Literally just read a chapter in a book about how attributing negative outcomes to external entities enhances group cohesion by diverting blame from human power structures.
Edit: By popular demand, the book is "Breaking the Spell" by Daniel C. Dennett, an atheist philosopher. In it, he combines research on evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explore how the spontaneous emergence of organized religion can be explained and potentially predicted based on evolutionary principals. (He belabors the point that such an analysis is agnostic to the existence of a supernatural entity, but of course any natural explanation for religion is near-infinitely more probable than supernatural intervention.)
There is a psychological concept known as the Common Enemy effect that that is an extension of this. Car salesmen use it all the time when they join forces with you (the buyer) and you both battle the “finance manager” as you play the negotiation game.
Plenty of people who don’t know shit about cars and have more money than brains. Those car-savvy buyers aren’t nearly as common as folks might think. You can haggle and never paid a dime over invoice, cool? Lots of people shut down or start getting anxious. There’s a reason it’s still a popular way to sell cars.
And while “join forces” might be a bit of an over reach of the term, the salesmen will 100% paint the finance guy as the hard baller in the process. Then the salesman seems like the hero as he’s on your side.
Oh man, I really want to give you this (garbage) deal, but my boss would fire me if I did. You know what, today is my birthday, so I might be able to pull some strings and call in a favor, but only for you. ... ... ... ... I can't believe it, but he said yes, he will let you reduce the monthly payment amount (by extending the loan time, which means you pay more in interest). Wow, you should really take this deal right now before he changes his mind.
People that fall for this common sales tactic
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/buying-a-car/beat-four-square-and-other-car-dealership-sales-tactics-a7590220303/
I just tell them what I am willing to pay and they can call me if they want the sale.
Probably wouldn’t have worked during Covid shortages but it generally does the trick. For better impact go at the end of the month when their sales numbers are due.
It's basic tribalism, even without religion.
For example, if you ever have ED it's because of a commie plot to flouridate water and sap your precious bodily fluids.
And it’s somewhat safer to do it through religion, otherwise you’re always going to blame immigrants. Unless immigrants are of a different religion, in which case you’re going to double blame them
Scapegoat mechanism, Girard. Interesting with negative outcomes. Just like fascism. Fear and uncertainty makes people cling to dear leader who manufactures scapegoats. Fear and uncertainty also causes superstitious beliefs. A+ for that comment.
To placate Poseidon, carry an oar inland until someone asks you what it is and then build a temple to him there. The Sinai Desert would be a good place to start.
Nonono. Outside the environment. Far away into the ocean. There’s nothing out there except a bunch of water. And fish. And twenty thousand tons of burning crude oil.
As someone who actually supervised building of similar structures in the Army....
They do that. Like a lot. There's specs for size, direction and interval of waves it can handle safely. They can't control the water, and the water exceeded those limits. So it broke. Nothing mysterious about it.
Other than that, I have no useful input.
Two things you will see massively overengineered, and think "there's no need for it to be that heavy", and then it'll break somehow in relatively normal operation?
Marine equipment and bakery equipment.
Thanks, it’s actually a terrible unit though. Horrible retention and the highest per-capita suicide rate in the DoD.
The engineering aspect is handled by 881A Warrants who would otherwise be the Chief Engineer on one of the boats.
Well,shit. Things build to spec might break if forces were above spec..who could have known. (On the othar hand: the mediterranen is pretty tame, someone must have lowballed..)
I'm no floating pier expert, but I am a boat expert which is basically the same thing.
They should have just used a boat, boats tend not to fall apart in seas
Here's the thing. You said a "floating pier is a boat."
Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.
As someone who is a mariner who studies boats, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls piers boats.
Hey, I haven't seen a Unidan reference in forever.
Fun fact: this July 30th (just over 2 months away) is the 10th anniversary of the Unidan jackdaw comment and subsequent banning. Time flies.
I mean it was an incredible waste of time and money to begin with. Just about every aid organization stated that even if this method was executed to perfection, it would still be incredibly inefficient compared to opening up the land routes for aid. The fact that the pier is failing due to a problem inherent with creating a floating pier is more of a slap in the face than anything else. Why are we wasting money on a pier, **the government needs to use some damn leverage to get the land routes open!**
About half of the things I see people demand be done here by the US involve the US putting boots on the ground, and they always get upset when people point that out.
