
Interesting take.
My grandma believed in fate, and she went through a lot of tough times in her life. Pilots, sailors and gamblers are often superstitious, and when I go sailing, I almost consciously cherish some of my own superstitions.
There is absolutely nothing nihilistic about it. Which is weird, because technically fate is something out of your control, but by observing various rituals you gain at least an illusion of control over your fate.
I truly believe that's how they saw it too, and it worked! When you pay attention to the rituals, first of all you pay attention. Which helps.
However, sometimes you are totally out of luck and bad things happen anyway. What do you do then? The Greeks told as to just take it.
It's not nihilism. I'd say it's wisdom. Sometimes all you can do is to suffer. Happens all the time.
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@christiandauz3742 "The Hot Air Ballons, Mortars"
That's just artillery. Yes, it became more important over time, even out in the open field, but artillery can't protect itself. It required large bodies of infantry for that. Large bodies of infantry required large amounts of provisions, so we are back to roads.
"Breech-loading Rifles and Gatling Guns"
They appeared back then, but the civil war was won with muzzle loaders. Breach loading artillery was of higher importance, I think. Still quite rare, though.
"Rairoads, Trains, Steam-powered Iron Boats"
Those fall into the category I shortened into "roads".
"Telegraph"
A nice feature, if you happen to have a huge theater of operations. Yes, it mattered. Not as important if your armies are small and slow moving.
Let's imagine you could get the Army of Potomac into early XVIIth century Livonia. How would they fight there?
Well, they'd run out of food, clothes and ammo so quickly, that leaving them alone would be probably the best counter strategy. Even in mid XIXth century America they were on the very edge of survival, so how would they fare without railroads and steamboats?
(With that said, a smaller number of supremely trained and equipped men could do a lot of damage. That's quite likely, I'm not saying that weapons do not matter. Just not as much as people tend to think.)
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@dovkaupas Man, that weaseling is silly. You can "stress" whatever you like, I can't stop you. It just makes very little sense.
As far as we can know, Chodkiewich family was Rus, then Polish. Possibly with Baltic roots, back in prehistory.
Everything else is trying to present a "narration", which suits some modern agendas. A narration, which even if based on some possible interpretations, is still distorting the truth.
(BTW - If Jan Hieronimowicz was hostile to the Union, he would not be given the marshal's baton, no matter how rich he was. You just don't give the command of the army to your enemies, not if you can at all prevent it.)
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@mariuszlech9173 "And you Lithuanians"
I'm Polish. I just hate lies. What you wrote is not true. It's just easy to blame the Lithuanians for our own mistakes.
How do you hope we'll avoid similar mistakes in the future, if we don't even admit we've made any?
"I have been there many times with you, a terribly anti-Polish"
I agree with that, meaning that Lithuanians are even worse at admitting to their mistakes than we are.
How are you any better, though? You are like: "If I blame them, we are perfect!"
You know what? We were not perfect ! Cossack rebellions were avoidable. The Deluge was avoidable. They screwed up, and paid a heavy price for it.
It would be silly not to learn from it.
(Napiszę coś po Polsku, żeby nie było że udaję Polaka. Nie jestem Litwinem, mieszkam niedaleko Wisły, na wsi. Wczoraj upiekłem chleb, prawdopodobnie lepszy niż pan kiedykolwiek jadł. Myślę że wystarczy.)
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@АндрейПопов-с4с "Witcher is basically set in Medieval Central Europe"
No, I don't think so. You could say that Northern Kingdoms are based on Medieval Europe, but it's not just Central, and it all happens in an alternate universe.
"but I think the social commentary is central to the story, not mythical creatures and magic"
Well, it starts as a series of short stories about magically enhanced monster hunter, then it proceeds into a full blown saga about magically bonded family of mages, who struggle against a powerful mage trying to take control over a council of mages.
Oh, btw, humans dislike nonhumans and vice-versa.
"It's tongue-in-cheek which will be rule-breaking for high fantasy."
Only if you insist that high fantasy must be pompous. It's a viable approach, but I don't like it, because suddenly we are required to pass personal judgement in order to categorize a work instead of following more or less objective criteria.
"Postmodernist fantasy? Deconstructionist fantasy?"
That I will protest! Postmodernism, if it ever said anything clearly, states that there is no objective truth. In the Witcher universe objective truth exists, the reality remains the same, regardless of personal opinion of whichever party or character.
The Curse of the Black Sun exists or it doesn't, regardless if Geralt believes it to be true or not. Ciri and him are bound by destiny (or not) also regardless of their opinion of it.
Deconstructionists influences make more sense, because Sapkowski used plenty of fairy tales and folk stories as basis of his work, then he twisted them inside out. But was it really a deconstruction?
As far as I understand it, not at all. Deconstruction again claims that it's impossible to extract the truth from the text, because so many opposite interpretation are possible. That's not what Sapkowski does, though. The story of Renfri "really" happened to her. What we know about her might be incomplete, but it reflects the realities of her actual life.
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@yulusleonard985 "A6M zero skip alot of armor for mobility that it will easily turn into ball of fire."
That's mostly a myth. First of all, if there was a specific tradeoff with their relative lack of armor, that would be the range rather than mobility. The "fireball" exaggeration comes from that too, that is they chose not to use self sealing fuel tanks, because they decreased the range of their planes. (Interestingly, they opted for fire extinguishers instead.)
The upside was though, that with the tanks empty your plane was not weighted down with armor and sealing rubber, which allowed it to land at a slower speed.
In carrier operations there is a very solid relationship between the landing speed and accident rates. Apparently, accident rates grow with the cube of the landing speed, so adding some safety features is a double edged sword. Not even talking about the risk of running out of fuel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Anyway, armor protection is usually overrated. It protected just the pilot, only from certain angles and mostly from machinegun fire. The main reason for using it, in my opinion, was to increase the aggression of the pilots. Japanese hardly needed it.
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@brucetucker4847 " * little effort was made by the leadership to preserve their lives. Putting them in flimsy, highly combustible planes* "
That statement is pretty much false. First of all, in carrier ops there is a very steep relation between landing speed and accident rate. I think it's square, from memory, so lowering your landing speed is guaranteed to save lives.
Then it's not true that Japanese planes were flimsy. They were light, but light in aviation often means strong. If you add weight anywhere, the loads increase, so you are forced to make the structure stronger, which means heavier, and so forth. Therefore a lighter structure might and often does prove to be stronger.
Anyway, they hardly had any choice in the matter, because of the engines they had available.
Regarding "highly combustible", Japanese planes carried fire extinguishers, which apparently worked fairly well. While self sealing fuel tanks seem like a great idea, they decrease the range and increase the weight even when empty. Is the tradeoff worth it? Would you rather risk running out of fuel because you got lost on the way home in exchange for a slightly lower chance of losing a plane in combat? Would you rather land at higher speed or lower? What if you are wounded?
Hard to tell.
" American plots were a LOT more likely to survive ground looping an F4U "
I think you chose your example poorly. F4U was notoriously difficult to land, simply because you couldn't see anything in this plane. I'd much rather land an A6M2. Nice and slow. Those huge ailerons still working. A beaut.
" the Americans always had more planes and more pilots, the Japanese did not "
What if it was the other way around? Would people argue that the Americans made all the wrong compromises, with their big and clumsy planes, difficult to land, expensive to build, etc?
I think yes, people would argue that. Which means, that the final outcome should not influence our analysis too much. The war was won through numbers, first and foremost.
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@brucetucker4847 Re: armor is heavy, planes must be light
Duh!
Re: We used what we got.
Duh!
Re: Zero followed a faulty design philosophy.
You don't know what you are talking about.
Re: Self-sealing tanks.
Seafire was pressed into a service it was not designed to serve in. It was conceived as a high altitude/CAP fighter, which means it would fight with its top tank empty. It wasn't the case for carrier ops, because they tend to be at low altitude.
Regardless, they didn't make the top tank self-sealing, because it would cost them too much range. It was too costly. Therefore drop-tanks one way, and you fight with a firebomb in front of the cockpit. Tough luck.
Zero was more of a challenge in that regard. It absolutely needed huge range because of the theater. Additionally, the cost/benefit ratio for self-sealing tanks in the wings works out much worse than for a fuselage tank (but at least wing flames don't burn off your face...). Later Japanese used this safety feature, but only after the war came much closer to their home turf. Then they could afford it. Earlier on, they simply couldn't.
Re: Japanese engines.
I pointed that out. Give them double-wasps, they'd design their planes differently. I guarantee you that.
Re: Zero not superior, because it was underpowered.
Not superior to what and for what task? Most naval fighters simply could not dream of performing the missions Zekes were capable of. Over Darwin Australians, on their own home turf, lost more Spitfires due to running out of fuel than the Japanese. And it was a beast in a scrap too. Contemporary advice to the allied pilots was to go into a 6g descending spiral and hope that you survive it better than the Zeke's pilot, because the allies had those early g-suits.
Or just dive (translation - run away!).
Kind of desperate, isn't it?
" any account of any Allied pilot declining to wear a parachute "
That's most likely a myth. You simply can't pilot a Zeke without a chute. You sit on it! Maybe bomber crews? Well, in that case, I could at least entertain this possibility. Though chuting out in the middle of the Pacific, on a far ranging mission, is not necessarily a way I would like to go out either, so I could understand.
With that said, I agree that humanist ideals were alien to the Japanese civilization. It does not mean it cost them the war, though.
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@realdaggerman105 " citizens in your area "
We aren't citizens. Citizens are armed and equip themselves to defend, in person , the state they participate in. We are not that, therefore we are subjects.
" Why are you tying high culture to christianity? "
That was the dominant religious and cultural trend of the Late Roman Empire. If we were talking about different people in a different time, it'd all be obviously different.
" Western Romans not fall relatively quickly after formally adopting Christian doctrines? "
Yes, they did, and that's why I often protest the "it's the degeneracy that did them in!" outcry.
The Byzantines were way more degenerate, simply because they were richer, yet they survived for much longer. Not even talking about the early Empire. Those guys went off the charts on degeneracy, yet nothing bad ever happened to them.
" Were the Chinese not [...] "
Sure, they were. I'm not claiming that Christianity is the only way to build a civilization. It just so happens, that it's our way of how to do it.
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@shrose68 "Just know that thinking that "big government" equals "left wing" is a childs understanding of political economy"
At which point did I suggest that my understanding of ideology is so one-dimensional?
With that said, lefties prefer big government. Always. (Until you count anarchists as lefties, then not always, but I'm not sure they qualify to be called that.)
Anyway, I believe you see that Nazis can't be classified as far-right, if they are openly left wing on many aspects of their ideology.
That's just silly.
Libertarians are far right. Nationalists with a capitalist twist can be too. Nationalists with a socialist twist? Sorry, does not compute.
"Just because the Nazis called themselves socialist doesnt mean they were" and "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea"
Yeah. That's true, but Nazis actually realized socialist agenda, while there is no democracy in Korea.
Socialists believe that everybody should get as much as they are contributing to the society. Regardless of market forces, regardless of inherited wealth, regardless of personal achievements. Hitler didn't just say he agreed with that. He actually did stuff, which lead us to believe he really meant it.
It's not only what you say, it's what you do. So while there is no democracy in Korea, there actually was a form of socialism in Nazi Germany.
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@ComradeOgilvy1984 "Either way, the one dimensional political model TIK employs is hopelessly simplistic"
Is it really? Let's see.
Communism-Socialism-Liberalism-Center-Conservatism-Libertarianism and Fascism?
Fascists are to the right of Libertarianism? National Socialists are more to the right than Libertarians?
No, this model is not totally useless, but the reality is simply different. Fascists should be between Communists and Socialists on economy and personal freedoms, while they should be considered to be almost exactly centrists as far as social order is concerned (family, religion and nation).
They were right bang in the middle on those issues and very much to the left on pretty much everything else.
So how come they are considered to be far right? Well, let's examine their doctrine. They believed in indoctrination and propaganda, so lying to the public was right up their alley.
What would have happened, if people who actually believe in many aspects of Fascist ideology took over? Just hypothetically speaking, you know.
Would they honestly admit that discredited Fascism and Nazism were close to their ideals, or maybe rather they'd try to use indoctrination and propaganda in order to paint one of theirs as belonging to the camp of their ultimate enemy?
It's just a thought experiment, obviously. Luckily we are not in this alternate universe, where people are indoctrinated to such an extent... Clown World is just an illusion and white is actually black. ;-)
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@ComradeOgilvy1984 "extreme form of Royalism, thus a true and inevitable outgrowth of right wing thought, right?"
No, not really. Monarchists believe in free market and small government. They just don't believe in democracy, so in order to prevent political entities from gaining support by granting more and more promises to the masses, they want an independent power structure, which will be immune to this process.
They do not consider the individual to be an unimportant part of a hive structure. They just (realistically?) believe that the position of an individual is very vulnerable and needs protection. Hence monarchy. That will "solve" all the problems with democracy, won't it? ;-)
Anyway, one thing monarchists can always rightfully claim, is that monarchies did work . In the long term! While socialism somehow always ends up being badly implemented...
"shoehorning complex political thought into a left to right spectrum is hamstringing the discussion."
Sure. Especially when it looks like the worst crimes against humanity were all committed by the left, so it definitely is wrong to do it that way... ;-)
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@paranoidandroid9511 "hey are to the right of center since you have to be part of the "racial national identity""
Oh, I see, they were righties, because they were racists? Well, then African National Congress are righties too... ;-) Though they foolishly claim to be hardcore Socialists.
Whether you are willing to put forward national goals, racial goal or gender goals has little to do with what kind of goals you are trying to achieve.
Nazis tried to achieve Socialism for Germans. The goals are what matters here, not the scope. When you advance as a politician from local to national level, you don't suddenly change your political affiliations, do you?
"Having an economic and a social axis makes sence becausee you may have people who combine parts of diferent ideological trends. Like beeing caltural liberal, but fiscal conservative."
How about religion axis? How about family? How about environmentalism? And so on, and so on. Why only taxes and personal freedoms? Actually, wasn't it authoritarian-libertarian axis just a post ago?
Oh, I got it again. You complicate the model for as long and on as many levels until you can put Nazis on the right!
Damn, I can be real dense sometimes... ;-)
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@Tryford9 I'm not sold on Lybians just turning in place. It does not work for me. They don't use their numbers well, since only a few can face the enemy, and they still have the Romans in front of them, so they risk being outflanked themselves.
I'm open to discussion, but it makes sense to me to assume that the whole deal was pre-planned. The cavalry mops up the Roman counterparts, that opens up the Roman flank, and the Lybians are there, ready to occupy this space and start their own attack at the flank.
I mean, why would Hannibal put his strongest troops with deep ranks at the flanks, if he did not want to make full use of them?
Regarding Scipio, yes, it does seem like they broke through, kept on running away from the battle, then gathered themselves and went for the nearest fortified place around.
However, it did not need to happen at the flank. It could have, but anywhere else would not collide with this scenario.
Now I'm constantly thinking about the water. How much water that many men, working extremely hard, in heavy armor, required to survive the day. How many people had to carry said water to them, how many donkeys, how would they do it in a hostile environment, when every batch would take literal hours to deliver?
Hannibal had to have thought it through. That alone shows us he was true genius.
Oh, the influence of the battle on Scipio? I've absolutely no doubt it shaped his entire life. Everybody was demoralized, he probably was too, but he was more willing to die than to give up to the despair.
One way or the other, he was done with the grief, it seems.
So yeah, he did understand panic like very few people in history. Scary opponent to face, really scary.
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@Tryford9 From this video we have learned, that the Romans were kinda forced to use extra deep ranks, or they simply would not be able to fit into the available space.
If they did what I proposed, that is to forget about cavalry on the flanks and spread out their infantry, then they would be able to use more normal depth of ranks, and keep their own cavalry in reserve.
The main idea of having cavalry on the flanks was to prevent an outflanking maneuver. However, considering the terrain and numbers involved, it does not seem like they had to do it the usual way.
Maybe a better idea would be to concentrate more cavalry on one side only and mop up the Carthaginian there? I can see that working too. They almost won on the right anyway.
I'm quite convinced that with a capable leadership Romans would have won. However, they were afraid of capable leaders, because those could grow too big and pose a threat to the Republic from the inside.
They surely did not treat Scipio too kindly in his later life. Apparently, he died a bitter man, feeling betrayed by his state. Adrian Goldsworthy recently published an hour long video on his channel about Scipio. Very good one too, highly recommended.
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"Poland being aggressors stem from the Polish-SOVIET war of 1920"
The war was started almost solely by Piłsudski, who was a guy transported from his luxurious quarters in Magdeburg, technically in German captivity. This war was in German interests, because it coincided with many plebiscites deciding the fate of many formerly German territories. Germans did gain from it.
Piłsudski was a German "guy" (read spy). He refused the deal offered by the Soviets and went on a rampage toward Kiev, despite a very strong opposition in Poland. This opposition is documented very well in surviving press archives.
"Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918"
Purely defensive. Later on Piłsudski closely cooperated with Ukraine and even tried to guarantee them independence. It didn't work, though.
"Polish–Lithuanian War 1919"
It wasn't even a war. Polish people took Wilno several times, but never from Lithuanians. Because Lithuanians have never controlled it, and that's because they didn't live there any more (confirmed by independent censuses). Not our fault, is it?
"numerous uprisings"
Yeah. It's a proof, that plebiscites were at least manipulated to the German benefit.
"Did the Poles assist the Germans in the annexing of Czechoslovakia?"
There was no cooperation. Polish forces took over a very small part of contested territory with no opposition and almost no violence. Czechs did the same 20 years earlier. Tit-for-tat, no hard feelings.
"rose tinted glasses"
No, I don't think so. I believe that we are viewed unfairly. Many people here are very disappointed about it, tbh. They are like: "What was the point of all this heroism? They rag about us all the same. We should've behaved much more egoistically."
I think they might be correct. Unfortunately.
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@REgamesplayer "inhabitants were polanized"
Became polonized, eventually. Through marriage and schools. They became Poles.
"Lithuanians who were identifying themselves as poles" were Poles. That simple.
"Your nation had aided Nazies"
That's a lie, and a very frustrating one too. We, did, not, do, any of it. At all. And we paid a huge price for it.
Yet now you rag on as anyway. I mean, really... People who argue we were idiots for not trying to cut a deal of sorts do have a point!
"Munich agreement"
Why do you cry a river about it? If Czechs would, I'd understand, but it's always somebody else...
Until you are a Czech, shut the eff up! Your feelings do not matter to us.
Anyway, the Czechs accepted the "loss" of Zaolzie. Both the Poles who lived there and the Czechs who lived there, preferred to be in Poland instead of in Nazi Germany.
Weird, I know.
"Each and every pole I talk about is full of shit and throws half understood half-truths."
How come, if this topic is barely existent in our education system? Is it possible, that we tell how it actually was, while the accusations of systemic propaganda you guys throw our way should possibly be reversed?
Think about it, man. We don't hate you. We never did. You do hate us, but you guys were always decent enough to refrain from murder. That counts! Big time!
There is no reason for all this enmity.
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@REgamesplayer "They were Lithuanians and other nationalities identifying themselves as poles. This is different."
You mean, the culture does not matter, only blood? Who are you, a "j e w"? Don't be like them. You guys are better than that.
Anyway, 100 years later, they still identify as Poles.
"invading foreign countries together with Nazies"
Czechs invaded Zaolzie in 1920 together with the Soviets. Do we care? No. So just shut up about it. It's none of your business. We invaded Zaolzie in 1938, for exactly the same reasons they did. Do they care? No. So just shut up about it. Your opinion does not interest neither Czechs nor us. It's none of your business! Do you understand that?
"It is far more convenient and pleasant to play victim's card"
Could be why it's not taught at all here. So it means, we are not propagandized to hold some special view, are we? Who is being propagandized, then?
"by trying to steal our capital"
I asked you what would you guys do if you were us? You never dared to answer. Please, do.
Anyway, "trying"? There was no "trying" involved. If we "tried" at all, we could roll over the whole Lithuania. With ease. We just defeated the Red Army, if you happen to remember...
BTW - If we didn't defeat the Soviets, you'd become a Soviet republic 20 years earlier. There is no reasonable doubt about it at all. Think about it, just for a second. You'll immediately know I'm correct.
"political cooperation impossible. We had entered into state of cold war"
I know. I'd hope you guys would stop it 100 years later, but it's not so easy, apparently. Aren't you guys tired of it all? Maybe it's time? Finally?
"Germany had offered us to attack Poland together to take back Vilnius."
I didn't know about it. Respect!
"founding legends are formed about Vilnius"
I understand. You guys should have taken Piłsudski's deal (he was from Lithuania). You'd have kept Vilnius and everything around in exchange for not being hostile to the Poles.
But you rejected the deal! What would you do, if you were us?
"to be independent and not crushed between Soviet or Polish occupation. "
Do you understand we could have occupied you guys with ease? Two weeks all told, or thereabouts. If not for our interests, the Soviets would have immediately "liberated" you, like they did 20 years later.
You were an independent state, for the first time in centuries thanks to us. Be a little bit less salty, how about that?
"Poland could not figure out anything for two decades and had locked entire region into cold war with itself."
Okay, I agree with that. How about you guys? You did everything perfectly well, didn't you? ;-)
"We were brothers mere decades ago."
Nah. When Poland has failed you and the Commonwealth collapsed, you turned sour toward us. That's the truth of it.
Yes, we have failed. Sorry.
"Two nations with one of the greatest historic bonds which ever existed between two nations completely ruined by Vilnius."
This is a convincing argument that it wasn't worth it.
You see, it's not like we care about the territory. Wilno is not that important to us. It was about the people. And the danger that you guys will turn Soviet.
We barely escaped sovietization ourselves, Germans were in danger, everybody was. Would you make an effort and understand our point of view?
Nowadays, when human lives are not in danger and the demographics is much more in favor of Lithuania, we have no claims toward Vilnius whatsoever.
But it's a shame that what happened has happened. We shouldn't be enemies.
I live around Czartoryski lands. They trace their roots to Gedymin and are very proud of it.
Take my hand, brother.
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@black_hand78 " Ted meant over socialized as in, in the internet and social media "
Internet was barely a thing, as far as I remember, the term social media appeared only after the normies went online, which was many decades later.
So he couldn't have meant that.
I think he meant "oversocialized", like in the society trying to force you into its universal mold too much. And in that case, he was simply wrong, just like he was wrong with his "diabetes" example.
It just so happens, that people develop diabetes so often, because our genes are finely tuned for scarcity of food, not for abundance. So it was the primitive life Ted preferred which promoted those genes, and it's our life that selects against them.
It's the same story with being "oversocialized". Primitive societies have very strict social norms, while a whacko like Ted was accepted in our society, because it was assumed, that he didn't hurt anyone.
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@troybaxter That's not what I got. For me it looked like he thought that modern people engage in religions, because they have everything easy. Like in, if they were pressed for survival, they wouldn't have the time or energy to do it.
Of course I think he was wrong on that too, and he did prove himself wrong, when he invented this rabbit god for himself.
He was also wrong thinking that primitive people do not worry a lot, because so much of their life is out of their control. The thing is, that people invent ways of trying to make random more predictable. Even if they know it's irrational, they will still do it. Pilots, gamblers or sailors tend to be quite superstitious, because it gives them (us) at least an illusion of control.
So when a bad thing happens, it's not just because it happened. It happened because you said something or you did something "wrong" and the gods got offended.
Every unfortunate event seems preventable, even if it really isn't.
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@aleksazunjic9672 "It is far better to use coupons then to have mass starvation."
Coupons become currency then. The rich can buy all the coupons and still have access to all the goods. I've seen it myself, it's not a "theory", it's what actually happens.
"While coupons are not ideal, they are only solution in case of shortages."
Shortages primarily come from destroying the purchasing power of currency. In a reasonably free market economy, there are no shortages, only high prices. If the prices are forcibly kept low, people buy more than they need, which results in shortages.
Do you remember the toilet paper shortage from two years ago? If the sellers were free to rise the price of goods, that would never happen. The shops would rise the price to the point, when they can't sell any more, so there would be some toilet paper left, albeit very expensive.
You freeze the prices, you are guaranteed to get shortages. Even without any other intervention.
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@Fan_Made_Videos "What's your source about the mammoth skull with "Solutrean looking blades""
Denis Stanford, the main proponent of the hypothesis. He details this find in one of his lectures available on Youtube. How it was found, where, by whom, where it stays and all that.
"where was it discovered?"
It was pulled aboard some trawler boat, which "scraped" the bottom of the shelf. The skull was pulled out, then the blades fell out of it, or something like that.
That's what I remember.
"drudge boat dug up some mammoth bones but there was no actual uncovering of both items together"
Yeah, that's the story. Digging up a mammoth is hardly much of a story. The finds of two "solutrean" blades was tightly associated with that event, and that made it important. I'd rather consider a forgery of sorts than that one find and the other were unrelated.
The lithic tech looked extremely similar to the European stuff. If all that was confirmed to be undeniably true, I'd become a believer in the Solutrean hypothesis.
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@johneyon5257 "confronting the science against the Solutrean hypothesis"
Against? Like this hypothesis isn't even science? Slightly biased, aren't we?
""half-hearted" - which has no place in science - they are instead rigorous"
As rigorous as that guy, who used his position in anthropology to suppress all the data and publications which did not agree with his own opinion (late arrival, land corridor)?
You know what? It turned out he was wrong, and people really did enter Americas before the land corridor opened.
"DNA studies - and the stonework"
The stonework is the reason d'etre for this hypothesis to even exist in the first place. It looks so similar, on both sides of the Atlantic.
There is also this very inconvenient cultural practice of creating caches. I'm not aware of other examples of such behavior. That is an evidence, whether you like it or not.
DNA studies did not confirm the Solutrean hypothesis, but lack of a positive result is not equivalent with a negative result. Such a "die hard for scientific method" like you sir, should be aware of that minor detail.
The remains analyzed were at the extreme range of the Clovis culture, and as we know, cultures can not be equated to genetic ancestry. Just compare how long it took to map out the genetics of contemporary Europeans, and it's still not very clear.
We simply don't have this type of results for pre-contact America.
In summary, if you were so dedicated to rigorous and dispassionate analysis of available data, you wouldn't come off as so emotionally invested, sir.
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@aleksander5279 "10,000 Ottomans"
What kind of a "show of force" would that be? 10K? The Poles could beat them out in the open even without the Cossacks.
"600 Polish cavalrymen [...] 3 hussar banners and 1 reiter"
How come those 4 banners amounted to 600? That' 150% of the theoretical garrison pay-list. The pay-list was incorrect either, because some people received double, triple or even five times the pay of the regular trooper. If you are correct here about the number of banners, there could be no more than 370 guys out there and likely less, due to attrition.
Is it similar to Somosierra? Where afterwards about one-half of the Grad Arme claimed to participate in this charge? ;-)
"by far common knowledge about the charge. At Chocim Chodkiewicz wanted"
I disagree with this statement. On principle! ;-)
I mean, "common knowledge" is not an argument in hard sciences. History at its best is a hard science (often isn't, tough), so common knowledge should not be even considered. Only sources and our best efforts at interpreting and understanding them.
Sikora wrote it was Chodkiewicz's decision to recall the troops to the fortress. Maybe he simplified it, I don't know. I don't even have a personal stance in this matter and if you can prove my understanding wrong, I'd be thankful and glad to change my mind.
"Hussar banners were usually around 150-250 men strong"
When? In the XVIIth century. Unlikely.
A quote from Wikipedia, apparently based on Podhorecki and Nagielski:
"w 1608 roku Chodkiewicz miał w 18 chorągwiach 2019 jeźdźców[2], także podczas bitwy warszawskiej w 1656 roku jazda koronna liczyła 17 043 jeźdźców zgrupowanych w 156 chorągwiach(3)"
That gives us 112 and 109 paid wages per banner, respectively. You correctly mentioned "ślepe poczty" (which I previously translated into "ghost portions"), so that's at best ~94 guys per banner. Most probably less, though. Like in "much less".
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@aleksander5279 "Podhorodecki"
1985-ish... I'd hope we know more than him.
"Chodkiewicz gave the order"
Done deal, then.
"usually had war councils"
Usually, when the decision needed to be made immediately ? That's nonsense. With that said, councils happened, but it does not mean that the decision needed to be agreed upon. The marshal could listen to opinions, especially if people in question had all the rights to disobey him due to delayed pay or whatever else, but the final decision was his, nobody else'!
Like before the march towards Klushino. Everybody spoke against it, but they went anyway.
Because Żółkiewski issued such order!
Your argument that Hussar banners had to be somehow bigger, because it suits your hypothesis, does not seem convincing at all. Do we have any reasons to believe that Hussar banners had more people in them? I'm not aware of it.
Regarding the number of Hussar banners mid XVIIth century, it was an independent problem. Serving in Hussars was expensive. War-torn country could not afford them.
"you need to learn Polish and read more books than just Sikora"
That's a good one! Thanks for a larf.
" it was simply an assault with a chunk of the force"
Unconvincing. A chunk of the force could be swept off the field if the Poles decided to really go for it. It's risky to put just a part of your army out in the open. The enemy can attack them! ;-)
The alternative theory, that they simply tried to scare the Poles with their shear numbers, makes way more sense to me. For that to work they needed basically all of their army. If the Poles stayed behind the walls, as was expected, they'd be scared and possibly easier to overcome.
Not how it went, though. Unlucky for the Turks. ;-)
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@aleksander5279 "are you arguing only about the charge"
Yes. That's what I understood from the context. Okay, we don't really disagree here.
"What are you even arguing with that 10,000?"
Not enough to scare anybody, yet risky, if the Poles would suddenly decide to attack in force. Makes no sense. I think there were more of them. Several times more.
"they would make gaps in the defense, the Ottomans would then strike in the gaps and overwhelm the camp,"
Unconvincing again. It's easy to hold the walls, hard to take them. That's the whole point of a fortress. Sorties were the norm (po polsku wycieczka), so the Turks had to consider this scenario.
Anyway, what they were supposed to achieve with those 10K? Overwhelm the camp? What do you mean by that? Guys go up the walls while the cavalry charges at those still in the field, they take the walls and open the gates, so the victorious Polish cavalry can come back home?
That's some serious fantasy stuff... ;-)
There had to be more Turks out there. Enough to scare the defenders and enough so the field battle didn't seem like a good idea. Only then the behavior of the Turks makes any sense.
They just panicked. It happens. Numbers don't fight in battles. People do.
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@lion-sn7dd "I was arguing about the "Rough and Ready" statement"
In that case, your position seems indefensible to me.
1. The most expensive, the best equipped cavalry unit of that time had one horse per cavalryman... One. Single horse. Which carried a guy, a fodder, a pot, a tent, some extra clothes, all that jazz.
Former era units used to have multiple horses. One for battle, one for traveling purposes, one pack horse and usually a carriage with all the necessities. That's up to five horses per fighting man. No comparison.
2. The most expensive and definitely decently trained cavalry unit of the time, was not trained enough to use a lance. They just couldn't do it. Lances are hard...
3. They couldn't charge. Jomini writes about it in his work. Cuirassiers attacked at a trot... A trot! While elite cavalry of earlier times was capable of a coherent attack at full gallop!
Then, when you mention that their armor was a bit of a turd, am I surprised? Not at all. And when you mention later that at least some of them tried to polish said turd, I'm not surprised as well.
"I guess that if they really wanted to, they would of fixed this problem)."
Why Russia very rarely fixes any minor problems with their equipment (as opposed to countries like Poland or Finland)? The economy of scale. It's just hardly worth it if you are dealing with huge armies. That's what Napoleonic era brought to the table. Huge, massive armies. They decided that producing right and left boots was not worth it, FFS! For marching armies, no less!
How much more "rough and ready" can you get?
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+HiveInsiderComments - Yeah, it all is some philosophical speak which is hard to grasp, but I think I can make it all much simpler.
1. You understand that most religions require faith. You are supposed to actively believe in a deity of you choice. Atheism is different. It does not require any sort of faith.
2. With that established, it's obvious that active disbelief can not be a requirement for atheism. You are free to consider the possibility of gods' existence. You may even consider it likely, but as long as it's open for a debate, nothing is settles before the fact, you can call yourself an atheist.
For example - you are perfectly free to think that those Elohim Metatron was talking about are some alien race, Daeniken style. You can call them gods or Gods. You can even worship them. What you can't do is consider their existence to be exempt from being questioned.
It all is rather pragmatic, really. There are and were so many deities that it's simply impossible to be sure that all of them never existed in some form or shape. Hindu religion alone claims to have one million of gods. Can anyone be sure that none of those gods ever existed in "some way"? Of course not.
An atheist simply does not actively believe in them. That's it. You lack faith, you are an atheist. Even if you happen to be the Pope (which I consider likely, actually).
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+the vu - Yes, I understand that it's a problem of signal/noise. The thing is that if you get clever and start analyzing every "noise" pixel in real time, you can possibly vastly improve the detection range.
Yes, you have to run every pixel on the radar screen through some sort of logic, but computer games do that all the time. Pretty much everybody can afford a computer which runs Witcher 3 on high if they really want to. Just a few years back it was not the case.
What about networking? What if you could remotely make all planes focus their radars on a small area suggested by ground level VHF devices, do the magic on their own computers, identify targets and automatically fire in succession? Russians can do something very similar already with their Mig-31 Zaslon system. Imagine the whole squadron painting a very small sector.
Yes, I understand that having a ground based radar everywhere is not viable, but you could create an area denial system probably today, when pretty much nobody really has any stealthy planes yet. Once they become more common, the investments in ground based mobile VHF radars might become more rewarding, so it could get worse.
Who knows, but there is a reason why Russians build a stealthy good plane, not a stealthy below average one. Without stealth, F-35 is not even mediocre.
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+Hwang Anderson - F-22 is a different beast, isn't she? She can take on any fighter in the world up close and persona and win, assuming she's not "on the rag" yet again. And the advantage only grows bigger as the ranges increase.
F-35? There was this leaked report when they tried to rig a test against an old, two-seater F-16. They failed. Despite being loaded with two drop-tanks, the F-16 had advantages in pretty much everything. Except stealth, of course.
+Benito Llan Matos - I don't understand most of what you wrote. I don't pretend to be any sort of expert, and I just honestly raise questions which kinda bug me. Your, and several other responses might be absolutely correct, but it does not help me much, simply because I can't decipher the jargon.
Apart from one thing. I get she can be a decent stealthy smart-weapon delivery platform. I read it elsewhere, and it does appear to make sense. A very expensive bombtruck, but still possibly a very effective one. But it's not how she's being advertised, it it? She's supposed to be all things to everybody... So far I simply experience serious troubles in convincing myself that's the case.
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+the vu - Yes, they evaluated the software in high AoA situations. Does it make all the statements I quoted invalid? No, it doesn't, and you know it. Don't act desperate.
Regarding range, as far as I understand this issue, the main advantage of carrying a lot of fuel internally is that you could release the droptanks before the fight, survive it and come back home on internal stores.
But if she's in trouble against two-bag F-16, it doesn't look too good, does it?
+Benito Llan Matos - I'm not dead-set in my preconceptions. I just argue from some position. As long as my arguments survive, I'll tend to think I was correct. If you guys shoot them down, I was probably wrong.
So, is it such a good idea to build a thick, heavy plane which carries all her stores internally when stealth is not a necessity? Nobody did it before. Russians even skipped this requirement for their stealthy plane. Why? Are they retarded?
+Hwang Anderson - It's not that she lost, it's that she lost sooo baad. Empty! Against a two-bag F-16, and her only chance was to go all-in in a suicidal energy killing maneuver, after which she was "dead in the water", so to speak.
Then, it was not a proper training fight, just a comparison of performance in various combat-related situations, so the pilot factor was largely nullified. You could always say that the better man wins, but not in this case, I think.
How about the cockpit being found terrible for WVR? She's not a dogfighter. She'll need escorts, or at least that's how it looks to me.
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+Hwang Anderson - F-35 didn't actually lose. It wasn't a mock combat exercise. F-35 was decisively outperformed, which I do consider bad. Also, the leaked report is much different from the official sales pitch.
+the vu - With those extra conditions, it's probably true what you say (I"m still trying to wrap my head around it). But it would be a strange coincidence if two different aircrafts would turn at exactly the same rate, radius and G with exactly the same excess power. That makes your comparison rather meaningless.
OK, guys. I'm done with this discussion. Since I'm done, I can give a summary of my starting position and where I stand now.
So I started suspicious of F-35. She's another attempt at making a do-it-all fighter, just like F-111 which turned out badly, but this time there are a bunch of extra requirements for STOVL. There is this guy Pierre Sprey who is very critical of this plane, but since he seems to be a bit extreme in his views, I do not assume he's automatically right.
I asked, I was answered, I argued, googled and learned a bit more in the process. While doing so I learned what Fighter Mafia was, what they achieved, how they were hated by pretty much everybody, but in the end they apparently were also proven right. Boyd was one of them, they guy who invented E-M and OODA loop, Sprey was another. Between them and one extra guy they can definitely claim an influence on the design of F-16, F/A-18 and A-10, very successful warplanes.
Anyway, Boyd devised a simple way of showing which aircraft has an advantage in which E-M region. "So simple, that even a general can understand", apparently. Blue region was advantage, red region was disadvantage. The F-111 graph was all red. I wonder how F-35 would look...
It happened before. It's quite possible it happened again. I'll wait and see. I'm not an expert, so I expect to be wrong here, but everybody must at least suspect something. My suspicions are not rosy-colored for sure.
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+Dirt Poor - I did not assume a flanking maneuver. Yes, it's even better, because then cavalry has local numerical advantage, but not necessary at all according to what I read. Carolus Gustavus even spoke to his troops to move out of the way in case of a frontal charge, because nothing can stop it.
Regarding losses - we (Poles) have a huge number of very detailed casualty lists after many battles. The losses were low! Win or lose, successful charge or repelled, the same story every time. More horses were lost, that is true, but rarely ever more than a few killed men, very often to gunfire. BTW - full plate was not in fashion any more, horses were totally unarmored - assume even lower losses for earlier knights.
Regarding your "shield wall" scenario - Imagine a big motorbike that is going at you at 50 km/h. Two armored guys on top, the passenger has a lance - still lighter than a horse and rider team. *Twice lighter*, the same speed! Half the momentum...
Anyway, are you going to stop it with a shield? A spear? Warcry, maybe? ;-) Good luck, whatever you choose.
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First, thanks for this vid. You are very clear and very convincing with your arguments. Exactly what we need.
Apart maybe from the moment when you speak about how sharp a sword needs to be to do its job properly. Because there are two aspects to sharpness. One is edge geometry, the other is the quality of sharpening. An ax has a "blunter" edge geometry than a razor, so in this sense you do not want an ax to be "razor sharp", that is you do not want it to have razor's edge geometry.
But you can sharpen axes so they shave without changing the geometry, and that is what you may actually want. Two mirror polished surfaces meeting exactly at the edge. If the end result is sharper than what you need to do the job, then you could use "blunter" edge geometry, polish it to perfection, and have something which cuts just as well, but is tougher.
To achieve the same sharpness from a rough edge you'd need to go for more "risky" edge geometry. Thinner, less robust, more prone to damage.
So in the end, as a swordsman, you would want your sword to be sharpened to perfection pretty much all the time. Of course it's not practically achievable, but if you could get it, you'd want it.
Anyways, congratulations on how your channels is doing. I enjoy it a lot.
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Just a quick comment regarding IQ. Yes, it's exactly the same for both sexes, but that's by design. The IQ tests are calibrated to give the same average in both cases, but it would be trivial to design a test which would give the advantage to either men or women.
So, contrary to the popular misconception, our intellectual capabilities are not the same. We differ. Significantly. In the West only women researchers are allowed to say so, but elsewhere more experts in the field are brave enough to discuss this topic. It appears that the male brain is a bit more sophisticated, but also more fragile. When it works, it works very well. When it fails, it fails really badly.
In the end, most geniuses and idiots happen to be male.
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Well, you try your best at being down to Earth and practical in your approach, but I don't think you got there in the end. Two friends of mine were attacked by an edged weapon, one female, one male. Both survived without a scratch, in both cases the attacker ran away.
Not all attackers are cold blooded killers. Probably only a small minority is. Running away is not the only option, and probably often not the best option either. They are human, they are afraid too. In both cases I mentioned the victim was surprised, but the attacker didn't try to assassinate her/him. They tried to overwhelm both of them with physical violence and terror.
That's what they planned, and they were prepared for this very scenario. That's why when the expected defenseless victim posed a threat to their own health, they decided to give up.
So, was running away such a great option? Doing exactly what they expected to see, what they probably have seen before? Maybe...
