115 points

To be pedantic, that’s still covered under E

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50 points

I don’t know of a single engineer who has never built a trebuchet.

I’m not even a “proper” engineer and I have like, five desktop trebs, 2 ballistae and some other odds and ends (3d printed, of course,)

It’s like, a right of passage or something.

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22 points

I have a scar over my eye from a trebuchet I built in high school, then I went to college for engineering, so that checks out

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6 points

yeah. Gotta be careful with them.

even the desktop variety has a lot of energy in the system.

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3 points

Probably better than the scar my cousin has on his thigh from an ad hoc fulcrum catapult.

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9 points

I’m a software engineer and I built a trebuchet during lockdown to launch Easter eggs at the neighbours’ gardens since we weren’t allowed to go see them.

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2 points

The plastic candy-filled kind…. I hope.

Or. I hope they weren’t very good neighbors….

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8 points

I’m a software engineer, but now I feel like I need to build a trebuchet.

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8 points

I’m a machinist, which is kind of engineer adjacent. We make cannons.

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6 points

Cannons are just trebuchets with extra oomph

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5 points

Cannons are fun too.

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2 points

In CNC as well, can confirm, cannons are made

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3 points

btw, it’s a rite of passage.

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-1 points
*
Removed by mod
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11 points

Mother, 33, stops being a scientist to do science.

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12 points

science engineering

Siege engineering to be precise

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5 points

And M. A lot of M actually. And S. Also T. Put some A in it to make it not threatening.

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1 point

no M here. you can just launch shot and need no M to explain it. have you ever had fun?

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1 point

I mean, if this were 1400 AD, sure…

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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69 points

Anyone else find it weird how articles often tend to add the parental status of the subject in the title?

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41 points

Only if it’s about a mother though.

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9 points
*

I guess being a mother is considered an important life achievement, while being a father is not.

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4 points

I think it’s more that, for some, becoming a parent is their only life accomplishment, so “reader engagement” is literally, “hey, overlap these two circles, or the middle won’t buy our crap.”

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4 points

You do get to be a father in news articles. Mainly when they talk about you being deceased though.

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13 points

I guess it’s bait for people who like to judge. The idea could be: it’s not responsible to quit science for this and being a mother makes irresponsible choices even worse. That’s not my point of view, but I know people whose life seems to be so empty that they feel a constant need to look down on others and the “mother” information gives them at least 5 more minutes of talking shit about how this is a terrible decision.

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5 points

I see it the other way around. Older people eat up clickbait news, and older people tend to be parents, so identifying the woman as a mother makes them go “she’s someone like me” while identifying her as a scientist is less likely to resonate. It helps some people imagine themselves in her shoes.

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4 points
*

It’s been this way since the inception of the news paper. To sell papers they needed to get people invested in the subjects of the paper. That included giving information about the subject of the articles that other people might relate to. If you’re a mother you’re more likely to be inspired by a mom of 3 who went for a degree in science and ended up becoming a “Trebuchet Master”.

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45 points

Since they specified female, there is presumably also at least one male trebuchet master as well, meaning that the UK considers trebuchets important enough to have multiple trebuchet Masters.

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11 points

The new alternative to Trident. It’s cheaper to have trebuchets posted around the coastline than nukes scooting around on submarines and offers about the same amount of protection from the country being nuked.

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1 point

offers about the same amount of protection from the country being nuked.

Sadly true lol

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7 points
*

It’s the cheapest means of getting fresh beef from point A to point B. I am surprised burgericanos haven’t discovered it yet

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3 points

Now hear me out…Railguns

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3 points

They said cheapest, not fastest. Ain’t no UK business got railgun delivery money…

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1 point

OK now we have the stem girls’ attention

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2 points
*

There’s a restaurant on the outskirts of bangkok that launches a whole rotisserie chicken from a slingshot over the guests tables and impales on a spike on the helmet of a guy on a unicycle next to your table

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44 points

Being “trebuchet master” without “Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”… doubt

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5 points

Sounds like multidisciplinary peak perfocmance to me.

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43 points

I would, too. Which is the more exciting job? Unfortunately there probably isn’t much call for a trebuchet bombardment these days.

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38 points

Fun fact, only one trebuchet has ever been deployed for combat in the new world.

The conquistadors and coalition forces built one during the siege of Tenochitlan, they tried to fire it but the sling snapped, rock went up, rock came back down.

Thus ended the storied military record of trebuchets in the new world.

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13 points

That’s fascinating! You should update the Wiki on trebuchets.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet

Clearly someone has pulled a Scots Language Wiki and has been writing bullshit on that article for years

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7 points

Not yet.

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3 points

Perhaps this should be decreed in a new Geneva convention as the only allowed long range missile system? That would make wars less deadly and more useful.

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