KLISHDFSDF 116 points 3 years ago

I've got my vote for the guy who thought carbon fiber would do great under pressure after being told "no" by tons of experts in the field.

path: 0 833604, hotness: undefined, score: 116, children: 11

harbingerofthefall 8 points 3 years ago

This is a great example of why "It was fine last time." is not an excepted safety standard in (most) engineering.

save

path: 0 833604 894451, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1

intensely_human 1 point 3 years ago

I can’t help but notice your entire design is predicated on the assumption the sun will come up tomorrow …

save

path: 0 833604 894451 910162, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

clgoh 6 points 3 years ago

And then by tons of water in the ocean.

save

path: 0 833604 859499, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

erogenouswarzone 3 points 3 years ago

I want to know more.

save

path: 0 833604 846742, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 2

intensely_human 4 points 3 years ago

The Titan sub was a private vessel hosting visits to the Titanic wreck at $250k per ticket.

Its main cylinder was composed of carbon fiber, which goes against naval engineers’ recommendations that submarines have bodies made of steel (or any material known for its compression strength).

Not only generally, but the owner of the sub was repeatedly warned by engineers that the vessel would not sustain the pressure of the depth they were diving to.

save

path: 0 833604 846742 910268, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1

intensely_human 1 point 3 years ago

Or was it called Atlas? I don’t remember.

save

path: 0 833604 846742 910268 910278, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

clgoh 1 point 3 years ago

And then by tons of water in the ocean.

save

path: 0 833604 859402, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

erogenouswarzone 1 point 3 years ago

I want to know more.

save

path: 0 833604 846743, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 2

dizzy 6 points 3 years ago

The submersible that crumpled and killed all passengers by the Titanic.

save

path: 0 833604 846743 848352, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

FIST_FILLET 3 points 3 years ago

boy do i have good news for you

save

path: 0 833604 846743 849175, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

clgoh 0 points 3 years ago

And then by tons of water in the ocean.

save

path: 0 833604 859389, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 0

fratermus 76 points 3 years ago

Given that it'd already killed someone, I'm going to nominate the second guy who thought he could cowboy criticality testing with the Demon Core at Los Alamos.

By coincidence, at this moment I am camped on a mountain overlooking the Los Alamos NL.

“Win stupid games, earn stupid prizes”?

BTW, I think it's play stupid games...

save

path: 0 833492, hotness: undefined, score: 76, children: 5

TaleOfSam 7 points 3 years ago

That’s an absolutely bonkers read; thank you.

save

path: 0 833492 834686, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1

deegeese 2 points 3 years ago

He was more of a reckless rocket enthusiast grifting Flat -Earthers to find his latest near-suicidal venture.

save

path: 0 833492 834686 835207, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

buckykat 6 points 3 years ago

Louis Slotin: smartest dumb guy or dumbest smart guy in history?

save

path: 0 833492 840365, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

intensely_human 3 points 3 years ago

Don’t do it man. The Demon Core isn’t worth it! No man should wield such power and it’s folly to try!

save

path: 0 833492 910330, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

StarkillerX42 1 point 3 years ago

Don't forget to stop at Bathtub Brewery before you head out!

save

path: 0 833492 889608, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

april435 55 points 3 years ago

it's an ongoing historical event, but the russian invasion of ukraine fits the bill nicely lmao

save

path: 0 842734, hotness: undefined, score: 55, children: 7

Bjoern_Tantau 9 points 3 years ago

If only the people actually ordering the game would win the price instead of those playing it.

save

path: 0 842734 846141, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0

6mementomori 5 points 3 years ago

let me add betraying Wagner to this

save

path: 0 842734 848905, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 5

fratermus 3 points 3 years ago

I didn't see the parent comment and thought this was about Nietzsche.

save

path: 0 842734 848905 858843, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 1

Akasazh 2 points 3 years ago

Lol. I do now wonder why they chose that name

save

path: 0 842734 848905 858843 862226, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

Chrisosaur 3 points 3 years ago

I hope that fits the bill, but so far the only consequence of betraying Wagner is that Wagner drove to Belarus with few apparent repercussions.

save

path: 0 842734 848905 854129, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 2

6mementomori -1 points 3 years ago

the reputation of Russia has been damaged further and I don't know how well Russia will fare now without Wagner's support and nobody will now trust Russia because they know they'll soon backstab them.

save

path: 0 842734 848905 854129 854766, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0

6mementomori -1 points 3 years ago

save

path: 0 842734 848905 854129 854767, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0

vsp 39 points 3 years ago

There is this guy who killed 40,000 elephants because he thought it'd improve the environment.