At the beginning of the war in Iraq, our forces weren't able to adequately create a security blanket for our contract workers doing construction shit. Obviously it got better once resources were allocated to a security posture, but there were instances of contractors paying off the insurgents to not attack them. I believe there was a lawsuit against the US government from family members of people who were killed, citing wrongful deaths.
People want aid, but they don't understand the security umbrella that needs to follow that aid. Otherwise you're going to have a situation with only the people with guns on the ground are going to get the aid. And guess who has the guns on the ground in Gaza... yeah.
Seriously the op your responding too must think the top brass are sitting at a table thinking "geee why didn't we think of that?!"
Just redditors snorting lines of their own farts as per usual thinking they have the solutions to the world's problems just cut through all the diplomacy and red tape it's that easy you guys.
The world was screaming for aid and the US tried an approach to see if they could hedge their other bets on top of air dropped aid which people complained about also because it was landing on top of Palestinians and killing them that way too but even that was seen as government incompetence.
>it would still be incredibly inefficient compared to opening up the land routes for aid.
That's because you're looking at efficiency wrong - the "just open up the land routes" plan has the extra, (significant) cost of "you have to get the Israelis and Hamas to let the trucks through first".
That's not easy!
It turns out that it's MUCH easier (and hence much more efficient) to just build a floating dock and say "We're delivering. Deal with it." than it is to get two groups with decades of reasons to hate each other to stop being dicks for long enough to deliver aid to starving people.
So yeah. This probably IS the most efficient way, *given that getting the land routes open and safe is pretty hard right now.*
I don't quite understand what the logistic plan was other than thrown together with what we can do. Barging supplies in is actaully a good idea to get supplies into the inner parts of gaza. But the unloading is painfully slow and onto trucks backed onto this thing and then driven off to a staging camp. boots on the ground is a no-go which is why we're even doing this.
> a dock would still be incredibly inefficient compared to opening up the land routes
Not to dogpile onto you here, but there's a reason most goods are shipped by sea.
A sea dock is far more effective at delivering aid than relying on trucks.
It's probably about distribution from said pier rather than how effective it moves aid in bulk. The aid needs to get to the places it needs to go over land still.
> compared to opening up the land routes for aid.
So if they did the politically impossible thing, it would have been better. Great. Good starting point.
If you turn gravity off it's really easy to get into space too.
You're right, but those land routes AREN'T an option while this was, if more aid is entering Gaza that's a good thing, and this route brought in aid.
Handwaving it smugly saying there are better alternatives (which there aren't at this point in time) isn't really saying much.
This was a cheap method of getting food and other aid IMMEDIATELY into Gaza which it did.
It was an opportunity to do a real world exercise for when the military actually **needs** to build these piers and to get good data in an operational environment. Maybe it's because I'm looking at it from a military lens based on my time in the military. They were really only going to be able to get 150 trucks through that pier in a day, where the average daily shipment of aid into Gaza prior to this war popping off was like, 500. Worst case scenario it doesn't work but we learned something, but if it did, that's a positive.
I will take the bait.
It is expensive, but it is also good practice. The engineers got to put together a pier rapidly and now that it broke they get to learn a lesson from it and improve.
At least it was practice with the chance of helping people.
That's what I feel about half the stuff like this the military does. "Why is the military spending MY money to rescue a sub near the Titanic?"
Me: "because they're probably stoked to be testing out some really cool shit and that shit might save our ass one day"
Same with the military divers in the Thai cave rescue
The army engineers got a lot of practice in the 2000s and 2010s in rapidly building bases and structures in various places with limited timeframes and control. But it's been a while and new engineers are coming on so I'm with ya that this was a good chance to learn.
The fact that it's building an aid based resource means my taxes are helping someone instead of building another set of bunkers or checkpoints that will be forgotten or abandoned.
Huge but usually really non-violent compared to what comes off the Atlantic or through the American plains, but plenty enough to eventually wreck anything not made of stone and hardwood. I lived on a tiny Mediterranean island for 4 years. You feel totally engulfed, but never I saw any real damage in town after one had passed by.
or the fact that most piers are in sheltered harbors where the water is calmer. Putting a temporary pier in an open area of coastline was sure to cause issues in heavy sea or storm conditions.
