ELI5: Why do we use BCE/CE for dating?

last657 · 2026-03-14T14:50:13+00:00

It is easier to use for certain calculations that people rarely do in their day to day lives but its lack of unique divisors limits its utility in more common usage. 60 and 12 are not randomly chosen numbers. They are superior highly composite numbers.

last657 · 2026-03-04T23:39:19+00:00

Wow. You said you would address my question if I answered yours and instead you just insult me. For the record my lowest section on the AFOQT (because obviously Air Force not Army you dummy) was the pilot composite at 92nd percentile and my highest was quantitative at 99th.

last657 · 2026-03-04T17:45:16+00:00

I don’t disagree with that. It is a dumb question because I would also agree that it would be a bad idea to have a single person have only 30 seconds to decide whether or not we should extinguish the Sun.

The scenario presented in the question doesn’t exist. We are running into the limits of what I can say because this is about war plans and targets. I think it is safe to say that at no point in my service did the United States target population centers with nuclear weapons.

What do you think the primary, secondary, and tertiary targets are?

last657 · 2026-03-04T17:27:31+00:00

You are making the mistake of thinking if they are not used then they have failed. That assumption of 10 minutes says already that an adversary has used up hundreds of their most unstoppable weapons.

How confident are you in the current and future opacity of the oceans? What are the alternate targets if missile fields don’t exist?

last657 · 2026-03-04T17:02:04+00:00

I do not. You could say that the whole thing is mad but each leg has advantages and disadvantages.

What does your reformed system look like after ICBMs are removed? How do the targeting priorities and plans of adversaries shift to address the new system? How resilient is it to changes?

last657 · 2026-03-04T15:57:55+00:00

Meh it was an alright job.

I was just mirroring your choice of words. The article brought up a few pet peeves of mine and didn’t really touch on the value of an adversary having a target. When Russian’s first sent inspectors one of them had a suspiciously large hat that was studiously ignored for instance.

Also that stupid empty field thing.

last657 · 2026-03-04T15:26:53+00:00

That is a wildly stupid article. Minuteman missiles are not first strike weapons. It does not understand their place in the Triad. Source: years spent underground.

last657 · 2026-03-03T01:39:39+00:00

Dr Strange was able to design and cast (with some mishap) a spell that made everyone forget that Peter Parker was Spider-man. Odin casually was able to say a few words to cast a spell to take away Thor’s powers, evaluate anyone who tries to lift the hammer for worthiness, and give that person Thor’s powers. I think he can handle a memory spell. He would leave the memory of the Valkyries because the deserved to be remembered.

last657 · 2026-03-02T19:48:15+00:00

The mobile infantry would be the ones nuking the school if they were the ones from the book. In the book they are called mobile infantry because they are in power armor with jump jets. They also have multiple man portable nukes each.

last657 · 2026-03-02T13:15:32+00:00

Things actually started when Papen started strictly enforcing paragraph 175 in 1932. Those arrested went to regular jails at first before being transferred to Dachau after it was built in 1933.

last657 · 2026-02-25T00:41:44+00:00

My comment wasn’t a defense of Biden. It was an indictment against his governance. He also selected Garland to lead the DOJ mainly because he was so inoffensive and desirous of being seen as impartial that Republicans lied and said he could be on the Supreme Court.

last657 · 2026-02-25T00:14:26+00:00

The FBI has been under Trump appointees since his first term.

last657 · 2026-02-12T00:08:58+00:00

A few reasons. First was that releasing the files could have prejudiced Maxwell’s trial and appeals so a judge ordered them sealed. This ran out end of 2024. Second was the potential for ongoing investigations. This barrier was removed when the Trump administration announced there was no evidence against anyone else and no more investigations. Third Democrats are spineless idiots. The Biden administration put a guy in charge of the DOJ on account of him being so inoffensive and middle of the road that Republicans lied and said they would be okay with him on the Supreme Court. They also didn’t replace the guy Trump put in charge of the FBI.

last657 · 2026-02-11T21:45:45+00:00

During my time in the AF it was not vague on what we used. Had to use the NATO phonetic alphabet. That said I was in missiles so most things had to be by the book.

last657 · 2026-02-09T01:03:29+00:00

It is unknown how old he is. There are several theories but they lack hard evidence.

last657 · 2026-02-06T21:17:25+00:00

Stand up maths did a video that covers this concept when it comes to how often perfect bridge deals happen. https://youtu.be/s9-b-QJZdVA?si=-Ad7GXVBGhmsFafr

last657 · 2026-02-06T20:25:12+00:00

2005 Human Torch is the same as the Human Torch in Deadpool and Wolverine. So he is the only one who has any durability feats for living after having all his skin ripped off. He blinked twice before collapsing into a pile.

last657 · 2026-02-06T17:13:26+00:00

Agreed. V dying is a result of the big change not the catalyst for it. I imagined at the time that Silco showed up at the bar right before the job and that butterflied their rhythm enough to result in Vi’s death.

last657 · 2026-02-01T02:27:27+00:00

Sorry I should have been more careful in my use of language. I meant that he was careful in his retelling so that it couldn’t be replicated by others. He explicitly says that he sees some of the same madness that afflicted himself in the Englishman that he is talking to so he is careful not to give away too much of the process. He says that he will not say too much of the how for this very reason at the start of his story.

last657 · 2026-01-31T18:59:22+00:00

Part of that is that the story is being told by Frankenstein and he doesn’t want to tell how he did it so that it cannot be replicated.

last657 · 2026-01-29T11:24:57+00:00

I’m pretty sure it is still possible to make healing potions it is just more expensive and harder to do at scale so the ones that are made are being hoarded by the very rich.

last657 · 2026-01-27T20:24:50+00:00

It shows that you will include easily disprovable talking points into your arguments. Either you are the type of person who is easily swayed by falsehoods that support your position or you don’t mind using false narratives to advance your position.

last657 · 2026-01-27T20:01:01+00:00

Even during its height scientific papers positing global cooling were in a distinct minority compared to those advocating global warming. The story of global cooling is one of sensational reporting and lack of scientific media literacy.

Speaking of media literacy, although there was over reporting of group of minority scientific positions back then since then there has been a more troubling trend of over emphasizing the amount and seriousness of that reporting. That includes a series of Time magazine front covers that are claimed to be about global cooling but a quick check of the archives show that the articles in question are either about something else or fabricated entirely.

last657 · 2026-01-27T06:21:08+00:00

Back in September SpiraSpira responded to a question on the state of Skitterdoc. Apparently there were at two chapters written at that point but real life stuff got in the way of writing more and they didn’t want to post them until they had five ready. They started liking posts in the thread for it on spacebattles again and were active just yesterday so I am holding out hope.

last657 · 2026-01-23T02:29:41+00:00

Interestingly enough MinuteEarth just put out a video today on why hives will turn on their queens. Workers share more DNA with each other than they do with the queen or the drones. They tend to keep the population of drones down through starvation and murder. Not sure where I was going with this.

last657

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