His name was Allan Savory.

Anyways, it was a poor decision, which harmed the natural regrowth of grasses in Africa. And probably contributed to drought and poor soil conditions there. Sadly, he has been regarded as an expert and heralded as an environmentalist par excellance. So, less of a stupid prize for him than a poor prize for humanity writ-large.

save

path: 0 834888, hotness: undefined, score: 39, children: 1

intensely_human 1 point 3 years ago

Wasn’t it something like the elephants were helping the soil by trampling it as they walked around?

save

path: 0 834888 910402, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

floofloof 34 points 3 years ago

I think the saying is, "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." You can edit post titles on Lemmy.

save

path: 0 833321, hotness: undefined, score: 34, children: 2

JohnSaveourSocks 24 points 3 years ago

Noted. Changed title

save

path: 0 833321 833393, hotness: undefined, score: 24, children: 0

TheButtonJustSpins 3 points 3 years ago

You can edit post titles on Lemmy.

Which is a godsend.

save

path: 0 833321 910559, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

Gsus4 30 points 3 years ago

Which reminds me: we need a leopardsatemyface community

save

path: 0 836690, hotness: undefined, score: 30, children: 5

Machefi 10 points 3 years ago

save

path: 0 836690 840884, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 2

erogenouswarzone 6 points 3 years ago

Yeah reddit's leopardsatemyface in the last few years was just awful.

It seemed like it was just a bunch of kids making stupid complaints and posting pics of severely mentally ill people's Facebook page.

Who needs Facebook pics when you can look in the mirror?

save

path: 0 836690 840884 846725, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 1

morphballganon 1 point 3 years ago

The posts I saw were great, but maybe because I only sorted by hot or rising

save

path: 0 836690 840884 846725 853287, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

INHALE_VEGETABLES 2 points 3 years ago

Yes!

save

path: 0 836690 837899, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

greatwhitebuffalo41 2 points 3 years ago

I think Lemmy.world announced one? Maybe I'm wrong. I saw something in !newcommunities@lemmy.world a few days back

save

path: 0 836690 844125, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

Nugget_in_biscuit 25 points 3 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...

save

path: 0 834959, hotness: undefined, score: 25, children: 0

hoodlem 24 points 3 years ago

Argentina claiming the Falkland Islands from Britain in the 80s 🤦‍♂️: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War

save

path: 0 852061, hotness: undefined, score: 24, children: 0

Donebrach 22 points 3 years ago

Probably the most pedestrian and US-centric answer but Japan bombing Pearl Harbor comes to mind almost immediatly.

save

path: 0 834203, hotness: undefined, score: 22, children: 1

morphballganon 4 points 3 years ago

The most US-centric answer would be the hundreds of seditionists at the Capitol on 1/6/21 who later got arrested.

save

path: 0 834203 853393, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

Saigonauticon 21 points 3 years ago

Pretty much the entire three kingdoms period in China. No one accomplishes what they set out to do, all the great heroes die ordinary deaths due to politics or disease, and everything they create gets arbitrarily absorbed into a Jin dynasty that none of them foresaw (except maybe Kong Ming) or wanted.

Awesome story though.

save

path: 0 839909, hotness: undefined, score: 21, children: 4

KluEvo 4 points 3 years ago

Eh, I'd argue that it was less stupid games and prizes and more... Unusually equally matched candidates vying for the throne? I mean, think of the warring states, or the Chu-Han contention, or whatever the fuck was going on in Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.

