PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

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Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

FreudianSlippers posted:

If you were a goy and weren't already in a concentration camp for dissidents by the start of the war you were probably at least a bit of a Nazi. Like Naziish.

Unless you were in the resistance, secretly saving Jews or part of of one of those plots to assassinate Hitler. In the last case you might even still be a bit of a Nazi.

What's certainly true is that a lot of the Germans who wanted to kill Hitler's main complaint was that he was losing the war, and (to be fair) some religious objections to actually doing the Holocaust as opposed to merely making GBS threads on and extorting the Jews and Gypsies and so on. Many of them wanted to continue the war in the East, partly of course to protect Prussia but also in the hopes that the UK and US would join up with them to fight the real enemy, :ussr:

Wasn't there some last ditch hope of Goebbels and co. involving Roosevelt dying which was actually rooted in some German history, where an enemy monarch died or got iced and was replaced by his heir who was much, much friendlier to Germany?

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 11:37

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:46

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

The Stirling Engine: God's Mechanical Cock

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 05:02

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Tiggum posted:

What I find really surprising about it is that apparently no one thought "Hey, this stuff is getting kind of hard to find. I should grow some. People will probably pay a lot for it."

Might've been hard to grow. Alternately, free market.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2016 06:44

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That fact wasn't fun at all! :mad:

# ¿ Jan 21, 2016 12:51

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Sounds like the doctrine of "total depravity" to me!

# ¿ Jan 23, 2016 02:04

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While they were certainly less sanitary than the apparent world average, I thought the middle aged Europeans did, like, wash their hands and faces pretty regularly and would scrub up, change clothes, and so on fairly regularly. They weren't making GBS threads in their own pants 24/7 or anything.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2016 06:38

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Even there it didn't seem like it was a given that (for instance) England would have somehow risen up to become the great conqueror of the waves, and indeed the Spanish probably have a greater claim for raw world impact. It's a bit of a just-so story, of course.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2016 02:07

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Kenning posted:

Diamond lets his theories get way, way, way ahead of his data, and has a bad habit of switching scales of analysis when it's inconvenient for his ideas. His whole east-west axis theory relies on treating Eurasia as a singular entity, and arguing that Eurasian people dominated Africans, Americans, and Australiasians. Except, Eurasians didn't do anything. Europeans did. Nothing in his goony theory-crafting would preclude Khazaks from being the imperial peoples of the world, or Vietnamese, and nothing in his theory explains why Europeans in fact were. As was mentioned earlier in the thread, his whole thing about the Rapa Nui in Collapse was predicated on a history of Easter Island that wasn't even true, and his story was designed to support a pre-fab ecological morality tale.

Basically his books are like laser-focused to stroke the egos of people who want to sound smart but don't want to deal with actual science. They are like the least rigorous things in the world. It's bad pop science masquerading as academic theory.

Mongolians did rule most of Eurasia though, and only by minor mischance did they not kick over more of Europe than they did. Before them, Islam had spread across a huge land area greater than the Roman empire even if it wasn't really an organized polity IIRC. The Chinese had the technological equipment necessary to do everything early modern Europeans did, with regards to reaching and exploiting the New World, but they didn't, also for random reasons.

Now I imagine there was plenty of complex poo poo in the Americas and Africa which was just not as well documented.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2016 07:45

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Unfunny Poster posted:

Not sure if this was mentioned already, but I find this to be kind of a neat trivia question.

Bugs Bunny is the only cartoon character in history to hold a US Military Rank at Master Sergeant for the short "Super-Rabbit" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Rabbit) during World War II.

uhhh

# ¿ Feb 1, 2016 05:11

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Molentik posted:

Doesn't malaria have a higher total, like probably billions?

I thought malaria usually doesn't directly kill you (though it can). If billions of people had died of malaria in recent history, even if they were poor people in the global south, I imagine there would have been somewhat more urgency regarding its treatment.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 11:58

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Nostalgia4Dicks posted:

Isn't the original concrete recipe lost in time or some poo poo like that

I think the Romans had some kind of secret sauce that made their concrete real good. Not that ours is bad but you know, there's a lot of Roman concrete actually around still to study, so that's a sign of something. I thought it had to do with shattered pottery that had gotten fire glazed or something.

