Qualifier: Former US special operations operator that served in multiple wars.
My anecdotal take is there are many ways that shock and trauma can accumulate through training and war that are far beyond the minimal effects of an M4.
Firearms: While the primary weapons systems are the M4 and side arm (pistol), there are many weapons systems utilized by special operations such as sniper rifles, crew serve weapons, and niche small arms.
The M82 sniper rifle shoots a 50 BMG round. In either the bolt action or semi-auto versions they feel like you are getting punched in the face when you shoot them.
Crew serve weapons like the MK19 and M2 do pack a punch. The MK19 is a machine gun that shoots 40mm grenades. The M2 is a .50 cal machine gun. These weapons systems are mounted, but the percussion of them is still far greater than an M4.
More niche arms like the M249 SAW, M16 HBAR, full-auto AKs, M240 Golf, MP9, etc are not as mild as the standard M4/M16.
Blasts: There are many types of blasts encountered such as Mortars (inbound and outbound), Flash Bangs, Entry charges, IEDs, Landmines, etc. These do make your head ring if you are close enough to them.
In my own personal experience there are many other daily jarring events that aren't nearly as sexy to talk about. Riding in the back of a 5 ton will almost shake your brain out of your head. Riding in an LCAC (hovercraft) is like riding in a 5 ton. Doing boat work in Zodiacs will bounce you all over the place, especially when doing surf passages. Doing hydrographic surveys right where the surf breaks will pound you for hours and make you a little sick afterwards. When your chute opens on a jump, if jumping round chutes, will make you see stars...the landing is not a soft pretty one like rectangle chutes...you hit the ground hard.
There are many more ways your body gets pounded on a daily basis far in excess of the weapons you use.
The article links to a USSOCOM-funded study. In your opinion, are they (as a whole) seriously concerned with mitigating this issue or is it just checking the box? The worry is this can be similar to the buried diesel tank issue contaminating water, which was known for decades but seemed to be ignored (possibly out of liability concerns).
I'm not sure how much of it you can minimize. You can only control what you can control...and war/combat is chaos. Honestly it seems most things in relation to this over the years has been on treatment, not so much prevention.
Thank you for sharing. It's a tragedy that this does not have enough mitigation and follow-up treatment. Armed forces are a necessity, and should not damage a generation beyond repair, and especially not in relative peace.
The tools used, as you’re undoubtedly aware, go far beyond small arms. Family members in the Army have talked about training to clear houses where they want to avoid going through a heavily defended doorway so they put an explosive against a wall, duck around the corner, light it off, pick themselves up, and run through the newly created entryway.
Round chutes (cupolas) are designed to get soldiers from the plane to the ground quickly.
Quickly enough to remain the least possible amount of time in the air where they are an easy target for any ground troop. (This is why soldiers are dropped from very low altitudes; 400m is usual, but some combat drops occurred at even lower altitudes)
But not too quickly that too many of the dropped soldiers end up unable to fight from the hardness of the landing. Please note that it is assumed that some will get hurt on the landing, and the calculus is designed to balance the risk in the air with the risk of the landing.
In contrast, rectangular chutes (wings) are designed to be dropped from higher than 900m, steered in the air, and to provide a very comfortable landing (as long as the surface of the wing is adequate for the suspended weight). They were also introduced for skydiving as a sport, and only later found some military use.
Why is the danger sickening? Of course the equipment is dangerous -- it all exists so you can kill people and not die well beyond any natural level, and there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Sickening like working a construction job. When you're killing yourself in slow motion (the impact, the noise, the chemicals!), and there's no way out.
Most injuries involve an element of luck or skill, and the ego serves as a natural buffer.
Consistent, unavoidable, permanent, self-inflicted damage is different. It hurts in its own (sickening) way.
This is discussed in the article, the mechanism is thought to be different:
>It was not chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which is found in football players and other athletes who have been repeatedly hit in the head. It was something new.
Depression is a lot like being drunk. There’s a point where you wish you could puke and get it over with but it’s just not happening. As I understand it there’s a lot of ex football players in this state. Just hopelessly miserable but not on suicide watch. Or on their way to Parkinson’s.
They need to implement weight limits in football just like are in use in most other contact sports. You don't force boxers to go up against guys 50+ lbs heavier than they are, over and over, daily in practice and weekly in games.
I have been tinkering with a cyberdeck for a while now for off-grid usage, so this is a nice find for the hardware side. My main battle lately has been building out the software side; primarily Kiwix (https://www.kiwix.org).
I was originally trying to set it up as the Kiwix wifi hotspot. But after playing with that I decided I wanted the pc to have more than one function so I switched to regular Linux with Kiwix.