But I say FIGHT! Shout! Scream. Do stuff! Be a threat, not just a defenseless victim. He wants you to be a victim...
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Martin Andersson Yeah, it seems you are right. The only controversial part was if Ruryk was Slavic or Nordic, and he rather convincingly was not Slavic. Genetic studies done seem to agree, Ruryk dynasty carried some rare genes not common among Slavs (mostly common in Estonia nowadays, but that's not beyond possibility).
Regarding language situation, I guess those Swedes were very few. One interpretation I found of what happened, was that they were hired mercenaries, who decided to hostile take over their employers. In this case they were just a few guys with no families. They must have married local gals, their children played with Slavs and could only talk Nordic to their fathers. They become Slavicized within a generation with very little language intermixing.
Using this case as an example, we can easily exclude similar scenario in Britain. Germanic invader had to bring families with them, otherwise they would adopt the language of Britain, not the other way around.
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Martin Andersson Maybe you should learn a bit about genetics, eh? It's not like you can fake results easily, and it was quite obvious that those results were very surprising to the people involved. When they came out, everybody accepted the old paradigm of large scale invasion. They expected much higher percentage of Germanic genes.
Politics and hope for grants may enter the picture at times, but here? If linguists have a valid case it's another matter, but that argument appeared in the discussion quite late, when it was shown that situations of total language replacement happened before. (Well, even on the Isles themselves more recently in other regions, but I don't know the statistics involved, so maybe Ireland or Whales are all fine and unsurprising.)
Regarding Varengians, even Nestor writes about take-over of power. He makes it appear as Slavs had no rulers at all, and searched for someone suitable. I think it's BS trying to legitimize the ruling dynasty, but the take-over probably really happened. At 862-ish.
Varengians were traders (that's what the word means), not rulers. Until they decided to become ones.
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+Death OfTime - My point of view is that no religion should be exempt from criticism. No religion should be privileged in a secular state. As it happens, all of them are.
Do not believe me? How about genital mutilation of young Jewish boys. If it wasn't a religious practice, it would be considered child abuse.
How about "Intelligent" design? If it was not a part of credo of some Christians, that thing would never pass. But because they are "offended" by science, they pushed it through.
How about some Christian sects which do not let their children go to the doctor, even if they are ill. If religion was not involved, the parents would lose their parental rights right away, simply because they are obviously dangerous to their own children.
Of course, it's all a delicate matter, and a perfect solution may not be even possible. But as I see it, the only logical way of approaching it all is to treat religions as any other secular ideology. If an extreme environmentalist does something irresponsible to his family, they will be treated accordingly. But what if he claims his actions come from some sort of "Gaya" religion? Then it suddenly is all right? Because he "believes" so?
I think not.
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+Abdullah khaled - "in modern days nobody can do it [child rape] and run away with it." - BULL SHIT. There is no minimum age for marriage in Sharia. The Muhammad married Aisha when she was 6, and fucked her when she was 9 (nine). The practice of child marriage is widespread.
What's worse, since Muhammad married Aisha before she could survive a sexual intercourse, it's possible to marry or temporarily "marry" even a baby, and some guys do it. I know because of some brave woman on Pakistani TV. She said it straight, the babies are prostituted out to rich pervert men, who have sex with them by rubbing the penis between the tights of the baby.
"A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not committed a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged. If the girl, however, is permanently damaged, the man must provide for her all her life. But this girl will not count as one of the man’s four permanent wives. He also is not permitted to marry the girl’s sister.”
– Ayatollah Khomeini, Tahrir al-Vasyleh, Fourth Edition, Darol Elm, Qom, Iran, 1990."
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+Abdullah khaled - Nonsense. The practice is so widespread, that it should be obvious that there is a loophole. In this case the required consent is given by the father, whether the girl in question says the required formal sentence or not.
You don't know what Ulema is? There is a wiki page about them, merely a few seconds away.
"The Council of Senior Scholars (Majlis Hay'at Kibar al-‘Ulama - مجلس هيئة كبار العلماء, also known as the Senior Council of Ulema) is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's highest religious body, and advises the king on religious matters."
BTW - Could you check what is the legal age limit for girls to marry in Saudi Arabia? I don't know, do a search in Arabic? Wikipedia says it's 18 since 2013, but this was just a proposal, which appears to be overthrown in 2014 despite lowering the proposed limit to 15.
Whatever the case may presently be, there was no limit until quite recently (and I think still there is none). Which illustrates my point of view perfectly. As people you are fine, fighting the good fight and all, but your religion is terrible and holds you back by many centuries.
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@vincentschumann937 " locking lugs also fail at this overload "
They don't suffer as much from regular impacts, though. Therefore, they don't need such a high safety margin.
Just to be clear:
1. If 55 Kpsi is a regular load, the threads need to be able to withstand 110, just to safely shoot 55 over a long period of time. Not so with lugs. They don't need as much.
That's regular 50BMG over a long period of time . No safety for any overloads here !
2. Every device ever produced includes a safety margin, with is usually within 150-200% of the expected load. So if we assume that a regular use requires 110 Kpsi, then it's logical to expect that the threaded breach should not fail before 210 Kpsi, which is a fairly typical 200% safety margin for firearms.
Finally, if the catastrophic failure occurs anyway, the firearm should be engineered in such a way that it limits the damage to the user.
On artillery pieces those threaded breaches work as designed. The users stand beside the barrel, not behind it. If the breach shoots out, there is likely nobody there.
Handheld guns do not work like that ! You are straight behind it. Therefore people engineer various failsaves into the gun, so most of the excess pressure is vented out. I don't know how exactly, I'm not a "gun designer", I just know some smart and knowledgeable people thought about it a lot before they sold me their gun!
Serbu is no such person. Scott is like "I want to shoot high pressure rounds.", Serbu is like "Fine, I'll make sure that if the gun fails, it hits you right in the face!"
That's simply incompetent!
" a .50 out of a saiga 12 "
Weird that it blew up. Without the barrel restricting the bullet, usually there isn't enough pressure buildup to even ignite all the powder.
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@Activated_Complex " confidence in Serbu’s commitment to make the design as safe as possible "
Let's use logic, all right?
Scott informs him that he's willing to put some overpressure rounds through it. What does Serbu decide to do?
Well, let's use a thicker barrel, so in case the rifle blows up, we can be 100% sure that the breach cap will fire up at the shooter!
And he knows the breach will shoot out, because he already destroyed a bunch of his rifles while testing, didn't he? Sure...
How about those "safety" lugs, which only bend if you are lucky (likely a recent "fix"), but if they break off, we already know what's happening.
" to turn the chamber of anyone’s favorite “safe” firearm design into a frag "
Not so easy, sir. Eight years ago Iraqveteran8888 and Barry tried to blow up a Mosin. They just couldn't. And they really knew what they were doing.
BTW - The late Barry predicted that Mosin will blow up either at the chamber, or right in front of it. Because that's the safer option when compared with the bolt shooting back at your face.
As it happened, Mosin ate all they shoved into the chamber, to the point it seized so bad, they broke it while trying to open the action.
R.I.P. Barry. We miss you.
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@Activated_Complex " You mean he tested to the point of failure of the prototype, repeatedly "
You got me exactly backwards. I mean that we have reasons to suspect he didn't do it.
" barrel that, as requested "
No! Scott didn't request a stronger barrel, he simply said he's planning to shoot overpressure rounds.
Regardless, even if he "requested" such a barrel, if Mark tested his rifle to the point of catastrophic failure, he should have flatly refused!
" set of ears to minimize the risk of operator error "
Those "safety" lugs turn into projectiles when the rifle blows up.
On Royal Nonesuch sketch those ears were seriously beefy. Then they would work as designed. Mark modified the design, so it could be produced cheaper. That's what Mark said himself, so we have no reasons to doubt him.
" leading to the gun being fired without the plug seated fully in its threads "
From what we see in this video, the design has been modified. Those ears no longer shear off, but the whole lower receiver detaches itself. That is preferable, of course.
Which leads me to suspect, that Mark did not blow up his prototypes in testing. If he did, he'd have known beforehand that those ears are a deadly threat.
It's just a suspicion, so I can be wrong. However, that's what fits the observations the best.
" Pick a .50 BMG rifle, anything on the market. Would you want to be anywhere near that thing "
Let's say I was forced to do it, then I'd pick any other random fifty over Serbu.
They just might hold up.
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@Activated_Complex Previously I wrote the following:
" Let's say I was forced to do it, then I'd pick any other random fifty over Serbu. "
So yeah, I take that back.
There is a lot of pieces OS flying about in the cheapo fifty market. Unfortunately.
So, there is an old vid with a Vulcan Arms 50 blowing up and seriously injuring the shooter. It seems, with a regular .50 BMG round, but it's hard to tell, of course.
If the following comment is true:
"It's Bob Hesse. He's changed his company's name multiple times to fool customers.
Hesse, then Blackthorne, then Vulcan."
then this guy is super shady and I think he should be put behind bars.
It may not be true. But I'm sure of one thing. If I really wanted a "budget" 50, I'd save up for a bolt-action Barrett. That thing is a beaut. Interrupted threads and a full set of secondary lugs.
(Some other designs seem to make sense too. I'm not dissing those guns, they might hold up. I simply dislike the "might" part of that statement.)
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@lloydgush That's what Heraclitus said, that change is the only permanent feature of the Universe. He considered it a paradox, and on some level, he was correct.
TiK said that it was silly, because "you can get into the same river twice". But you can't, since rivers change over time, so Heraclitus was more correct than TiK.
What I said, my original thought, was that paradoxes like that stem from our misunderstanding of logic. We still tend to think in terms of boolean logic (true or false, no in-betweens), while a diffused set logic (truth, in-betweens, falsehood) fits much better to how we use language.
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By the time he started interfering with the captain's decisions with regard to navigation , not trivial stuff, but exactly the thing she was responsible for, I immediately was like: "It would have never happened on my watch!"
And when he overridden her decision to terminate the trip, I think he'd have ended up literally arrested. Bound up, possibly gagged, if he insisted on shouting. (Until she commanded me not to do it. She's the boss, so I'd listen to her direct orders.)
If someone was lost, she'd be held responsible, not him. Even if it was his fault, she'd be blamed. You never, ever, question the captain's authoring on the water , until you have all the reasons to do it and are literally ready and willing to take over.
BTW - I'm very rebellious by nature. It's just that even rebellious people don't fancy drowning all that much, usually at least.
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@TheImperatorKnight "debates in the comments"
Okay, let's debate why those people preferred the suicide over the return to the Soviet Union. You seem to argue, that they simply loved the free world so much, aka communism is worse than death, which suits your narrative and political views (mine do not differ by much, just to be clear on this).
I argue, that they knew what they have done, so they expected a fate worse than death, therefore they chose to escape it by more painless means.
Sending them off was not a crime against humanity. Sending off the innocent, and I'm sure there were quite a few of those mixed in the broad stroke of global politics, was a crime, at worst. However, not a crime against humanity. To fall into that category, the Allies would need to purposefully oppress some populations and commit atrocities against them.
I argue that nothing of the sort happened here.
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@heijimikata7181 If Germans did the same, it still wouldn't have been a war crime.
Say, they captured some Hungarian communists during Barbarossa, and Hungary wanted them. Regardless of what Hungary did with those dudes, it's on them.
" illegal imprisonment and banishment "
They were POWs with no legal right to stay in any Western country. You can't banish someone who's not your citizen, so there was no banishment. POWs can legally be held captive.
Anyway, let me quote my other post, since almost nobody seemed to read it, and it's relevant to the whole picture:
"But let's not forget, what those people did in Nazi service. Was I a Polish guard in one of those camps (as TIK reported that happened), I'd not lift a finger in their defense. They were the worst of the worst. They were the most brutal, immoral, absolutely awful people purposefully sent to Warsaw in order to punish it for the uprising, just to give an example.
So, cry me a river over a rezun slitting his own throat for a change..."
Yes, those people you guys so valiantly defend were the actual perpetrators of both war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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@nadiafriesen971 Jet engines don't need high quality fuel. Usually they run on kerosene (high flash point, high caloric content), but they will burn anything. Also, contrary to popular belief, they aren't particularly inefficient while running at decent power. They can't idle, that's true, but that's also less of a problem for planes.
Sure, there were shortages which limited Me-262 utility, but those had to do with alloy metals. Germans lacked those, so they ended up making critical parts out of mild steel, which of course made the engines burn themselves out very quickly.
Regarding the impact of oil shortages, I think that TIK overstated his case here a little bit, like it happened before on some other occasions. Oil wasn't necessary to run WWII economy. It was based on coal. Oil was necessary to make modern war of maneuver on large scale, but that's a different story, isn't it?
Regarding what if scenario, USA was gearing for war, we know that for sure because numbers do not lie. Could Germany be eventually defeated without the involvement of Soviets? Maybe not, but who said that Soviets wouldn't be convinced to attack them?
Regarding Germans taking over North Africa, I doubt that would happen, and if it did, then it would be a trap. Royal Navy was too much for Kriegsmarine, so the more units you send there, the better for the Allies. As it was, they couldn't supply Rommel. A tiny force by comparison to what was needed for a proper invasion.
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@nadiafriesen971 First the facts. I wrote that I checked the timeline and the first combat mission of Gloster-Meteor was in July 42 . Why have you ignored it and wrote about "first flies" in 1943? Meteor went into combat just few months after Schwalbe, and it was a better plane too, because the Brits had access to alloy steel, unlike Germans.
Regarding Malta, Egypt or Suez - it's largely irrelevant. Malta almost fell, because Brits weren't sure if it's worth fighting for, but once they decided to keep it and make a stand in Africa, they achieved those goals.
Say they lost Egypt. So what? They still keep all of the Middle East with their oilfields, resupplying their army in Iraq is no more difficult than in Egypt (you have to go around Africa in both cases), so what exactly changes? Germans still can't resupply their forces, Brits still can, USA is on another level and most probably joins soon.
The same game on a different field.
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So Alexander the Great had a successful cavalry, managed to defeat the Sacred Band of Thebes at a tender age, yet suddenly several centuries later horses decided they simply won't charge into a shield wall... ;-)
I mean, seriously, that makes no sense whatsoever. Macedon had the best anti-cav infantry of their times, yet Macedon nobility still thought it made sense to ride into battle and engage the enemy in combat, not just scout around and poke the routing enemy after the battle was already won.
I emphasized the word nobility for a reason, because that's the important part, in my opinion. Nobles don't fight for pay, they are not hired for war. They fight to protect their own land. If they don't show up, they lose favor with their liege lord and endanger the future of their family.
So they have to show up in person and risk their own hide. And since they are rich, they kit themselves up as much as possible. You don't skimp on personal protection. Alexander's Companions were nobility. They had the best horses, the best training, the best armor and weapons on the field of battle. That's why they were effective, while hired auxiliaries of Rome much less so.
Elite infantry is way cheaper then elite cavalry. The very existence of elite cavalry shows that they had to be of immense value on the field of battle. Nobody in his right mind would spend five or ten times more money to get an "armored scout". Let's be real. People were never that crazy.
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The Winged Hussars were knights. They remained effective even against pike-and-shot formations in the open field. The way they were eventually defeated was the use of field fortifications, but those things were heavy , so the mere presence of the threat still hampered the enemy. Especially if you happened to have cannons with you...
Anyway, the most ridiculous statement was the one which accused knight of "too much chivalry", which apparently lowered their battlefield performance. Let's imagine you are a younger son of some sort, does the chance of capturing a wealthy prisoner lower or improve your morale? Let's imagine, you are a wealthy aristocrat. Does a chance of being ransomed in case of defeat lower or improve your morale?
Though, of course, there were exceptions. At the Battle of Grunwald there were no surviving Teutonic Knighs prisoners. Somehow, they all "died in battle", unlike all the volunteer knights who fought alongside them. Most of those returned home.
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Let me reintroduce the hypothesis that formed in my mind when I saw the original vid.
It looks like the Libyans could feasibly detach their rear ranks, march to the flank of the Romans, form up, then attack from there. That would create congestion wave and push the Romans toward the center. Yes, it does conflict with the sources a little bit, but the maneuver, as described, them turning in place and pushing toward the center, would expose their own flank. Some of them could have done it, but not all of them, I don't think.
Regarding cavalry, I've a feeling they didn't do that much fighting. While they definitely could help with the outflanking, there were simply not enough of them to deal any major damage. I rather think they were simply present, which limited the scope of the Roman responses. They couldn't meet the Libyans on the flanks, despite having lots of units in reserve, because marching out and forming up would be obstructed. They also couldn't run away, or they'd be picked off one by one. They were also cut off from water.
Obviously, I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems logical and I can see how it could have been summed up into the picture that emerges from the sources.
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@giftzwerg7345 I don't think there is a conflict between the sources and my model. There would be, if we assumed that all the Libyans turned in place, but I doubt it's what happened. It makes little sense to me.
When the Roman pushed the Celts out, the Libyan flanks were exposed, so turning in place makes a lot of sense. However, they were still facing their original opponents. In order to create any sort of envelopment, those original opponents need to be accounted for. That's where I see a pre-planned outflanking maneuver going on.
Regarding if any serious break-through in the center occurred, I'm quite skeptical about it. If id did happen, Romans would have likely won and they'd never become surrounded.
Some smaller scale outbreaks surely did happen, since at least Scipio managed to get out. I can easily imagine how such stories could grow in scale over time. The defeat was so unimaginably complete, that you'd expect them to cling to any glimmer of available hope. I'm from Poland and similar stories were told and retold about the Polish campaign in WW2.
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@shaneriggs6678 " how did that work out for them, I don't hear anything positive from the USSR "
So, that's the thing which you guys in the West seem not to be able to understand, and that includes your own communists.
Soviet Union was not a failure.
Pre-soviet Russia was an agrarian society. Most people living in there were illiterate farmers, barely scrapping a living. 20 years later they could take on and defeat Germany pretty much alone.
Germany was an industrial powerhouse, second to the USA only.
You guys compare Soviet Union with your own, highly industrialized, literate societies and correctly conclude that this system was definitely inferior. However, from the point of view of an illiterate farmer, whose children went to schools, got good jobs, even finished universities, it all wasn't too bad.
Besides, when the Soviet Union fell, Russia totally collapsed. We had them selling all their belongings for peanuts all over my place.
Basically, they tried democracy and they didn't like it.
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@lonestarr1490 " imagination "
How would we test such a hypothesis? Well, if it was "just an imagination", then there would be no correlation between the Zodiacs of the equinoxes and cave paintings.
Apparently, there is something there. Sweatnam claims some crazy, astronomical, number needed for such a pattern to appear by pure chance.
Is he right? Is he wrong? I can't tell, if the people who criticize him converge around the "He's no right to be correct!" kind of argument.
(BTW - Optional reading. His, well, it really is a theory, so let's call it that. So his theory was that people always needed to understand the passage of time, even if they were nomadic hunter gatherers, hence they developed this Zodiac thing.
Then it all became way more important when the comet stoke and caused a cataclysm during the Younger Dryas event, which possibly sparked the interest in stars even more, eventually resulting in Gobekli Tepe.
If you want to know more, simply watch his stuff. He's almost definitely correct on Younger Dryas comet, that part is very well supported by evidence. His prehistoric Zodiac idea is more speculative, but the inept criticism leveled against it, in my mind, kinda supports it... I mean, they still oppose this Younger Dryas comet, and that is really silly talk if you dig into it at all.
Don't rely on me, do your own research.)
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@shepardpolska There are (largely extinct) dialects, which still use dual form, apart from singular and plural. A separate set of grammar tools, which allow you to distinguish between a pair of something and a larger number. Rękoma - rękami, oczyma - oczami, końmi - koniami, chodźwa - chodźmy, zrobiwa - zrobimy itd.
Are there no dialects which use different vowel qualities for ó and u? That's hard to know, because even if I heard them, I'd most likely think that they do not distinguish, simply because I can't, which means my ear is not trained to hear the difference.
It's similar to when the Japanese learn Polish and have trouble hearing the difference between z and dz, which in their language sound the same.
Basically, only a linguist will know for sure.
But it's true, that in standard modern Polish those vowels sound exactly the same.
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Stretched to the point the whole idea is bursting at the seems. Russians might treat their women worse than Westerners, but their patriarchs do not hold much power. The OG Fascists, that is Italians, have to be discarded as outliers. The Mongol "Empire" wasn't, it was just a large scale protection racket, they hardly interfered if you paid your dues.
And, what's worse for this whole angle, we can not dismiss the idea, that some people adopt some customs in response to the circumstances they found themselves in. Actually, it would be very weird if they didn't, so some similarities are at the very least expected to be the result , not the cause.
Interesting nonetheless.
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@richmondaddai-duah " rhetoric instead of truth and good logical formulation "
So Ben has made a "prime mover" argument, and he based it on the assumption, that "potential for the existence" and "actual existence" are two different things.
He's been "debunked", because those who use "truth and good logical formulations" aren't sure anymore, that those two statements describe something different.
Because we can't any longer assume, that "Everything, Everywhere, all at once" is a fiction movie, supposedly.
No, guys! Time is a one way street. Entropy can only go up. That's how we can tell, that if pieces on the floor self-assemble into a cup, it's because someone is playing the movie backwards .
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You argue that because the individual exists, therefore all collectivist ideologies are inherently flawed. If I understand you correctly, showing a strong example where collectivist ideology was successful would totally ruin this argument, would it not?
Whatever you may say about anything else, nations definitely exist. They not only exist, but they have proven to be a very powerful concept, capable of huge successes, however you want to measure those successes. Territorial success (controlling vast territories), material success (amassing huge wealth), cultural success (imposing their culture and language over others) and reproductive success (spreading their genes). All of that has happened over, and over, and over again. Not a fluke!
So if collectivism is apparently impossible as long as the individual remains in existence, how come ethnocentrism was still capable of all of the above? How come it happened so often and for so long?
That's simply because while extreme individualism and extreme collectivism are on the opposite sides of the spectrum, like all other extremes, the existence of a spectrum itself proves that the compromise between those two opposite concepts is obviously possible.
And history has shown us, that at least sometimes this compromise is also extremely powerful.
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@NorthAmericaIsBestAmerica "Most of the high octane fuel used by the Soviet Airforce came from lend lease."
That's what Wikipedia says, but I have my doubts. They quote that the total amount of all petroleum products delivered to the USSR under LL was almost 3mln tons. Even if all of that was high octane aviation fuel, it's still less than documented domestic Soviet production. They managed to produce about a million tons of avgas alone , per year, throughout the whole war.
http://www.teatrskazka.com/Raznoe/StatSbornikVOV/StSbVOV04.html#t6
We can also see, that while their gasoline production went down quite a lot at some point, they managed to keep their avgas production up and later even increase it by 50%.
Oh, their aviation fuel had an octane rating of 95. US made avgas could be better, resulting in lower sparkplug fouling or even higher octane rating, or both. That could be true, but while definitely helpful, I can't see how it could be considered essential.
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@NorthAmericaIsBestAmerica Yes, sources are unreliable, all of them. But they are the sources ! Without unreliable historical sources we are left with speculations, which is way worse.
Anyway, I find it suspicious that the Soviets could build a half decent and definitely sizable aviation without at least some basic understanding of how to increase the octane rating of gasoline to the required level. And they had that for sure before the war even started.
So you see, both the claims of Wikipedia and your own are possible to be refuted with rather basic reasoning, therefore I find them very doubtful at the very least. Worth some checking, maybe? Who knows, there could be some truth to them, which the Soviets then and the Russians now are reluctant to admit. But still, rather doubtful.
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@Pooles1738 " I live in cuckada. [...] No person or buisness objected. "
That's so untrue it's almost painful to read. You guys made the Castro run for cover and fake illness. Which he pretended he got, despite being supposedly \/4xed up to his ears.
I bet even your granny grew a little suspicious, when the news spread.
You had politicians openly supporting the cause, which shows how "united" they are. The first hint of a defeat, they are immediately trying to switch sides...
And all of that, despite that the rollout was relatively harmless.
" Then came the trucker protest. They lost. "
The passes are gone, aren't they? It was damage control for the goons. They got hit hard , not by the protest itself, they were prepared to stop it, but by the popular support the truckers received.
BTW - making them back down was the only success I ever claimed has happened. I never said we already won, it will take a while (though in our age everything happens so fast, that I may still live to see it).
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@aswadianknight4766 " reality not about warband "
Why would you march your army into the territory you have no hopes of holding? Even Mongols, who didn't try to settle in the conquered lands, even they tried to extort a tribute. A burned and looted village can't pay any.
However, there was one case I'm aware of, when a planned destruction of the enemy was conducted. It took time and it happened on the lands "technically" already controlled by the evil-doers. The Teutonic Knights purposefully attacked the civilian population of the Prussians, in order to simply kill them off.
That wasn't easy to do, because it turned every man into an active combatant, which is something you'd rather avoid. Usual armies were less than a few percent of the population. Much easier to defeat.
Anyway, as far as I know, the Teutonic Knights had little choice, if they wanted to keep their conquests. The Crusades were events, they conquered and went back home, while the Teutons were left heavily outnumbered, trying to subdue a hostile population.
So then, yes. They really would rather rule over empty space than over Prussians, but that's an exception to the rule. Usually you would prefer to have subjects.
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First of all, I did click on my "History" tab earlier, but the mighty algorithm didn't find it profitable enough to show me this vid, so sorry for a late engagement.
1. The "registry of Cossacs" had very little to do with how it was portrayed here. It was not a form of oppression. They gained significant privileges (abolition from criminal persecution most likely chief among them...) and they rebelled several times because they considered this registry to be too low !
Basically, everything the other way around. Not my fault. Sorry. I love the vid, it's just not how it was.
2. Then, it's not true that Cossacks did fine against the Tatars themselves. It is true that without them in the way the Tatars were even more dangerous, it is true that the Cossacks sometimes managed to pay in kind for the abuse the Ukraine received, but it's not true they were any good at actually protecting the people of Ukraine from Tatar raids. Those areas were very depopulated, which is obvious even from your vid, when you mention how much wild game and fish was there to take.
At some point Poland received Ukraine as inheritance, so it made sense to send some armies there and subdue the Tatars. Only then actual peaceful life became possible again.
However, that ended the Wild East outlaw character of the place, which understandably did not suit the outlaws.
3. Polish nobility oppressing the Cossacks.
That's partially true, because there were some Polish nobles who did that, but the majority of them were Rus aristocracy (Ukrainian, in current terms). Ukraine is actually an archaic Polish word. It means "At the borders" of Rzeczpospolita. They used to have greater and older than Polish civilization earlier on, The Great Kievan Rus, but it's their choice to identify how they want. Not gonna argue.
Cossacks are cooler, I guess?
4. This lady Helena Czaplińska/Chmielnicka (actual noblewoman) the whole war broke out about was a Lady Macbeth if you ever saw one! When Czaplinski won, she married him. When Chmielnicki won she married him too. Then cheated on him, so Chmielnicki ordered his son to kill his own stepmother. She was executed together with her lover.
Good ridd... I mean, rest it peace.
5. You are correct in pointing out that the Chmielnicki Rebellion (not an uprising, sorry) had very strong religious undertones. Basically, after the Constantinople fell, the dominant Orthodox church was in Kiev, but over time Moscow won. Through poison. There was a lot of stuff happening, but in general it were Moscow patriarchs fighting against the Pope, and winning.
6. You "forgot" to mention that the payment for the alliance of Tatars were the slaves of Ukrainian people. Cossacks betrayed them. True story.
Love the vid.
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Opposite stances can be both partially correct and partially incorrect. It's very rare, when trying to describe very complex systems like economy or social behaviors, that one stance describes the reality so accurately, that it completely nullifies the opposite viewpoint.
For example, just because Keynesian economy leads to socialism does not implicate that "taxes are just theft", which is something you seem to believe in. Just because education is a state sponsored babysitting program does not mean that it's largely useless. Well, why not we try and see how a fully "homeschooled" society would look like? Thankfully, we can. It happened before. Most people were illiterate and extremely ignorant, hence very vulnerable to propaganda.
So, is education worth it in the end? I don't know for sure, but at the very least I'm aware that there are serious risk in ignoring it altogether.
Or, another example. You quote a scientific opinion and treat it as a statement of fact. Which it is not, and the only way of knowing that, is by understanding the basis for the statement. I'm referring to "races don't exist" statement, which you very obviously do not understand. I'll just point out that it's the very same people who say that races have no scientific basis, who insist on "fair representation" of various ethnic groups. So, if that was a statement of fact, how come could we even recognize "unfair" representation?
In summary, maybe, and quite likely, I'm missing a lot of nuance in what you say, because of cultural and language barier, maybe I'm oblivious to some sarcasm, but it does seem to me that you show a tendency for jumping between extremes. It isn't all bad, since you are always willing to question your current view, but it seems to be a thing, so it'd useful to at least be aware of that.
Best wishes.
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@frankjaeger1711 " It’s not just that "
Absolutely.
First of all, they had two children we know of, separated by almost 20 years. Seems like cold bedroom situation...
Then there's the cheating. It could have been this one guy, this one time, but I suspect it went on for longer. Probably with multiple guys.
I mean, do you think some silly dude would stick around when Philip was around? She had to change horses.
My guess is he threatened to do what he eventually did multiple times, she didn't care, until he finally snapped and did it.
Probably as a warning to future prospects, the message was received as intended, so the well dried up.
" Both parties are at fault "
Sorta, but what else could have he done? Separate and find some wholesome wench to have someone to come back to? Anna would never allow for that to continue. She'd scheme and make her life a total misery whenever Philip was not around, so not an option.
Kick Anna out? Not something people seem to do in this universe, and there was his daughter at stake too.
A really tough situation indeed.
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@DepressedHandsomeSpaceCop " his analysis might be interesting if it was actually based on a close reading of Marx and of Marxists "
I believe JBP is correct, while you guys aren't. Because I grew up under Marxist regime, so I know how Marx was interpreted in actual practice .
JBP: Marx concentrates on power distribution within hierarchies to the exclusion of everything else.
Wisecrack: Well, sorta yes, but only within the context of XIXth century economics.
Actual Marxists: They implement the "dictatorship of the proletariat" by making sure that the Workers' Party is and always remains the dominant power.
JBP: Marx doesn't care about human struggle with nature.
Wisecrack: So Wrong! Marx wrote about it! : "Bla, bla, bla, hard to tell, WTF, nature." JBP so funny, lol!
Actual Marxists: They push for the collective ownership of arable land, which results in inefficient, wasteful and heavily polluting agriculture. Famine too. Almost everywhere they won.
JBP: Marx calls for violent revolution.
Wisecrack: No! Though he supported every revolutionary movement, he actually wrote: "bla, bla, something, democracy", which means he actually didn't.
Actual Marxists: They implement violent revolutions right left and center.
And so forth.
So you guys can "carefully read" Marx all you want. You won't be the ones who will implement anything if Marxism wins. And those who will are either less careful in their reading and interpretation, or, I'll throw it out as a remote possibility, maybe they are the ones who read him correctly?
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@ChancePhilbin That's a very reasonable answer. It seems like you get the general idea, it's just that it might seem "weird" on some level.
Okay, let's see if I can help with that a little bit.
So, "long distance travel ability".
First of all, it's not all that great. Yes, bipedal walking requires less energy than a quadruped walk, but it's very slow. It kinda doesn't matter how far you could have walked when a lion or a pack o hyenas attacks you suddenly along the way, and you have no means of either escaping or defending your family.
An elderly chimpanzee aunt is way faster than the Ussain Bolt, just a reminder.
Then, "we evolved for the steppe" thing.
If that's so, how come we couldn't survive on the steppe before the domestication of the horse? They have the finds which show, that before the horse, the very same peoples were confined to the river valleys.
Regarding "bipedal walking is more efficient, so it likely was the main selection criterion", I don't think we can say so with any confidence. It could have been a byproduct of other changes and other selection criteria.
And then it turned out it was very useful, one does not exclude the other.
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@ChancePhilbin Yes, "the steppe" was an exaggeration on my part, but you surely did grasp the general idea very well. So, the savanna hypothesis claims we evolved to suffer the heat in there by wasting precious water.
The coastal ape hypothesis claims we evolved close to water, and profused sweating is a byproduct of this, which coincidentally helps in dry heat, as long as we have easy access to water .
The second idea makes way more sense to me.
Yes, we are as slow as I said. The absolute human top speed, unattainable for mortals, is 28mph or 45 km/h. The low range of chimp top speed starts at 25 mph or 40 km/h, so a healthy elderly chimpanzee aunt should be able to beat 45, on a good day at least.
What's more, in case she really wanted to fight, she should be able to beat up all human champions in a cage fight too.
Her "husband" could surely do it, with absolute ease. "Not even close" territory.
And those superior creatures can't survive on a savanna . They are food out there, even if we artificially provided them with all the necessities.
How it makes any sense?
If you have a tree on a savanna to "dance around", why not simply climb it? That's our natural instinct anyway. I've seen hunters fending off bears from a treestand.
Our only advantage over all other animals is our dexterity and throwing ability. A chimp can't eat an apple without using both hands.
Yes, humans can stalk, or usually ambush. That's how we hunt. Persistence hunting is how wolves do it at times, but it's rare even for them.
Re: "why not a lakeside ape instead of coastal?"
Lakeside makes way more sense to me than a savanna and I surely do not rule it out. However, tides!
We still eat what you could easily gather at low tide. We still eat it raw. And pay big bucks for it too.
Re sharks
The sharks you encounter in tidal waters are not very dangerous to us. Even reef sharks aren't. Lions? There were lions specialized in hunting humans. Humans with guns. Usually lions won.
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@ChancePhilbin I have to be brief, longer post did not go through. YT and its antics.
Yes, "the steppe" was an exaggeration, but beating arid climate by wasting water seems like a weird strategy. That was my point.
Yes, we are as slow as I said, and even weaker in an unarmed fight. Chimps, demonstrably superior creatures, can't survive on a savanna.
There were lions who specialized in hunting humans. Long story, but it was in the XIXth century and they had the weapons of the time. Lions usually won.
Oh, sharks? Sharks in the wading depth water are not a real danger to humans.
Why not lakeside instead of coastal? Lakeside makes way more sense to me than savanna, but tidal waters allow for easy access to all the shellfish you can gather. Humans surely did it (we have the mounds of shells), and it's not beyond what an ape with a rock could also manage.
Then climb a tree for the night. Which is warm and humid in the tropics, so fur is not necessary.
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@horatio8213 "TIK do it and you should do it the sam to prove him wrong."
I did. The relevant topic is the state of Soviet economy post war. I have found the source and posted the title, quote, reasoning behind it and a direct link. In a separate post.
This tank thing was just an addendum. I found it symptomatic, because similar to this video, TIK have read a bunch of sources, analyzed them as best he could, then came up with a conclusion which could be easily falsified.
Anyway, I have found it.
Under "Soviet "War-Winning" Tanks in 1941? The Role of Tanks on the Eastern Front WW2" video I wrote:
"What's the point of putting high velocity guns on tanks? To punch holes in frontlines? No. It's to punch holes in enemy armor.
If tank-on-tank encounters were as insignificant as you seem to put it, WWII tanks would be designed differently.[...]
To which TIK responded with:
"There's two aspects to this. One, your tanks need to be able to fight enemy tanks, because they may run into them and there's no guarantee there will be a friendly AT gun around to help. And two, the Matilda Mark II suffered from not having a sufficient gun, and couldn't fire HE rounds, making it poor against infantry (which was it's purpose, as an "infantry tank"). So you do need higher calibre guns. You also need range, because you don't want to be out-ranged by the enemy AT guns - e.g. 88mms in North Africa comes to mind.
But here's a question for you - why are light tanks still in use? Surely, they would have been replaced by heavier and heavier tanks if they weren't capable of going toe-to-toe with a heavy tank?"
So, as we see, my argument was valid and I did not distort his opinion. If I did, he could simply dismiss it as irrelevant. Which he did not do , but responded with a counter of a possible lack of friendly AT gun.
Of course I responded further, but that's where the discussion ended.
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@horatio8213 "You just prove that TIK was right, because he in both statements put point on importance of anti-tank and kiling soft target."
Nonsense. If you are correct, my argument would be irrelevant. Dismissed, not countered.
If you are correct:
Me: You said tanks hardly ever fight tanks.
TIK: That's not what I meant.
Me: Oh, sorry.
If I am correct:
Me: You said tank-on-tank doesn't matter, because tanks fight infantry while AT guns fight tanks. So why bother with AT guns on tank turrets?
TIK: Idunno. Just in case?
See? By trying to show that my argument is wrong, he validates my understanding of his position.
Besides, I challenged him on this once again quoting Nicolas Moran. He responded that Chieftain thinks like a tanker, not like a strategic commander. AT guns are cheaper, so that's how you are supposed to deal with a tank.
No! I'm not searching for it on Youtube! Let's pretend it's just my fantasy.
"Going to soviet economy you claim something without proper sources."
Nonsense. I wrote that I have the data and I have explained my reasoning. Do you want to read through it? So far only one person here addressed this topic at all.
"TIK bring his sources and his understanding of facts looks proper."
TIK is also extremely biased against Socialism, in case you didn't know. He's a human being. Listen to him, but don't just blindly follow everything he says.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like TIK, I respect him, but I'm no fanboy. I also hate Socialism (I was raised under this PoS), but I'm not blinded with hate because of that.
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@horatio8213 TIK wrote: "One, your tanks need to be able to fight enemy tanks, because they may run into them and there's no guarantee there will be a friendly AT gun around to help. [emphasis mine] "
Basically, "Idunno, just in case." He truly believed, at least back then, that AT guns are for fighting tanks, while tanks should just act as mobile artillery. There are people who think that tanks mostly shoot other tanks, TIK recognized them to be wrong, so the opposite is obviously true, isn't it?
"Tank with great AT gun but without any way to attack soft targets (only MG is poor tool for that)."
Actually, Chieftain claims that you mostly fire your MG, but whatever. But I agree. You need both, and there were various ways how people tried to get there, different early in the war and late. I get it. TIK did not. Because he read a bunch of books, where tank-on-tank engagements appeared to be statistically insignificant.
But it's often like that. For example, on a different channel, people analyzed the effectiveness of close aerial support and came to the conclusion that it was almost useless. Very few hits, even less kills, so why even bother? They speculated that psychological impact could maybe explain that.
But it's not how it works. People avoid danger, so if you know there is an enemy tank in the area and you have no means of taking on him, you just don't go there . If the enemy is bombing the hell out of your transport columns, you don't use them during the day, you hide, you organize AA support and so on.
However, all of those avoidance measures cost you dearly. In ground taken, poor supplies, heavily impacted mobility and so on.
But the kill statistics don't show that, do they? So that's how people make false conclusions. TIK is not the only one here.
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@horatio8213 Oh, I forgot the "You didn't show me the sources, I never asked for!" accusation...
Reassessing the Standard of Living
in the Soviet Union: An Analysis
Using Archival and Anthropometric Data
Elizabeth Brainerd
"Four different measures of population health show a
consistent and large improvement between approximately 1940 and 1969: child height, birth weight, adult height and infant mortality all improved significantly during this period. These four biological measures of the standard of living also corroborate the evidence of some deterioration in living conditions beginning around 1970, when infant and adult mortality was rising and child height and birth weight stopped increasing and in some regions began to decline."
One should always try to find a way of crosschecking the final conclusion. TIK has failed to do so. Despite arriving at a really weird conclusion, that Soviet Union was basically in a state of constant collapse. It did not surprise him, because he believes that Socialism is unable to produce wealth, but can only redistribute it.
That's what he read in a book, so it's obviously true...
So once again we have the same process at work. Socialists claim that Socialism is the best thing ever, TIK knows they are wrong, then the opposite must be true.
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@horatio8213 "Then using simple logic iI ask about it."
No, you did not. You just accused me of not showing any sources, while I actually wrote that I did. In a separate post, not in this thread, in which up to now right next to nobody seemed to be interested in discussing the effing video.
"And that is your capital evidence that TIK mIssunderstand economics and policy in USSR?"
Yes, and I'm quite convinced about it. He did say that food production numbers were faked, while the population was starving. The first thing is to check how the population was actually doing, which I did, and TIK did not!
They were doing better than before, so TIK is wrong.
"whole industrialized world came with great jump"
I agree, but TIK claims that the Soviets did not participate.
"Also data itself as usual in USSR could be altered for many reasons."
Sure... Everybody was on it, but only from 1935 to 1970. Because before that the data show a decline and after that there are obvious signs of a recession.
That's just silly. Don't be silly. It hurts my brain.
"Whit less childrens even with less resources you can uplift their state."
Check the demographics data. It's just not true. Old men breed just fine, boys grow up quickly, so losing young men is no biggie.
"You mix two set of data and try that way made TIK thesis wrong."
