The shrouded sinister history of the bulldozer
43 comments
·March 10, 2025kens
rkosk
The P-80 might not have seen any action but the Gloster Meteor was introduced into service in July 1944 and saw a fair bit of combat through to the end of the war in Europe. Not a massive impact and wasn't really that important in the grand scheme of things, but it's still an allied jet powered plane that made some contribution to the war effort.
out-of-ideas
great catch - deff seems inaccurate of a statement (more like lack of jet engine used against)
tangentially, had to dig up https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37945006 as it triggered the ol brain
NoahKAndrews
It says "aircraft engine" for me
jsheard
You're both right, it says aircraft engine in the article body but jet engine in the pull quote. They caught the error but forgot to update the latter.
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karaterobot
Bulldozers can be used to grade surfaces prior to buildings being constructed... Buildings in which crimes are committed, from financial fraud to outright murder.
aprilthird2021
Bulldozers themselves have been used to murder. There were examples given in the article? Not sure the point of this comment?
Qem
> Bulldozers themselves have been used to murder. There were examples given in the article?
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/israelpa...
theogravity
killdozer? although "No one else was injured or killed,[1] in part due to timely evacuation orders"
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS
I believe the comment's point is sarcasm
tedunangst
What kind of safeguards are we imagining the bulldozer should have? Should we attach an AI camera to the engine to prevent bulldozing the wrong things?
dullcrisp
It sounds like the article is advocating something more along the lines of, buy a copy of a newspaper and if the front page has a picture of your customer committing war crimes with your product maybe ask them about it.
thorncorona
Disappointing that all HN can offer on this is political drivel, shallow commentary, and snark.
CoastalCoder
The night is young. Perhaps better comments will show up still.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS
More regulation, of course. It's worked so well for guns, after all. Because making more laws prevents people who disregard laws from breaking other laws.
Really, we should just cut to the chase and outlaw murder.
CoastalCoder
I have mixed feelings about outlawing concealed bulldozers.
awesome_dude
It has worked for guns - the countries where guns are a problem either have very lax regulation, or very lax enforcement (because of a breakdown of government)
coffeecantcode
Well, there are also countries like Switzerland where there is a substantially higher amount of gun ownership compared to that of the rest of Europe but very few of the same issues of other countries with similar ownership per capita. Though, that’s probably due to the required service training and the screenings that come along with it. And it being a relatively small country.
CobaltFire
Relevant to the part about the brown tree snake on Guam, the inspectors for Hawai’i just had their building lease canceled by GSA/DOGE and barely kept their jobs:
https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2025-03-10/brow...
I was stationed on Guam for a bit, on the aviation side. We had to do quite a few inspections for those snakes, and worked with the people in the article I linked. In three years we found 7 on birds I inspected (a few hundred I imagine), all just before deployment overseas. Those snakes got into the oddest places.
Reasoning
New Journalism and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Lammy
It usually really bothers me (not joking) when people use “sinister” when they actually mean “nefarious” or “odious” or whatever, because it perpetuates old superstition about left-handed people being evil even if does so unknowingly.
> “bulldozer” […] popped up in […] an Illinois court case to describe a manufacturing machine that had ripped off a worker’s left arm.
…but this time I guess I have to give it a pass :) Hug a lefty today!
CoastalCoder
That's hysterical! (geddit?)
But more seriously, there's a number of words like that, IIUC. E.g. cretin, barbarian, slave, hysterical, lesbian. Probably other terms as well, I'm guessing.
I'm not sure it's worth getting too worked up about the original usages of those terms, if most people using them aren't making the connection.
robocat
Too many words have gauche secondary meanings: we can't sidestep every nuance or there'd be no words left. I love me some wry leftfield connotations. Although I think maladroit and dextrous can rightly be left out.
genewitch
As someone who lives now in Louisiana and with someone born here, we did not know that the term was used to describe mostly white Democrats attacking black Republican male voters.
I wonder if there's any historical markers to that effect.
Also interesting is that "bullpup" to describe a type of firearm comes from this usage of bulldozer.
aerostable_slug
> Also interesting is that "bullpup" to describe a type of firearm comes from this usage of bulldozer.
It does? Can you point me to more information on this topic? I thought the etymology of "bullpup" was far from settled.
hot_gril
ISIS also used bulldozers, notably to destroy ancient cities like Nimrud.
dale_glass
Eh. This all seems very backwards to me.
It seems to be a human tendency to want to oversimplify problems. It seems very wrong-headed to me to concentrate on one particular machine than for instance on that one influential guy had no appreciation for the jungle, plus whatever politics surrounded that, plus the desires/needs/etc of the surrounding communities, investors, etc.
Because yeah, the right machine sure helps get wrong things done faster, but it's not like we've ever lacked means to be inventive when we really want to, or just sheer pigheadedness to do it even if it was hard. If it's not a bulldozer it might be flamethrowers, defoliants, repurposed tanks, chainsaws, etc.
If enough people (or a few rich enough people) want a jungle gone, then they'll probably get that done sooner or later with whatever means they can. It's this bigger and more complex issue we should be looking into solving.
hot_gril
I just took it as poetic, not that bulldozers are actually a problem. Innocent-looking machine can be used for grotesque things, which is creepier in a way than regular weapons. That's about it. Idk if that's what the author intended.
6stringmerc
Marvin Heemyer may be relevant in some way to readers as well:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer
The documentary “Tread” is something I recommend if available.
deadbabe
Nothing good happens in the path of a bulldozer. The operation of this machine extracts a heavy toll from the soul of the operator.
tty2048
The Scoops Are On Their Way!
tty2048
Technically it was a modified garbage truck but they were sort of used like people bulldozers. https://scifi.fandom.com/wiki/Scoops
The article has a pull quote: “Bulldozers were as important to the Allied victory as the jet engine, the radar or the atomic bomb.”
That's a strange statement since the jet engine had approximately zero impact on the Allied victory; the P-80 Shooting Star was produced too late to be useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jet_aircraft_of_World_...