Why do we still joke about setting up old wooden guillotines?

If it's about sending a message, then the item itself is the conveyor of the message, not an unrecognizable but more efficient substitute. The guillotine is a recognisable symbol of people rising up and seizing power from the criminal ruling class. It is a warning and a threat.

If you plan on actually executing people, then sure - optimize all you want, or just go with a bullet to the brain.

But as a symbol, the guillotine is powerful.

Ugh? Guillotines are very reliable actually. And it's not that expensive, everything is wood except the large blade. Also, you can't fake an execution, the crowd will be satisfied when they see the head

Guillotines are too tame for modern audiences. Wood chippers are fresh and exciting.

Ton of materials?

It's just a large frame to hold a big knife dropped by letting go of a rope. The hardest thing to get would be the blade, and the whole thing could be constructed in under 2 hours.

Do know what a meme is?

Same reason we still "hang up" the phone.

You can make them modular, with telescoping rails, for portability. The blade needs to be weighted, but the weight can consist of a stack of weights, like on gym equipment. In fact, you could probably repurpose a bench press machine into a guillotine with a few minor modifications.

Who is joking?

Because if we talk about guns and bombs we end up on a list.

I like your approach here of making a clearly wrong statement just to get more activity on this important topic

I will add yet another comment that guillotines are neither complicated nor require much material. you could make a sturdy one with less than a dozen 2x4s, some screws, a scrap piece of rope, and whatever junk metal you have lying around that's around 24x8 (which you need regardless of how fancy the frame itself is)

that said, mobile ones seem like they would also have a purpose

Nobody is wanting to build a guillotine. it's simply a symbolic reference to the French Revolution.

Use a log splitter with a different blade, higher capacity valance and an accumulator for faster action. Strengthen the frame and maybe add a dampener for the end of stroke so things last longer. Reloading ca be controlled by smaller hoses.

Same reason people have crosses on them. It's a symbol.

if it were up to me, i would use a chainsaw

I propose we build a large paper cutter style contraption.

Let's make the blade 5 m long so that it's big enough for everyone to see. Also, the blade should be so heavy that it will always chop reliably. You should also put some nice bearings in the pivot point so that it always swings very smoothly.

Oh, but how do we lift a heavy blade like that? If electricity is available, you could have an electric motor to lift it up. If not, you would need some rope and pulleys.

As the blade falls down, it would need to shear the target material to make a clean cut. This means that you can't have a huge gap between the blade and the lower surface it shears against. Just like in paper cutters, the stationary blade needs to be made of steel, but it doesn't have to be super sharp. The gap is important though. Think of the gap between scissor blades and you'll get the idea.

As the contraption will inevitably be contaminated with organic material, it could have an integrated Clean In Place system. After each cycle of operation, the CIP should spray the affected area with cold water and soap. If that doesn't do the job, there would be a second program that uses hot water and soap, which would obviously require more energy.

All that water needs to come from somewhere, so you're going need like an IBC container. If you need more than 1000 l, you might need to use a lorry to deliver enough water. Ideally though, you would operate in an area where you can just connect the contraption to a nearby water outlet. Ask a local a firefighter to help you out.

Also, all of that water needs to go somewhere too, so I would recommend operating it in a place where there's a sewer near by.

If you're planning to operate in remote locations, I would recommend building it into a detachable lorry bed. You know those things with a hook loader. This way, you can move the machine easily to wherever you need and even lower it to the ground where it's easier to operate.

Hold on, what was the question again? Got carried away by the logistics of all of this.

Why am I thinking of a d4a/InheritanceMachining crossover episode?

Because we don't see what real, actual, guillotines do.

I accidentally saw a guillotine-execution on DuckDuckGo ( they used to be much worse than they are now, for including stuff you don't want to see )

and .. it's kinda hard to communicate how WRONG that is, to chop a human-life to that degree of .. to just-now-dead..

interesting: I can't communicate how wrong/horrible it was, through words!

Anyways, there's some German word, looks sorta like schedenfruede or something like that..

it means "finding enjoyment in other people's suffering", and old-people don't find it funny, generally, because old-people have experienced enough diversity-of-suffering to be able to understand other-people's perspectives..

The more one sees what people mean, the more one has to choose a self-defense-for-one's-psyche strategy:

either sensitivity, in which case one has to avoid the coarser & worse stuff in life, systematically .. XOR

de-sensitization, in which case one can joke about it, push it, even do it, because one is making one's essence become mechanical/dead to what one's engaging.

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There's a story of Hinduism, during the British rule of India..

Some privileged people got together to do some hunting..

1 of those was Indian, he'd used guns, before, he just hadn't destroyed someone's life, before..

After he shot a naturally-magnificent animal, & saw it dying as a result of his bullet, he put down his rifle, & left, never returning to that kind of culture, again..

IF sensitivity is one's path, like making oneself into a combination microscope+telescope, spiritually, THEN .. this kind of reaction becomes inevitable.

You just can't accept what a real guillotine-execution is.

Joking-about such stuff is fine until you actually understand what it means .. & then .. you can't joke about it, anymore.

Like Ukranians are unlikely to be able to joke about what Russia did to Mariupol, you know?

It's too live-wire fresh a wound..

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Having seen what a 1-to-2-second long video of a guillotine-execution looked like, I'd now say that only the evil could do them, repeatedly.

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