• 482: With all the talk of the 2nd Amendment and its intent, can you cite either a regime that was repulsed by a well armed general population, or a regime that may not have come to power if there had been a well armed general population?, submitted on 2022-05-30 00:51:12+08:00.
• 483: I’m a new civil servant in the Chinese Imperial government. How do I figure out what it is I will be doing?, submitted on 2022-05-30 02:40:18+08:00.
• Sources and Further Reading
• 484: That last step…, submitted on 2022-05-30 06:54:52+08:00.
• 485: How do you think todays capital cities such as Washington, Berlin, Paris, and London will be seen in thousands of years by future generations after the countries will eventually collapse? Do you think they will be treated similar to how Rome or Constantinople are treated today?, submitted on 2022-05-30 10:48:10+08:00.
• 486: what does the term Freebooters mean?, submitted on 2022-05-30 10:54:08+08:00.
• 487: What actually happened to Hololive Alternative?, submitted on 2022-05-30 11:04:15+08:00.
• 488: Renee Picard’s Role in Uniting Earth and the Federation, submitted on 2022-05-30 17:48:40+08:00.
• 489: Mechanic Maniac Maiden - Weekly Discussion Thread, May 30th, 2022, submitted on 2022-05-31 00:30:48+08:00.
• 490: The Forbidden Words (Translated) [ODOC], submitted on 2022-05-31 09:46:04+08:00.
• 491: Spam should be removed from the Reddit comment count, submitted on 2022-05-31 14:51:36+08:00.
• 492: It still cracks me up that Civ IV’s image for the “Modern Era” is… a digital travel alarm clock?, submitted on 2022-06-01 22:34:50+08:00.
• 493: Thursday Reading & Recommendations | June 02, 2022, submitted on 2022-06-02 21:00:10+08:00.
• 494: I’m Dr. Luke Reynolds, author of Who Owned Waterloo? Battle, Memory, and Myth in British History, 1815-1852. Here to talk about Waterloo commemoration, Battlefield tourism, 19th century British cultural history, The British Army Officer Corps, or the Duke of Wellington’s funeral. AMA!, submitted on 2022-06-03 21:01:56+08:00.
• 495: Why did Half-tracks fall out of favor?, submitted on 2022-06-04 08:36:36+08:00.
• 496: Was porn produced in and/or by the Soviet Union? Did they ever use porn as a form of agitprop internally? Did they ever use porn as part of their active measures campaign in America in the 60s and 70s?, submitted on 2022-06-04 09:00:16+08:00.
• 497: Spaghetti Westerns were famously usually made by Italian leftists; did these films find much popularity in the Eastern bloc as a result? Indeed, did the USSR and its satellite states have their own Westerns?, submitted on 2022-06-04 12:55:33+08:00.
• 498: Kiara clearing up some misunderstandings regarding her new costume and if all of Myth will be getting one too., submitted on 2022-06-04 20:48:33+08:00.
• 499: Hololive and friends showed up at my local anime convention!, submitted on 2022-06-04 21:10:21+08:00.
• 500: Look out, seems like Botan has reinvented the Great Panjandrum!, submitted on 2022-06-04 23:18:53+08:00.
• 501: When did China Become Aware of America’s Existence and What Were Their Reactions to the Discovery of a New Continent?, submitted on 2022-06-04 23:43:48+08:00.
• 502: me irl, submitted on 2022-06-05 11:15:59+08:00.
• 503: smol mumei, submitted on 2022-06-05 12:14:40+08:00.
• 504: Went back to play FotS again. With some mods it aged like fine wine. Why can’t we have real guns like this in Warhammer?, submitted on 2022-06-05 13:48:10+08:00.
• 505: [Video Games] Someone leaked classified military documents on the War Thunder forum (for the third time in a year), submitted on 2022-06-05 22:29:57+08:00.
• 506: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of June 6, 2022, submitted on 2022-06-05 23:00:13+08:00.
• 507: Painting Artist Translation, submitted on 2022-06-05 23:06:37+08:00.

482: With all the talk of the 2nd Amendment and its intent, can you cite either a regime that was repulsed by a well armed general population, or a regime that may not have come to power if there had been a well armed general population?, submitted on 2022-05-30 00:51:12+08:00.

