Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "Metatron" channel.

  1. Metatron No problem. I was in the US Marine Corps. Also, leave means vacation, when you leave the military for good, that's a discharge.
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  2. The P and S at the end of Corps are silent.
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  3. Pineapple on pizza is completely inexcusable.
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  4. Iceland to Greenland, not Greenland to Iceland.
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  5. Don't talk shit about R. Lee Ermey. He may not know swords, but so what? It wasn't his job to know swords. And he is a former Marine.
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  6. + Riceball01 Anyone who has no problem with women in combat arms has clearly never been in combat arms himself. It's not only the matter of physical strength (most women could not physically do any of the roles in a basic infantry fireteam), but it's also a matter of conditions and culture. Privacy isn't exactly a thing in the field, which would cause far more problems in coed units than it does in all male units. In Iraq, I lived in a hooch with about half a platoon's worth of guys. Let's say a 42 man platoon has a single female. What are they going to do, put the 38 guys (minus platoon Sgt and Lt) in one room and give the lone woman her own? This is a great way to create resentment. Same with any other facilities, like the rare times we had showers. Then there's also the way we interact with one another. It's obviously a dynamic that only works in an all male environment. Much of not most of the culture of a Marine infantry unit would be grossly inappropriate with women involved, and I would argue that our culture helps create as good a fighting force as has ever existed, and should not be tampered with. The way men ought to treat women and the way a fighting unit treats each other are mutually exclusive.
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  7. Riceball01 This is an amazingly bad analogy. A black man is no less capable than a white man is at any of the basic tasks required of an infantryman. He can carry the same load, run as fast, etc. He has the same testosterone levels, and is capable of the same amount of aggression. His being there causes no sexual tension of any type, and creates none of the privacy issues a woman would. He gets no special treatment because he's black. No massive cultural shift is required to accommodate him. None of the above can be said of a woman. Sex is only similar to race in that it is an immutable characteristic.
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  8. Riceball01 You're comparing an arbitrary reason for segregation (race) to one based on actual characteristics (sex). Anyone who thought blacks would make inferior soldiers could have easily looked at the Zulus and learned otherwise. Sex is not the same as race. It is a foolish and indefensible position to claim it is. A woman cannot carry the load that a man can. A 140lb woman is relatively large, and significantly weaker than a 140lb man, who will generally be the smallest and weakest guy in his platoon. You're deliberately choosing to ignore eons of relations between men and women to categorically state that women could be integrated into what has been an all male culture for the entirety of its existence based on...nothing. You have not made a single argument for your position based on anything other than pure conjecture, and most of it involves ignoring any and all a priori knowledge of any of the issues involved. You even admit that introducing women into combat units would take "major adjustment". This in and of itself is reason not to do so. The culture in combat units works wonderfully, and to drastically change that culture so as to include people who are physically incapable of performing the basic tasks those units are required to do is insane.
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  9. ChaoticButterfly The Kurdish units you're talking about are all female, I've never heard of female Spetsnaz units and would like to see some documentation on that one, Chinese special forces aren't exactly good, and I've never heard of the other things you've mentioned. That being said, a soldier is something that one becomes. People are men or women because they were conceived as such. Your argument there holds no water. And what about corporal punishment? It's technically not allowed, but it certainly exists (or at least did 10 years ago when I was in). You cool with a senior hitting a female boot when she fucks up? Of course, you made no argument against the issues that a lack of privacy in the field causes in coed units. Basically everyone who was in my company has seen me take a dump. That's just how it happens. You don't think that it would somehow be the same if a woman had to drop trou in front of 150-odd horny, undersexed men, do you?
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  10. Riceball01 What you're talking about is introducing change that even you admit would hurt morale and readiness, and to what end? To have a watered down unit with members incapable of meeting the floor-level strength and aggression expected? A unit that teaches men to treat women the way grunts treat each other? It's detrimental any way you look at it. The only upside is the vague political notion of "equality". The very real and very obvious multitude of downsides on every level far outweigh this theoretical upside. Combat units exist to fight and win. There's a reason that war has been exclusively the domain of men for all of history. Why change this? It isn't "progress", it's idiotic social experimentation for its own sake.
