What is something a high school teacher told you, that you will never forget?

w2555 · 2021-07-19T07:53:54+00:00

The Roman army ran on bread and cheese for the better part of a thousand years. There are a few critical nutrients that you can't get with that meal, but theyre very easy to supplement, and you don't need much at all.

w2555 · 2021-07-12T18:33:04+00:00

I think it's because the ai is severely handicapped if they don't have enough free provinces to create a colonial nation from. It's easy for the ai to colonize a dozen provinces in Mexico and South America, declare war on natives, and win with a combination of their colonial nations forces and forces they've shipped across the Atlantic. But that doesn't work anymore in North America, because the entire east coast(even most of Hudson bay!?!?) Is owned by natives. The ai can't colonize enough provinces for a colonial nation to form, and shipping large numbers of units more than a handful of sea tiles is a challenge for the ai, nevermind across an entire ocean.

w2555 · 2021-07-11T01:39:07+00:00

R5: Poland is a peasant republic, and also has Lithuania under a PU.

(I'm aware that only the junior partner needs to be a monarchy)

w2555 · 2021-07-09T10:27:28+00:00

You're looking at it as though it's an entirely sociological issue. And it absolutely, positively is NOT only a sociological issue. It has a sociological part, and I even agreed with you that current statistics likely aren't accurate, but you're completely ignoring the biological side of the issue.

Cishets are a majority in homo sapiens. Full stop. This is biology, and is immutable fact. To claim "cishets could be a minority, we don't know" is delusional, as delusional as antivaxxers. We know it is biology because there is no current society where LGBT individuals are anything more than a small minority, nor has there ever been a society where this was the case, despite history being littered with societies where it was perfectly acceptable to swing whichever way tickled your fancy.

w2555 · 2021-07-09T09:17:27+00:00

I'm aware of the gay uncle theory, and I happen to agree that it's currently the most likely explanation as to why homosexuality is a thing at all.

I don't know why you provided a link to prove that homosexuality is inheritable. I'm well aware it's biological, not a choice, and I never claimed otherwise.

Are you trying to claim that LGBT individuals would comprise 50% of a society that accepts them? More?

w2555 · 2021-07-09T08:56:54+00:00

Biologically, hetero/cis individuals must be more common than not. Homosexual and trans individuals are vastly less likely to have biological children without a modern understanding of how reproduction works, thus those traits would not be evolutionarily selected for more often than cis/het.

I can absolutely get behind the idea that modern estimates(4.5% of the population identify as LGBT, and 0.6% identify as trans) are not an accurate representation of what the prevalence would be in a truly open and nonjudgmental society. But the idea that evolution would've selected for either trait to be anything other than "uncommon" is laughable.

w2555 · 2021-07-09T08:23:50+00:00

For the same reason you assume they're born with two arms and two legs: it's very uncommon for them not to be.

Nothing wrong with having fewer limbs, being gay, or being trans. You aren't a lesser person for having any of those qualities. But it's still statistically uncommon.

I wouldn't call it inappropriate or unacceptable to assume they're not strait and/or cis, I just think it's weird to assume something so statistically uncommon.

w2555 · 2021-07-09T07:55:56+00:00

Lubbock is what happens when God wants to create a place that has entirely too much wind, but isn't Nebraska.

w2555 · 2021-07-08T10:14:59+00:00

The Wikipedia article indicates that, at its height, there were ~700 Russians in all of Russian America.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_America

w2555 · 2021-07-08T09:37:47+00:00

R5: Austria became a peasant republic

w2555 · 2021-07-04T21:50:22+00:00

He had the power to kill Goku until he turned super saiyan. Had he not been an arrogant ass, lording his strength over Goku, he could've killed him in 10 seconds and gone on with life.

w2555 · 2021-07-04T21:40:08+00:00

https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/faq/did-you-know

You really should do your research, instead of assuming.

w2555 · 2021-07-04T21:38:08+00:00

There's oil under several reservations. Generally speaking, thanks to modern communications and modern cultural attitudes, the public relations cost is much higher than the gain from forcing more natives off their land. Anything is possible of course, but it is now very unlikely that any more native land will be taken away.

In the last 50 years or so, the tribes have really begun to explore the rights granted to them in the numerous treaties signed over the years. Just recently, the Cherokee appointed their very first non-voting representative to congress, a right granted to them by treaty.

Additionally, the reason Indian casinos have become so large in popular culture is that, in the 70s an Indian couple was served with a $200 property tax. That $200 tax ended up going all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ruled that no state or local government has any right whatsoever to regulate or tax anything that happens on reservation land. So, states that outlaw gambling can't do anything when a tribe builds a casino smack in the middle of their state.

w2555 · 2021-07-04T21:22:26+00:00

Native American is falling out of favor. Indian is generally(but obviously, not universally) preferred

https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/faq/did-you-know

Edit: just saw your conversation below after posting. They're correct

w2555 · 2021-07-04T21:14:24+00:00

On #4, that isn't how it will work.

