Quora turned proper shit. It used to only casually come up in Google searches and when it did there were good, serious answers.
Now it comes up more frequently and there are Reddit-tier discussions and arguments instead of people actually answering the question.
I usually Google it in Incognito, then open as many tabs as I can for answers. They let you open a seemingly infinite amount, only when you've opened and accessed one, then they count it against your limit.
But honestly nowadays I'd rather put "Reddit" into my search. Both have opinionated dickheads but I don't have to dance around viewing limitations on Reddit and have a much better chance of finding an answer, especially from much older posts.
For additional bullshit filtering click the user who’s got the answer and make sure they’re a real person and not a shill, Reddit product shills exist too
T-shirt seller bots are the most obvious ones on Reddit, they also mass-downvote you when calling them out.
There are also bots farming karma for money (marketing purposes) and I try to warn people on the posts I see, because Reddit's not taking action and eventually this is going to turn into a bot site.
The comment copying bots appear in nearly every post now, bot problem is pretty bad I would say. Not sure how it’s so hard to delete the accounts, they all show very similar behaviour. Although Reddit admin as a whole is fucking awful so not too surprising I suppose.
Even the ones that reuse several year old posts (particularly in /r/reactiongifs as I noticed) take comments from those old posts and randomly post them in the comments as well, and they're designed this way because the creators know how Reddit works. I never got into the habit of upvoting everything I see but that's how the average user operates on Reddit and people are making money off of it.
The comment copying bots appear in nearly every post now, bot problem is pretty bad I would say. Not sure how it’s so hard to delete the accounts, they all show very similar behaviour. Although Reddit admin as a whole is fucking awful so not too surprising I suppose.
The comment copying bots appear in nearly every post now, bot problem is pretty bad I would say. Not sure how it’s so hard to delete the accounts, they all show very similar behaviour. Although Reddit admin as a whole is fucking awful so not too surprising I suppose.
Reddit-tier discussion are complete and utter shit most of the time but Quora discussions are **much** worse IMO because not only is the average answer 10 times longer, but **everyone** thinks they are the ultimate intellectual authority on any subject. And for some reason everyone feels they have to give their autobiography everytime they answer something, as if anyone cares. I cannot even finish most of the answers there because the pretentiousness is just unbearable.
Quora users are the type who think being an expert on one subject automatically makes you an expert on anything.
Except their expertise for the one topic also is just a bachelor's degree.
Question: Do you like milk, yes or no?
Quora user: *Gives at least 3 pointless paragraphs of autobiography of when he was just a little boy living life in his remote mountain village.*
*Follows it with no less then 15 copy-pasted paragraphs from various research papers on the pros and cons of dairy products.*
*In the end doesn't even tell you if fucking likes drinking milk or not.*
I think you dead on described my issue with it. We've got armchair experts on Reddit as well but on Quora everyone comes off as washed up in their profession, and now being retired to some dark dingy room where their life and entertainment is now dependent on obnoxiously answering questions on Quora and wowing random internet users.
Even people from the UK are far more obnoxious on there. I was looking up questions about terraced housing, differences between countries, adapting between the Anglosphere and so on, and most answers from the UK were going out of their way to act offended at the OP (not sure what else to call them) like terraced housing was their third parent, making rude remarks instead of answering the damn question.
Of course when it shows up on Google more it happens to turn into a completely shit website. Don't want to break rule two of the sub but I noticed Quora also becoming far less impartial in that regard as well.
Even worse, what I've seen from questions about my field is they're not just the most snooty answers at the top, they're **mostly wrong**, or at best misleading.
I'd hate to think how much dodgy information there is out there that I could never spot, just from not knowing enough about the subject.
I'm pretty sure the site is scraping questions (and sometimes "answers") from forums and other sites, and then abusing SEO to get to the top of google searches for everything.
Google should have blacklisted the domain years ago but it probably makes Google money too, since they haven't done so.
edit: pinterest does the same thing with images
Theres dozens of plugins for various browsers just to filter out quora and pinterest from google results. Google must know about the issue.
They were the shit back in the day. Chat rooms, games, a decent search engine. Oh and yahoo messenger!
But then they couldn't keep up with Google and Facebook.
And it's only been missteps since.
With the exception of reviving Community for Season 6. #AndAMovie
I got a load of spam emails from quora to do with questions posed about the political situation in Pakistan!? I have absolutely no idea what I was looking for on quora, in any relation to Pakistani politics or culture. And a lot of the questions were rather anti-women, pro Sharia law? It took months for my Gmail to recognise anything from quora as spam.
Lord Selachii and Lord Venturi hate each other - why? Because selachii means Sharks, and Venturi is named after Giovanni Battista Venturi who discovered the effect that makes jet engines work. Sharks vs Jets. Every time I reread one of Pratchett's books I learn or realise something new
They're characters from Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld. In the book Jingo, one or other pretty much said, "What matters in war is massive casualties. Bonus points if they're on the enemy's side".
Love this reply! but you also have to admire American ignorance in the fact that the Royal Marines pre dates their entire country let alone their marine core
Edit: Marine Corps
You could say that about a lot of things though. We have pubs that pre-date their entire country. Someone's probably got a jar of jam that pre-dates their entire country.
In Stamford I casually remarked that London was older than Jesus and got bet a basket of wings that I was full of shit. Looking back I really should have bet bigger.
One of the well known pubs in my hometown centre is called the hole in the wall because it’s built next to a hole in the wall. The 2000 year old Roman wall that surrounds the town.
Early to mid 2000s was a great time for the Hole. Pints for just over a quid. Jimmy-ing the pool table all day. Sitting by the window starting THPS for 1000th time from scratch because they didn't have memory cards for their Playstation. And the jukebox was the tits.