—– 482.1 —–2022-05-30 02:54:33+08:00:

This submission has been removed because it is soapboxing or moralizing: it has the effect of promoting an opinion on contemporary politics or social issues at the expense of historical integrity. There are certainly historical topics that relate to contemporary issues and it is possible for legitimate interpretations that differ from each other to come out of looking at the past through different political lenses. However, we will remove questions that put a deliberate slant on their subject or solicit answers that align with a specific pre-existing view.

483: I’m a new civil servant in the Chinese Imperial government. How do I figure out what it is I will be doing?, submitted on 2022-05-30 02:40:18+08:00.

—– 483.1 —–2022-05-30 17:32:00+08:00:

You’ve covered a lot of material here, although one item that I’d wished you’d gone into more detail on was on the appointment process for those who had entered the civil service through examinations. This is something that’s always been somewhat murky to me, as from what I know positions at the provincial and viceroyalty level were assigned by lot by the Board of Civil Appointments, but I have never found if more junior magistracies – not to mention appointments to the Six Boards – were also handled this way. Would you be able to offer any insights on that?

—– 483.2 —–2022-05-31 00:02:02+08:00:

I had begun a bit of an answer before /u/SettingCool8239 posted theirs, but hit a bit of a snag in that I was having trouble getting good, hard information on the appointment methods used, specifically under the Qing which is my period of speciality. Since then I’ve managed to dig up some material that goes into more detail – as well as find detail in some works that I’d already known about – and so this answer is largely a small supplement to that focussing solely on the matter of selections for appointment.

In theory, nearly all appointments to official positions were done by lot, except at the very highest levels: when vacancies opened up, one would be assigned to them at random by the Board of Civil Appointments (aka the Ministry of Personnel). So, if you were considered capable enough out of your exams to qualify as an upper-seventh rank, you might find yourself assigned as the magistrate for one of the 1300 counties of China Proper, or in some form of auxiliary role at an imperial academy. If you received a higher or lower rank out of your exams, then the possible posts would again be concomitant to that rank. This, at least, was the theory. In practice, the randomness of the process was somewhat compromised by a few additional complications.

The first was office-selling, which was intermittent throughout the first century and a half of Qing rule in China but became firmly entrenched from the Taiping War (1851-64) onward. We ought to be clear here that office-selling didn’t mean that specific postings were sold directly and that you could immediately buy your way into the magistracy of a particular county or a secretarial position at a particular board. Rather, you could purchase a scholarly degree qualifying you for a certain level of posting, and you could in turn buy yourself a higher level of consideration for a specific post – or in other words a place further up the queue – for when your number came up for appointment. This could reach theoretically absurd extremes, such as was the case for Wu Gongliang, who was listed in 1798 as the holder of a gongsheng 貢生 degree and under consideration for a position as a sub-prefectural magistrate for the capital prefecture. Wu Gongliang was three years old, his degree and theoretical candidacy for the magistracy having been purchased by his father Wu Jing, then acting governor of Henan Province, with the expected return on investment to come literally decades down the line. While purchasing candidacy for a specific office did not guarantee your holding it, it nevertheless put your foot in the door with the bureaucracy writ large and significantly heightened your chances of holding a post at or near the rank of the one you had bought a place for. For instance, if you bought a position as a salt intendant, you’d be near-guaranteed a salt intendancy (of which there were only six and all at defined locations), while buying a post as a county magistrate could end up sending you anywhere. Positions up to and including the rank of circuit intendant, therefore, were not necessarily solely obtained by merit as conventionally recognised, but rather a competitive process weighted in favour of those who had bought preferential consideration.

