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Land of Mine Trailer

newtboy says...

Big assumption. Many Hitler youth made the choice to fight for Germany, and joined on their own before children were being drafted.

As for those that were conscripted, is it your position that draftees are somehow immune from responsibility for murdering their neighbors, women, children, rapes, burning towns, or planting millions of landmines on foreign soil, etc? How convenient for them. I don't believe that's a popular or legal position.

I take responsibility for my actions. If their fate was mine, I would be eternally grateful I was treated so much better than I would have treated them if the tables were turned. I would be part of an invading Nazi army, trying to undo just a tiny bit of the damage we had caused, doing so at the direction of my superiors just like when I caused the situation. I would deserve execution, not release. This assumes I wouldn't have the spine to refuse to be a Nazi and be imprisoned or executed.

If the majority of Germans weren't complicit, the Nazis would have never come to power. You give them far too much credit. From the holocaust encyclopedia- "Opposition to the Nazi regime also arose among a very small number of German youth, some of whom resented mandatory membership in the Hitler Youth." Same with adults, the opposition was a minority by far, not the majority of Germans. Who told you that?

"Survived the fighting"? "Here"? "They"? Please finish your thoughts so they have meaning. You seem to be equating Nazi soldiers with the Jews they tried to eradicate. What?!?

The Geneva convention we know today was ratified in 1949. The accords of 1929 were found to be totally insufficient to protect POWs, civilians, infrastructure, etc. Yes, Germany did appear violate it's vague provisions....so did the allies. That's why it was strengthened in 49.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

What provision of the 1929 version do you claim this violates?

Articles 20, 21, 22, and 23 states that officers and persons of equivalent status who are prisoners of war shall be treated with the regard due their rank and age and provide more details on what that treatment should be.
Or
Articles 27 to 34 covers labour by prisoners of war. Work must fit the rank and health of the prisoners. The work must not be war-related and must be safe work. ("Safe" and "war related" being intentionally vague and unenforceable).
Please explain the specific violation that makes mine removal a "war crime". It's not war related, the war was over, and it's "safe" if done properly.
Since this was done at the direction of German officers, the convention as written then doesn't apply.

Death camp!!! LOL. Now I know you aren't serious.
"The removal was part of a controversial agreement between the German Commander General Georg Lindemann, the Danish Government and the British Armed Forces, under which German soldiers with experience in defusing mines would be in charge of clearing the mine fields.
This makes it a case of German soldiers under German officers and NCOs clearing mines under the agreement of the German commander in Denmark who remained at his post for a month after the surrender - this means Germany accepted that they had responsibility to remove the mines - they just had far too few experienced mine clearance experts and far too many “drafted” mine clearers with no real experience in doing so." So, if it's a war crime, it's one the Germans committed against themselves.

I'm happy to say that anything done to a Nazi soldier is ethical, age notwithstanding. Many Nazi youth were more zealous and violent than their adult counterparts. Removing their DNA from the gene pool would have been ethical, but illegal. Taking their country to create Israel would have been ethical, but didn't happen.

At the time, there were few mechanical means of mine removal, they didn't work on wet ground, they required a tank and that the area be pre-cleared of anti tank mines, they often get stuck on beaches, and had just over a 50% clearance rate, cost $300-$1000 per mine removed, and they were in extremely short supply after the war. The Germans volunteered in this instance. Now, the Mine Ban Treaty gives each state the primary responsibility to clear its own mines, just like this agreement did.

So you know, the film is fiction, not history. Maybe read up on the real history before attacking countries over a fictional story. History isn't nearly as cut and dry as it's presented, neither are war crimes.

psycop said:

These boys neither chose the age of conscription nor to go to war. Given their age and the time in the war, they would have been forcably made to fight. If you had the misfortune to be born then and there, thier fate could be yours.

Being in the German army did not imply being a Nazi, the majority of the German population were victims as well, pointlessly lead to slaughter by monsters.

Those of them that would have survived the fighting ended up here. They didn't feed them. They worked until they died. They expected them to die. They wanted them to die.

The Geneva Conventions were signed in 1929 making this an official war crime if that's important to you. I'd say the law does not define ethics, and I'd be happy to say this is wrong regardless of the treaty.

As for alternatives for mine clearance. I'm not a military expert, but I believe there are techniques, equipment, tools or vehicles that can be used to reduce the risk to operators. Frankly it's besides the point. Just because someone cannot think of a solution they prefer over running a death camp, does not mean they are not free to do so.