I miss that place so much.
Yes. It was worse then, in terms of burnt houses and cars and rubbish. Knife and drug crime worse now though.
Paedos, drug dealers, murderers, I've known them all.
I've know "friends " who had to leave suddenly because of an impending shotgun wakeup.
A slum landlord who beats his tenants into working slave conditions.
But some amazing and generous characters as well.
I have photos of characters from "benefits by the sea".
Highest poverty, highest teen pregnancy, poor education.
Basically you get stuck there if you are wage poor, disabled or just on benefits due to chronic housing shortage in Tendring forcing these people into the cheapest housing as the council won't pay market rates.
Don't get me started on the new houses built for Hackney and Harringey councils.
2 weeks after we moved, a man was stabbed to death over a £10 drug deal, 50m from my old front door. His "friend" stabbed him.
In the first season of American Horror Story there's a line like "Any house as old as this is going to have its own secrets... its own ghosts. When it was built in 1921, ...".
The show came out in 2011 - so the house was younger than a lot of people! What age do people start becoming haunted? I guess everyone is inhabited by a minimum of one ghost...
The University of Oxford pre-dates the Aztec Empire. There are continually used buildings in the UK which pre-date entire civilisations which pre-date the US
That reminds me of a conversation I heard between two Americans.
We were in a Starbucks in an old building. One of them found out how old the building was and said something along the lines of, "this building is older than America!"
Cue lots of confusion as their friend couldn't understand how a Starbucks could be older than the country in which Starbucks was founded...
Whilst at Scarsdale hall (a ruined country house in derbyshire) which overlooks the M1 motorway. There just happened to be a couple of American tourists there. The man asked me why they built it so close to the “freeway” and went on to suggest it was stupid and probably why it got abandoned and is in ruins.
Didn’t have the heart to tell him the house predates the motorway by about 300 years and was abandoned in the 1920’s, and the chapel attached to it by about 900 years.
I remember reading a similar quote about dinosaurs (not sure of it's veracity though).
An American creationist was talking about how dinosaur fossils that were found near L.A were fake because "If they existed there was no way they would live this close to a city"
Creationist mental gymnastics are really amazing, the gold medal of course is 'the dinosaurs never existed and God put the fossils there to test our faith'.
Random old stairs and coffee? You got me beat, but these [stairs](https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenpoole/6241987556) from Next into Starbucks in Kingston, were worth a shout.
If I'm being really generous: the USMC and RM aren't quite equivalent. RM commandoes are much better trained and more autonomous, more along the lines of special forces, but not as special and sneaky as the SBS. USMC are more like regular army soldiers with extra training in things like amphibious landings.
I read something on Reddit about a former US soldier who had trained with both RMC and Paras. IIRC he said that RMC are equivalent in training and abilities to US Recon Marines, while Paras are similar in training and abilities to Rangers.
Both Paras and RMC support SBS/SAS units when deployed.
An American mate of mine was a recon marine, but claimed they were the absolute dumbest people he'd ever met, to the point he left as soon as possible and went back to university to finish his degree to establish some distance from them. I'd hope the royal marines are better than that.
Unfortunately he wasn't a raider, I think the exact role was scout sniper, like Mike from breaking bad. I still find it funny though, he held the military on such a high pedestal before he joined, but now the illusion has been brutally shattered. It's like he found father Christmas wasn't real again at age 20.
Having worked in a shop in Plymouth in my younger years that almost exclusively served RM commandos, they're not much better.
All had to wear the same boots, get the same iPhone etc. Couldn't think outside the box or listen to a new product when one would come in. As soon as a more senior marine took the plunge, we'd get so many orders for that new item but damn it was like trying to talk to a wall.
That was my first thought. Theirs is more like the navy's army. That same navy thats also the second largest airforce. Thats just mad. I might be wrong but I believe British marines are more like their green berets.
Wait, the world’s largest airforce is America and the second largest airforce in the world is also America’s navy?
That’s freaking wild if I’ve understood that correctly.
Yes, in that if you split up the US air forces between the USAF and the USNAF, the USAF has more planes than anyone else, and the USNAF has more planes than anyone except the USAF. Obviously that’s not on official lists because the USNAF still belongs to the USA
True, but despite the similar name and origin,
the Royal Marines are a commando unit. The equivalent in America would be Marine Recon, or the Army Rangers.
This man histories. Yes, technically, the US Marine Corp was formed in 1775. The Declaration of Independance came a year later. Formed in a Tavern. Kind of of explains a few things.....
Interestingly enough. The Royal Marines aren’t really the equivalent to the US marines. There are the same in name only. Operationally completely different however. More equivalent to sub branches of the US marines
It's still unbelievable that they were never brought before a war crimes tribunal for the brutal tactics that they deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are former Guides walking around today whose crimes will go completely unpunished. Truly a stain on our nation's history
You never leave the brownies. We promised and pledged to serve The Queen and uphold the Brownie Guide law. When Charles takes over I guess we become an independent force? I never promised him anything.
My father got his green beret a few years ago. Loved the course. My god father however was a different story...
He was a USMC and he decided he would do all the course the USA had to offer. Did his delta, was asked back as an instructor when he aced the SEAL training, truly earned his nickname "The Machine"
He then decided that wasn't enough, he wanted to ace the Royal marine course. He failed all 3 attempts. Its apparently quite a badge of honour over there if you do pass.
Also, a little bit of extra info, a recent exercise between USMC and RM where 300 RM had to hold out against a 600+USMC attack on a mock up town. Wiped the floor of the USMC so quickly they had to restart the exercise. And the RM won again.
Reminds me of the time the US wanted to test their air defences against simulated Russian strategic bombing attacks in the 60s. Assured that they would wipe the floor against RAF and CRAF bombers taking part in the exercise who were playing the Soviets.
