Priory_of_Sion Posted December 31, 2015 Report Share Posted December 31, 2015 Sykes' response to Kitchener's concerns on Wahhabism. Donward and LoooSeR 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LostCosmonaut Posted December 31, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 31, 2015 Iraq considered buying the Mirage 4000 during the 80s: http://web.archive.org/web/20060320051012/http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents-docex/Iraq/Audio-transcripts/ISGQ-2003-M0008110_TRANS.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T___A Posted January 2, 2016 Report Share Posted January 2, 2016 TIL there is still a Ghulat sect of Shia still around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted January 2, 2016 Report Share Posted January 2, 2016 Alawites are Shia in the most narrow, technical sense. They're pretty secretive about their beliefs, but what has leaked to outsiders is bizarre. The Iranians deciding that they are fellow Shia to be supported against the hordes of Wahhabist apostates is, AIUI, quite the development. Most Shia had considered Alawites heretical hitherto. But Iran has reached out to their brothers in Yemen, despite the fact that they're Twelvers and the Houthis are Fivers (I think), and backed up their Alawite brethren in Syria despite their ecumenical disputes. And it's not like Sunnis aren't getting in on this new spirit of worldwide religious brotherhood! The Turks have been quietly supporting terrorists freedom fighters among the Uygurs in China. And let's not forget all those foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria! Special Holiday Bonus Choose your Own Punchline Special a) When are Levayan Satanists in the US going to step up and start helping their poor, besieged brothers in northern Iraq? 2) If this spirit of international religious brotherhood continues, the war may last decades! c) Whereas the US, being a purely secular state supports both sides. d) It's the sort of revival of transnational religious solidarity that would make Cardinal Richelieu smile. LoooSeR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T___A Posted January 10, 2016 Report Share Posted January 10, 2016 People cite the Borgia popes as when the papacy was most decadent, however they should cite the family that produced the 12 year old pope: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T___A Posted January 12, 2016 Report Share Posted January 12, 2016 TIL the amount of force required to correctly hang someone is ~3200 newtons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priory_of_Sion Posted January 19, 2016 Report Share Posted January 19, 2016 RAF is still bumbling along in Germany. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belesarius Posted January 20, 2016 Report Share Posted January 20, 2016 RAF is still bumbling along in Germany. Welp, gotta pay the rent. You'd expect them to at least be able to get an RPG to take out the armored car... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T___A Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 TIL 40% of all humans that ever lived died before the age of one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tied Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 TIL polish airborne tanker hats were different from regular tanker hats Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T___A Posted January 23, 2016 Report Share Posted January 23, 2016 TIL the church considered the Cathars to be Manichaean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrashbotUS Posted January 26, 2016 Report Share Posted January 26, 2016 I learned that no matter how much whiskey I drink, I cannot jump over a 10 foot tall snow bank. Belesarius and Sturgeon 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belesarius Posted January 26, 2016 Report Share Posted January 26, 2016 I learned that no matter how much whiskey I drink, I cannot jump over a 10 foot tall snow bank. Experimentation is key in exploring physics. Documentation also. Drink more whiskey, try again, post pictures. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted January 26, 2016 Report Share Posted January 26, 2016 I learned that no matter how much whiskey I drink, I cannot jump over a 10 foot tall snow bank. Try gin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted January 26, 2016 Report Share Posted January 26, 2016 TIL that the queen palms which infest my house have fruits which can be used to brew beer or extract sugar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priory_of_Sion Posted January 29, 2016 Report Share Posted January 29, 2016 TIL Jordan has a Circassian Royal Guard. Belesarius 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belesarius Posted January 30, 2016 Report Share Posted January 30, 2016 TIL Jordan has a Circassian Royal Guard. Interesting read. Thanks Priory! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donward Posted February 5, 2016 Report Share Posted February 5, 2016 TIL Not only is there something called "Resting Bitch Face" but it is a scientific phenomenon and a phrase totally OK to ascribe to women as diverse as Kirsten Stewart, Anna Kendrick, Kanye West and Queen Elizabeth the Second. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/03/health/resting-bitch-face-research-irpt/ I look forward to describing more women's facial expression as "Resting Bitch Face" because it is totally science and has been OK'd by cultural and media bastions such as CNN, Washington Post, HuffPo and Cosmopolitan and this makes it not at all misogynistic, sexist or demeaning. Jeeps_Guns_Tanks 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priory_of_Sion Posted February 7, 2016 Report Share Posted February 7, 2016 Sturgeon and xthetenth 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted February 7, 2016 Report Share Posted February 7, 2016 Yep. FDR was the master. Obama has gotten a reputation for executive orders essentially from the Alex Jones types, and that's trickled into conservative politics subsequently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priory_of_Sion Posted February 7, 2016 Report Share Posted February 7, 2016 I was more surprised by how many Harding and Coolidge had. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belesarius Posted February 7, 2016 Report Share Posted February 7, 2016 FDR had WWII to deal with. Totally understandable that wierd shit comes up when most of the civilized world is at war. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LostCosmonaut Posted February 7, 2016 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2016 There's actually a good reason why the landing gear on STS could only be deployed manually. Once the gear dropped, it couldn't be retracted without ground support equipment, and they were worried about spurious signals from the flight control system dropping the gear too early (can't reenter with 3 huge holes in your heat shield). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted February 8, 2016 Report Share Posted February 8, 2016 This doesn't quite fit then topic ("today I realised"? "today I will learn" ?) but anyway. Today I realised that we are going to see our first verifiable case of gene doping within the next few years (I'd put money on 5-10). Expect a promising athlete to develop a mystery medical condition and have to train in an isolated facility for a while (including a sterile living/training room) before returning to the sport with a noticeable increase in performance. The trick here will be to use a gene drive in combination with aggressively knocking down the immune system. Post-treatment, the drive will work it's way throughout the body and edit pretty much the whole cellular population, while the immune system will be prevented from killing the patient via targeting of transformed cells or initiating an anaphylactic response to the drive components. Once the patient is fully edited, a second drive may be used to erase the drive machinery itself. Alternatively, the drive might be cleverly engineered to self-excise when given a particular stimulus. Your athlete now has a totally edited genome providing greater muscle mass, oxygen carrying capacity, or whatever else you can stuff into an adult human. The edit, meanwhile, would be completely invisible unless you had access to prior genetic material from the athlete or the design of the drive was sloppy enough to leave behind a recognisable insert site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xthetenth Posted February 12, 2016 Report Share Posted February 12, 2016 I was reminded that there's actually a way to swap two variables without a third variable to use as a placeholder (just requires two or three compares and three add/subtracts so it's potentially worth using if you really really need to save a register and are willing to buy that with a few extra ops). I also learned that some people apparently still believe enough in stupid tricks only really worth using in very specific cases and prone to causing some really fun integer overflow bugs if you forget that you need to break it down into cases to ask that on interviews and say it's something anybody sufficiently curious would have run into. The fuck. Friendly reminder that we write code for the ease of use of the person maintaining it and optimize performance as a secondary concern unless there's a real critical section to performance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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