Nonsense. He did say that the Soviets were simply faking it all, while the food production went down and didn't reach 1940 level even by 1953.
That is total nonsense! The population was doing better with every year even during the war. Think about it. The war was less of a problem than Stalin's purges, holodomor, kulak purges and lysenkoism.
Okay, time for a summary. I truly believe that your whole case stands on "TIK didn't really mean it!" So we both agree on the issues I raised, but you excuse TIK for being silly, because he surely couldn't have meant it.
Time to wake up! He really did.
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@horatio8213 "[Ukraine] Starved by Stalin."
All of USSR was starved by Stalin, not just Ukraine. It was worse there than elsewhere (apart from Kazakhstan), but the famine was widespread.
"your claim about war rise production of grain!"
I never claimed that. Per capita means "by head" or "na głowę" (I'm Polish too). Neither Ukraine nor Kazakhstan could feed themselves in the early to mid thirties. Soviet Union could lose both and not get that much worse per capita !
"Ukraine was and still is food basket"
Sure, but if Socialists took over Sahara, they'd run out of sand. An old joke, but fitting.
Nobody, including you, seems to be aware of how bad the situation was during the famine of 1932-1933. The cannibalism was widespread. People were eating their own children.
When you compare wwII with that, it actually is possible that it wasn't any worse.
Why don't you read the paper? Just throw the title in Google and it's freely available from a bunch of sources.
Anyway, I actually studied it a little bit, trying to find traces of unreliability or fakery and can't find any . I mean it. It all looks convincing. Why? Let me explain.
The data are often scattered, there are holes in various sets, totally surprising results, which often paint a very damning picture of the Soviet Union. It all seems legit. Fake data tend to look very smooth and show no surprises. Also, when a liar admits he did something wrong, you tend to believe him. The data admit that the Soviets did plenty of wrong. Legit again.
Let's discuss Leningrad in particular. In the data it looks like children's health did not go down during the siege and later even went up considerably. Not what everybody would expect! It could be a blip, the data might not be very precise, too much noise, whatever, but you wouldn't expect that someone would fake such a result!
So fakery is probably out, but how about unreliability? If the data are more or less reliable, various independent datasets should agree with each other, and they do. The height of girls, boys, total calories per capita and calories from animal sources.
So it's possible that the data are reliable and we simply do not know how come children didn't suffer as much as expected.
You do not fudge I don't know result!
So once we exclude all the scatter and concentrate on clear signal, we can quite convincingly state that from 1935 till 1965 the condition of the Soviet population steadily improved .
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@horatio8213 Gdzie na to wszystko są jakiekolwiek dane? Bo jeśli to prawdziwy obraz rzeczywistości, to musiał on mieć wpływ na populację.
Naprawdę przeczytaj tę publikację.
Na przykład są dane dorosłego wzrostu względem roku urodzenia. W późnych latach trzydziestych, kobiety są niby o centymetr wyższe od mężczyzn, co nie ma sensu, czyli dane są po prostu niedokładne.
Nikt nie naciąga danych w ten sposób! To prawdziwe dane, tyle że niedokładne. Ale jak pominiesz rozrzut, to i tak wynika z niego że ludzie w ZSRR rośli coraz wyżsi i tyle. Jakim cudem, skoro stale bidowali?
Dalej - są dane wzrostu dzieci miejskich i wiejskich. Duży rozrzut ale trendy oczywiste. O dziwo, w czasie pierwszej wojny też im się powoli poprawiało, ale przyszedł Lenin i zrobił głód. Potem na początku za Stalina szli ostro w górę, aż zaczął rozkułaczać i znowu głód.
Po co ktoś fałszowałby dane w taki sposób, że Leninizm wygląda gorzej niż pierwsza wojna światowa a Stalinizm wygląda na większą klęskę niż druga? Te dane nie są fałszywe.
"Odbudowa trwała, ale jako całość demogrrafia i ekonomia ZSRR nigdy nie odrobiły strat otrzymanych w drugiej wojnie."
Jesteś wyjątkowo odporny na argumenty... Nawet CIA szacowało wzrost PKB w ZSRR i im wyszło co innego. CIA też uprawia sowiecką propagandę?
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@horatio8213 "Dane szacunkowe CIA [...] mocno przeszcowane"
Owszem. Od 30 do nawet 100% (realny wzrost dwa razy mniejszy niż szacowany), ale trendy z grubsza te same. Czyli można traktować je jako niezależną weryfikację, nawet jeśli bardzo przybliżoną.
"jak Japonia podniosła się z klęski po wojnie"
Oczywiście. Ci mieli cud, Sowieci nie mieli, ale to nie znaczy, że im się w ogóle nie poprawiło.
Dobra, znudziło mi się. Pogadajmy o czymś innym. Chleb niedawno zacząłem robić bo mam swoją mąkę (dzierżawię gospodarkę) i wszyscy się zajadali. Wirus ludzi wystraszył i chleba nie ma, no to co, aby drożdże kupić i git.
A tu kicha. Drożdży nie ma, bo wykupili. Tylko suszone dostałem, ale do kitu i nie rosło.
No to na zakwas przerobiłem i taki chleb mi wychodzi, że pojęcia nie masz. Ludzie wtryniają bez pojęcia. A tu jeszcze kobiety żurku na zakwasie nagotowały i też zupełnie bez porównania. Nie ma tego złego, co?
Szczerze polecam! Na sklepowej mące to zakwas się będzie długo robił, bo moja to rośnie jak na sterydach, ale wyjdzie. Roboty to mniej niż z drożdżami, tylko czasu wymaga. Chętnie pomogę, jeśli masz ochotę spróbować. Nie święci chleb pieką... ;-D
Trzymaj się.
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@michaelweir9666 "they [meaning: the battles] were very cheap [in the ground scheme of things]"
That's what I meant. Relatively few people died in battle. Most combat troops died on campaign due to accidents or disease, and an order of magnitude more people died totally elsewhere, because war destroyed the economy they relied upon. Usually children or old people. The weak.
Which reminds me, German POWs in Soviet Union had higher survival rate than the general population. The defeated and often abused still had a better chance than average, simply because they were young and strong.
"early on entire kingdoms' economies were dependent on agriculture"
Not just early on. But that agrees with what I meant to convey. A prolonged war costs more lives. Even if the whole army died but won, that would be worth it.
"The majority of men pulled in levies were farmers'
That wasn't always true. How come, if the vast majority of all men were farmers? Simple. Armies used to be much smaller. Which also means, that even if you recruited your army directly from peasants, it still didn't have such a big impact on overall productivity. Because only a percent, or at worst a couple, would be drafted. Usually ten times less than that (depending on specific period).
I'm not gonna talk politics here. With that said, while I sympathize with your sentiments, I specifically disagree with quite a few of the statements. No place to talk about it, though. Literally. There exists no place for that any more.
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I always thought that our age the most closely resembles that of the Gutenberg revolution. Too many parallels to put in a short post.
Anyway, I believe you missed a very important mechanism for which the press allowed, and that is the state funded propaganda. Previously kings had to be legitimized by the church, but with print, they could legitimize themselves. That lead to protestant revolts, since the kings did not need the church anymore, and robbing their property was definitely profitable.
Propaganda allowed for absolutist states to emerge, absolutism allowed for large armies to be levied.
Finally, I don't think that weak morale was the main reason for the stagnant warfare of the era. Morale works both ways. It takes a lot of grit to resist a siege too. What changed warfare was improved artillery and road networks, which made it possible to gather enough guns in one spot to overwhelm the defendants. Napoleonic infantry might have been highly motivated, but they were rather poorly equipped, especially for siege warfare. No armor, no close combat weapons, poor support, hardly a pot between them to cook a stolen chicken.
Earlier armies were extremely well equipped in comparison. Because you simply couldn't feed Napoleonic size armies, you had to win with quality.
So I disagree on this part, but I definitely liked the video overall.
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@ZarlanTheGreen "but you are utterly wrong, about what Silver says. I checked."
I checked too. Silver writes that the "perfect length" usually comes about 8-9 feet. According to current measures, 9 feet is 2.74m, which fits exactly into the quote I was responding to.
But I also measured the "perfect length" for me, according to what Silver recommends. It came out at 3.20m. I'm 1.81m or 6 feet tall.
"No.
Spears and quarterstaves, were just round."
I'm sure you are capable of quoting the sources for this authoritative statement?
Anyway, I based my opinion on a video by Stoccata channel, titled "Quarterstaff vs Sword". The author quotes a book on medieval forestry, where they describe how to purposefully grow (not just construct) quarterstaves. He claims that such staves were both oval and tapered.
Regardless of the sources, flattening the cross-section makes engineering sense. You can lose a lot of mass, especially at the ends (angular momentum) while sacrificing pretty much no stiffness or sectional density.
"No. If you had a metal end on a staff, you'd make it into a spear or something.
Not just a quarterstaff with two butts. That's not a thing."
Nonsense. Purposefully constructed quarterstaves had metal reinforced ends, at least sometimes. There are pictures of them!
Just for protection from wear, if not for any other reason, since they doubled as walking sticks or shepherd staves. If you put effort into growing, drying, straightening and working the shaft, then you wouldn't want it to swell and split due to moisture after talking the first walk in the rain, would you?
"Yeah ...but pretty much any other polearm is better."
Better for what? It's a blunt weapon, so worse for lightly armored combat, but probably actually better for heavy armor, because it can bash with a lot of force, which spears can't really do well.
Halberds or polaxes can bash with even more force, yet it comes at the cost of either reach or speed, especially in recovery.
Silver considers it worse only to an English Bill, which is a light halberd. Definitely not worse to "any other polearm". Apparently, you simply know much better...
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@ZarlanTheGreen "No it doesn't."
Yes, it does. The original quote: "3 meter long wooden shaft is unwieldy. " and my response: "That's very close to what Silver recommends."
"I reached my arm as high as I can, and I get to a length of about 2.4m or 7'10".
Not 3.2m."
You are supposed to add the span between your hands to that. There is a related picture which shows that (first hit in duck images search under "silver quarterstaff"). One hand fully extended, the other at waist level and the shaft extends above the top hand as far as the hands are spaced apart. Metal spikes on both ends of the shaft are also shown.
"...and I would say, that the "half pike", partisan, and glaive, are all superior to the "short staff"."
That's very fine opinion, indeed. They will be inherently slower, though. Because of physics. (Or significantly shorter, since we can trade one for the other.)
"No other polearms are mentioned or considered. As such, you cannot claim that Silver thought them inferior."
Oh, of course. How foolish of me not to consider that there could have been this "holy warscythe of Antioch" which he simply forgot about...
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@InhabitantOfOddworld " Current WHO growth reference standards "
For whom? For pygmys, for nilotes, for the Dutch?
The numbers I quoted were said to be measured for the same people, living in the same area, for two millenia.
According to them, 13th century men were about 5cm shorter than men in the 1970s. Other studies suggest we kept on growing taller still.
" In your study, do they control for ethnicity? "
Yes, in practice they did.
" England or elsewhere? "
England.
" windrush "
I had to search it up. Both Jamaica and especially India have shorter men than UK.
Any addition of those people would likely lower the late XXth century average, so it works in favor of the 13th century men.
" land baron would be shorter, possibly more deformed, than a healthy and active peasant "
I'm quite convinced you are incorrect here. Rich people throughout the ages were healthier and had more surviving children. They were very likely taller too.
" modern myth is that medieval man was about 4 foot 5 and dead by 30 "
That's 1.34m. Pygmys are significantly taller. Who ever thought that to be true?
"Dead by 30" is partially true. Due to high child mortality, the average lifespan was actually close to that.
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@InhabitantOfOddworld " Cite your sources "
Highs and lows of an Englishman's average height over 2000 years (that's the name of net article)
By University of Oxford. The lead author is Dr Gregori Galofré-Vilà, from the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford
Former work they cite (also on England) was carried out by dr. Richard Steckel of Ohio State University.
" and you're assuming the study controls for ethnic background. Significant areas of contemporary England aren't English "
They studied remains , and immigrants tend to be shorter anyway, so the errors those people are expected to introduce work in favor of Medieval England.
" I never specified exclusively south asian males, just migration in general "
Did you mean they were all Polish, or are just trying to muddy the waters?
" The wealthy had sugar "
You mean, they knew about sugar? Some of them likely heard stories from crusaders...
" The wealthy could not work "
They had plenty enough exercise. Just walking everywhere while trying to keep an eye on the manor (and all the villages) was enough to keep a man healthy, but they were also expected to keep and train their own armed retinue, to raise the young as fighters, which meant constant training in weapons, armor and horsemanship.
Super high aristocracy? Yes, some of those did let themselves go a little, especially as injuries made them largely immobile in later years, but the exception does not make the rule.
Even still, they'd grow tall first, get injured later, and grow fat as they stopped moving about.
" lack of adequate sun exposure "
Man, I grew up when we used to have two TV channels. Obviously, we had books, which they did not, because of no printing press.
There was nothing to do inside!
" child mortality rates mean. It does not mean that the average person was dead by 30 "
That's exactly what it means.
Well, not exactly-exactly. There is a bit of a wiggle room, but not much.
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@acceptablecasualty5319 " You are reeeeeeally hyperfixated on the "declining empire" meme "
Not true at all. If I'm fixed on an idea, that would be that of an emerging empire idea. And then I'd hope to become a part of this successful project.
Obviously, I wouldn't want to become a part of a failed republic project. That would be silly.
" The main strategic advantage of a hypersonic missile is the bypassing of FORWARD air defenses, and the complication of close-in air defense. "
Why not simply range? I mean, range with maneuverability, like if they came in much closer.
That seems like an advantage all right. Am I wrong?
Though, you might have meant the same thing. If so, we agree. If not. tell me please how I'm incorrect.
Re: Bla, bla, we win anyway because we always win.
Not very convincing. Regardless if you end up winning or losing, an advantage is an advantage, and a disadvantage remains a disadvantage. You keep on winning if you keep on stacking the advantages in your favor.
You stop doing that, that's when your losing streak starts...
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@SHVRWK " the ones who put people on the moon "
Last time I've seen those guys, they tried to help with the global warming problem, so they read the papers.
They came to the conclusion it was all hogwash. How do you imagine people like that surviving in current NASA, which (last time I checked) was largely funded through this AGW channel?
Russia? I watched a youtuber recently who went into the research center, in order to ask questions about hydrogen fuel cells he was using in his projects. So, they mentioned in passing, that they tried that system in cars and even got like 1000km on one fill, but it makes no sense for them. The trouble is, Russia can be quite cold, and when it's cold, you'd use up lots of energy on heating up your car's interior. ICE engines make more sense when it's icy.
The research was all about the drones. Like, makes sense, or what? And there are no special regulations on who and where is allowed to fly those.
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@simplicius11 "Pilsudski was a spy? Whose spy? Do you have any reliable source for that?"
Yes, he was a pro spy, it's not a fringe opinion, it's a fact. It's been known for sure since Austrians opened their archives. Piłsudski spied for Japan first, then for Austria. Germany didn't open their archives, so it's just a guess for whom he worked after Austria, but it's not a far fetched hypothesis to connect those very close dots.
"i really doubt that the Soviets wanted Poland"
Correct. They wanted the whole Europe, not simply Poland. But you have to start somewhere...
"except those territories that Poland took after the Polish-soviet war"
Actually, we refused some of the territories they offered us, namely Minsk. We were not land-grabbers. The idea was to gain control over the lands where actual Poles lived. Minsk wasn't such a place (for the most part).
"but I don't think they would risk that without a major conflict"
They were bolsheviks. They tried to spread the revolution to the whole world. Letting them in meant large scale communist infiltration, propaganda, espionage and so forth. Then they'd simply "help their proletariat brothers" and take everything.
Poland would become at best a satellite puppet state. The difference between Germany and Soviets was that Germans did not murder their allies. Soviets did. A lot!
"Gain what actually?"
Peace with France and Britain, just for starters. Much better starting position for their invasion of USSR too. It was always about Soviet Union, not about Western Europe. Hitler attacked Poland, because we were in the way.
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You're Spying Such a long epistle, and so little in it...
Anyway, I never claimed we have proofs of Piłsudski being a German spy, only that we have proofs of him being a professional spy. That is simply true. That's what he was. A pro spy, with no military training whatsoever.
I only suggested, that it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots and at least suspect Piłsudski of being a German spy too. So let's do it, since you insist so much.
We are absolutely sure he was a spy earlier on, so until you expect him to give it all up all of a sudden, you kinda have to suspect that moving to Germany at least could mean changing his employer. Germans gave him a military rank of some sort too, despite his lack of either education or practical experience. Then they split up for a while and Piłsudski ended up under house arrest in Magdeburg. It was not a prison, don't be a fool.
Then one day he appeared in Warsaw...
Obviously, Germans let him go. On which conditions? One is easy to guess. Germans had an army outside Eastern Polish borders, so guaranteeing safe passage to those people surely was one of those conditions. But Piłsudski also had access to German arsenals. On which conditions? Maybe, just maybe, Germans wanted him to guarantee he won't fight them with their own weapons? Don't you think it's possible they demanded such a thing?
I believe they did and I believe Piłsudski complied with this request when he refused to help Wielkoposka Uprising (which was ultimately saved by Dmowski and Paderewski).
Like I wrote before, it's just connecting the dots. Whether you find it all convincing or not, depends greatly on how you otherwise see Piłsudski, but Youtube comments are really lousy way of discussing anything nontrivial, so I'll stop here.
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Regardless of the cartridge, I'm not in love with this rifle.
First of all, it's not fully ambidextrous, because you can't switch the ejection side easily. 10%-ish of men are left-handed, 30% are cross-dominant. All of them will get hot brass in the face, or down the collar. Why? It's a huge redesign, after all.
Then, it's long, it's heavy, it's front-heavy, yet it's not well suited to being converted into a bullpup. Also, the stock folds badly and on the wrong side. It's gonna catch on equipment and be a nuisance in any IFV.
I compare it to the only other modern design I'm familiar with, that is MSBS Grot. I prefer Grot. If this 6.5 Fury will take off, I'm sure they will make a version which can shoot it.
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@darkoneforce2 " * had very small range. And that meant they couldn't go far behind the front line.* "
Yeah, they couldn't go to Berlin, so women and children were safe, but they were good enough to escort IL-2s conducting tactically relevant missions.
Regarding air superiority, I'm not saying that it is useless, I'm only saying that how useful it seems depends on the price you pay for it. You guys were willing to trade a crew of 12 (not even talking about women and children) for a chance to get a single fighter. The pilot likely survived, too.
Just because you guys paid too much for something does not mean that the goods you purchased were worthless. And further, those who refused to pay the same price are not necessarily stupid, are they?
" germans finally wihdraw from Monte Casino "
Oh, that means my uncles fought for nothing. One stayed there too...
" An american bomber has more armor "
Look it up. Practically nothing. You repeat wartime propaganda. 80 years later.
Daytime "precision bombing" was a flop. The losses were unsustainable.
" Bomber losses were never really the problem "
BS
Regarding dogfighting tactics, when you escort a force, you need to stay with them. Or they become defenseless. Boom and zoom is fine, if you catch someone unawares and then escape to safety. For actually contesting an airspace, it's not all that. Soviets had both types of fighters. For escorts, they preferred Yaks.
Regarding killing off the pilots being the goal, I finally agree. Most of them died on the Eastern Front, though...
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@InqvisitorMagnvs " Intelligence most likely originated as a domain-specific evolutionary adaptation to enable humans to solve evolutionarily novel, unfamiliar, nonrecurrent problems "
I disagree with that. I think that constant tool use and the required dexterity was what prompted the development of better brains.
In other words, it was a physical stimulus, not a mental one.
" Highly intelligent people possess no advantage in those mundane and predictable aspects of life "
What's worse, having big and active brain requires lots of calories to feed it, so it's a disadvantage. That's why most animals are not very smart.
Some are abnormally smart though, like octopuses. As it happens, their bodies require extreme dexterity. Intelligence is simply a byproduct.
" Smart people have advantages only in evolutionarily novel situations wherein a person needs to be able to think "
Social life and the politics of the herd are nothing new or unexpected. Intelligence gives a huge advantage there.
It's just that usually it's too costly to be worth it.
Just thinking aloud:
The currently prevailing opinion is based around savanna and breaking open skulls and bones left by the top predators.
I don't buy it. This source of food is not reliable enough. I rather think that those early apes started feeding on shellfish. If you can pry them off the rock, or smash their shells open with a stone, it's like "all you can eat buffet".
That's how we lost our furs and started sweating (too much salt, which is rare on savanna). At least it makes more sense to me, than walking out in the open among top predators in hopes they left something over for you.
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@Cyricist001 "battle of Kulikovo"
I think you chose a really bad example. First, the battle seem to be decided by a breakthrough charge, which is not how Tartars fought. Then the prince of Moscow is supported by two Rus princes from Olgierdovitch family, so we can't tell if the breakthrough charge would be successful without the help of those guys.
Finally, while Moskals defeated the horde, they got badly mauled by late arriving Jogailo (who became a Polish king few years later). I mean, if they were that great, how come he managed to practically destroy their army?
I understand how people come to the conclusion, that the vast areas of the Eastern Europe made cavalry based warfare preferable to infantry based warfare. That is true and it worked very well, under one condition. You needed those superb cavalrymen. Trained from childhood.
Moskals, in general, didn't have those guys. It's like expecting that since mounted archery was a successful strategy, all you need is tell to your guys to use bows on horseback in order to achieve similar results.
Obviously, it won't happen until they trained from childhood to achieve a high level of mastery in this type of warfare. From what I've read so far, Moskals have never based their armies around skirmishing, highly mobile, highly maneuverable cavalry forces.
In case I'm wrong, please correct me.
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@Cyricist001 "What Poland has [at the time] going for it is their relative security around its borders. The Holy Roman Empire"
Attacked Poland. Often.
"[Russia] usually ceded land to invaders to pull them in, similar how the nomadic tribes of Central Asia operated."
That's how they try to spin it, at least.... ;-)
"Mongol armies were not centered around [horse archers]."
How do we know that? Because we know how Tartars fought. They were light, highly mobile, ultra skirmishers/raiders. How do we know that Mongols were totally different?
"the Mongol armies were predominantly heavy cavalry armed with spear and sword"
How come Tartars were not?
"Cavalry by definition is a highly mobile, skirmishing force."
Whose definition is that? In modern times cavalry units were transferred into tanks. Was that a mistake, or are tanks a "highly mobile skirmishing 'force'"?
"A direct cavalry charge against prepared infantry is suicide, there's no way a lance can compete with a pike"
That's total BS. Sorry. I could use kinder words, but at the expense of accuracy.
Finally, I mostly agree with your description of Monogol tactics. They seemed to weaken the enemy first, before committing to a final attack, preferably from an advantageous position. How would they weaken the enemy? By throwing insults their way? ;-)
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@TheImperatorKnight " Freedom comes from the ability to say no "
Many of my ancestors were enslaved. I bet they said "no" many times over. The trouble was, that the slavers were free to ignore it.
The rather inescapable conclusion should be, that if we make slavery illegal, we limit the freedom of the individual.
" to say that men COULD create slavery is missing the point "
Oh, the problem doesn't even exist? Silly of me not to see it that way...
" slave has the freedom to fight back "
Believe you me, they did.
But every prisoner ever had this choice available to them, so they were all "free", apparently.
Ergo, the problem does not exist. Again...
" Give me liberty or give me death. "
Fine, it might come to that, but I'll start with 20 lashes. I need to protect my investment, you see.
" democracy isn't freedom, it's state tyranny "
Stop redefining words. Yes, democracy is not freedom. No, it's not tyranny. Tyranny replaced democracy in many Greek city states. Those were two different forms of government.
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@ZIEMOWITIUS If you were a noble, PLC was pretty damn close to the ancap nonsense.
In feudal societies the power of the king was very strong, attenuated only with high aristocracy, who could lay a claim to the throne themselves.
Nothing of the sort happened in PLC.
It's the crucial difference, that allowed for the anarchistic character of PLC, which is stated over and over in the sources. They thought that PLC was anarchy, I didn't invent it out of the blue!
As far as capitalism goes, it was that too. Extremely low taxes, private security, private law enforcement, private just about anything you could imagine.
Yes, only the citizens held all those freedoms, but it wasn't very difficult to become one, if you had the guts for it. You didn't have to ask the king for permission, for starters.
As far as the fate of peasants go, let me just say that when supervolcano erupted in 1815 and brought the "year with no summer", there was famine all around the world, but not in former PLC lands. The only peasant uprising (common during Middle Ages) that ever happened here, was in the Austrian partition, which switched to paying rent with money, not work.
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@lonjohnson5161 " Midshipmen. What were they and what were their duties? "
Young lads (early teens to late teens), learning to become officers of the navy. As far as duties go, they were supposed to mostly learn, but they took command of the boats, sometimes boarding parties, smaller detachments during shore actions, that sort of stuff.
" When did they fall out of fashion "
After the age of sail, surely.
" anything else you think would be useful to know about midshipmen "
They were young kids, who still needed female care, so (I think it was) bosun's wife who was tasked with that. Some of the midshipmen were not really at see, only officially listed as part of the crew, just to pad their resume. Being rich and having good family connections vastly improved the chances of gaining a command later on, and generally the chances of a better career.
I think Cook was one of those, who were not very fortunate with family connections. That's why such a great sailor was in command of small and frankly not very good ships.
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1.49 - Rolling log is implied to precede the sled. I don't know why? Sleds are useful for transporting any moderately heavy load over less than perfectly even surface, as it prevents the load from getting stuck on bumps. If you "pave" the way with wood, you can even achieve lower friction. Then , on a paved or evened out terrain, it finally makes sense to try the rolling log. On uneven ground it will just get stuck.
Just saying what makes sense to me, I don't know what is most commonly assumed. (However, the illustration presented at 2:11 seems to agree with my view. We can see a loaded sled, on rolling logs, on a smoothed or paved road. Not a bare stone block with rollers underneath, being pulled over uneven ground.)
Re: Why the wheel came in so late.
While the reasons presented here are definitely correct, I like to rather think about who might have benefited from the wheel the most. While the wheel is so incredibly useful, everybody did benefit from it, but not to the same extent.
1. Primitive wheels are no good for moving heavy loads.
People tend to overlook it, but it's absolutely true. The load bearing capacity of a simple sled is an order of magnitude higher than that of a primitive wheel. Or even a sophisticated one! Sleds were used for big objects for a very long time after the wheel was already known.
2. Sedentary people do not move much in general. That's why they are called sedentary.
From that I propose, that more nomadic lifestyle is likely to come up with this invention. The people who absolutely need to move, or they starve. For them, having even slightly better transportation capabilities is of great value.
3. Wheels are no good on uneven ground.
Currently, mountains and heavily wooded areas are still converted into "flatlands" in order to use the wheel (roads, rails). Where it's not possible, people still use horses, which walk. When horses can't go, they carry stuff on their own backs.
What it all amounts to?
I believe, that in search for the wheel inventors, we should look to the nomadic people (modest loads, high distance), who lived on, or at least in close proximity of the flatlands. Basically, Eurasian steppe. Yes, finds will be hard in this terrain...
So finally, back to the original question of "why so late?". In my approach the wheel came in so late, because people who could benefit from it the most, started colonizing the environment with the strongest "need" very late.
Re: Greeks did that, Egyptians did the next thing.
How do we know that? We don't. It's probably the earliest finds which come from those areas, but you don't get finds where you don't dig, do you?
Anyway, if that approach is true, I'm a Pole so I want to claim that invention for my nation. (That's reductio ad absurdum, if it's not obvious!). The earliest depiction of a wagon, or any other wheeled vehicle, happens to come from Poland. Obviously, it means nothing
But if people claim it does? Gimme! ;-)
Okay, it's a long post already.
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@lolzmogus40 " Yes it was a plan "
I find it very doubtful.
First of all, a fake retreat is a "steppe" maneuver. They retreated into the woods. With very narrow roads. What kind of advantage was it supposed to give them?
Then, the Teutons came back to the battle, while singing a song of victory . Christ resurrected, something like that.
Which means, that it was the Polish army, which was outflanked by their return. And Polish army was in dire straits already. The banner of Cracow has temporarily fallen, the Czech mercenaries tried to retreat (stopped by Mikołaj Trąba), even our king was attacked, due to the Teutons running unopposed on our rear.
I see this new narrative as a reflection of our current politics, not a reflection of historical truth. The battle of Grunwald is extremely important to the Lithuanians, so if we insisted that they routed and endangered the whole deal, it would look bad.
But I just don't care about such things. I want truth.
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@hotelsierra7441 " many commanders could not imagine it "
Nonsense. People have used ambush tactics since forever.
" the cavalry had spread out and scattered them with a sudden attack "
That's an open steppe maneuver, where you can see what's going on, and use some pre-arranged signals. It doesn't require a genius to come up with it, but it does require highly trained and disciplined troops.
" where an ambush was prepared "
You can ambush cavalry in the woods. With infantry . Prepared fortifications, shooting from behind cover, that sort of thing.
Lithuanians were cavalry, so how were they supposed to do it?
Dismount, while the Teutons were hot on their heals? Where you neither can see far, nor even hear very well? Narrow track and dense woods all around? Chaos!
What do you do with the horses?
How do you defeat the pursuing cavalry?
By throwing insults?
" Teutons would have returned exactly as you wrote "
They did come back, convinced that the battle was already won. It's well attested in the sources. What's worse, they came back as the banner of Cracow has fallen, which means at the crucial moment of the battle.
The sources say, that the Poles started to gain advantage at this point, but then the banner goes down all of a sudden...
That's just propaganda, obviously. The Polish army barely held on.
" most were dead "
How were they killed? In the woods! With magic?
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First of all, Copernicus was a priest. If what you claim holds true, that is that scientists should be less religious than the society they live in, how come he was a priest?
Then, the church ordered and paid for his research. It also accepted it without any problems at all. It only later, when Copernicus was used as a weapon against the church, only then the use of this weapon was banned. Not for long, too. The church knew for a very long time that the Bible can't be taken literally, because they studied it!
Similar story with others, like Newton, Tycho, Kepler and so forth. They were more religious than the rest of the society.
I'm a disbeliever, in case it matters.
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@cetus4449 " jest wyedukowany powierzchownie "
Poznał warsztat i go codziennie używa. Biegle czyta staropolski, czyli musi mieć pojęcie o Łacinie, poza tym rosyjski i staroruski. Siedzi cięgiem w bibliotece, gdzie zdobył głęboką wiedzę o epoce, co można zobaczyć na kanale Ostoja Tradycji, gdzie go poznałem.
Tak wygląda powierzchowne wykształcenie? Wie że dzwonią, tylko nie wie w którym kościele?
Nie sądzę.
Poza tym ma praktyczne doświadczenie w szermierce, jeździe konnej, zbroi, rozmaitych flintach i armatach, czego żaden dr poza Sikorą nie posiada.
Swoją drogą, Sikora jest z wykształcenia inżynierem. Doktorat z historii zrobił chyba zaocznie. Niewiele to zmienia.
" pisarz z niego nader przeciętny "
Przeciętny w porównaniu z kim? Poza tym, zbudował sobie dworek szlachecki z tych książek, więc coś mu się chyba udaje...
" promując specyficzną polską historię, dla której przez długi czas nie było w światowej recepcji miejsca "
Miejsce to było, tyle że kiedyś nie było wolno tego robić, a nawet teraz nie bardzo to w smak polskojęzycznym władzom.
Mimo to się przebijamy.
" Jeden Sienkiewicz pokazał jej prawdziwy potencjał. "
Nie da się już pisać jak Sienkiewicz. Zrozumiałem to, gdy mój siostrzeniec z obrzydzeniem odrzucił W Pustyni I W Puszczy, bo Staś był tam absolutnym wzorem wszystkich zalet, więc jak w końcu przeczytał, że nawet pływał lepiej niż poławiacze pereł, to cisną tą książką w kąt i więcej po nią nie sięgnął.
Paradoksalnie, Sapkowski lepiej wypromował polską kulturę niż Sienkiewicz. Komuda też ma szanse, choć pisze od Sapkowskiego gorzej, bo Komuda ma szanse trafić w niszę zainteresowanych historią. Mimo że nie jest ich wielu, to ich opinia ma nieproporcjonalnie duże znaczenie.
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@cetus4449 Zgadzam się, że Sapkowski dużo czerpał z Sienkiewicza, ale nie tylko od niego. No i udało mu się przynajmniej częściowo złagodzić Sienkiewiczowskie słabości.
W czasach popularyzacji amatorskiego pisarstwa fan-fiction (tzw. fanfiki), ludzie zaczęli dostrzegać i popularyzować wiedzę na temat często powtarzających się błędów początkujących amatorów pisarstwa. Jeden z najbardziej rażących to postać tzw. Mary Sue.
Jedynie ślepy nie zauważy, że wiele z Sienkiewiczowskich postaci do złudzenia ją przypomina.
1. Mary Sue nie posiada wad charakteru. Tak jak Winicjusz, Skrzetuski, Tarkowski czy późniejszy Wołodyjowski (wczesny jest przynajmniej porywczy, ale wtedy jest w tle).
2. Mary Sue jest dobra we wszystkim czego się tknie, często bez treningu.
Skrzetuski jest silny jak koń, bogaty, odważny, układny, świetnie się bije i nawet w piciu może dotrzymać kroku Zagłobie.
3. Każdy ją lubi bądź nawet kocha, często bez powodu.
W Skrzetuskim natychmiastowo zakochuje się Helena a w Wołodyjowskim Baśka. Tarkowskiego darzy afektem nawet słoń...
4. Jak Mary Sue kogoś kocha, wszyscy inni też go kochają. Potajemnie, bądź otwarcie.
Chyba nie ma sensu nawet przytaczać Sienkiewiczowskich przykładów.
5. To idzie dalej, dużo jeszcze pasuje. Skrzywdzeni nie z własnej winy. Jak coś zbroją, nikt się nie czepia. Nietypowe cechy wyglądu, często wynikające z mieszanki ras. Ludzie rzucają im się pod nogi, nawet taki frant jak Zagłoba. Jedyny zbawca. Może być ludzkości, krasnoludzkości, a może być Zbaraża. Ginie w szczytnym celu. Czasami cudem ocalony. itd.
Podsumowując, nie odmawiam Sienkiewiczowi talentu, ale jego pisarstwo nie jest pozbawione nawet dość szkolnych wad!
Czyli sumarycznie chodzi mi o to, by nie porównywać żyjących pisarzy do sztucznie wyidealizowanych pomników.
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@ДмитрийТрудов-х7к "Italians, along with the Romanians, helped us a lot under Stalingrad in December of '42))"
Germans were short on men. Women did not work in German factories, so every big campaign required removing part of the important workforce and sending those guys East. That weakened German economy and allowed for the USSR to significantly outproduce them.
Italians and Romanians were badly equipped, so their fighting qualities were limited. But it could be changed. And even if not, they were still useful fighting force, suitable for many tasks.
"Japan remembered the Khalkhin goal.
"
Sure they did, and that's why they would attack if USA did not oppose them. Not because they wanted those lands so badly, but because they were afraid of USSR.
And if they won in the East, it would be really hard to kick them back out, simply because of logistics.
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@ДмитрийТрудов-х7к "millions hijacked for forced labor from the ussr
"
Low skill workforce most of them, partially because Germans simply didn't trust them (rightfully so). My uncle was taken too, and he worked on a farm, not in a factory.
Female workforce of USSR or USA could be trusted to work in the industry, so young men were free to be drafted into the army. Germany couldn't do it. Their industry was severely hampered by every big military campaign due to shortage of men.
"distributing valuable weapons to low-skilled troops is inefficient.
"
You guys "distributed valuable weapons" to two of my uncles (who worked as slaves in USSR), when you created Polish army. They had no more skills than Italians, I'm sure of it. How come you guys decided it was worth it?
Actually it kinda wasn't, because they all defected to the British, but then the British did exactly what you have done and "distributed valuable weapons" to them once again. ;-)
"but in August '45, logistics didn’t stop defeating the Japanese in just over three weeks."
You guys could use your Transiberian Railway to ferry the troops into more civilized areas, which you still kept. If Japan attacked, there would be no place to unload them and create the whole offensive.
With that said, the invasion of Manchuria was a masterpiece. Highly underrated!
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@ДмитрийТрудов-х7к "Well, the Anders army was "badly equipped" and what does this prove in the combat value"
They were not badly equipped. Soviets equipped them with Lend-Lease weapons, which fitted well with British supply chain, so they proved themselves exceedingly well in combat.
"being a slave in the USSR is ... yes ... how much better to be a pan in Poland ... "
Both of them were peasants and they ended up chopping trees while being starved to death in Siberia.
The "pans" were shot to death.
"what kind of "slaves"? "
Forced labor with starvation level food rations. People went blind because of malnutrition, so they held hands in the column, while those who could still see were leading them to the place they were supposed to go. Fun times...
"I would know Kaczynski, you see you would have survived"
I recently voted for people who heavily criticize Kaczyński for his anti-Russian bias. The guy is mad, because his twin brother ended up dead on Russian soil. Give him some slack, if you will.
Though, I will not! I will vote against him again and again. We have no business annoying Russians for no good reason.
"very conditional combat value."
Not true. Anders' army was kept in reserve just like all the other Western forces were, then they were sent into heavy combat, against German paratroopers in heavily reinforced position. And they won! At a heavy cost of blood (including one of my uncles), but they won where many others have failed before. Read on Monte Casino.
Then they participated in the whole Italian campaign and acquitted themselves very well. Everybody loved them, until the day of victory parade, when the British suddenly didn't need them anymore, and did not invite them to participate. Soviets recognized Polish blood contribution toward victory, just for comparison.
Sad story.
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@ДмитрийТрудов-х7к "strange ... fasting above, they managed to survive and train in the Anders army"
Well, they were emaciated but still alive. Uncle Mieczysław mentioned some woman in Siberia with whom he stayed for a while and she fattened him up a little. Apparently she wanted him to stay, but he wanted to go back to Poland. He never did (apart from a few visits, when I've met him).
"and now they, who died of starvation, were also shot"
You think I'm joking, or what? Several thousands of Polish officers were shot to death by NKVD. That's only during WWII, but before WWII there was a huge anti-Polish NKVD purge, with a number of victims at least ten times higher. Up to 100K, people say. It's a recent discovery, so hard to tell.
"yes, the times are funny ... starved to death, shot and sent Anders into the army."
It's not my fault, that you were never told about all of that. USSR was almost as bad as the Reich. Them's the facts.
"yes, with Poland in general, the story is sad ... with Kiev, Vilnius, Teschin ... flirting with Adolf ... very sad ...
but also instructive"
Kiev? I guess you mean 1919, don't you? Poles did not take it to keep it, but to give it to the Ukrainians under Semen Petlura. I think it's okay to do it.
Vilnius was also fine. Sure enough, Lithuanians were annoyed, but there were all of 2000 of them in Wilno. Germans made a census earlier, so the numbers are more or less legit. Later confirmed too, but whatever. Wilno was a Polish town, despite being historically Lithuanian. When Polish civilians take arms and liberate the place, what were we supposed to do? Tell them to screw off and become Bolsheviks?
Teshin was a border dispute. The Czechs shafted us in 1920, when we could not respond and we paid them back in 1938. I think it was stupid, but not unwarranted. Tit for tat. Anyway, it's not like Czechs and Poles hate each other over it, is it? If we both don't care, why you guys do?
Finally, "flirting with Adolf"? What do you mean by that? There was no flirting with Adolf in Poland. No puppet government was ever created. While you guys on the other hand, did "flirt with Adolf". You've made a Ribbentrop-Molotov pact to partition Poland and you have supplied Germans when they were taking over Europe. Plenty of much needed oil and other stuff was being sent to Germany.
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@panzerofthelake506 " Hierarchies in the animal world are based on families "
What do you mean by that? That a dominant stag is somehow allowed to rule, because he's a son of someone?
That wouldn't be true. He's dominant, because he dethroned the previous stag. Likely his father.
So, what do you mean?
" have no enforcement "
No enforcement? You live in a city, don't you? You read about the animal world in books about politics, that's all you know. Am I right?
" don't have hierarchies at all like Tigers "
Packs have hierarchies. Animals who don't form packs will still fight for dominance, but a strict hierarchy is hard to form. Because they rarely meet each other.
" There is no "structure" "
That's not true! Hyenas, for example, have a very strict structure.
Okay, I've no time. In a nutshell, humans are animals and our social structures are nothing special in the animal world. What distinguishes us from them is how big our societies can get.
But that's a new thing, in evolutionary timeframe. Thousands of years only.
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@Somberdemure " Define violence "
"the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy" From Webster.
" then there is self-defense "
Usually being violent is forbidden, but there are exceptions. Self-defense is one of those.