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  11. ChaoticButterfly The Celts and Vikings did not have women fighting, and the idea of "shieldmaidens" is pure fantasy detached from any actual historical evidence, either archeological or written. Try actually researching your "points" before making them. As for samurai, women would take up arms in defense of the home (just like any women anywhere throughout history). This is not the same as being an actual warrior on campaign, something you seem to have trouble understanding. Yes, there are exceptional women in the world. The key word being exceptional. You don't make policy based on exceptions, and exceptional people, male or female, can find success in any number of fields. Putting a single woman into the one job where she is least suited, and where her presence is a problem, isn't taking advantage of her talents, it's making her into a problem. I've heard of that woman, whose name I don't remember, who dressed as a man to fight in the Revolution. If I remember, it all ended poorly. Then there's the more modern record...women like Jessica Lynch, who disgraced herself and the US Army with her cowardice and unpreparedness. Good men died rescuing her. Then there's these "lionesses" in Afghanistan, the female engagement teams who go out and talk to local women. They're an utter waste of resources for no gain. You're taking admin clerks, giving them an infantry escort that could be better used on a real mission, and sending them to talk to...people who have zero agency, thereby gaining nothing useful and annoying their fathers and husbands, who are the ones we're theoretically trying to win over. Your analogy about Rome is incoherent. If the Celtic women had fought, it would have been mentioned by people like Caesar, who fought the Celts. It's notably absent. Furthermore, the Celts were conquered as Rome was ascending, not declining. And then there's the whole thing about not having women in combat makes them "weak". Um, no. Women not being men doesn't make them weak. It makes them women. A society that fails to understand the difference between men and women is a weakened one; as is a society that has women - people who are biologically unsuited for the task - in combat. You seem hung up on the fact that some women can be as strong as a man. Noted. That isn't relevant. A woman's body is less durable than that of a man of equal strength. She has less testosterone, and thus cannot have the propensity for aggression and violence that a man has. And the very fact that she's a woman in an all-male culture creates massive problems with unit cohesion, morale, logistics, and literally everything else that matters to a combat unit.
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  12. All these stereotypes are from New York Italians. And they're certainly true in New York. New York Italians eat all the above mentioned foods and talk with ridiculous accents. They also tend to mention their Italian heritage constantly, wear pinky rings, and get tattoos of either the Italian flag or the map of Italy (sometimes in the colors of the Italian flag).
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  13. Kami Nana No, they won't. They don't have the muscle mass or density of men, or the capacity to develop it.
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  14. Ian M Finally, someone else who actually served in a combat unit and isn't just shouting nonsense based in "social justice" instead of fact.
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  15. ChaoticButterfly Because her presence would be detrimental to the unit, and her body, hormonal makeup, etc, are not designed for the task.
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  16. ChaoticButterfly Yes, women have testosterone. At very low levels compared to men. Even of she can make it through the training, her body is not nearly as robust as that of a man. She can carry about half of what a man can without serious risk of injury. She lacks the potential to achieve the upper body strength, speed, and stamina. This is a massive problem in and of itself. More disqualifying than the physical issues are the social ones. Your absurd notions aside, a woman can never be "one of the guys". The idea of a "sister in arms" is frankly laughable, as anyone who has actually served in a combat unit would tell you. The culture of an infantry unit is very testosterone driven and aggressive, and a woman in the mix would throw it all off. As I have previously said, there is no advantage to be gained, and massive disadvantages, to attempting to integrate women into combat units. Letting feminists feel good about themselves isn't worth the harm to military readiness, morale, and unit cohesion. I'm saying this as a former Marine rifleman, and unlike all you "social justice" types, I actually know what I'm talking about.