The second was exemptions for high-priority counties. During the Kangxi reign (1661-1722), there had been some recognition that pure sortition might put a sub-par official in charge of a highly sensitive post, and as such governors were allowed to request special dispensation to hand-pick new appointees to specific counties; in addition, counties were rated on a four-letter scale from most to least sensitive. Counties on rivers and the coastline were most likely to be given such consideration, as the threat of piracy and banditry, as well as these counties’ position along commercial highways, made their administration especially important. The Kangxi-era measures were, however, rather clunky, and even as Qing rule stabilised, problems with individual counties when it came to administrative workload and political sensitivity never really went away. The priority county system would be introduced under the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1722-35), with an initial, not-entirely-formal designation of riverine and coastal counties as permanently exempted from the appointment lottery, followed by a more comprehensive reform in 1728 proposed by Jin Hong, then the provincial judge for Guangxi and with a temporary appointment as an imperial commissioner for administrative affairs. Per Daniel Koss, Jin Hong’s system, which was finally implemented in 1732, saw the four-letter system superseded by a more specific set of tags, where counties could have any number (including, in most cases, none) of the following designations: chong 衝 ‘thoroughfares’, which were located on major land or water routes; fan 繁 ‘complex’, where there were complicated administrative considerations; pi 疲 ‘tiresome’, where taxes were often in arrears; and nan 難 ‘difficult’, ‘where the population is wicked, where customs are violent and where cases of theft are numerous’. At the same time, the old river and coastal tags remained in use. Appointments to the magistracies of any county that had at least three problem tags, or a river or coastal one, remained at the discretion of the provincial governor, which again limited the full extent of the lot-based appointment method.

The third was preferential appointment of Bannermen, especially Manchus, principally during the Qianlong reign (1735-96). Ethnic bias was, to be sure, more acute when it came to promotions (which ultimately saw Manchus promoted at a higher rate than Han officials) than appointments, but there were ways in which Manchu preferentialism did affect the direct appointment process. Firstly, the Six Boards had specific ethnic quotas for Han and Banner populations, and with the latter being considerably more numerous than the latter, that meant that competition for such posts was considerably greater among Han aspirants than among Bannermen. Secondly, at the provincial level, a certain level of preferential appointment of Manchus also took place, especially under the Qianlong Emperor, who on average appointed five Manchus to governorships for every four Han; at one stage all eight viceroys (who served either as governors of particularly important provinces, or as supervisors of two or three ordinarily-governed provinces) were Manchus. During the later Kangxi reign and much of the Yongzheng reign, Manchus did not hold county and prefectural appointments at a particularly disproportionate rate – or at least not what could be perceived as one – but some Han officials remarked with increasing perturbation upon what seemed a sudden increase in Manchu appointments to local office from the 1740s onward. So one might also find one’s access to official appointment to be influenced heavily by one’s ethnic background.

In short, there was theory, and there was practice, and the supposed meritocracy of the Qing was not all that it appeared to be.

Sources and Further Reading

• Elizabeth Kaske, ‘Fund-Raising Wars: Office Selling and Interprovincial Finance in Nineteenth-Century China’. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 71:1 (2011)

• Lawrence Zhang, ‘Legacy of Success: Office Purchase and State-Elite Relations in Qing China’. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 73:2 (2013)

• Daniel Koss, ‘Political Geography of Empire: Chinese Varieties of Local Government’. The Journal of Asian Studies 76:1 (2016)

• R. Kent Guy, Qing Governors and Their Provinces: The Evolution of Territorial Administration in China, 1644–1796 (2010)

—– 483.3 —–2022-05-31 11:37:21+08:00:

In practical terms, the Qing are the only imperial state whose archives still exist in relatively complete form. It had been traditional, after the completion of an official history by a later state, to destroy the archives on which that history was based, and so the surviving materials for any pre-Qing state largely do not consist of archival sources in the conventional sense. Historical writings, both state-sponsored and private, as well as simply whatever other sources from the periods in question survive, serve as the basis for any kind of serious writing. The Qing situation is different because there is a surviving state archive as nobody destroyed it, but it is essentially split in half between Taipei and Beijing. The Manchu archive in particular is located almost entirely at the latter.

As I’m not a professional in this field I don’t have particularly good knowledge on archival accessibility, especially in Beijing, but it’s the sort of thing that can go back and forth. Scholars often aren’t necessarily barred from access, although I believe large sections of the Manchu archive in Beijing have been cut off for a while in order to produce a compilation of translated Chinese editions. This is compounded by my principal area of focus, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, being one which can require essentially no archival work depending on one’s focus, as the majority of the kingdom’s own documentary output has long been compiled into edited compendia along with key works on the Qing side, while European published sources are easily accessible via the public domain.

484: That last step…, submitted on 2022-05-30 06:54:52+08:00.

—– 484.1 —–2022-05-30 19:30:11+08:00:

Check out LADB Restoration too; they specialise mainly in agricultural tools.