" which the state does "
So whenever the state uses a threat of physical force, it's violence, even if it rarely goes that far? However, when a citizen uses actual physical, or even deadly force, it's a non-violent self-defense?
You guys are as bad as marxists in smearing the meaning of words until they fit your agenda.
" reaching for straws and trying to over complicate rebuttals "
Unfortunately I had to dig deep, in more ways than one. I mean, I literally had to bury my dog this month. He was killed in a pack dispute.
I wish I was wrong about how dogs settle their disagreements, but unfortunately I was correct.
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TL,DR: Persistence hunting was late.
The more I think about it, the more unconvincing seems the picture presented here.
We know that evolution can't bridge gaps, and there are many of those here.
First of all, how do you persistent hunt if you are primarily a tree dweller with some bipedal capabilities? There is no way to do it, and what's more important, there is no reason to invest so many calories in an endeavor which is so unlikely to result in a success.
In light of that, the idea of a wading ape makes way more sense. There is an open path of transition from grazing shellfish to opportunistic hunting near the watering holes. That's hunting from an ambush, which is energetically cheap. Obviously, they would have to follow a wounded prey, so there is a reason why a rudimentary bipedalism could be useful, as walking on two legs is very energy efficient. This in turn opens a path to bipedal running, and finally to persistence hunting.
Which leads to running down a healthy antelope becoming the pinnacle of this evolutionary path, not it's starting point.
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@TheImperatorKnight I recently exchanged a few posts with those haters. They have no arguments.
Yet they tend to repeat that names don't matter and that even if someone actually meant something at one point, later they could change.
That's pathetic, I know, but it's there. So in case you plan a follow-up, please consider including the actual Nazi practices. Of state-controlled wages, prices, profit margins, factories, shortages that followed, large scale corruption etc. and that it was pretty much exactly the same in the Soviet Union.
Actually, do what you want. You tend to know best anyway.
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@Gvjrapiro "a form of socialism that was right wing"
Whoa! That's so absurd, that it literally melts my brain.
Oh, wait! I get it! Since Nazis were racist, it's simply impossible for them to be lefties? Well, how about current lefties who are willing to forgive everybody everything, but for the white man, who is always hated and always blamed for all the calamities, imagined or real?
Those are our current lefties, and they are very racist.
"what is socialist about giving women planes?"
Never heard about liberation of women?
Regarding Youtube, they block mostly right wing and centrist views. They let some token weirdos off the hook, because they have no clicks anyway, and YT can always point toward those to show how "fair" they are. But they are not fair.
With that said, I believe it was TIK who blocked my post. I don't blame him, whether he skipped through it in person or it's just some script which does most of the heavy lifting for him. He's in a tough spot, simply waiting for the moment when the YT gods strike his channel down. Being cautious is just prudent.
And that's how censorship works. I was raised under it, so it really annoys me when I see this POS coming back in force. YT tries to appease the rage-crowds, TIK tries to appease the YT and I'm trying to appease TIK. Nobody says what they think anymore and free exchange of ideas is broken.
Which is exactly what they want.
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@Gvjrapiro So the Nazi program was just a rouse? Fine, let's pretend it's true, but even then it was a socialistic rouse, not a right-wing one. Definitely not a "right-wing philosophy" in any sense or form.
"Voter reform?"
Can't find it. What do you mean?
"no mention of actual socialistic policies like redistributing land directly to the people"
That's false. "17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land."
"I gave my reasoning, the actions and worldview of Hitler was decidedly right wing,"
That's false. So far you voiced your opinion, but provided very weak arguments in its support. All of them you had to concede when confronted with verifiable historical facts. Those arguments were:
1. Nazi "self-admitted" to be righties - No worky, since they claimed to be Socialists.
2. It was just economy - No, it wasn't. They allowed women to reach high profile positions in roles previously reserved to men only.
3. They followed a "right-wing philosophy" - Proven incorrect. Their philosophy is clearly outlined and it's definitely a socialistic one.
"conservatives founded the kkk"
That's a blatant lie, because I can't imagine it would be an honest mistake. It's so easily searchable.... Even people who try to deny it, do not say that the conservatives founded it, they only say that it was a "grass-roots" movement and that plenty of Democrats simply happened to join it. But it's obviously false. "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White" - "Although it is relatively unreported today, historical documents are unequivocal that the Klan was established by Democrats and that the Klan played a prominent role in the Democratic Party, [...] In fact, a 13-volume set of congressional investigations from 1872 conclusively and irrefutably documents that fact."
"Of course that isn't what they do, they want to be profitable."
That's not the problem (righty channels obliterate the left for clicks). The problem is that YT and many other Internet giants have very clear and very lefty agenda. People are not motivated by profit only, ideologies do matter. And it so happened, that every Internet giant is located in the same cultural background of Bay Area Shit-Francisco. Their ideology obviously does not work and they managed to achieve so much progress at home, that it's literally the shittiest city in the USA, with Boubonic Plague making a comeback.
Still, that's what all of them believe in, so that's what they do.
So we can hope that a more politically-agnostic site will rise up and overtake YT or we can demand free-speech protection from dominant Internet giants. I believe the second option is both more practical and actually makes more sense. A public forum should be treated as public space, not a private space.
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@Gvjrapiro "the contents of a lie don't really matter if we agree that it's a lie"
We didn't agree. Assuming you bring back your "self-admitted righty and fake socialist" argument, I think it's totally false. So far I didn't bother calling you on "self-admitted right" part, because I considered this argument to be moot from the get go, but if you insist, go ahead. Provide me with a quote and context. I'll gladly tear it apart. And obviously, they were not "fake socialists" either. It's a long story, so I urged TIK to make it into a full video if he is so inclined, but the actual practice of Nazi Germany was socialistic. They were true socialists, not a fake ones. (Not Marxists, though. I don't claim that!)
"enjoyed by the citizen of the state alone "
Voting rights are restricted, not granted. You aren't German? No say! You are a "degenerate" German? No say either. No contradiction between declarations and practice detected.
"disproves your "no libertarian" line"
Total nonsense. "abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land." - That's exactly against libertarian positions. They want ad valorem tax and free trade of land. Man, you have ways with arguments...
[Lots of hand-waving skipped]
"tell me how it was socialist"
No problemo.
11. Abolition of unearned incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.
12. [...] personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all associated industries
14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16. We demand [...] immediate communalization of the great warehouses [...].
17. We demand [...] provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program,
21. The State is to care for the elevating national health
Minor points:
7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens.
9. All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
10. [...]The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all
And I still feel like I'm missing something!
I don't understand your arguments about KKK. (Oh, BTW, I'm not American. I'm Polish.) One link does not open, the other shows KKKs are afraid of communism. Well, you don't have to be far-leftist to be a lefty, do you? Then it's something about pro-2a and so on. Are you trying to twist it all around again and claim that Democrats who founded KKK were righties, while the Republicans they used to hang were actually lefties? I can't imagine you'd go there, so please clarify. Or let's just forget about it.
"Profit, and profit alone."
That's not true. Sure, that's how market works, but that isn't how people work. YT, Google, Apple, Patreon and all that jazz is ran by people. For example, how would you explain Star Wars wreck if profit was the only motive of people who are behind it? Or The Last of Us 2, for a recent example. Markets don't care for your motives, but people do.
"Nike can say black lives matter all it wants"
How about Gillette fiasco with their "boys will be boys" ad? They lost loyal customers, they almost buried the brand. Why would they risk it, if all they cared for were profits? And even with Nike, why do they assume that their main customers aren't fed up with riots, whining, robbing, shootings and so on? Why do they even risk picking a side here? Because they believe it's the "right thing to do". People can't just work, and work, sleep, eat, work, get old and die. They want to work for something!
Ideas matter and they have consequences. That's why I discuss ideas. Because the consequences can be truly disastrous.
Man, it's not as long as I feared. Success!
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@Gvjrapiro Sorry man, all of it is very long and it's simply impractical to discuss any of it in detail. Anyway, I'll try to address a few points.
1. "framed it as a lie"
I just follow your arguments to their logical conclusions. If they are liars, you can't take their word for anything, so "self-admittance" means nothing. Anyway, I don't think they were liars.
2. You really do claim that the Democrats were righties and Reps were lefties... My, oh my. I refuse to discuss this issue any further.
3. Since we can't agree on very basic definitions, I also skip all your twisting and turning regarding Nazi 25 points program, but I'm glad you (seem to?) admit that it was socialist at least in letter.
4. The talk with Hitler.
Hitler is not lying to this Strasser guy. He followed in practice what he declared in this discussion. It's also in perfect agreement with the Nazi program, because they were not strictly against private property, as long as people did what they were told . So he can keep Krupp as a de iure owner and de facto director of "his own" factory. That's what they have done all the time. As long as the "owners" were obedient they could keep their stuff, thought the interest rates and prices were fixed. There was no free market in Nazi Germany, apart from black market. Black marketeers were equally viciously and ineffectively persecuted. I was raised in such economy. It's socialism.
5. "Self-admittance" quotes.
Man, it's a lot of them, and all of them that I've studied are totally irrelevant. Yes, Nazis and Fascists were to the right of bolsheviks . They were not communists, they were not Marxists. Every quote which emphasizes how they are to the right of Lenin is totally irrelevant. Find me something where they say they are to the right of center! Or don't, cause you won't. Because they weren't. Giovanni Gentile was a socialist and he was the main fascist ideologue.
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@Gvjrapiro "3. Yet I am using the basic definition, and parts [of the Nazi program] were [socialistic], but some parts certainly were not."
That's good. I started losing hope we'll ever agree on anything. Anyway, now we see that framing Hitler as "far-right" is simply a lie. Not a misunderstanding, not an oversight, it's a lie. He was center-left at worst.
"objectively true claim that they were not socialist"
Depending on the definition used, it can be true. But there is no sane definition of far-right which would fit Nazis with respect to their program, their philosophy and actual practices. So it's a lie. Because people who pushed for this classification definitely knew and understood all of this.
" state control is not socialism."
State control is the only practically viable option. You let people do what they want, they will act according to the market forces and ruin all of your utopia. I mean, some people won't do it, but others will and market will select for those "bastards". Sooner or later every socialist regime figures it out and it all ends in tyranny. It's been tried so many times already. How you people manage to still believe in this nonsense? Actual religions are so much more sane in comparison.
"In this quote, he clearly references "the right""
Yeah, but it's not about the Germans, but about those people we are not allowed to even mention. (They) acted both on the right and left, and (they) profited from politics.
"Carl Schmitt"
That's an easy one. I've known a bunch of people who were not communists, yet they were members of the communist party. The answer is simple. Power. You wanna do anything, you have to get into the power circles. In a way it's similar to monarchists starting in an election, and we have a bunch of those in the parliament. Besides, Schmitt was an anti-bracket guy, which obviously helped him to fit in. I didn't bother searching for the other one. Do I have to? Is he somehow important?
"support from foreign capitalists like Ford"
Ford built Soviet Union. Nothing new or unusual here. Or maybe bolsheviks weren't Socialists either? ;-)
"Why did he purge the aryan socialists"
Infighting. In Poland we had Piłsudski, a leader of Polish Socialist Party, who also purged most of the left (and right). BTW - Hitler admired him. He spent an hour honoring his death in front of a symbolic coffin in Polish Embassy in Berlin. Anyway, Stalin killed off Trotskists, Lenin killed off mensheviks. That's normal socialism. They kill. A lot.
"but not the aryan upper class?"
They did what they were told. Anyway, are you trying to argue, that Hitler wasn't a socialist, because he didn't murder enough rich people? That'd be funny. Please, do! (Yeah, I'm a bit tipsy by now. ;-))
And tired. But at least I'll look at the rest of your post.
Why a bunch of people preferred fascism to communism? Because communism is actually worse. Fascists weren't nazis, they didn't murder the (). They actually hardly murdered anyone.
"Jesus was j(censored). So what? [...] those who formulate new ideas"
You don't know much about Jesus, do you? He was an apocalyptic J(censored), just a minor sect in Palestine. Most (practically all) of the new ideas of Christianity were formulated by the Greeks, who wrote the Bible, and later by the Romans.
Seems like I'm done finally? Good. I'm tired, hungry and tipsy. Good night to you, mate.
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@Gvjrapiro Let's just summarize, shall we? What we agree on and what we'll never agree on. Actually, let's start with disagreements.
Nazi program was not realized in practice - I'll never agree with that. I believe they did almost exactly what they promised to do. ""What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish, we shall be in a position to achieve." - said Hitler to Otto Wagener, his economic adviser, and he really meant it.
75% of Nazi program is right wing - I'll never agree with that. Neither you do, I think. You wouldn't constantly try to devalue this evidence by claiming "it's just a pamphlet, just a propaganda piece" if you did. Because it would mean that they were fake-righties, not fake-lefties, as you constantly argue.
"the nazis were absolutely socially far right" - Definitely not. They were centrist, at worst. Everybody seems to forget, that traditional gender roles were universally accepted. Nazis were no different. Even Soviets didn't differ much (I mean they tried, bu the experiment totally failed).
"far right in nearly all policies that did not impact economics" - Total nonsense. I'll never agree with that. They implemented censorship, state owned press, total control over education. Eguenics was an idea supported by plenty of leftist, including Wells or George Bernard Shaw, who wrote: "Extermination must be put on a scientific basis if it is ever to be carried out humanely and apologetically as well as thoroughly... If we desire a certain type of civilisation and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it." Again, Hitler simply put those ideas into practice.
Stateless society idea - I'll never agree with that. It's a pure utopia, which leads to dystopia. All utopias do.
NEP wasn't socialism - C'mon man. I don't even.
Which countries do I consider fascist - Spain, Italy, Hungary, just to narrow it down. J()ews had it fine there, until Germans took over.
Where do we agree?
1. Nazi program had some aspects which were socialistic.
2. While you can argue that Nazis were right wing, far-right claim is badly supported.
3. Nazi economy was a Centrally Administered Economy, which is what you typically find among socialist states.
4. In NSDAP there were socialists, at least initially.
Anything else?
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@Gvjrapiro 1. Unification of Germans - Realized in practice.
2. Denouncing of treaty of Versailles - Done in practice.
3. Colonies for lebensraum - Poland, big parts of USSR taken. Realized in practice.
4. Restricting the civic rights to ethnic Germans. - Done.
5. Restricting the rights of foreigners. - Done.
6. Purging foreigners off any public offices. - Done.
7. Purging foreigners off the Reich. - Some left, some were murdered. Mostly done.
8. No immigration. - Realized.
9. Equal rights for citizens. - Aristocracy (hated by Hitler) was not privileged, so it was true.
10. Do as you are told, or else. - Of course realized.
11. Abolition of unearned incomes (rent-slavery). - Sure. By printing money, so they become meaningless, but they did it.
12. "War profits" a crime. - They did it. Selling pigs at market value was a crime, people were convicted for it.
13. Nationalization of war industries. - Of course. They never specify the means and there was no need for "literal" nationalization, as Hitler clearly outlined over and over. He must have thought people to be really stupid for insisting on minutia and I agree with him on that.
14. Division of profits of heavy industry. - Of course happened. Fixed prices and profit margins made sure of that.
15. Welfare expansion. - I'm not sure about the scale of that. They surely state-funded cruise ship vacation for at least some workers, so I think we can count that one.
16. Support for small retailers. - From what I've heard, it happened.
17. Expropriation of land as needed. - Of course.
18. War against "degenerates", regardless of race. - Sure.
19. Abolition of Roman law tradition. - Of course.
20. State controlled education. - Obviously.
21. National health improvement program, exercises and such. - Hitlerjugend alone should count.
22. National army. - Did they ever...
23. State controlled media. - As above.
24. Free religion, the opposition to J()ewish-materialistic world view. - Very successful at that. Fanatics were not uncommon at all.
25. Strong central government with unlimited authority. - Well, I don't believe in unlimited anything, but they came close... ;-)
You see, people who think the way you are used to, simply play with words, like they have no real meaning. Like there is no reality which those words are suppose to (possibly precisely) reflect. But the reality is out there. It's waiting. So you can twist and turn, reinterpret this, redefine that and find a corner where your cherished ideas are perfectly protected from any possible attack.
But there are people who take those ideas very seriously. If Antifa ever takes over, you'll be forced to know them intimately. When comrades Cleetus and Jazzira smash your door in, Jazzira following up with a swift kick to the balls, just because you are a disgusting white male, only then you will realize the truth of it.
But it will pass. Apparently, even deep in "re-education centers" of this world, people find a way of sheltering their most dearly beloved ideas from the infringements of harsh reality.
So, good luck with that. You will need it.
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@Gvjrapiro "You're accusing me of saying words with no meaning?"
No, that's not what I wrote. I wrote that you play with words, like if they have no real meaning. Which is dangerous, because words do have a meaning.
"Mate, you literally said that overinflation is the same as abolishing rent."
Literally? If you are in debt, inflation will erase it. I've seen it. It really has this effect. Is it "the same", especially "literally the same"? Of course not. Close enough, though.
The difference between you and me? You write that the first several points of the program are nationalistic. I agree with that! Why? Because it's true. I vote nationalist right, I don't like the association, but I agree with you, because it's simply true.
Now, I could argue that nationalists back then were not far-right and not always even right of center. There were monarchists, theocrats, capitalists and libertarians to the right of all of them, and some nationalists were obvious lefties. To distinguish themselves from nationalistic right, they called themselves appropriately, yes, National Socialists.
Which is a concept you simply can't accept. Too painful, isn't it? Wait for comrade Jazzira to know what a real pain is.
"And mate, not sure if you could tell, but I am an organizer for my local antifa chapter."
You think it makes you somehow immune to what is going to happen? Nope. If you guys ever win, your fate will be the worst. Why? Because guys like me will be defeated by the enemy, which is easy to swallow. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, such is life. You guys? You will be defeated by your own. By the people you dedicated your life to. By your own children.
Stay strong. You will need it.
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@Gvjrapiro "Debt, which is a different thing entirely from rent."
It was probably badly translated. Hitler meant interests on debts.
“Our financial principle: Finance shall exist for the benefit of the state; the financial magnates shall not form a state within the state. Hence our aim to break the thralldom of interest. Relief of the state, and hence of the nation, from its indebtedness to the great financial houses, which lend on interest. Nationalization of the Reichsbank and the issuing houses, which lend on interest.”
But I don't even need to defend this position. Rents in a regulated market can't catch up to even moderate inflation. I lived under hyperinflation and I paid rent, so I kinda know what I'm talking about here. We were all poor, but paying rent was peanuts.
"actually cared about the nation above race"
Current left keeps on dividing the nation into so many subgroups, that I genuinely lost count. I'd call them racist, but the PC term is racialism. Moot argument anyway.
"LEft wing nationalism tends to be isolationist"
So guys I vote for (and we are Winning!), are actually lefties? Damn, they fooled me so well... ;-)
"i'd love for my old buddy Jazzira here to fucking shatter my nuts, because that would be more entertaining than this."
You think: "What can she do to me, she's just a frail lady?", but she was 250 before fat shaming became a thing, and you also forgot that gender is just a social construct, so she's sporting a significantly bigger package then you do and knows from personal experience how much it hurts to be kicked there... ;-)
"Thanks for your fun little fantasy"
Fantasy? So whom you guys managed to get elected so far? Gay Obama for starters, but he's not your harmless gay. He kept on murdering his former partners until one of them became so scared, that he decided to testify. He was very convincing. Not a harmless gay, this Obama guy... Then it was the turn for Killary. Nuff said. The elites of your movement had to make sure that Epstein killed himself, which was such a blunder.
So, who are the people you vote for? Nice guys, aren't they? Let's wait until they don't have to pretend to be so nice, then you'll see how my "fantasy" plays out.
"right wing infighting isn't as much of a thing"
No, it really isn't. Nowadays it's like "Nationalists of the World, unite!" , which is really funny, but I like it. Re: Christians vs. Muslims? You were mislead there, I believe. It's Muslims vs. Infidels. You are an Infidel.
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@Gvjrapiro "Mate, you think we like obama? Or Hillary? Come on now."
That's whom you gonna get, though. And once they come to power, through subversion of democratic processes, who is going to be the most dangerous people to them? Guys like me? We are joke to them. They know us, every single one, there are spies in every place, they got hooks, and we are branded as enemy already. So not us. It's you guys! You know way too much. And you are idealists, which is a synonym for "people hard to control". You gotta go. Sorry. Them's the rules.
"Nah, it's conservative monotheistic religion vs the other conservative monotheistic religion."
No. Crusades weren't a thing, until Islam tried to take over France. They took all of Africa and Middle East? Nothing. They took Sicily? Nothing. They took Spain? Still nothing. But once they crossed over Pyrenees, people became scared. Rightfully so.
Nowadays they took Lebanon. You think if people of Lebanon were not Christians, they would be treated differently? Sure! You are correct. They would be treated even worse , because that's what is written in their holy book.
BTW - I'm an atheist. I'm not defending Christianity because I've so much invested into it. Still, I like Christianity. It's the basis of our common culture, yours and mine. BTW - What cultures Islam has created? Well... Let me think... They inherited some astronomers at some point, but after that? Zero.
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@Gvjrapiro "all of the elections that I don't actually give two shits about"
I'm not blaming you, I'm warning you. But I agree, I should've figured out you don't care about democracy. That's even worse, actually. I was somehow deluded, that you guys at least hoped to win without destroying everything in the process. Not? Well, I pity you guys less now. Still, you are humans, so... Yeah.
"No, not really. History helps."
What? The Battle of Tours 732 A.D., the First Crusade 1095 A.D. (A few years between the two, don't you think?) I'm not going to watch an hour long video and try to figure out what you might have meant. What's your point?
"just a re-written bible"
You never read either, so why do you try to pose as some sort of an intellectual? Please do. They differ. A lot!
"europeans were still trying to carve huts out of solid shit to live in"
Well, there was this thing called Rome and Greece before that. Not very well known fact, but it really happened.
"biggest [Greek] libraries" - I fixed that one.
"longest lists of inventions" - From a very short period in history. It basically lasted since they took over actually advanced civilizations, until they managed to bring them down. They were good at it, so it didn't last too long...
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@Gvjrapiro "US elections, which are not democratic"
Do something about it! Our guys did. pilnojwyborow dot pl, which means "watch/supervise the elections" was a marvel which was professionally assured to be impossible to achieve within the available timeframe, even if we'd had any money. But someone did it anyway. Pretty much for food. It worked, we can prove it. (Then it didn't, because of corona, but not much loss. We "won" anyway.)
"The crusades were not retaliatory by any measure."
People were genuinely fed up. I know what Italians went through, because my people went through it too. The biggest slaver raids had reached up to where I live right now. The people were rounded up, marched to Crimea and sold in Bakchisaray. You know where the word "slave" comes from? From Slavs.
With that said, I don't really disagree with you. It was a complex issue. Saying it's that one thing is simplifying way too much. Though that one thing was there. We still remember, so how could you expect they'd forget so soon?
"Yes, empires that stretched into muslim territories and partially collapsed because of the attacks of those reigons, and left europe in shambles for literal centuries."
You've absolutely no idea about history... That's just rubbish what you wrote. Sorry, man. That's pitiful.
"I'd like to see some, really any, citation on this."
I've found something on your level. NY Times, I'm afraid... ;-))
"how-islam-won-and-lost-the-lead-in-science.html"
"The Golden Age
When Muhammad's armies swept out from the Arabian peninsula in the seventh and eighth centuries, annexing territory from Spain to Persia, they also annexed the works of Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Hippocrates and other Greek thinkers.
Hellenistic culture had been spread eastward by the armies of Alexander the Great and by religious minorities, including various Christian sects, according to Dr. David Lindberg, a medieval science historian at the University of Wisconsin.
The largely illiterate Muslim conquerors turned to the local intelligentsia to help them govern, Dr. Lindberg said. In the process, he said, they absorbed Greek learning that had yet to be transmitted to the West in a serious way, or even translated into Latin. "
[...]
"Why didn't Eastern science go forward as well? ''Nobody has answered that question satisfactorily,'' [That's a lie, BTW. At some point their Theologians figured out, that if Allah decided that 2+2=3*11, that's what it really is, so logic was useless. Which reminds me, that the intellectual fathers of your movement not so long ago decided, that establishing truth is impossible, and our science goes the same way Islamic science went.]
Okay, the rest is total bollocks. Read at your own risk.
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@Gvjrapiro Stop the press. Pinker is being cancelled. Over some tweets. So, he's the enemy of the people now? What chances do you have?
Anyway, let's read your post.
Democracy is hard and very imperfect! - I feel you, man. I really do... ;-)
Muslim countries did relatively well. - Sure. The climate, as recorded in high resolution Greenland ice cores, was more favorable over there at this time. However, it doesn't mean that a slave industry operating successfully and preying on your own people will be considered a minor issue all of a sudden, does it?
"the romans and greeks had many troubles [...] but one of them certainly was muslims"
Lol. I'm not sure, but it's possible I wrote this acronym for the first time in my life. Anyway, just drop it. Whatever. It's not important.
"a large amount of time was spent reexamining and recovering literature and science from the greeks and romans"
True. It went off for reals, once we captured Cordova, with all the Arabic translations.
"the inspiration of the inventions of those empires did come from the islamic world."
Sure. And nothing good came out of there ever since. ;-)
So, that's the "mystery" of Arabic Golden Age. A bunch of ruffians attacking barely functional civilizations, taking them over, subduing them, but a few remnants of what was already lost still managed to do something impressive. Truly great people, those. The optics was discovered in a prison cell, apparently. But once they ran out of remnants, that was it.
"And what "movement" would that be?"
Postmodersnism. Watch Stephen Hicks. He's brilliant and not boring. A rare combination.
"Please, enlighten me."
Discover the savior of mankind, the lord Jesus. You will be happier, and you will have purpose in life, which will very unlikely kill yourself and others. He was a good man. Recommended. And the Greeks who wrote about him were effing brilliant.
It's only a half joking comment.
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@Gvjrapiro No comments on Pinker being cancelled? Just as we speak? That s*t apparently happened today...
"And I could be mistaken, but didn't similar discoveries like that help to kick start europe back into an enlightenment? "
Absolutely true. But they got it first and got nowhere with it, so I wouldn't fall head over heels with praise. Could we do without those early sources? I think we could. It would be harder, but I think we could do it. Aristotle would be hard to replace, though. His logic was kinda crucial... Oh, I don't know if it was in Arabic sources. I just don't know, period.
Anyway, It's good we got the library in Cordova before some fanatic Muslim idiot decided to burn it down, like they did in Alexandria.
"Again, they [the great people of Islam] were conquerers"
No, not really. They were the conquered.
"postodernism isn't really like... compatible with my "movement?"
Well, you may be a true old-schooler then. Kropotkin and all that. Yeah, that's more likely. Back then we used to have science! But your "pupils" are postmodern, so you should still know how they "think".
"but the whole "unquestioning obedience and faith for a purpose you will never understand" kinda turns me off"
On the other hand, Jesus was a true communist... ;-)
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@Gvjrapiro "They wouldn't do it if it wasn't legal, dude."
Legal shmegal. Do you understand the consequences? Half of the territory of various states can stop belonging to them now. Federal territory is being vastly expanded, though. With no proper legal or fiscal systems in place. That could be truly disastrous.
"correct legal procedures to get it, and not just decided it was theirs."
What a bureaucratic way of thinking. Anyway, all of that missing paperwork was neglected nearly 200 years ago, but it somehow still counts. That's so crazy, I can't even.
"Islamic empires absolutely existed"
Sure. We've been battling one of those for several hundred years. But it doesn't mean that "they had a relatively stable empire going until WWI", or however exactly you've put it. They never had any single empire, which unified even the majority of Islam. They still keep on fighting among themselves. Nothing new here. It was always like that.
"they wouldn't have been able to pose such a threat to the romans"
I thought you'd google it up eventually, but Rome fell before Muhammad was born. Like 200 years before, or thereabouts. The level of education in the States is truly atrocious. You guys are below the World average right now, according to the research I've seen. Poland is right below NE Asia, who actually rule.
Oh, my. You are falling apart so fast... Turn it around, or something. We kinda need you to stay up for just a little bit longer. You can't expect a broken country to be able to stand up to Russia after only one generation of independence.
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@Gvjrapiro "new deal is formed"
So Oklahoma is about to go bankrupt and the Indians can rightfully expect all the taxes from Tulsa. What kind of deal would be profitable enough to them, so the'd agree? "We don't kill you, if you agree..." kind of a deal?
I think it's a political plot. They'll force Trump's hand, then impeach him, or something? Maybe just steal his votes? I don't know, it's so silly. But it's also a treason in my book. Only the enemy of the state would rule such a thing.
"You don't get to keep something just because you stole it 200 years ago"
Actually, you do get to keep it, if it was a long time ago and you made it all your own, with investments and improvements. Such a silly ruling, that. You guys go total bonkers.
"The eastern roman empire"
There were more of those. Carolingians, Germans and Russians had empires, which claimed to be the direct descendants of Rome. Even our Rzeczpospolita was based around the Roman Republic model and all the nobles spoke Latin. Sure, Byzantines had more of a claim than others, but they spoke Greek and were actually Greeks. Anyway, they never "stole" any Muslim lands. The original Muslim lands were deep in the desert, everything else they conquered, then forced their religion onto the local population. That's how you got all those "deep Muslim thinkers". The locals still remembered how to do science, and as long as it wasn't forbidden, they did some of it.
"How we're keeping up in quarantine?"
Splendid, actually. I live in a countryside, so lockdown didn't affect me in the slightest. I learned how to bake my own bread and do it all the time. Many people have told me they've never ate a better bread in their life, and those are Polish standards, which aren't half bad at all. I don't miss much, but I worry about the coming recession. With that said, I'm equipped to survive for quite a long time.
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@Gvjrapiro "Not really [not the taxes], nor would they want them most likely."
You mean, they are allergic to money? That would explain it all right.
"the US getting most of its land back with either added reparations, protections, or more land for native americans."
Oh, I get it! You pay them more money so they don't take less money, and give them more land so they won't take less land! That's brilliant in its simplicity.
I have a better idea, though. You pay a little bit to the biggest twat, because you accidentally killed his dog. You know, he deserves a bit of reparation for an accident, doesn't he? He shuts up, understandably, so it's just this unfortunate ruling to deal with now. I'd have a few ideas there too. High treason is out, unfortunately, so we'd have to get creative... ;-)
The question is, why didn't they do it like that? They don't like killing dogs? Well, kill the twat then. It's not like they've never killed for much more minor issues, is it? So why?
Because they want chaos. They really do. They hired you to sow it, just for an off the cuff example. So, how do you like being a tool? Still useful...
"Well in practice yes [settlement laws, I hope I use the correct term]"
No, not just in practice. It's the law. After some time passes and especially with a lot of effort put into the "thing", you get to keep it, even if you kinda stole it back then. Time and effort counts. It's the law, not just practice.
Anyway, I live in crowded Europe. Every piece of land I pass when I want to take a piss into the nettles is claimed by five countries. Indian claims don't impress me much. What are they going to do? Hire a shaman to charm my chickens? Well, that would be disastrous.
"i'm pretty sure I didn't say anything about stealing muslim lands"
What did you mean by that: "empires that stretched into muslim territories"? The Greeks trying to steal their deserts? I agree the Greeks were super smart, but figuring out those sands will make you rich a millennium later was beyond even their eggheads.
"I've taken to some home baking, and it's actually quite fun."
Want some tips? I believe I have it figured out reasonably well. Easy, quick(ish), really, I mean it, really tasty (but it's my flour mostly, sorry) and even looks good.
"Also gardening"
I totally hate it, but I do it too. You just can't beat the taste. You get used to good stuff, it's like an addiction.
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@Gvjrapiro "Well I'd hope that you could cite some US law saying that then."
It's hard to google it in English, because "settlement" refers also to settling a case out of court, which results in plenty of false positives. I've no time right now, but literally a few seconds search in Polish, where we use a unique term, was immediately successful.
I won't cite it, but the property is legally yours after 20 years, if you didn't try to steal it (purchased in "bad faith" is the term they use). After 30 years it's yours even if you tried to steal it.
It's a very common concept, so I'm positive USA has similar laws. It's a very practical thing. It cuts down on people trying to dig through archives in order to reopen a very old case, where nothing is clear any more, laws have changed, witnesses non-existent or hard to find and so on.
"land that were never legally yours"
I didn't know you guys were such legal fundamentalists. How do you explain "Just Act 447" then, where United States declares it will break the international law in order to appease bogus claims of some powerful people vigorously waving their victim card?
"Anything to do with cutting down on or finding alternative ingredients would be really helpful, since our stores are all out of stuff."
For bread you need flour, water and salt. That's all. No yeast.
So first you create a sourdough starter. Mix a table spoon of flour with equal weight of water and leave it be for a day. Then double the weight (two spoons of flour this time and that much water), leave it for a day, double again (three spoons this time). The lid on the jar you use must be loose. It will grenade on you if you seal it shut!
Depending on the temperature and the quality of flour (whole grain, rye, "organic" is the best) after a few days of that you will have a sourdough starter. It will bubble up and smell sour. At worst it's going to take a week, so starting small can be beneficial.
Then you can bake a sourdough bread. First feed your starter for the last time and wait 6-12 hours so it expands fully.
The recipe is silly easy. 1-2-3 2%. 1 weight of starter, 2 weights of water, 3 weights of flour (whichever kind you like), 2% salt content. It will seem like a lot of salt, but it's just fine, don't worry.
Mix it all together, leave it for 15min or so, then kneed the dough for at least 10 min. Leave it in a bowl for practical reasons. It's so sticky, it's a mess. That's fine. After that stretch-and-fold the dough every half and hour, so the gluten will properly develop. You grab the edge, pull it up and fold it on top. Go around once, that's enough.
Then transfer the dough into a baking tray or simply a metal pot. Cover the bottom and walls with a bit of oil, transfer the dough, cover it with wet towel or simply a lid and let it raise. 4 hours is the minimum, 12 might happen occasionally, but basically you wait until it raises enough. How much is enough? It should at least double in volume.
Then you just bake it inside the baking tray or a pot. High temperature, and bake until it's baked. There is no rule to it for how long, but somewhere around 45 min should do. The first 20min you can bake with the lid on (if you use a pot). That helps with "oven spring".
Whatever starter was left, feed him and store in the fridge. Take him out the day before you plan on baking again, feed him and it will be ready tomorrow.
It's a simplified recipe. It doesn't require too much handling skills, refrigeration and all that jazz. It works. I do it all the time.
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@Gvjrapiro Regarding the treaties and annexation laws, I really don't care about the legalese. The spirit of the law is obvious. You keep it for long enough, it's really yours, regardless of what some tambourine thumper might find profitable to abuse.
I mean, stop being such wussies. I suspect you might not be aware of it, but Poland was shifted west after WWII. Germans still didn't sign a peace treaty with us, because they've lost quite a bit of land to us. Do we care? No! They can have it back only by force!
And that's it. Do you threaten us with war? Bad idea... It's going to be long, bloody and you'll most probably get your arse handed to you once more. No war? Get lost, then. I'm washing my dog today, so I've more important business to attend to.
Though actually, I allegedly distilled some stuff today. I can give you a lot of hints on that too. I don't drink it myself (family does, though...), gotta keep the habit in check, but it's good stuff nonetheless. Season it for half a year in oaken barrels... Beautiful. Approaching the level of single malt, which is achievable at home, but since it's not for me, I don't bother with that much hassle. Others aren't such connoisseurs to care for the top shelf quality. But it can be done.
Regarding bread, I've a bit more time now, so I'll systematize the process a bit.
Three stages:
1. Get the starter going.
2. Mix the ingredients and develop the gluten matrix (kneeding, folding, stretching).
3. Transfer the dough into the baking container and let it rise.
4. Bake it. (So it's actually four stages, after all.)
This process is a combination I developed from English, Russian and Polish videos. English sources usually make it way too complicated. A lot of what they do is necessary only if you want to bake a free-standing loaf, but why bother? You use an oven pan, a pot of any sort, whatever, and the loaf does not need to be able to support itself. It's so much easier that way!
Then, the local, traditional ways of making bread resulted in fairly sour taste. You may like it that way and still use my approach. It still works. But neither me, nor my family enjoys the sour taste all that much. A little bit is cool, though. A matter of personal taste, obviously.
And it's quick. I start in the morning and I have the bread in the afternoon. Most of the time is simply waiting, so I can do whatever I need to do in the meantime.
We rarely buy bread anymore. Only if my started goes too sour and I need to start over. Otherwise, it's home baked bread. And nobody bothers me with pizza anymore, which is actually harder to do at home, so that is a plus too. ;-)
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@Gvjrapiro "no longer exists, they can't really settle a deal"
Nonsense. Of course they can, they just don't want to. You could maybe argue that when they were divided it was a bit more complex, but even back then the West Germany was settling deals regarding war reparations. Soviets stole all of ours, but Germans don't care, obviously. And rightfully so, I believe.
"so we can't just pretend that we can take land as we please"
What do you mean by "pretending"? You can take whatever you want, by force or other means. There is no pretending there.
"especially when that land is so substantial and goes directly into the nations"
Especially then. If it was all peanuts, I could imagine giving them that, just to feel better about yourself. But better half of Oklahoma? And possibly way more than that? That's madness.
On another note: Today is the day of remembrance of Volyn Massacre. It went on for a long time, but the corresponding Sunday of 1943 was especially bloody. Ukrainian nationalists attacked a bunch of churches and murdered about 8k of Polish women, children and elders (very few men). With hand tools. Extreme cruelty. Truly extreme cruelty. For no good reason (Poles never murdered Ukrainians). About 100k dead overall. Still within living memory.
What our media said about it? Nothing. Actually worse than that. Some Muslims some time ago had a bad day in Srebrenitsa, so that's what they mentioned...
I find it truly offensive.
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@juliancate7089 " conditions for continued employment "
That's a long term transaction. Once a week or once a month deal. Still, many people were screwed up at the end...
" you can either accept them as conditions for continued employment, or you can say, "no thanks" "
How about I sell my produce (I'm a farmer, BTW), they load it onto the truck, and them I'm left with promises instead of money?
How do you deal with that?
Cash on the spot? Well, we need to weigh the produce, at the very least, so it's not always possible to know how much do they owe me. So, how do you deal with a recurrent problem of being screwed up?
" No one is forced to accept the rules. "
Then there are no rules , period.
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@brmbkl " political movements are well defined "
We inherited the definition from Marx, who created international socialism. He wanted to dismantle nation based societies in favor of class based society.
However, that's only one type of socialism. There were others. National socialism, tribal socialism, religious socialism, maybe more.
" US would be inherently Socialist, because it's a nation. it's not. "
They have public schools, public roads, some form of public health care, social help programs, very high taxes and largely centrally governed economy.
Whether you like it or not, USA is quite socialistic.
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Amerykanie tego dużo robią, bo u nich z broni prymitywnych wolno polować. Nie wszędzie i nie na wszystko, ale i bizona, i tego ichniego wielkiego jelenia (elk, wapiti) ustrzelili na wideo.
Zgodnie z tym co tam widziałem, użyte tutaj groty są chyba za duże. Krzemień jest kruchy, a jak grot się złamie przy trafieniu, to jest porażka. Znowu oszczepy są chyba za krótkie, bo tam są nawet zawody w rzucaniu do celu i wszyscy używają oszczepów dłuższych. Te tutaj bardziej przypominają średniowieczne, które były miotane przy pomocy rzemienia.
Swoją drogą, całkiem możliwe że i w paleolicie tak miotali. Nawet jakby się rzemień zachował, to nikt nie byłby w stanie poznać do czego był używany, więc same rzutki mogą mieć sens.
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If the food production went down, the average height and weight of the population must go down to.
Reassessing the Standard of Living
in the Soviet Union: An Analysis
Using Archival and Anthropometric Data
Elizabeth Brainerd
http://ftp.iza.org/dp1958.pdf
"Four different measures of population health show a consistent and large improvement between approximately 1940 and 1969: child height, birth
weight, adult height and infant mortality all improved significantly during this period. These four biological measures of the standard of living also corroborate the evidence of some deterioration in living conditions beginning around 1970, when infant and adult mortality was rising and child height and birth weight stopped increasing and in some regions began to decline."
It was a five minute search, at worst, and it totally falsifies your stance. Well, until we go into deep conspiracy and start suspecting that Soviet statisticians were super smart and kept on making up antropometric data from 1935 till 1970, but not earlier or later than that.
I understand that you hate socialism, I do too, but Soviet economy was basically working. Not as well as capitalist economies, but it did work. Why shouldn't it? It was a tyranny. The vast majority of people through the vast majority of human civilization were living under tyrannies. Ancient Egypt had a central government and it was producing grain.
