History Time!: Tuesday Open Thread

Before I became the spiritual head of a world-spanning multi-level-marketing-scheme-cum-religion, I was a history major. Specifically, late-Medieval to early-Modern Europe, with an emphasis on the development of dedicated navies as a driving force behind the increased centralization of state power.

Why yes, I was rolling twelve hoes deep 24/7. Bitches love it when you talk about Ship Money and the role it played in the execution of Charles I.

With naval warship design back in the news (finally!), it’s Mayhem’s time to shine.

WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS?

Because Trump needed to distract America from the Epstein files, but hasn’t managed to provoke any Venezuelans into firing a rifle at our pirate fleet. Having already played the New Jet Fighter card, the Demolish the White House card, and the Rename A Large Body of Water card. So it was either Giant Ship Boondoggle or Melania has to have another kid. Trump, unsurprisingly, went with the one that gave him an erection.

SO HE WANTS TO BUILD A BUNCH OF GIGANTIC FLOATING TARGETS TO SALVE HIS EGO AND DISTRACT THE GULLIBLE?

Don’t forget the graft potential- at $15-$20 billion each (before cost overruns and necessary shipbuilding infrastructure costs), this has the potential to dwarf his crypto-bribery and corporate extortion schemes.

Seriously, the “specs” put out on this are laughable, even to a barely-educated amateur like me. We can’t even build frigates FROM EXISTING DESIGNS. Dumbfuck wants big guns, so they stuck a railgun on there…that we stopped developing in 2021 because 16 years of effort had yielded fuckall usable results. And lasers! And anti-drone somethings! And a 5-inch gun for all those Japanese pill-box emplacements we’ll need to shell in support of the landings at Iwo Jima!

SURELY THIS HAS NO HISTORICAL PRECEDENT, RIGHT?

Let me introduce you to the Vasa.

398 years ago, she was laid down to be the most impressive warship afloat. She was built with two gundecks, because King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden ordered too many cannons to fit on one.

397 years ago, she was launched.

396 years ago, she set off on her maiden voyage from.

396 years ago and roughly 25 minutes later, she sank while most of Stockholm watched, the victim of…uh…a wind gust that tipped her over.

Fairly good animation here:

Pretty much everyone directly involved in the Vasa’s construction and fitting out knew it was massively top-heavy and unstable (except possibly the ship’s master builder, who had conveniently died a year before). The story is that a test involving thirty sailors running from one side to the other of the ship was enough to make it nearly capsize at its moorings. But everyone was too afraid to tell the king that his massive floating phallus-proxy was a dud.

In fairness, even with the lace and ridiculous facial hair, Gustavus Adolphus was probably the scariest man in Europe during the early 17th Century, and certainly the scariest Swede of his time.

Like Napoleon, Gustavus Adolphus was a truly brilliant military mind who revolutionized grand strategy and logistics, and then used those to kick seven shades of shit out of his neighbors.

Also like Napoleon, he was a true landlubber general with no real understanding of floaty-floaty things. He wanted big, he wanted heavily armed, and he wanted it in the water yesterday. He got all three wishes, although he probably pictured “in the water” a bit differently than it turned out. What is Swedish for “Monkey’s Paw”?

If you are in Stockholm and need a walk to let your lutfisk settle, you can visit the Vasa Museum. Something like 98% of the hull was recovered beginning in the 1960s and is now housed at the museum.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TRUMP’S DINGDONG?

It’s perhaps the neatest self-contained historical lesson about what happens when an egotistical maniac gets too obsessed with his cannon.

NFL NEWS:

The playoffs are nearly set. There are two playoff spots still open in each conference and the favorites to claim three of them are heavy favorites. The final two weeks are going to focus mostly on 1. playoff seeding, 2. which monkey-fucking-a-doorknob is most vigorous in the NFC South, and 3. which lame-duck coach can muster a final suicide charge to play spoiler. On the upside, CHRISTMAS DAY FOOTBALL! Who’s hyped for an excuse to ignore their family?

-The Pro Bowl rosters were announced. Your favorite player was cheated out of his rightful spot by the fans/media/other players, and you should riot. Or your favorite player got in, thereby confirming your own personal worth. Yay.

The Pro Bowl’s sole continuing value is its use in player contract incentives. If the list of players provokes any emotional reaction in you, I need you to take a big, deep breath, look at your life and find something- anything- more worthwhile to expend your energy on.

Like that shit PI call in the [insert your team here] game last week.

-JJ McCarthy is out again, this time with a broken bone in his hand. Listen, I fully expected him to fail miserably because he was a system quarterback with poor fundamentals. I did NOT expect him to fail miserably because he is made of spun sugar and wishful thinking.

Contrast this to Jayden Daniels, who I hoped would be drafted by the Patriots lest he “die on the sands of the CommanderBowl, like RGIII before him“. That shit went down in an entirely predictable manner.

-The Chiefs are planning to abandon Missouri for the greener fields of…Kansas? In 2031? I look forward to the new stadium being finished in time for [choose your own joke]

a. one of Andy Reid’s grandchildren to get a DUI

b. Harrison Butker’s second term in the House representing Buttfuck, Georgia

c. the first concert date for Taylor Swift’s triumphant post-divorce album “His Cock Is Actually Tiny, I Was Just Being Kind”