201 posts tagged with weapons.
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The Use of Weird Weapons
i was expecting an earth-shattering kaboom
Seventy years ago today, the USA conducted its only nuclear artillery test. A contemporary propaganda video (ten minutes), which is much more about the cannon than about the Grable warhead. [more inside]
The Frontex Files
The Frontex Files documents how Frontex, the rapidly-growing EU border and coast guard agency, has been working closely with the weapons industry to equip Frontex with firearms and controversial technologies such as biometrics (including facial recognition) and drones, all in an effort to "push back" migrants away from Europe. [more inside]
What's historically inaccurate with this picture?
Why are movie swords always wrong? How period drama costume design works. What's wrong with this still from Gladiator?
"Any criminal that uses an encrypted phone should be very, very worried"
International cooperation between police forces enabled them to spy on an encrypted phone network, Encrochat, since the 1st April 2020. The result is a massive operation arresting 746 suspects in the UK alone. [more inside]
“Give us more guns!”
Doom creator John Romero on what's wrong with modern shooter games [The Guardian]
“I would rather have fewer things with more meaning, than a million things you don’t identify with,” he says, sitting in a Berlin bar mocked up to resemble a 1920s Chicago speakeasy. “I would rather spend more time with a gun and make sure the gun’s design is really deep – that there’s a lot of cool stuff you learn about it.”Modern shooters are too close to fantasy role-playing games in how they shower you with new weapons from battle to battle, Romero suggests. This abundance of loot – which reflects how blockbuster games generally have become Netflix-style services, defined by an unrelenting roll-out of “content” – means you spend as much time comparing guns in menus as savouring their capabilities. It encourages you to think of each gun as essentially disposable, like an obsolete make of smartphone.
PLAN A
This four-minute audio-visual piece is based on independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets. It uses extensive data sets of the nuclear weapons currently deployed, weapon yields, and possible targets for particular weapons, as well as the order of battle estimating which weapons go to which targets in which order in which phase of the war to show the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical, to strategic to city-targeting phases. [more inside]
3-D printed guns now allowed by the Department of Justice
An article in Wired reports that now anyone can download plans for guns. A new development in a story previously discussed on MetaFilter and other publications such as Forbes: as of a couple of months ago, distributing blueprints for printing guns is no longer deemed illegal in the USA. [more inside]
Tailoring In Metal
Nothing remains of the Royal Armor Workshops at Greenwich. What does remain are many of the great masterpieces of the Greenwich armorers, which allow us to stand in the presence of great princes and knights long dead. For those who take the time to look, they live on in ways their makers could never have imagined-Tobias Capwell
Sad news for MilSF fans
Rust in Pieces
The Enfield P53 .577 musket-rifle was the standard longarm of the British Army for two decades starting in the 1850s, and also saw service on both sides of the American Civil War. In 2011 a 600 pound crate of these rifles was trawled up in Canadian waters almost 200 miles offshore. Archaeologists at Memorial University of Newfoundland are conserving the find. It's not the only such crate of rifles to come up from the bottom.
Gun Jesus Apocrypha: The Gospel of Browning
Most American mass shooters use legally obtained firearms.
A Mother Jones Investigation: Fully Loaded: Inside the Shadowy World of America's 10 Biggest Gunmakers. [more inside]
GPS jammin'
FAA warns of widespread GPS outage. The FAA advisory (pdf). The FAA is warning pilots that there will be several widespread outages of the GPS syste centered on China Lake, California, home of the Navy’s China Lake Naval Weapons Center. A military GPS jamming system? Let the conspiracy theories commence.
"A bold race bred there, battle-happy men causing trouble & torment"
“So at Christmas in this court I lay down a challenge: /
If a person here present, within these premises, /
Is big or bold or red-blooded enough /
To strike me one stroke and be struck in return, /
I shall give him a gift of this gigantic cleaver /
and the axe shall be his to handle how he likes. /
I'll kneel, bare my neck and take the first knock. /
So who has the gall? The gumption? The guts? /
Who’ll spring from his seat and snatch this weapon? /
I offer the axe — who’ll have it as his own? /
I’ll afford one free hit from which I won't flinch, /
and promised that 12 months will pass in peace, /
then claim /
the duty I deserve in one year and one day. /
Does no one have the nerve
to wager in this way?”
[more inside]
Ark and flood in one package
The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was established in 1961 and has grown into one of the US government’s largest intelligence organizations. It employs 17,000 people, including thousands stationed overseas, and its 2013 fiscal year budget request was for $3.15 billion. Yet, the DIA is also one of the more secretive agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, regularly denying access to basic information about its structure, functions and activities. On November 20, the National Security Archive posted a new sourcebook of over 50 declassified documents that help to illuminate the DIA’s five-decades-long history. [more inside]
“...lot of dogs dont like black people but theyre fine w/everyone else.”
Our Racist Dogs by Kelly Mays McDonald [The Awl] Why do certain dogs attack certain people? Because they’re weaponized.