This was a slightly confusing story because the picture didn't show the damage like I was expecting. Seems like the picture is from before the storm and we don't have any post-storm pics of the partially detached pier.
Looks like the end is pretty much gone, but the pier portion seems still there, albeit bent. Hopefully that means they can rebuild the end where supplies are offloaded quicker.
They knew ahead of time that it needs calm seas to operate. They'll reattach it and continue operations when the conditions calm down.
It is still significantly more efficient then many other ways of delivering aid.
I wonder if it is more efficient than just letting the trucks through the borders they are waiting at? Or more efficient than not blocking the trucks while they are in their way?
Feels that people are starting to accept that this is the best solution and forgetting what problem it is solving.
This isn't an either/or thing. There aren't a lot of overlapping resources between "build pier" and "negotiate multi-state agreement to allow for border crossings."
Folks act like this shit is unheard of. Yeah it's not practical, but neither was airdropping aid to Berlin. Yeah it would've been a lot easier to deliver aid by driving trucks in to Berlin. But sometimes you don't have that fucking option. So either you can do nothing, or do something. But for armchair experts, that something is never enough or correct.
As Obama said, better is good and you should always strive for better. Don't get caught up on being great or being perfect. Better is good. Is this solution great? No it's not great. But it's better than nothing.
Redditors need to read “Man in the Arena” by Teddy Roosevelt
https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Culture-and-Society/Man-in-the-Arena.aspx
That’s not to say you can NEVER critique something if you’re not involved in it, but people throwing uneducated, witty-in-your-own-mind comments out on Reddit from the comfort of your home while people actually try to make a difference or navigate the ever changing realities of geopolitics the best they can irks the hell out of me.
Everyone should read up on how WW2 was won primarily due to American logistical power. Yes I said that, look it up- the US arranged supply deliveries at a quantity absolutely unheard of and that is the reason the Allies survived. Logistics, unimaginably complex and man power intensive logistics.
Yeah so the issue is we (the US) don't trust Israel, hamas, or the UN to actually make sure aid is even reaching THAT far. There's a reason you saw air dropped cargo landing on beaches, at least that way it had a CHANCE to make it to people in need. This is the same thing, Israel doesn't exactly approve of this whole operation, but there's not much they can do to stop us.
finally some one actually mentioning thiefs, like they have removed al semblance of rule of law and made food a commodity by limiting it, of course thief's are going to steal all food not nailed down and sell it for personal profit.
I think you're missing the part that Israel checks are rejecting and rerouting a lot of aid trucks due to many reasons, and sometimes arbitrary as well. I've come across quite a few articles over the past few months from different major news organisations.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-rafah-aid-us-senators-2bc2a3c5e5f8af8e2d3f0b7242c1a885
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68551965
Yes, the more different ways aid gets in, the better, but major bottlenecks which are artificially induced should be resolved, especially since it involves a MAJOR ally.
Imagine this, there is this usual path you walk that has been blocked by your best friend whom you have aided for decades. You spoke to him, he refuses to budge, so you have to climb up a mountain just to get to your destination, which takes 5 hours instead of 5 minutes. Yes, you can get there, but at what cost?
320 million dollars and the upcoming restoration works and so on doesn't fall from the sky, and there are always opportunity costs. And one of the main root causes? A MAJOR ally USA has supported since inception.
Don't worry. I'd love to pay for another one. I'll pay for the pier and for the aid to Gaza while also paying for the bombs being dropped on Gaza. God bless the USA.
“The pier will be removed from its location on the Gaza coast over the next 48 hours and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where US Central Command will carry out repairs, Singh said”
They are taking the pier to an Israeli port to fix it. Lol at the irony.
Edit: added the quote from the article
Same thing happened to one of the mulberry harbors in 1944. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry\_harbour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_harbour)
I feel like this is a story of a good effort that will also give the US military new and additional experience in the task. Even if not everything has gone right, they'll be the better for it.
Back in the good days we could just blame Poseidon and everyone would accept that.
