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I mean, its also an atoll in paradise. Theres definitely plenty to do there, the navy for some reason has decided to ban surfing and instead put in slot machine

by kart23 4y ago

I mean, its also an atoll in paradise. Theres definitely plenty to do there, the navy for some reason has decided to ban surfing and instead put in slot machines.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Huh, I had no idea. https://wavelengthmag.com/curious-case-diego-garcia/ https://wavelengthmag.com/curious-case-diego-garcia/ I'm guessing surfing risks injuring US military... assets.
- jjulius 4y ago
  I mean, even the article suggests that if the military reversed course and allowed surfing, there may not be as many people jumping at the opportunity as OP suggests. It says that military personnel have smuggled surfboards and failed to get many other folk interested in joining them over the course of a whole year: >Somehow, he’d managed to smuggle his 8’6 pintail out there (we’d find this tricky to believe were it not for the images featured in the original article above) and he spent his year finding fun down the line tubes to jam it into. Unfortunately for Tom, he wasn’t able to coax many mates out into the lineup to join him, largely due to the abundance of hazards that lurk between the fast-breaking waves and the shallow coral reefs, including an array of hungry sharks, sting-rays, and stonefish. And of course, the the limited medical facilities on land should you come to blows with any of them. And just because something's "in paradise" doesn't mean there's plenty to do, and simply suggesting a sport that not everyone's into doesn't really support that assertion. Paradise can be quite uneventful, even if it's still paradise.
  - emiliobumachar 4y ago
    What's the punishment for ignoring the ban? Fear of that may dominate the reasoning of those who declined to join him.
    - packetslave 4y ago
      Ignoring orders in the military is a good way to end up in prison.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      Best case? Non-judicial punishment of some sort, e.g. "captain's mast" or the like. Forfeiture of pay, additional duty, minor imprisonment, changes to your rations, etc. In a highly secured, remote base it's totally possible you get court-martialed, busted down in rank (aka losing out in monthly pay and bennies), or even catch a bad conduct discharge or something.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    That quote smells like BS. There are a lot of people who don't surf, and those reasons aren't why.
  - watwut 4y ago
    I never tried surfing, so I would 100% not risked punishment to surf. That just seems dumb. My point here is that if something is not allowed, you need a lot more to be willing to try it.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    What percentage of Navy enlisted in the lower E-numbers have ever surfed, at all, in their whole lives? Reads like this would be a pretty shitty place to learn, so I can see why people'd balk at the notion, even without the risk of punishment.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Military bases, especially in the austere / remote environments where some of them are, have a few differences from most civilian areas. - Specialized personnel, who are required to fulfill the base's mission - Substantial logistical costs for additional personnel or materiel - Limited medical facilities, often lacking in higher standards of care, supplies, and with substantial evacuation distances Since Diego Garcia is a major airbase, some of these are lessened, but they still all apply. If someone is injured, they have to be rotated out and someone with the same specialized training rotated in. If something is needed (say, medical supplies), they have to be flown or shipped thousands of miles. Each doctor/nurse/piece of medical equipment thus has a logistics footprint several times what a mainland one would. Which means a bare minimum medical presence. Which means if something really bad happens (major trauma from a shark attack), someone is probably dying. Weighed against that... a ban on surfing for recreational purposes seems fair. At the end of the day, when you're deployed in a remote environment with the military, you're there to serve the mission. Fun comes secondary, or not at all. :(
  - CogitoCogito 4y ago