In each of the cases, after the fall/overthrow of the previous dynasty, multiple powerful folks threw their hats into the ring. Warring states ended with Qin beating its rivals. Liu Bang out maneuvered Xiang Yu to reunite all/most of China. The Song Dynasty succeeded where all the previous 5 Dynasties failed and absorbed the ten kingdoms. The Three Kingdoms era was mostly similar, but somehow the three major contestants managed to almost perfectly balance their power and just got stuck at an impasse for long enough that the good ol' classic causes of the downfalls of Chinese dynasties (corruption of bureaucracy and the imperial families) took hold.

On reddit, I once read a really good perspective of the whole thing. To summarize: one of the greatest tragedies of the three kingdoms was that Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan were born in the same conflict era, as each of them were more than capable rulers and leaders that had what it would have taken to unite china. Meanwhile, the other conflict eras had only one or two truly capable emperor-aspirants that had the potential to take it all.

save

path: 0 839909 854154, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 3

Saigonauticon 1 point 3 years ago

That's an interesting summary! I don't know that much about all of those periods of history. Mostly the R3K era, some Song dynasty. Also Vietnamese history, which has a lot of really random bits.

The greatest tragedies are often the conflict between completely acceptable powers, not good and evil.

I thought Sun Quan was the weakest of the three leaders though. So indicisive!

save

path: 0 839909 854154 859284, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 2

KluEvo 1 point 3 years ago

The greatest tragedies are often the conflict between completely acceptable powers, not good and evil.

Yeah, that's a really good takeaway from this kinda of history.

Sun Quan was the weakest of the three leaders though. So indicisive!

In terms of individuality and becoming emperor of all of China, perhaps. He had a surprising number of really competent aides and generals, when compared to Cao Cao and Liu Bei. He was the kind of leader that was much more of a skilled manager of capable talent than a director who knew exactly what commands to give. In the long term, tho, this admittedly lead to politicking and infighting that cause Eastern Wu to rollover and die.

Also, it's worth considering that he was also arguably the most important of the three for their legacy. The Southeastern part of China is incredibly important /influencial in later chinese history, from Tang to Song to Ming and all the way to today, and Sun Quan had the unenviable task of fully absorbing the distinct jiangnan and southern chinese customs and idiosyncrasies into what we nowadays think of as chinese culture.

save

path: 0 839909 854154 859284 859285, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1

Saigonauticon 1 point 3 years ago

That's an interesting take on it! It's true Sun Quan had cultivated some good generals. Heck, Wu was the last of the 3 standing so I guess that counts for something.

Another big lesson I got out of the era was that the skills to build an empire are very different from the skills to run it. So an empire built by a great hero, can easily be mismanaged by the same hero. Then, when an empire is passed on through heredity, there is no guarantee that the new leader possesses either set of skills. This seems to be one of the major ways that empires fall apart.

I work with some large family-run Chinese companies. There were ones with a certain flavor of weak leadership which really confused me before I looked at it this way. Now I'm better aware of why this happens, the time scale and method of the resulting descent into chaos, and how to convince and maneuver my employers to profit from it. Similar things come up sometimes in Vietnam too, but somehow I never really connected the dots before.

Also apparently eunuchs ruin everything. I feel that there's a more modern analogy, maybe people who play politics for personal gain inside companies instead of through the merit of their own work? Can't quite put my finger on it.

save

path: 0 839909 854154 859284 859285 887300, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

HexagonFox 21 points 3 years ago

That guy, who made a steam powered rocket to see if the earth was flat 🚀

save

path: 0 834550, hotness: undefined, score: 21, children: 2

INHALE_VEGETABLES 4 points 3 years ago

Steam powered rocket sounds crazy but it would of worked if they didn't shoot him down with the space laser.

Sad fact: he only made it about 500m so he never even found out.

