"his gun is jammed, he can't shoot" said in the most moronic way possible
goddamn, tourist, you dumb. You fucking dumb.
I love considering the logical chain that leads someone to conclude that ceremonial guards are chosen from amongst something other than the soldiers who take their jobs the most seriously.
probably someone who has no understanding of military culture
how seriously soldiers take earning stripes and berets and ceremonial positions
i've been watching a documentary series about royal marines commandos training
it's like, that green beret is not just a hat to them, it's the culmination of going through months of hell on earth, proving you can endure stuff that bearly a fraction of people could
like they can't even touch a green beret until they earn their own
+3
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
I've never been a fan of the 50% divorce statistic. It seems poorly defined to me.
Like, I'm generally against boiling down complicated issues to single numbers anyway, but marriages and divorces cover such a wide range of cultures, ages, and religions in the United States to make a statistic like "50% of all marriages end in divorce" to be entirely worthless in my mind.
To be slightly fair, colloquially "ceremonial" is often used to mean "something that is decorative/meaningful rather than practical". Ceremonial guards being shit soldiers is also something of a fantasy trope.
That being said, even if you think they're not "good" soldiers, prodding someone who is even nominally a soldier while they're on guard duty is a dumb thing to do.
They aren't really ceremonial guards, they're guards. With snazzy uniforms and orders to stand up straight instead of being slouched in a gatehouse with a coffee cup. Our royal guards deployed with machineguns in parade uniforms on 22nd july. Arrested a policeman who couldn't identify himself well enough.
I suspect I'll only be able to get you guys SO hype for Sunday morning's rocket launch today (apparently there's bigger news today?!?!)
But in case you're interested, NASA/SpaceX have released their Press Kit , full of cool stuff like the mission overview, a moment-by-moment description of how things should happen during the mission (including a timeline and fairly in-depth descriptions), and all sorts of other cool stuff about the Dragon, Falcon, ISS, NASA, SpaceX, the launch facility - everything you'd need to know to write your own generic article about the event! :P
I'm paying attention! I'm super excited about what SpaceX is doing!
I'll do a little more hype-building tomorrow morning (~24 hours before launch) - we should have images of the rocket on the pad, static tests will be finished, etc., so we'll have a lot more information - and then I apologize for none of my behaviour Sunday morning :P
Reminder: Launch is 14:21 UTC on Sunday - That's 10:21am on the East Coast, 7:21am out west, and do your own math if you're somewhere else!
Streams will go up about ~30 minutes prior to launch (which coincides nicely for when interesting stuff starts happening on the timeline), and of course if you can't / don't want to view the launch live, I will be ALL OVER post-launch media, including how the first stage landing attempt goes!
That's exactly when I'm on my way to work, so I'll have to catch the post-launch replay. I might be in time to see their recovery attempt live. If they can pull it off, that's a massive leap forward in space exploration.
If you have your doubts about 'ceremonial' positions, just look at the Canadian Sergeant-at-Arms and how he resolved the terrorist attack on the Parliament last year.
'Ceremonial' guards take their jobs very seriously, and aren't picked because they aren't good at what they do.
Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
Like, what's the denominator for that divorce rate? Is it all marriages that exist in the United States? Then what is the numerator? All divorces ever in the United States? Those are both problematic methods of attaining what we actually want to know about divorce rates, which is essentially "What is the probability that a given marriage will end in divorce?"
Doing some cursory research, it looks like the first appearance of the 50% statistic came about by counting up how many divorces and marriages there were in a particular year, and dividing the latter by the former. Which is honestly idiotic.
"his gun is jammed, he can't shoot" said in the most moronic way possible
goddamn, tourist, you dumb. You fucking dumb.
I love considering the logical chain that leads someone to conclude that ceremonial guards are chosen from amongst something other than the soldiers who take their jobs the most seriously.
probably someone who has no understanding of military culture
how seriously soldiers take earning stripes and berets and ceremonial positions
i've been watching a documentary series about royal marines commandos training
it's like, that green beret is not just a hat to them, it's the culmination of going through months of hell on earth, proving you can endure stuff that bearly a fraction of people could
like they can't even touch a green beret until they earn their own
A royal guard I talked to got an M1 bayonet first through his foot and screamed MY POLISHED SHOES
Like, what's the denominator for that divorce rate? Is it all marriages that exist in the United States? Then what is the numerator? All divorces ever in the United States? Those are both problematic methods of attaining what we actually want to know about divorce rates, which is essentially "What is the probability that a given marriage will end in divorce?"
Doing some cursory research, it looks like the first appearance of the 50% statistic came about by counting up how many divorces and marriages there were in a particular year, and dividing the latter by the former. Which is honestly idiotic.