“Weaponized dogs are ever-present in humanity’s long legacy of colonialism and slavery. They have fought alongside many instances of human atrocity to perpetrate acts of physical and psychological violence that supersede the scope of a simple gunshot. European colonizers of the New World notably trained their dogs to “relish Indian flesh” by explicitly feeding them the bodies of the victims after a battle. Throughout America’s early history, slave masters and bounty hunters adopted bloodhounds as the primary means of tracking down runaway slaves by scent, which is widely depicted in popular media. What is left out of the popular narrative, however, is the fact that when they encountered people on the run, the dogs were often trained to bite and tear the flesh of slaves to hold them there until they could be shot, shackled and dragged back to their masters for public lynchings and beatings.”
Watch the skies
North Dakota becomes the first state to legalize weaponized drones. "Less than lethal” weapons like rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers are now permitted on drones, thanks to the actions of a lobbyist representing law enforcement.
Drones previously.
Drones previously.
The good advice Lockheed Martin just didn't take
"Ideally suited to mobilization on the shifting terrain of asymmetrical conflict, inherently covert, insidiously plastic, politically potent, irony offers rogue elements a volatile if often overlooked means by which to demoralize opponents and destabilize regimes. And yet, while major research resources have for forty years poured into the human sciences from the defense and intelligence community in an effort to gain control over the human capacity to lie (investments that led to the polygraph, sodium pentothal and its successor compounds, “brain fingerprinting” and associated neuro-physiological imaging techniques, etc.), we have no comparable tradition of sustained, empirical, applied investigation into irony."
If a thing is designed to kill you, it is, by definition, bad design.
Dear Design Student - In Praise of the AK-47 (NSFW language)
The AK-47 is often cited as a well-designed object. And this case is usually made by pointing out that the AK-47 is easy to use, maintain, take-apart, modify, and manufacture. It’s a model of simplicity. And the original design, introduced in 1948, is still in use, even as the AK family has continued evolving...[more inside]
It has become death, destroyer of worlds
Over a thousand scientists and public intellectuals, including Stephen Hawking, Daniel Dennett, Steve Wozniak, Noam Chomsky, and Elon Musk, have signed an open letter calling for a ban on the development and deployment of "offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control”, i.e., the coupling of autonomous Artificial Intelligence to weapons systems.
“I tend to think it happened. In fact, I’m damn sure it happened.”
What Lies Beneath
In the 1960s, hundreds of pounds of uranium went missing in Pennsylvania. Is it buried in the ground, poisoning locals—or did Israel steal it to build the bomb?
In the 1960s, hundreds of pounds of uranium went missing in Pennsylvania. Is it buried in the ground, poisoning locals—or did Israel steal it to build the bomb?
Illegal Weapons Used in Wrestling Death Match
Illegal Weapons Used in Wrestling Death Match (slyt). Not the 'Most Illegal Thing I've Seen in the History of Wrestling', but still good. The pain is visceral. So, so visceral.
What's that rocket?
Arms Identification With Wikipedia, Holiday Photographs, and Shoe Size Conversion Charts - from the recently launched bellin¿cat 'by and for citizen investigative journalist'. [previously] [more previously]
"Don’t shoot me"
Why Did Michael Brown Die in Ferguson? - According to the police of Fergusson, Missouri it was because he reached for an officer's weapon, necessitating that he be shot multiple times as he ran away empty handed. Eyewitness tell a different story. Whatever happened the killing has prompted demonstrations and looting. Ferguson police responded in full force, firing teargas and wooden rounds into crowds of protestors and sealing the area off from the media. In the wake of the tragedy questions of racial profiling, the paramilitarization of police and media depictions of black shooting victims have been raised. Meanwhile the shooter has not been named to preserve his safety.
War Robot
War robots are now so real that "87 countries sat down at a United Nations-convened conference from May 13th to the 15th to discuss banning the things." A country on the forefront of development is Russia. They have announced that armed roaming robots would be standing guard over 5 ballistic missile bases, and there are plans for a new military robot laboratory. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said "We have to conduct battles without any contact so that our boys do not die, and for that it is necessary to use war robots." Defense experts say within 10 years nearly every country will have robotic weapons, mass produced and exported by countries like the US, China and Russia.
By 1909, the hatpin was considered an international threat
In March 1910, Chicago’s city council ran with that idea, debating an ordinance that would ban hatpins longer than nine inches; any woman caught in violation would be arrested and fined $50. The proceedings were packed with curious spectators, men and women, and acrimonious from the start. “If women care to wear carrots and roosters on their heads, that is a matter for their own concern, but when it comes to wearing swords they must be stopped,” a supporter said. Cries of “Bravo!” from the men; hisses from the women. Nan Davis, there to represent several women’s clubs, asked for permission to address the committee. “If the men of Chicago want to take the hatpins away from us, let them make the streets safe,” she said. “No man has a right to tell me how I shall dress and what I shall wear.” [more inside]
Future52
Future 52. Fifty-two weeks, fifty-two creators, fifty-two creations of Hoverboards, Robots, Starships, Wearables, and Energy Weapons.
