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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
Panjandrum: The 'giant firework' built to break Hitler's Atlantic Wall
arandomusername wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
[flagged]
tomhow wrote 2 hours 26 min ago:
We detached this subthread from [1] and marked it off topic.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44219711
veqq wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
> 90 percent of the American people stated that they would rather
loose [sic] the war than give full equality to the American Negroes
from Greenberg's Troubling the Waters about Black-Jewish relations.
FridayoLeary wrote 2 hours 20 min ago:
it's unfair to hold people from the past to our moral standards.
I'm sure that in 50 years they will be appalled at some of the
things we do. Society progresses. Hopefully.
elephant81 wrote 4 hours 42 min ago:
[1] Tyler Cowen posted this last week, I was completely shocked by
it. Worth reading on the state of the UK in general.
[1]: https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?utm_medium=ios
mhh__ wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
[flagged]
OJFord wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
Surely you have also to act on it in some way?
I don't agree with the 'ideology' but I don't find it totally
unreasonable or objectionable.
And surely even 'everyone who doesn't worship X and abstain from Y
and live according to text Z is living in sin' is... That's just an
ideology, that's fine, it's not terrorist until you do some sort of
destructive act in its name or try to enforce it somehow?
Some context lost in the linked article I think, not having read
into it.
typewithrhythm wrote 3 hours 13 min ago:
The context is that the UK government has extremely wide reaching
powers to fine or imprison based on online speech, with much of
the wording of these laws being contrived as anti terror. So by
classifying a position as terrorist ideology, they can apply
these laws and chill opposition.
mhh__ wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
I'm exaggerating obviously, you're not automatically considered a
terrorist now, but I want to draw attention to the fact that this
is the avowed view of the british state.
That particular organisation is particularly batshit in that they
have e.g. published guidance that watching (say) TV shows about
politics or railway journeys could mean you're harbouring
dangerous right wing views! [1] All in all it's a (deep) state (I
mean deep in the sense that we can't see it rather than in a
conspiratorial sense) that basically accidentally enacted a huge
cultural revolution in the 90s, got away with it for a while, now
has nothing to show for it, knows everyone now knows this, and is
hedging.
We do not have free speech anymore because of this e.g. see this
case of a man having his home raided while police officers
rummage through his books - "very Brexity things". Brexit got a
majority in a referendum! (which fwiw I was at the time and sort
of still am against but they won) [2] The english middle classes
despise their worse offs, but are quite fond of similar people
from afar.
Oikophobia, basically.
Unless we get out of this (and we probably won't) there will
basically be a "gradually, then suddenly" transition to a very,
very, different society as the boomers die off, and then probably
a civil war over the scraps.
[1]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11764775/Yes-Mi...
[2]: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2053511/pensioner-arre...
sevensor wrote 5 hours 19 min ago:
Nevil Shute is worth a read. Best known for On The Beach, probably, but
I enjoyed Round the Bend more.
emmelaich wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
[1] A Town Like Alice is probably the most popular in Australia,
where he resided after the war. Also made into a good movie.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevil_Shute
icameron wrote 5 hours 55 min ago:
There’s good footage of actual tests about 40 seconds into this
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJQqXXENYsI
kjellsbells wrote 6 hours 49 min ago:
As the ww2 generation passes on, it's easy to forget the degree of
utter, total mobilization that went on in the British Isles during the
war. I'm always struck by how easy it is to hike into some remote part
of the UK and learn that the parish school was a training ground for
Italian resistance fighters or that some park in remote scotland was
where they trained commandos. Perhaps its because the country is quite
small, and they had to use every inch, but it always seems remarkable.
I think the notion of odd, but brilliant, boffin is deeply embedded in
British culture. Or was, until at least the 2000s. The Great Egg Race
on TV being a fine example.
mhh__ wrote 5 hours 7 min ago:
> As the ww2 generation passes on,
I was at a picnic recently that happened to be on VE day, it really
struck me that now London is only about 35% or so English as the ww2
generation would've known it, almost no one has a particularly good
reason to bother paying attention. I'm sure I was the only person
there who knows who Barnes Wallis was.
And yes I miss the boffins. They do still sort of exist but that type
of mind has been strangled by the last few decades drive towards
left-brained processes where everything basically has to be nailed
down before the work actually starts.
