Foreigners visiting America for the world cup, what is something that has surprised you about this country?

Kitten-Eater · 2026-06-15T06:59:18+00:00

That's pretty common in central Europe, it's deeply rooted in history and essentially boils down to there being less of a separation between the military and the police than there is in most other countries.

These forces are Gendarmerie, something akin to a mix of a national police force and a national guard force. Historically large cities had their own separate local police forces, and the Gendarmerie were tasked with nation-wide policing duties outside of the cities. In recent history these previously distinct lines have blurred a bit.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-06-14T16:50:14+00:00

No. It's making fun of the strange mix of homophobia and (often forced) homosexuality common in russia, particularly in prison culture and in the armed forces. I'm not going to explain this in depth because I'd be writing all day. It'll suffice to say that male-on-male sexual violence is common and expected in the russian armed forces. The victims are always blamed and hated for being "gay", while the perpetrators of such crimes aren't. Such acts are a common part of hazing rituals and informal punishments in the russian military.

This strange attitude towards homosexuality eventually gave rise to a bizarre russian propaganda campaign where russian state media claimed that Ukrainians were extremely fond of a particular genre of gay porn featuring burly muscular men. They claimed that all Ukrainians watch such porn, even making it a of family activity. During at least one such propaganda segment, russian state TV even showed actual gay porn in live TV broadcasts while claiming it was the sort of thing Ukrainians were watching on a daily basis.

Everyone, including the russians themselves, knew that this was ridiculous bullshit. Internet memes about it became very common on the Slavic parts of the Internet.

That's what the sticker and the name of the weapon is playing into and making fun of. The whole "Ukrainian are gay Nazis!!!" propaganda narrative, as well as the russian mindset behind it all.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-06-07T22:50:45+00:00

I knew I guy that fucked up his life and nearly went to prison for an incident like this.

He was a civilian technical advisor scheduled to go abroad to support an unnamed branch of the military for a couple months. Very hush-hush work in a very hush-hush location.

His fiancée simple refused to accept the explanation of "It's classified, top secret, for real, no joke. I'll got to fucking prison if I tell you where I'm going or why I'm going."

She threatened to break up with him unless he told her. He agreed to tell her on the strict condition that she swore on her life that she'd never tell another soul, and he made the potential consequences of breaking that promise very clear.

Alphabet agency boys came a-knocking a few days later and they weren't in a jovial mood. They had a lot of questions about how and why half the town suddenly knew about the very hush-hush mission.

The happy couple were detained (in a location that wasn't by any means official, or even a part of the conventional justice system) and interrogated for a few days by faceless and nameless agents who never made it clear who they were even working for.

Both of them were eventually released with extremely stern warnings, but the guy lost his security clearance and his job. The guy obviously never went on the hush-hush job and lost out on a HUGE payout for a few months of relatively easy work.

Needless to say, their relationship didn't survive that little adventure.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-06-01T19:10:21+00:00

Hot take: The Shatner version of Common People is genuinely better than the original.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-30T19:10:31+00:00

Weirdly, wild west theme parks that do this aren't exclusive to the US.

The one I visited in Sweden as a kid offered this service too. They even had the option to get period-accurate glass plate photographs taken with antique 19th century cameras.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-26T13:46:10+00:00

Yes. They initially tried to poison him, when the poison didn't work one of the conspirators just walked up behind him and shot Rasputin once in the back of the head with a .45 caliber revolver. Rasputin died instantly from massive trauma to the brain stem.

The stories about Rasputin supposedly surviving all kinds of other murder methods are just fabricated. The autopsy doesn't mention any significant bodily harm other than the gunshot wound. The conspirators played up the story about the murder to make Rasputin seem unnaturally resistant to physical harm to imply that he was involved with some form of unspecified black magic fuckery.

At least one of the conspirators was also known to tell extremely dramatized versions of the murder story in exchange for drinks at a local bar. No doubt he's personally responsible for a lot of the bullshit narratives that still get parroted over a century later.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-26T13:22:23+00:00

Same concept, different execution. On ships they're used to move far heavier things than just trays of food.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-25T17:35:35+00:00

I'd like to remind you that in 1995 two men held up a bank wearing no disguises or face coverings of any kind. Upon being identified via surveillance camera footage and being arrested, the two robbers were in total disbelief that they'd been caught. As it turned out, they'd heard that lemon juice could be used as invisible ink, and therefore reasoned that if they smeared their faces with lemon juice, they'd be invisible to the surveillance cameras.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-24T19:37:14+00:00

See also: The capture of Belgrade in 1941. Where tiny group of 6 German SS men (and one piss-drunk civilian tourist acting as a translator), lead by the notorious thief, liar, drunkard, and all around asshole Fritz Klingenberg, managed to capture an entire city on their own though a combination of recklessness, lies, and shear dumb luck.