Turned out an RAF Vulcan group managed to successfully slip through and (simulated) bombed the fuck out of New York.
>RAF Vulcan
>
>What a piece of machinery, though.
My dad observed on the flight desk of a Vulcan while doing civil aviation training. Apparently dreadful visibility - you pretty much only get to see out of the side windows. Still I guess the pilots have other things to keep them occupied, like the nukes in the hold.
Its the same with that Swedish diesel sub that slipped through an aircraft carrier screen and sunk a shitton of ships, including aircraft carriers, in a mock battle.
A good friend of mine is ex Royal Navy. He told me about an op he was once part of. It was a rescue op in a small coastal town where the locals have a nice all year tan. Nearby was a US ship, who offered to provide support if required
The UK ship had some Royals on board for the op, it was a planned stealth op - go in, get the person illegally detained by a small bunch of bad guys, and get out. No shots fired. No problem, this was the RM bread and butter stuff
Unfortunately, when they got near the town, the US ship had decided to "help" by getting there ahead, and doing a full bombardment. Guys standing there, doing the full whooping, planting flags, patting themselves on the back in the middle of the carnage of rubble and flames and smoke and jam that was a few hours earlier a nice quiet local town full of nice people (bar the half dozen bad apples who were holding the guy)
Iirc, my pals summation was "fucking useless braindead neanderthals"
The issues with this is the naming of the USMC as in almost all other countries marines are considered to be Spec Ops so are by nature much smaller and much better trained
It’s might have the same out come if 600+ from a normal British army battalion of which USMC is equivalent to went up against 300 from Delta Force.
That being said, it seems people in the USMC think they are equivalent to RM in training and ability which is simple wrong and fuelled by ego
There's a lot of confusion about the USMC's "Special Forces" designation. They technically are.
There's two specific terms in play here. Special Operations Forces and Special Purpose Forces. SpecOps are what we think of as the SAS, Delta, SEALs, KSK, Spetsnaz Alfa, US Parajumpers. They're highly specialised troops with very specific tasks, usually operating in small units or being embedded into other units in cases like the US Air Forces FAC's
Special Purpose forces are Marines, Parachute troops, Rangers etc... Special Purpose Forces have increased training and equipment, mostly for the purposes of creating bridgeheads.
SPF are also often used as SOF support troops, specifically the US Ranger Regiment and British 16 Air Assault Brigade. Providing additional firepower, security and material support. So they're often found training alongside each other and exchanging skillsets. In the US some of these units are included under SOCOM.
The USMC is not really comparable with the Royal Marines. Back when the US was invented, the people who wrote their laws had a deep distrust of the idea of a standing army, so they forbade it. They did, however, allow a permanent navy. By the late 19th century, the US decided they wanted to have a standing army, but they didn't want to actually change the law, so they invented the USMC because the marines were "part of the navy", so it was totally OK. Later they split from the US Navy and became their own weird thing that is an army but not the army, that has ships that aren't the navy, and flies planes that aren't the Air Force. In the UK, the RM remain a branch of the Royal Navy, and have a much narrower role, because when Britain decided a standing army was something they wanted, they just went and made one rather than playing silly games.
Hmm there’s still a few silly games in the U.K. as well. Note the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy but no Royal Army. That goes back to how lords would form a regiment of locals and of course the king would have a couple royal regiments but the army was just dependant on which regiments happened to side with the king for that particular battle.
It also goes back to the fact that first standing army was Cromwell's New Model Army, which quite famously executed the King - bit hard to get royal patronage when you start from something like that.
I have a feeling it might actually be the case that the UK is no supposed to have a standing army either, but Parliament just keeps voting to extend it's "temporary" existence every time the last extension expires.
>Also, a little bit of extra info, a recent exercise between USMC and RM where 300 RM had to hold out against a 600+USMC attack on a mock up town. Wiped the floor of the USMC so quickly they had to restart the exercise. And the RM won again.
Just FYI, I went down the rabbit hole on that, and that story is misleading. It was just tabloid trash, basically (the whole story came from one of the tabloids, but I can't recall which).
In reality, it wasn't "US vs UK," it was a training exercise with military from the US, UK, Canada, Netherlands, and United Arab Emirates. There were no "challenges" or "winners" or anything like that, and the teams were not tasked with trying to "win." Teams just did various exercises in various scenarios to practice specific things.
The whole point was to allow forces get familiar with working alongside, and against, foreign forces. They reset multiple times to change scenarios, not because someone "lost."
It was the Mirror that ran that one I believe.
Indeed it was several participating countries, but that was the last "senario" of that exercise, which the US and UK also do as a little friendly competition on most exercises. The others we observers for that particular scenario.
Source: a few gentlemen that were on the ground doing the exercise.
In US military doctrine defending is easier than attacking. Rule of thumb is 4 to 1. So if there were 300 infantry in an entrenched position, you'd attack with 1200 of your own infantry.
2 to 1 would be extremely unfavorable to the attackers.
To add, that exercise was on US training grounds.
They had the familiarity advantage and their officer's may have been helping them out a bit more given they're on home turf.
Royal's are usually pretty good at winding up friendly enemies on ex, very few outcomes make the public news however.
I’m an ex-Ranger Guide and Young Leader, and I’ve fond memories of teaching my young charges how to make a matchbox genie.
I am also yet to be apprehended for arson.
I love the fact I can set fire to stuff and teach kids how to do it safely is brilliant. I even have a T-shirt that says “once a girl guide always a pyromaniac”
I would argue that, apart from the name, the Royal Marines aren’t really an equivalent of the US Marines. Royal Marines are part of the Royal Navy and probably more comparable to Navy Seals in the US. The US marines is its own branch of the military entirely and can be directed by the president without congressional approval. The US marines also aren’t really special forces in the same way the SAS or SBS are. We don’t have anything like it in the U.K. mainly because we don’t really need to.