That latter point is one reason why we're struggling so much - we owe
a great debt to the generations who built all the infrastructure and
housing. We didn't pay it off, we now can't really do anything at
scale other than extract rent. The victorians were building a HS2
every few years.
jameshart wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
Not sure the WW2 generation would be all too comfortable with you
looking around and making a snap judgement based solely on
appearances that some of the people around you have a lesser right
to call themselves ‘English’ than you because you assume none
of them know who Barnes Wallace is.
mhh__ wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
I'm not assuming, I asked; they wouldn't call themselves english
anyway. Almost no one does anymore anyway, I don't.
aerostable_slug wrote 5 hours 21 min ago:
Various infantry bunkers laying about are also a reminder, but what
really gets me are the bonkers last-ditch defensive weapons you can
still find in places, like preset positions for flame fougasse
batteries: [1] They speak to the particular combination of
desperation, urgency, and ingenuity found in the UK at that time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_fougasse
FridayoLeary wrote 6 hours 26 min ago:
What i find even more remarkable is how every town, village, school
and institution have memorials for those who lost their lives in the
Great War. Usually there is another plaque attached in memory of
WW2. It's hard to imagine the scale of deaths.
The tragedy is how little was accomplished by the sacrifices of ww1.
It had none of the moral clarity of ww2 nor did most of the deaths
achieve any strategic purpose.
On the other hand i knew an old scientist who had quite a few
interesting and amusing stories to share about his efforts in WW2.
One of them was about his attempts to perfect a formala. Several
factories exploded before they succeeded.
jltsiren wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
There was moral clarity in West and South Europe. But if you
happened to be in East Europe, WW2 was primarily a war between
nazism and communism. Everyone else was trying to find the least
bad option, which usually meant choosing a side and switching it at
least once.
FridayoLeary wrote 2 hours 43 min ago:
I don't know if the eastern european countries besides maybe ussr
count. Many many polish, ukrainian and lithuanians
enthusiastically helped the germans in carrying out the
holocaust.
sorcerer-mar wrote 5 hours 51 min ago:
It's worth pointing out explicitly that WW2 didn't have the moral
clarity that it does today either. The vast majority of the western
world was perfectly content to let Hitler run Europe and Japan to
run Asia.
FridayoLeary wrote 3 hours 10 min ago:
To an extent you are right. ww1 made much more sense at the time
then it does today. And it wasn't as clear during ww2 that it was
in fact the greatest conflict of good vs evil ever.
The extent of the German and Japanese atrocities only became
clear after the war and they were so great that even the Soviet
Union were on the side of the angels.
I wouldn't say they were perfectly content. It was more that they
were cowardly and apathetic.
MattPalmer1086 wrote 5 hours 45 min ago:
What do you define as the vast majority of the western world?
Just the US?
sorcerer-mar wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
Literally not one country initiated combat against Nazi Germany
before being attacked itself.
Churchill stands virtually alone as one with moral clarity on
the Nazis.
USSR allied with them. France was fine seeing everyone else get
rolled. Poland signed a nonaggression pact. The British
parliament were generally happy to let Hitler have his way.
How about instead, you tell me who you think went out of their
way to combat Nazism?
nocoiner wrote 6 hours 43 min ago:
You would probably enjoy the book “Backroom Boys” by Francis
Spufford.
KineticLensman wrote 7 hours 4 min ago:
There's a recreation of a Panjandrum in the iconic UK WW2-set comedy
'Dad's Army' [0] which captures the essential nuttiness of the real
device
[0]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_and_Round_Went_the_Great_B...
daverol wrote 7 hours 8 min ago:
I always preferred the thinking behind the 'Conundrum' used in
Operation Pluto. No big bangs but excellent logistics - see
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pluto
the__alchemist wrote 7 hours 22 min ago:
Panjandrum: Fraa Orolo’s pejorative term for a high-ranking official
of the Sæcular Power.
ben_ja_min wrote 6 hours 32 min ago:
Thank you for this. I was going nuts trying to figure out where I had
read this before. Peace and love! For the uninitiated, the Neil
Stephenson novel, "Anathem", is brilliant and extremely entertaining.
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
And if you enjoyed that you'd possibly enjoy The Glass Bead Game
lelandfe wrote 7 hours 6 min ago:
Stephenson enjoys the word. He also used it in Cryptonomicon. I keep
a running list of new words I encounter and share them online
occasionally. Someone once recognized I was reading Cryptonomicon
just from a string of those new words, lol.
Rebelgecko wrote 6 hours 16 min ago:
I had a pretty good list for Polostan
KineticLensman wrote 7 hours 1 min ago:
If you enjoy encountering new words and phrases such as 'theurgic
vermin' then you might like China Miéville’s Kraken. I had to
read it with a copy of the OED and Wikipedia to get the most from
it.
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