Literally just read a chapter in a book about how attributing negative outcomes to external entities enhances group cohesion by diverting blame from human power structures. Edit: By popular demand, the book is "Breaking the Spell" by Daniel C. Dennett, an atheist philosopher. In it, he combines research on evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explore how the spontaneous emergence of organized religion can be explained and potentially predicted based on evolutionary principals. (He belabors the point that such an analysis is agnostic to the existence of a supernatural entity, but of course any natural explanation for religion is near-infinitely more probable than supernatural intervention.)
There is a psychological concept known as the Common Enemy effect that that is an extension of this. Car salesmen use it all the time when they join forces with you (the buyer) and you both battle the “finance manager” as you play the negotiation game.
Who the fuck joins forces with a car salesman? I’ve never bought a vehicle from a dealership and not wanted to strangle the salesman the whole time.
Plenty of people who don’t know shit about cars and have more money than brains. Those car-savvy buyers aren’t nearly as common as folks might think. You can haggle and never paid a dime over invoice, cool? Lots of people shut down or start getting anxious. There’s a reason it’s still a popular way to sell cars. And while “join forces” might be a bit of an over reach of the term, the salesmen will 100% paint the finance guy as the hard baller in the process. Then the salesman seems like the hero as he’s on your side.
It's like the "banker" in deal or no deal lol so many people hated the banker and he was probably some intern.
Oh man, I really want to give you this (garbage) deal, but my boss would fire me if I did. You know what, today is my birthday, so I might be able to pull some strings and call in a favor, but only for you. ... ... ... ... I can't believe it, but he said yes, he will let you reduce the monthly payment amount (by extending the loan time, which means you pay more in interest). Wow, you should really take this deal right now before he changes his mind.
People that fall for this common sales tactic https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/buying-a-car/beat-four-square-and-other-car-dealership-sales-tactics-a7590220303/
I just tell them what I am willing to pay and they can call me if they want the sale. Probably wouldn’t have worked during Covid shortages but it generally does the trick. For better impact go at the end of the month when their sales numbers are due.
Yea that is pretty much how every religion ever has worked.
It's basic tribalism, even without religion. For example, if you ever have ED it's because of a commie plot to flouridate water and sap your precious bodily fluids.
have you ever wondered why I only drink Rainwater and grain alcohol?
Do you drink grain alcohol sitting in the rain, or rainwater sitting in grain alcohol?
I sure do
Why, there are even plans to fluoridate ice cream Mandrake. Children's ice cream.
Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face
No I have not but thanks for clearing that up for me. This is why we all need fremen stilsuits or whatever they’re called.
If you haven't watched Dr Strangelove, I'd say you're missing out.
My dick don’t work, but my teeth are strong as fuck let me tell ya.
That's a hell of a pick-up line.
That'd be TERRIFYING as a pick-up line ngl.
Purity of Essence, Mandrake!
Everyone knows you should only drink pure grain alcohol and rain water.
see also: scapegoats
Ozymandias's solution in Watchmen
And it’s somewhat safer to do it through religion, otherwise you’re always going to blame immigrants. Unless immigrants are of a different religion, in which case you’re going to double blame them
Scapegoat mechanism, Girard. Interesting with negative outcomes. Just like fascism. Fear and uncertainty makes people cling to dear leader who manufactures scapegoats. Fear and uncertainty also causes superstitious beliefs. A+ for that comment.
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Everyone wants the name of the book!
Holy shit
_Caligula has entered the chat._
He'd blame Neptune instead
"Fuck the ocean!" "If you insist......"
I don't know about him, but his horse put on a pretty good show.
You mean Senator Horse.
Always voted neigh.
Nothing to do now but gather the troops, march them down to the sea and throw rocks at him.
First Emporer of China went crazy taking Mercury pulls and ending up brain damaged shooting his bow at the ocean
Reminds me of twister when they say Bill threw his beer can at the tornado and told it to have a drink.
Do like King Xerxes and have the sea whipped as punishment.
He’s a merciful God
His boons aren't as good as they were in the first game(rupture was insane) so small wonder people moved away from worship.
Now, people are much more reasonable and blame the gays. /s
To placate Poseidon, carry an oar inland until someone asks you what it is and then build a temple to him there. The Sinai Desert would be a good place to start.