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  17. ChaoticButterfly If you're for "fairness", tell me, how is it fair to force a combat unit to accept someone who will drag the unit down because she is biologically unsuited to her job? Someone who can't physically perform with the rest of the unit, and whose very presence is a distraction? Should men sacrifice their lives to your version of "fairness"? Your anecdotal nonsense is entirely pointless. I've known tough girls too, but none who would make an adequate infantryman. As for warrior cultures accepting women AS PART OF THE WARRIOR BAND, who, besides maybe the Scythians? The Chinese emperor who made an "army" of his concubines as a demonstration of discipline? They never fought. The Japanese? No. A woman picking up a spear to defend her home is one thing, a woman going on campaign is something else, and didn't happen. The Vikings? Settlers aren't raiders. Joan of Arc? She dressed up in armor and carried a banner, she didn't actually fight. There is a reason that female warriors are such an anomaly throughout history. You wanna talk about Rome? How is maintaining a fighting force consisting solely of those best qualified to fight anything like the decline of the Roman empire? Bad analogy there.
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  18. Kami Nana UFC isn't war. These UFC women fight each other, with trainers and medical staff present, for brief, timed matches that they train specifically for. In combat, you're fighting men, for prolonged periods without all that specific attention, while doing sustained strenuous physical activity and carrying heavy loads of weapons, armor, and equipment. UFC is a sport. Combat is deadly real.
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  19. Kami Nana What they'd be in actual combat is useless, for all the reasons I've mentioned above. A woman shouldn't carry more than 25% of her body weight, because she's virtually guaranteed to hurt herself if she does. This has nothing to do with how conditioned she is, this is based on things like skeletal structure and bone density. An average infantryman carries 60-80lbs of gear. Just because women's UFC is a thing doesn't mean that women in combat is anything other than an atrocious idea that would be beneficial to nobody but the enemy.
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  20. Fheed Pexx The sagas don't put Ragnar Lodbrok, whose name the show gets consistently wrong, and who was probably mythical, with Hrolf the Walker, who they call by his Latinized name "Rollo" and who was the man who took Normandy as tribute. Nor do they connect either of them with the Lindisfarne raid. The sagas don't put 8th-9th century Scandinavia in a feudal system, because that's retarded. And they don't claim that before Lindisfarne, nobody in Scandinavia knew of the British Isles, because this is also retarded. Basically, nothing in that show is even remotely accurate or authentic other than the ships, which are done wonderfully.
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  21. Nobody in America calls it that. I don't know about any other English speaking countries, but here it's always called the Czech Republic.
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  22. ***** No, I'm basically saying that women cannot be effective combat soldiers, for all of the above listed reasons. There are very narrow and limited exceptions to this (namely female Soviet snipers in WWII), but as a general rule, women have no place on the battlefield.
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  23. Oliver Eddy Strength is only ONE of the reasons why women are unfit for combat. Not even the biggest one.
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  24. TheHornedOne81 That 2707 yd kill you were talking about was with a .338 Lapua, not a 7.62 NATO. And yes, modern firearms are far more accurate than Wild West era black powder weapons. Saying otherwise is somewhat absurd.
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  25. Then there's also the basic fact that almost no women at any point in history would have worn armor at all...
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  26. Cornered Fox His show was mostly about guns, which he does know.