Looking it up, it seems using coal ash is a reasonable substitute for the Roman recipe and would hopefully produce similar results, though of course we won't know for a while, will we?

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 04:54

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

BrandorKP posted:

I don't buy it.

If the premodern mind was so different, why is it so easy to open up to a random Psalm and find something in common with the psalmist?

Edit: That book is pretty good.

I don't really buy it either, although I can certainly buy that there are some emergent concepts and details which subtly color modern thought which did not occur with the ancients. But if they were really that cognitively different from us, we would presumably have more trouble understanding their writings.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2016 11:27

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

System Metternich posted:

I was going from the wiki page of Folk memory, but now I see that they don't give any sources for that (though there are other, better sourced examples like the Kaska in British Columbia speaking in 1907 of �[a] very large kind of animal which roamed the country a long time ago. It corresponded somewhat to white men's pictures of elephants. It was of huge size, in build like an elephant, had tusks, and was hairy. These animals were seen not so very long ago, it is said, generally singly, but none have been seen now for several generations. Indians come across their bones occasionally. The narrator said he and some others, a few years ago, came on a shoulder-blade [...] as wide as a table (about three feet)� which suspiciously sounds like a mammoth). Any other mentions of the Mapinguari I could find were either cryptozoologist nutters or vaguely talking about "anthropologists" who claim that. So it looks like this specific example turns out to be bullshit, sorry!

This reminds me of how, you know how the Egyptian gods are famous for having the heads of animals? A hawk, a jackal, and so on?

Nobody really knows the animal that Set has the head of. It has a consistent portrayal, and some have guessed that the different design is just meant to clarify that THIS jackal is Set while THAT jackal is Anubis, but one theory is that it was a regional animal, never common, that became extinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_animal

# ¿ Nov 6, 2016 23:31

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Deteriorata posted:

My parents (Americans) described Simpson as a shallow gold digger who wanted to be queen, and thought Edward was a spineless sap for falling for her. They just rolled their eyes at his abdication "for the woman that I love" line.

My own great-aunt had little to say about English kings, but had plenty to say about the Black and Tans. And Winston Churchill. Also curiously fond of Stalin.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2016 05:30

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Khazar-khum posted:

17th & 18th c porn is glorious. There was an amazing amount published, which has raised the question of just how literate the general populace was. When you consider that anyone of the merchant classes would need to be able to read and write, along with reeves & clerics, and you see that the market was quite substantial.

Wasn't a lot of what we see as Victorian prudery rooted more in a social reaction to the gin-fueled gently caress fest that had been the previous era?

# ¿ Dec 13, 2016 12:04

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Baron Corbyn posted:

There's also stuff like astronomical events such as eclipses and comets referenced prior to his timeskip that wouldn't make any sense with his calendar and non-European stuff happening during the years he said never happened; the rise of Islam being the notable one.

I wonder why a theory that suggests that Islam is fake and made-up might have some popularity in some quarters lately! :v:

# ¿ Jan 21, 2017 09:03

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

MisterBibs posted:

Also, if your medieval/feudal lord demands your taxes in corn/wheat/whatever, you can worry a whole lot less that you'll run out of food after his slice of the pie is accounted for. Especially if your crop had a bad year, or he decides to be a dick and increase his slice of your harvest, it's OK because nobody wants those nightshades!

(source: one of the What If? books had a story on how potatoes drastically influenced history and historians shudder to think how things would be different if they weren't a thing)

I thought it was more that you could store the taters in the ground where they would be harder to locate, unless you really wanted to go digging up a guy's field.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 09:31

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I'd think an alternative problem is that you would get sores and lice and poo poo.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 10:18

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Mycroft Holmes posted:

Japanese guy looks so uncomfortable. "Should I salute? Most people are saluting, but the american is saluting differently. Do I bow or something? Oh god, the Emperor is going to be so disappointed with me."

"God, I hope we don't end up allied with these sausage-eating motherfuckers."