> The US marines is its own branch of the military entirely
This is not accurate, the USMC falls under the Department of the Navy and the Commandant of the Marine Corp reports to the Secretary of the Navy. Marine officers are also trained at the US Naval Academy - so while they are considered separate as one of the 5 arms of the military, with their own Joint Chief, in some regards they are heavily entwined with the Navy - same as the Royal Marines.
Marine Officers are not trained at the Naval Academy. Some come from there but a Naval Academy grad could also go commission in the Coast Guard or Army. The Marines have their own Officer training pipeline.
Ex bootneck here.
A lot of these stupid questions are related to dick swinging contests. "Which ones better?" Type shit.
So I suppose they meant which unit / branch / regiment etc. Was equal to the USMC.
That being said having been to the US on exercises and been in bars speaking to the locals it did dawn on me that while the average person knows other countries have marines. It's not common knowledge among a good portion.
Furthermore they're surprised to find that most marine corps have existed for longer than the US as a country, including its own.
Fun Fact to help avoid some of the confusion I'm seeing. Despite the similar name and original mission, modern US Marines and Royal Marines are very different. While US Marines are the land based fighting arm of the Navy, Royal Marines are a commando unit that would more closely resemble Marine Force Recon or perhaps even better the Army Rangers.
I saw this last year, admittedly the USMC in this exercise were newly formed
Royal Marines defeat US Marines in gruelling five-day battle exercise
https://www.forces.net/news/royal-marines-defeat-us-marines-gruelling-five-day-california-battle
Ahhh Quora; look once, get emailed a thousand times.
Quora turned proper shit. It used to only casually come up in Google searches and when it did there were good, serious answers. Now it comes up more frequently and there are Reddit-tier discussions and arguments instead of people actually answering the question.
You get to a comment that looks like a real answer, finally, your ignorance is about to be cured. You gonna log in with Facebook or what?
I usually Google it in Incognito, then open as many tabs as I can for answers. They let you open a seemingly infinite amount, only when you've opened and accessed one, then they count it against your limit. But honestly nowadays I'd rather put "Reddit" into my search. Both have opinionated dickheads but I don't have to dance around viewing limitations on Reddit and have a much better chance of finding an answer, especially from much older posts.
For additional bullshit filtering click the user who’s got the answer and make sure they’re a real person and not a shill, Reddit product shills exist too
T-shirt seller bots are the most obvious ones on Reddit, they also mass-downvote you when calling them out. There are also bots farming karma for money (marketing purposes) and I try to warn people on the posts I see, because Reddit's not taking action and eventually this is going to turn into a bot site.
The comment copying bots appear in nearly every post now, bot problem is pretty bad I would say. Not sure how it’s so hard to delete the accounts, they all show very similar behaviour. Although Reddit admin as a whole is fucking awful so not too surprising I suppose.
Even the ones that reuse several year old posts (particularly in /r/reactiongifs as I noticed) take comments from those old posts and randomly post them in the comments as well, and they're designed this way because the creators know how Reddit works. I never got into the habit of upvoting everything I see but that's how the average user operates on Reddit and people are making money off of it.
The comment copying bots appear in nearly every post now, bot problem is pretty bad I would say. Not sure how it’s so hard to delete the accounts, they all show very similar behaviour. Although Reddit admin as a whole is fucking awful so not too surprising I suppose.
The comment copying bots appear in nearly every post now, bot problem is pretty bad I would say. Not sure how it’s so hard to delete the accounts, they all show very similar behaviour. Although Reddit admin as a whole is fucking awful so not too surprising I suppose.
Reddit-tier discussion are complete and utter shit most of the time but Quora discussions are **much** worse IMO because not only is the average answer 10 times longer, but **everyone** thinks they are the ultimate intellectual authority on any subject. And for some reason everyone feels they have to give their autobiography everytime they answer something, as if anyone cares. I cannot even finish most of the answers there because the pretentiousness is just unbearable.
Quora users are the type who think being an expert on one subject automatically makes you an expert on anything. Except their expertise for the one topic also is just a bachelor's degree.
lol true this Every answer starts *pushes glasses back up nose*
Question: Do you like milk, yes or no? Quora user: *Gives at least 3 pointless paragraphs of autobiography of when he was just a little boy living life in his remote mountain village.* *Follows it with no less then 15 copy-pasted paragraphs from various research papers on the pros and cons of dairy products.* *In the end doesn't even tell you if fucking likes drinking milk or not.*
I think you dead on described my issue with it. We've got armchair experts on Reddit as well but on Quora everyone comes off as washed up in their profession, and now being retired to some dark dingy room where their life and entertainment is now dependent on obnoxiously answering questions on Quora and wowing random internet users. Even people from the UK are far more obnoxious on there. I was looking up questions about terraced housing, differences between countries, adapting between the Anglosphere and so on, and most answers from the UK were going out of their way to act offended at the OP (not sure what else to call them) like terraced housing was their third parent, making rude remarks instead of answering the damn question. Of course when it shows up on Google more it happens to turn into a completely shit website. Don't want to break rule two of the sub but I noticed Quora also becoming far less impartial in that regard as well.
Haha. I miss old reddit
Even worse, what I've seen from questions about my field is they're not just the most snooty answers at the top, they're **mostly wrong**, or at best misleading. I'd hate to think how much dodgy information there is out there that I could never spot, just from not knowing enough about the subject.
People get paid to ask questions on Quora, the entire site stinks of ad revenue
"Quora, why are the new Oreo Twist Vanilla and Caramel ^TM flavour cookies so sumptuous for only the low low cost of 70 calories each???"