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  27. Of course I haven't read every saga, but I do know that in English (what with me being a native English speaker and all) Ragnar Lodbrok is ALWAYS spelled and pronounced with the D, not the TH. And Hrolf is either referred to in English as Hrolf the Walker or Gangahrolf. It would be nice if they were speaking Old Norse, but as half-assed as that show is, I can see why they're not. It would also be nice if they managed just a little historical accuracy on a couple things, but they don't seem to be going for that, either. I haven't watched the show past the first half of the first season, after that I became too disgusted and gave it up. In the first episode they're acting like there's nothing to the West of Scandinavia, and "Ragnar Lothbrok" has this "revolutionary" idea that there is land, ie the British Isles, to the West. This is ridiculous. You claimed that this moronic show is based on Icelandic sagas, I was pointing out how taking a couple characters from them and a couple unrelated historic events and throwing them all in one jumble is neither true to history (which I know quite a bit about) nor true to the sagas. And they got almost no details right, especially about society. They put these people in a feudal system first and foremost, which is every bit as anachronistic as putting them in the Roman Republic. Then, they make the feudal system such that if you kill the Jarl, you become Jarl yourself, which is just pure fiction. Then they have shieldmaidens, for which there is zero historic evidence, and it is HIGHLY unlikely that such a thing ever existed, because it's an incredibly bad idea on every level. Then they have these ridiculous monstrous priest-demon things, which is also completely false. Oh, and explaining how the guy getting executed is going to Valhalla, which isn't how Norse paganism worked. And of course the whole "my slaves are my equals" thing which was clearly designed more to appeal to modern sensibilities than to give any air of authenticity whatsoever. If you think they got details right, I'd suggest reading some history books on the period, because that shit is no more accurate than Game of Thrones, which at least admits that it's fantasy. I don't remember any jewelry off hand, but the weapons aren't particularly accurate (I recall some rather ridiculous axes and swords slung over shoulders and a conspicuous lack of spears), the "armor" and costumes are by no means accurate, and the ships are really the one redeeming feature of the show. They're done beautifully.
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  28. Don't chicken wing when shooting rifles/muskets. It's very bad form.
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  29. ***** They're not actually Italians as in "people from Italy who actually speak Italian". They're guys named D'Amato who pepper their speech with occasional Italian words, especially profanity.
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  30. ShieldWife To be fair, Rome defeated the Celts not because of the individual strength of the Roman legionary vs the Celtic warrior. The Roman army was well trained, disciplined, and used far superior tactics compared to the Celtic combat style of individual warriors not fighting in any cohesive manner. The rest of what you said is all true though.
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  31. Bart Van Riel Nope, Belgian is the best. After that, American - not the Budweiser crap that most Europeans are familiar with, but the wide variety of beers developed over the past 30 years.
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  32. You do not have an English accent. Your accent is clearly Continental European, but it's hard to place. You don't necessarily sound Italian per se - there was a man at my university who was the veteran's coordinator or some such who was from Italy, and had a very thick accent, and you don't sound like him, but you don't sound British either.
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  33. Jason32Bourne Yeah, they do manage to make an M16 look an awful lot like a flamethrower
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  34. I think this is way cooler than HEMA. HEMA is essentially Renaissance-era unarmored fighting, which isn't particularly exciting. I imagine that guys in armor trying to bash each other with weapons is not only more fun, but far more similar to actual medieval combat than HEMA. Is it perfectly accurate? Of course not. Still cool though.
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  35. Cornered Fox I don't remember him saying that the 7.62X39 gets better penetration than the 5.56, but then again I haven't seen his show in years. He had a couple episodes about swords and shit to change it up, but that doesn't make him an expert. In the end, he's a celebrity known for being a Marine, and so the History Channel or whoever it was had him in a show about weapons. In this case, he was out of his element. I imagine most of what's wrong there is on the producers and this "Bob" guy.
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  36. I've never done any reenacting myself, because I've seen WWII reenactors do their thing, and they looked ridiculous. People with no military training attempting tactical maneuvers and whatnot just look like clowns. I was in a real war, and have never felt the need as an adult to play at war. Obviously Roman legionary reenactors have no actual training and will be doing it wrong. That being said, the general lack of armor for the right arm specifically strikes me as odd to say the least. I can think of two possible solutions: First, that the Romans figured it wasn't worth the logistical hassle of having another piece of gear to give to troops who would probably just lose it or break it anyway (at least if Roman legionaries were anything like US Marines, and I suspect they were). Second, they may have decided that armor on the arm was an encumbrance, that any protective value it may have had was offset by reduced effectiveness at throwing a pilum, or something to that effect. All armor is a compromise, and armor that protects you but prevents you from fighting effectively is not a good one. It would be interesting to see statistics from Roman campaigns about where on the body most wounds were taken, and I suspect that it would be the right arm/hand, but I don't think any such data exists.
