18 would be pushing it since the “divide” it meant to be people that didn’t quite live their whole lives with the internet everywhere.
Hell, tell me a German knife doesn’t look identical to a katana - and they predated it. A curved blade with hardened steel wasn’t specific to Japan.
EDIT
Even further back, falcatas were being made in 4th century BC by hardening steel trough corrosion and folding the result together into a famously dangerous calvary sword.
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That’s a big fuckin’ age-range, there.
I mean, I get it that a generation is supposed to be a span of about 20 years, but the inconsistency with which it’s applied is indicative of what a fabricated construct the whole thing is.
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I did say there was some fuzzyness. I also wouldn’t say there was ubiquitous internet until smart phones and tablets became cheap enough for most families to have one, and that happened less than 10 years ago, at least in the UK. They’re still considered luxury items by reactionaries who want to attack the poor and those on benefits.
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This is serious stuff; police departments often shoot samurai sword wielders dead. I guess the bright side is that apparently didn’t happen this time.
As someone who has done Iaido, I’m in the camp that gets why we have to try to find some sort of humor in these events (though there really seems to be none), or you get sucked into the horror hole of how absolutely f-ing horrible it would be to get sliced with a Japanese sword.
Hopefully it was a dull “wallhanger” and not something like this:
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I feel that the biggest spike in influence in the US was in the broadband era where the internet went from the thing that ate up a phone line to a dedicated fixture in the house, when not only could you access the world in a new way but it flipped government’s shit because of Napster and whatever else. Broadband crosses the 50% of household market just before the iPhone was released, so that time was definitely a huge acceleration since Facebook was global the year before the iPhone as well.
To be pedantic (as someone who has made Japanese style blades), it’s not the folding that makes the martensite. The folding was to rid the “jewel steel” (tamahagane) from all the crap/impurities in it, and achieve a relatively uniform carbon content in the various sections of construction (dependent on blade construction style). The carbon content allows you to hit the point on the transformation curve during quench that allows martensite formation.
Claying the blade + low alloy steel allowed for a relatively shallow hardening steel that could achieve a hard martensitic edge with a zone of transitional crystal types (the hamon), and a springy back with other crystal types.
Fascinating stuff.
Here’s a pic of one of my small blades (1.4k+ layers):
and a detail shot:
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Some hammers are designed specifically to damage someone in heavy armor:
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no doubt! bamboo isn’t exactly easy cutting either.
I was just recalling that testing the sharpness of a katana on actual people of a lower class than oneself or criminals was pretty traditional. dang that is intense. maybe this guy was just making sure his blade was still sharp. ouch.
Tsujigiri (辻斬り or 辻斬, literally “crossroads killing”) is a Japanese term for a practice when a samurai, after receiving a new katana or developing a new fighting style or weapon, tests its effectiveness by attacking a human opponent, usually a random defenseless passer-by, in many cases during nighttime.
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Here, let Lindybeige disabuse you of that notion
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The suggested range varies by th source, but the youngest millenials based on the widest range would be 20 right now and the oldest 42. Funny note. The main actors from Singles are all technically baby boomers.
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“I’m 33, and squarely millennial“
Then get off my lawn.
/s
And I’m 61 and coolly boomerish.
(Oh - I forgot - it’s hip to be square)
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I know, The 20 year range was to get most of the people who were old enough to fight in WW2 into the greatest generation, and every generation since then has only existed to make the older generations look good.
However, the people who came up with the generation hypothesis (I refuse to call it a theory) believed it was an 80 year cycle, which means that millennials are equivalent to the greatest generation and gen z are equivalent to the silent generation (who were anything but silent in the 50s and 60s, but the boomers took the credit for their hard work. Maybe silenced generation is more accurate.). This may backfire badly on those who are looking down on millennials and gen z, if there is any truth to it.
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There’s only one cast-iron definition of “Millenial” - a person younger than the person using the term, who is doing something they don’t like.
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Boomer’s get painted with the same broad brush. I barely qualify as one, but me and my cohorts are apparently the source of all the broken dreams of everyone that comes after us. It’s my fault that you’re sad.
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There’s nothing wrong with being a boomer. I happily choose to associate with social-liberal and socialist boomers because of a similar worldview, while avoiding reactionary and fascist millennials.
I also feel like I have more in common with gen z queer anarchists than I do with a lot of people my age, but that might be because we are still fighting the same battles as we were 20 years ago.
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You mean Rurouni Kenshin? Yes please.
It’s just because the rich and powerful have basically been the same age since forever. Woodrow Wilson was in his 60s while in office, John Adams was in his 50s. As medical advances have grown along side the Boomer generation their rich and powerful we got to pick between a presidential candidates whose ages started at 69. Usually the younger ones who get the power show the same stripes even if they are in a younger generation. The relatively unique tech industry proves that the young ones act just like the old ones, and that there are plenty of people in their mid-twenties that simply seek to gain influence no matter what.
And when you grow up under the thumb of those things, and especially when you become an adult under the policies of those people it’s easy to push your grudges across an age divide - particularly when people like Trump have the majority of their base in the old and white. It doesn’t help that there are a lot of boomers either increasing their voting power as an age group.
Hell, I have to regularly point it to my (boomer) dad that his jokes about the erosion of labor’s power (I remember when my boss was coasting to a comfortable retirement, and my pal and I always joked about how we got half of what he did!) while actively supporting every policy that eroded that power is extremely obnoxious to his son who now will have none of the retirement benefits he enjoys. So I get why there’s a lot of resentment to boomers, and I regularly hear it from people my age or a little younger who are struggling with medical bills, housing, and job security despite good wages and an economy that has more wealth than ever in it.
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