485: How do you think todays capital cities such as Washington, Berlin, Paris, and London will be seen in thousands of years by future generations after the countries will eventually collapse? Do you think they will be treated similar to how Rome or Constantinople are treated today?, submitted on 2022-05-30 10:48:10+08:00.

—– 485.1 —–2022-05-30 11:04:39+08:00:

Sorry, but your submission has been removed because we don’t allow hypothetical questions. If possible, please rephrase the question so that it does not call for such speculation, and resubmit. Otherwise, this sort of thing is better suited for /r/HistoryWhatIf or /r/HistoricalWhatIf. You can find a more in-depth discussion of this rule here.

486: what does the term Freebooters mean?, submitted on 2022-05-30 10:54:08+08:00.

—– 486.1 —–2022-05-30 11:04:47+08:00:

Please repost this question to the weekly “Short Answers” thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn’t mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the ‘Short Answers’ thread would be “Who won the 1932 election?” or “What are some famous natural disasters from the past?”. Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be “How did FDR win the 1932 election?”, or “In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?” If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

487: What actually happened to Hololive Alternative?, submitted on 2022-05-30 11:04:15+08:00.

—– 487.1 —–2022-05-30 11:14:04+08:00:

You can find the roadmap here: https://alt.hololive.tv/news/203/

Basically HoloAlt consists of four sub-projects:

• HoloEarth, whose (pre?)alpha test happened a month or two back;

• The manga series, of which the Fubuki and Mio-centered series is being made though I don’t recall if it’s just that the translations haven’t gone up or if the original Japanese version is still in production;

• Holonometria which is basically a lore site tied in with the manga and wider HoloAlt;

• The PV from 2021 and one that was slated for this spring but might be delayed.

With the manga, unfortunately there was some disagreement that led to the artist for what would have been a Marine manga quitting, and that seems to have been cancelled outright. As for the other, titled ‘Underworld Academy Overload’, unfortunately there’s been no news there to my knowledge.

—– 487.2 —–2022-05-30 20:15:19+08:00:

Ah, I’d seen an earlier announcement where it said they’d also be hosted on Holonometria, which they don’t seem to be as far as I can tell, so good catch!

Hang on I did a quick check, and per discussion in this thread Chapter 2 is up in JP, but the reader on Holonometria wasn’t finished in time for EN and ID versions.

488: Renee Picard’s Role in Uniting Earth and the Federation, submitted on 2022-05-30 17:48:40+08:00.

—– 488.1 —–2022-05-30 18:13:58+08:00:

It’d take several years to get to Jupiter and back; depending on how quickly WW3 happened the mission might have returned after the nuclear exchange.

489: Mechanic Maniac Maiden - Weekly Discussion Thread, May 30th, 2022, submitted on 2022-05-31 00:30:48+08:00.

—– 489.1 —–2022-05-31 12:33:05+08:00:

Beat Box maybe?

—– 489.2 —–2022-06-04 02:16:29+08:00:

Lamy excepted.

—– 489.3 —–2022-06-04 09:56:03+08:00:

You forgot ‘comedians’.

—– 489.4 —–2022-06-05 12:53:40+08:00:

Walfie’s been drawing Lazulight since they debuted so it’s not the biggest shift in the world to be honest.

490: The Forbidden Words (Translated) [ODOC], submitted on 2022-05-31 09:46:04+08:00.

—– 490.1 —–2022-05-31 19:31:53+08:00:

I can’t find the clip, but per Miko on a MiComet stream she was told to buy koppepan because it doesn’t exist in the spirit realm but she’s been procrastinating on it.

491: Spam should be removed from the Reddit comment count, submitted on 2022-05-31 14:51:36+08:00.

—– 491.1 —–2022-06-01 00:50:52+08:00:

As a moderator of r/AskHistorians, I believe I speak for everyone on the team when I say that the most tedious aspect of modding this particular sub is dealing with variations on ‘where are the comments?’ This, ironically, is without a doubt the most frequently asked question on the subreddit.

Because we remove a very high proportion of submitted comments (as a general rule, the only things that stay up are adequate attempts at answering the question), there is almost always a mismatch between the comment count and the actual comments displayed – sometimes dozens or even hundreds – which almost always ends up being met with either indignation or confusion. On some high-activity threads, the majority of comments (which themselves have to be removed) are asking where the comments are, and I do not exaggerate when I say we get almost daily modmails asking about why the comment count doesn’t correspond to the actual number of visible comments on a given question or just in general. This reached a stage where one enterprising user voluntarily created a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome that added a count of non-removed, non-distinguished comments in brackets next to the displayed count for anyone who wanted it, but the limitation is of course you wouldn’t have that running before you came across the sub.