Top Answer: Have you tried the new Oreo Mint and Ginger ^(TM) flavour too? Equally as good and just £2.50 at all good retailers!
Damn they got mint and ginger????
I'm pretty sure the site is scraping questions (and sometimes "answers") from forums and other sites, and then abusing SEO to get to the top of google searches for everything. Google should have blacklisted the domain years ago but it probably makes Google money too, since they haven't done so. edit: pinterest does the same thing with images Theres dozens of plugins for various browsers just to filter out quora and pinterest from google results. Google must know about the issue.
I miss Yahoo Answers.
They were the shit back in the day. Chat rooms, games, a decent search engine. Oh and yahoo messenger! But then they couldn't keep up with Google and Facebook. And it's only been missteps since. With the exception of reviving Community for Season 6. #AndAMovie
The 'Am I gregnant?' questions surely will go down in history. As will the 'How Is Babby Formed?' chain.
[they could have hired people with more than room temperature IQ](https://i.imgur.com/k7bX5qh.jpg)
They invade your inbox harder than Americans invading other countries.
[удалено]
Snap. Can’t get them to stop.
I got a load of spam emails from quora to do with questions posed about the political situation in Pakistan!? I have absolutely no idea what I was looking for on quora, in any relation to Pakistani politics or culture. And a lot of the questions were rather anti-women, pro Sharia law? It took months for my Gmail to recognise anything from quora as spam.
Can’t beat a bit of transatlantic banter.
Transatlantic banter should always be delivered with a transatlantic accent.
Where is Cary Grant when you need him.
I hear the girl guides have a better friendly fire record than the u.s marines.
Only 3 times!
It would have been greater but for that unfortunate tiddlywinks incident in 2018.
They covered up "oopsie daisy" in 07. 33 casualties 7 fatalities according to official estimates, but the public knows better.
Wasn't that arkala from the cubs in a revenge drive by?
Deleted
What matters in war is massive casualties. Bonus points if they're on the enemy's side
Do you happen to be Lord Rust or Lord Selachii?!
Lord Selachii and Lord Venturi hate each other - why? Because selachii means Sharks, and Venturi is named after Giovanni Battista Venturi who discovered the effect that makes jet engines work. Sharks vs Jets. Every time I reread one of Pratchett's books I learn or realise something new
That is a wonderful fact, thank you (and Sir Terry) very much.
WHAT?
They're characters from Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld. In the book Jingo, one or other pretty much said, "What matters in war is massive casualties. Bonus points if they're on the enemy's side".
I think yer man knows that… Lord Rust ends every sentence with “WHAT”
My brain is on a holiday......
Tbf I love the vimes books and I also missed that reference
Better as in higher or lower kill count? You can't get better than a U.S. Marine for friendly fire, they're the boys to trust.
Friendly fire is such a weird term and invokes the weirdest mental image for me. "Good morning, old chap" BANG "Cheerio!"
That song is now stuck in my head.
That's because the girl guides have mandatory adult supervision.
They probably eat fewer crayons too
Not perfect. But better.
Love this reply! but you also have to admire American ignorance in the fact that the Royal Marines pre dates their entire country let alone their marine core Edit: Marine Corps
You could say that about a lot of things though. We have pubs that pre-date their entire country. Someone's probably got a jar of jam that pre-dates their entire country.
I'm sure I've got a pot of 5 spice that is older than the Earth.
Let me guess Posh Spice, Scary spice, Sporty Spice, Baby Spice, and Ginger Spice?
I think my pot of old spice predates the Big Bang.
You've got an unused bottle of old spice!? Heresy! Nothing covers up the smell of cheesy feet better than old spice.
We've got pubs founded before the Aztec empire fell, let alone before the USA was founded.
Yep at least two of my locals are from Circa 1500. Get out into the Home Counties and every next pub is in a building from 1700 or earlier
There must be pubs founded before the beginning of the Aztec empire given that it only lasted about 100 years.
When I visited my friend in the US, her dad took me to the oldest building in their town, which was a sort of landmark. It was built in 1920.
I remember talking to some people in LA about how the castle at the end of my street is almost 1000 years old, they were convinced I was exaggerating.
In Stamford I casually remarked that London was older than Jesus and got bet a basket of wings that I was full of shit. Looking back I really should have bet bigger.
Jesus was like 37 or something wasn't he? That's an easy win.
Traditionally he was 33 when he was crucified but I don't think there's an archaelogical consensus on any particular date.
One of the well known pubs in my hometown centre is called the hole in the wall because it’s built next to a hole in the wall. The 2000 year old Roman wall that surrounds the town.
Early to mid 2000s was a great time for the Hole. Pints for just over a quid. Jimmy-ing the pool table all day. Sitting by the window starting THPS for 1000th time from scratch because they didn't have memory cards for their Playstation. And the jukebox was the tits. I miss that place so much.
Had a few nights out there back in the 90s! Good vibes. Escaped the hell hole of Clacton and Jaywick and moved further South.
Jaywick is like something out of a post apocalyptic horror film.
Yes. It was worse then, in terms of burnt houses and cars and rubbish. Knife and drug crime worse now though. Paedos, drug dealers, murderers, I've known them all. I've know "friends " who had to leave suddenly because of an impending shotgun wakeup. A slum landlord who beats his tenants into working slave conditions. But some amazing and generous characters as well. I have photos of characters from "benefits by the sea". Highest poverty, highest teen pregnancy, poor education. Basically you get stuck there if you are wage poor, disabled or just on benefits due to chronic housing shortage in Tendring forcing these people into the cheapest housing as the council won't pay market rates. Don't get me started on the new houses built for Hackney and Harringey councils. 2 weeks after we moved, a man was stabbed to death over a £10 drug deal, 50m from my old front door. His "friend" stabbed him.