So now instead of just Kiwix; I also have my handheld radio programming software (CHIRP), ATAK Server, microcontroller dev environment, copy of Collapse OS, etc.
Does ATAK (FreeTak I assume) run pretty well? Are you just saving everything to the sd card?
I have had a similar project set bouncing around in my head. I have some LilyGo LoRa radios arriving soon to see how well Meshtastic works as an alternative to internet.
I am running the Pi from a solid state hdd as I don't trust the sd cards. ATAK/FreeTak does run well on it. Funny you mention LoRa as I am using exactly that. I have a bunch of the TTGO T-beams (915 MHz) that I have paired up with old Android phones that run entirely off the T-beams/Meshtastic. They can be slow at times for messaging, but it really depends on the channel setting (short range vs very long range).
Andrew McAfee did an interview last week w/ Sam Harris [1] that was a fun listen if you are interested in a conversational understanding before reading his book.
My wife had the same thing happen to her but luckily our bank clearly says that this is a password reset pin code (don't share with anyone) type of message along with the pin code in the SMS. So, my wife refused to give it to the person on the phone.
A better sms password reset flow would be to first send a text asking "A password reset has been initiated. Was this you? Reply: YES or NO". Then after a YES confirmation they send the reset code along with the same big "Don't share with anyone on the phone" message.
I have been patiently waiting on the Soffos[1] product from Fountech to be released to give it a try. I am assuming that there is a repetition algo in there as well.
Purposeful mixing or mild randomization of search results also seems like a decent way to help obscure the ranking algorithms to help thwart reverse engineering.
YT now has channel "memberships" built in that mimic Patreon. Since it is integrated into YT you get a streamlined perks platform along with a special icon noting you are a "member" of the channel when commenting.
Not to sound like an anti-intellectual, but it could be a mistake to assume that innovation comes from academia.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a convincing chapter (I think it is Chapter 13: Lecturing Birds to Fly) in his book "Antifragile" about this very thing.
Then there are cultural differences that could be at play concerning innovation. It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taking and innovation. Whereas, western cultures seem to promote risk-taking and innovation. That is not to say that there aren't risk takers in China and risk averse individuals in the West...just that overall there may be asymmetry. And, very little asymmetry can create very big differences.
So, have all the smartest people you want, doing all the research you want; but if they have no pressure to put that research to practice, nor a desire or support to take the risks associated with implementation then you might as well have nobody doing anything.
I don't think that line of reasoning is completely wrong but I think it's often over-emphasized as some sort of durable higher truth rather than a simplification of very complicated social factors, and usually this tends to significantly under-weight the ability to change things — e.g. many Americans are used to thinking that we have a huge cultural lead for entrepreneurship but the popular opinion there hasn't adjusted for the degree to which Europe, Canada, Israel, etc. have closed that gap over the last couple decades.
In the case of China, I don't think there's any question that it used to have higher barriers to innovation but I'm not comfortable concluding that this will be true for that much longer given how many people are trying to change it. Every time I read one of Bunnie Huang's gongkai posts[1] it really seems like the view in 20 years will be radically different.
I agree. I wasn't using it as de-facto; rather as an idea that may calm the panic of "OMG They have more X than we do!" "They have more X than we do" only works to determine an outcome if all other things are perfectly equal, which they are not. My primary point was the idea that academia does not necessarily mean applied innovation.
That said, how long does it take for a culture to change part of its core structure? Cultures seem to me evolutionary and, aside from rare radical mutations, very slow to change. Then again, with over a 1.3 billion people there are sure to be plenty of sub-cultures with enough size to be a driving force for the whole.
> Not to sound like an anti-intellectual, but it could be a mistake to assume that innovation comes from academia
It isn't that innovation necessarily comes from academia, but that academia is a reflection of how wealthy and educated the population is. Innovation comes from the wealthy and the educated. So as china gets wealthier, they will innovate more.
> It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taking and innovation.
That's an "observation" based on racism and nonsense.
> just that overall there may be asymmetry.
Based on what evidence? It's just silly things people say - "The west is more individualistic". A society based on "white supremacy" is "individualistic"? How is basing one's ideology on "race - a genetic/communal" concept individualistic.
All these things are essentially nonsense created by people who want to sell books/etc. There is no truth.
You could write a book saying the west is collectivistic and china is individualistic by cherrypicking any data.
> So, have all the smartest people you want, doing all the research you want; but if they have no pressure to put that research to practice, nor a desire or support to take the risks associated with implementation then you might as well have nobody doing anything.
What makes you think they won't?
