Top tier post

Have etymologists ever conclusively settled on whether the term “duct tape” or “duck tape” came first?

I’m talking about trusting him and his work, not the tweet.

I’m not saying that he does bad journalism or there’s no value in his work, I just don’t trust him.

His coverage can be skewed and there’s a difference between being strategic about your coverage and consciously sidling up to the agents of imperialism and acting as their stenographer. Take this podcast episode of his on the Uyghur issue. Set aside the editorial position that he takes on the Uyghur issue itself and listen to the way he never attempts to question how his guest arrives at any of his claims, no matter how outrageous and impossible to verify, and note how he never pushes back on a single issue. Watch to see how long it takes before he mentions his guest’s employer and affiliation - you wouldn’t know throughout the entire episode, perhaps at all if you (like most people) skip the end credits of a podcast episode. Even if you figure out who he is and who he works for, the damage is largely done because the audience’s skepticism is not primed throughout the episode where Hanrahan does his best Joe Rogan impression of naively swallowing his guest’s every claim without an ounce of skepticism.

Nathan Ruser works for the ASPI, an Australian non-government organisation which receives most of its funding from the Australian government but which also receives a good deal of funding from military contractors. They are a far right organisation that directly influences Australian military and foreign policy, much like how the RAND Corporation does for the US.

Ruser manufactures consent for the war machine. He works hand in glove with the military-industrial complex. Hanrahan positions himself as being on the left and of being “anti-authoritarian”. He’s more slick than the crass NAFO bros who position themselves as libertarian leftists or anarcho-somethings but he is of the same ilk. The anti-authoritarian acting like a dupe swallowing a war hawk’s agenda to instigate war with China? Come on.

To me, he’s like a Robert Evans figure - I give them too much credit to say that they are fools. I think it’s quite obvious that they are intelligent, thoughtful, and very capable of being critical. What interests me is how they both seem to flip a switch in their brains and suddenly, strategically, they turn all of that off. Evans is anarchist-adjacent yet he works for Bellingcat and collaborates with intelligence and the feds, and he pushes interventionism. Hanrahan, while not being as directly connected to these things, is very close to them and he seems to be perfectly comfortable with them.

Like I said, I don’t trust him. There’s nothing about someone who presents themselves as being radical-ish who is pro-NATO, pro-interventionist, and is completely at ease with the MI-Complex and government cutouts that I trust.

Oh damn that is wild

I too, have seen Phillip’s bits

A coilgun that size isn’t going to be making anything supersonic. I would be genuinely surprised if it even matched the force of something like an airsoft gun.

Honestly this thing looks like a hobbyist toy more than a weapon. Like it might pose a risk of eye injury if fired towards someone, but I wouldn’t expect it to even break skin at close range. Unless it’s got some absurdly strong capacitor bank powering it and is very well designed it’s just not going to put out much force at all. At that scale a railgun might honestly be a better bet for “an at least somewhat dangerous handheld electric projectile launcher”, because the problems with those (the surface of the rails oxidizing after a shot or two, so they stop making a good connection with the round and can’t fire) only start cropping up when you get to really high velocities and higher power flow.

If I recall correctly there’s also the issue of ballistics. The artillery rail guns have the projectile encased in a sabot AFAIK, something you can’t really do in a anti-personnel version, especially if it’s handmade. Unless you choose to make a shotgun, and then it’s just a with extra steps.

Edit: I just reviewed some wiki articles and sabot isn’t really the right term. But whatever.

And we have some pretty good batteries but they really dont compare.

I feel like Samsung had a grip there on leading the development of batteries that explode

(note that the actual principles involved in them are used in real things, but mostly for accelerating things along rail systems, not as guns or cannons)

[Legendary - Success]: Schwerer Gustav, but you don’t shoot from it, you shoot it.