• 144 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • I wish I had a solid source on this. The best I can find is a 6-year-old Reddit comment:

    This particular jump with the BT-7 cavalry tank was performed by a tank test pilot Evgeniy Kulchitsky, he mentions in his memoirs that it was a very challenging test to perform (15m height, 42m length of the jump), requiring challenging practice and long preparation. You had to adjust the rotational speed of the tracks mid-air to not outright lose them, assume a (relatively) safe position and then continue to pilot the tank after landing to get it to the shore.

    The reason for this testing was to make sure that similar jumps were a viable tactical option (fording rivers at speed, for example) and that both the crew and the tank could manage it and remain effective.























  • I was working for an HVAC contractor and we did a job at a prison. We would work at night while all the residents were locked up and sleeping. We had a corrections officer escorting us the whole time. The hallways were all on the exterior of the building and lined with large windows. That allowed the guards in the towers outside to watch people moving within the building.

    One night, in the wee hours of the morning, we’re walking down the hallway when a red laser dot appears on the wall next to us. All of us contractors freeze instantly. We don’t know what is happening and we DO NOT want to get shot. Our escort gets on his radio and tells the guys in the tower to stop fucking with us. The little red dot disappears and we go on with our night.

    We were briefly afraid for our lives because some bored asshole prison guard couldn’t resist flagging us with the muzzle of his rifle and teasing us with the laser sight.







  • If you win a state by one vote (offer not valid in Nebraska and Maine), you get all that state’s electoral votes.

    I’m going to pile on to your good answer.

    Since you only need 51% to win all of a state’s electoral votes, any additional votes beyond 51% could be considered excess votes that are not helpful. The system rewards candidates whose supporters are spread around, and punishes candidates whose supporters are heavily concentrated in a handful of states.

    For example, in 2016 Hilary Clinton got 4,269,978 more votes in California than Trump. That’s 4,269,977 more than she needed to win the state. Meanwhile, she lost Michigan by 10,704 votes, lost Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes, lost Florida by 112,912, etc. Hell, she lost Texas by less than a million votes. If Hilary’s supporters in California had been spread around in other states she would have won the national election easily.