To put it in brief, the comment count mismatch has been one of the longest-running issues with running the sub as it very easily trips up new users who expect to see considerably more content than is actually present and then inadvertently contribute to the problem, and changing it to show the number of actually visible comments would help a lot with that issue.

—– 491.2 —–2022-06-01 01:59:48+08:00:

Only if a comment has been replied to before it was removed. While large chains that get nuked will have [removed] indicators, if it’s a situation where a lot of top-levels get removed, then you end up with blank space.

—– 491.3 —–2022-06-01 11:17:30+08:00:

We could, but there are only two pinned posts available which we use for megathreads and rotating feature posts, so it’d mean getting rid of other things in the process. That said, we have an Automod sticky on every thread in which we could put some kind of explanation.

492: It still cracks me up that Civ IV’s image for the “Modern Era” is… a digital travel alarm clock?, submitted on 2022-06-01 22:34:50+08:00.

—– 492.1 —–2022-06-02 02:43:07+08:00:

I think it’s worth noting that what historians term the ‘modern’ era can vary, but in general the period 1400-1800ish tends to be termed the Early Modern era which is not modern and isn’t necessarily to be framed as a precursor to the modern era but which we end up calling that anyway.

493: Thursday Reading & Recommendations | June 02, 2022, submitted on 2022-06-02 21:00:10+08:00.

—– 493.1 —–2022-06-03 17:49:35+08:00:

It’ll depend on what level of accessibility you consider ‘somewhat’. If you have access via a university or other large library, the Cambridge History of China series will be a good pick, although it consists of edited volumes rather than monograph works like the trio by Mark Edward Lewis in the History of Imperial China series.

—– 493.2 —–2022-06-03 19:30:50+08:00:

In that case the CHC does serve as a series of largely introductory works with some specialist coverage and should be about right content-wise. Best of luck getting access!

494: I’m Dr. Luke Reynolds, author of Who Owned Waterloo? Battle, Memory, and Myth in British History, 1815-1852. Here to talk about Waterloo commemoration, Battlefield tourism, 19th century British cultural history, The British Army Officer Corps, or the Duke of Wellington’s funeral. AMA!, submitted on 2022-06-03 21:01:56+08:00.

—– 494.1 —–2022-06-03 21:44:56+08:00:

Hello Dr Reynolds, thanks for coming on!

Your mention of shades of blue pretty much immediately reminded me of the Prussians. How did the Prussian army, and indeed the various German and Dutch elements making up the Anglo-Allied force, feature in the memory of the battle in Britain in the period discussed? I appreciate that may actually be quite a big question, so my more specific enquiry would be whether there were those who deliberately highlighted the contributions of non-British forces – or perhaps more accurately the relatively small nature of the British contribution – either in general or specifically as counter-narratives to narratives pushed by specific interested parties?

—– 494.2 —–2022-06-04 01:44:53+08:00:

Thank you again!

495: Why did Half-tracks fall out of favor?, submitted on 2022-06-04 08:36:36+08:00.

—– 495.1 —–2022-06-04 21:16:22+08:00:

Dragoons-as-mounted-infantry had largely fallen out of use as a meaningful designation by the Napoleonic Wars, partly as most cavalry were issued with carbines by that stage and so all could function as mounted infantry if required. Basically only the French dragoons still had some notion of also being distinctly mounted infantry (occasionally dragoon regiments would be outright dismounted and designated as ‘Foot Dragoons’ if a particular field army was running low on horses). Until the late 19th century when, as /u/IlluminatiRex said, all cavalry essentially gained a mounted infantry role, in most European armies dragoons functioned as ‘reserve cavalry’, i.e. heavy cavalry whose role was to achieve decisive concentrations of force at opportune positions.