It's not like civilization did not exist before Adam Smith, is it?
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TLDR: Why invent the Hitler?
I deeply oppose the idea, that historical truth can only be subjective. What happened really happened, and sometimes we really know what it was.
Not always, obviously. So it's the crucial difference between objective truth and absolute truth. The last one is out of our grasp, the former one quite often is not.
Also, just because you can't convince some people, it does not mean that "their truth" is just as valid as carefully considered interpretations of sources, backed by reasoning and serious multidisciplinary cross-checking.
I've heard Dr Ewa Kurek stating once, that history is hard science. That's how she treats it, and I do agree with this approach. Hard sciences are capable of establishing objective truths.
Not! absolute truth. That's the difference between knowing something for sure, and knowing everything.
In summary, I do think that without the belief in objective truth in history, we simply can't do it. Because if that was the case, we could pose then a very valid question of "Why invent the Hitler?"
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@anon4854 " Liechtenauer's treatises were written centuries after both Marshal and El Cid "
That means that more people had access to better armor.
" The longsword was not precisely the same "
That is correct, and it's actually a relevant argument. Well, we have I.33 from Marshall times, where they fight without armor with swords and bucklers. In XIth century sword and shield was more likely, closer to the duels depicted in the sagas.
So fighting without armor would be quite common, but they did rely on their shields quite a lot.
" treatises do show people training in arming doublets "
They show them fighting in those. While attacking targets and inflicting wounds which make no sense in armored context.
They trained for judicial duels, they are shown fighting without armor, why assume it's "licentia poetica" of sorts? I mean, there are duels between a man and a lady shown, both without armor, the man is in a hole in the ground armed with a club, while a lady circles around armed with a rock in a sock.
That's much more crazy and we think it really happened.
" Plenty, if not the majority, of Lichtenauers techniques could be utilized wearing armour "
Yet some don't work in this context, while all of them work without armor.
I don't know how you imagine people dueled back then, but I do know how they did it much later in Baroque Poland, because we have plenty of sources describing those.
Disputes could spring out of the blue, and they just started fighting. If the duels were forbidden by law for some reason, they'd go somewhere more private. I don't remember reading a single account of them donning any sort of armor.
" Marshall and Cid would have fought would have been in armour '
You mean, you travel somewhere, you meet a guy in a tavern and he insults you. So, the mighty El Cid would tell him to wait until he puts on his hauberk?
Even if Cid won, he'd be laughed at.
" Pitting Musashi against either Marshall or El Cid makes no sense if you ask me. "
I don't think so. All of them were top level fighters. Musashi more of a calculated trickster, but I'm sure the times of El Cid and Marshall were much less glamorous than how they are being recalled.
They'd have known how to deal with tricksters.
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@anon4854 " they trained without armour, that doesnt mean they fought without armour "
That's too silly. You fight when you have to fight, that includes all the times you are being attacked while not wearing armor. You train when you want to train. So you can prepare yourself and avoid silly injuries.
Plenty of treatises both prepare you and show on the illustrations people fighting without armor . Regardless of the period, weapons used and the different techniques - they are optimized for unarmored combat.
Harnischfechten is a very different style. Most sword strikes are literally useless.
No, I won't debate this issue anymore. It's too silly.
" Duels were not hot blooded and spontaneous like in films "
Yes, they were. At least quite often they were just that.
" If someone insulted El Cid there would likely be a challenge and an appropriate time and terms agreed upon "
I so wish you could go back in time (as a noble) and try that... He'd flatten you on the spot, before you'd have any time to say "I was jok.." Splat!
" A commoner just wouldnt insult him. "
Rightfully so. El Cid wouldn't even need to direct his retainers, they'd grab the dude right away. If the dude was really off his kilter, El Cid would simply order him hanged, then nonchalantly throw some coins on the ground as a compensation.
But that's mostly theoretical. Almost nobody would be that stupid.
" you have them fighting in armour because of course you do, that's how duels were fought "
Why would they train for unarmored fighting, then? What's the point of delivering a swift cut to the side of the helmet? So the other guy can smile, close in, grab and stab you in the eyeslit with his dagger?
Damn, I was supposed to ignore this issue. From now on, I'll be good.
" Musashi is absolutely a top tier swordsman but a better match up would actually be Lichtenauer or Fiore "
Both teachers. You know the saying? Those who can do, those who can't teach? (and those who can't do either, teach philosophy)
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@anon4854 " There was legalities and codes "
How would you enforce them? There is a character in Polish history, who lined his coat with all the legalities leveled against him. He lived in one of the richest countries in the world, with printing press, courts, and all that.
Yet he was able to laugh in the face of it!
You think 11th century Western Europe was more "civilized"? Obviously, you do. Obviously, you are delusional.
BTW - If it all was so balmy, how come we are told that Marshall could have killed the King if he just wished? He killed his horse instead (very expensive...) and got away with it too.
What do you mean with all those "legalities and codes"? So, if Marshall agreed to fight a rumbling dude in the tavern and wounded him, there would be what? A police officer, which didn't exist, would start an investigation against him?
No, sorry, it's all way too silly. Have a nice day.
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@anon4854 " you're just ignoring arguments [...] you concede that the treatises you're referencing are not relevant? "
I already addressed it. Okay, let me repeat.
Since treatises teach and show techniques of unarmored combat, in the eras when armor was cheaper, better and more prevalent, it's obvious that fighting without armor was done before, when armor was expensive and rare.
But you were like - Nope. Doesn't count. LaLaLaLa, Doesn't count.
So be it. It's not like I can counter that, is it?
" Chivalry existed "
Well, that depends how early, but I never said it didn't. Dueling is not unchivalrous, though. The whole dueling culture stems from the code of honorable conduct of the earlier eras. Like, you would openly challenge your oponent, instead of simply trying to kill him. You would give him fair chance too.
" issues could be brought before legal courts "
How is that chivalrous? Instead of defending your honor sword in hand, you hide behind some sleazy-legalezy?
Only a coward would do that, or some merchant, which for them probably amounted to the same thing.
" I'm fairly certain Marshall unhorsed Richard during a war, before he was king. "
You didn't watch the video, did you?
Richard was the king, it wasn't a battle, Marshall purposefully killed his horse and got away with it.
" How ignorant of history are you? Though a matter of violence among nobles would likely be handled directly by the local lord or higher courts. "
So funny. I really loled.
Anyway, you gotta be German, aren't you?
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@michaelterrell5061 " men on horses can be dismounted with well placed lance "
Of course, that's what jousting is all about.
However, with regard to a spearman on foot fighting a mounted lancer, it's much harder to do. If the spear is short, the lancer has an advantage of range. He can pass by the spearman and attack him with perfect safety.
If the spear is long, so the lancer can't easily outrange it, we are entering a "lance-fencing" duel of sorts. It's been described in several manuals and there is a Dutch (I think) guy who demonstrates some of it on Youtube.
Here the advantage again goes to the lancer. He can displace the spear while keeping his own point directed toward the spearman, while it's very hard or outright impossible to do on foot. If you beat the lance out, your point misses the lancer. He can even topple you over with his horse, then finish you off.
Basically, if horsemen didn't have some serious advantages over footmen, nobody in his right mind would want to pay for those stupidly expensive mounts. You could equip and train about 5 footmen for the price of a single, well trained warhorse.
Could be more, depending on the quality.
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@kimberlywalker_ " Throw it "
That can work. But it disarms you and he's got a shield. Though sure, chucking missiles at the dude will at least be able to nullify his range advantage.
" I mean, it's a POLE. Reach "
He's got his own pole, which outranges your weapon.
From what people who tried it say, like Matt Easton, 3vs1 might give an advantage to the footmen. That's now, with barely trained horses and horsemen, so we have to assume that with better horsemanship, it was likely about even odds.
1v1 ? I think a good rider should win even if he doesn't have a lance. I mean, sword and shield vs a spear is not a forgone conclusion even on foot. When one guy sits atop of a competent mount?
It can't be worse, not out in the open.
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@johannesmattsson9900 If you train for it, it's not much harder. For someone who's not used to it at all and specializes in single sword, even sword and shield can be difficult, but even then, with no training, you can still use the shield as a passive defense.
Someone who is trained to fight with both hands at once will obviously employ a more effective style. And it's not very difficult at all, novices learn it at a similar pace as the single sword techniques.
Anyway, employing both hands in fighting is a huge part of European swordsmanship. Two swords were rarely trained, since most people weren't willing to carry them around, like a witcher. However, sword and dagger were absolutely mainstream. In case they didn't have the dagger, they trained for sword and cloak or even sword and lantern.
Because employing both hands was more effective than just one.
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@DoorDashHere " there is no cheating in life or death combat, how foolish of you "
That wasn't true. For example, they used to write and publish very detailed rulebooks for dueling. It's obvious, that where there are rules, there can be rule breaking, that includes cheating.
But that approach extended to all manners of violent conflict. You could conduct yourself honorably or dishonorably, and people were really willing to risk death in order to protect their honor. It wasn't a trivial matter to them, not at all.
Anyway, I'm not saying that fighting with two swords was literally cheating. It simply gave a sizable advantage to one side, but if both parties agreed it was allowed, then it was fine.
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I listened till the end, where you summarized that the right side of the graph emphasizes the individual over the collective. In that sense, fascism and it's various kinds should not be placed on the right. A nation is a collective, hence extreme nationalism is obviously a strongly collectivist ideology, it's just that it doesn't care as much about other nations.
To reinforce this reasoning - Monarchism is a legit right wing ideology, and it's been said that it emphasizes nations. That's plainly false. The kings did not care one bit about the nationality of their subjects. Richard the Lionheart was very happy to rule over Anglo-Saxons, and he allowed their nobles to advance in the society. At the same time, he was often at odds with France, which were people of his culture. (Also, Austrian Habsburg dynasty ruled over half of Europe, the British queen was German, all sorts of cases like that.)
Even later, when the concept of nation already fully crystallized, the monarchs still allowed for the advancement of their subject who were of different nations. For example, Frederic the Great discouraged accepting ethnic Germans into his cavalry, and stated that either Poles or Hungarians should be preferred. The national oppression was introduced when the traditional monarchy was on its way out, and was turned into national democracy, where some people were allowed to vote based on their nationality, while others were not.
But that's a move to the left !
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The Soviets did not reverse-engineered german motorcycles. They were given a licence and spare parts, probably due to some Ribentrop-Molotov agreement. The motorcycle they received was BMW-R71, a side valve engine, unlike the Ural in the movie, which is an OHV engine. We can be quite sure that's what really happened, because people who restore M72 bikes sometimes find german marked engine blocks in them (also some other integral parts, but I forgot which ones). M72 is a licence built R-71. If Spielberg managed to get hold of a couple M-72s, he'd not need to fake anything on it apart from markings.
Urals were a domestic upgrade, not a reverse-engineering effort, definitely not a licence. One could claim it was inspired by BMW, but not a copy of any particular model.
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A bit of constructive criticism and some answers to the questions you raised. (BTW - feel free to remove this post. I write it for You, not for Youtube.)
1. Since you insisted on pronouncing Paulus correctly, I think you should also improve your pronunciation of Reichenau. It's Reich-enau, like in reich, where "ch" is a soft "h" sound, not a "k" sound. The word "reich" as read by "google translate" sounds legit to my Polish ears.
2. 6th Army was not a "bunch of murderers". Sure there were some murderers there. Some created by war, some were already like that before, but most of those guys were just a bunch of kids. Therefore it's not wrong to sympathize with them. Any army can be turned into savages if the high command tolerates such behavior. Reichenau not just tolerated, not only approved of or even applauded, but simply ordered barbarity. He's responsible for what happened, and other people like him. Not those kids starved at Stalingrad (apart from those who actually deserved it, of course).
3. Walther is pronounced a Vahlter, not Walter. Schwerin is prononced as Shverin, not Shwerin. In general, German "w" is pronounced as English "v", and German "v" is pronounced and English "f". (I wouldn't bother with this, but you seem to care. Blame yourself... ;-))
4. The only picture of Richard von Schverin I found which appears to be at least plausibly correct is this one: https://forum.axishistory.com/download/file.php?id=16558&sid=696d491b2196a7be8d5efc9929a80c30
It has been requested previously in 2003 in this thread: https://forum.axishistory.com//viewtopic.php?t=23159 . I can't tell if it's legit or not. It seems like somebody verified it at one time... Use it at your own risk.
5. The symbol for 79th Infantry Division can be found here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/79e_division_d%27infanterie_(Allemagne)
6. It's Hans-Heinrich Sixt von Armin, or Germans don't know how to spell it either. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Heinrich_Sixt_von_Armin
7. The symbol visible at 13:54 appears to simply represent the 113th Infantry Division. It's their logo. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113th_Infantry_Division_(Wehrmacht)) I've looked through a bunch of WWII German tactical symbols. I don't think they used this symbol for anything else, or I've just wasted about an hour of my time. Which is possible...
8. The symbol of 71 Infantry Division is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/71st_Infantry_Division_(Wehrmacht)
I'll send what I've written before something freezes up and I lose it...
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@horsemumbler1 It would have helped, if you've quoted my remark, that the "recoil happens after the bullet has left the barrel".
That's not technically true, but it's a viable simplification. I don't think I'm able to explain the hows and wherefores without splitting hairs, so bear with me, but it's you who asked for it! ;-)
So there are two aspects to it. First is, that the gasses create a lot of recoil by themselves. Often most of it, sometimes the vast majority of recoil is created by the gasses, which do escape the barrel "long" after the bullet has left the bore.
The other thing is, that the recoil which happens before that moment is pretty much always the same. The same (or close enough) pressure acting upon the same (or close enough) mass over the same distance creates very repeatable conditions, which are zeroed out during zeroing your gun.
I mean, piston powered air rifles behave differently. The majority of the recoil happens before the pellet leaves the barrel, so they tend to be more difficult to shoot than low powered firearms exactly because of that.
Finally, the recoil force which acts on the shooter happens quite often even after the bullet has reached the target. Rifles are heavy, with lots of inertia, so it takes some time to stop them with your shoulder.
I hate being unnecessarily longwinded, but I believe that in this case I had to do it! ;-)
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@kikixchannel Scouting didn't simply involve going out and looking around. Obviously, even if you did just that, you were likely to encounter the enemy at some point. Scouting parties, foraging parties, raiders, robbers, all sorts of people, so scouting was a dangerous task.
Apart from that, you were often trying to capture prisoners for interrogation. That meant getting fairly close to the main enemy force and then engaging in combat.
Meaning, you would want your scouts to be decent fighters.
Obviously, heavy armor may not be your first choice, but you would want to wear some of it, considering the situation, wouldn't you?
Finally, whatever unit or an ad hoc group you end up sending out, they still need a leader. Someone experienced, someone who knows the war, someone who has a prime quality horse that can get outta there in a hurry, if need be.
A Winged Hussar would fit this role very well.
I could quote-bomb you with sources which clearly state that they performed such tasks, but you could still dismiss them as "exceptions", while there are valid reasons for them to do it.
Storming castles on foot? That's a bit another story, because they sometimes refused to do it. The commander had to ask them nicely, and then usually would participate, but since that was sometimes necessary, we clearly see that fighting on foot was not considered to be an integral part of their duties.
Anyway, in summary, Winged Hussars could and did perform all the tasks of the cavalry. With lances, they were shock cavalry. Without the lances, they had pistols like reiters or cuirassiers. If they chose to wear flexible armor, they could serve as lighter "Cossack" banners. Since most of them owned and could shoot a bow, they could also serve as horse archers. (BTW - carrying a bow in public was a symbol of military service.)
I mean, those guys had no weak points. They were OP as eff. Nerf please!
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Wszystko dobrze, tylko najwyraźniej dopiero Pan zaczyna w tym temacie.
Zacznę może od tego, że te kamienne płaskorzeźby, które Pan pokazuje, zostały prawdopodobnie rozszyfrowane przez Martina Sweatmana. Ma kanał, Prehistory Decoded. Dużo pisać, mogę się rozwinąć, ale generalnie jest to archeoastronomia, która nawiązuje do zdarzenia zwanego "Młodszy Dryas", które nieomal na pewno było uderzeniem komety w Ziemię.
Dalej, tak, pod koniec epoki lodowcowej wulkany wybuchały, bo bilans mas na półkuli północnej i połódniowej bardzo się zmienił. W skrócie, wulkany wybuchły bo skończyła się epoka lodowcowa, nie na odwrót.
Co tam jeszcze? A, Potop Biblijny. Znaleźli krater na Oceanie Indyjskim odpowiedzialny za to zdarzenie. Nie na 100%, tyle że są ślady kilkusetmetrowego tsunami na całym globie z bardzo sensownym datowaniem. Dwa miesiące deszczu, powolne zatapianie Mezopotamii, wszystko pasuje. Tyle że to było później. Z pamięci, jakieś 4000 BC, a nie 14000.
No i co tam jeszcze? Możliwe nawet, że znaleźli miejsce uderzenia komety, która spowodowała, że Morze Śródziemne przelało się przez Saharę, co widać na Google Earth. Płytka woda paradoksalnie powoduje wyższe fale. Ślady zniszczeń sugerują około 600m wysokości. Parę tysięcy lat przed "potopem". Kto wie, może akurat w okolicach Younger Dryas, może trochę później? Sęk w tym, że ludzie łączą to z zagładą Atlantydy, szczególnie ci, którzy szukają jej w Mauretanii.
Generalnie tak, są powody by przypuszczać, że istniały wcześniejsze, stosunkowo wysoko rozwinięte cywilizacje neolityczne.
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@RealCrusadesHistory " Poland was a huge component of the Prussian Crusade "
Of course. The pagan Prussia was an insufferable slaver state.
So were the Pomeranians, the Pomerelians, the Rugians, especially the Poles , until they converted.
But all those other tribes were converted, not genocided.
" It wasn't until Poland and the order started butting heads over territory "
You mean, until they took over Gdańsk through outright treason, which endangered the whole Polish grain export?
Yes, that's when they overreached.
Prussia is a very poor region. I spend all my holidays sailing there. Beautiful nature, because agriculture have never made much sense on those poor soils. At the time Poland was partitioned, one single province of Poland was richer than the whole of Prussia, which already included many other lands.
Yet they won. Sad story.
BTW - Aren't you an American? Do you sometimes wonder which poor state is going to conquer you guys? ;-)
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@thebrocialist8300 Both early agrarians and early pastoralists went through a period of misery during their transition to a new lifestyle. The agrarians had very poor diet. Mostly grains, very little meat (no domesticated animals), most of vegetables were not domesticated, etc. They suffered accordingly.
Similarly, pastoralists went through similar hardship when they started to rely on milk in large quantities. Lactose intolerance is still the norm among humans, so it definitely was for them too. Those who couldn't digest milk well, simply suffered. Apparently, it can be seen in their remains.
Which lifestyle has more favorable selection toward innovation? It's probably settled lifestyle, simply because it allows for amassing wealth. Excess food production creates niches, which allow for new inventions that fit those new environments, but I'm not sure that the selection pressures are easy to distinguish.
Plenty of important innovations came from the steppes. Definitely domestication of many animals, quite possibly the wheel, lots of cultural traditions (Zoroastrianism, Vedic religions), composite bow, probably more.
Settled lifestyle allows for specialization, nomadic lifestyle encourages trade and exchange of ideas. Which one was more selective toward innovation? I simply can't tell. Eventually the issue totally disappeared, as pastoralism became a part of settled agriculture. Ever since it happened, it's a moot point.
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@ohmandamp " [Romania] could not Harbor a government hostile to another government and still claim neutrality"
Maybe, but since they didn't "harbor" any foreign governments, they could claim whatever they wanted. "Officially", since you are so hung up on legalese, the members of the Polish government were simply passing through.
In more practical terms, they were coordinating the evacuation of the Polish army, at least technically. Whether their presence helped or not, large portions of the Polish army escaped and reformed in France later that year.
German losses in October exceeded those in September. In part because defending very long border with Germany, Prussia and Czechoslovakia was an impossible task, which Polish strategy for defense recognized to some extend. The plan was to retreat behind Vistula and survive till the Allies attack.
But it were the Soviets who attacked instead. What to do, apart from organizing more or less orderly escape?
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@ohmandamp "fascist White armies"
Fascist? Read on who funded Bolsheviks. The revolution was created by German Reichsmarks. Astronomical sums! (In excess of 50 million gold marks.) Lenin was a German spy. Germans dictated Brest-Litovsk treaty. They could do it, because they were still paying and they could destroy Lenin by telling on him.
Lenin was a spy and a traitor of his own country.
Besides, fascism was a system which opposed democracy and proclaimed a one-party state. Dictatorship for life and so on. How many parties there were in USSR? One? Boo. Fascists idea. How about the term or service of rulers? Lifetime? Boo. Again, fascist idea. How about nationalization of property? Another fascist idea.
Sure, fascists opposed international communists, because they believed in nation states, but apart from that there are more similarities than differences.
Not so with the British and the French. Their ideologies of limiting the political power, free trade, free enterprise, freedom of speech and so on, were actually totally different from either fascist or communist ideologies.
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@BenTrem42 " You can then say absolute things about the system. "
Under those assumptions, it works.
" No uncertainty? "
For an ideal gas, pv really equals nRT.
For a real gas, it depends. While real gases never follow this equation with absolute precision, your real measurements are not absolutely precise either.
So this statement remains true. You'd have to phrase it a bit differently, though. Like in: "This specific gas, under those specific conditions follows pv=nRT as closely as we can measure it."
And this statement would be absolutely true.
" No Heisenberg? Nothing quantum? "
I think they tried to figure out how a steam engine works, so there was no quantum physics yet.
And they did figure it out. What I mean is, that steam is very far from an ideal gas, but the closer it gets to it, the closer it follows the ideal gas equation.
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@Eddie_of_the_A_Is_A_Gang " asking for something it establishes can be confusing "
Okay, I'll give you an example. If someone asked me the same about chemistry, I could have said, that we know that the simplest possible atom consist of one proton and one electron. It's established knowledge, because all chemistry relies on it and chemistry works.
Got it now? Tell me something like that about epistemology.
" Man is born tabula raza is one of them "
You mean, it's one of the "false" epistemologies? Because that is not a true statement.
Anyway, those other guys? Are they true or false, and how do I tell the difference?
" an Axiom cannot be just something you assume "
That's how it works in math. (It's not "just" an assumption, but whatever.)
" If you assume God exists, you would still be wrong. "
Assuming you are a zebra, your fur is vertically striped. Do you understand that it's a true statement, regardless if you are a zebra or not?
" Axiom is undeniable because the very action of denying it implies the Axiom "
I can easily assume, that the sum of all angles in a square is more than 360, so what? It doesn't "deny" Euclidean squares.
My assumption is even true on Earth, but it does not make Euclidean squares false.
" Existence, Consciousness and Identity "
Those are very complex ideas. More like topics. How come you guys can base anything solid on such nebulous foundations?
Let me guess. You can't. I'm right, am I not?
" man Act, because to deny it is to do an action "
What if you ignore it? (Oh my, it can't be that silly, can it?)
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@Loehengrin " you can go a long way just by asking how do we know what we know? "
I did that, actually. I think I even have a working concept (an analogy) of how we know stuff. Unfortunately, it's very simple, so probably destined to be ignored. It's hard to impress people with simplicity.
" I choose objectivism because all other schools of thought lead to conclusions I don't like "
It's not as silly as it seems. If the conclusions are absurd, it's at least very likely that the method is at fault. Like in, you calculate a chemical problem and arrive at a negative mass. You did it wrong, didn't you?
Once in a blue moon there is no escape, which happened to me (the problem was badly formulated). But usually it's the other way around.
" Objectivism is nothing more than relativism LARPing as realism "
Does it mean we can't know anything? If so, I disagree. We really know that Earth is not at the center of the Solar System, or our space probes would not land where they need to land. We know that electrons exist, because if they didn't, we wouldn't be able to communicate right now. Etc.
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@Eddie_of_the_A_Is_A_Gang " apple to oranges "
Knowledge is knowledge.
Yes, I do assume that things exist, that they can be defined precisely enough, and that we can be aware of their existence. Thanks for clearing it out.
Those are assumptions though, not conclusions.
(I mean, there are people who seriously postulate that the Universe is a simulation running in the mind of God. If that were true, your axioms would be incorrect, but still work properly.)
" If you assume something that is faulty, whatever statement you have made is not based in anything. "
That's not true. The statements are based on the assumption . If you are a zebra, then your fur is striped.
" arbitrary statement have no truth value "
Then 2+2=idunno, because 2+2=4 is an arbitrary statement.
" i gave you the philosophical definition of an Axiom "
That's how people thought about axioms in math too. But then they learned stuff, and now they know better .
What have you guys learned since then?
" *''Right now, i am not writing''
Well clearly i am writing, this statement cannot be true.* "
Well, it can be. It's a side note, but the diffused set logic would really help you guys. Another thing mathematicians have learned since antiquity...
" It remains true even if you ignore it. "
You said that the action of denial was what defeated the denial itself. Inaction does not defeat anything.
" At that point, there is only one thing you can do. Stop the conversation right there. "
Cope.
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@BenTrem42 " or you missed the point of the original question "
You asked about uncertainty, if it makes "absolute" statements impossible, as far as I can tell.
So no, it does not. The statements themselves rely on a set of assumptions, and as long as those assumptions are being met sufficiently, those statements remain perfectly true. (Especially if you take care to verse out all the silent assumptions most physicists take for granted.)
" you don't deal with uncertainty "
I thought I did. The part with "even if the gases aren't ideal, we can't know that, because our measurements aren't ideal either".
If that's the case, the gases behave exactly as our models predict they should, so our statements (equations) are 100% correct.
" probabilistics, another big part of ontology/epistemology "
Is it, really? That's news to me. Anyway, I don't see any problems inherent to what I wrote so far with regards to that. And yes, obviously I'm aware of that aspect of reality.
" So ... nothing for me to engage here. "
Another one? You philosophers appear to be particularly timid guys. One solid punch, you're outta there!
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@BenTrem42 " is all about gases "
Just an example somebody else used. Yes, the ideal gas laws can never exactly reflect the behavior of real systems. So? Did we learn anything of importance once we discovered them?
I think yes. Unequivocally yes!
" under what I take to be Newtonian theories "
Actually no, but whatever. I don't wanna go there, until there is a real need for it.
" Heisenberg and things quantum [...] how brain works "
Deterministic chaos is a thing too. There is no need for quantum effects in order to not be able to predict the outcomes with any certainty.
That's what you guys don't seem to understand, seriously. You see, there are deterministic mathematical equations, which are so sensitive to the initial parameters, that we can only predict some general behavior (atractors, that kind of stuff). It takes a lot of runs to figure those out, otherwise it looks like there is no regularity to it at all.
We can easily conceive a reality in which we have access only to the results of such equations, so Heisenberg's uncertainty can very well be a natural consequence of complex deterministic interactions.
Anyway, yes. Quantum effects govern all chemistry, so whether we talk about real gasses, or a lot of goop called the brain, they surely do matter.
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@ihugkittens484 " See? You can't construct arguments that way, it's nonsense "
That's how he was rebutted.
We've been told, that a "potential for existence" and "actual existence" are not obviously different. Apparently, the majority of current philosophers do not distinguish between the two.
So if he has a "potential for paying" it's the same as "actually paying", be it for gay sex or whatever else.
Supposedly, it has something to do with time, because we can't any longer assume that if flies at constant speed, the same for everybody, and what not.
Those guys made a good start on understanding physics. Now they need to read something on entropy. Or actually, better not. They will gain some "potential" for spewing some more nonsense, while we will gain "potential" for paying them for it.
Honestly, I'd rather sponsor gay sex. At least someone will find joy in it.
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@ihugkittens484 " You're over-thinking it. "
No, I'm not. I watched this video, where it was confidently stated, that Ben will be shown to spew a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense.
Then his arguments were dismissed with a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense. Under the banner of "Rationality rules", no less...
Regarding Ben himself, I don't like him, I don't watch him, but it doesn't mean I feel obliged to disagree with him on everything he says.
For example, his "prime mover" argument is not insane. I don't like this argument, I don't agree with it, but it doesn't make it nonsensical, just because I don't like it.
The counter to this was definitely stupid, though.
The same with omniscience, which somehow excludes the possibility of change itself, because as it was put here, if a stick burns into ashes, then it requires for God to "change his mind" about the stick.
The trouble with this way of thinking is that we all know that sticks burn into ashes, so if God can't possess this knowledge, neither we can ! All of a sudden, there is no knowledge possible at all...
What? That's supposed to be more rational? More rational than what exactly?
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@ihugkittens484 Yours are much better counters to his arguments, but they are also much less authoritative.
" I don't see how "prime mover, therefore God, there - proven "
The theist thinking goes like: Nature might be mostly running itself, but what set the laws of nature? It couldn't be nature itself, so something supernatural then.
They got a decent boost when people started modelling the evolution of hypothetical universes. It quickly turned out, that various constants must stay within a fairly small margins for a universe to evolve into anything which could give us galaxies, stars, planets and eventually life.
The atheists countered it with a multiverse hypothesis. They speculated that close to infinite number of universes were created with random constants. It just so happened, that only the one with a decent set resulted in us pondering this question.
Now, you tell me which argument is based on reason and which one is based on ideology?
Me? I think they are roughly equal with regard to this.
" "faith" and thus NOT being able to prove God? "
They understand for more than a thousand years already, that anything which can be called a proof can't exist. Therefore you need faith.
It doesn't mean you can't reason about God and find various clues and evidences. Those things might exist, they aren't proofs though.
There is a bit of "free will" added on top of that. People are expected to have a choice of accepting or rejecting God. If his existence was blindingly obvious, where is the choice in there?
In essence, you get clues and choices. Not too stupid. (Not too surprising in that either, wise people thought about those problems for two millenia.)
" He created us to act a certain way and knows it because he's omniscient but still punushes us for our actions? "
Again, that's a problem of free will. Theists assume, that a world without free will, which translates into a world without freedom, is inherently evil, so a benevolent God didn't do it.
If you are free to do what you want, you are free to do evil too. But there should be some consequence for choosing to do evil, so there we are.
You know what? I agree with that! What's more, we all inherently agree with that. That's what our justice system is based upon.
Anyway, your argument works best against perfectly omniscient and omnipotent God. Only philosophers consider such a being. For most thinking people those words are mere approximates. It's just much shorter to say omniscient, than reall,really,really.[...]knowledgeable.
You basically argue against infinity. As we have learned from science, wherever we find infinity, our models break apart.
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@ihugkittens484 " then God is not perfect by his own standards? Who punushes Him? "
Infinite perfection is yet another infinity. No wonder it leads to another paradox.
That's a theory, the actual religious practice is that gods, or even monotheistic Gods, do seem to have opposition. In Christianity that would be Satan, so if God would screw up, the power of Satan would grow. In Judaism it's even simpler, because Yahveh doesn't even deny the existence of other deities, he simply forbids his people from active worship of those.
" Also if we remove infinity, how did God come to be "
Here both atheists and theists seem to agree and give the same answer: "We do not know."
Though it's interesting to consider, that theologians did ponder the concept of infinity for a very long time. For example, they were interested in how many "angels" might fit on the point of a needle, which translates into a question: "Is space infinitely divisible?". Or they asked: "Is God capable of creating a stone so heavy, that even he won't be able to lift it?", which obviously constricts the concept of omnipotence.
" He was ALWAYS there? "
We do not understand the nature of time, so we don't even know what "always" means. Regardless if you are a theist, atheist, pagan, whatever. None of us understands it.
" Was he somewhere else "
Again, we do not understand the concept of space clearly enough to know what "somewhere else" might mean.
You might think it's an outright silly position, to consider something like "outside of space", but the ruling theory in theoretical physics assumes a whole bunch of extra dimensions. This theory is likely not even wrong (meaning, worse than wrong), but it's not like science and religion are polar opposites, as it is often portrayed.
It's simply not the case.
For another example, how about those multiverses, which keep on popping up, until they chance a set of constants suitable for developing life? Where from they do pop up? Not from space itself, since they create space...
When do they pop up? Not from time, since they create time...
So here, there is no difference. Both science and religion fail to a very similar degree.
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@ihugkittens484 " the initial state of the universe was a singularity "
Which is a fancy way of saying: "We don't know."
Singularity is where our understanding of physics breaks down. We might as well call it God.
BTW - relatively many physicists are theists.
" We have those even now, they form naturally... "
You misunderstand this concept. We can't tell what happens inside the black holes, our current theories predict crazy stuff, and that's pretty much it.
What is maybe interesting, the skepticism toward the existence of black holes seems to be growing. It's not like they can't exist in theory, it's more of a case of "do they really exist"? And it's not obvious.
They might, but we used to be much more convinced that they do.
Anyway, I'm not expressing my personal views here. I'm a disbeliever, but I like this term more than atheist, because I'm just as skeptical about all kinds of knowledge, and that includes especially the more crazy scientific musings.
I mean, it's easy to "defeat" the opponent if you misrepresent what they are actually saying and believing. I wanted for you to see, that's how it goes for both sides. Especially our current "soyence" is absolutely rife with anti-rationalist tendencies.
Theists genuinely look good when compared with that. That's probably because they have such a vast breadth of knowledge to draw from. Nonetheless, they seem to be the saner bunch, at least to me.
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@ihugkittens484 " we don't need Him anymore "
If so, why various tyrannical regimes always pick a fight with God?
" when it comes to how we behave in normal day to day life and how you treat others, it's time to put God out of the equation. "
Especially if you wanted to enslave or outright murder those other people! I understand, so frustrating.
This old, outdated idiot tells you to love your enemies, care for them, and if you can't be bothered with that, at least pray for them. Those stupid Christians often pray for my soul, and they expect me to be outright hostile in return.
Why, I think it happened in this very thread.
So annoying...
" I believe we've grown enough to learn by ourselves "
By accumulating mistakes? So much better than listening to our fathers. Ask every teenager that ever lived!
" how and WHY we should be descent people "
You misspelled by pure accident, or is it your soul trying to tell you something?
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@seanmac1793 " Patton [...] needs to be able to force the Germans to not abandon his front. "
Must, resist, smartass, comments (so hard though, no joke).
Forcing Germans to move is great. Imagine they had a well supplied division, and they move. What happens? They expend their resources and arrive at the front partially depleted.
Lots of fuel used up, some of the tanks left, because they couldn't fix them on time, other broken down, lots of trucks used up, lots of them shot from the air. How about artillery? It's not easy to transport, is it?
It's all good.
And once they finally GTFO, Patton can take all this ground with reduced opposition.
You think I'm joking. During the Bulge Patton wanted to draw them in as far as they were willing to go, only then counterattack.
Whatever people might want to say about this "nice gentleman", he was not stupid!
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@dickartist " Did you even watch the video? Serious question. "
Most of it. If he expands his narrative later on in the vid, I did miss it.
" He isn't arguing for an entirely tax-free society "
He got me then.
But how does he turn around from his "taxes are theft" and "mah roads" stance? I already dealt with "taxes are theft". Regarding "mah roads", he argues that if there is a need, there is a market.
Well, I'm a Pole. We did try it. In Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth taxes were very low and there were no roads or bridges built. "People would crowdfund" approach did not work. You had very wealthy citizens and very bad roads, all at the same time. (Weak standing army, weak law execution, weak property protection too - we've been there!)
" a more free market generates more wealth and faster technological advancement "
Only assuming you get all the niceties, like the rule of law, basic safety, etc, "for free".
Those things are not free . They cost money. Public money.
" You came so close to understanding the point "
Well, why would he try to get it across in such a convoluted way? He does argue for all the things I objected to.
But yes, it seems that we two rather agree than disagree. (BTW - I grew up in a commie Poland, so I know first hand how centrally planned economy works.)
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@sean640307 " Britain was sending tanks "
Britain received three times bigger help from Lend-Lease than Soviet Union. Whatever they sent is absolutely dwarfed by what they got, and all of that still wasn't enough to build an army capable of destroying Wehrmacht.
BTW - how effective those weapons actually were? I mean, I read on Soviet Hurricanes and Spitfires. They were all in British measures (non-metric and non-American), nobody knew how to operate them, no spare parts and they were often beat-up planes too.
Those planes broke-down, the cannons jammed, Soviets literally hated them.
Crappy American planes? Fine! There was a supply chain, enough of the planes to train people to run them, so forth.
" it's incorrect to you casualty numbers as the pure basis for measuring effort "
Of course! Poland has lost the most and all that effort was largely inconsequential. I agree with that!
" Look at Normandy, for example "
Exactly. Omaha beach was an average day in Poland. We were losing that many people every day of the war.
" If the USAAF and RAF raids hadn't curtailed the German oil production "
I don't think they did. We (since our guys did that too), we mostly killed innocent people. For barely any effect too.
Until the real goal was to weaken Europe... Then it did work. But that's beside the scope of this discussion, so whatever.
" considerable increase in oil production "
All of the synthetic oil was just a meager trickle. Burning women and children did very little to slow it down.
Although... I don't doubt for a second that we are uncomfortable enough with that reality, to invent a narrative which "explains it all away".
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I may come off as harsh, but I'm not trying to be. You probably simply don't have access to recent research, which is all in Polish. Please, don't get offended. I'm just trying to educate.
The first hussars were actually Serbs (called Racowie), not Hungarians. Solid info, no confabulation. Those Balkan troops were hired at the same time in Hungary and Rzeczpospolita (PLC). Later on the Hungarian name for them stuck, so partially true.
The greatest Winged Hussar victory was the Klushino battle in 1610, with possibly Kircholm battle in 1605 as a close second. Vienna is peanuts when compared to those. (caveat - I mean major battles resulting in total destruction of the enemy force, not necessarily the greatest feats of military prowess. There were so many of those that it's impossible to choose, but the charge during the battle of Khotyn in 1621 probably takes the cake here.)
14 000 winged hussars charging at Vienna? Not possible. The hussars led the charge, 14 000 horsemen might have charged, or maybe even more, who knows, but we simply didn't have that many fully equipped and trained Hussars at the time. Not any more.
That's it? More or less, at least. Not bad. Really. I mean it.
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@eliasthienpont6330 " 2000 kCal is indeed what an average person requires "
Requires for what? Sitting in a warm room?
" in the freezing Russian steps during actual combat 4000 kCal is almost enough "
Before their rations were cut, they consumed 4.7 Kcal/day. 700 Kcal/day of excess would result in them gaining, what 5kg per month? Well, 30*700/4 = ~5kg indeed (converted to "bacon" of bodyweight).
Were they fat?
The thing is, if you are short of that many calories per day, you will be losing bodyweight at a similar rate.
Royal Navy during the age of sail consumed about 5 Kcal/day/man. Were they fat?
Competitive athletes may require 6 Kcal/day for men and 4 Kcal/day for women.
Are they fat?
If not, then that's what they need . It's no magic, it's thermodynamics.
Even current day MREs amount to about 3.8 Kcal/day, but that's an emergency food.
" food package in the USA [...] assuming a 2000 KCal diet "
Get out of the car, walk to work, do physical work , then try to keep your bodyweight on 2 Kcal/day.
People, use logic. If 4.7 Kcal/day was what sustained the soldiers during summer, then in winter they needed more in order to function at their full potential. 5.5-ish, or so. That's on average. Big guys needed even more than that.
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@tollictollic3610 " 80 % of the Slavic Population in Silesia was killed by the Mongols "
That's silly talk. Maybe 8% loss during a single raid? That's believable.
For comparison, Eastern Poland suffered from Tatar raids for centuries. It did lower the population density and the development of the area, but people still lived in there.
" Every source I can find contradicts what you are saying "
There are plenty of German sources which support my position. Like, what to choose?
Well, a German printed Polish-German dictionary? "Wegweiser zur polnischer und deutschen Sprache" They say there, that both nations live together and relay on each other, like dear neighbors or brothers, and need to constantly communicate in matters of trade, everyday life, buying and selling.
That's 1648.
" it is made up by post WW2 propagandists to somewhat justify the annexation "
The commies printed the aforementioned dictionary?
You are acting like the commies had a monopoly on propaganda, while in the West effectively the Germans did enjoy such a monopoly for a long time. Only recently we are capable of presenting our side of the story.
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@tollictollic3610 " For example how many Slavs were killed by the Mongols. "
Man, if your numbers made any sense, Poland would become a vassal state of the Mongols, just like Kievan Rus.
And even Mongols wouldn't go that far, because much lower losses would be entirely sufficient to subdue the whole state, and you can't extract tribute from corpses.
Besides, there were up to 30K Mongols in the whole raid. How do you imagine they could manage to genocide literal millions? With bow & arrow technology?
I'm sorry, but it's just silly to think that could have happened.
