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Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal

137 points · 121 comments · xqcgrek2

  1. JumpCrisscross · · focus · HN ↗

    [dead]

    1. scun · · focus · HN ↗
      Coincidentally TIL about a Namibian politician who decided to drop the "Hitler" from his name. I only mention it because his first name is also Adolf
      1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

        [deleted]

    2. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

      [deleted]

    3. moritzwarhier · · focus · HN ↗
      the purpose of square-bracketed text in quotes is to mark editorializing
      1. stackghost · · focus · HN ↗
        I think the point is that in an article about Nazi Germany, editorializing "Hitler" to add "Adolf" is probably not required because almost every adult in the English-speaking world knows who Hitler was.
        1. SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
          The more I learn about that fella, the less I like him.
          1. 1-more · · focus · HN ↗
            You joke, but Destined to Witness is a really interesting memoir of German-Liberian Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi growing up in the rise of Nazi Germany as a young kid and then experiencing WWII as a civilian German teen. I ended up learning how the Nuremberg laws came down on kids at playgrounds, etc., something I'd never considered. Sure it pales in comparison to everything else, but it's always interesting to learn one more way the Nazis were just awful.
      2. happytoexplain · · focus · HN ↗
        That's why it's notable. If it were part of the original quote, it wouldn't be.
        1. moritzwarhier · · focus · HN ↗
          > That's why it's notable. If it were part of the original quote [without square brackets], it wouldn't be.

          happytoexplain rightfully expands on the importance of square brackets as orthographic signifiers inside quoted text, marking a temporary suspension of the literal quoting context.

          What they fail to address though, is that while "[square-brackets are] notable", this convention turns out to be problematic when dealing with markdown, or other structured text with unusual semantic orthographic markers. Square brackets "work" (scare-quote!) because they are unusual.

          But what to do when dealing with an original text that contains square-brackets, such as a comment about square brackets, or computer source code? There are also some forms of art revolving around unusual punctuation, especially from the 20th century!

          And this doesn't even touch the fact that the spellings "square-brackets" and "square brackets" both seem to be considered acceptable, notwithstanding the question whether minimizing the square-bracketed portion of quoted and editorialized text should include whitespace, such as in

          > If it were part of the original[ non-square-bracketed] quote[...]

          Also, [...] is seen as offensive and insensitive quoting by some scholars.

          Quite a conundrum!

    4. joshblack1982 · · focus · HN ↗
      Not to be confused with Adolf Hitler's half-nephew Bill Hitler, who fought against Adolf Hitler.
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