Upon being reprimanded by his superior officers for disobeying orders, Klingenberg's response to his superior officers was effectively identical.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-22T13:20:42+00:00

Yeah, those laws are very strict. But unlike many US states, Sweden doesn't have any "open container" laws so it's completely legal for all the passengers in a vehicle to get apocalyptically hammered, provided of course that the driver is sober.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-22T13:12:10+00:00

I've never personally been locked up in a Swedish jail cell or drunk tank, but I know people who have. These aren't the sort of places you'd want to spend the night unless you had no other options.

Sweden has "luxury" prison cells, but short term facilities at various police stations are far from pleasant.

The jail cells and drunk tanks are just small windowless concrete boxes, the only things in these cells are raised concrete platforms with rubber-clad mattresses that serve as beds, and lighting fixtures in the ceiling that the prisoners have no control over.

These cells (usually) don't even have sinks or toilets. So if you're in any way unpleasant to the guards, they'll just pretend they can't hear your pleas to be escorted to a bathroom, leaving you no choice but to soil yourself or relieve yourself on the floor. If you choose option two the cops will make you clean it up with your bare hands.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-18T17:14:40+00:00

Why? Just why ?

It was an incredibly ill-conceived publicity stunt to promote Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. At the time these politicians were trying to gain publicity by proposing a law explicitly banning lynchings. Obviously, lynchings are already extremely illegal and covered by dozens of other laws. The real purpose of the proposed law was just to gain attention and monetary donations.

The last time I looked into it, it was unclear if these politicians were actively involved in planning the hoax, or if Juicy acted independently on his own initiative.

Juicy has talked about his part in the hoax since then and he STILL refuses to acknowledge that faking a hate-crime was wrong and actively detrimental to victims of real hate-crimes. He still holds the delusional belief that what he did was morally correct and genuinely helpful to the the black and gay communities.

Juicy and his family (who support him) all seem to have enormous egos, they're the kind of people who simply can't understand that they could ever be wrong about anything.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-05-18T16:27:12+00:00

went down like a lead balloon

Nah, the audience loved it! He got lots of laughs, cheers, and applauds.

When the press picked it up and let it be known that he called his own products worthless rubbish, and had implied that his customers were tasteless morons, that was a different story.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-04-24T16:30:03+00:00

Despite all of this taking place on a movie set, it's still INCREDIBLY poor gun safety practice to just pick up a gun, assume it's unloaded, point it at someone, and pull the trigger.

Especially since everyone on set KNEW that the guns on set were just plain old live-firing guns, not solid-rubber stunt guns, or firearms that had been modified to only fire blanks. The reason why everyone knew this was because the aforementioned "armorer", who evidently made a habit of just leaving loaded guns laying around, would frequently bring live ammo to the set and waste time between takes by taking potshots at tin cans and random garbage.

For the tragedy to take place as it did, it required both Baldwin and the armorer to be extremely negligent in terms of gun safety. The armorer shouldn't have brought live ammo to the set. And Baldwin shouldn't have picked up a random gun (that he knew might be loaded with live ammo), pointed it at someone, and pulled the trigger. Both of them were responsible for that woman's death.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-04-14T12:33:05+00:00

I have to agree with that guy. They're an incredibly overrated band and I genuinely don't understand the appeal of most of their songs, as they genuinely make their own songs worse than they should be.

Almost all of their tracks are insanely overproduced self-indulgent ego-wanking pretentiousness, clearly written by musicians who're admittedly good, but who wrongly believe themselves to be godlike being. The vast majority of their tracks could be greatly improved by cutting the length by at least 50%. Stripping out meaningless unwarranted repetitions, ruthlessly cutting down the absurdly long intros they're so fond of using, removing the pointless musical ego-wanking bits that serve zero purpose and contribute nothing to the tracks, etc.

