Fun Fact Thread! (previously fun fact for the day, not limited to 1 per day anymore.)

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Maria Sirona said:

Fun fact: "peloton" in finnish means "fearless"

Another fun fact: the Donald Duck character Gyro Gearloose is called Pelle Peloton in Finland, literally meaning "Clown Fearless"

Giving an less flattering impression than Petter Smart in Norway, no translation needed here  

[DDE]

So, fun fact. See these?

These, as you probably know, are smoke grenade launchers, ubiquitous on armored fighting vehicles.

As you can probably notice, they're not exactly armored. And they're filled with highly flammable agents like phosphorus, and so when they get hit, they catch fire almost as well as if they were set off deliberately. This means that even a superficial hit can cause the target vehicle to disappear in a flash and a huge cloud of smoke, blinding it and leaving the other side proudly claiming a kill. Worse yet, it's been known to convince the vehicle's own crew that they've been badly hit and caused them to rout.

To my understanding, it's one of the reasons why the Israelis use the otherwise antiquated style of semi-internal multi-purpose 52 or 60 mm mortar on all their vehicles instead of banks of external launchers.

[darthgently]

When gale force winds decide a cruise ship is leaving, it is leaving.  One snapped line at a time.  The problem is that one line will always be under more tension than the others.  Some kind of dynamic load balancing snubbing system among the docks lines would be required for another result to have a chance

 

 

[kerbiloid]

12 hours ago, DDE said:

To my understanding, it's one of the reasons why the Israelis use the otherwise antiquated style of semi-internal multi-purpose 52 or 60 mm mortar on all their vehicles instead of banks of external launchers.

Aren't these things them?

Spoiler

 

[DDE]

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Aren't these things them?

  Hide contents

 

I think it's a Trophy launcher - you can see the radar "cheek" further to the right.

And the mortar port is still there:

[DDE]

Among the test subjects of Operation Plumbbob were four K-class airships.

Steampunk fans, beware.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Among the test subjects of Operation Plumbbob were four K-class airships.

Steampunk fans, beware.

Yeah - um... 

My first thought when someone says, "Nuclear War" has never been, "Run to the Zepplins!"

Edited January 11 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

18 hours ago, DDE said:

Among the test subjects of Operation Plumbbob were four K-class airships.

The disballooning starts at 02:25

Spoiler

 

 

The French nuka-tests were widely using the balloonukes.

(To carry the nukes, not to photograph them.)

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

The disballooning starts at 02:25

  Hide contents

 

 

The French nuka-tests were widely using the balloonukes.

(To carry the nukes, not to photograph them.)

Now I'm having Command & Conquer Red Alert! flashbacks.

[magnemoe]

On 1/11/2024 at 1:17 PM, DDE said:

I think it's a Trophy launcher - you can see the radar "cheek" further to the right.

And the mortar port is still there:

Now an benefit of the external smoke launchers is you press an button to launch and then reverse if under fire and in danger and panic. The mortar is more better and you can use it to fight infantry but it take time to set it up to fire in an direction and if you just got hit by an round from an tank you did not see can you can not just pop smoke and move before he reload. Stuff exploding on the outside of the tank is not an life and death issue.  

[magnemoe]

18 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Yeah - um... 

My first thought when someone says, "Nuclear War" has never been, "Run to the Zepplins!"

Yes, Bikini island tests showed that heavy armored ships like battleships was very resistant to nuclear bombs, so much that the ships got so much neutron  radiation they was dangerous to board before they sunk. 
Unarmored stuff like radars and most optical range finders got trashed so ships was no longer combat effective in an WW 2 environment but they survived. 
For airships storms are very dangerous. 

[darthgently]

Noice

 

 

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

Noice

 

 

May I propose the nickname "Swordbird?"

[kerbiloid]

I suggest "Woody Woodpecker".

And instead of the sonic boom, the people below will hear that idiotic laughter from above.

[kerbiloid]

Just recalled.
From the pikabu forum, several months ago.

The best explanation of several controversial theories at once (flat vs spherical Earth, oil origin, humans vs dinosaurs, dino killer), which I ever met.

"Originally the Earth was flat and round.
Humans were living on one side, dinosaurs on the opposite one.
They were meeting each other, but not often.
When the dino-killer asteroid had hit the (flat) Earth at the dino side, it curled up into a sphere, wrapping around the dinosaurs.
Now the humans are living on the outer surface of the sphere, drilling it, and pumping out oil, made out of the buried dinosaurs inside."

Still can't see a weak place in this theory...

Edited January 14 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

51 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

can't see a weak place in this theory

Doesn't explain why Sasquatch is blurry 

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Doesn't explain why Sasquatch is blurry 

The sas quatch is out of its scope, but I guess this word spelling is doing it instead.

[DDE]

LBJ spammed other heads of state with the Earthrise photo (who wouldn't).

One of the responses were... highly unlikely.

[darthgently]

38 minutes ago, DDE said:

LBJ spammed other heads of state with the Earthrise photo (who wouldn't).