Greed works on the chinese as much as westerners. The things you need to "innovate" are wealth and security. Innovation is a luxury. The chinese will innovate as they get wealth and security.
The chinese are risk averse and yet they love gambling. They are risk averse and chinese have immigrated all over the world.
> academia is a reflection of how wealthy and educated the population is
This is correct, but that doesn't mean causation. Look at any civilization and look at what came first wealth or academia. It seems to me that wealth creates academia.
> That's an "observation" based on racism and nonsense.
Saying something is "racist" does not constitute an argument. I didn't say whether it was "good" or "bad" to have a culture that promotes or suppresses risk taking...no one can. It is not "racist" to say that two things are not exactly the same.
> The things you need to "innovate" are wealth and security. Innovation is a luxury.
Dead wrong. Wealth and security create complacency. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is not just some stupid quip.
>What makes you think they won't?
I don't. My entire post was a postulation, which is why I used phrases such as "it could be", "general observation" and "there may be", etc. It appears that you are merely looking for a fight instead of having a conversation.
Yes. That's was my point. You get wealthy, then you get "civilized".
> Saying something is "racist" does not constitute an argument.
No. But saying an "observation" based on "racism" is an argument.
> I didn't say whether it was "good" or "bad" to have a culture that promotes or suppresses risk taking...no one can.
Well you did imply it...
> Dead wrong. Wealth and security create complacency.
Not dead wrong. Dead truth. It can for some people, but it also gives people FREE TIME to pursue other things. I didn't say EVERYONE would become innovative. My point is that you need wealth and security to be innovative.
>"Necessity is the mother of invention" is not just some stupid quip.
Like all quotes. It is. And without wealth and security, not much time or resources to innovate.
> I don't. My entire post was a postulation, which is why I used phrases such as "it could be", "general observation" and "there may be", etc.
You don't but that's a lot of "implying" what you think.
> It appears that you are merely looking for a fight instead of having a conversation.
I would but you seem quite defensive. I wasn't calling you racist. I said the observation was based on "racism". Lumping 1.4 billion into one "stereotype" is the definition of racism.
Also, as I noted, I debunked most of your "it could be"s.
A key Chinese collaborator of mine on this https://hackaday.io/project/21966-quamera and I have chatted about the 'old' China and the 'new' China - he thought up, designed, and built a company around making a general purpose FPGA that allows for a wide range of imagers to be attached via standardized I2C/SPI or USB bussing. He's very much the new China, and while there are cultural differences, there's no question that an ever growing number can be either incredible collaborators or fearsome competitors - a lot of that choice is up to us.
>It is a general observation that east asian cultures tend to suppress risk-taking and innovation. Whereas, western cultures seem to promote risk-taking and innovation.
It's not a general observation. It is an idea promoted by westerners to make them feel superior. Creative, innovative thinking is not the norm anywhere. Everyone who thinks new thoughts is an outlier by definition, in every society.
Friendly writing advice: use simple words. Elongated romance (etymologically-Latin) terms sound pompous. Short words are better. Think "gut" not "stomach".
My anecdotal take is there are many ways that shock and trauma can accumulate through training and war that are far beyond the minimal effects of an M4.
Firearms: While the primary weapons systems are the M4 and side arm (pistol), there are many weapons systems utilized by special operations such as sniper rifles, crew serve weapons, and niche small arms.
The M82 sniper rifle shoots a 50 BMG round. In either the bolt action or semi-auto versions they feel like you are getting punched in the face when you shoot them.
Crew serve weapons like the MK19 and M2 do pack a punch. The MK19 is a machine gun that shoots 40mm grenades. The M2 is a .50 cal machine gun. These weapons systems are mounted, but the percussion of them is still far greater than an M4.
More niche arms like the M249 SAW, M16 HBAR, full-auto AKs, M240 Golf, MP9, etc are not as mild as the standard M4/M16.
Blasts: There are many types of blasts encountered such as Mortars (inbound and outbound), Flash Bangs, Entry charges, IEDs, Landmines, etc. These do make your head ring if you are close enough to them.
In my own personal experience there are many other daily jarring events that aren't nearly as sexy to talk about. Riding in the back of a 5 ton will almost shake your brain out of your head. Riding in an LCAC (hovercraft) is like riding in a 5 ton. Doing boat work in Zodiacs will bounce you all over the place, especially when doing surf passages. Doing hydrographic surveys right where the surf breaks will pound you for hours and make you a little sick afterwards. When your chute opens on a jump, if jumping round chutes, will make you see stars...the landing is not a soft pretty one like rectangle chutes...you hit the ground hard.
There are many more ways your body gets pounded on a daily basis far in excess of the weapons you use.