It:s an old WW2 story. They were trying to improve their bullets thus analysed the returning planes which had collected many. By siphoning the bullets out of the frame they could see which ones had the most luck, and could then manufacture luckier bullets.
Comment on it's a war out there
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
can you explain? What does survivorship bias have to do with that
tetris11@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
shalafi@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
^ Channeling Slaughter House 5
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter plans flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
thanks haha, I’m asking about the gymnosperms
janonymous@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
It’s an old WW1 or WW2 story. They were constantly trying to improve their planes and thus analyzed the returning planes to figure out where they needed more protection. However, as the story goes, they did not account for the fact that the bullet holes where only in non-critical spots, because the planes that got hit on critical spots did not come back.
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
thanks! but I meant the gymnosperms
neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
The gymnosperms also did not survive anti-aircraft fire.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
Herbaceous gymnosperms were likely outcompeted by early angiosperms.