If you have the time, I'd recommend watching the film. It's excellent. And as with most things, particularly in times of war, it's complicated.

Land of Mine Trailer

psycop says...

These boys neither chose the age of conscription nor to go to war. Given their age and the time in the war, they would have been forcably made to fight. If you had the misfortune to be born then and there, thier fate could be yours.

Being in the German army did not imply being a Nazi, the majority of the German population were victims as well, pointlessly lead to slaughter by monsters.

Those of them that would have survived the fighting ended up here. They didn't feed them. They worked until they died. They expected them to die. They wanted them to die.

The Geneva Conventions were signed in 1929 making this an official war crime if that's important to you. I'd say the law does not define ethics, and I'd be happy to say this is wrong regardless of the treaty.

As for alternatives for mine clearance. I'm not a military expert, but I believe there are techniques, equipment, tools or vehicles that can be used to reduce the risk to operators. Frankly it's besides the point. Just because someone cannot think of a solution they prefer over running a death camp, does not mean they are not free to do so.

If you have the time, I'd recommend watching the film. It's excellent. And as with most things, particularly in times of war, it's complicated.

newtboy said:

If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to clean up your mess.
Truer words were never said.
These kids should be eternally grateful they weren't treated the same way Germany treated POWs.

Land of Mine Trailer

newtboy says...

Explain please.

The first wrong was being a Nazi youth invader attacking their neighbors and trying to subjugate or eradicate them....IMO that's actually three wrongs at a minimum, but I digress.

What's the second wrong? Using POWs this way was common practice then....no Geneva convention yet banning it. Most POWs were treated exponentially worse, starved and tortured to death or used as slave labor and worked to death on dangerous projects. By comparison, these Hitler youths were coddled.

Being forced to clean up a small mine field before release is hardly on par with that....there are still allegedly POWs alive in Vietnam and elsewhere....They would jump at the chance to clear mines and be released.

And what's the alternative? Leave the mines to kill civilians? Have the victims of invasion do the dirty work of cleaning up the mess the invading Nazis left? I think forcing the invaders to clean up the mess they made is the ONLY right move, anything else is wrong....like what we do, dropping hundreds of thousands of mines on foreign soil from the air with no idea where most end up and just leaving them to disable a country for generations. That is wrong....this isn't even harsh IMO.

Harzzach said:

Two wrongs do not make a right.

The Watermelon Joke That Saved Me After I Got Pulled Over

luxintenebris jokingly says...

moonsammy: great take. thumbs-up! crystalized my thoughts exactly!*

a couple of rules of comedy are 'know your audience' and [the joke] 'it has to be funny'. if there is no laugh, either you told it wrong, told it to the wrong person, or your wrong about it being funny. your audience is the final judge. not their duty to laff at your doody joke.

stukafox: okay [btw: the watermelon joke is very old] but not going w/the worst or nastiest, just with a few of old risqué ones.

novice is riding back to the convent w/the mother superior on their bicycles through the medieval section of the town. mother superior tells the novice "let's cut through this alleyway". the alley is long, rough and bumpy but the novice agrees. when they get back on the regular route the novice says, "that was new! I've never come that way before!" mother superior says, "it's the cobblestones."

a woman notices her neighbor's tomatoes are fully ripening while her's are still green. she asks him "how do you get your tomatoes to ripen so quickly?" he tells her, "I get up around dawn while I'm still in my bathrobe and open it and flash them. they get so embarrassed they turn red." women tells him she's going to try it but later in the evening. the next day, the neighbor sees the woman and asks "so? did it work?" the woman turns to tell him, "no. it didn't - but YOU SHOULD SEE MY CUCUMBERS!

an old woman was talking w/her younger friend. old woman tells her about some of the older woman in town. "oh! don't let them fool you! they were pretty wild in their day! " then she went on and listed all the men a trio of sisters went through and each tête à tête they had. the list was shockingly impressive enough that the younger woman said, "gee...maybe they couldn't help themselves...maybe they suffered from a hereditary disease?" the old woman cocks her head back and eyes the younger woman then says, "hereditary? hell! yes! it was! it was IN THEIR JEANS!!!"



*david letterman

James May's Tesla Model S has failed!

cloudballoon says...

The design flaw is not that the 12V conventional battery can die or lack of charger port. It's that you can't open the hood to replace it (or other parts of the engine) in a Tesla (or the Model S at least) when the 12V battery dies. Conventional car models use a MECHANICAL means to do that.