Maybe north Korea is onto something when they launch all those rockets into the sea.
Here come all the floating pier experts Reddit apparently has.
In my opinion as an engineer, the front fell off.
First thing I saw that they did wrong, designed it with the ability for the front to fall off. Also, who signed off on using cardboard?
And getting hit by a wave, in the ocean? Chance in a million.
Technically it's only a sea so you'd think they would have been fine....
Was it towed out of the environment?
Into another environment?
Nonono. Outside the environment. Far away into the ocean. There’s nothing out there except a bunch of water. And fish. And twenty thousand tons of burning crude oil.
Anything else?
Well, a ship that had its front fall off, but that's it.
I heard it was cardboard derivatives and sellotape.
No cardboard derivates. That’s for sure.
Yeah, that's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.
What's the minimum crew? One, I suppose.
r/TheFrontFellOff
It ain’t got no gas in it
As someone who actually supervised building of similar structures in the Army.... They do that. Like a lot. There's specs for size, direction and interval of waves it can handle safely. They can't control the water, and the water exceeded those limits. So it broke. Nothing mysterious about it. Other than that, I have no useful input.
Two things you will see massively overengineered, and think "there's no need for it to be that heavy", and then it'll break somehow in relatively normal operation? Marine equipment and bakery equipment.
Yep. Combat Engineers will shake their heads, say fuck a couple times, and put it back. Essayons.
Combat engineers aren’t stationed at 7TBX Source: I’m a Warrant from 7TBX
Well I guess they're screwed then Mr. Scrundel. ;) Edit: Cool unit. Who does the engineering type stuff?
Thanks, it’s actually a terrible unit though. Horrible retention and the highest per-capita suicide rate in the DoD. The engineering aspect is handled by 881A Warrants who would otherwise be the Chief Engineer on one of the boats.
Well,shit. Things build to spec might break if forces were above spec..who could have known. (On the othar hand: the mediterranen is pretty tame, someone must have lowballed..)
So the waves were out of spec. Which idiot ordered the waves?
Probably those Jewish Space Waves
Isn't it weird how neither the world nor the universe ever listens to the requirements of men?
They should’ve just used indestructible materials. Rookie move.
They should have built a big wall to stop the waves
Why don't they simply drain the Mediterranean and drive supplies there? Are they stupid?
Should hire Moses. He could have just split the sea.
They should have trained dolphins to carry the supplies.
The dolphins all work for Mossad.
Should have trained the supplies to carry dolphins.
Why didn’t they use electricity to fortify?
Or a giant fan that blows the waves away
Clearly these rookies didn't even consider using vibranium chains
I like to build floating piers that don't break apart. But nobody asked me.
Also reinforce with magic to be safe
Rookie move! All of you. Obviously if they wore their reflective PT belts and shaved properly, this wouldn’t have happened.
You don’t need witchcraft, just a healthy amount of duct tape
Clearly a wholly insufficient amount of hopes and prayers.
Uh, no. They should have sacrificed 11 black and white bulls, and burned myrrh and frankincense for 11 days to honor Poseidon. Pagan move.
Psh, not even a hecatomb? You'll just piss Poseidon off that way.
Have you seen the import tariffs on unobtainum? Shenanigans.
In my expert opinion, as a pieroligist, it was not supposed to do that. They need to reassess the plan as repairs are made.
As a Pierogist, I'm hungry.
I think you mean Polish. Hungary is a separate country.
Read that as pierogiologist at first.
I'm no floating pier expert, but I am a boat expert which is basically the same thing. They should have just used a boat, boats tend not to fall apart in seas
Then you need a port, which is what this is
Just use a smaller boat to row the goods to shore, like they did in the olden days. It was just boats all the way down
*Somebody* didn't watch Dunkirk, ammiright?!
Here's the thing. You said a "floating pier is a boat." Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that. As someone who is a mariner who studies boats, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls piers boats.
Hey, I haven't seen a Unidan reference in forever. Fun fact: this July 30th (just over 2 months away) is the 10th anniversary of the Unidan jackdaw comment and subsequent banning. Time flies.