We may never know.

save

path: 0 834550 839174, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1

erogenouswarzone 2 points 3 years ago

I feel like that's how a lot of these go. We could've had flying pintos if they had used larger wings. But then the inventor dies and their work rarely gets picked up again, even though most of the heavy lifting is done.

save

path: 0 834550 839174 853592, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

knusprig 20 points 3 years ago

Brexit

save

path: 0 889029, hotness: undefined, score: 20, children: 2

zen404 3 points 3 years ago

/thread

save

path: 0 889029 894037, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

plain_and_simply 2 points 3 years ago

The truth hurts

save

path: 0 889029 893630, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

sunbeam60 19 points 3 years ago

Sub-prime mortgage crisis springs to mind.

save

path: 0 842758, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 1

Qualanqui 10 points 3 years ago

You would think that, but the big banks made out like absolutely crazy from the derivatives and then got to seize a whole swathe of land they then sold on for even more money or kept for themselves and used to artificially inflate the rental markets while at the same time curb stomping their competition thus giving them a much larger piece of the pie after everything shook out.

The real own goal here is the poor saps who thought they were getting a cheap mortgage until the interest rates started going up and up.

save

path: 0 842758 865792, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

AdamEatsAss 15 points 3 years ago

Thomas Edison famously tried to prove that AC current was more dangerous than his DC current. (Edison was pushing DC current for long distance transmission and as home electrical service.) To do this he electruted Topsy the elephant in front of an audience. When the AC current wouldn't kill Topsy he switched to DC current and zapped her to death.

save

path: 0 835912, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 5

duncesplayed 13 points 3 years ago

I don't know that this one really counts. First, as stewie said, Edison didn't electrocute Topsy (though he did film it).

But anyway, what "stupid prizez" did Edison win? An enormous pile of money and immortal fame and admiration?

save

path: 0 835912 839103, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 0

stewie3128 5 points 3 years ago

Although Edison was a complete ass, and did lasting damage to the world by teaming up with JP Morgan to extinguish Nikola Tesla's work, he wasn't the one who electrocuted Topsy.

save

path: 0 835912 836841, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0

DigitalAudio 2 points 3 years ago

I mean… if you use DC digitally (I.e turning it on and off making it binary code), it really is a cleaner information transmission than AC. But I doubt that’s what Edison had in mind.

save

path: 0 835912 841340, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

stewie3128 0 points 3 years ago

Although Edison was a complete ass, and did lasting damage to the world by teaming up with JP Morgan to extinguish Nikola Tesla's work, he wasn't the one who electrocuted Topsy.

save

path: 0 835912 836795, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 0

stewie3128 -1 points 3 years ago

Although Edison was a complete ass, and did lasting damage to the world by teaming up with JP Morgan to extinguish Nikola Tesla's work, he wasn't the one who electrocuted Topsy.

save

path: 0 835912 836822, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0

ch00f 9 points 3 years ago

Never fight a land war in Asia Scroll down to casualties.

save

path: 0 833508, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 6

Arbiter 1 point 3 years ago

A mistake people keep making.

save

path: 0 833508 834069, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 5

001100010010 11 points 3 years ago

save

path: 0 833508 834069 834232, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 2

Quill7513 3 points 3 years ago

By most definitions Ukraine is definitively not part of Asia. The only line that would intersect with Ukraine at all is "A" which only the Soviets ever claimed to be the line between Europe and Asia

save

path: 0 833508 834069 834232 834811, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

ch00f 0 points 3 years ago

Eh. On the border.

save

path: 0 833508 834069 834232 834662, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 0

vacuumfountain 7 points 3 years ago

… do y’all not know where Asia is? Both of those are European conflicts

save

path: 0 833508 834069 836418, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1

Arbiter 3 points 3 years ago

Asia is somewhere east of Britain

save

path: 0 833508 834069 836418 851453, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

intensely_human 7 points 3 years ago

Failing to heed the (Army Corps of Engineers)’s warning and fix the dikes in New Orleans, in the years leading up to 2005.

(Sorry for those weird parentheses but I had no idea where to put that possessive apostrophe in that phrase.)

save

path: 0 910143, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0

angrylittlekitty 6 points 3 years ago

spez fucking with 3rd party developers, mods and fucking down on lies to the community.

save

path: 0 863705, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

lntl 3 points 3 years ago

WWI

Newly industrialized nations, to an extent, went to war to test out their new industrial and mechanized firepower. What proceeded this was unprecedented death and destruction.

save

path: 0 911658, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0