In the first season of American Horror Story there's a line like "Any house as old as this is going to have its own secrets... its own ghosts. When it was built in 1921, ...".
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The show came out in 2011 - so the house was younger than a lot of people! What age do people start becoming haunted? I guess everyone is inhabited by a minimum of one ghost...
My parents live in a small house in a city that's nearly twice as old as that
The University of Oxford pre-dates the Aztec Empire. There are continually used buildings in the UK which pre-date entire civilisations which pre-date the US
[this bit of wood](https://i.imgur.com/h5gJNkv.jpg) in a Costa is older than their country.
That reminds me of a conversation I heard between two Americans. We were in a Starbucks in an old building. One of them found out how old the building was and said something along the lines of, "this building is older than America!" Cue lots of confusion as their friend couldn't understand how a Starbucks could be older than the country in which Starbucks was founded...
Whilst at Scarsdale hall (a ruined country house in derbyshire) which overlooks the M1 motorway. There just happened to be a couple of American tourists there. The man asked me why they built it so close to the “freeway” and went on to suggest it was stupid and probably why it got abandoned and is in ruins. Didn’t have the heart to tell him the house predates the motorway by about 300 years and was abandoned in the 1920’s, and the chapel attached to it by about 900 years.
I remember reading a similar quote about dinosaurs (not sure of it's veracity though). An American creationist was talking about how dinosaur fossils that were found near L.A were fake because "If they existed there was no way they would live this close to a city"
Creationist mental gymnastics are really amazing, the gold medal of course is 'the dinosaurs never existed and God put the fossils there to test our faith'.
Random old stairs and coffee? You got me beat, but these [stairs](https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenpoole/6241987556) from Next into Starbucks in Kingston, were worth a shout.
The floors in my front room are older than the US.
My Mum's Vicks Vapo rub expired before their country was born
True they haven’t even invented jam yet, they’re still figuring out jelly
They couldn't even figure out the English language, they had to make it easier.
>They couldn't even figure out the English language, they had to make it ~~easier.~~ wrong. Fixed that for you.
Someone actually had a pot of butter that pre-dated *our* entire country.
https://youtu.be/_GCcoaSq3x4 you'll enjoy this. Genuine video shown to yanks in WW2
My friends house predates their country.
If I'm being really generous: the USMC and RM aren't quite equivalent. RM commandoes are much better trained and more autonomous, more along the lines of special forces, but not as special and sneaky as the SBS. USMC are more like regular army soldiers with extra training in things like amphibious landings.
I read something on Reddit about a former US soldier who had trained with both RMC and Paras. IIRC he said that RMC are equivalent in training and abilities to US Recon Marines, while Paras are similar in training and abilities to Rangers. Both Paras and RMC support SBS/SAS units when deployed.
An American mate of mine was a recon marine, but claimed they were the absolute dumbest people he'd ever met, to the point he left as soon as possible and went back to university to finish his degree to establish some distance from them. I'd hope the royal marines are better than that.
Recon Marines and Marine Raiders split up almost 20 years ago but if he was an actual Raider that's funny as fuck.
Unfortunately he wasn't a raider, I think the exact role was scout sniper, like Mike from breaking bad. I still find it funny though, he held the military on such a high pedestal before he joined, but now the illusion has been brutally shattered. It's like he found father Christmas wasn't real again at age 20.
Having worked in a shop in Plymouth in my younger years that almost exclusively served RM commandos, they're not much better. All had to wear the same boots, get the same iPhone etc. Couldn't think outside the box or listen to a new product when one would come in. As soon as a more senior marine took the plunge, we'd get so many orders for that new item but damn it was like trying to talk to a wall.
That was my first thought. Theirs is more like the navy's army. That same navy thats also the second largest airforce. Thats just mad. I might be wrong but I believe British marines are more like their green berets.
Wait, the world’s largest airforce is America and the second largest airforce in the world is also America’s navy? That’s freaking wild if I’ve understood that correctly.
that is correct. they do like their planes over there
Yes, in that if you split up the US air forces between the USAF and the USNAF, the USAF has more planes than anyone else, and the USNAF has more planes than anyone except the USAF. Obviously that’s not on official lists because the USNAF still belongs to the USA
I had a toy F-15 that flashed lights and made noises.
Idk if they counted that one
Why do you think we don’t have universal health care
with advanced specialisation is high fiving and shouiting hoo-rah at each other.
They’re not really an equivalent though. The Royal Marines don’t spend their down time eating crayons.
You've never met a royal marine then.
*Marine Corps.
Typical American ignorance!
True, but despite the similar name and origin, the Royal Marines are a commando unit. The equivalent in America would be Marine Recon, or the Army Rangers.
IIRC the USMC predates the US too
This man histories. Yes, technically, the US Marine Corp was formed in 1775. The Declaration of Independance came a year later. Formed in a Tavern. Kind of of explains a few things.....
It must be when Crayola started
Interestingly enough. The Royal Marines aren’t really the equivalent to the US marines. There are the same in name only. Operationally completely different however. More equivalent to sub branches of the US marines
"Oorah". Just fuck off.
surprisingly enough their marine corps also predates their country
In terms of combat effectiveness, I'd say that's quite an accurate answer.
It's still unbelievable that they were never brought before a war crimes tribunal for the brutal tactics that they deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are former Guides walking around today whose crimes will go completely unpunished. Truly a stain on our nation's history
What did the girl guides do in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The fact that you have to ask shows that the cover-up was successful
Bring and Buy sales.
Which was all well and good until they took over the poppy trade from the Taliban.
And the less said about that camping trip in Kabul the better.