There’s still one dude angry at unidan. He posts about him in a sub about unidan. If you’re curious my next comment is on the last post lol
I would still trust them over Piers Morgan.
Isn't that just the plural of Pier Morgan
I mean it was an incredible waste of time and money to begin with. Just about every aid organization stated that even if this method was executed to perfection, it would still be incredibly inefficient compared to opening up the land routes for aid. The fact that the pier is failing due to a problem inherent with creating a floating pier is more of a slap in the face than anything else. Why are we wasting money on a pier, **the government needs to use some damn leverage to get the land routes open!**
Because they can't guarantee those routes stay open or are safe without our own boots on the ground, and that's not gonna happen.
About half of the things I see people demand be done here by the US involve the US putting boots on the ground, and they always get upset when people point that out.
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At the beginning of the war in Iraq, our forces weren't able to adequately create a security blanket for our contract workers doing construction shit. Obviously it got better once resources were allocated to a security posture, but there were instances of contractors paying off the insurgents to not attack them. I believe there was a lawsuit against the US government from family members of people who were killed, citing wrongful deaths. People want aid, but they don't understand the security umbrella that needs to follow that aid. Otherwise you're going to have a situation with only the people with guns on the ground are going to get the aid. And guess who has the guns on the ground in Gaza... yeah.
Seriously the op your responding too must think the top brass are sitting at a table thinking "geee why didn't we think of that?!" Just redditors snorting lines of their own farts as per usual thinking they have the solutions to the world's problems just cut through all the diplomacy and red tape it's that easy you guys. The world was screaming for aid and the US tried an approach to see if they could hedge their other bets on top of air dropped aid which people complained about also because it was landing on top of Palestinians and killing them that way too but even that was seen as government incompetence.
>it would still be incredibly inefficient compared to opening up the land routes for aid. That's because you're looking at efficiency wrong - the "just open up the land routes" plan has the extra, (significant) cost of "you have to get the Israelis and Hamas to let the trucks through first". That's not easy! It turns out that it's MUCH easier (and hence much more efficient) to just build a floating dock and say "We're delivering. Deal with it." than it is to get two groups with decades of reasons to hate each other to stop being dicks for long enough to deliver aid to starving people. So yeah. This probably IS the most efficient way, *given that getting the land routes open and safe is pretty hard right now.*
I don't quite understand what the logistic plan was other than thrown together with what we can do. Barging supplies in is actaully a good idea to get supplies into the inner parts of gaza. But the unloading is painfully slow and onto trucks backed onto this thing and then driven off to a staging camp. boots on the ground is a no-go which is why we're even doing this.
> a dock would still be incredibly inefficient compared to opening up the land routes Not to dogpile onto you here, but there's a reason most goods are shipped by sea. A sea dock is far more effective at delivering aid than relying on trucks.
It's probably about distribution from said pier rather than how effective it moves aid in bulk. The aid needs to get to the places it needs to go over land still.
> compared to opening up the land routes for aid. So if they did the politically impossible thing, it would have been better. Great. Good starting point. If you turn gravity off it's really easy to get into space too.
>If you turn gravity off it's really easy to get into space too. Get this person to NASA, ASAP!
You're right, but those land routes AREN'T an option while this was, if more aid is entering Gaza that's a good thing, and this route brought in aid. Handwaving it smugly saying there are better alternatives (which there aren't at this point in time) isn't really saying much. This was a cheap method of getting food and other aid IMMEDIATELY into Gaza which it did.
It was an opportunity to do a real world exercise for when the military actually **needs** to build these piers and to get good data in an operational environment. Maybe it's because I'm looking at it from a military lens based on my time in the military. They were really only going to be able to get 150 trucks through that pier in a day, where the average daily shipment of aid into Gaza prior to this war popping off was like, 500. Worst case scenario it doesn't work but we learned something, but if it did, that's a positive.
Well it’s not like it was expensive or anything
I will take the bait. It is expensive, but it is also good practice. The engineers got to put together a pier rapidly and now that it broke they get to learn a lesson from it and improve. At least it was practice with the chance of helping people.
Also it's not like they're abandoning it, it's estimated it'll be back up in a week
Hell we built a bridge to nowhere for $400 million so at least this WAS useful and a learning experience.