    > Which means if something really bad happens (major trauma from a shark attack), someone is probably dying. > Weighed against that... a ban on surfing for recreational purposes seems fair. > At the end of the day, when you're deployed in a remote environment with the military, you're there to serve the mission. Fun comes secondary, or not at all. :( I wouldn't be surprised if the risk of shark attack to surfers there is lower than the risk of death due to basically every other activity on the base. There are maybe a dozen deaths (not just including surfers) due to sharks each year in the whole world. Banning surfing due to the risk of shark attack is totally illogical. Surfers are so much more likely to injure themselves or die in any number of other ways surfing. The risk of shark attacks just doesn't even enter the conversation. I'd be interested to hear the reasoning on the ban. If it really is due to shark attacks, the military might consider getting someone more rational to make those decisions at the base.
passwordoops 4y ago
After getting a dream job on a paradise island, I can tell you how fast it takes to do everything there is to do on that island before the isolation sets in. I was told the week I landed "there's two type of people: those who immediately fall in love and never leave. Then there's the ones who get island fever after 6 months and never come back... You won't find too many mainlanders who have lived here for very long"
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Sure, but why don't slot machines get boring?
  - Adraghast 4y ago
    “Addiction By Design” by Natasha Dow Schüll is a good book to answer this question.
    - mickdeek86 4y ago
      I'm reminded of an anecdote I once heard, which I can't readily find atm, that in the days of yore when Chicago dominated the pinball industry, the same complex also dominated the slot machine industry. This business was later purchased by Bally's and moved to Las Vegas, where it appears the book picks up. Along with the business came the statistician whose job it was to make slot machines addictive. He later came out of retirement to work for Tinder. Don't really know if that last part is true, maybe someone here does.
  - paulcole 4y ago
    That's like asking "Why doesn't it hurt when a tick latches onto your leg and starts sucking blood?" They've been designed (evolved) for a purpose. Pulling a lever/pushing a button should get boring. Slots are designed to not be boring while they bleed you dry.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Because the human brain is bad at probability and susceptible to hacking. And on the other like-a-fox hand, the military does have a strong incentive to identify individuals susceptible to developing gambling addictions. It's cold, but putting them in close proximity to available gambling isn't the worst test...
jeltz 4y ago
I love swimming so I am sure I will have some fun but atoll in paradise sounds like a place with not much to do, at least not compared to a major city like where I live. And I can swim here too during the summers.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  It may have just been his own spin on it but I used to read a lot of this world-traveller Russian blogger's low-commentary (mostly just strings of photos with short captions) posts, and was surprised at how seemingly every truly-remote, small, island "paradise" he visited came off as hellishly dull and absolutely covered in trash (every single one of them seemed to have a severe problem with trash disposal, to the point that there were small de-facto open landfills evidently around every corner and in every cranny when out in the wilder areas... which actually made a lot of sense when I started to think about it, but was just something I'd never considered before) Dude completely broke me of my childhood desire to go to see every little middle-of-nowhere island I could find on the globe. But did make me way more interested in visiting Ethiopia, so, there's that.
yieldcrv 4y ago
sounds like someone that's never taken that tropical sabbatical
Broken_Hippo 4y ago
You can play slot machines for more hours than you can surf - and not only that, but you can do it in more types of weather with a lower risk of injury. Plenty to do there if you are there for a week. 6 months in, those things aren't nearly as neat and you will probably need some other entertainment. Slots wouldn't have been my first (or 10th) choice to offer folks, though.

