i'm going through some of the long-form naval hearings on the oceangate submarine. i don't think i could write fictional engineering satire as good as some of the shit they pulled

i'm going through some of the long-form naval hearings on the oceangate submarine. i don't think i could write fictional engineering satire as good as some of the shit they pulled

THE ABOMINATION

"what is that! what the fuck is that!" - army guy, Fun Summer Jacket (1987) dir. stanley kubrick

Oh boy, I knew it, I knew I felt firefox hang for a bit too long when I loaded up www.tumblr.com -- Yep, another long ass dumb ass kremlinpost sure to blow out my scrollwheel's bearing or my middle finger's tendon.

Tanks or some shit this time, who would have guessed. At least his former, much better machining hobby gave us the Gear Post which was dressed up in enough whimsical twee bullshit in the beloved I Fucking Love Science tone, even if we could tell it was through gritted teeth. When's another one of those coming?

That magic is long gone pal. Buddy, after this it might be time to enter my speech-to-text era on my phone in the bathtub. [2]

-----

Do you remember my Knife's Post ? It was not a knife post. Nobody here wants to read about knives, but I wanted to write about knives, so I met my audience in the middle: hands, my hands, dads, Types Of Steel, talking to ghosts (metaphorically), why it is OK to talk to ghosts, and f#%*ing plastic straps. Those are subjects that fall on the midpoint between gay sex stuff+cuteanimal and tanks, knives, and etc. Whatever. Almost enough beating around the bush.

You already probably know what is going on. There is a loser, weirdo, short-man-short-dick-complex piece of shit dictator who started a war with a European country after forgetting he bimboified his military as to avoid them being able to, you know, kill him once he fully became a brutal dictator. He also has a fake ass middle name (Vladimir "Vladmirovich"?) and worst of all infringes on my trademark username.

You know what happened next, his decrepit, looted, club-footed and water-headed military turned what should have been an "easy" operation into a long attrition war against an opponent with a shitty NATO-hanger-on-military + was still suffering the hangover of being a former soviet state following soviet military doctrine (asinine). Now, somehow, Ukraine holds the advantage.

How did this happen?

"Water-headed" is the key descriptor. The Russian military is commanded by the biggest numbskulls they could find in order to prevent them from doing things like mounting a revolution or tying a shoelace knot. Seriously. The guy with the Russian equivalent position of "Secretary of Defense" will visibly shrug when asked things like "Will we win the war?" on a televised interview. The next level of senior officers aren't as dumb, but have no interest nor intention in Army Crap. They're there to steal weapons and sell them. Rich and without-rifle also makes for a poor revolutionary. The next (extremely oversized) rank of lower-tier officers is a bunch of young kids trying to pad their resumes by having a brief military career before moving on. They micromanage and supervise the bottom tier of enlisted soldiers, mostly to walk into machine gun fire, who are dead now. All of this leads to The Abomination.

That is enough military and geopolitics for now. It's time to move on to the next obvious point to follow: jpegs Please revisit the above jpeg of The Abomination.

~

Long time friend and fellow computer terrorist @foldingcookie2 cleverly pointed something out that had escaped me entirely:

How did I miss that? That's hilarious. The little orange box looks like some dinky generator you might use to power a small fridge during a power outage. And it's cabled up through the tracks under the hull (??). There isn't anything under there.

A topic for another time, but this is an example of a greatpeg which is a name I just made up for images that seem normal-ish at first glance, usually there is one odd thing sticking out but would pass without further thought, but if afforded that second thought, becomes a never-ending cornucopia of completely bonkers shit that people will keep finding in the years to come. The most famous example of greatpegs is Grover's House, (pictures of home improvements home expansions completed by famously stupid man holding zero qualifications) which you all already know everything about. We've tapped that one dry. Try this one on for size: Le déjeuner de l'homme divorcé à Hong Kong -- Hong Kong Divorce Lunch [3]

The stand-out thing here is the, uh, burger; in The Abomination's case this would be the Giant Turret, but lets work our way up from the bottom. Ignoring that, there is some kind of base vehicle that was "properly" engineered fifty years ago. The MTLB:

It's an armored personnel carrier. From fifty years ago. Which is more like sixty/seventy years ago adjusting for the fact it was made in the Soviet Union. You generally want newer stuff than this. Go look at cars from that long ago and imagine going to war with that. This thing already doesn't make sense. Don't let "armored" fool you, the exterior is steel but you can poke this with a pillow and kill it. You can spray it with bullets from a rifle and the motherfuckers inside will be very upset and panicking but unperforated nonetheless. you can throw a hand grenade on top of it and daylight will shine through. APCs are battle taxis. You get a bunch of motherfuckers, you load them in, you drive them to war, you drop them off, you go back to get more motherfuckers. It has to be fast, maneuverable, fuel-efficient, and provide ample room for the motherfuckers. No armor and no armaments. You get a .50 caliber machine gun if there happens to be someone you don't like along your taxi route.