Khufu said:

while the dismantling seems problematic, 1 hour is nothing when messing with body panels. I'm impressed.

but any car battery can die when left undriven and other cars don't have trickle charger ports installed from factory, you have to add those yourself. (and should)

Making Spherical Tanks Through Explosive Hydroforming

eric3579 says...

From YouTube videos description..

Explosive hydroforming, also known as HERF (High Energy Rate Forming) or exploform, is a striking alternative to the more traditional process of metal hydroforming. Unlike this older method, which shapes metal using pressurized hydraulic fluid pumped into a forming chamber, HERF techniques utilize an explosive charge to create the necessary pressure. Although the charge is relatively small, it is capable of generating enough force to mold the associated metal into the die.

The explosive charge is typically positioned at a specific distance from the workpiece, and both are immersed in fluid, usually hydraulic fluid or simple water. Certain facilities may also use oil, gelatin, liquid salts, or regular air as the transmission medium. However, water is the most commonly used medium as it is the least expensive, excellent for creating uniform peak pressure, and readily available. Once the charge and workpiece are properly positioned, the charge is detonated, pressing the workpiece into a die. The part is then removed and the process is repeated if necessary.

Explosive Hydroforming Methods
Explosive hydroforming techniques fall into two basic categories. Although both methods function according to the same general principles, they rely on very different placement of the explosive charge within the forming chamber.

Standoff Method: With the Standoff Method, the explosive charge is used in conjunction with an intervening medium. In most hydroforming applications, the intervening material is typically water, oil, or air. The required deformation level dictates how far the explosive charge is placed from the piece of metal to be formed. When the charge detonates, the ensuing force is transmitted through the fluid and pressures the metal into the die. Detonations used in the Standoff Method can often reach several thousand pounds per square inch (psi).

Contact Method: In the Contact Method, an explosive charge is placed in direct contact with the forming metal. This process generates far more pressure than the more conventional Standoff Method. By placing the explosive charge in close proximity to the surface material, the detonation can result in as much as several million psi.

Piece of Bread falling over

C-note says...

I met a couple trek legends at the Star Trek Convention in Cleveland back in 1986. It was nothing like the spectacle modern conventions have become. I'm so sad we did not have cell phones with cameras back then. We stood in line just to get autographs.

It would have been hilarious if you did say "Bridge".

BSR said:

My last con was Magnum Opus Con in 1989 when I rode in an elevator with Nichelle Nichols. To my regret, when the elevator doors closed I should have said "Bridge."

Rocket Sled Impact Test In Slow-Motion

grinter says...

My guess is that they need to measure the forces that the weapon, and its internal components, are subjected to if it falls out of a transport or if it goes off course and subsequently impacts the ground. This will help them predict the likelihood of and unintentional detonation of the conventional explosives, and I suppose the likelihood of a nuclear reaction resulting from this. It will also help them predict the kind of cleanup task that will be necessary. It might also be useful to know how much secret technology survives after an impact if the weapon does not detonate.
Anyone know the back story on Sandia Labs appropriating the thunderbid symbol? It seems a poor choice for a weapons lab of colonizing nation to use the symbol of a people that nation has displaced.

bobknight33 (Member Profile)

newtboy says...

The restriction is about groups of people being unsafe. It is not about any one group.
The decision makes it restrict one group and not others. No Jedi conventions, but Christian, Jewish, or Muslim churches/conventions are ok?
Utter bullshit, I hope every religious nutjob gets covid and churches are held liable, maybe we can end the stone age superstition that rules and ruins lives.

Stop your divisive ignorance and join civilization.

bobknight33 said:

Clearly you fail to see the how the restriction limits 1 group and not another.

Nether is right. SCOTUS is correct.

The SHOCKING Truth About Ben Franklin and the Kite

newtboy says...

My favorite president. ;-)

My favorite Franklin story is about how he would enter the constitutional convention in a sedan chair carried by four prisoners from the Walnut Street jail in Philadelphia. Hardly the humble man of the people some people think he was.

*promote *quality history

Doc Rivers

scheherazade says...

Assault weapon bans. Effectively making illegal the most common rifle in the country (ar15) - even though it's statistically tiny in terms of gun killings.
(~450 people killed per year with all forms of rifle. Only some of that is ar15. That's the ~same amount of people as what die yearly from falling out of bed.)

Suppressor bans. Illegalizing an item that has been statistically as good as nonexistent in firearm crimes.

Banning DIY non-commercial firearms. Illegalizing firearms that have been statistically as good as nonexistent in firearm crimes.