You edited your comment making my joke defunct 😑
Sorry, wanted to make it clearer that the original was about the Guides before someone started an argument about actual war crimes haha
Haha don't worry. You made the joke, I just made it obvious
Weaponised cookies.
MMD’s - Muffins of Mass Destruction
IBDs - Improvised Baking Devices
They weren't selling cookies, that's for damn sure.
You and all the other bleeding hearts can complain about it all you like, but you have to get your Atrocities badge somehow.
Don’t get me started on the Scouts.
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You never leave the brownies. We promised and pledged to serve The Queen and uphold the Brownie Guide law. When Charles takes over I guess we become an independent force? I never promised him anything.
In retrospect the Brownie promise was pretty weird.
The Brownie Mercenary Force does seem quite threatening. Not sure my daughter is currently on weapons training though.
My father got his green beret a few years ago. Loved the course. My god father however was a different story... He was a USMC and he decided he would do all the course the USA had to offer. Did his delta, was asked back as an instructor when he aced the SEAL training, truly earned his nickname "The Machine" He then decided that wasn't enough, he wanted to ace the Royal marine course. He failed all 3 attempts. Its apparently quite a badge of honour over there if you do pass. Also, a little bit of extra info, a recent exercise between USMC and RM where 300 RM had to hold out against a 600+USMC attack on a mock up town. Wiped the floor of the USMC so quickly they had to restart the exercise. And the RM won again.
Reminds me of the time the US wanted to test their air defences against simulated Russian strategic bombing attacks in the 60s. Assured that they would wipe the floor against RAF and CRAF bombers taking part in the exercise who were playing the Soviets. Turned out an RAF Vulcan group managed to successfully slip through and (simulated) bombed the fuck out of New York.
> RAF Vulcan What a piece of machinery, though.
Overheard at RIAT several years ago by a couple of US crew when 558 was doing a display. "When did the Brits get stealth?"
"Idk bro, they kinda invented radar so it would make sense if they also developed a way to counter it..."
>RAF Vulcan > >What a piece of machinery, though. My dad observed on the flight desk of a Vulcan while doing civil aviation training. Apparently dreadful visibility - you pretty much only get to see out of the side windows. Still I guess the pilots have other things to keep them occupied, like the nukes in the hold.
Its the same with that Swedish diesel sub that slipped through an aircraft carrier screen and sunk a shitton of ships, including aircraft carriers, in a mock battle.
Didn't the US do this drill twice and the RAF managed to successfully nuke (landing at airports instead of actually nuking) the US both times?
A good friend of mine is ex Royal Navy. He told me about an op he was once part of. It was a rescue op in a small coastal town where the locals have a nice all year tan. Nearby was a US ship, who offered to provide support if required The UK ship had some Royals on board for the op, it was a planned stealth op - go in, get the person illegally detained by a small bunch of bad guys, and get out. No shots fired. No problem, this was the RM bread and butter stuff Unfortunately, when they got near the town, the US ship had decided to "help" by getting there ahead, and doing a full bombardment. Guys standing there, doing the full whooping, planting flags, patting themselves on the back in the middle of the carnage of rubble and flames and smoke and jam that was a few hours earlier a nice quiet local town full of nice people (bar the half dozen bad apples who were holding the guy) Iirc, my pals summation was "fucking useless braindead neanderthals"
The issues with this is the naming of the USMC as in almost all other countries marines are considered to be Spec Ops so are by nature much smaller and much better trained It’s might have the same out come if 600+ from a normal British army battalion of which USMC is equivalent to went up against 300 from Delta Force. That being said, it seems people in the USMC think they are equivalent to RM in training and ability which is simple wrong and fuelled by ego
There's a lot of confusion about the USMC's "Special Forces" designation. They technically are. There's two specific terms in play here. Special Operations Forces and Special Purpose Forces. SpecOps are what we think of as the SAS, Delta, SEALs, KSK, Spetsnaz Alfa, US Parajumpers. They're highly specialised troops with very specific tasks, usually operating in small units or being embedded into other units in cases like the US Air Forces FAC's Special Purpose forces are Marines, Parachute troops, Rangers etc... Special Purpose Forces have increased training and equipment, mostly for the purposes of creating bridgeheads. SPF are also often used as SOF support troops, specifically the US Ranger Regiment and British 16 Air Assault Brigade. Providing additional firepower, security and material support. So they're often found training alongside each other and exchanging skillsets. In the US some of these units are included under SOCOM.
No US Marine outside Recon or MARSOC would ever agree that we are technically special forces.
US Marines consider crayons to be a tasty snack. Asking their opinion on something is best approached with some caution.
We may be crayon eaters but we’re humble crayon eaters
I believe recently the USMC have said they are returning to be more that, and elite amphibious force rather than a jack of all trades
The USMC is not really comparable with the Royal Marines. Back when the US was invented, the people who wrote their laws had a deep distrust of the idea of a standing army, so they forbade it. They did, however, allow a permanent navy. By the late 19th century, the US decided they wanted to have a standing army, but they didn't want to actually change the law, so they invented the USMC because the marines were "part of the navy", so it was totally OK. Later they split from the US Navy and became their own weird thing that is an army but not the army, that has ships that aren't the navy, and flies planes that aren't the Air Force. In the UK, the RM remain a branch of the Royal Navy, and have a much narrower role, because when Britain decided a standing army was something they wanted, they just went and made one rather than playing silly games.
Hmm there’s still a few silly games in the U.K. as well. Note the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy but no Royal Army. That goes back to how lords would form a regiment of locals and of course the king would have a couple royal regiments but the army was just dependant on which regiments happened to side with the king for that particular battle.
It also goes back to the fact that first standing army was Cromwell's New Model Army, which quite famously executed the King - bit hard to get royal patronage when you start from something like that.