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  37. As an American, I can say that learning about firearms at a young age is generally a good thing. I grew up in New York City, which has draconian gun laws, but most of my friends were given a .22 rifle for their 7th birthday. Any children I have will be given a .22 rifle for their 7th birthdays as well. In this case, it was very unfortunate that this girl was handed a weapon that she could not physically use safely. However, bad judgment on behalf of a very few people is a terrible reason to restrict ANY rights, including gun rights. I recently was at a "machine gun tourism" spot in Tennessee. I got to shoot on full auto for the first time since I got out of the Marine Corps 10 years ago. I shot a G36 on full auto. Granted, I have actual military training, but I don't think that that matters. I have no children, but I wouldn't be likely to let my hypothetical 9-year-old daughter shoot an Uzi. That is not to say, by any means, that if some parents have a nine-year-old girl, and decide that it is safe for her to shoot an Uzi, and that properly trained range authorities concur that it is safe, that this hypothetical girl shouldn't be allowed to shoot (on an aside, I don't like the Uzi, because I'm left-handed and I tend to accidentally engage the safety catch as I try to press the trigger). An accident, no matter how horrific, is by no means an excuse for additional infractions on basic rights like gun ownership.
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  38. I've never been to Italy, so I can't speak to what people in Italy actually do, but Americans of Italian descent sure like getting Italian flag tattoos. And I don't speak Italian other than a couple swear words. I know shit like capo de cazzo, but not what you just said.
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  39. So that guy dressed in what is presumably an Italian army uniform brings up a question - what are Italian gun laws like? All I know is that you are not allowed to own guns in "military" calibers, hence the 9x21mm pistol caliber, but, as I know Italian shotguns are a (wonderful) thing, does "military calibers" include 12gauge? Because in the Marine Corps, we had Benelli shotguns in 12gauge. Do you own any guns? And what are you allowed to own?
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  40. I saw that video. According to it, knights were essentially modern bums. They don't attempt to back any of it up with any actual information, and it seems to be just iconoclasm for its own sake with some shock value thrown in.
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  41. Bart Van Riel Heineken and Amstel Lite are available worldwide. Both are terrible. Beyond that, Dutch beer is hard to come by. But I can find Saison DuPont and Rodenbach and Rochefort at most decent beer stores in the US.
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  42. GIOVANNI THE NEAPOLITAN Both of those beers are terrible. I've had a decent beer from Italy before, it was some kind of Belgian style dubbel. I don't remember what it was called.
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  43. stoffel Belgium actually has the most breweries per capita of any country, and far more diverse styles than Germany. German beers are all pretty similar and in very few styles. Belgian beer you have everything from a wit to a lambic to an oude bruin to a blonde to an abbey quad.
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  44. stoffel I've never had Westvleteren, because the one time they sold it in the US, it sold out immediately, and I haven't been able to get to Belgium, much less go through the whole song and dance required to actually buy some. I brewed a clone though, which should be ready to drink in a few months.
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  45. stoffel Yup, I'm very familiar with St Bernardus Abt 12. One of my favorite beers. And I think you're right about the relationship with Westvleteren, I know they had one but don't remember the details. Esen I'm not at all familiar with, but I'll be sure to try and check it out.
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  46. Bart Van Riel Heineken is what is usually available outside the Netherlands. The only other Dutch beer I've ever had was La Trappe Quadruple, which is a Trappist beer that was quite good, but not as good as some of the similar ones I've had from Belgium, like Rochefort 10 or St Bernardus Abt 12.
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  47. Bart Van Riel I've never even heard of that.
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  48. GIOVANNI THE NEAPOLITAN Coming from a guy who likes Heineken and Peroni, that doesn't mean much. Especially when Belgian beers are consistently rated the best in the world.
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  49. GIOVANNI THE NEAPOLITAN Yeah, but objectively, it sucks.
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  50. Bart Van Riel Oh yeah, I forgot about Grolsch. Not a fan at all.
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