—– 495.2 —–2022-06-04 23:03:10+08:00:

I perhaps should have placed the ‘European’ a little earlier in the sentence. That said, as I note at the beginning of that comment, there were armies by the Napoleonic wars – particularly the French, on which the US Army heavily modelled itself – where all cavalry was expected to have some ability to function as dismounted skirmishers, and specifically-designated Dragoon regiments were no longer unique in this regard, and indeed arguably had been superseded in this role by specialist light cavalry such as Hussars and Chasseurs a Cheval. My bit on the late nineteenth century refers to the general abandonment across the board of pure arme blanche cavalry in favour of essentially entirely multirole forces.

—– 495.3 —–2022-06-05 01:42:10+08:00:

To name just a few:

• The Prussian cavalry under von Bredow at Mars-La-Tour in 1870, where they overwhelmed the French infantry and artillery and most casualties were taken during the French counter-charge (thanks /u/IlluminatiRex for pointing this one out to me before);

• The 21st Lancers at Omdurman in 1898, which drove off a Sudanese force over six times their number;

• The Australian Light Horse at Beersheba in 1917, who weren’t even specialist cavalry (they were Mounted Rifles and thus charged with bayonets rather than swords); and

• The Polish 1st Cavalry Brigade at Schönfeld in 1945, which overran a German infantry and light artillery position.

496: Was porn produced in and/or by the Soviet Union? Did they ever use porn as a form of agitprop internally? Did they ever use porn as part of their active measures campaign in America in the 60s and 70s?, submitted on 2022-06-04 09:00:16+08:00.

—– 496.1 —–2022-06-04 13:52:06+08:00:

This submission has been removed because it is soapboxing or moralizing: it has the effect of promoting an opinion on contemporary politics or social issues at the expense of historical integrity. There are certainly historical topics that relate to contemporary issues and it is possible for legitimate interpretations that differ from each other to come out of looking at the past through different political lenses. However, we will remove questions that put a deliberate slant on their subject or solicit answers that align with a specific pre-existing view.

497: Spaghetti Westerns were famously usually made by Italian leftists; did these films find much popularity in the Eastern bloc as a result? Indeed, did the USSR and its satellite states have their own Westerns?, submitted on 2022-06-04 12:55:33+08:00.

—– 497.1 —–2022-06-05 01:28:10+08:00:

Thank you!

498: Kiara clearing up some misunderstandings regarding her new costume and if all of Myth will be getting one too., submitted on 2022-06-04 20:48:33+08:00.

—– 498.1 —–2022-06-04 21:08:40+08:00:

Do we know what the other mems’ 1 million sub gifts were/are?

—– 498.2 —–2022-06-04 21:23:33+08:00:

You mean Amelia Watson the announcer from Paladins time travelled to Hololive to ensure she became the announcer from Paladins?

499: Hololive and friends showed up at my local anime convention!, submitted on 2022-06-04 21:10:21+08:00.

—– 499.1 —–2022-06-05 02:30:42+08:00:

As the other comment asked, in what way?

—– 499.2 —–2022-06-05 11:55:38+08:00:

It really only started trending outside of Japan about a year ago.

Hate to break it to you, but 2020 was two years ago now.

—– 499.3 —–2022-06-05 11:56:25+08:00:

A few 3D animations superimposed and rotoscoped onto real life footage.

500: Look out, seems like Botan has reinvented the Great Panjandrum!, submitted on 2022-06-04 23:18:53+08:00.

—– 500.1 —–2022-06-04 23:19:28+08:00:

For a touch of added context, the (Great) Panjandrum was an experimental weapon developed in WW2 that was basically a bomb on rocket-propelled wheels.

501: When did China Become Aware of America’s Existence and What Were Their Reactions to the Discovery of a New Continent?, submitted on 2022-06-04 23:43:48+08:00.

—– 501.1 —–2022-06-05 15:19:16+08:00:

Don’t promote conspiracy theories and especially not Menzies’.

502: me irl, submitted on 2022-06-05 11:15:59+08:00.

—– 502.1 —–2022-06-05 17:47:10+08:00:

As someone who only encountered Nuxtaku after falling beyond the VTuber event horizon, what was the original appeal?

503: smol mumei, submitted on 2022-06-05 12:14:40+08:00.

—– 503.1 —–2022-06-05 12:19:59+08:00:

Oh no she ate her

—– 503.2 —–2022-06-05 12:34:12+08:00:

Yes, but if you’re not paying close attention…

—– 503.3 —–2022-06-05 12:40:00+08:00:

A bold choice of words.