Even this thing raises eyebrows. Why is it so- wait. Hang on. *reads email from marketing/focus group firm* ..Why is it uh. Why is this boi so looooong. This is a heckin long boi damn bruh 💀. Seriously. What happens when it needs to climb a hill with a significant incline? Does the back just bottom out? Notice the tracks. There aren't tires there. This is meant for moving things cross-country, not over a road. Why is it so long. It's seats way, way too many motherfuckers. That is way too many motherfuckers to just stick in a big conspicuous long boi and just roll around with. If it manages to show up to war, I guess it just hangs around for the very long time it takes for all the fully-combat-loaded motherfuckers to shamble out of it one at a time. Hope nothing bad happens to all those motherfuckers. You know. At war.

An ancient vehicle with an ancient engine, poor aspect ratio, and full of highly valuable motherfuckers isn't really doing the job it needs to do (taxi). We've already lost on speed an maneuverability, fuck it, let's give it some firepower so it can better fare [4] its journey to safely deliver its womb of motherfuckers safely in front of machine guns to get mowed down immediately. Let's put a world war II era anti-aircraft turret on it. A naval world war II era anti-aircraft turret. Let's just weld it on.

These types of guns have lost as much relevancy in the modern era as the crossbow has. It fires 25mm contact-fuzed shells [5] meant to shoot down planes powered by propellers and cigarettes. Trying to hit a modern jet with one of these would be like trying to hit a hawk flying high in the sky with the most pathetic BB gun you can buy. You could very well shoot every day for the rest of your life and never hit the bird.

Great, so, the turret is useless, that's perfect, nobody will need it, let's just attach this ninety year old piece of shit meant to welded to a giant warship on top of our long boi and fire ammo at any jerks that only works if you hit them dead-on with it instead of explode in proximity. Real pain in the ass it turns out -- the turret is best at shooting planes which live in the sky and not jerks which live on the ground. Hopefully the jerks are on the hillside and you're in a valley (?).

Another problem arises -- Using its high-tech iron spider sight, I notice the rounds just go all over the place on account of being fired from a lightweight long boi it was probably panic-welded on to, shaking the whole Abomination to bits while doing so, putting rounds out with the accuracy of a blunderbuss and terrifying the motherfuckers inside. Wait, no, not putting rounds on target. Putting rounds into the airspace above it which isn't ever occupied by, like, aircraft. Except friendly aircraft. GREAT.

How does it even shoot? Can it rotate? Is it remote controlled? Of course not. The smelliest motherfucker is made to to climb and man the giant, incredibly conspicuous turret. He's just in there. You can see him from the outside. You can just point and shoot him. I don't think it matters if you're a good shot or not -- For him to traverse his gun to point at you, he's using hand cranks moving several degrees a second maybe.

Remember the hill example? Imagine The Abomination somehow crests a steep hill. The ass end of it kicks up enough to jostle around the motherfuckers inside at speed. But what about the unseatbelted motherfucker way high up in turret? The turret mounted normal to the axis of travel? The turret that, you know, translates manageable bumps and bounces into an experience more akin what it'd be like standing in the back of a box truck as it navigates a vicious winding racetrack at NASCAR speeds.

When The Abomination shows up to war and all its motherfuckers have finally exited, someone notices Smelly Davidov is missing. Hey, go get Smelly Davidov and tell him we've arrived at war. Oh wait, Smelly Davidov is fucking dead. Bashed to bits or hopefully outright thrown free and clear 25 miles back after that small bump we hit turned the turret into the arm of a catapult.

You could go on forever. Why were we so terrified of these jackasses? Where did this asinine "Russia Stronk" idea come from? Weren't these guys supposed to be the second strongest military in the world? If you even tried doing something like this in any other modern western military you would get court-martialed.

--- Foot's Notes ---

[1] Pun + editor in-joke. This footnote didn't make the cut apparently.

[2] Next comes drunk-driving-video-via-dashcam-turned-to-face-driver era.

[3] May actually be Argentinian. Enjoy the next fifteen minutes of your life breathlessly finding fucked up things in this image. You're about 20% the way there.

[4] Pun

[5] Last manufactured before either of us were born & made and only used for this specific AA.