Anyway, Wikipedia claims that Polish losses amounted to about 22 000 people. 10K lost in battles, 10K lost civilians and about 2K taken as slaves.
It may seem low, but we couldn't have lost many more fighters, because we simply didn't have that many. The civilians mainly ran away into the woods. Hunting them down was not only tedious, it was outright dangerous for the Mongols, so low losses there do make sense too. The low number of slaves captured is a consequence of the above.
That's for all of Poland, not only Silesia.
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@Icetea-2000 " Millions of germans were forcefully expelled "
Where are the bones? I used to think that it might be true, but when asked for evidence, Germans came up with nothing.
Nobody wanted to stay under the Soviet rule, as illustrated with Poles in Soviet Union and Ukrainians in Poland. The Poles had to leave everything behind, while the Ukrainians were offered sizable compensations and they still did not want to go there.
Anyway, we did forcefully resettle the Ukrainians to Western Poland. Not to the SU, though. We weren't that cruel.
" what a disgusting thing to say "
The disgusting thing was to imply parity of guilt, "we did you wrong, but you did us wrong too". We do have tonnes of archived material which documents German antics, they have nothing, but they used to claim it was all somehow equal.
It all ended when we asked for evidence.
" because you’re polish "
I was Polish when living behind the iron curtain too, but back then we had no voice, and that's how Germans could pull it all off for so long.
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@Panzer-Geomancer I don't know how the deal was sealed. The wife of our president is Jewish, from an influential family I think, so maybe this had something to do with it? I just don't know. Though president in Poland does not hold much of real power.
Anyway, we are definitely not allied with Israel. Our relations even have been strained recently. They ask for money on behalf of Polish citizens murdered by Germans, who have left their possessions without an heir, which customarily goes to the state everywhere in the world.
But they still want money, just because of their religion. We consider that claim outrageous, they think they can pressure us by guilt-tripping if they lie enough about it, so it's not all roses, that for sure.
Not an enmity either, though. More or less neutral-to-positive relations.
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@steenkigerrider5340 "Only proves how gigantic superior the US"
Of course, what else? ;-D
"400.000 vehicles."
Below I quote a summary of a fairly detailed report:
"on 22.6.41 Red Army had around 270,000 trucks, and received another 745,000 during the war. Out of these, 150,000 were new domestic production, 221,500 trucks drafted from the industry and agriculture sectors, 60,600 captured enemy's trucks and 312,600 lend-lease trucks."
Above a million in total, from which LL trucks were about 30%. Not bad and definitely important, especially considering those were good trucks, but not critical.
What I like the most about those LL trucks, is that they were delivered in bulk. Enough to build a supply and maintenance chain around them, so they could actually deliver the goods, both literally and figuratively speaking.
That was not he case with regards to a lot of LL deliveries. Imperial, metric and even effing Whitworth! Not even talking about the lack of manuals, basic training and so on.
Did it all help? Sure. There's no denying that. But the raw numbers do not tell the whole story.
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Were you inspired by James Lindsay of the New Discourses? If yes and if you credited him, I'm sorry, I've legit excuses for writing this comment before watching and digesting this whole vid.
However, it's possible you were not inspired by this dude, which would validate your research even more. It'd be like two different people, studying two apparently opposing ideologies, who discover the exact same undertones in both of them.
Anyway, I feel I need to ask now. It's prolly already too late, considering how many comments you get.
Edit: I'm sorry, I'm really tired. I already found out that “Race Marxism: The Truth about Critical Race Theory and Praxis.” is in your sources list. The question stays, though. Was he "one of" the sources, or "one of the" sources?
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@Yonomansushi " AR właśnie po kąpieli w bagnie strzela "
Grot jest wersją AR18, ale mniejsza o to.
Na błoto AR15 jest faktycznie stosunkowo odporny, ale na piach i kurz już nie. Każda konstrukcja ma swoje wady i zalety. Grota zaprojektowali pod modułowość i pełną obustronność, więc ma więcej miejsc, którymi brud może się dostać do środka.
Z drugiej strony, ma wbudowany regulator gazowy, który sporo pomaga.
Poza tym, AR15, mimo że to dobra broń, naprawdę nie jest cudem niezawodności. Nie ze względu na sam projekt, a raczej ze względu na to, że jak wymienisz zużytą część na nową, od jakiegoś tam producenta, to ona pasuje generalnie, ale nieszczególnie.
No i ma swoje ograniczenia konstrukcyjne, które wykluczają bezkolbowce i składane kolby, czego się domaga desant i zmotoryzowani. Grot został do tego zaprojektowany.
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" Ubuntu and stable versions of Debian are not effected "
Even if they were affected, the fix would have been written very quickly. If you apply security fixes with any regularity, you'd be fine.
Open source model, in general, is a difficult environment for hacks and exploits. Yes, you can see the code and use this knowledge to write malicious software, but then the "shelf life" of the said exploit can be quite short, since Open Source relies on code, not on binary compatibility. The end result is that even if you get a library full of known Linux viruses, it's really hard to make them run.
Why, in this particular case they expended a lot of effort before they were able to take over the project, then they were caught before anything bad happened. Yes, people can be evil and not very wise, so stuff like that might happen again. Such is life. But it's very unlikely to turn into the Windows disaster scenario.
Go for hardened security Linux systems, if you are really worried.
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+Your Mom - The easiest way to think about it I found - torque equals displacement. The more fuel you burn, the more force you produce so you get more torque.
It's not perfect simplification, but it should help in understanding what's going on.
Like, longer connecting rods will not change the amount of fuel burned, so they don't matter, but longer stroke does matter. It also changes the leverages at the crank and increases torque that way, but at the cost of lower max rpm for the same piston speed.
Aftermarket bolt-ons - do they change the amount of fuel burned? Sometimes they do, when intake and exhaust systems are quite limited from factory, so they may work. Sometimes they don't.
Small engines with high torque - not really. Until we are talking two-strokes, which burn twice more fuel for every turn, then yes. Or until we compare with really old flathead motors, which couldn't burn the fuel efficiently due to weird combustion chamber shape.
7L engine with about 300 Nm of torque? Only if it was intentionally throttled down. Maybe unintentionally, but throttled nonetheless. Such huge combustion chambers should give more torque when full.
There are other exceptions, but displacement=torque works quite well, and more mixture=torque works even better.
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@Paciat "Also soldiers were trained to burst shoot an MG 42? So? It only proves my point that even in 1943 6 men caaaying ammo for it wasnt enough to fire it on full auto."
MG-42 was not a water-cooled heavy machine gun, which is supposed to fire continuously. It was a light MG, which a single man could carry. One belt of continuous fire would overheat the barrel, but unlike BAR (which served in a somewhat similar role), you could change the barrel quickly.
If you fired in short aimed bursts, you could at least in theory achieve the same tactical effect without the need to change the barrel as often. But I've read somewhere, that by the end of war the Germans have problems with providing enough barrels to replace the shot-out ones. Apparently, exercising trigger discipline under extreme stress is not an easy task, so quite a few barrels were damaged. (Still, better than BAR, where you'd have to replace the whole gun.)
Anyway, MG-42 is considered to be the best machine gun of wwII and beyond. Probably still better than "the pig" of Vietnam era.
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@Raskolnikov70 "modern-day armies eventually settled on an intermediate-cartridge"
They didn't "settle" on this one cartridge. Actually, all modern armies use at least four cartridges. High caliber heavy MG (50BMG, 14.5mm), regular MG caliber (7.62 NATO, 7.62x54R), intermediate cartridge (5.56, 5.45) and a pistol round (9mm NATO and Luger).
An intermediate cartridge is an ineffective MG round. That's why nobody actually replaced anything, they just added yet another round to their supply chain. The main reason why nobody did it earlier, was probably this added logistical strain which amounted to not that much extra effectiveness. Once all the armies fully mechanized, it was a much easier pill to swallow.
Anyway, Germans are often laughed at for their apparent lack of consideration when adopting new marginally more effective weapons, which required a separate supply chain, but in this case they don't look too bad... Your "typical" German squad would need only 8mm Mauser and some small addition of 9mm Luger once in a blue moon. The Soviets would need a full supply of 7.62x54R and a full supply of 7.62 Tokarev. In case of trouble, the Germans could feed their MG with smallarms ammo, while the Soviets not so much. They could run out of either ammo and lose battle effectiveness, while the Germans would keep on fighting.
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@Paciat Firepower eats ammo, that's how it works. Yes, the US squad could work around the deficiencies of BAR thanks to their excellent rifles, but the squad was still centered around the BAR.
I wasn't aware that the Soviets managed to pump out so many SVTs. Weird, since it wasn't a mature design yet, quite finicky with corrosive ammo, but apparently they tried their best.
Not my fault that the US Army in wwII was using wwI "walking fire" concept weapon. That's what they had, that's what they used. Not the best, by a long shot, but it still worked way better than nothing. Overall the quality of US equipment was probably the best out there, but BAR was not really well suited for the role it was used (SAW/LMG).
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@HighlyCompelling " "they assumed Africans had zero Neanderthal DNA* "
They didn't assume that, as far as I remember. And it was all about 'higher' or 'lower' correlation between the sampled genes, nothing about "zero" per se.
Still, Africans have about two orders of magnitude less Neanderthal DNA, and it's also possible that some of it is actually a Sapiens' admixture into the Neanderthals. That's what the lecture you have linked suggests.
I mean, we can see recent European admixture in Africa. Why nothing earlier than that?
" This study goes into the genetics of Yoruba and Bushmen "
Thank you very much, it's a very interesting paper.
However, it confirms that Africans are the most genetically diverse people, and among them the hunter-gatherers are the most genetically diverse.
If Sapiens emerged in Eurasia, then went into Africa, we would expect low genetic diversity as we see among Amerindians. It's exactly the other way around, though.
That's a big problem for Out of Eurasia hypothesis, since it predicts a very different result. Additionally, I don't see how Neanderthals and Denisovans suggest that Sapiens should have evolved in the same area? It surely couldn't, since we are different than them, most likely because of different selective pressures.
So it was a different area.
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@ericdaniel323 "Ben Shapiro"
I barely recognize this guy. Don't recognize the other one.
Regardless, fascism is definitely not right wing. At worst, it could be argued that it's a highly authoritarian, militaristic centrism, but I think that's incorrect too.
It's a lefty ideology. It sprang out of syndycalism, which is a lefty movement. Just look up Fascist Manifesto.
Universal suffrage. (Lefty, progressive.)
Voting for women. (Lefty, progressive.)
8-hour work day. (Lefty, anticapitalistic.)
Minimum wage. (As above.)
Workers' representatives in industry commissions.
Equaling the rights of labor unions and property owners.
Nationalization of railways.
Lower retirement age.
Nationalization of armament factories.
Strong and progressive tax on capital.
Seizure of Church's property.
Seizure of 85% of the profits from military industry.
Show me one postulate which is actually right wing. No, nationalism does not count. Nation is a collective.
Saying that fascism is right wing is a lie . Meaning, it's so obviously wrong, that it can't be a mistake.
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@roro-mm7cc "(more centrist)"
By current standards, not if judged by the standards of their times. They were a lefty movement.
Still, it's a more defensible position.
"gaining support from the traditionally right-wing/conservative"
With their lefty rhetoric? Of course not. They gained popular support, then blackmailed the elites, "it's either us, or the commies".
They truly were to the right of Lenin, so a lesser evil.
"universal suffrage"
Obviously they wanted that, because they had a lot of support among the lower classes. Unlike the commies, who quickly realized they'll never win in democracy, so they preferred a revolutionary way.
But even the commies participated in democracy, simply to promote themselves and their ideas. Were they "democratic" too?
"what a load of old rubbish"
Cognitive dissonance hurts, dunnit?
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@roro-mm7cc "those things you listed are not the key tenets of fascism"
I issued a challenge in one of my other post. Show me one right wing fascist postulate (as outlined specifically in the Fascist Manifesto) which is right wing.
With a caveat, that nationalism does not count.
"(if they were [as lefty as it looks] it wouldn’t actually be very bad at all)"
I respectfully disagree with that. I consider the ideas proposed there as to be extremely dangerous.
"[fascists lied] just to gain support from the working class"
No, that's not true. I went through a few discussions like that, buried in google for hours while trying to check if they really meant it.
Basically, they really did.
I can do it once again, but I'll need specifics. What is the exact postulate they never really wanted to make a reality, for starters.
"a bit like how hitler called the Nazi party “socialist”"
Not "a bit", it's exactly the same thing. Nazi party was socialist, they really meant it, and it's the exact same thing with fascism.
Claiming otherwise is simply a lie.
(I'm not accusing people who know no better, I'm accusing Marxist researchers, who knowingly distort the truth.)
"Economically it may have some aspects which are centrist"
Not even. Economically fascism is very left wing.
"[not] attractive to actual leftists"
Meaning Marxists? Sure. They hate it, and fascists hate Marxists. Both of them are actual leftists.
"due to the militarism, imperial expansionism, the idea of hierarchy"
Bad luck... I grew up in a Marxist utopia, so I simply know all those ideas were universally accepted by all the leftist around.
No problemo. None at all.
"the amount of damage done would be far greater"
I beg to disagree with that. Body count alone suggests, that the Commies were worse.
"the only way to change things was through revolt."
I disagree with that statement too. Fascists and Nazis managed to gather a lot of popular support, so demonstrably, the revolution was not the only way.
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@roro-mm7cc "militarism and imperial expansionism, hierarchy"
Are you trying to characterize the Soviet Union? Because if fits perfectly... (It also fits any other commie state I ever heard of.)
"one race above another [...] typically appealing to the right, not the left"
Actually, not true. At worst, both sides of the political spectrum score very similarly on racism, while some studies show that the left is more bigoted than the conservatives, and especially libertarians. (Remember, it's okay to be ethnocentrist, as long as you are a "minority"...)
Anyway, stricte fascists (as opposed to Nazis) were not interested in races. They simply rarely thought about it.
"[the ideas of] universal suffrage and women voting [are dangerous]???"
Not especially those (though I do have my reservations...) but the ideas of limiting personal freedom and exchanging them for the promised "rights" are deeply worrying. Also, abolishing the protection of private property simply destroys societies. Always.
It's the typical lefty pipe dream of eating somebody's else cake, while still having your own. It does work. Once!
"[Nazism] killed tens of millions in just a [little over a decade] and did so systematically and deliberately [but mostly in war]"
I fixed your quote. Anyway, Soviet Union killed even more, equally systematically, during peace time ! (How about China, Cambodia, Korea etc?)
"Most of the deaths from communist regimes were actually down to stupidity and mistakes eg people dying of starvation"
You mean, it wasn't possible to steal somebody's cake and still keep your own? Go figure...
Anyway, gulags were real, NKVD was real, killing fields in Cambodia were also very real. That's as systematic and deliberate as it comes.
Oh. The people in charge were not stupid. Deal with it as you want, but them's the facts.
"not the equivalent of actually deliberately gassing a whole race of people as a matter of policy"
It's the equivalent of planned extermination of whole social classes and national minorities, which happened in the SU. (Probably elsewhere too, but whatever.)
Anyway, fascists didn't do it. Commies and Nazis did, but they are a different kind of lefties. Let's keep the taxonomists happy, shall we?
"capitalism has killed the most people"
How I wanted to be "killed by the evil capitalists" when I grew up in your promiseland. You have no effing idea! Actually, three of my 12yo friends decided to flee to America and they really tried it, I kid you not. The whole town had a hearty laugh.
Which reminds me, there is even a popular movie with epic music about two other kids who actually managed to do it. 300 miles to heaven. Worth a watch.
"autocracies like Russia and china"
Marx and other ideologues of the left professed that the capitalist West will be the most welcoming to the communist ideas. They were wrong, obviously.
Back then. Nowadays? A different story altogether...
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@glebkrawez5046 " mongolian conquest "
At this time the Patriarch in Constantinople was still independent. Anyway, Kiev was still stronger than Moscow, which rose specifically under the Mongol rule.
Search for oprichina.
" Fall of Byzantine "
By this time Kiev was strong again, because the Kingdom of Poland pushed the Tatars back.
" cemented separation "
There was no separation. Kiev was ousted, through poison, Moscow took over.
" wasn't any chance of Poland gaining any contorol "
I agree, not without committing serious resources.
However, if we did commit those serious resources, which we had aplenty, we could have taken control all right. Don't you worry.
Or, the other scenario was to earlier protect the Kievan patriarch, and then it'd be the Muscovites who were in troubles. No need for conversion to Catholicism, you see. The "real" Patriarch would be on our side!
" much cultural drift "
That's silly talk. More people in Moscow could read Polish than Russian. The dictionary of Russian words borrowed from Polish has 300 pages.
Do not believe me. Check it for yourself!
" no one from clergy or boyars would agree to that "
That's demonstrably incorrect. It should be obvious to you guys, but after Justinian forbid the study of history (and law), you guys are being owned in Internet debates ever since. ;-)
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@glebkrawez5046 I'll try to be brief. I apologize in advance.
Re: reading Polish.
Muscovy at this period is very poor in sources, which is a problem for historians. Very few letters, no literature, mostly official documents. Whoever wanted to read was forced to read imported Polish books (which were banned, but still circulated).
Re: Putin
He based the origin of Russia on Nestor, who lived in Kiev. Directly or indirectly (I don't remember), he admitted that it started in Kiev.
Re: patriarchy
Your own description roughly fits the picture I'm painting. Initially Kiev dominated, and only later Moscow took over.
That did matter. Rus noble in PLC were all orthodox, but after Moscow takeover they started converting on mass too protestant faiths, later more often to Catholicism. That created a divide between them and the common folk, who remained Orthodox.
Re: Smuta
Those are later times. Moscow already dominated the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Re: filioque, mariology
Minor differences, with no practical impact. Unification partially succeeded anyway. The main reasons for a large scale failure were political in nature, not theological or liturgical.
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11:03 - "The German soldiers on Eastern Front committed horrendous crimes, and the all did it"
I understand it's not scripted, you speak off the cuff and all that, but regardless, I want to protest this statement. Very few people are capable of committing horrendous crimes. Most German soldiers didn't do anything particularly bad. Most normal people would do what they did, because German soldiers were normal people. We have no grounds of condemning what we'd also do. It can't be a crime if you'd do it, and I'd do it too.
To make it clear, I'm from Poland and I'm in no shape or form a Wherhaboo.
It's just like saying that burning women and children alive is automatically a crime, regardless of the circumstances. If you'd be drafted into a bomber crew, you'd do it. I'd do it. (I'd also shoot at parachuting Germans, and that's a crime all right. I'm fine with that. You probably wouldn't, I would. I'm worse than average, obviously.)
But it does not mean we should condemn people for being forced to do something horrible.
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@Centurion101B3C "[shooting at] a civilian or non-combattant, you are right. That is a crime"
That reminds me of Saburo Sakai. He was tasked at intercepting enemy transports leaving the Indochina, but a nurse stood in the open door of the plane in flight and begged him to let them go. He did. He felt guilty about it afterwards, but I bet he'd feel even more guilty, if he downed a plane full of children and wounded. We can tell he would, since after the war he swore to never kill another living being and turned vegetarian.
She found him after the war, it's all confirmed true.
What if he followed his orders? Should he be condemned as a war criminal? What of the U-boot crews, who were demanded to shoot at survivors of the ships they sunk? Would I do the same? Civilians and all?
Yes, I would. I can't condemn them. Sorry. If I was drilled to follow orders and I was ordered to do something like that, I'd do it.
Actually, another story. Early in the war an U-boot captain decided to help the survivors of the boat he sunk. He took their lifeboats in tow and tried to get them closer to shore. The allies learned about it and ordered an air-strike on this whole deal. Yes, they ordered an air-strike on their own people. The strike happened, the u-boot escaped, but the people in lifeboats suffered casualties.
What of the people in this plane? Attacking their own. Are they responsible?
No, not them. Given what they could possibly know, they did their best, I suspect. Others? Those who made the decision? War criminals all right.
So, when were they hanged? Never...
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@shibre9543 My grandpa always told me, that Germans were decent people. If they were ordered to do you harm, they would, but otherwise they very often tried to help.
That's a statement from a person living through a reign of terror piloting program. The Germans experimented in this area, if cracking down with extreme repressions will get rid of the resistance. They admit in their reports that it didn't work, yet they still kept on going.
Still, it's hard to condemn regular people for participating in all of this. You hardly had a choice. If you refused, they'd sent you to the front, where you'd most likely die, and rather quickly too.
Compliance was basically self defense. Military is based around discipline, because otherwise you'd never be able to send your dearest friends to the likely death. It's much easier to order your men to shoot at some random people.
(There are always those, who revel in cruelty. They are few and far between. I don't defend them.)
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@Regis1995 "the difference between upper and working class is determined by who owns the means of production."
Stalin owned Soviet Union, Hitler owned the Third Reich. Both of them were super upper class, by your own definition. Where are the differences?
" there is no upper class in the Soviet Union."
How about those bridges on the moon, heh? I have three more bidders banging at my door, so decide quickly.
"The Third Reich never intended to have an egalitarian society; they HATED this part of Marxism"
Oh, that's why NSDAP was a worker's party? So the workers would know to shut up and work?
I mean, don't be that silly. NSDAP has called itself a Socialist worker's party for a reason. They were aiming for an egalitarian society for the Germans. International socialists wanted an egalitarian society for all workers of all nations, so initially there was a difference.
But then war has happened and in order to win, Soviet Union had to turn to nationalism as well. So, what was the difference after that happened?
"Soviet Socialism was a heavily authoritarian kind of Socialism."
Unlike the Third Reich? Because if they were the same also in this regard, why do we even talk about it here? Show me the differences, not similarities.
" (government) mediated between upper class and lower class"
You mean, Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were mediated by the government? Because they were the actual upper class of the Third Reich, so the government supposedly told them what to do?
BS. Hitler owned the government and told it what to do, not the other way around. Just like it was in Soviet Union. Where are the differences?
"There is no mediation because no upper class exists, there is no profit as all value is distributed among workers. There are no clashing interests that need to be reconciled. "
The holy RNGeesus, that's so stupid it hurts my head.
1. Lenin, Stalin and so forth, were tyrants. In the classical Greek sense. They owned their states and they were the pinnacle of power and social status.
2. All their lackeys were the second level of social class, right below the monarch. They were the aristocracy.
3. The directors of factories, big land farms and so forth were the third tier. They were the nobility.
Nothing. And I mean it. Nothing has change since the Tzarat, apart from kicking out the old elites and bringing in the new ones in its exact place.
So finally, there was a difference between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. Because in the Third Reich they didn't murder and/or disown all of their old upper class. Only the Jews.
Oh, and that too. In the Reich the Jews were at the bottom, while they were at the top of the Soviet Union.
But why do I have to write it? Finding and showing the differences was supposed to be your job. I was supposed to dismiss them as inconsequential.
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@Regis1995 I wrote a lengthy response (in which I agreed with some of your points), but it's not appearing, at least for me. I don't know who deleted it.
It could be me, by mistake, though I don't believe it to be true.
It could be TIK. I think he's progressive, and I wrote some stuff which could be interpreted as criticism of this ideology. That would reflect very badly on him, but since I don't know it's his fault, I reserve my judgement.
Or it could be Youtube. Some keywords appeared to often, the thread was nested too deeply, my "social score" is possibly already damaged to some extent, so some algorithm decided that my post does not need to appear.
Whatever the case may be, I rest my case. The discussion of ideologies is obviously not welcomed here. Consume the content and be content, that's the message. I get it. I have bread (I bake it myself), I have entertainment, and that's where it ends.
A bit sad, though.
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@Telleva " [Sparta] would likely kick Plato out. "
Why would you say so? While obviously getting his academy running in there was likely out of question, it was mostly because there would be nobody who had the time and means to attend it, rather not because Spartans would be offended by it.
The same story with theater. Who was supposed to go there? Spartans were few and busy with their military matters, while the vast majority of the society were helots, who were basically slaves. Even if some of them managed to scrap a decent living, it would be risky to flaunt all this wealth.
Athens had a much higher population of free, wealthy men, who could afford such luxuries as philosophy and theater. That is, I believe, the main reason for Athenian advantage in culture. The supposed rigidity of Spartan ways seems to be vastly overstated in comparison.
Actually, as I'm thinking it through, it occurred to me that one of the reasons such culture was not possible in Sparta, were their progressive social attitudes toward women. It were women who were the rich people of Sparta, not men. They had both the time and means to pursue high culture.
Somehow, they did not.
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Your model, while compelling on the surface, is simply not very accurate. I'll give you an example from a book I'm reading. So, in XVIIth century Poland women were well respected, considering the historical context. All the traditional chivalrous behaviors were upheld, yet they held all the necessary rights. They could own property, sign contracts, were equal in courts, the lot.
In contrast, in XVIIth century Muscovy they had none of those rights and were treated as property.
So, maybe that's an outlier? How about we look at the current situation, where certain major monotheistic religion treats their women as property and displays none of the chivalrous behaviors we used to take for granted.
In summary, chivalry is a culture , which values women for their contribution to society. If it's declining in the West, it's because we/you no longer believe in it. It's that simple.
BTW - effortless good manners are an absolute killer. Biology does not change. Women want to feel protected and respected, even if they are told to feel otherwise.
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@catnappernellie1211 The reign of Constantine is 306-337 A.D. One would think that Christianity got to be fairly big already, if even the emperor was one of them.
Anyway. by pure numbers it's likely that Christians were not the majority yet. Paganus means rural, the vast majority of people used to live in villages, but they were not the most influential people.
As far as when exactly converted pagans started to outnumber converted Jews, I think it had to be quite early. By the year 49 A.D. they already had so many converted pagans, that the question of if they need to follow the exact letter of The Law needed to be answered.
Also, while Paul tried to preach in Synagogues, he always faced very strong opposition there. It was simply dangerous to do so, while converting pagans was not associated with similar risks. Pagans were polytheists, after all.
Supposedly in 57 A.D. Paul was so successful in Ephesus, that his teachings negatively influenced the sales of silver figurines of Artemis, which resulted is some protests.
Whether it's true or not, it shows the difference between converting Jews and pagans. Pagans didn't care, until some very practical effects managed to irritate them.
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@NuclearTreerat "Yes."
Yes what? You refer to a several years old post, buried under 200 comments and you provide no context?
"Manpower that was wasted"
Like they even had a choice... What do you do? Simply refuse to fight until Hitler waits long enough to better train your men?
Anyway, in Leningrad they were reduced to cannibalism on a massive scale. They still produced arms in the city and did not surrender. I'm sure they would have, if Germans would offer them some chance of survival, but they did not, so it was a fight to the bitter end.
"Without first Lend Lease"
Let me repeat my numbers. The official American numbers state that the value of Lend Lease was on the order of 10% of the total American war effort. Less than a quarter of that reached the USSR, and the vast majority of it late.
In light of that, claiming that Lend Lease was crucial for Soviet victory is not even sane! Do you understand? You guys claim that a 2%-ish token help thrown at the Eastern Front decided the war!
"you can't fight a war if you have no trucks"
Not true. You use railways and horses. Like the Germans did.
Sure, the lack of trucks will slow you down, but it won't immobilize your army. Besides, the Soviets had their own trucks. Not as good as the American ones, but still usable.
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@doowopdiggy " forcibly trade for a coconut "
That's the correct answer. Sooner or later all law is reduced to force.
Re: 1
That claim is trivial. It boils down to: "Stable systems are stable, unstable systems are unstable".
Re: 2
If, against all odds, we somehow succeed, we somehow succeeded. Brilliant...
Re: 3
Wait, we are still very vulnerable? Oh, that's so sad, isn't it?
Re:4
I got a brilliant solution, guys. We make crime illegal. Solved!
Re: 5
What's more, we gonna make them courts , which will say stuff. And it's gonna be binding. Without force, which is illegal.
It truly pains me to say it, but communism genuinely makes more sense.
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@MrNickPresley " carte blanche "
You mean that they used bribes in order to deregulate ranching?
It should have resulted in an ancap utopia...
" monopoly was enforced by government regulation "
Or lack of it, apparently.
" Comcast "
...made a perfectly valid business decision and cornered a market. Yes, you can blame the upper limit regulation, but it did happen even without such limits, simply because laying down cables is a huge barrier for entry for any potential competition.
In my country we have cheap and reliable Internet, because competition was forcefully imposed by government regulations, which forbid one company from owning the whole chain, therefore smaller companies could bid in as providers in smaller areas. They didn't own fibers, but still could provide useful service, grow, and even take over.
" using those very same regulations to prevent any competitors "
Why wouldn't they?
In an ideal world free market is supposed to regulate itself. Quite often it even works as intended, however it's definitely not uncommon that it doesn't. There is precisely zero regulations on black markets, yet all the illegal drugs can be purchased from one, tightly controlled source, while you can go and buy legal drugs from multiple sources even in a single drugstore (despite this market being far from healthy, pun not intended).
So you guys should grow up and start discussion on "how much regulation?" and "what kind of regulation?" instead of going Reee every time someone mentions the r-word.
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@TheImperatorKnight " normal people don't go after an innocent people "
You mean, without law? Why then preppers have WROL (without rule of law) acronym?
According to your current delusion, everything's gonna be perfectly normal even without law.
I mean, have you not seen people blatantly stealing someone's else property, just because there was a natural disaster, and the rule of law was momentarily weakened? They didn't even care about being filmed!
" It's also not "good for business" to go after innocent people; in fact, it's bad for business "
Slavery was/is business. In Bakhchysaray for example, you could take a loan and finance an expedition. The Vikings, for another example, often collected savings of many members and expected the profits to be shared according to the size of the said investment. We know, since they wrote (in largely illiterate society) very detailed lists. They paid someone to do it.
" plagiarism, which everybody understands to be both unethical and immoral "
That's patently false. First of all, there are licenses which allow for derivative works. Lots of authors use them.
Then, very obviously, people create a lot of derivative works even when it's not released on such license. There are whole genders of music and literature which are based on pre-existing original works.
Have you seen memes? No attribution, no compensation. How can you even consider making such blatantly incorrect statements in our viral culture?
" YouTube and the Brazilian State did nothing "
But they could, which is important. Both Brazil and Youtube recognize copyright law.
And in case you just threatened the dude to send an angry mob his way, you could do it even if you were in the wrong. It happened many times before. And it worked.
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@TheImperatorKnight " it's called taxation "
Taxation is taxation, thievery is thievery. You might consider those things to be related, but do not equate them, or you are doing the "woke" thing, of smearing the definitions of words beyond recognizable borders.
They do it, because they want to deceive us. Why would you do it?
" taxation is slavery "
Cop&paste my response from above.
" someone who believes in theft and slavery "
Oh, and sophistry. Wokies love it too. They do it in order to "win" an argument, while being wrong. Why would you do it?
" YouTube has done anything about it? "
They don't have to. It's the author's duty to, at the very least, complain,
Don't tell me it doesn't work, since there were a bunch of trolls who made it their business model to mass-claim a bunch of videos on the most shaky grounds.
Anyway, I know for sure that people who organize armwrestling events managed to make sure, that reposting their pay-per-view content to be blocked.
" why has "the law" sat on its hands "
Do you want "the law" to interfere in your private life even before you notice anything went wrong?
I definitely would not!
You behave like a kid who takes all the "nice things" for granted, then refuses to do the chores, because it's "slavery", or something.
Grow up!
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@TheImperatorKnight Re: "what's the difference? "
Very simple. We, as a society, agree to pay taxes, because it benefits us.
I does not mean we always agree to it, and that all taxes are beneficial, or that taxation is always warranted. However, as a very general rule, we do agree to it, for the very reason stated above.
Nobody ever agreed to be robbed or have things stolen from them.
" Why should I be compelled under threat of force to hand over that pay? "
Because we work as a team. We all need roads, an army, a police, a court system and more. If you defect from it, you basically become a sort of a parasite, who reaps all the benefits of a working system, while you contribute nothing to it.
That's why paying taxes became a moral issue among citizens .
With that said, I do not defend our current system beyond reason. All systems can go wrong. The question remains, what now?
A revolutionary utopia? Communism was such a "fix", for example. So, who did better? Citizens who worked hard trying to fix their faulty capitalism, or the revolutionaries, who tried to create an utopia?
What's worse, even communism sorta worked. Very badly, but it did function. Ancap? Nope. Never. Never will. It's literally worse than communism.
" by "society" you mean "the State" "
Nope. By society I mean society. If your society became so divided, that nothing but force keeps you guys together, you guys barely have a society.
That's a separate problem, though.
BTW - there is this guy, Stephan Molysomething. So he shared your genuinely (for once!) far right views. He visited Poland and enjoyed his stay here. Safe, clean, free, the lot. He adjusted his views afterwards, and claimed that collectivism does work.
Well, it can only work, if a genuine collective exists. If it's all forced, it does not work very well. Still better than anarchy, though.
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@TheImperatorKnight " Taxes are not agreed on "
I'll give you an example.
Everybody knows about the siege of Vienna in 1683. Military campaigns are expensive, so the citizens of the PLC had to vote in war taxes. In this particular system, everybody had to agree. Literally. Every citizen had a right to veto every constitution. Which did happen way too often. Not in this case, though.
In this particular case (and many similar ones), taxes were definitely agreed on.
" they're enforced "
Of course! Military campaigns need real money, not "I'll pay you tomorrow" kind of money. Also, this example shows exactly how people who defect from paying their dues still reap all the benefits. With the Otoman army defeated, they all can enjoy peace, just like those who funded the campaign and/or served in person.
Especially military service was extremely expensive. And obviously risky.
" taxes don't benefit us in the slightest "
Well, they surely benefited the people of Vienna...
" A free market would provide these things so much better, cheaper and more efficiently "
It did not happen in PLC. No roads, no bridges, very poor law enforcement. The citizens were rich . Like in, a single region of Poland was richer than the whole of Prussia. (BTW - they had roads and bridges)
Yet it was Prussia which partitioned Poland.
" There is no 'we', there is only you and I. There are only individuals. "
That happens, when the army *routs" . By this moment all cohesion is lost.
They cease to be an army. However, they were an army before that, and an army is not a simple collection of individuals.
It's the same thing in societies. A working society is more than a collection of individuals.
" the State that is the parasite "
Why would people volunteer to defend this "parasite"? Once lost, why would an uprising happen almost every generation, which aimed at bringing back this "parasite"?
You guys had it so easy, that you lost all touch with harsh realities. You could have easily sat through WW1 and made peace in WW2 at any moment. The very existence of your own state was never in serious question. You guys are like a kid who always had a car, he can hardly imagine how life without a car would look like, yet he complains that the car he didn't pay for is old and needs some maintenance.
Literal spoiled brats. Loose your state, then you'll know if you want it back or not.
I have to go. Sorry.
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Japanese aircraft were excellent. A6M2 Zero is often considered as the #1 ww2 fighter, depending on context and period. It had the range of the P51 very early in the war, snail-pace landing speed, unsurpassed maneuverability, good climb rate and good firepower.
Americans like to claim they could match it early on (no, not really) and that they totally dominated with their later constructions. It's all based on propaganda, which appears more convincing than it should due to the last-ditch Kamikaze raids with practically untrained pilots. Interestingly, even taking those extremely inflated "kill claims" at face value, later A6Ms do not look too too bad when you factor in the operational losses, which strongly depend on landing speed.
Also, the Japanese rifles were arguably the best bolt-action rifles of the war. The strongest action with the best safety features on top of it. Dead simple bolt construction. Three big pieces or so. Nice dust cover. Even their last-ditch rifles with no corners left to be cut perform satisfactorily.
The only real disadvantage those rifles had, was that they were hand-fitted. Not uncommon back then, but parts interchangeability, which we take for granted, was a major achievement of the more developed industrial powers.
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This "outcast hypothesis", it got me thinking. I mean, who was the outcast, the wolf or the human? Nobody apparently considered, that it could've been the human who had do make do on his own. I mean, nobody in his right mind would want to keep even a tame wolf around his babies. But an outcast human has no babies, does he?
So the following is a scenario, which is all speculation, but I believe it's still useful, because it's an imaginable and coherent picture.
Let's assume, that some guy was banished from his tribe and forced to survive on his own. It's doable, because Ishi could do it. He's pathologically lonely, that's a given. What if he kills a she-wolf and finds the cubs? Free meal, but he's so lonely, that he decides to keep one of the cubs for later. The cub grows fond of him and vice versa. His success in hunting improves, because the wolf helps him track the game.
If the wolf is a female, it's likely that he's capable of prolonging this relationship for two or three generations, always selecting for the cubs which are the most suitable for his needs.
Finally he grows old and sickly, nothing to lose anymore, so he approaches some tribe together with his companion. Just like Ishi did. They get the pre-selected tame wolves almost for free. Even if those wolves are still very wild in their ways, the tribe gets all the knowledge from an already experienced handler. Much easier.
In the end, domestication might not have been a prolonged process (hundreds of generations, as they propose), but an event. At least in evolutionary timescales.
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" the historical method is a cousin to the scientific method "
If that's the case, you'd have to throw away "bad sources", just like the scientists throw away bad data.
Contrary to the popular belief, scientific data are usually bad. That's the norm. It takes a lot of verification, ideally by independent researchers, ideally through independent methods, to finally be able to say, that: "yes, atoms are not indivisible and electrons do exist".
You practically never analyze "all the data". (And if somebody does that, it's likely because they intentionally introduce more noise, in order to get to the predetermined conclusion.)
However, I do agree that there exists a similarity between both methods. Meaning, it takes a "cumulative evidence" in order to become more convinced and less skeptical about some idea. Ideally acquired with different methods (archaeology, genetics, what not).
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I tried to search for what is the "consensus" on narcissism among genders. So apparently, there are many more narcissists among men than women, and the article (in Psychology Today ) that starts with this premise states the following:
"People who are high on the trait of narcissism tend to be self-focused, exploitative of others, low in empathy, and in need of attention."
Self-focus - I've never had a male friend who tried to c*k-block me. It's *always the case with the female friends of the woman I'm after.
exploitative of others - So, who's expected to pay on a date? And later in life?
low in empathy - That one rings true. Men are lower on empathy.
need of attention - no need for a comment.
Further they say:
"a person high on narcissism is likely to expend a great deal of energy on looking good to others, which, in turn, requires a certain amount of preening and prepping. Narcissists, indeed, do like to look at themselves in the mirror and invest excessive amounts of time and money on their appearance."
That's an obviously female trait. Later they realize how it looks like, so they try to smear the picture with focusing on men buying shoes... I mean, seriously? Like, women don't buy shoes all of a sudden?
Something's fishy here...
Now you tell me that it's common for women to not apologize, which means they feel no guilt for the wrongs they've done.
Something does not add up here.
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@PaulHooker84 " but safety "
This "spoon" at the front is a safety increasing device. In case you inadvertently cover the muzzle with your fingers, it will push them out before it goes off.
Yes, it was designed to charge the gun one handed too. But whenever you need to do it, you have much bigger problems than a small chance for a ricochet. Because you are driving a truck and you ran into an ambush. You are already taking heavy fire.
Or, you are dragging your wounded buddy.
Or your other arm is already out of action.
Or any other situation, when you need to return fire right now , but you can't use both of your hands.
Did some guys shoot themselves while trying to impress their buddies? Possibly. Why, I've seen an idiot who intentionally shot himself in the nuts on camera, so anything is possible.
In the end, guys got equipped with an smg that was only 50% heavier than a 1911 and not much bigger than it. You can do you, but I'd take the Rak into just about any firefight over a 1911.
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@johnkeeports8795 The examples you gave for those more interesting questions seem to fall into two categories: very broad and very detailed.
Regarding the broad questions (why Nazis went to war?), it's likely that those questions might not have a straight answer.
Sometimes they might have a straight answer, though. Like, for example, I do believe that I know why Bronze Age collapsed and why Rome collapsed. I do think there existed the main reason for it, so sometimes it might work. But often it won't, simply because the question is not precise enough to have a precise enough answer. Precise enough to be considered either true or false, in a meaningful sense.
Regarding the detailed questions, the number of correct answers is inversely proportional to how detailed the question is. It's the problem of deterministic chaos, or the butterfly effect. Too many stars had to align in the exact right places in order for some detail to happen, so that asking "why" is not very productive.
So yes, we will never know everything, even in math (that's been proven). Does it mean we will never know anything? Of course not.
As we see, history is not special at all. Math, physics, chemistry, biology - all knowledge - is exactly the same. If historical truths can only be subjective (not really true), then all truths can only be subjective.
While we know, from experience, that is not the case. We really know something about how nature works!
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@captainvanisher988 " Paris was conquered by raiders and Vikings "
I know they paid them off once, but conquered? Let me check...
It seems I was correct. Paris was not taken.