504: Went back to play FotS again. With some mods it aged like fine wine. Why can’t we have real guns like this in Warhammer?, submitted on 2022-06-05 13:48:10+08:00.

—– 504.1 —–2022-06-05 15:21:21+08:00:

Which mods, out of interest?

505: [Video Games] Someone leaked classified military documents on the War Thunder forum (for the third time in a year), submitted on 2022-06-05 22:29:57+08:00.

—– 505.1 —–2022-06-06 01:30:01+08:00:

cries in VTuber minutiae

—– 505.2 —–2022-06-06 09:52:04+08:00:

The devs are from Russia but the studio as a whole is now based in Hungary; it’s distributed by Tencent in China but it’s otherwise self-publishing internationally.

506: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of June 6, 2022, submitted on 2022-06-05 23:00:13+08:00.

—– 506.1 —–2022-06-10 14:02:25+08:00:

Less drama, more general business shenanigans, but supply chain issues and impending recession have been impacting the business side of wargaming at the moment, with a number of places raising prices due to costs of metal. Perry Miniatures for instance, one of the staples of a lot of 28mm historical wargaming, has done a nearly 25% hike.

This post, however, is not about metal miniatures at all, but rather about 4Ground, which announced back in March that it would close at the end of June. 4Ground has been around for many years and is relatively well-known (at least in the UK) as a maker of terrain pieces, especially MDF building kits, as well as as a licensed manufacturer of kits designed by smaller makers, particularly some in North America that don’t ship overseas. For my part I have made a couple of 4Ground purchases in the past, principally of kits originally designed by Things From the Basement which is one such manufacturer that only directly ships to the US and Canada. The official announcement simply cited rising costs as the reason for the closure. But the announcement and response to it have brought up a few interesting things (see this thread and this thread on wargaming forum The Miniatures Page (TMP)).

It began with some snide references to a successful but unfulfilled Kickstarter from 2017 for a fantasy skirmish game called The Legend of Fabled Realms, produced jointly by 4Ground and Thomas Gunn Miniatures (TG). TLFR hit its funding goal within 8 hours and ultimately raised over £100k from 437 backers – yes, that comes out to around £230 per backer (look, wargamers will shell out a lot for stuff). The game, however, does not exist, with the last update being in October 2020 but with no indication of the project being shelved. The update in question hints at some serious legal issues behind the scenes, with some degree of acrimony between 4Ground (or rather its owners, Tymeagain Ltd.) and TG that was ultimately resolved with an agreement to split the IP rights 50-50, with 4Ground handling terrain and TG handling miniatures. And… that was that. Nothing in over one and a half years.

I don’t know how well-known Tymeagain’s relationship with 4Ground had been in the past, but I for one was quite surprised when I found out via the closure announcement, because I assocate Tymeagain with the little wooden swords that get sold at English Heritage sites. Well, one of the above-linked TMP threads offers some context in the form of a link to a thread on another forum (that being that of 10mm specialist Pendraken Miniatures) discussing claims of 4Ground being bankrupt way back in 2019. The only reply is a verbatim copy of the official statement made by one of 4Ground’s staff regarding the rather complex legal relationship between 4Ground and Tymeagain. In (extreme) brief, 4Ground was founded in 2011 as a fully-owned subsidiary of Tymeagain, but at an unspecified later point 50% was bought out by its director of operations in preparation for 4Ground to split off into its own company; latterly 4Ground seems to have ended up essentially absorbing Tymeagain’s manufacturing business in what was essentially a licensed production deal – as it turns out the wooden swords business was far bigger than the MDF kits business – while the two companies remained legally separate. This produced problems in 2018-19 as Brexit gutted the UK tourism industry and so sales of gift shop items collapsed. 4Ground thus ended up heavily in debt to Tymeagain and ended up going through liquidation, as a result of which it was bought out again by Tymeagain and reconstituted.

What isn’t fully clear is why 4Ground is shuttering while Tymeagain isn’t. One would have thought that COVID would mean 4Ground’s wargaming business would get more traction and Tymeagain’s gift shop items would get less, but I guess I’m not an economist so… !?!?

507: Painting Artist Translation, submitted on 2022-06-05 23:06:37+08:00.

—– 507.1 —–2022-06-06 02:55:34+08:00:

Looks like 王章 Wang Zhang (at least in Mandarin).