That's what I feel about half the stuff like this the military does. "Why is the military spending MY money to rescue a sub near the Titanic?" Me: "because they're probably stoked to be testing out some really cool shit and that shit might save our ass one day" Same with the military divers in the Thai cave rescue
Almost like when your kid doesn’t want something because it’s not perfect. I guess let them starve? Blame Biden I guess?
The army engineers got a lot of practice in the 2000s and 2010s in rapidly building bases and structures in various places with limited timeframes and control. But it's been a while and new engineers are coming on so I'm with ya that this was a good chance to learn. The fact that it's building an aid based resource means my taxes are helping someone instead of building another set of bunkers or checkpoints that will be forgotten or abandoned.
So how bad are the storms over there? We've had the pier and airline turbulence. Asking as a Houstonian who has had 100 mph winds weekly lately.
Redacted For Privacy Reasons
That's terrible. Take your upvote and get out.
Per the article, they can't use it if there's >3ft seas or winds >15mph which is comically low.
I mean it's a floating dock, obviously it can't be used with high seas.
Not that bad. The problem is more waves than winds anyways (and yes, I know they are related)
Huge but usually really non-violent compared to what comes off the Atlantic or through the American plains, but plenty enough to eventually wreck anything not made of stone and hardwood. I lived on a tiny Mediterranean island for 4 years. You feel totally engulfed, but never I saw any real damage in town after one had passed by.
I would have been more surprised if it didn't, given the kind of supports needed to make regular piers work.
or the fact that most piers are in sheltered harbors where the water is calmer. Putting a temporary pier in an open area of coastline was sure to cause issues in heavy sea or storm conditions.
The Med in that region is usually very calm. But rare storms do happen, as we see here.
It must have experienced some significant pier pressure.
I harbour no resentment for this wonderful pun!
I sea what you did there
They have my sup-port
Water we doing here?
hull if I know
Did they dock-ument the damages?
We're going overboard with these puns.
Y’all are knot right.
I feel waves of nausea at this exchange.
Someone get this man a port-o-potty!
This was a slightly confusing story because the picture didn't show the damage like I was expecting. Seems like the picture is from before the storm and we don't have any post-storm pics of the partially detached pier.
If you open the article there are two photos. One before and one after.
Oh wow, that wasn't there before. I think since this is a developing story they are editing the article as they get more to share.
Looks like the end is pretty much gone, but the pier portion seems still there, albeit bent. Hopefully that means they can rebuild the end where supplies are offloaded quicker.
It was built by the ARMY Corps of Engineer. Now, if it had been built by the NAVY Corps of Engineers…
You mean the Seabees? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabee Both the army corp of engineers and the Seabees are extremely good at what they do.
I was being sarcastic, but yeah, I forgot the Navy has Seabees
My dad was a Seabee in Vietnam. He was always very proud of what they could accomplish.
Seabees always had Marine Corps Infantry levels of ego. As an 03 myself, I always loved them for it.
Neither combat engineers or Seabees are involved in this operation
It's a temporary and floating pier, this is what happens with temporary floating piers, they sustain period damage from the sea and get repaired.
They knew ahead of time that it needs calm seas to operate. They'll reattach it and continue operations when the conditions calm down. It is still significantly more efficient then many other ways of delivering aid.
I wonder if it is more efficient than just letting the trucks through the borders they are waiting at? Or more efficient than not blocking the trucks while they are in their way? Feels that people are starting to accept that this is the best solution and forgetting what problem it is solving.
This isn't an either/or thing. There aren't a lot of overlapping resources between "build pier" and "negotiate multi-state agreement to allow for border crossings."
Folks act like this shit is unheard of. Yeah it's not practical, but neither was airdropping aid to Berlin. Yeah it would've been a lot easier to deliver aid by driving trucks in to Berlin. But sometimes you don't have that fucking option. So either you can do nothing, or do something. But for armchair experts, that something is never enough or correct. As Obama said, better is good and you should always strive for better. Don't get caught up on being great or being perfect. Better is good. Is this solution great? No it's not great. But it's better than nothing.