Masterwork versions available for an additional 300 GP.
Melee combat enthusiasts rejoice! Cold Steel (previously) are back with a whole bunch of new videos showing off their newest armaments. The more exotic selections include the Battle Star, the Boomerang, the Viking Axe, the Grosse Messer, the Sergeant's Halberd, the War Hammer, the War Club, the Sword Cane, and a brand new video for the beloved Two Handed Great Sword. (WARNING: Pig carcass butchery and tactical dummies full of blood ahead.) [more inside]
Data Visualization Fun Fridays: Mapping Arms Data.
ARMSGLOBE: an interactive visualization of the international trade in small arms (generally defined as lethal weapons for use by individuals) from 1992 to 2011. Click on an individual country or type its name into the search box to examine it separately. Uncheck the boxes in the lower right corner to narrow down by category. Drag the slider at the bottom or click the graph button to view change over time. May take a while to load on slower connections. [more inside]
How War in Syria Turned Ordinary Engineers Into Deadly Weapons Inventors
Makers
of War. "The arms manufacturers of Aleppo used to be ordinary men—network administrators, housepainters, professors. Then came the bloody Syrian crisis. Now they must use all their desperate creativity to supply their fellow rebels with the machinery of death." [Via]
Assume A Cylindrical Cow
Bang Bang
AMMO - oddly beautiful cross section photos of ammunition by Sabine Pearlman, taken in a WWII bunker. The io9 write-up has Redditor identification of the cartridges.
Surviving Edged Weapons
Chris Sims, formerly of Comics Alliance (previously) , takes a look at 7 awesome moments in the greatest police training video ever.
Stop the killer robots before it's too late!
Nobel laureate's campaign calls for pre-emptive ban on autonomous weapons. As our technology advances, it becomes more and more feasible to give more and more autonomy to our drones. A new campaign led by 1997 Nobel laureate Jody Williams calls for an international ban on the design of autonomous weaponized drones. [more inside]
Shark Tooth Swords
Badass Shark Teeth Weapons Hint at Shadow Diversity Josh Drew and colleagues have published a report in PLOS ONE wherein he shows that the people of the Gilbert Islands make really cool weapons that can tell us about the shark biodiversity the used to exist. Original paper here
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"It was on stun... now it's on kill."
Prop Wars is a fantastically entertaining short film about three friends fighting to the death using iconic props from movies. [via]
The gun of the fearful
The AR-15 is more than a gun. It's a gadget. It's an addiction and the future of firearms manufactures. It's the most wanted gun in America and more than anything it is a symbol of the cycle of fear that drives assault weapon sales.
Mexican Drug Cartel Animated Infographic
A short animated infographic that pretty clearly explains the extent of the illegal drug and weapon problem shared by Mexico and the United States.
The tools of Mexico's drug cartels
MANPADS proliferation
Terminator: the Documentary
A report was recently released suggesting a pre-emptive ban on fully autonomous weapons - robots that can pick and choose whom to fire on. If this sounds vaguely alarming to you, don't worry - the Department of Defense issued a directive indicating that fully automous robots may only decide to tase you.
Galleries of beautiful bowie knives
Each year Bladeforums members vote for the best bowie knife. The result is a gallery of absolutely beautiful and innovative custom bowies by master craftsmen.
Destroyer Gods and Sons-of-Bitches
In the telling it has the contours of a creation myth: At a time of great evil and great terror, a small group of scientists, among the world’s greatest minds, secluded themselves in the desert. In secrecy and silence they toiled at their Promethean task. They sought the ultimate weapon, one of such great power as to end not just their war, but all war. They hoped their work would salvage the future. They feared it could end everything. - Prometheus in the desert: from atom bombs to radio astronomy, New Mexico's scientific legacy
"Don't chase me, I'm an illusion, a suicide bomb."
In the long history of love songs the attention of a beautiful woman has been compared to many things – but perhaps only in Pakistan's tribal belt would it be likened to the deadly missile strike of a remotely controlled US drone.
30 mm cannons, anti-tank guided missiles, air-to-air missiles and unguided rockets
"The Canadian arm of the aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney closed a six-year U.S. government probe last week by admitting that it helped China produce its first modern attack helicopter ... The prosecution marked 'one of the largest resolutions of export violations with a major defense contractor in the Justice Department's history...'"
But they are our bastards
Midwifing Skynet
Quadcopters are very cool and a little creepy. It was probably only a matter of time before someone attached a machine gun to one and called it Charlene.
Fight and Flight. And Cars, too.
AIRBOYD.tv has three Youtube channels: The eponymous AIRBOYD features 2000+ videos for "aviation and aerospace enthusiasts. Then there's the Nuclear Vault: Vintage Military, War and News Videos, with 1200+ full-length documentaries, news reels and other assorted footage, including 200 episodes of "The Big Picture (Army Signal Corps)" and a variety of Atomic and Nuclear energy films. Last but not least is US Auto Industry, an archive of over 450 vintage automobile films, including commercials from Buick, Pontiac, Chevy and Ford. [more inside]