# ¿ Feb 19, 2017 10:16

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Deteriorata posted:

Presumably by selling mineral rights to a developer, like you would if you had oil or other valuable stuff on your property.

Yeah I think the idea was that if your lovely scrub ranch turned out to be sitting on a uranium deposit, Uncle Sugar would pay you fat stacks (or you could sell for fat stacks) - sort of like a much more radioactive version of all the ranches selling wind turbine siting rights lately.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 01:00

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

umalt posted:

This part is especially true; the thnking of the top brass in a pre-Cold War military believed that the most moral path of action involved making the enemy suffer as much as possible in as short a period of time as possible. With the idea being that the sooner you can make your enemies surrender, the shorter the war will be; and the shorter the war will be, the fewer the casualties. So it's basic math that if you can cause 2 million casualties in a hour, and make your enemies surrender immediately; you would save 280 million lives on all sides that would be thrown into the grinder over a period of four years.

So it's no wonder that American commanders would be eager to use as many bombs as possible during the war.

Wasn't this also the thinking of Grant and Sherman in the Civil War?

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 07:07

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steinrokkan posted:

AFAIK most plans issued in preparation for the invasion counted American casualties "only" in tens of thousands. Also they didn't want to destroy / genocide Japan, that is some weird revisionism. They for the most part wanted to capture the Tokyo coastal plains and force the Emperor to surrender at Kyoto.

It seems to be a long-standing theory that we didn't use the Bomb on Germany because we didn't want to kill white people, but I think a simple glance at a timeline reveals that this would not be the case. If Hitler had held out til summer, I don't think he would've seen autumn.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 05:56

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Khazar-khum posted:

Pretty nice thread we had ourselves here, until folks started down that Glory Road of Nuclear What - If.

OK dipshit, here's one from recent history.

Star Trek: Voyager is why we had Obama - or at least, made his path much easier.

Jeri Ryan's marriage to Jack Ryan (not the guy from Clancy) was strained heavily by Jeri going to LA to work on Star Trek Voyager while Jack stayed in Illinois. This led to divorce. Jack won the 2004 primary for the senate seat from Illinois, up against some guy named Barack Obama. Jack Ryan's divorce records were unsealed, revealing that he had taken Jeri to weird sex clubs, leading to his withdrawal from the race and Obama going on to crush noted crazy person Alan Keyes by a much larger margin. (He had been leading Jack Ryan in polls beforehand, but by a much slimmer margin, and 2004 was not full of massive Democratic headwinds like '06 was.)

You can theory-craft out the implications of McCain or some other guy possibly beating :abuela:

in '08 for yourself.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 09:04

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Wheat Loaf posted:

Doyle was interested in the supernatural and occult (as was popular in high society in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras) while he was writing Holmes but became full-bore spiritualist in 1916 partly as a reaction to the violence and destruction of the First World War. He went so far as to write a story in which the ultra-rationalist Professor Challenger converted to spiritualism so he would have a medium to explain his beliefs.

If this religion is good enough for Dan Aykroyd it's good enough for me.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 01:18

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

John Big Booty posted:

I knew this big, fat fucker who loved Hitler almost as much as he loved his knit rasta cap.

Well, I mean, the two have an obvious point of overlap: They both celebrate 4/20.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2017 06:06

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Pick posted:

Can someone who knows more about history tell me why there's an actual weather site called Weather Underground when I assume that's a bad association for a lot of people?

It was probably a cute name when they started and now it's their #brand so they're stuck with it.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 21:08

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

chitoryu12 posted:

It's also why we seemingly can't get anything done. Every region is completely different from every other region in terms of climate, culture, and local politics. Getting everyone to agree on something is more like getting the EU to agree on something.

I think this gets kind of overblown although it may be more true in a few hundred years. The great majority of the US's territory was settled by whites in the last two hundred years, which is bupkis, historically. (Of course other people were there previously, but outside of Hawaii I don't think they constitute a large proportion of any state or region's population at present.)