" China "
I'll let it be. It kinda looks to me like they were conquered often, then the new dynasty ruled and was conquered again, but I'm not in the mood to fight over this.
" Byzantium "
The Franks conquered and ruled Constantinople for 60 years or so. The Byzantines never posed any threat to the Franks. Be it in Fance, in Sicily, in Calabria or even in Outremer.
" Ottomans "
The Franks beaten them twice during the First Crusade alone. With absolutely ridiculous odds.
" Huns "
The Romans have beaten them. By the time we can speak about Francia, they are long gone.
" definitely not the top males. Maybe the most educated ones "
They were the top fighters. Likely the top f***ers too.
" status, wealth and power. Education sometimes coincided with wealth but the others didn't usually line up "
That's incorrect. Whether we are talking about secular rulers or about clergy, they were all nobles, they were the best educated people in the society and they enjoyed the highest social status of all classes.
It took a lot of money for a merchant to contest a wealthy noble. Once they got that much money, they could and usually would get into the nobility themselves, so it's a bit of a moot distinction anyway.
" coping "
About what? How was I hurt, in order to come to terms with this unfortunate event?
Anyway, it was just an idea which would explain how an intelligent man would come up with an absolutely ridiculous concept, like the one we were presented here.
It doesn't work in the historical context mentioned here, and it even doesn't work in the broader, evolutionary context.
It's just silly.
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+Андрей Борцов - Oh, of course they started the whole thing much earlier. In 1915, to be precise. On the German side there was a guy called Jacob Ganetzky, otherwise known as Fuerstenberg, and Parvus on the Russian side. Ganetzky had money from Count Ulrich von und zu Brockdorff-Rantzau, a German ambassador in Copenhagen. von und zu, what an irony! ;-D
And, as I showed earlier, they continued the whole deal for a long time.
"but the Bolsheviks' coming to power was unprofitable" - They planted Lenin in Petersburg, FFS.
"TELEGRAM NO. I925 AS 4486 Berlin, 3 December 1917 [...] It was not until the Bolsheviks had received from us a steady flow of funds through various channels and under different labels that they were in a position to be able to build up their main organ, Pravda, to conduct energetic propaganda [...] The conclusion of a separate peace would mean the achievement of the desired war aim, namely a breach between Russia and her Allies. "
I would say that a separate peace with Russia was "profitable" enough...
"but you can not finance idea." - So, who paid for Pravda?
Regarding Sissen documents - I barely know anything about them. Just that it was a fake, as you say.
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@jameshannagan4256 " The Soviet army in 43 did not have enough food to feed their army never mind the civilian population "
You are basically arguing, that USA won the war with 0.03% of their total war effort.
Them's the numbers:
Total LL program = 15% of USA war effort
LL for the Soviets = 1/5 of that, that is 3% of USA war effort.
Food = 13% of everything, which is 0.03% of U.w.e.
Even if we'd assume, that the Soviets had absolutely no room for maneuver, it still seems very suspicious to claim they'd have collapsed without American condensed milk and chocolate.
I mean, do you guys really think that without American boots, the Red Army would have walked barefoot? No. If push came to shove and they simply couldn't make enough, they'd requisition all the boots from the civilians, who'd have to make do with sandals, clogs and footwraps.
The same story with aviation fuel. The Germans didn't have good avgas, so they relied on water injection. Why not the Soviets? They shot down enough German planes to figure out how to do it, but what's the point, if Americans send you all that avgas?
It makes more sense to do other stuff, but that's how the "tipping point" theory is largely demolished, because it relies on small but supposedly crucial deficiencies, with the Soviets doing nothing to combat those problems.
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@jameshannagan4256 " Soviet produced stats "
Those are American stats!
" they would not have been able to procure FOOD fron the civ population "
So, in your version of reality, Leningrad fell, because people were reduced to eating people?
" Ukraine mostly occupied by Germany "
Stalin purposefully orchestrated Holodomor in order to starve them to death not that many years back. Yet, they survived.
" they did not have nearly enough to feed their army never mind the populace "
If that's so, then LL couldn't have made that much of a difference. Famine was inevitable...
" the [Germans] may have been able to supply their army better and help their logistic issues "
Yes, that is true. However, it does not mean that the Soviets would have collapsed. First of all, it takes time to build a supply network. You can't just throw money and manpower on a bogged tank and make it go. It takes time to build those roads, to organize an efficient way of reloading all your cargo into a railway network which is incompatible with the rest of the world, and so forth.
Then, it's the problem of Germany being already invested in her navy. You can't just juggle the numbers from one page to another. It takes time and effort to do it with any efficiency at all.
So it's not that simple. In part they were already committed to their chosen strategy, in part you couldn't expect miracles even if they weren't.
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@Nightdare " they found another added problem in North Africa called American assistance "
That's two years later. Three, if we count in the planning phase.
" They didn't expect to need more troops on the eastern front "
And they were correct. In order to use more troops, they'd need a better supply chain.
Anyway, Wehrmacht outnumbered the Soviet armies it faced until fairly late in war. When the numbers shifted in favor of the Soviets, the Soviets were winning.
No wonder, at this point they pretty much mastered the logistics of large scale warfare, which can be seen when they absolutely steamrolled through Manchuria.
BTW - It's often brought up that "Soviets committed their forces piecemeal, instead of throwing them all at once at the enemy".
Can people be that simple and not understand, that two soldiers with ammo will always win against three without?
" they received lots of 'labor' courtesy of the Russians "
Not only them, they captured some of the people I knew too. But what do you "really" get this way? Unskilled labor? Very little of that is actually useful. And as far as skilled labor goes, the will does matter.
So they ended up short on people. Not the soldiers, they had enough of them (albeit since 1941 the quality dropped), but of not so simple workers, needed to feed the war machine.
" Any idea how much the Atlantik wall cost? "
I've seen the same stuff in Eastern Prussia. Yes, it was expensive, but I wouldn't say it was "too expensive".
What I mean by that, if you build even a very elaborate bunker, it's all in the same place. You build a rail extension, a road to it, a reloading station, put some slaves to carry all the stuff from one place to another, and then it's almost a waste to build a simple bunker.
So you build a big and elaborate structure and maximize the return on your investment. Or a least plenty of simpler ones concentrated around your rail network.
" Most of eastern USSR was flat "
I grew up in a similar area. Yes, it's mostly flat, but then there is a river... For a river to be crossed by a train you need to build a huge bank, like 6 stories tall even, and a bridge.
Yes, it's doable, because you have a rail literally right there, but it takes time .
And you simply can't throw more resources at it and hope it's gotta scale. It won't.
" old soviet rail lines "
Yes, they ended up using those. However, weren't that You who proposed that they could "easily" build their own rail network ?
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@rafaa4988 " Teutons didnt had a chance "
Why the Czech mercenaries tried to run away? Why was our king attacked? Why the banner of Cracow has fallen?
It doesn't look like we "got it" easily. It was a narrow victory.
A total one, though! They never recovered.
" Polish troops were greater in number "
Without the Lithuanians? Maybe, but not by much.
" what may shock you, better equiped "
That can be actually possible. Teutons and Lithuanians warred each other for so long, that they adapted very similar gear, suited to the style of ambush warfare they did in the woods.
At the very least, the assumption that our knights wore lighter armor than the Teutons, which prevailed for centuries, should be questioned. It could be true, it may be false. I don't know. It's just, it's not a given.
" As a matter of fact during whole battle more and more new polish units were arriving "
That is true, to an extent. They were on the move, so Jogailo tried to delay the battle for a while. Those two swords sent to him are reasonably well attested in our sources, and since they put us in a bad light, it's quite likely that episode is not a later invention.
With that said, I don't think we had much more to give. If the final charge of the Teutons was not defeated, we'd have lost this battle, and Europe would look very different for centuries to follow.
But it was defeated. Superior morale of the Polish knights won the day. They had much to win, a lot to lose, and they knew it! Teutons never recovered, Prussia was dominated for centuries. Until we fell apart, but nothing lasts forever...
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Re: "A "true" scientist does not believe in absolute truth, which doesn't even exit, since all we have are our current "best guesses", which are subject to change"
That's the creed of a postmodern philosopher, not a scientist. Scientist believe in objective truth. Maybe not absolute, since that implies we would know everything there is to know about something, but they do believe that objective truth exists.
If objective truth does not exist, what do they even try to discover ? Yet another subjective opinion? Of course not. When they tried to measure the circumference of the Earth, they assumed that the Earth does have a real circumference, not just an opinion about it. When they tried to figure out if planets orbit the Earth or the Sun, they assumed that one of those statements is true, while the other is false.
Also, scientists do not "question everything, including themselves". They just don't do it. Even if they speculate, they adopt their starting assumptions, which aren't questioned until the model collapses. Like in: Nobody questions if America exists. Nobody asks if we are all deluded about its existence.
That's simply not how it's done.
The philosophy you present here is not accepted by the scientists. It's a new concept, which in my opinion, explains very well the failure of philosophy at its stated goal. It does not explain the unquestioned success of science, which resulted in us knowing for sure that electrons exist, that the outer space is empty, that genetic code is contained in every cell in the body, etc, etc.
It's the philosophers who might doubt if any true statements can be made. Scientist do not.
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@kilianklaiber6367 It depends where you live. The further East you go, the more continental the climate gets, and that means harsher winters and hotter summers. Then the transition period is extremely unpredictable.
Yes, it can snow in May. Rarely where I live, right next to Vistula, but it happens. Wet, cold and windy Mays are quite common, though.
Anyway, the whole idea of Barbarossa was to capture the Red Army right next to the border and destroy it there, where the supply lines were short and sweet. It succeeded. If they rushed the offensive and chanced on bad weather, it could have failed.
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@heespeseth You are wrong. That simple.
Spec-ops on garrison duty - not in combat - I stress it!
"The current USARIEM study began at the Combat Diver Qualification Course in Key West, Fla. Crombie said preliminary results indicate that service members at that venue needed 4,600 calories a day. "
As contrasted with regular soldiers, who need less.
"NATICK, Mass. (Jan. 24, 2013) -- A typical service member in garrison needs to consume about 3,250 calories a day for sustenance. "
"The MDRIs for calories can meet the needs of the average Army personnel. Men and women should have 3,250 to 4,600 and 2,300 to 3,150 calories, respectively, per day, which will fluctuate based on size. The Departments of the Navy, Air Force and Army say the daily calorie requirements are based on a 174-pound, 69-inch man and a 136-pound, 64-inch woman. "
3500 in combat is a starvation level diet. That's acceptable for a short period of time, especially if you have to carry all of those extra calories on your back. It's not sustainable, though. You need about 5K for that.
"The RN was and is stil on an unhealthy diet :)"
I beg to disagree. If they ate 2000 cal surplus, which is what you seem to claim, they would look like whales. Study the paintings from the period. Those guys were wiry! (Apart from the higher ranks, who ate better and worked much less.)
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@dovkaupas "Ivan Chodkiewicz married ethnic Lithuanian Jaunutė Agnetė Bielskytė (Jawnata Bielska in pl.) whose family are direct descendants of duke Gediminas"
First thing that actually makes sense and it is a direct connection to ethnic Lithuania.
Still not very strong, because those families lived in Rus areas and were already Russified. We know, because they were orthodox. But yes, at least one line does connect Chodkiewicz family to Lithuania.
Deep in the XVth century, but at least it's real.
"Hieronim who married ethnic Lithuanian Ona Šemetaitė"
Maybe, I can't find anything about her, apart that she converted to Calvinism. That's typical for Rus nobility, who probably didn't like being dependent on Moscow, but maybe she was Lithuanian in some sense.
Hieronim was orthodox, then Calvinist. Their son, Jan Hieronimowicz, converted to Catholicism. Like I wrote, he's considered to be Polish.
"not at all unintentional"
If I don't know about something, then I'm mistaken, not a liar. I didn't know about Bielski line. That one is genuine Lithuanian.
"Union of Lublin"
I never disputed, that there were some obvious political struggles going on. That's different from enmity, though. Very different. You will never give the army to your enemy.
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The best "pizza" I ever ate was made by me, in home oven. It's medium thick, crunchy and crispy, because that's the style of dough which turns out well with this equipment. While I can easily imagine the best Neapolitan style pizza is just as good or better, I've never chanced upon one. The floppy, thin dough usually simply doesn't taste very good.
I mean, I came close to that ideal once. I baked it on a superhot barbecue (with a cover) and it was good, but the temperature needed to be so high, that it's simply not worth it to bother, since most of my family enjoys and even prefers my usual style.
Baking it that way was a two-men job. One guy was constantly feeding sticks into the fire, the other one was busy paying attention to the dough. Lots of hassle.
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I don't buy this argument, but I left a like, because the reasoning and presentation was so enticing.
Anyway, I don't buy this argument for two reasons.
1. Military reason.
The encirclement works, because the encircled are cut off from the supplies. If you attack them immediately, there is hardly any advantage to it at all. They had no time to run out of supplies yet, did they?
2. Further development.
If Hitler wanted Britain alive, he wouldn't have risked the Battle of Britain. A costly stalemate. What's the point of it? To train the British in Air War, strengthen her diplomatic position and waste all those highly trained German airmen and expensive equipment?
Finally, the Dunkirk basically worked anyway, for the most part. People make a big deal out of evacuating some soldiers outta there, but soldiers are not the army. Depending on the circumstances, the equipment can be way more important than the recruits. It takes a lot of effort to build a gun, while the people who man it can be sufficiently trained relatively quickly and cheaply. Highly trained people are expensive to replace, but most grunts are not.
In other words, even if the evacuation at Dunkirk failed, Britain would have achieved similar levels of war readiness in similar time. Soviet Russia managed to do so very quickly, so why wouldn't eventually? And what if they could actually halt the Germans at Dunkirk and escape anyway? What if apart from inflicting immediate damage, they'd use this temporary advantage to rescue some equipment too?
That's the scenario you don't want to risk, if it's obvious you are already winning.
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+TIK - I'm not trying to argue they were perfect, but sure enough they didn't look incompetent throughout all the time since 1939 till 1942. They pulled off what appears to be some sort of a miracle quite regularly.
Regarding the core of your question, there are reasons why Germans were much better initially than the Allies. For once, it's Reichswehr. A relatively small army, where you needed to be a genius or a hero to even enter the ranks at anything above grunt level. The doctrine, the will, the culture - all of that mattered too, but whatever. I can pretend it didn't, because I don't really need this argument.
The only thing that really matters is that Germans were experienced at modern war, while the Allies were not. Bad commanders were kicked out long time ago and people were chosen for their commands more in line with their actual battlefield abilities.
While in peacetime armies of the Allies the command was often a result of skilled internal politics.
We should also remember that plenty of those former enemies were hired by the Allies post-war, and their opinions were deeply respected. It's rare to do that to the foe you just beat, so my guess is they were the real deal.
So I do have reasons to assume that gross incompetence should not be considered until other options are exhausted. Mistakes? Sure. Everybody makes them. Gross incompetence, which your video seems to suggest? An interesting opinion worthy of consideration, but I'm not changing tack based on just that.
BTW - I'm not a particular fan of Wehrmacht or even Germany herself.
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@brednbudr2406 "A drawn out speech that turns Geralt"
It's rarely Geralt who speaks so much. Usually it's the other side who does that, while Geralt is confined to rather short and sarcastic comments, plus a summary at the end.
The cool part is that he rarely ever does what he professes, so I like that. If he never explained what he supposedly thinks, we'd never know how much of an internally conflicted personality he is.
"pages of side characters and sub characters"
In my opinion, that's how you should present a grand intrigue. Show, not tell.
Better than Tolkien, who often told all the background story. Like during the council of Rivendell, for example. Also better than George R.R. Martin, who simply went too far the other way, and we are totally lost among all those people.
Sapkowski may introduce a single character for a single purpose, then he dies and we can safely forget him. Not so with GRR. It never ends.
"amazing series of games"
Why, especially the second game was all about the plot, which was a grand political intrigue. Much less focused on characters.
Honestly, I was lost in it. I just couldn't be bothered with figuring out who's doing what and why. They did it well in the first game, then they did it well again in the third. Not the second, though.
"entertaining show"
If that's your taste, that's your taste. I won't argue for mine or against yours. Still, it'd be cool if you based your critique on actual characteristics of the source material.
For me, Sapkowski stood the test of time, way better than I ever expected. I can't read Tolkien any more. It's too idealized, too serious and the motivations sometimes are hard to understand. I never could read G.R.R. even twice (though he was extremely fascinating the first time through). Once you know who dies, it's not very appealing to go through it again. Apart from that, he lacks the characters I actually like.
I can read Sapkowski still, which genuinely surprised me, but he's holding up.
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@zackzittel7683 Okay, let's call it "survivor bias". A bunch of guys have average shooting ARs and they rarely say anything about it. Those few who own a bad shooter will surely keep quiet about it, so in the end we have skewed expectations. Like 3 MOA shooter might be considered bad, while it's possibly good.
Of course, it goes the same way when reporting groups. Almost nobody will report groups with "fliers" in them, or excuse them somehow, yet they do matter. The end result is that just because somebody said something, we can't know how close to the truth he is, even if the report is perfectly honest.
It's just, humans are human and act accordingly.
" it was built for accuracy and I got lucky "
How lucky do you have to get, to shoot an 0.5 MOA group, though?
I mean, I'm just watching a pro builder testing his own creation. The first two groups turned out to be 0.3 MOA. So it surely is an 0.5 MOA gun, not? Well, his third group was 0.8... (And the first two were stringing in different directions, so it was likely luck.)
Well, the guy surely knows his craft, so he claimed subMOA. Maybe you are just like him and consistently shoot holes touching at 100, and that's why you can claim 0.5MOA, but I honestly doubt it.
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@zackzittel7683 " I don’t blame you for doubting the word of someone on YouTube "
Actually, I believe your word. I don't trust your understanding of the issue at hand, though.
Let me put it this way. Recently I'm trying to improve my pistol shooting skills, so I bought a CO2 pneumatic. The other day I managed to hit the string my target was hanging on, oh, I don't exactly remember, but maybe 10 times in a row? Definitely more than 5.
Is it a true statement? Yes, it did happen.
Does it reflect my shooting skills? No! Not even close!
For a true assessment I would have to at least mention those days, when I'm struggling to hit a palm sized target at the very same distance. And I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I'm just not hitting. I check the sights and they are fine. I check my pistol and it's working correctly.
It's just that it's not my day.
So the true assessment of my skill level would have to include the bad days together with the good days, but I"m very unlikely to brag about my bad days. Actually, I did brag to my friends about my good day and obviously did not mention my bad days, so I truly do it!
It's the same story with reporting groups. People tend to "explain away" bad groups, while at the same time they tend to overvalue good groups, while it's just a luck of the draw.
You may think I'm wrong on this, but I'm not. There is a guy on YT, who analyzed what would it take to reliably detect an even quite sizable effect, and it takes a lot of shots. Practically impossible amount of shots for any high pressure cartridge.
The video is titled: "Science agrees: 5-shot groups are pointless"
It is a "sciency" video, with software simulating dispersion, but they also shot 100 shot groups with a bunch of rifles too, so "It's just computer magik!" crowd has no leg to stand on.
I'd try my best at summarizing the indisputable findings of the video:
1. The "statistical analysis" we often use to assess the significance of the group sizes we shoot is based on a wrong model.
Our model assumes that shot dispersion has a normal distribution, where the center is the most likely to be hit. That's incorrect. If you ever shot bottlecaps, you know from experience that it almost never happens that you hit the middle, it's always the rim.
That's because guns hit a doughnut shape around the center, which never gets hit. They confirmed it in practice too.
2. What are the chances that a five shot group would tell you the truth? Minuscule! The effect size would have to be huge for it to really show anything.
It becomes clearer when you see the blob of a 100 shot group and realize that any five hole group has equal chance of happening.
In other words: "Fliers are not fliers". They are usually legit shots, that simply happen a bit less often.
For example, they shot a 100 shot group with a 10-22 and there were literally 2 fliers there. Two shots which hit outside of the main blob. Every other "flier" you could chance upon was well within the main blob. Just less likely to happen, is all.
3. You mentioned tuning the load to the harmonics of the gun.
Oh my, I've no time. I gotta go.
The take home message is that it's all about luck. If your 5shot groups truly reflect reality, stay away from lotteries , because you likely already used up all your luck for a few years.
No disrespect intended, none at all. I believe your words! I'm convinced your shooting ability is easily twice better than mine and your guns are not even comparable to the best stuff I ever shot (okay, maybe comparable, still much better).
Best regards. Sorry for the misspells. I've no time to check and I'm mildly dyslectic. I gotta go.
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@brucetucker4847 I know what the general opinion is. I simply don't know if there are any numbers which support it. I used to be told, that hellcats had 11:1 kill/death ratio too, but I never bought it.
Similarly here, all I got from you is an opinion, and "trust me bro, I read the books". "They were losing pilots right and left, because they simply didn't care." is not a statement I will accept on that alone.
Regarding plane construction, I don't think your stance makes any sense. Self sealing tanks and cockpit armor obviously helped a little, but were not game changers. If they were, they'd do it, though even a late war Seafire had only one tank self-sealing. Does it mean that the British were some feudal death cult too?
If cockpit armor was such a useful feature, why was it so fragmentary? Were Americans a death cult, or there were reasons not to make the coverage more complete?
Though, considering the torpedo bomber losses at Midway, you could argue that Americans did not shy away from sending their top quality pilots into certain death, so maybe they were evil worshipers after all.
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@arturhashmi6281 " multi-ethnic "
Of course they were, but in the context I spoke of, I "stand by my guns", so to speak. Not only lots of people who volunteered to serve in those units came from Poland, but the rest were also predominantly Polish nobility, just living in Ruthenia, or Lithuania, or Ukraine.
Yes, usually they were of the local stock, but they became polonized mostly through marriage, but also schools. Polish culture was the dominant culture of the region, specifically among the nobles.
" American civil war "
The Tatars were much more of a threat, because while the Commonwealth army was perfectly capable of dealing with the Cossacks or the Tatars in isolation, they did not know what to do against both of them fighting together.
The Cossacks were usually surrounded in the wagon fort and dealt with artillery or starvation. Against the Tatars we used to keep our forces behind cover, shoot at them, then ride out and deal with a demoralized enemy.
Against a combined Tatar-Cossack force we were out of options. If we fortified, the Cossacks were experts at dismantling those. If we tried to take the field and force the Cossacks to dig in, the Tatars could appear anywhere, at any time, and ruin the whole plan.
So it was not a token participation, but a crucial one.
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@ihaveachihuahau Re: "standing army allowed Rome to exist"
But it did not build Rome, because that concept came in later. They somehow managed to become a superpower with a citizen army.
" if a lord died, it could just collapse "
But it never did collapse. I understand that you could lose your fief if you supported a losing side in a war of succession, but even then usually you would not lose it.
The king wanted loyal supporters. If he replaced all the loyal supporters of his enemy, he'd be lacking loyal supporters himself.
" medieval soldier would have better equipment "
How much better, though? Most people have no idea how crazy expensive top knightly gear was.
The warhorse alone was worthy of many "fully equipped" Roman "Marius' mules". In total? I know of an estimate from later times. Apparently you could equip a unit of 15 musketeers for the same price as a kit of a single Winged Hussar.
Seems a lot, but it does makes some sense. Imagine you are a millionaire duty bound to serve in person . If you can afford it, you have it! And you can afford quite a lot, actually.
" wouldn't be able to muster the numbers to fight a 40,000 "
Yes, they would. First of all, they'd be able to immobilize this infantry based army and simply starve them.
In my opinion, medieval army of 10 - 20 000 would be roughly on par with the Romans.
Barring the Romans had a genius leading them. Usually they did not, and once it happened, those geniuses became Emperors, so statistically not much of a problem.
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@theeggtimertictic1136 "Russian children coming over [...] just to give their bodies some time from the after effects if Chernobyl"
- Russia was not affected by Chernobyl. Anything North-East [edit: North-West, of course. Sorry.] was, to various extents, due to wind direction at the time.
Anyway, it's really funny that you take Russian children home to save them from death magic of radiation, while your place is probably three times more radioactive than their place.
You really want to save someone from exposure to those pesky death rays, take people from Iran or Brasil, where natural background radiation can be two to ten times the global average in some places. (No, people don't drop like flies there, but they'd like a free vacation all the same.)
Oh, c'mon. Get a Geiger counter and some clue then use both. Radiation is not invisible magic. It can be measured! Even by someone like you.
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@mememachine5244 "finding a new power source before we cook our planet to-death."
- Ah, that's the deal? Then I think we should wait until the theory which predicts cooking the Earth produces one, single, non-trivial prediction, which turns out to be true. It didn't happen so fat, therefore I consider that goal quite unlikely to be important.
In other words, we have at least a century, probably more, before any sort of emergency arrives. There is time to develop new designs.
"im not sure you know what you are advocating for, have you actually read any published papers?"
- I'm not advocating for anything here and I haven't read the papers. I'm just listening to arguments and trying to figure out which ones make sense and which ones do not.
Though I probably should invest more time into understanding this topic? I'll think about it.
"If something has been researched, had millions thrown at it and it's just worse than the alternatives, it's probably just not a concept."
- The research I have heard of was very preliminary and most of it concluded that this type of reactor should work. Comparing the minutia of economy between a very well developed tech with almost a century of optimization behind it and a very new and underdeveloped tech is quite pointless. At similar stage motorcars were a more expensive and totally unreliable alternative to horse-drawn carriages. Not much faster. Smelly too.
You see, I'm not advocating for MSRs, especially for mass deployment of those tomorrow. I'm just not buying your argument, that this topic was well founded and well researched. It simply wasn't. Now it changes and I like that.
"People seem to think MSR are some wonder reactors"
- Some people may think that. I think they are a promising new tech, which can prove useful in some situations. Providing we will work on it for a while, of course.
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@mememachine5244 "Wrong, they are not promising"
- Small size, cheap fuel, some inherent safety advantages, can process some nuclear waste. That alone is enough to justify further research .
"You just seem to keep denying what im telling you,"
- Like what? Where have I denied anything you have said, which was not your opinion ! Where have I done it?
You know what? You just can't stand I'm not treating you like a "know all" authority. That I will never do. Expert opinion is just that, an opinion. It's not the same as expert knowledge.
Yes, I'm just a layman when it comes to reactor tech, but even a layman can form his own opinion by listening to both sides of an argument. I have listened. One side has decent arguments which seem to make sense, the other side has some weird complaints, like "a well developed tech is currently cheaper". C'mon. That's low.
"So you deny CO2 and other green house gasses are harming the planet?"
- Yes, I do that. I have read plenty of papers on it though, so I'm not simply a layman here. AGW theory is terrible, it doesn't work, it never worked. There are better theories which actually do work. Like in "they have had meaningful predictions which turned out to be true!"
Show me one non-trivial prediction of AGW which actually worked. Just one! You won't find it, because AGW is trash.
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@Ukraineaissance2014 " larger cartridges have more propellant, more velocity and more penetrstion "
That's often true, but not always. For example a .44 Magnum will be stopped by a pistol grade armor, while a 5.7x28 might go through.
Anyway, it's not difficult to stop a bullet propelled with black powder. It was always practically doable. Ned Kelly, an Australian outlaw, improvised a suit of armor for himself. As far as I remember, it is dented in many places, but not penetrated.
Maybe I'm wrong on that. Check it yourself. The armor definitely worked, as in, he could fight in it and it provided him with a lot of protection.
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@demomanchaos " The raw penetration of full length muskets is far more than you seem to think "
Show me. Find something on Youtube, for example. I watch many black powder channels and they routinely shoot at pistol targets.
A "ding", not even a dent.
" AR500 "
That's why I asked to shoot at 5mil piece of steel, because we know that such thickness is still used in practice.
A black powder musket has a chance of shattering some random piece of brittle cast iron, or thereabouts. It won't penetrate through even mild steel.
" .44 Magnum rounds which will happily punch right through any 17th century armor at 30 yards "
I'm pretty sure it's not true. .44 mag is still a pistol cartridge, that is reliably stopped by pistol targets.
Winged Hussars, for example, wore musketproof cuirasses, impenetrable even at point blank range. For what it's worth, there is an account of one of them surviving being hit by a cannonball.
Maybe the ball bounced off the ground and lost a lot of its initial punch? It was definitely a rare occurrence, so it was noted. Surviving a musketball to the chest was not unusual.
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Sweatnam is not claiming that the symbols of the Zodiac didn't change. Actually, he claims they did. Also, the position of Zodiac does change over time, and that's how Sweatnam approached the problem of reconstructing those symbols. Long story, well explained on his channel.
Edit: Also, you gave an example of changing interpretations by showing us Ursa Major. That's a rather unfortunate example, as we have good reasons to believe, that this interpretation is extremely old. There's a channel which explores and reconstructs old myths, and one I remember being convinced to be correct was the story of hunters chasing a bear, which pertained the Ursa Major.
So, the thing is that the second star from the left is actually a "double star", meaning there is a smaller star visible only sometimes. The myths reflect this feature. The second hunter can have a dog with him, sometimes carries a lantern, maybe something else I forgot.
It's an extremely old myth with fairly consistent interpretation passed through literal millenia.
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Post-modernists do not claim that "their truth" is objective. They claim that since we can never agree, we can never establish the objective truth, so it doesn't even exist, or might as well not exist at the very least.
Because of that, the only thing that remains is "wining". In a debate, for example.
Which is what you are actually proposing, are you not?
(Obviously, post-modernists are demonstrably wrong. I have fiber optic network in my village now and if all the "truths" on which this technology relies were mere illusions, or petty "wins" in petty "debates", then it all wouldn't be able to work. So we really know something , even if we'll never know everything.
History is the same. It can be treated as hard science with its ability to cross-check and establish some ideas as facts, even if a lot of it will always remain speculative, hence subjective.)
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@ComradeOgilvy1984 "Circular reasoning. [...] using words redefined to fit"
That's what I accuse the left of. Nazis, literal National Socialists, are redefined to become "far-right" in order to fit the need of distancing them from the left and associating the right with the crimes they had nothing to do with.
Mussolini was a Socialist. Giovanni Gentile was a Socialist, Goebels was a Socialist. Hitler was a Socialist too. And Lenin, Trocki, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.
"hollowness of your (and TIK's) understanding."
Oh, sure. We are so "hollow", because we recognize that National Socialists were Socialists. That's such a simplistic view of reality, isn't it? The reality must be more complex than that, because otherwise the left would be blamed for all those crimes against the humanity.
That can't be allowed to happen!
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@damienrichards7216 "as the only way to stop a "Bolshevik style revolution" [...] (although this was merely a perceived threat in reality the socialists had very little power). "
Who killed Mussolini? Could you maybe remind me how he died?
"my point being that someone can call themselves something (and even believe they are that thing) but then either change into something different or not care much for it in the first place."
Unfortunately, that's not the case as far as Fascists and especially Nazis go. Both of those movements put in practice broad state intervention programs. Starting from regulated wages and prices, through profit margins and going as far as state sponsored holidays. They did all of is merely three years after they gained power! Three years!
They didn't outright seize the means of production, but the control of the government was vast . You were allowed to remain the nominal owner, but only as long as you produced what you were told to produced, by using methods as approved by the government and selling it all at a price as assigned by the government. Only in name you could call yourself an "owner".
In practice, you were a director of a state owned factory!
"I do however agree that the soviet union was ironically similar to the 3rd Reich in a major way because although they went about things in different ways they ended up with a very similar result."
There is no irony, because the ways in which they went about things were almost exactly the same. Large scale state controlled economy, huge black markets, shortages, the reign of terror, infighting.
Just, the lot. They were the same.
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@paranoidandroid9511 No, I wrote that we should take a weighted average of all those issues and put the dot on the line wherever it belongs.
"Weighted" means, that if the issue is important to someone, it carries a lot of weight. For example, a fervent feminist would be considered a lefty, even if he/she happens to support libertarian capitalism, but can hardly be bothered to ever talk about it.
Or, a fundamentalist Christian activist would be a righty, even if he sometimes dreams about living in a Christian commune with no private property to speak of.
In a nutshell, we take everything into account and then simplify the living out of it. Sure, it won't work in some fringe cases, but in general it's what we already do.
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@randomnobodovsky3692 I never claimed that out-of-battery detonation is not a problem, only that it's not a serious problem. You seemed to argue, that trying to dial it in with trial&error is dangerous.
No, it isn't. And once you get it right, there is very little which can go wrong.
On the other hand, a hammer-fired gun can and does detonate OOB at times. All it takes is maybe a tiny burr on the firing pin, or even a bit of dirt.
I don't see how it's any safer, considering the conditions in which those guns were expected to be made. Then likely handed out to people who couldn't be well trained in the use of them.
Accidentally, I spoke to a dude who served back then, as a teen. So he survived, because when he wanted to shoot, he'd go deep into the forest. His two friends, who were less cautious or lucky, were captured, executed and dropped on the street for everybody to see.
In conditions like this, the simpler the gun is, the safer it is.
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@REgamesplayer "annexing foreign land is morally wrong"
Sure. How about a plebiscite, so the people would decide where they want to live, heh?
Nah, that won't do...
How about you have as independent as possible democratic government, which does not threaten the Poles? You can keep your treasured historical places! As long as you are friendly, we don't care!
Nah, that won't do either...
What would you guys do if you were us?
"Poles rejected international courts and ruling on Vilnius."
Could be true. So, what should the Polish army do, when Wilno is taken from the Soviets? Make a generous gift to you guys? You behaved like an enemy, you were allied with the Soviets...
Do you know what's happened to about a million Poles who remained in the Soviet Union? They were murdered. 200 thousands of them, give or take.
One in five shot dead.
If I was in command of the Polish army back then, I'd never give Wilno to you guys. Get salty all you want, but there are priorities. I would not abandon the people I was sworn to protect.
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Nope. He's cool. Brave, flamboyant, brilliant, unruly, tough, effective, charismatic and ambitious. Promiscuous, hedonistic, cynical, greedy, gracious, passionate, loyal, scheming and naive.
He's only problem was, that Caesar was all of that and more, while Octavian was simply smarter.
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@idan654321 "When one universe meets another universe, and they love each other very much..."
"Where do they meet, nanny?"
"There is no place where they can meet, Johnie."
"But maybe later, they can meet later."
"No, Johnie, there is no time when they can meet each other.
Anyway, when they meet each other, it can result in a creation of an even more beautiful universe.
When you grow up, you can write plenty of beautiful stories about it, which won't even be wrong!"
There is an infinite amount of ways in which we can hypothesize. Until we get rid of the junk, we are guaranteed to waste an infinite amount of time and effort.
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@vgzimrlankey5682 First of all, I'm not saying that black holes do not exist. I'm saying we can't be sure about it.
As far as I understand it, there are two main objections to it. The first one is purely practical. The upper limit to the neutron star mass is 2.25 solar masses, which has a Schwartzschild radius of less than 7km .
That's a really small target, man! Most of the comets miss Jupiter and are being expelled to the outer space at high velocity instead of colliding with it, and Jupiter is way bigger than that. (10 000 times bigger, in fact)
So there exists this purely pragmatic objection, that while black holes make perfect sense in theory, they might never form for practical reasons.
The other objection relies on low trust in our theoretical understanding. Since we know for some time already, that our theories do not describe the observable Universe very well, we have little reasons to trust them at the boundaries of their predictive capabilities.
So, we can't say that black holes are real. That's simply not one of those things we happen to know for sure.
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@vgzimrlankey5682 A big mass in the middle does not equal a black hole, and accretion disc does not equal a black hole either.
Black holes are very specific objects, hidden behind the horizon of events. So far we have not seen anything that demands the existence of this particular object, only stuff which looks like it might be there.
Yes, GR works very well, but we know it's incomplete, because it's inconsistent with quantum physics. We also do not know if it holds true for very high spacetime curvatures. GR has not been tested in this regime.
Regarding our models of the Universe, the vast majority of matter is supposed to be a dark matter, and it's not been found yet. Dark energy is also required and the expansion of the early and late Universe seems to be different. Besides, we discovered well developed objects with extreme redshifts. They should not exist so early.
Something's off, for sure.
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@MFLimited What's more, we have no idea if constants can vary at all?
I mean, it's not unthinkable to propose, that all those constants are a necessary consequence of space geometry, or something like that (that's why I brought up the pi example, which is just that).
Assuming it'd be the case (probably wrong, but whatever), that would limit the requirements for fine tuning to setting up the space geometry, which hopefully would not need that many seemingly arbitrary variables, so it would be a progress.
And that's where we should go in order to finally gain some ground, but it's simply easier to plug different values into fairly well understood equations, than to try and rethink our core understanding of reality.
So, guess what we are mostly doing for the last half a century?
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@aleksazunjic9672 "In fact, starvation was constant part of life."
That's simply not true. For example, Poland has never experienced famine, as of yet. It may change shortly.
Market based economies do not result in starvation. If the food becomes more expensive, people invest more effort into producing food. It only happens when there is a large scale disaster, like war or large scale crop failures (Bronze Age Collapse, for example).
Anyway, let's imagine that some climatic disaster happens, crops fail all over the world, then how are you supposed to solve this issue by coupons? Will this piece of paper produce nonexistent food out of thin air?
On the other hand, socialistic policies do result in famine, and that's why I'm worried about our future.
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@januslast2003 "Whether a subsidy is good or bad depends on the frame of reference."
I agree with that. Libertarian capitalism is an utopia, just like communism, meaning that it works best on paper, but in reality it always fails at some point.
For example, capitalism encourages efficiency, which leads to specialization (aka, it's cheaper to buy food, so we stop producing it). That's great, until you factor in the disasters. Those happen both in economies and in nature. From observing nature we can conclude, that while specialist species can thrive under stable conditions, they are the first to die out when the inevitable happens.
Another problem is simply force. Libertarian capitalism assumes, that no one will ever use force to get what they want. That no one will ever unite, in order to obtain more force. That's very unrealistic.
When we factor that and similar aspects in, we end up somewhere close to the gray area of observed reality.
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@iamcleaver6854 "free food, eat apples"
Apples are "free" now? Grand. Hogs like apples a lot, hogs grow fat, humans like fat a lot ... profit!
"taxes collected"
From what? Last time this "healthy food" idea was tried around here, the stores in schools forced to sell apples and carrots, which no kids wanted, instead of chocolate and icecream, which all of them want, started running at a loss.
How can you tax something, which runs at a loss?
(Anyway, apples are just sugar and starch. Carrots are sugar and starch too. Starch is a more complex version of sugar anyway. Fortunately, all those starches and sugars can be turned into alcohol... Profit?)
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@iamcleaver6854 "and use the tax revenue to lower prices on carrots and apples"
If you do that, then I could buy carrots and apples cheaper than I can grow them. Why would I grow them then? Tell me, please. I do grow both, atm.
"if you want to fill yourself with extra calories, do as you will"
So, what are you actually solving here? The poor can stuff themselves full with free "healthy" food, then finish it off with what they actually want, because they can suddenly afford it.
I repeat, what problem have you solved?
""leftist", whatever it even means. I never said I am."
You proposed policies, which are unavoidably lefty. Sorry, but as long as you think what you seem to be thinking, you are a lefty.
"Of cause it is about myself."
I know. It's just that you guys like to claim high moral grounds. Which usually you do not deserve.
"price controls. Taxes don't make the market less free."
You want "free" apples and "expensive" candies. That's price control. You propose to do it by means of taxes. You contradict yourself.
"The market should serve the nation"
How about, "the market should serve the people"? That's easy to do.
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@iamcleaver6854 "the government would pay you for it! The tax revenue"
Per hektar dedicate or per ton? In the first case, it's the most beneficial for me to fill some papers, collect my subsidy and do nothing. In the second case the most economical solution is to not even do that. Just "buy" underpriced carrots and sell them at a profit to the gobment.
You know what, I have a better idea. How about the gobment takes away my land and plants those apples themselves? Yeah, I know it's been tried, but this time it's gonna be all right...
"The people who before couldn't afford to buy healthy food now can."
I'll tell you a secret. They always could afford to eat less junk and buy some carrots instead. They could always afford home cooking, which is cheaper than take-aways. They just do not want to do it.
"What do I seem to be thinking?"
You think that government has the means, the reasons and justifications to force the population. It's totalitarian attitude, where government intervenes into almost every aspect of life. Because that's where it will end up, and unfortunately that's where we are going anyway.
"It is hilarious. Most liberals end up calling me a fascist. To libertarians I am apparently a lefty"
I don't think it's funny at all. There is no contradiction here. BTW - I am not a libertarian.
"If the government ORDERED to sell a product at a particular price"
That's what they end up doing. If the stores could make profit by selling cheap, then they would still search for a better price elsewhere, where there are no/less subsidizing. If they don't make any profit from selling cheap, they need to be forced into carrying those products.
