u/johntwit

I knew submarines were an incredibly important part of overall nuclear strategy as a second strike weapon, but I never appreciated how important they were for espionage in general. Like I had no idea we just used them to spy on Soviet coasts with the periscope, for example. That strikes me as insane and it kind of was. Also we used them to study the radio signatures of ICBMs and cruise missiles, using the submarine to detect

And also that we had specially modified submarines to deliver deep sea divers to tap communication cables. Like I knew we tapped cables, but we actually modified submarines to travel to the cable, underwater, the whole way, and divers got out of the submarine at hundreds of feet of depth and tapped the cables with recording equipment and then came back to swap out the tapes. Crazy. Recommend the book. We also used these modified rigs to deploy robots to recover Soviet missile tests on the seafloor to study them.

Very interesting that we wanted to tap the cables to gauge how serious the Soviets were about a potential first strike. In hindsight it seems obvious that of course they did not want to attack, but I guess the Americans seriously didn't know for sure.

Also a wild story about Howard Hughs building a crazy billion dollar boat to pull up a sunken Soviet sub, which was outdated, we recovered 11 Soviet sailor's bodies and gave them a sea burial but we broke the sub in half and dropped it on the sea floor. The mission was a failure and a huge Navy boondoggle, uncovered by WaPo reporter Bob Woodward.

The theme of the book is that all these sub sailors did incredibly dangerous missions - the cable tapping missions had self destruct charges installed as they were ordered not to get captured under any circumstances - but they couldn't tell anyone about it, even their wives and children.

Great book, wonder if anyone else has read it, if any of it is inaccurate or sensationalized.

Seems like these days everyone wants to blame criminal behavior on social problems. But there's nothing wrong with calling a criminal a loser. There are many people who grew up in poverty and had terrible home lives who never break the law. I feel like it does them a disservice to always blame society instead of the criminal themself.

Now I know this online space is a bit left of where society truly is, but it seems around here it's become practically a faux pas to express any kind of demeaning attitude towards criminals. They are even celebrated at times! But I think we *should* demean criminals. Yes, we should fix social problems. But that's another matter. Is it related? Of course! That's the thing about social problems - they are related to literally everything. But there's nothing wrong with disapproving of a criminal, even of calling them a low life. They made a choice and they should be judged for that choice.

Hi, I'm trying to find more information on how exactly tobacco and alcohol companies are influencing TV screenwriting. I'll admit it's just a hunch at this point but I know product placement is a thing, and when I watch Taylor Sheridan shows I'm practically certain that alcohol and tobacco companies have some kind of creative control/influence on not just the dialogue but on the story itself.

Without any evidence, I'm just a conspiracy theorist - I admit that. Maybe Taylor Sheridan just loves stories involving alcohol and tobacco. But if anyone could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but it seems like alcohol and tobacco either set storyline quotas, or have a say in the screenplay, or have a preferred writer involved, or something.

Does anyone know how it works, exactly? How does the money flow, and how exactly do they exert creative influence? Or am I just insane?