# ¿ May 27, 2017 04:48

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Baron Corbyn posted:

It wasn't an invasion of Haiti by Cuba. It was a coup in Haiti against Papa Doc led by Haitian and Cuban exiles living in the US followed by an invasion of Cuba using Haiti as a staging ground.

Was Baron Samedi consulted about this?

# ¿ Jun 8, 2017 06:26

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swamp waste posted:

Hell no, everyone knows which side he was on. For real though, I read that Papa Doc affected Samedi-like manners and speech to imply that Baron Samedi was the actual ruler of the country and he was just the human host.

That sounds a little too exotifying and too cool to be true, but dang, can you imagine? It would be like having Bob from Twin Peaks as president. And i can see how it would make the violence and oppression easier to take. Like if Trump had paused during the Comey hearing to vomit up a pile of creamed corn and blood, on some level i'd be like, well, there's worse things than corruption and nepotism i guess

I believe the actual voudun (sp?) portrayal of Baron Samedi makes him out to be a pretty cool dude who likes kids and partying hard. It's Baron Kriminel you have to watch out for.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2017 06:07

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Do they still have that giant chain I heard about in a Turisas song?

# ¿ Jun 21, 2017 10:40

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Baron Corbyn posted:

Is the octopus in the toilet thing real or the Roman version of alligators in the sewers?

Wouldn't it need to be on the sea coast for this to be even kind of possible?

# ¿ Jun 29, 2017 06:06

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I wonder if there are records of drug culture projections from eras of past drug users. Like did Victorians hosed up on opium write about how human history was marked by the use of the poppy?

# ¿ Jul 16, 2017 09:44

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steinrokkan posted:

The Pope didn't object to their reproduction by sprouting from driftwood, he only said their unusual origin didn't make them non-birds.

The myth makes sense when you consider nobody had at that point seen a barnacle goose breeding, since they left for the Arctic during the breeding season, but people frequently saw them around barnacles.

Wasn't there some animal where the idea of migration only came up after someone found one coming back with an African arrowhead in its leg?

# ¿ Jul 19, 2017 08:49

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steinrokkan posted:

Not just Persians. Ever heard of black cats and bad luck?

Aren't black cats good luck in England?

# ¿ Aug 5, 2017 07:20

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

PMush Perfect posted:

What use is gold to a baby?

Gold has intrinsic value which obviously Jesus would want for he would be granting the ultimate value to Mankind (salvation) and would therefore deserve by right all real value (all gold). :ancap:

# ¿ Oct 22, 2017 08:52

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Metal Geir Skogul posted:

What the gently caress is going on with that article? I can't parse it.

It's an anthropological-jargon examination of the hygiene habits of Americans.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2017 22:19

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Whiz Palace posted:

Yeah there was absolutely no way the Russians were going to just shoot Hitler. Didn't Stalin say something about parading him through Moscow in a cage?

The one I heard was that he'd get to walk back to Moscow... barefoot.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2017 21:57

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Ugly In The Morning posted:

The flamethrower is still gonna stand out though.

You know. Because it�s throwing flame.

I expect the purpose is to make it more likely that Ivan Flammenwerfer can make it to the bunker without being sniped because he's apparently Generic Rifleman #7, not Flamer Attachment #1.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2018 21:39

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I think your big problem would be finding people to crew those boats. Torpedo boats are one thing, what are basically manned torpedoes are another.

Obviously the strategy has been executed and it is not impossible, but most of the examples I can think of are coming in situations where you have been fighting for a long time and are losing. Organizing people for the Suicide Commando Corps from a cold start seems difficult.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2018 22:09

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:46

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

I'd guess the most likely answer for "why does this culture tolerate lactose well" is "they're descended from the original population(s) that evolved lactose tolerance." Whether more than one population evolved it separately vs. it evolving once and then spreading with migrating populations is a hard question to answer.

Per this NPR article, "Today, however, 35 percent of the global population � mostly people with European ancestry � can digest lactose in adulthood without a hitch."

Europeans, some Africans and East Indians - that does seem to total up to about 35%, yeah. I would be curious if it is the same genetic cluster in Euros, Indians and the south/east African groups with the cow herding practices.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2018 06:22

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