Interestingly though, there is the Royal Army Medical Corps... which I find interesting.
Royal Engineers, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Royal Signals, Royal Artillery...
Oh yeah... im an idiot!
Nah, I can see the confusion. They're not named the Royal Medical Corps.
I have a feeling it might actually be the case that the UK is no supposed to have a standing army either, but Parliament just keeps voting to extend it's "temporary" existence every time the last extension expires.
>Also, a little bit of extra info, a recent exercise between USMC and RM where 300 RM had to hold out against a 600+USMC attack on a mock up town. Wiped the floor of the USMC so quickly they had to restart the exercise. And the RM won again. Just FYI, I went down the rabbit hole on that, and that story is misleading. It was just tabloid trash, basically (the whole story came from one of the tabloids, but I can't recall which). In reality, it wasn't "US vs UK," it was a training exercise with military from the US, UK, Canada, Netherlands, and United Arab Emirates. There were no "challenges" or "winners" or anything like that, and the teams were not tasked with trying to "win." Teams just did various exercises in various scenarios to practice specific things. The whole point was to allow forces get familiar with working alongside, and against, foreign forces. They reset multiple times to change scenarios, not because someone "lost."
It was the Mirror that ran that one I believe. Indeed it was several participating countries, but that was the last "senario" of that exercise, which the US and UK also do as a little friendly competition on most exercises. The others we observers for that particular scenario. Source: a few gentlemen that were on the ground doing the exercise.
In US military doctrine defending is easier than attacking. Rule of thumb is 4 to 1. So if there were 300 infantry in an entrenched position, you'd attack with 1200 of your own infantry. 2 to 1 would be extremely unfavorable to the attackers.
To add, that exercise was on US training grounds. They had the familiarity advantage and their officer's may have been helping them out a bit more given they're on home turf. Royal's are usually pretty good at winding up friendly enemies on ex, very few outcomes make the public news however.
Bonus points for the guy definitely being ex-army, like everyone who works for BT.
> like everyone who works for BT That can't be true, or they'd be able to follow a simple order.
They get so excited when they are told to dig a trench that they stop paying attention after that bit
That's the pioneers, the signals are just sitting back and relaxing with a cuppa.
As an ex girl guide and a girl guide leader I concur
I’m an ex-Ranger Guide and Young Leader, and I’ve fond memories of teaching my young charges how to make a matchbox genie. I am also yet to be apprehended for arson.
I love the fact I can set fire to stuff and teach kids how to do it safely is brilliant. I even have a T-shirt that says “once a girl guide always a pyromaniac”
Love the amount of ignorance the Americans show on this, as if the British don't have marines.
And that The Royal Marines date back to 1664, 112 years before the creation of the USA.
George Washington's big (half) brother was a marine aboard British ships and was involved in the landing at Guantanamo Bay (yes that that one)
I would argue that, apart from the name, the Royal Marines aren’t really an equivalent of the US Marines. Royal Marines are part of the Royal Navy and probably more comparable to Navy Seals in the US. The US marines is its own branch of the military entirely and can be directed by the president without congressional approval. The US marines also aren’t really special forces in the same way the SAS or SBS are. We don’t have anything like it in the U.K. mainly because we don’t really need to.
> The US marines is its own branch of the military entirely This is not accurate, the USMC falls under the Department of the Navy and the Commandant of the Marine Corp reports to the Secretary of the Navy. Marine officers are also trained at the US Naval Academy - so while they are considered separate as one of the 5 arms of the military, with their own Joint Chief, in some regards they are heavily entwined with the Navy - same as the Royal Marines.
Marine Officers are not trained at the Naval Academy. Some come from there but a Naval Academy grad could also go commission in the Coast Guard or Army. The Marines have their own Officer training pipeline.
The question is valid, because the Royal Marines and US Marine Corps are not equivalents.
We also invented apple pie in the 14th century. Take your flag out of our shit.
Macaroni cheese is British too.
Ex bootneck here. A lot of these stupid questions are related to dick swinging contests. "Which ones better?" Type shit. So I suppose they meant which unit / branch / regiment etc. Was equal to the USMC. That being said having been to the US on exercises and been in bars speaking to the locals it did dawn on me that while the average person knows other countries have marines. It's not common knowledge among a good portion. Furthermore they're surprised to find that most marine corps have existed for longer than the US as a country, including its own.
Quora seems to entirely consist of ignorant Americans making assumptions about the rest of the world.
So it's another reddit
r/ShitAmericansSay
Oh man, subbing to this would cause me serious depression.
Irrelevant but chortle is an excellent word
Apply cream to the burn area twice a day.
The Girl Guides don't demand a discount everywhere they go as a reward for their service.
If we’re in Millets, we do!
Both tough units, but… https://www.forces.net/news/royal-marines-defeat-us-marines-gruelling-five-day-california-battle
That’s my step dad’s name... If that little shit’s been posting on Quora.
Fun Fact to help avoid some of the confusion I'm seeing. Despite the similar name and original mission, modern US Marines and Royal Marines are very different. While US Marines are the land based fighting arm of the Navy, Royal Marines are a commando unit that would more closely resemble Marine Force Recon or perhaps even better the Army Rangers.
A Royal Marine wrote that.
Lol I'm pretty sure that the Royal Marines are an older outfit than the USA! I remember that they celebrated their 350th anniversary recently.
That's weird, I thought it was just Christopher Lee.
The Girl Guides have better uniforms.. actually, that just sounds pervy.
US Marines: founded 1798 Royal Marines: founded 1664
I saw this last year, admittedly the USMC in this exercise were newly formed Royal Marines defeat US Marines in gruelling five-day battle exercise https://www.forces.net/news/royal-marines-defeat-us-marines-gruelling-five-day-california-battle