The only way in which we can combat all that is by total control. The producers need to be tightly controlled, the suppliers, the sellers. Everybody. Just to have some "cheap" apples...
Apples are cheap anyways! You go on with your scheme, there will be no apples . I have seen it. In real life!
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@dannyhalas9408 "The Luftwaffe couldn't hit the royal navy at sea"
I consider this a "silly talk". I mean, it's quite possible that the Luftwaffe lacked the necessary expertise to do effective attacks in this environment, but the equipment they had was sufficient. If you can dive-bomb a bridge, you can dive-bomb a bridge on a destroyer. Even if it's "moving". Not so easy if it's shooting back at you, obviously. Nothing ever is so easy if they are shooting back at you, especially if you are new at this thing.
"fast moving [destroyer]"
You mean, full forward at a mind-bending 20 kt? Well, that's a whooping 10% of a (cautiously) diving Stuka! An expert pilot can probably distinguish between a stationary vessel and a "fast moving one" in a double-blind study. Probably...
"Most of the boats capsised."
I flat out don't believe that, until they did a very German thing and tested the limits.
"towing"
River barges tended to have their own propulsion. With enough ooomph to overcome a very significant inertia and, surprise of surprises, river currents.
But I'm not saying that what you say definitely did not happen. Something like that could have. I'm just saying that I suspect there is more to it than what you just wrote.
"the destroyers could just pull up near by and the waves would tip them over."
That's just total nonsense. Germans had Kriegsmarine with proper seamen. Those guys knew what they were doing. Your scenario is basically impossible, if seamen have any say in the matter.
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@dannyhalas9408 " I think maybe you need to educate yourself"
Challenge accepted.
"British Tribal-class destroyers could move at a speed of 67 mph"
Well, I "educated" myself at Wikipedia, which claims they moved at 61 km/h, not 67mph. That's 33 kt instead of 20 or whatever I wrote before. Not much of a difference, if any. Not when being dived on.
"what hope could the Luftwaffe have of hitting targets moving that fast"
What if you try it yourself? You know, there are free-to-play games, where you can bomb ships, strafe trains etc. I did it for a little while some time ago. I couldn't tell if the ship (or train) was moving or not, until I observed the smoke or the wake.
How about you do it, so we can compare notes?
"The speed of diving Stukas has nothing to do with their ability to hit fast moving targets"
Should I educate you about the physics of inertial frames of reference, or we are playing at educating exclusively me?
"Dive bombers in reality really weren't that effective,"
Particularly at Midway.
"the benefits were more psychological in reality"
Especially for Akagi, destroyed with a single psychological hit.
"10% of the troops didn't manage to get ashore at all"
I thought all of them drowned, since most of the boats capsized...
"The Kriegsmarine didn't have many experienced seamen"
Of course.... I forgot that Germans can't sail. Not further than Jutland, for sure.
Regarding the whole exercise, it does look like they were testing the limits. Tugging a long train of "dumb barges" out to sea and attempting a landing is taking it to the extreme. Still, most of the barges did not capsize, did they? Because you wrote they did, and I objected. Not on the grounds of German supremacy, but on the grounds of seamen supremacy. No sane captain would go that far. They tend to know what a boat is capable of. That's how they got the job.
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@dannyhalas9408 "the destroyers are a whole 6 km slower"
67 mph is 108 km/h. That's not 6 km/h difference. That's speedboat range. Strange blunder, from someone so well informed....
"actually trained and outfitted to attack ships"
You mean, outfitted with bombs? Stukas could do that too.
"I made a mistake about most the of boats capsising during the exercise."
How about "simply pulling along" being enough to capsize the boat? A minor overstatement, I suppose.
"Unsurprisingly you don't mention anything about the exercise at all, apart from the nitpick."
It's not a nitpick, it's calling out BS. It's the question of trust. Can I trust you when you say, that they planned to tug over a thousand "dumb barges" across the channel? As their main means of transport? That seems like a folly all right, but since you were off elsewhere, I'm not inclined to believe you here either.
The exercise went badly, as was probably expected by those who carried it out. If they were significantly short of experienced crews, as you quote, the invasion was doomed to be a disaster, if attempted.
But even considering such a scenario undermines TiK's theory. You do not go to such lengths if you desperately try to keep Britain in the war.
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What do you mean by "potential existence is the same as 'actual' existence"?
I just asked this question. Since I really did it, it must have existed as an unrealized potential in my mind. So there is no difference between unrealized and realized potential?
That's so stupid, that only an intellectual could believe it.
Just to illustrate - It would mean that there is no meaningful difference between potential energy and kinetic energy. There would be no meaningful difference between talent and achievement. So forth.
Yes, we can agree to pretend, that time is just a dimension, but it isn't. Because we can go up, then come back down, we can go left, then come back right, but we can never come back in time.
So it's obviously different, and everybody who claims otherwise, is doing something profoundly silly!
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@johneyon5257 "solutrean is failing the standards of science"
That's not true. I've no stake in this thing being correct or incorrect, but it's still science. It's a hypothesis , not a theory. It can fail, like most of them, but it's still science.
"there are more hypotheses that failed than succeeded - don't feel bad"
Obviously I do know, and less obviously, I don't feel bad.
"they can't totally block it - a lesson from the history of science"
The lesson I learned from this example is, that an underdog is sometimes correct. Sometimes they eventually get to hold the cathedra and complain about being suppressed for decades.
"science does recognize a good idea eventually - but it leaves many bad ideas (eg solutrean hypothesis) behind"
How do you know it's a bad hypothesis? I don't. It annoys me when people are so "absolutely sure" it's wrong, then they come up with such weak arguments against it.
Seriously. I've no stake in it. If it's wrong, it's wrong, I don't care. I just can't see how it shouldn't be considered and researched.
"dissimilarities - better explained by coincidence rather than diffusion"
Weak. It does not make this statement wrong, though. It could be correct. One day we will hopefully know.
"lack of evidence for the seafaring abilities of the solutreans"
They hunted seals, just like Eskimos, didn't they? Eskimos used to have the same level of technology they had.
We have evidence that Eskimos visited Shetland Islands during the Little Ice Age.
Solutreans didn't live during a Little ice age, they lived during a Big one!
"etc - etc"
Two weak arguments and I'm supposed to leave this idea in the dust...
"the rest of science evaluates the arguments - and forms a judgement"
Judgement? No. You take a hypothesis, pretend it's true, even just for a moment, then try to figure out where it leads you. Correct hypothesis survive, because they lead to new discoveries. Incorrect ones do not.
Judgement has nothing to do with it. "Science by consensus" is a myth. A very damaging one too!
"wishful thinking"
Wishful? What do I wish for? That it turns out that people from North Africa stayed for a while in Northern Spain, then some of them moved to Florida?
What kind of wish are you talking about?
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@johneyon5257 "in science the underdog is SOMETIMES correct - but underdogs forget that underdogs OFTENTIMES are not"
Yes, that is true. However, the other side of this same statement is, that whenever a breakthrough in science happens, it's always the underdog who comes up with it.
So, bringing up the "usually" statement is at least somewhat misleading. Meaning, that all those people who constantly try to build a perpetuum mobile, do not invalidate Wegeners, who came up with a continental drift hypothesis.
"btw - science by consensus is not a myth"
It definitely is. And a very dangerous one, as I already wrote.
"science is evidence"
I can agree with that. Without evidence, there is little actual science going on, while the institutional science works just as it always does.
Which is important for us, the outsiders. Because we need to be able to judge, which science is good, and which one might likely be less than stellar.
If people gather a lot of evidence, if the evidence is solid, if people who don't like it still bump into the evidence, then we can trust it a lot. Otherwise? Superstring theory...
"without growing in strength with new stronger evidence"
Well, the recent political climate does not seem to be very conducive to this type of research. I used to do unpopular research some decades ago, so I know how it works. Don't expect miracles...
"you are obviously invested - why?"
It's pretty. I know it's silly to admit to such a thing, but sometimes you simply like an idea, because it's so outrageously silly, yet it's elegant, and it could be correct !
But I'm aware of my bias and I'm nowhere near being married to this thing. If it works, I'd be glad. If it fails, I hope it's replaced with something similarly interesting.
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@johneyon5257 "science as consensus it NOT a myth"
Okay, let's examine this idea.
If it's true, then a situation when someone contradicts the consensus should not be celebrated, should it?
If it's true, then especially if someone contradicts the consensus written into the elementary school (no joke) textbooks, then such a thing should never get published in (nomen omen) Science journal, should it?
Yet it happened.
A youtuber (scientist) managed to get published in Science for contradicting what I've been told in elementary school chemistry classes.
Yes, that was beautiful!
"this was Kuhn's thesis"
He's a philosopher? Everybody knows they know nothing, so why should I care?
"consensus can get overturned - and a new paradigm can emerge"
Or maybe someone actually measures stuff, like Galileo. Or maybe someone counts the legs on a fly. Or maybe someone gets a hold of a cheap high-speed camera, like this youtuber.
The end result always is, that science by consensus is a myth.
As far as solutreans go though, the new paradigm, pioneered by this Chilean cave dating, is actually emerging. If people could paddle to Chile a few thousands years later, some other people could paddle to Florida too.
A new paradigm shift is possible. Genetics, especially archeogenetics, especially archeogenetics from South America, can overturn a lot of preconceptions, methinks.
We just need to do some real science, which always hopes to overturn the consensus, instead of trying to earn a living by avoiding controversy and getting grants.
That's wasted money. No new knowledge emerges from this attitude.
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@johneyon5257 "obsessed with the scientific consensus is a myth"
That was the core of your argument, I think. You went with "scientia locuta, causa finita" style of argumentation.
Then it's obvious to argue back, that science has spoken many times and was all giggles when it was shown to be wrong.
"there will be a majority for one side"
Science is not a democracy! It's all about logical interpretation of observations and predictive power of certain views.
For example, let's go back to anthropology and see what the competing theories predicted.
Land corridor - it predicts all sites to be late, post Last Glacial Maximum.
Wrong prediction!
The newest "accepted" theory predicts humans paddled from Aleutians along the West Coast.
If they spread West to East only, then one would expect continuation of their lithic tech. That's not the case. Wrong, or at least problematic prediction.
Regardless how many people accept those problems, those problems do exist.
Anyway, while I searched for the Capo Verde paper, I stumbled on a new publication which claims 24 000 BP calibrated in North America.
"Earliest Human Presence in North America Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum: New Radiocarbon Dates from Bluefish Caves, Canada"
Now what? Do you see a paradigm shift in the offing, or are you going to pretend nothing is happening at all?
"DNA research"
Inconclusive. Culture is not genetics, which we barely know anyway, because the evidence was destroyed before we got good at it.
"stonemaking research"
Similar enough to be plausible. There is this find under the Atlantic shelf, associated with the Mammoth skull, with much more solutrean tech.
If that's not blatantly fake (which is possible...) then it supports this hypothesis very strongly.
"archeological research - etc"
Meaning, that's it... Fine. We are free to assume whatever we like to assume.
"will prove the solutrean hypothesis"
No, not the solutrean hypothesis. The hypothesis, that peopling of Americas was a complex process, with many possible waves.
Solutreans maybe among them.
"disproves your side"
Nothing was disproven so far, and it's not my side anyway. Please, stop that. It's annoying.
"he crystalized your vague ideas about underdog ideas"
Impressive!
"why dismiss him"
Because philosophy is a democracy, not a meritocracy. Popular ideas win over correct ideas.
In other words, it's useless.
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@johneyon5257 I'm not evading, you simply didn't go into any details on it, so I responded accordingly. If your argument is "science says", my counter must obviously be "it doesn't matter".
But lest go deeper.
Kennewick Man - West Coast guy, obviously related to West Coast people.
Anzick boy - That's the problematic find. He's associated with Clovis culture, so we should at least expect some less than usual ancestry.
We will never know though, because the evidence has been destroyed before we got good at sequencing genomes. Anyway, from what we do know, he was also related to West Coast populations. That's why I wrote, that culture is not equivalent with genetic ancestry, especially if we find remains on the extreme range of some cultures.
So far we didn't find anything related to Canadian populations, did we? They do have some unique genes (X2 haplogroup). Where did they got them from?
Could be that from Solutreans, could be from elsewhere, I don't know.
Stonework - I don't understand how stonework can be considered to be a counter to Solutreans? That's where it started! It's not just shapes and sizes, it's also the culture of creating caches. There is this Mammoth skull, dated to 22 000 BP, with two "solutrean" bifaces. If it's not a forgery, it supports this hypothesis.
Anyway, microlithic tech from Beringia and West Coast techs do look different. Like some other people used those.
Archaeology - What do you mean? There are sites with very early dating at least possible.
That's enough to keep this hypothesis alive. As I wrote, I'm not married to it. I simply want some solid arguments against it, or a better explanation of observed reality, that's all.
"when you try to prove that scientific consensus is wrong - you are being a philosopher"
And when I use language, I'm being a linguist? IOW, BS. Description of observed reality, followed by hypothesis with predictive skill, is how science is done, not philosophy.
They never predict anything, do they?
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@johneyon5257 Language is a tool and analysis is a tool. Linguist describe language, philosophers described analysis. Both of them observed a common tool in use and wrote down how it works, according to them.
Though actually I don't know if philosophers really described how to analyse information. Did they? More likely they tried to prescribe how to "analyse properly". Nonetheless, using this tool does not make me a philosopher, just like any mother trying to figure out if her son's hiding something or not, is not one either.
It's just a tool. That works. That's why we all use it.
"you made a mountain out of my comment that Thomas Kuhn"
Wasn't me. I just dismissed him (with an ad personam, apparently...), and that triggered your PTSD.
"999 came down on one side"
If that's how science is actually done, then superstring theory is perfectly true. Almost everybody was engaged in it in the relevant field, to the point that doing a PhD in any other field of theoretical physics was very difficult.
You know what? Superstring theory is not even wrong!
That's why, despite prevailing consensus, it's considered to be a failed theory. It didn't lead to any new discoveries .
Re: Kuhn again.
I just don't give a hoot what he says. His method of discovery was empirically shown to lead nowhere. Whether he happens to agree with me or not is simply irrelevant.
Coming back on topic - the prevailing opinion can be influenced by many factors and we hardly even know what it happens to be, how many people actually share it, is their position strong or weak, how much do they know, and more, and more.
So you just should not care. Look at the evidence, analyse how strong it is, see where it leads you, etc.
"2019 - an english layman"
Stefan Milo. I watched it. Let's analyse his arguments again.
1. Tools similar, but could be a coincidence.
Bifaces with overshoot flaking are rare. America, Solutreans and some Eastern Europe culture. Stanford has presented bipointed bifaces (solutrean style) from Chesapeak bay area. (Milo even shows those biface bipoints at 5:07.)
Stanford's found broken bases, when they tried to do Clovis flutes, but set up the platform wrong and the base broke off. That's a transition point.
He also came up with a graph, where he showed various transitions. It was a hard sell a few years back, because pre-Clovis was a minority opinion back then.
It's no longer the case. Pre-Clovis are accepted.
Finally, Milo forgot to mention creating caches as an important similarity. That is quite a rare behavior.
So Milo's analysis is misleading. It does not reflect the strength of the argument as presented by Stanford.
2. The time gap. How do we explain it?
Sea level rise. Most of the early sites are expected to be flooded. They do find earlier and more transitional artifacts closer to the shore though, so that actually fits the hypothesis.
And maybe what's more important, it clashes with the Western route for Clovis hypothesis. Presenting the weakness of one argument without contrasting it with the competing argumentation is misleading again.
If Clovis came from the West, why do we find so little of them out there? Why those finds tend to cluster to almost exactly before Younger Dryas (very late)? Why raw materials in the caches tend to come from South-East of the site?
Stanford explained, that Clovis traveled upriver, from South-East to North-West. His critics do not explain it at all.
3. Mammoth predates Solutreans.
That's not true at all. The dates came up at 22000 BP, which is fine. Anyway, how can you argue that dating a skull dredged up from the bottom may be inaccurate, and complain that it came up too early?
If dating is inaccurate, then being anywhere around the ballpark should be fine, should it not?
How can you argue that the association is doubtful, then complain that the associated find is too early? If you don't believe the dates, don't complain they are wrong. If you don't believe they hunted this particular mammoth with those particular points, don't complain that the mammoth died at the wrong time.
Milo's one of those smart guys, whose reasoning always baffles me.
4. Unbroken ice-bridge required.
That's totally wrong. No such requirement exist. The hypothesis is based around Inuit level technology and Inuit level of seafaring ability. They did cover the same distance in very similar conditions.
5. Why no Solutrean sites in N. Europe?
Those sites are expected to exist, but are currently flooded. Stanford claimed that many such sites have been found and marked by underwater surveys, and that huge piles of artifacts are routinely found by fishermen and discarded as trash. He's shown a picture of a trash container filled with "useless" broken bones and other trash, which can't be sold for profit. That's actually legal.
It's too long. I don't gel well with Milo, he tends to annoy me, whether I agree with him or not. But if you insist, we can go with a finer comb over the rest of his arguments. Later, though.
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@johneyon5257 Eating lettuce does not make me a botanist. That's actually a more accurate analogy. Botanists describe plants, philosophers described some cognitive tools, which everybody ate or used for millenia.
Anyway, if your argument is strong, no need to attack me...
"Thomas Kuhn pointed this out"
So impressive! Tell me again, when he figures out something equally trivial.
"i have emphasized the scientific evidence against the solutrean hypothesis"
Nonsense. So far only I come back on topic to discuss actual finds and models. You just defer to opinions, you happen to think are prevailing.
We don't even know which opinions are more common!
"far more scientists against"
See? Exactly what I wrote just above. How do you know that?
Seriously, I'm getting tired of this.
"which way did the stoneworking go? - east or west?"
I was about to give up, but lo and behold, we come back on topic! Fine then. So, which hypothesis is more shaky, which one has more holes?
They look about equal to me.
"the solutrean blades were eventually superceded by other technology"
The Clovis fluted bifaces. Fluting is hard! Also risky. It's the final and the most difficult step of producing such blades.
You would expect it to be a late development.
"the clovis blades were gone in about 1,000 years"
Because the Clovis people were also gone. Younger Dryas.
"the solutrean hypothesis relies on a static technology that spans several thousand years"
Not true. Anyway, how come people can, at the same time, bring up differences and similarities between lithic technologies as weaknesses of the same hypothesis?
I mean, pick one approach...
"emerged west of the mississippi - and gradually moved to the east coast"
How about pre-Clovis finds? Pre-clovis-sites-of-the-americas.svg (on wikipedia) is a rough map of those. They cluster along the coasts, one cluster on the North West, one on the South East.
If the Gap from Missisipi to the East Coast is such a serious barrier, how come West Coast to Missisipi is not?
We need to consider the alternatives, do we not?
(Anyway, the culture quite likely emerged wherever they found the most abundant resources in the rapidly warming World, so I've no problem with them being a little bit further to the West.)
Re: sampling error.
Lots of sites do find microliths and stemmed points, so this does not work.
However, they do find bifaces in Alaska recently, but late ones. That's the problem for the alternative hypothesis, of West Coast to everywhere, as far as I see it.
"if there were only 1 site and it was older than all eastern sites - it would be significant"
That is a solid argument! Finally!
So I googled for it, and if we discard the pre-Clovis sites, it no looky too goody for the Solutreans.
Yes, the earliest sites are in the West. There is even a last year article in Science Advances which concentrates on more rigorous dating. Early sites are Western.
That is a genuine blow.
"your argument that people resist the solutreans cuz they are invested in the beringia hypothesis"
Not my argument. I never believed that.
Re: caches
Still a similarity. Less strong then before, though.
I'll read the article. Thanks.
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@johneyon5257 "[Clovis] emerged west of the mississippi"
I assume that's true now. While I thought it's a serious blow to the Solutrean hypothesis, after some thinking, I'm not sure it matters as much as I initially thought.
So I assume that Clovis appeared first in the West, on the East side of the Rockies. How did they got there?
Obviously, if they were of the Western stock, which current genetics seem to indicate, they had to cross the Rockies somehow. I though about how they could have it done?
Likely in the south? I mean, I only dabbled in mountaneering, but yeah, high mountains are a solid barrier, especially if you need to hunt for food on the way.
So let's assume they did that, followed the Atlantic coast, then went upriver.
The trouble is, that by the time we get to this point, there are already two possible ancestral populations. One on the West Coast, the other on the East Coast.
So, which one looks more like them?
I'd say that the East Coast seems like a more likely candidate, but maybe I'm wrong.
In the end, it doesn't change all that much. It could be the West Coast people who crossed the Rockies and became specialist in big game hunting. That's quite possible. Or it could be the East Coast people who did that. It seems just as likely, if not more.
We still have to explain how the East Coast was populated. It could be that the West Coast people crossed over long before Clovis. Much earlier, actually. So early? Maybe, I don't know.
Current archeogenetics is so good, that you can get a genome from pieces of bone too small to be even dated. I doubt the ancestors will care about such trivial pieces, so let's hope we'll learn more.
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@johneyon5257 "your investment in the solutreans is intense"
That's not true. I simply adopt a position, and see how it holds up to counter arguments.
"americans came up with clovis points on their own"
Such long posts anyway. If I'd dabble in counters to my counters...
Whatever, I thought about it nonetheless. It's possible that a technology like that is self-emergent, given the right conditions. What would they need to be?
1. Plenty of good rock. Otherwise simply impossible.
2. Plenty of big game. There is no need for large blades and/or projectile points if you mainly hunt and butcher rabbits.
3. If people really go for it, I think that creating caches is also self-emergent consequence of this style of blades. Rock is brittle and heavy, so carrying spares on your back everywhere is costly. That's why you'd want to store what you can't carry.
So yes, it's possible.
"you are so obsessed with europeans teaching the natives"
That's absolute nonsense. Also, I do suspect that presumption of that is the reason why this hypothesis is so badly treated by some people.
That's 20K BP, for eff's sake! If the Solutreans crossed over to America, they did it right after they left North Africa. They were possibly even less "european" than those Ainu ancestors, who paddled from Siberia.
Recently I've watched face reconstructions from Yamnaya, and even those people only resemble us. We know for sure they were our ancestors, we have good reasons to assume they spoke the ancestral language to ours, yet they have very robust skulls, prominent brow ridges and all that.
That's 5K BP! Four times younger than Solutreans. (Who might not even be the ancestral population of anyone surviving today.)
I believe you expect me to be a mirror reflection of yours. That's not the case, though.
"[mastodon] can't be proved"
There is a difference between a proof and an evidence. I never claimed it's any sort of proof, and I always added the possibility of forgery. (If it's not a forgery, then yes, it's significant.)
Besides, the point found there is prominently displayed on Stanford's book cover. If I'm unscientific for even bringing it up, so was he. Then all those people who invited him to speak at Nobel college are also unscientific. That includes the panelists, like Svante Paabo, who treated this hypothesis with all respect.
You seriously seem to believe I'm your mirror reflection. I'm really not. We differ in very asymmetric ways.
"without showing any seafaring abilities at all"
That is an unscientific complain. How so? Because we can't expect to find much direct evidence, while it affects both competing scenarios. People did get to America when there was no open land connection.
People did stick to waterways, whether we have any evidence for watercraft or none.
Even actively maintained, boats rot. A lot.
"you are, you are, you are"
TL:DR Seriously, I'm not interested in what you can say about me. I don't care. Attack my arguments, leave me alone.
You did come up with one piece of info I was not aware of, so it's possible.
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@johneyon5257 I'm not sure how coherent my response is going to be, because the philosophy of "trust the experts" literally almost crashed on my head. Their arguments made little sense to me, but they were the experts, yet the wall crashed down as logic predicted, not the credentials. Lots of work, money, little time. Cut me some slack, won't you?
Re: referring to non-solutrean scenarios.
That's correct. This hypothesis does not exist in a vacuum. We need to consider the alternatives, then pick the more logical one. Hypothesis exist in order to explain an observable phenomenon (here, peopling Americas). We pick the best one among the alternatives .
Re: The evidence being incomplete.
Of course! What do you expect from a hypothesis? A miracle? Then it'd a theory. It's not. It's bound to be speculative.
Re: Natives did it themselves.
Horses and camels? Those are native to America, humans are not. They evolved in Africa.
What do you mean by "did it" anyway? Chipped rock and hunted bison? Sure, they did it all right. But before they achieved those accomplishments, they had to arrive on the American continent, and exactly how they've done it, is the exact topic of this discussion.
Re: Dark-skinned solutreans.
I do believe it's the correct assumption. Dark skin provides protection from UV, which is a plus, until people are vitamin D deficient. Solutreans shouldn't have been. They lived close to the coast, with food sources rich in it.
"white supremacists"
Here we go again... I'm serious now, so read carefully. I do believe that bringing it up over and over again, tells more about you sir, than about me.
Powertrip on whatever you like, I do not care. Just take into account that not everybody will buy your BS.
Re: Svante Paabo's acceptance.
It's irrelevant. What counts here is that both this hypothesis, and the evidence presented, are perfectly scientific.
You wrote it wasn't. I proved you wrong.
Re: "claiming that they were real but decayed away is not scientific proof"
First of all, there is no such thing as "scientific proof". You have those in mathematics, not in natural sciences.
Anyway, can we expect that the boats would survive? That's silly. Of course they didn't. So why do you complain about it?
People lived along the waterways, coasts and rivers. That's a fact. Stone-age tech allows for sophisticated seafaring. That's another fact.
I don't think that assuming some level of seafaring ability requires a "robust proof", as you put it, but I'm a sailor, so I'm likely biased.
Re: "natives could've done it"
Lol. That's so funny, when it's you sir, who constantly comes up with those nonsensical ideas. :-)
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@johneyon5257 "sidenote - the UV effect on skin color is falling out of favor"
I don't understand it. I'm pale and it's a real problem while sailing. Sunburn is a serious issue, not a joke.
"when in fact they [horses] died out in the americas when they were tiny creatures"
That's incorrect. 1.6m tall, modern size, however many feet it happens to be.
"they evolved outside of america"
Genus equus evolved in America.
"fully capable"
Of what? Hunting and gathering? Every hunter gatherer population was "fully capable" of that. It's such a silly angle.
"they didn't need anyone else - yet somehow - solutreanists deny that"
Deny what? That Asians could hunt and gather? How would they survive along the way? It's such a nonsensical approach, purely idiotic to the very core.
"stoneworking"
That thing? You perceive one lithic technology as "superior"? I do not. Pretty does not equal better. Bigger isn't better either. Energy efficiency, material efficiency and effectiveness are more important factors. Being able to survive with small chips is actually even more impressive than knapping huge blades out of large rocks.
"hypersensitivity"
Nonsense. I'm not woke. I don't suffer from cognitive dissonance, and I don't feel the need to virtue signal in order to mask it all out. :-)
That's why I can afford considering solutreans, while the woke crowd can't do it. That would make them look bad!!11!! ;-)
"that's all that's needed of a hypothesis to make it scientific"
Even a failed hypothesis is scientific. A hypothesis fails, when other approaches explain the observations better.
So far it didn't fail, though. Pre-Clovis East Coast finds are very early, and nothing we could hope to find underwater can be any later, since it wouldn't be flooded.
West Coast migration definitely happened, so it has an advantage there.
"that some humans are seafarers has been proven - but seafaring by solutreans hasn't"
True, it's just that we shouldn't need a "robust proof" for this not very unique ability.
It's like demanding in a court case a "robust proof" that John Smith could potentially overpower his female victim. Most men are stronger than women. You don't need to hire an expert to testify that's the case.
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@johneyon5257 "some peoples had the skills to cross an ocean - they all did"
No, I just proposed that some level of seafaring ability was quite likely, and we should not demand a "robust proof" to even consider it.
Ocean crossing is a different story. I consider it likely that coastal populations had access to small crafts. Probably used close to the shore only.
"best explained by the beringaria bridge"
That's not true. The Beringia was cut off from America by a wall of ice, which didn't open, until many thousands years after the early settlements. While it's possible to stress, that some strip of the coast could've been ice free, I see it as not very relevant.
It was all frozen solid during winter, so people most likely could survive on the ice.
I consider it very likely, that the West Coast settlement happened because people had access to small boats. Then it all falls into its place. Meaning, that you'd expect them to spread rapidly along the coastline, even across huge distances.
""even a failed hypothesis is scientific" - no"
You are wrong. Proposing hypothesis is a part of the scientific method. Obviously, most of them fail, that's expected. That's how it's supposed to work.
"but once it falls out of favor with a scientist - they dismiss it as "unscientific""
So science is what scientists believe is true? How does it differ from religion?
"no scientist will say "that idea is wrong - but it's scientific""
I strongly disagree with that statement. Science is a method, not a belief system.
"to develop sophisticated stoneworking"
They came to America already having sophisticated stone tools. Microliths for example, are not "primitive". They have more parts, for once. They use very little material. It's a sophisticated technology.
I do not believe that Solutrean, Clovis, Redston or Folsom lithic techs are "more sophisticated" than mircoliths or stemmed points. They are just different.
Regarding your projections, as I already wrote, I'm not woke. I do not need to hide my cognitive dissonance. I do not need to dogwhistle. Do not judge me by your own standards. We differ. A lot!
"certainly there's a cognitive dissonance when considering native americans inventing their own technology"
It's You sir, who brings it up over and over again. It's not my position, not what I believe either.
If I thought so, I'd bring it up and argue that it's true. I do not! Because I do not believe it's true!
Do you understand it at all?
"White Sands footprints have been dated to 21 to 23k years - besides the lack of solutrean"
Yeah. There are many confusing datings, so as I already wrote, the peopling of Americas could have been a very complex process.
Solutreans could be there, or not. I do not know.
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@johneyon5257 Why don't you simply read what I write? No need to misread, misinterpret, misrepresent, extrapolate and "imply".
Re: Beringia, I wrote that people feel the need to stress, that there was possibly some strip of the coast that was free of ice. (Not the inland corridor.) I wrote , that I see it as irrelevant, because in winter the coast was fully frozen anyway, so settlers had to be able to survive on ice.
Therefore they likely had boats, and used them for their coastal migration route.
That's what I wrote. Find it and read it.
Inland corridor hypothesis is dead. It opened late, and it remained barren for another thousand years. Much too late to be of any use for those early settlers.
Re: Consensu science vs. religion.
1000 people decide somehow what is true, as opposed to shamanism, when they do the same?
I see no meaningful difference there.
Re: Solutreans and their seafaring.
Other people with the same tech have crossed the ocean, therefore it's possible to do it. It does not mean it actually happened. Might have, might have not.
Solutreans help in explaining the similarities of lithic tech on both sides of the pond. Those similarities continue existing even if we rule the Solutreans out, and still require explanation.
It's possible that certain conditions promote this type of flintknapping. But then you'd expect very similar tech to pop up wherever those conditions arise.
I'm not sure we see something like that. It's possible that we do, but I'm not sure of it.
"what do you think the odds are that the solutrean hypothesis is correct?"
I honestly don't know, but they are likely below 50%. 20%-ish?
I think this discussion has sailed its course. I see no reason to suffer any more. Bye.
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@frankmartin8471 "no genetic evidence of European DNA in North America before Columbus"
That's a weird statement, since Amerindians are much more closely related to current Europeans than to North Asians.
Current Europeans had three major ancestral groups. Western Hunter Gatherers, North Eurasians and Middle East Farmers. North Eurasians are the latest admixture, and through this we are related to Amerindians.
"See Scientific American, May 2021"
Thanks. I'm currently downloading it.
So, first of all, they confirm what I wrote above about our shared ancestry. Then they present an outdated model, with the relevant critique, a most likely model to actually happen, plus a crazy one, just for kicks.
Good article. I loved it.
It does not mean it has no faults, though. I do believe that omitting the Solutrean hypothesis was influenced by the political climate, which they actually outline in the summary.
The thing is, we do not expect a strong "solutrean" signal in current Amerindian DNA. There is no reason to think that. And since the sampling of genomes was so incomplete, and mostly without the USA, it's hard to exclude the possibility of this hypothesis being correct.
"If Europeans made it here before Columbus"
They definitely did. Leif Erikson and his people did reach Labrador and settled there for a short while.
"It doesn't matter if some Europeans reached Greenland if none of them had descendants that reached the Americas and susequently procreated."
What? The truth is not important, even if it happened? How so?
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@frankmartin8471 "the "pale faces" did this to themselves"
Agreed.
"through their treatment of the Native people"
Tit for tat... (I grew up on western books which glorified Amerindians, so if I inherited a bias, it's the other way around.)
"How many of the treaties with American Natives did the U.S. government violate?"
Not as many as the Amerindians violated. It's impossible to make a treaty with a body without a central power structure, so we "forgive" all of that.
Should we also forget? Your choice. Do as you wish, guys. I'm not here for the politics.
"writes inaccurate narratives of their lives?"
I like that one! You guys claim the right to tell what's true and what's not. Go ahead and reap the spoils of your conquests... (Meaning, if truth is irrelevant, then the might makes right. Do you have any of that?)
"Thor Heyerdahl"
Was wrong. That simple. It's hard to sail upwind, and that was his angle, but that also means that it's easy to go back in case you find nothing.
"I put Dennis Stanford in the same category"
That's what I mean by this topic being politicized. Listen to me:
1. Solutreans were not white. We know, because pale faces can analyze genes.
2. The Asians who crossed over Beringia were at least as closely related to pale faces as the Solutreans. Quite likely more.
3. It should not matter anyway.
"bogus idea"
It's not bogus. It's a possibility, which might broaden our knowledge, whether it turns out ot be correct or wrong.
Anyway, all the enemies you mentioned are already dead. Find someone new.
"It will be interesting to see how the recent"
I agree with that. I just want to know.
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@thescarletpumpernel3305 The astronomically high percentage of burials did not survive (or if they did, we haven't found them). Considering that, we must have been extremely (un)lucky to find those which strongly suggest what they strongly suggest.
Add to that the source material, the historical context in other cultures, similar or not, and it's not a far fetched conclusion that they likely really did it.
I mean, maybe Romans made it all up, but they were usually quite tolerant about the enemy religions, regardless if they won or lost a war against them. For example, they never accused the Germanics of anything awful, despite being soundly beaten by them, same thing about the Persians, and Romans outright idolized the Greeks.
Why they never made anything up about those peoples?
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A counterargument: What about the archives?
Do they say that they do what is asked of them and even have some capability left? If not, I don't believe you. People almost always are willing to overstate their own achievement and claim they did well, even if they didn't.
Your hypothesis requires me to believe that people on the ground were willing to take the blame for someone's else failure, and keep their mouths shot. While I could believe that, I'd need more evidence than some rather shaky happenstances.
I mean, screwups happen and sending the wrong packets is almost expected. Also, there is nothing particularly mysterious about having more planes at some day than another. They just fixed them, how about that?
So if the say, they can't fly because their engines are frozen solid, maybe, just maybe, they were simply frozen solid?
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Saying that "compact infantry with shields" is the best counter to a heavy lance cavalry charge makes no sense whatsoever. First of all, you mention pikemen, who carried no shields, opting for longer two-handed pikes instead. Those pikes did serve as a decent deterrent , but by no means a foolproof way of stopping a charge.
Holding a shield in one arm limits the length of the spear that can be handled effectively, while it gives you almost no advantage in case of a determined charge. Well, you can take a couched lance hit on the shield. That's a very strong impact, which is capable of unhorsing a knight. Even if, by a stroke of luck, you remain on your feet, your spear will move off target and miss the knight.
So he can attack with almost no danger to himself. Then get out, to make place for the following guy and keep on doing it, until the infantry had enough of it.
What really defeats cavalry charges are the use of terrain and field fortifications. That's what Gustavus Adolphus opted to do.
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@lion-sn7dd "largely thanks to the Polish, by Napoleon and the other countries"
That's how Napoleon became aware, that the lance is still a formidable weapon in skilled hands. I've read an anecdote, that he initially dismissed Polish requests for lances, because he thought them to be an obsolete weapon. But then he personally witnessed some sort of a skirmish between Polish cavalry and some other enemy, I forgot who it was.
Anyway, apparently the Poles managed to take the lances away from the enemy and supposedly wielded them so skillfully, that it impressed the Emperor.
And since Polish Lancers became so famous, the news spread and everybody else decided that all those hours of extra training weren't just a waste of time.
With that said, Polish lancers of Napoleonic era had not chance of snow in hell against Polish cavalry of XVIIth century. I love those guys, Somosierra and all, but them's the facts.
"3 meter long lances."
That's enough to outreach either a sword or a bayonet. The shorter the lance, the easier it is to learn the basics and the more fancy stuff on top of that you can do.
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@adrianthom2073 " how does someone believe in Atheism? "
You believe that religion is evil, so getting rid of it is ultimately good.
I've grown up around such people. Some of them were genuinely decent folk.
" He may have accomplished so much more "
It's akin to saying that Einstein would have achieved "so much more" if he only wasn't atheist.
Both Newton and Einstein are often considered the top two physicists of all time. Meaning, nobody else achieved more than them. The absolute peak.
So your argument makes no logical sense, hence it's likely emotional.
" fictional book called the Bible "
It's a real book. More real than any other, since we have so many ancient copies of it. Usually you have several, if you are lucky. The bible? Hundreds. Even Iliad doesn't come close. (BTW - Iliad is based on real events too...)
" his beliefs that inspired him to try understand the natural world "
Most likely. In addition, his belief in "magical fluids" allowed him to at least assume that forces can be enacted through the empty space.
Most other people assumed that in order to pull something, you need a rope.
" Galileo observations proved that the views of the church at that time were wrong "
Actually, no. The thing is, the Church understood for a very long time already, that the Bible can't be taken literally. Because they studied it!
So they knew it, and when Copernicus published De Revolutionibus, there was no uproar. Yes, they did understand what it meant.
The ban came in later, during the Reformation, when Church had to defend itself. And Galileo was actively attacking it. It he kept it civil, the'd do nothing, but he didn't.
So, what have they done with such a troublesome child? Killed him? Excommunicated him?
Well, he was kept under house arrest until he stopped being a dick. Kinda mild, considering the church fought for it's own survival, wouldn't you say?
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@adrianthom2073 " when did I ever say religion was evil? "
You clearly implied that it strongly impeded scientific discovery.
" Galileo was kept under house arrest until he died "
You are correct, I thought they let him off after the process. So I checked how it went: (Britannica)
"After the process he spent six months at the palace of Ascanio Piccolomini (c. 1590–1671), the archbishop of Siena and a friend and patron, and then moved into a villa near Arcetri, in the hills above Florence. He spent the rest of his life there."
Not the worst way to be punished...
" How was he being a dick? "
He betrayed a friend and patron. He published a book in which the guy called Simplicio is constantly ridiculed for being a stubborn Aristotelian, and at the end he issues a statement which coincided with the stance of the church. His friend became the pope by then, people thought the book ridiculed him.
The Bible is a historical source. Listen to Bart Ehrman, he's an atheist and a Bible scholar. He's really funny too.
" You still have not advised me your definition of God. Do you believe in the Abrahamic god Yahweh? "
I must have missed it, I'm a bit busy. No, I don't believe in God, gods, magic, alchemy and so forth.
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@adrianthom2073 " religion has prevented and slowed scientific discoveries and progress "
No, it didn't. The atheistic regime I grew up under did slow down science, though.
" Not sure how that claim makes religion evil "
Well, the guy in this vid stated, that religion delayed scientific revolution by 1000 years, no less. That's a lot of time and I absolutely disagree with him too.
BTW - our current regime makes the air in academia extremely unhealthy for conservatives. I bet we'd have many more theist scientists, if not for that.
" If you don’t believe in Gods etc, why are we arguing with each other? "
I don't believe religion has slowed down scientific progress.
For example, the Japanese and the Chinese hardly ever had proper religion. Where are their scientific breakthroughs? Russia had Mendeleyev (Marie Curie by proxy), whom the Soviets had? Poland, where I live, had Sierpiński, Banach and Tarski. Whom the commies had in their stead?
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@chrissonofpear1384 " I assume you mean Catholicism "
Yes, I did. Most of the early science happened there.
" clashed with Galileo several times "
Meaning, Galileo was yanking their chain, so they got fed up, and "punished" him with a long term stay at the archbishop's palace, then granted him a villa on the hills around Florence?
I mean, seriously. Whom am I supposed to clash with in order to be punished in a similar way?
" the case of Giordano Bruno "
Very rarely they did burn heretics. We do that too. The advantage of being tried by the Inquisition, was that all it took to get them off of you, was to renounce your heresy and promise to be a good boy in the future.
Nowadays we "burn" people for the sins they committed long time ago and often never repeated.
I'd rather be tried by the Inquisition.
(No joke, many people knowingly chose to do so, but that's a digression.)
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