Was it the head of the USDA withholding funds? I was under the impression that the administration said there were no funds, and then there was no way to release the funds, and then that it would be too complex to do so with any expediency.

Why are they appealing the ruling, do you think?

Is it? What is the more nuanced view?

Can you believe they lip synched on live TV!? What fraudsters!

The way I understand it, yes, Point Detonating rounds operate exactly like the 40mm rounds, which are supposed to have a 10 meter arming distance. But they’re not much more complicated than that.

That being said, CVT technology was certainly classified during world war 2. I think it’s even called “controlled variable timing” to make it sound more mechanical than it actually is. Interestingly, it’s part of the reason people think that carrots make eyesight better.

Hopefully I’m not misremembering, but when the Allies developed more miniaturized radar technology they wanted to keep it a secret from the Germans, and so started a rumor that the reason the Brits had such early warning for air raids was because the country was eating a lot of carrots due to rationing. Carrots, they said, are good for your eyes and can make them more acute.

In reality we were using radar, not only for early warning, but also for our anti-aircraft artillery. From what I recall, using the new radar-equipped CVT rounds took AA fire from 5% accuracy to nearly 40% accuracy, because the fuzes were no longer hand set.

I don’t know how strong CVT “radar” is, but I imagine it’s in the several yards range rather than some crazy distance that might make the round ineffective from long range. Actually, the “controlled” part is really just referring to the set arming distance of the fuze, which only needs to be long enough to get past any potential friendlies.

Ah, gotcha. Well, I appreciate the conversation regardless.

CVT rounds in the Navy are a generalist round, kinda used for everything. The idea is indeed proximity, but it works against all sorts of metal stuff, (including ground targets) with a supposed 50 yard kill radius, but I never got to see any of them land, so I’m going off of what little I can remember of various manuals.

Even the “dumb” point detonating fuzes worked on setback and spin, so the round actually has to be fired and in flight in order to arm.

I’ve never done 155mm artillery, but I assume it’s similar enough to naval artillery.

What kind of fuzes do they normally shoot, do you know? I think we always shot controlled variable time fuzes (that have point detonating backups, of course) and I’m struggling to imagine what would make a round explode in midair like that. They basically require a strong electromagnetic return from a nearby metal object in order to initiate. But maybe 155mm rounds are different, I don’t know.

I don’t think we ever shot over people’s heads, and any time we did have to shoot over a road (out at Cherry Point) it was closed off, because shit happens. If we did have to, we would use ordnance approved for OverHead Fire (OHF), which is just a fancy way of saying “highly reliable.”

And even then what the fuck is the benefit here versus the very obvious and severe risks?

It’s so crazy that 10 million subscribers is huge by YouTube standards but practically meaningless in the larger context.

That’s a good one. I like this guy’s series on the topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo

I don’t clap when planes land safely, but I’m sure I would celebrate if the train I was on landed safely!

Noooo, getting the bay leaf is lucky!

Didn’t I read somewhere that they were operating at a faster than normal pace?

Opportunity as a way to reframe a bad situation is a good argument. “Is English your first language” is a very poor argument. Merriam-Webster shows it as positive, Cambridge says between positive and neutral, and Oxford just says neutral. As a native English speaker I feel comfortable saying that the connotation of opportunity is generally positive.

Knowing very little about the national guard in particular, I would argue that the standards are there but the enforcement isn’t.

In the Navy, at least, physical training was never a serious priority except for more specialized commands. The standards were identical, but the commands where PT was emphasized were the only places where a majority of people were fit. There’s way more to it than just standards.

I don’t understand the motion sick part.

“Real name” is kind of a funny concept in this scenario

Dang, I always wondered…

I’ve only recently even heard of substack as some sort of social media platform. I’m almost afraid to ask, but what’s wrong with its owners?

In that case maybe the single chopstick was the first utensil…? I feel like a two-pronged stick would be ridiculed at first, much the way heliocentrism was. Imagine being the Copernicus of stick technology, lol

I went to a restaurant in Dallas near the stadiums where asking for “water, please” got us a glass bottle of whatever rich-people water they served.

Everything was expensive and the food was super whatever. It’s called Soy Cowboy, if anybody’s curious.

I would have sworn you were wrong, but I guess I assumed that it was around long before I learned the “correct” term for it. Turns out I just learned it at the same time everybody else did, basically.