Banning Private Sales (aka gunshow loophole). Effectively banning transfers between family and friends. Even though nearly all illegal arms are acquired by straw purchase at conventional stores by girlfriends.
And commercial sellers at gun shows have to do background checks anyways - this is much ado about old geezers trading collectible wild west / ww2 / antique shit.

Nearly all people are killed by pistols. Nobody is calling for a pistol ban. It makes things like an AWB look like a disingenuous effort - because you can pass all sorts of non-pistol-banning gun control laws and there will be no effect on gun death stats. Meaning you can just make more and more stuff illegal forever so long as you save what really matters (pistols) for last.

Between city, county, state, federal, existing gun laws are fat like an encyclopedia. Most people, unless they are 'gun folk', don't even realize the ways you can go to jail. Put a vertical grip in a pistol and posted it to instagram? Enjoy your time with the ATF. 10 years and $100k, assuming you're lax enough to not hire a lawyer to knock it down a bit. Literally volumes of ways to go to jail for shit you wouldn't even imagine would matter.

Many things people complain about aren't even a thing. Like complaining about buying guns online (you can't, not without an FFL involved), or crazy people buying guns (they can't, unless they've yet to be caught doing crazy shit).

Too many laws as it is. Erase a bunch first.

-scheherazade

newtboy said:

What anti gun legislation do you mean? All I know of is closing a few loopholes that allow people legally banned from gun ownership to obtain them anyway without background checks. I disagree that that is anti gun legislation, and across the board background checks are something a vast majority think is proper.

There's plenty of misinformation on this topic floating about. Is there other actual legislation in the works, or just rumors of other legislation the left will enact....and only according to the right?

newtboy (Member Profile)

Kurzgesagt - Is Organic Food Really Better or is It a Scam?

newtboy says...

Repeatedly, companies large and small have been caught passing conventionally grown vegetables as organic. When they get caught, they pay a fine that's far less than the profit they make, and then they move on with little notice.
Recently I read about a huge grain supplier (i think for general mills) that had been selling their conventional grain as organic for decades, so all the higher priced organic products made from it weren't actually organic, but there's no refund coming for customers.

This means store bought organic food is a Crap shoot at best.

If you want fresh, clean, eco friendly vegetables, grow your own. It's really the only way to be sure what you're getting.

Hypersonic Missile Nonproliferation

Mordhaus says...

The simple point is that as soon as we realized the capability of the Zero we easily and quickly designed a plane(s) capable of combating it.

The Yak-3 didn't enter the war until 1944, at which point the war had massively turned in Western Theatre. For the bulk of the conflict, they were using the Yak-1.

The Mig 25 and Mig 31 are both interceptors, they are designed to fire from distance and evade. The Su 35 is designed for Air Superiority. We have held the edge in our capabilities for years compared to them.

Every expert I know of is skeptical of China's claimed Railgun weapon. As to why they would bother mounting it and making claims, why not? It is brinkmanship, making us think they have more capabilities than they do.

The laser rifle is a crowd deterrent weapon. It would serve almost no purpose in infantry combat because it cannot kill. Yes, it can burn things and cause pain, but that is all. Again, this was claimed to be far more effective than experts think during our diplomatic arguments over China's use of blinding lasers on aircraft. We have no hard evidence of it's capability.

Yes, Russia could sell such a missile to our enemies versus using it directly against us. The problem is that as soon as they do so, the genie is out of the bottle. It will be reverse engineered quickly and could be USED AGAINST THEM. No country gives or sells away it's absolute top level weaponry except to it's most trusted allies. Allies which, for all intents and purposes, know that using such a weapon against another nation state risks full out retaliation against not only them but the country that sold it to them.

Our carriers are excellent mobile platforms, but they are not our only way of mounting air strikes. If we were somehow in a conventional war situation, we could easily fly over and base our aircraft in allied countries for combat. Most of our nuclear capable aircraft are not carrier launched anyway. Even if somehow all of our carriers were taken out and somehow our SAC bombers were destroyed as well, we would still have more than enough land launched and submarine launched nuclear warheads to easily blanket our enemies.

My points remain:

1. It is in the greatest interest of our enemies to boast about weapon capabilities even if they are not effective yet.

2. Most well regarded experts consider many of these weapons to either be still in the research stage, early production stage (IE not available for years), or they are wildly over hyped.

