bomag: The late bloomer is a thing; appears to be more common than I thought. I’m wondering about measuring the early maturing aspect: growth plates? I suspect the top juniors are early mature-ers; wondering what percentage of early mature-ers go on to be top seniors compared to percentage of slow mature-ers. The article doesn’t cover this: if ten percent of kids are early maturers, and nine of them are tagged as top athletes as youths, time would be expected to weed them out later to match...
Boganboy: You make me wonder if Stalin making peace with Hitler would have led to the UK and the US doing the same. Pretty low probability all around I’d say. But of course plenty of decisions are so stupid that you wouldn’t have believed people could make them. Except they did.
Boganboy: Would have expected the environmentalists to scream demands that the father be publicly shamed for killing this poor helpless animal. You Yanks are obviously more sensible than we Aussies.
Grasspunk: I’ve been watching this play out in the sport of rugby, which is extremely strong in our SW France region. The best young players around 10-11yo get invited to start at a specific middle school associated with the big club. Three years later a lot have already been let go because they did not grow enough and there’s a second cohort that comes through at the start of high school. Often the let-go kids quit the sport because they had huge expectations that were not met. Rugby has a...
McChuck: I think it’s hilarious that modern Lefties are finally rediscovering masculinity. Naturally, they’re studying it as if it were from Mars. Aside: What do they think football is? Aside aside: This is what happens two generations after schools institute “zero tolerance”, AKA punishing boys for defending themselves from bullying.
Jim: Everyone wants state formation to be more accessible and warlord positions to be more plenty, but no one wants to take an underwear bomb to the boys for the divine calling of Butlerian Jihad. Sad!
Jim: What they really want from all this is not some policy outcome but the self-actualization that comes from fighting the enemy, and the dearth of opportunities for them to challenge their opponents’ honor on the battlefield in a rights-respecting way What? Men who are down especially bad will take absurd pay cuts to join artificial and economically unmotivated criminal sects, solely so they get the opportunity to pick mortal battles with other people who’ve opted into the same social systems they...
Isegoria: Without knowing much more than Rommel’s reputation from World War II, you could guess that he was a successful World War I officer, too — but that would be an underestimate.
Isegoria: According to Fehrenbach, “Erwin Rommel had written that he had never seen any troops so inept at first as Americans in battle — or any who learned the hard lessons more quickly once the chips were down.”
Bob Sykes: Guderian was Germany’s best general, and one of the inventors of combined arms warfare. Rommel was sent to Africa, because he could be spared. Guderian, who had led the charge across France, was needed on the Eastern Front. Re the Wehrmacht: In both World Wars it outperformed the Allies at every level. But it was simply overwhelmed by raw numbers of men and materiel. Initiative at lower levels of command was expected and rewarded. Re victory in WW II: Germany’s fate was sealed when...
Michael van der Riet: [citation needed, I know] I have read that in WW2 in all theatres of operation at all stages of the war, the Wehrmacht inflicted casualties at a rate of twice casualties received. I also believe that Von Manstein was Rommel’s equal. But generals apart, I think that the typical Soldat was more professional, more plucky and highly inured to hardship. (Putting this out there for flaming.)
TRX: There is a great amount of overlap between robbery and homicide in larger cities. In 1969, LAPD merged their Robbery and Homicide dividions into a single Robbery/Homicide division, since most of the time they were connected at the same crime scene. As far as straight violence… it has been, what, fifteen years since “The Knockout Game” videos started surfacing on Youtube and elsewhere? It’s big fun for the perpetrators. Every couple of weeks some attack makes the national...
Isegoria: Fallout definitely caught my eye, but I haven’t played any computer games seriously since…the original Starcraft?
Gavin Longmuir: A relevant book is America’s First Battles: 1776–1965, edited by C.E. Heller & W.A. Stofft. Kasserine Pass was typical. America’s military lost most of its first battles, from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam. The initial loss was often followed by big changes in equipment, training, and leadership — sometimes turning initial defeat into eventual victory. It has often been noted that the kind of smooth political operator who rises to command in a peacetime force is...
Bomag: ”Many prosecutors aren’t interested in filing charges against the violent kids who attacked you or stole your stuff.” Why is criminal advocacy by our alleged rulers such a thing? Partly explained by: ”Process predators aren’t interested in your stuff [or well being]. They get pleasure out of the process of victimization. They revel in the act of causing pain and misery.”
Jim: We have just one solution and it is to speak the truth— N
Longarch: Sorry for the obscure joke. Because you always post the most insightful ideas about wargaming I can find anywhere, I always assume you know everything about military history, wargaming, and geeky spin-offs like civilian games. The Fallout series of games started off as a remarkable fountain of risk-taking creativity. It drew on very obscure sources, including seldom-read Phil K. Dick stories. Because its source material was diverse and often totally unknown to most of its audience, it seemed to...
Contaminated NEET: Ranger, have fun explaining in court why you called your victims “animals.” If you were serious, you wouldn’t be boasting to anonymous idiots about what a big tough man you are.