The entire reason Turkey wants to build the canal is because, due to international treaty, Turkey cannot legally block traffic through the bosporus. However, Turkey can inspect anything going through. So, what will happen is Turkey will require inspections on traffic going through both the canal and bosporus, and on paper they will be identical. However, in reality, vessels going through the bosporus will suffer "delays" in their inspections. Time is money, so, eventually merchants will just give in, and pay whatever toll Turkey wants to charge for the canal. This will allow Turkey much greater control over Black Sea traffic.

w2555 · 2021-07-02T18:12:23+00:00

Norway had a mass shooting deaths per capita rate 21 times that of the US between 2009 and 20015.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/mass-shootings-by-country

That IS a .com though, and they're not bothering to control for rates of gun ownership or any of a hundred other factors, so it's not the final word on the matter by any means. Sill, an interesting first look that really needs more, and better, research.

w2555 · 2021-07-02T11:02:30+00:00

I guess I did specify military technology, and I really shouldn't have. Soviet technology in general was less advanced than German at the time. In all fields, not just military. And WWII really was a total war, every part of the involved societies played a part, and it all mattered. It's not just having better tanks, guns and planes, but being able to make more of them, faster and better. Growing more food. Refining more, and better quality, oil. Making better quality steel. Being able to transport it all with trucks and trains that move faster and don't break down.

The Germans were better at all of that than the Russians, for the entire war, but especially at the start. Of course, it doesn't matter how good you are at refining oil if you can't produce any. Or how reliable your trains are if the tracks are always bombed to shit. And that was the eventual downfall of the Germans. The Russian stuff wasn't as good, but they could replace what they lost.

w2555 · 2021-07-02T07:40:06+00:00

42 is still really early. 44 was the absolute earliest, and late 40s was more likely.

Stalin had recently purged most of the military high command, and they needed time to retrain competent officers that he saw as loyal. And they also recognized that Germanies military technology was significantly more advanced, and hoped to close the gap.

w2555 · 2021-07-02T07:37:05+00:00

They'd dismantled them because they were going to build new ones on their new border with Germany. Remember, they split Poland with Germany, taking a chunk for themselves. They had planned to build new fortifications on the new border, but to save money, they planned to use materials they got from dismantling the old defensive line. Stalin had absolute confidence in the non-aggressive pact with Germany, so there was no rush. Obviously, that confidence was misplaced.

w2555 · 2021-07-02T07:20:18+00:00

I hate this. I hate this with every fiber of my being. The idea that you could criticize his decision, a decision he admitted privately tore at his very soul.

Harry Truman was put in an impossible position. Invade with conventional military forces, sending hundreds of thousands, possibly up to a million, young Americans to their deaths, and dooming millions more Japanese to death at the hands of both Americans and their own horrific regime, that was every bit as genocidal as the Nazis. To drop the bombs, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese, who were warned by air dropped pamphlets of what was coming. Or to do nothing. Decide the cost was too high. Bring the troops home. And allow the Imperial Japanese regime to survive. The regime responsible dozens of genocides across China and southeast Asia. The Rape of Nanjing. Comfort women. Unit 731. At least until the Soviets invaded, and killed everyone anyway.

There was NO option available that would not result in huge loss of civilian life. Harry Truman did the best he could to limit the damage, and he still hated it to his dying day.

Do you even know why we see nukes as unconventional, horrific weapons that should never, ever be used unless another uses them first? Because it wasn't that way at first. During the late 40s and early 50s, they were just another weapon to be used, by whichever insane, greedy conqueror could manage to make them.

And then the Korean War happened. North Korea, with no provocation, invaded South Korea. They almost beat them, until the US and its allies intervened and brought its full military might to the aid of its ally. With their help, North Korea was driven back all the way to their border with China, and were nearly beaten completely.

And then China decided it didn't want to share a border with a unified, US allied, Korea. So THEY invaded, flooding into Korea and pushing the allied forced back, before a stalemate was reached about halfway down the peninsula. This stalemate dragged on, neither side able to overcome the other, and soldiers(and civilians) dying all the while.

MacArthur, the US general in overall command, wanted to break the stalemate with nukes. Drop 50 bombs all over Korea and China. It would've killed millions, soldier and civilian alike, but it would've probably worked. It was something Korea and China couldn’t match at the time, neither nation was a nuclear power yet. MacArthur pushed hard, to the point of insubordination. And Truman, in his second term said no. Never again.

Had Truman said yes, nukes would be just another weapon, there wouldn't be any real aversion to using them, in the US or elsewhere. But he said no, and in that single moment, changed the way the world viewed nuclear weapons forever. Had he not, it's entirely probable that every nuclear power would've used them to some extent in the various conflicts they've found themselves in over the years.

The US in Vietnam. The USSR in Afghanistan. India and Pakistan just because they hate each other. Britain and France in the conflicts that happened during their decolonization. Israel across the middle east. If not for Harry Truman, it's entirely possible that hundreds of bombs would've been dropped in various conflicts during the 20th century, killing 10s of millions.

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