Avian flu thankfully didn’t become a major pandemic in times past due to luck and measures taken. But SARS in 2003 could have become a major pandemic… because COVID-19 is a variant of the 2003 SARS…

Sail ships continued to be used well into the 20th century. The absolute last purely sail powered warship served during WW1!

I never used X. I did half-assedly make an account in 2013 but I have long since deleted it. I have no real use for twitter.

So let me get this straight. Trump appointed some guy with minimal military and managerial experience as the defense secretary? Is that the same as Secretary of Defense? I am not surprised, I am just trying to fathom the stupidity of this current decision.

I thought this dipshit was arrested in Japan for trespassing, among other charges.

No idea. It’s an article I read. You can read it here.

The one scary thing about the holocaust is that while it did cause some problems in shipping supplies as you mentioned, it actually didn’t cost that much at all and even produced a profit. If I had to point to the ultimate evil of capitalism I wouldn’t point to the massive wasted food or environmental destruction. I would point to the death camps. They were remarkably cheap to run all things considered AND they paid for themselves AND made a profit.

I feel for some Nazi-like propaganda in times past, and I am PISSED at the people who tricked me and I will never forgive them. They weren’t born evil in some nefarious manner, I will agree, but they did fall for the same shit that anyone can fall for. This was the critical lesson that most people forget.

Also the depiction of Nazi Germany as this hyperadvanced tech nation also played a role in it. While the Germans did have some very interesting secret weapon projects, people don’t realize the following:

1: They were in trial stages and were often rushed into production well before the underlying technology was sufficient to make them operational. Meaning they would NOT have been able to turn the tide of the war no matter what.

2: The Germany military was seriously lacking in many BASIC components. They didn’t have enough trucks and automobiles to do most of their shit. The Americans were fully mechanized, on the other hand and had FAR more of the nuts and bolts needed to win the war.

3: Much of the secret weapons they tried to make were wastes of time and resources. If they had put their efforts onto the stuff that is needed to win they might have held out for longer, but their failure was their attempt to win by a magic bullet instead of real bullets.

4: The Allies also had their own secret weapons projects that were just as funky and cool as the Axis. The Allies had jets and radar controlled stuff, too (and need I mention THE ATOMIC BOMB!). The Allies even had operational jet fighter squadrons during the war, but they didn’t throw them at the enemy. Even the Soviet Union, a backwards nation compared to the UK and the US, had their own secret weapons projects, too. But Stalin, like Roosevelt and Churchill, realized that the war would not be won by magic bullets, but real bullets, and focused more on getting the basic needs of the military done.

In short the Nazis weren’t any more advanced with their tech. Their attempted use of fancy shit was done out of desperation and not an sign of better thinking.

I read on the news that Poutin threatened to invade 4 more countries. This is how ww2 got started. They just kept appeasing Hitler until they realized just far he would go. Also with every takeover the Germany military machine got a lot stronger. The take over of Czechoslovakia meant he took over all their military arsenal which was enough to arm several divisions.

Same here. Facebook I am still on only because of a handful of people I know are there.

I made a twitter account that I never used and I deactivated it yesterday. I didn’t have to, but I did anyway.

Yes, and those are on a slow day, too.

I mean it’s only because they didn’t give him exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it immediately and without any resistance that we got the war. He was the real oppressed one after all /s /s /s /s

Because I cannot emphasis enough that what I said above is sarcasm.

In times past, I was fascinated by Hitler and WW2. It was a lifelong obsession that I had since childhood. But ever since the Trump era started it started to wane due to the fact that WW2 and Hitler just didn’t seem so distant anymore… the world felt like a repeat of what was happening in those days and looking up facts felt, in part, like learning more to understand what is happening now instead of about history.

But if there is something that I need to point out is that Hitler was a SHIT leader. Germans and Germany ever since the Kaiser era were portrayed as hyperefficient and militaristic, and people then claim the Nazis were the same. They weren’t. Nazi bureaucracy was bullshit and most of their economic growth was based on plunder (initially from German Jews and other marginalized groups and later from other countries) and almost purely military build up. Germany actually lagged behind in technological build-up to most countries, despite the stereotypes of the Wunderwaffen of WW2 (Fritz-X bomb, the ME-262, etc), and industrially as any technology that didn’t have a direct military benefit was discarded. They didn’t even have any proper anti-biotics during the war!

Even agriculture was fucked by the Germans. Despite the romanticization of the German peasantry and the countryside by the Nazis, they could not sustain their population at all. Most German food was imported, and they were preparing their population for harsh wartime rationing even before the war started. They fed their population almost entirely on stolen food from Poland, France, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. Also by killing a lot of people in the death camps they saved on food that way as well.

People stereotype communist countries as having no food when they don’t realize that fascist nations just can’t feed their own folk. Nazi Germany wasn’t alone in having serious food problems. Imperial Japan couldn’t feed its own population and would have had widespread hunger if they didn’t start plundering China during the war.

Hitler lead Germans and Germany into death and destruction and misery and mayhem. He did nothing good for Germany. None at all. Even towards the end of the war he would have been OK with the German people being genocided since if they were defeated by the barbarian orc-like Soviets and the mongrel Americans they were not the master race he thought they were and they deserved to die. There is a reason why he is remembered as one of the world’s greatest monsters.

So 16 to 20 hours?

I am gonna get it.

There is a question of just how much better or worse human memory was in the old days. Some say it was better because there just aren’t that many things people need to remember, so they can remember what they consider to be important more easily.

Laws were generally far more rudementary and easier to remember. People didn’t need to remember as many numbers as we do now, and as a general rule, the amount of news and events that the average person contended with within their lifetimes was also far fewer. I remember learning a fact that the average amount of news and information a person gets in just one week today is actually more than what the typical farmer would get in their lifetimes. That is mind boggling when you think about it.

It’s like in 1984 where the Party blames all problems on Emmanuel Goldstein, and even if he was dead or long dead it was all the machinations that he put into place that is causing all their issues.

That’s why you never had kids… you were firing blanks!

This is why billionaires shouldn’t exist.

The other thing I need to mention is that is that Elon Musk is far from the only billionaire with a massively disproportionate influence on elections and society. Or even the biggest. He is just the biggest attention whore of them all.