by kart23 4y ago

I mean, its also an atoll in paradise. Theres definitely plenty to do there, the navy for some reason has decided to ban surfing and instead put in slot machines.

ceejayoz 4y ago

Huh, I had no idea. https://wavelengthmag.com/curious-case-diego-garcia/ https://wavelengthmag.com/curious-case-diego-garcia/ I'm guessing surfing risks injuring US military... assets.

jjulius 4y ago
I mean, even the article suggests that if the military reversed course and allowed surfing, there may not be as many people jumping at the opportunity as OP suggests. It says that military personnel have smuggled surfboards and failed to get many other folk interested in joining them over the course of a whole year: >Somehow, he’d managed to smuggle his 8’6 pintail out there (we’d find this tricky to believe were it not for the images featured in the original article above) and he spent his year finding fun down the line tubes to jam it into. Unfortunately for Tom, he wasn’t able to coax many mates out into the lineup to join him, largely due to the abundance of hazards that lurk between the fast-breaking waves and the shallow coral reefs, including an array of hungry sharks, sting-rays, and stonefish. And of course, the the limited medical facilities on land should you come to blows with any of them. And just because something's "in paradise" doesn't mean there's plenty to do, and simply suggesting a sport that not everyone's into doesn't really support that assertion. Paradise can be quite uneventful, even if it's still paradise.
- emiliobumachar 4y ago
  What's the punishment for ignoring the ban? Fear of that may dominate the reasoning of those who declined to join him.
  - packetslave 4y ago
    Ignoring orders in the military is a good way to end up in prison.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    Best case? Non-judicial punishment of some sort, e.g. "captain's mast" or the like. Forfeiture of pay, additional duty, minor imprisonment, changes to your rations, etc. In a highly secured, remote base it's totally possible you get court-martialed, busted down in rank (aka losing out in monthly pay and bennies), or even catch a bad conduct discharge or something.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  That quote smells like BS. There are a lot of people who don't surf, and those reasons aren't why.
- watwut 4y ago
  I never tried surfing, so I would 100% not risked punishment to surf. That just seems dumb. My point here is that if something is not allowed, you need a lot more to be willing to try it.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  What percentage of Navy enlisted in the lower E-numbers have ever surfed, at all, in their whole lives? Reads like this would be a pretty shitty place to learn, so I can see why people'd balk at the notion, even without the risk of punishment.
ethbr0 4y ago
Military bases, especially in the austere / remote environments where some of them are, have a few differences from most civilian areas. - Specialized personnel, who are required to fulfill the base's mission - Substantial logistical costs for additional personnel or materiel - Limited medical facilities, often lacking in higher standards of care, supplies, and with substantial evacuation distances Since Diego Garcia is a major airbase, some of these are lessened, but they still all apply. If someone is injured, they have to be rotated out and someone with the same specialized training rotated in. If something is needed (say, medical supplies), they have to be flown or shipped thousands of miles. Each doctor/nurse/piece of medical equipment thus has a logistics footprint several times what a mainland one would. Which means a bare minimum medical presence. Which means if something really bad happens (major trauma from a shark attack), someone is probably dying. Weighed against that... a ban on surfing for recreational purposes seems fair. At the end of the day, when you're deployed in a remote environment with the military, you're there to serve the mission. Fun comes secondary, or not at all. :(
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  > Which means if something really bad happens (major trauma from a shark attack), someone is probably dying. > Weighed against that... a ban on surfing for recreational purposes seems fair. > At the end of the day, when you're deployed in a remote environment with the military, you're there to serve the mission. Fun comes secondary, or not at all. :( I wouldn't be surprised if the risk of shark attack to surfers there is lower than the risk of death due to basically every other activity on the base. There are maybe a dozen deaths (not just including surfers) due to sharks each year in the whole world. Banning surfing due to the risk of shark attack is totally illogical. Surfers are so much more likely to injure themselves or die in any number of other ways surfing. The risk of shark attacks just doesn't even enter the conversation. I'd be interested to hear the reasoning on the ban. If it really is due to shark attacks, the military might consider getting someone more rational to make those decisions at the base.

passwordoops 4y ago

After getting a dream job on a paradise island, I can tell you how fast it takes to do everything there is to do on that island before the isolation sets in. I was told the week I landed "there's two type of people: those who immediately fall in love and never leave. Then there's the ones who get island fever after 6 months and never come back... You won't find too many mainlanders who have lived here for very long"

hgsgm 4y ago
Sure, but why don't slot machines get boring?
- Adraghast 4y ago
  “Addiction By Design” by Natasha Dow Schüll is a good book to answer this question.
  - mickdeek86 4y ago
    I'm reminded of an anecdote I once heard, which I can't readily find atm, that in the days of yore when Chicago dominated the pinball industry, the same complex also dominated the slot machine industry. This business was later purchased by Bally's and moved to Las Vegas, where it appears the book picks up. Along with the business came the statistician whose job it was to make slot machines addictive. He later came out of retirement to work for Tinder. Don't really know if that last part is true, maybe someone here does.
- paulcole 4y ago
  That's like asking "Why doesn't it hurt when a tick latches onto your leg and starts sucking blood?" They've been designed (evolved) for a purpose. Pulling a lever/pushing a button should get boring. Slots are designed to not be boring while they bleed you dry.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Because the human brain is bad at probability and susceptible to hacking. And on the other like-a-fox hand, the military does have a strong incentive to identify individuals susceptible to developing gambling addictions. It's cold, but putting them in close proximity to available gambling isn't the worst test...

jeltz 4y ago

I love swimming so I am sure I will have some fun but atoll in paradise sounds like a place with not much to do, at least not compared to a major city like where I live. And I can swim here too during the summers.

yamtaddle 4y ago
It may have just been his own spin on it but I used to read a lot of this world-traveller Russian blogger's low-commentary (mostly just strings of photos with short captions) posts, and was surprised at how seemingly every truly-remote, small, island "paradise" he visited came off as hellishly dull and absolutely covered in trash (every single one of them seemed to have a severe problem with trash disposal, to the point that there were small de-facto open landfills evidently around every corner and in every cranny when out in the wilder areas... which actually made a lot of sense when I started to think about it, but was just something I'd never considered before) Dude completely broke me of my childhood desire to go to see every little middle-of-nowhere island I could find on the globe. But did make me way more interested in visiting Ethiopia, so, there's that.

yieldcrv 4y ago

sounds like someone that's never taken that tropical sabbatical

Broken_Hippo 4y ago

You can play slot machines for more hours than you can surf - and not only that, but you can do it in more types of weather with a lower risk of injury. Plenty to do there if you are there for a week. 6 months in, those things aren't nearly as neat and you will probably need some other entertainment. Slots wouldn't have been my first (or 10th) choice to offer folks, though.