One of the responses were... highly unlikely.

For a short moment, historically, those photos really did inspire people everywhere into a sense of increased unity.  For a time, anyway.

Thanks for posting this; very unique compared to a lot of internet fare 

Edited January 15 by darthgently

[magnemoe]

On 1/14/2024 at 1:46 PM, kerbiloid said:

Just recalled.
From the pikabu forum, several months ago.

The best explanation of several controversial theories at once (flat vs spherical Earth, oil origin, humans vs dinosaurs, dino killer), which I ever met.

"Originally the Earth was flat and round.
Humans were living on one side, dinosaurs on the opposite one.
They were meeting each other, but not often.
When the dino-killer asteroid had hit the (flat) Earth at the dino side, it curled up into a sphere, wrapping around the dinosaurs.
Now the humans are living on the outer surface of the sphere, drilling it, and pumping out oil, made out of the buried dinosaurs inside."

Still can't see a weak place in this theory...

Reminds me of Tolkien  fall on Numenor. Earth changed from flat to an sphere who drowned Numenor. Elven ships sailing to the west don't follow the curve of the earth but travel straight and reach the elven lands.  This raises some question about sailing boats with no water to offset the force of the wind and the small issue that stuff like this is likely to release some magnitudes of more energy than the impact who formed the moon. 

[DDE]

Eurodollars. Not as in Cyberpunk currency but as the phenomenon of USD accounts and deposits in non-US banks, facilitated by such a bank holding a correspondent account with a US bank. It's how much of the capitalist world economy runs to this day.

And it was invented by the Reds.

Details vary whether it was the treat of sanctions against China over Korea or against USSR over Hungary, but in the 1950s one of the earliest, if not the first such schemes were hatched by Soviet-owned European banks to theoretically move "red" USD out of the US (as you can see, back then the sanctions were not terribly sophisticated). The Soviets then worked on creating a greater market for dollar deposits in Southern Europe to better use their dollar cash, and are even understood to have propped up London's financial industry when it in turn was clobbered by sanctions over the Suez Crisis.

Eurodollars are in turn a core enabler of the concept of offshore finance, although the US and Britain have domestic offshore subjurisdictions as well. And then, once Comecon fell and there was no alternative to the now-dollarized world...

"Ivan, are we the capitalists?"

[darthgently]

Approach Statistical Mechanics cautiously ...

 

 

Edited January 22 by darthgently

[AckSed]

After one payload specialist on the Shuttle said if his experiment didn't work he "wasn't coming home", commanders began locking the hatch: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/solving-a-nasa-mystery-why-did-space-shuttle-commanders-lock-the-hatch/

Key takeaways here:

The Shuttle's hatch doubled as an escape system, and so it could be opened with a single lever. That it still worked while the crew were in orbit, and would have spaced the whole crew if opened, is alarming to say the least. 'Do not do this thing' is only mostly fine when everyone has the same level of training.

Screening everyone for "the right stuff" will not be feasible with greater access to space. Mental health in a high-stress environment must be addressed yesterday.

Designing safety systems to be safe when someone panics is damn hard.

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, AckSed said:

After one payload specialist on the Shuttle said if his experiment didn't work he "wasn't coming home", commanders began locking the hatch: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/solving-a-nasa-mystery-why-did-space-shuttle-commanders-lock-the-hatch/

Key takeaways here:

The Shuttle's hatch doubled as an escape system, and so it could be opened with a single lever. That it still worked while the crew were in orbit, and would have spaced the whole crew if opened, is alarming to say the least. 'Do not do this thing' is only mostly fine when everyone has the same level of training.

Screening everyone for "the right stuff" will not be feasible with greater access to space. Mental health in a high-stress environment must be addressed yesterday.

Designing safety systems to be safe when someone panics is damn hard.

There were a lot of systems on the Shuttle that were (obviously) designed in the 1970s. It was a time when a lot of assumptions were made about how normal people behaved, and what was considered to be "safe".

[SunlitZelkova]

5 hours ago, AckSed said:

After one payload specialist on the Shuttle said if his experiment didn't work he "wasn't coming home", commanders began locking the hatch: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/solving-a-nasa-mystery-why-did-space-shuttle-commanders-lock-the-hatch/

Key takeaways here:

The Shuttle's hatch doubled as an escape system, and so it could be opened with a single lever. That it still worked while the crew were in orbit, and would have spaced the whole crew if opened, is alarming to say the least. 'Do not do this thing' is only mostly fine when everyone has the same level of training.

Screening everyone for "the right stuff" will not be feasible with greater access to space. Mental health in a high-stress environment must be addressed yesterday.

Designing safety systems to be safe when someone panics is damn hard.

This is a problem with airliners too to some extent. Before the door plug incident, Portland International Airport had another incident in which a depressed, off duty Alaska pilot took drugs and then tried to seize control of a plane. He's now on trial and claims he doesn't remember any of it.