The median length of a marriage in the United States is 11 years.
To be slightly fair, colloquially "ceremonial" is often used to mean "something that is decorative/meaningful rather than practical". Ceremonial guards being shit soldiers is also something of a fantasy trope.
That being said, even if you think they're not "good" soldiers, prodding someone who is even nominally a soldier while they're on guard duty is a dumb thing to do.
They aren't really ceremonial guards, they're guards. With snazzy uniforms and orders to stand up straight instead of being slouched in a gatehouse with a coffee cup. Our royal guards deployed with machineguns in parade uniforms on 22nd july. Arrested a policeman who couldn't identify himself well enough.
I mean, I think we can all agree here that the problem is the difference between popular perception and reality.
"his gun is jammed, he can't shoot" said in the most moronic way possible
goddamn, tourist, you dumb. You fucking dumb.
I love considering the logical chain that leads someone to conclude that ceremonial guards are chosen from amongst something other than the soldiers who take their jobs the most seriously.
Well, kinda. They're definitely very, ah, motivated, but I've always held garrison bullshit is just bullshit. Actual combat deployments are where it is at.
Almost everybody in those sorts of positions (Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Queen's Guard, etc.) is required to have had one or more combat deployments.
Eh. I'd argue that anything you're not in utility uniform while doing is self-evidently not important, but there's a bit of personal opinion there.
Posts
probably someone who has no understanding of military culture
how seriously soldiers take earning stripes and berets and ceremonial positions
i've been watching a documentary series about royal marines commandos training
it's like, that green beret is not just a hat to them, it's the culmination of going through months of hell on earth, proving you can endure stuff that bearly a fraction of people could
like they can't even touch a green beret until they earn their own
i thought he was just a judge altho in my defense im a crab
There's also some limited data indicating that more recent marriages are less divorce prone because people are waiting longer
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Like, I'm generally against boiling down complicated issues to single numbers anyway, but marriages and divorces cover such a wide range of cultures, ages, and religions in the United States to make a statistic like "50% of all marriages end in divorce" to be entirely worthless in my mind.
They're correlated.
You can't get divorced without being married.
that's amazing
I'm 100% sure that the U.S. ones do, though they don't have a bullet chambered.
It's an incredibly poor practice to put someone on any sort of guard duty with a fake or non-functional firearm. Those are for training exercises.
i can
yes but you said "marriage rate is falling because people aren't getting married anymore"
which is water is wet because it's water
i would say people are getting married/divorced less often because millennials
That's a neat infographic.
Seems relatively consistent then. I do find the fact that the marriage rate has flat lined pretty cool itself, though.
They aren't really ceremonial guards, they're guards. With snazzy uniforms and orders to stand up straight instead of being slouched in a gatehouse with a coffee cup. Our royal guards deployed with machineguns in parade uniforms on 22nd july. Arrested a policeman who couldn't identify himself well enough.
I'm sure the US guards are heavily armed as well but those ones are not out in the open
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
People are avoiding marriage out of poverty, or such is the common story.
no only a third of them
the rest should wear hawaii shirts, cargo pants, socks in sandals and cameras and chatter incessantly in foreign languages.
yes they do
it's general practice for fake/training magazines to be painted yellow in the British army
besides they are actually guarding a place that is plausibly likely to come under attack
if a suicide bomber or something decides to hit Buckingham Palace I guarantee the guards will have more at their disposal than harsh language
Security at the white house tends to have these little black sleeves over their guns.
That's exactly when I'm on my way to work, so I'll have to catch the post-launch replay. I might be in time to see their recovery attempt live. If they can pull it off, that's a massive leap forward in space exploration.
if she is in seattle you should still doooooo iiiit
'Ceremonial' guards take their jobs very seriously, and aren't picked because they aren't good at what they do.
not the beefeaters
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Doing some cursory research, it looks like the first appearance of the 50% statistic came about by counting up how many divorces and marriages there were in a particular year, and dividing the latter by the former. Which is honestly idiotic.
A royal guard I talked to got an M1 bayonet first through his foot and screamed MY POLISHED SHOES
The median length of a marriage in the United States is 11 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States
I mean, I think we can all agree here that the problem is the difference between popular perception and reality.
Eh. I'd argue that anything you're not in utility uniform while doing is self-evidently not important, but there's a bit of personal opinion there.
are you thinking of police?
soldiers don't tend to guard tourist attractions unless you're talking about something like Buckingham Palace
heavily armed police are just a fixture of most European cities these days
walking around the Paris metro there were squads of police standing around in tactical gear carrying what i assume were tear gas grenade launchers
that's not counting the real troops the French have on the streets of PAris in the wake of the hedbo attacks