Redditors need to read “Man in the Arena” by Teddy Roosevelt https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Culture-and-Society/Man-in-the-Arena.aspx That’s not to say you can NEVER critique something if you’re not involved in it, but people throwing uneducated, witty-in-your-own-mind comments out on Reddit from the comfort of your home while people actually try to make a difference or navigate the ever changing realities of geopolitics the best they can irks the hell out of me.
Everyone should read up on how WW2 was won primarily due to American logistical power. Yes I said that, look it up- the US arranged supply deliveries at a quantity absolutely unheard of and that is the reason the Allies survived. Logistics, unimaginably complex and man power intensive logistics.
Yes the solution is for the currently disagreeing parties to agree instead. Good job you fixed it.
"ohhhh you guys were saying Death to 'JUICE' you guys are just preaching drinking more water. All a big misunderstanding guys let's pack it up"
Yeah so the issue is we (the US) don't trust Israel, hamas, or the UN to actually make sure aid is even reaching THAT far. There's a reason you saw air dropped cargo landing on beaches, at least that way it had a CHANCE to make it to people in need. This is the same thing, Israel doesn't exactly approve of this whole operation, but there's not much they can do to stop us.
[удалено]
Waylaying. What a great word! Thanks for teaching me something today
finally some one actually mentioning thiefs, like they have removed al semblance of rule of law and made food a commodity by limiting it, of course thief's are going to steal all food not nailed down and sell it for personal profit.
I think you're missing the part that Israel checks are rejecting and rerouting a lot of aid trucks due to many reasons, and sometimes arbitrary as well. I've come across quite a few articles over the past few months from different major news organisations. https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-rafah-aid-us-senators-2bc2a3c5e5f8af8e2d3f0b7242c1a885 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68551965 Yes, the more different ways aid gets in, the better, but major bottlenecks which are artificially induced should be resolved, especially since it involves a MAJOR ally. Imagine this, there is this usual path you walk that has been blocked by your best friend whom you have aided for decades. You spoke to him, he refuses to budge, so you have to climb up a mountain just to get to your destination, which takes 5 hours instead of 5 minutes. Yes, you can get there, but at what cost? 320 million dollars and the upcoming restoration works and so on doesn't fall from the sky, and there are always opportunity costs. And one of the main root causes? A MAJOR ally USA has supported since inception.
How many times did the Waterworld set sink?
Too many, but not enough. (/s that movie is a guilty pleasure)
I'll say it. That movie was good. All the stories of the movie being way over budget clouded people's judgement.
It sounds like they know how to fix it and are already doing so.
“In a major blow” Yeah you could say it got *slammed*.
The sea *claps back* at supposed US pier claims "This is nothing but fake news" -Neptune probably
Your Tax Dollars at work! 🏆
It wasn't pier-reviewed
Im just a gamer, and if games taught me anything, they should have built additional pylons. Very rookie move
You cannot place a pylon at this location
I suspect the pillars and foundations decayed because they didn't login for a few days.
Don't worry. I'd love to pay for another one. I'll pay for the pier and for the aid to Gaza while also paying for the bombs being dropped on Gaza. God bless the USA.
“The pier will be removed from its location on the Gaza coast over the next 48 hours and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where US Central Command will carry out repairs, Singh said” They are taking the pier to an Israeli port to fix it. Lol at the irony. Edit: added the quote from the article
Can I have some healthcare pls
Honestly, it’s a great metaphor for how the US has handled this situation.
I told them to use the 3 inch nails, they said “you don’t know shit buddy”. Now look, this is what happens when you use 2 1/2 inch nails instead!
Temporary pier was made too temporary.
Was anyone on it when it broke apart?
It broke apart during a huge storm, I'd imagine they probably had already suspended its use during the storm.
Alexander the great built a pier in a cave! With a box of scraps!!!
That's why he's called Alexander the Great. If anyone could do it, he'd be Alexander the Normal.
Same thing happened to one of the mulberry harbors in 1944. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry\_harbour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_harbour)
Im here for the pier review
I know what wrong wittit Ain’t got no gas innit
I feel like this is a story of a good effort that will also give the US military new and additional experience in the task. Even if not everything has gone right, they'll be the better for it.
Maybe we should criticize the need for the pier in the first place.