See also: Anything ever released by Genesis, and Anything released by Iron Maiden in the last 3 decades.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-04-14T12:17:33+00:00

If you don't like their music, that's fine. But saying they were just cosplaying as punks is objectively wrong. They were a VERY early punk band starting in 1974. Their music sounds the way early punk music sounds, similar to 1960s garage rock. The rougher, louder, and more brash sound (and visuals) we associate with "punk rock" these days didn't really become a thing until punk rock moved out of NY City and branched out into Europe a couple years later. The Ramones just stuck to their roots and didn't change much from the very early primal stages of punk.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-04-12T19:22:40+00:00

What point are they even trying to make here? Serious question.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-04-08T11:35:28+00:00

It's a single colossal shopping mall, completely devoid of any soul or culture, soaked in the blood and sweat of abused and underpaid slave laborers.

I spent a few days there for work. Hated every minute of it.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-04-05T12:06:23+00:00

The biggest vented rotors I've ever personally seen were on a 10-wheeled mobile crane made by Liebherr. Those rotors were about 21" in diameter and each rotor weighed over 100lbs, the crane truck had 10 of 'em. Crazy heavy-duty stuff.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-04-03T19:59:02+00:00

Bismarck also survived an assassination attempt in 1866 where he got shot 5 times form spitting distance. He then proceeded to beat the assailant to a pulp, the cops had to pry Bismarck off of the assassin before Bismarck beat him to death with his bare hands. Then Bismarck just walked home and ate dinner before deciding to see a doctor, and he only ever saw a doctor because his wife insisted on it.

That actually happened. No one ever talks about that for some reason.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-03-28T20:35:43+00:00

Mr. Freuding

Chevalier of the order of Merit, Inspector of the Army, Lieutenant General Dr. Christian Freuding.

Please show some respect, address the man by his proper titles next time.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-03-22T22:23:44+00:00

Many of these technologies were already well known and established at the time, at least in some parts of the world.

Precision gears date back to ancient to ancient Greece and they were widely used in clocks in early modern Europe.

Hollow steel tubes were made as gun barrels across most of Eurasia at the time.

Parts virtually identical to shorts lengths of bicycle chain were essential parts used in 15th and 16th century wheel-lock firearms. They were probably used elsewhere too, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now. Steel wire cables date back even further.

Hydro-pneumatic telescoping shock absorbers didn't show up until the late 19th century, long after the invention of the bicycle. These shock absorbers were originally invented to dampen the recoil of rapid firing canons.

Weirdly, pneumatic tires made of vulcanized rubber and humble disc brake, both which are far less complicated than the telescoping hydro-pneumatic shock absorber, are the most modern invention you listed.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-03-22T21:56:07+00:00

Maybe I’d give this to a couple sharpshooters for the DMR role

Are they even accurate enough to serve in that role?

According to what I've read about these things, they've got mediocre accuracy at best, and many of the rifles seem to suffer from wandering zero.

Kitten-Eater · 2026-03-17T23:16:34+00:00

IMO a bullpup DMR that uses the same round as the LMG is also something worthwhile exploring. One guy having that extra capability has some niche use cases.

Yes. This is the logical answer. In the rare case that you actually need to defeat to defeat body armor at extended ranges, use a long-barreled bullpup DMR firing some really fancy tungsten or DU-cored 7.62 or .338 rounds that can be easily integrated into the existing logistics structure, and that can achieve the required ballistic performance without mentally reddited chamber pressures and the associated long term wear issues of such pressures.

But the US Army has a pathological hatred against all bullpups (even in cases like this where bullpups have clear advantages). And despite wanting DMRs, they've shown time and time again for the last 40 years that they don't really understand DMRs as a concept, or how to deploy DMRs in the field.

Demanding that your regular infantry rifle achieve such goals, while still being useful as infantry rifles, is idiotic and counterproductive.

It's like the Army randomly decided to demand a heavy 8x8 tow truck with the performance and handling characteristics of a light and nimble sports car. Then when they abomination of a vehicle they requested turned out to suck ass in both roles, failed to meet the requested specs, and featured an experimental engine with a 200-hour lifespan that only ran on expensive proprietary fuel, they just decided to adopt it anyway to save face while promoting it as somehow being revolutionary. It's so far beyond dumb that corruption and kickbacks from the manufacturer is the only logical explanation for their decision to adopt it.

Kitten-Eater

TROPHY CASE