3. There is no logical reason for our enemies to use these weapons or proliferate them to their closest allies unless the weapons can prevent a nuclear response. Merely mentioning a weapon that would have such a capability creates a situation that could lead to nuclear war, like SDI did. I don't know if you recall, but I do clearly, how massively freaked out the Soviets got over our SDI claims. For two years they started threatening nuclear war as being inevitable if we continued on the path we were, all the while aggressively trying to destabilize our relations with our allies. 1983 to 1985 was pretty fucking tense, not Cuban missile crisis level maybe, but damn scary. Putin has acted similarly over our attempts to set up a missile barrier in former satellite states of Russia, although we still haven't got to the SHTF level of the early 80's.

scheherazade said:

The Zero's Chinese performance was ignored by the U.S. command prior to pearl harbor, dismissed as exaggeration. That's actually the crux of my point.

Exceptional moments do not change the rule.
Yes on occasion a wildcat would get swiss cheesed and not go down, but 99% of the time when swiss cheesed they went down.
Yes, there were wildcat aces that did fairly well (and Zero aces that did even better), but 99% of wildcat pilots were just trying to not get mauled.

Hellcat didn't enter combat till mid 1943, and it is the correction to the mistake. The F6F should have been the front line fighter at the start of the war... and could have been made sooner had Japanese tech not been ignored/dismissed as exaggeration.


Russian quantity as quality? At the start they were shot down at a higher ratio than the manufacturing counter ratio (by a lot). It was a white wash in favor of the Germans.
It took improvements in Russian tech to turn the tide in the air. Lend-lease only constituted about 10% of their air force at the peak. Russia had to improve their own forces, so they did. By the end, planes like the yak3 were par with the best.


The Mig31 is a slower Mig25 with a digital radar. Their version of the F14, not really ahead of the times, par maybe.

F15 is faster than either mig29 or Su27 (roughly Mig31 speed).
F16/F18, at altitude, are moderately slower, but a wash at sea level.

Why would they shoot and run?
We have awacs, we would know they are coming, so the only chance to shoot would be at max range. Max range shots are throw-away shots, they basically won't hit unless the target is unaware, which it won't be unaware because of the RWR. Just a slight turn and the missile can't follow after tens of miles of coasting and losing energy.


Chinese railgun is in sea trials, right now. Not some lab test. It wouldn't be on a ship without first having the gun proven, the mount proven, the fire control proven, stationary testing completed, etc.
2025 is the estimate for fleet wide usage.
Try finding a picture of a U.S. railgun aboard a U.S. ship.


Why would a laser rifle not work, when you can buy crap like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7baI2Nyi5rI
There's ones made in China, too : https://www.sanwulasers.com/customurl.aspx?type=Product&key=7wblue&shop=
That will light paper on fire ~instantly, and it's just a pitiful hand held laser pointer.
An actual weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than a handheld toy.
It's an excellent covert operations weapon, silently blinding and starting fires form kilometers away.


Russia does not need to sink a U.S. carrier for no reason.
And the U.S. has no interest in giving Russia proper a need to defend from a U.S. carrier. For the very reasons you mentioned.


What Russia can do is proliferate such a missile, and effectively deprecate the U.S. carrier group as a military unit.

We need carriers to get our air force to wherever we need it to be.
If everyone had these missiles, we would have no way to deliver our air force by naval means.

Russia has land access to Europe, Asia, Africa. They can send planes to anywhere they need to go, from land bases. Russia doesn't /need/ a navy.

Most of the planet does not have a navy worth sinking. It's just us. This is the kind of weapon that disproportionately affects us.

-scheherazade

Hypersonic Missile Nonproliferation

newtboy says...

All you mention are a far cry from sustained hypersonic powered atmospheric flight, which is what we're talking about here.

You mentioned a ramjet, but scramjet engines are hardly an incremental improvement, they're an entirely different class of jet engine. Ramjet engines only do around mach 2.5- 5, scramjets 4-8+ theoretically. What's needed for a viable weapon imo is the next iteration of dual mode ramjets that can do both with one engine, that's a long way off. Public scramjet engine tests have only been successful in a few short 5 second+- burns so far, launched with conventional solid rockets.

scheherazade said:

We have conventional missiles that hit hypersonic speeds for short periods. Aim54 fired at altitude checks that mark, and that's a 60's/70's tech missile.

The X15 did it manned, and that first flew in the late 1950's.

Why would Russia not be able to come up with something similar in the last half-century?


Re-entry from orbit is 4x hypersonic. Russia has plenty of experience with the effects.

The Russian p-270 was made in the 80's, and used a ramjet.
This new missile is an incremental improvement over tech they already posses. A higher speed ramjet missile. Hardly a stretch.

It's not like they are spamming the internet with updates just so you can see how they are doing.

-scheherazade



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