I mean, I thought it was a funny joke, @jlw.
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Make that 40 years, and yeah, me too. My first opportunity to vote in a general election was the 1979 disaster that led to Thatcherism and everything we are still reaping now from her Reaganite, Randian warped view of the world. No such thing as society, my arse.
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Mission Accomplished
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It’s a really arbitrary and silly designation. There’s a huge cultural divide between people who grew up analog, people who group up with internet, people who grew up with internet and cell phones, and people who grew up with internet, cell phones, and social media, all of whom can fall under the umbrella of “millenial”
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That makes more sense since the ‘average’ human life span can be that long.
I’ve been defiant of manufactured labels and divisions for ages; I ask anyone who bitches about ‘the younger generations’: who do you think raised them, and shaped them into what they are today?
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And it’s been discovered independently in many times in many places from “Old Man’s Beard” to “Mohammed’s Ladder”. It’s not like metals behave differently in different parts of the world.
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As someone who has been a sword geek for quite a few years, let me assure you getting cut with any sword is fucking horrible. Japanese swords are not light sabers and are not better or worse than any number of other swords from different times and places.
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Tragedy + distance (temporal and/and geographical) = comedy
I’m half a world away. Therefore: comedy gold
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Again? 
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When asked how a man dressed in black and wielding a sword was allowed to enter school property, officials cited their Zorro Tolerance Policy
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Like all swords, a katana is a long piece of metal with a sharp edge.
Isn’t that enough?
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I would have expected Mr. Paul so simply appear on the scene and flatten “those darned noisy kids” with the sheer power of his Awesome…
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Swords have always been mythologized, mostly because it’s always been difficult and expensive to make a good one. The sword is a gentleman’s weapon, because only a gentleman could afford one, and because in a number of cultures only gentlemen were allowed to carry one. The sword is the hero’s weapon in folklore, often with a supernatural origin story.
“An elegant weapon for a more civilized age” tends to gloss over the fact that swords get the job done by causing massive trauma and blood loss.
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And it has generally been a sidearm. Tje spear, the polearm, and missiles were always more important
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wow, that guy was hilarious, it was like watching the public access after school home basement studio version of some racist uncle giving half baked sword opinions.
i’ll try and find the documentary i watched most recently, it interviewed numerous master blade smiths from a wide range of traditions and analyzed the physics of many sword types and fighting styles throughout history, highlighting the few styles in history that stood out above the others as being the pinnacle of this or that type of sword making or efficiency for x purpose. the most fascinating sword was the whip sword of india. that video was a lot longer but had much better information, but no rabling anglophiles alas. every single one of them had katana in the top 5 half of their top 10 list. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they were all pretty enamoured with a specific style of scimitar as well if i recall.
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How can a sword be “powerful” - it’s basically an inert object that has 1 or 2 variably sharp edges. It doesn’t have any stored or potential energy.
How can one type of inert object be more powerful than another?
The katana was a very expensive way to make rubbish raw materials into an ok sword.
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power as in efficiency of the physics in its intended capacity or something like that, how form, weight, size, flexibility, effect speed and force and articulation and reach, it was a bunch of criteria they evaluated, that i don’t recall. obviously not power like electricity, or influence, or rangers lol 
i don’t pretend to be a sword expert, i’ll leave that to others here. i can only relay the information i’ve encountered seemed to have fairly consistent expert consensus, that some self proclaimed forum experts seem to disagree with without providing alternatives or reasons. that’s the internet these days i guess.
what do you feel are the top 10 most efficient or effective, or whatever word you don’t get hung up on, sword types? obviously there is a tremendous variation in both force and speed that can be put into the various applications of a sword based on its weight, size, shape, flexibility, strength, etc.
if katana isn’t in the top 10 for you what 10 are better?
Fucked if I know. Give me a rifle. Or a better yet a howitzer that’s part of a well developed system of indirect fire.
Arguing over swords is like arguing over who had the best revolver in WWI. I mean … sure … if you want to … ?
those are the worst kinds of swords! 
but effective in their own right.
