Loss in terms of money or efforts. Could be recent or ancient.
Brexit. As historical blunders go, this has a beautiful unambiguous purity.
I agree, but unlike usual blunders this was very much planned!
Once the campaigns were underway, yes. But the opportunity came from a huge blunder by David Cameron. He called the referendum expecting an easy win for the remain side that would silence the anti-EU faction in his party and shore up his position as PM. Instead, the anti-EU faction won, prompting his own resignation and causing damage to the UK’s economy, a loss of global influence, the loss of British people’s right to live and work in the EU, and reopening difficult issues in Northern Ireland that had been laid to rest for years. It also arguably sped up the Conservative Party’s lurch to the right and its embrace of UKIP-like policies, disempowering Conservative moderates and leading to the spiral of ever less competent governments we have seen since then. In particular, Boris Johnson’s rise was a direct result of post-referendum power games among Conservative politicians.
I didn’t keep up with this at all (I’m from across the pond) and I wondered why Brexit was even thought up in the first place.
It’s so sad to see conservatives fucking things up over there too.
Well, I’m in Canada and our Conservatives are pretty active in making this a worse place to live too. Currently they run almost all of the provincial governments, but they may take the federal government after the next election. Not something to look forward to.
It’s heartbreaking to see happen with y’all. We’re a mess, PLEASE LEARN FROM US!
religious right wingers are dangerous AF. Don’t let religious folk skate by on some “we’re persecuted” shit.
They know what they’re doing, don’t treat them with kid gloves like we did in the US
So what’s David Cameron up to these days? I’m sure such a massive and unnecessary screw-up has landed him in dire personal straights. /s
We’ll there was that time Kublai Khan tried to invade Japan with the largest amphibious assault in history (until D-day) and got absolutely wrecked by a typhoon.
Then tried again a few years later, with an even larger force, and got wrecked by another typhoon.
You can’t leave aside the fact that those typhoons were called “Divine Winds”, or kamikaze.
I doubt if it counts as a blunder, but thanks for sharing anyway.
Their blunder was using disgruntled Chinese labor to build their ships. It turns out that conquering people makes them rather upset.
Do you guys remember that time u/Spez took the reddit API away from third party apps?
Unfortunately most reddit users didn’t even notice. Or just don’t care.
I hope the Redditors that didn’t care about the whole thing never find their way here. I can’t imagine being that apathetic about something you use daily.
Oh wow, that really takes me back. 🤌🏼
Nobody cared. Only reddit addicts and power tripping jannies, who all seem to have migrated here.
When the Spanish were raping the New World in the 1500s for gold, they dumped enormous quantities of platinum into the ocean because it was the wrong kind of shiny metal. Nobody in Europe had any clue how valuable the stuff was, only that it was often used to counterfeit gold. But since it wasn’t gold, or even silver, everyone thought it was worthless. This was exasperated by the fact that nobody could melt the stuff until the 1800s. But mostly it was just not yellow enough for the idiots at the time.
You don’t hold onto a useless material for 400 years hoping it has some value in the future.
Ever heard of the cables drawer? Bet you feel real stupid now
HODL
Knight Capital - They were biggest equities trader in 2012. They manually deployed code and didn’t get configuration right and it reactivated “Powder Peg”. They lost $460 M in 45 minutes and went bankrupt.
The program was called “Power Peg” for those googling for it. It was a test program not intended to be used on the live market.
The Power Peg program was designed to buy a stock at its ask price, and then immediately sell it again at the bid price, losing the value of the spread.
The Worst Computer Bugs in History: Losing $460m in 45 minutes
Thanks for sharing. This is exactly the kind of blunder I had in my mind when asking the question, a seemingly silly mistake like forgetting to do something causing way too much trouble!
It’s actually a good case for why you needed devops and an automated build/release
Talk about a Nanosecond Buyout!
The Jan. 6th insurrectionists who thought Trump was going to pardon them all because they were heroes.
Or that they were doing the middle class any favors by fucking up the nation’s credit score (as it were) with their smooth-brain fuckery. 🤦🏼♂️
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King Pyrrhus of Epirus. He was known for winning battles against superior armies, at the cost of taking heavy losses. He was once quoted as saying “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
He was so famous for this, that the term for a victory that devastates the victor bears his name, a Pyrrhic victory.
I would have expected to see this story way higher in this thread!
World War I didn’t do anyone any good whatsoever; including any of the various parties that might be blamed for starting it.
I’m by no means brushed up on my world war knowledge, but didn’t WWI help set the stage for the nazi party’s rise in Germany? Still a horrible event, but may have benefited someone even if the wrong someone?
Kinda. The winners of WWI decided to leave Germany be, but took most things of worth and some land. The reparations were brutal. I think Germany finished paying of the reparations a few years ago. Additionally there was military propaganda that the reich was “undefeated in battle, stabbed in the back”, because the civilians negotiated the harsh peace treaty and ignoring the fact, that the war was going badly.
I will not go more into details because I do not know exactly. But the combination of a very depressed economy, the feeling of being treated unjust and the desire for revenge led to a disgruntlement -> rise of populism -> rise of extremist parties.
I am missing a ton, but when things are unstable it is easierfor radical forces to emerge and succeed.
Hitler literally was tasked to spy on the NSDAP and joined them. You have to see: at the time two major parties in the reich were anti constitutional.
That is why a lot of people in Europe look worringly at trump or at least at the whole movement. The USA has issues that need fixing. There is a large disgruntled part of the population and people start to radicalize.
I may generalize, but the start of WWI was mostly a series of pride, miss communication and bad luck.
Elon acquiring Twitter for $44B in the first place, not taking into account the subsequent blunders. He not only overpaid too much for a social media company without even understanding it, he also wrecked Tesla’s stock price as investors saw he was clearly spending too much time on Twitter and he had to panic sell Tesla shares to fund his Twitter adventure. He easily wiped out hundreds of billions from Tesla’s market cap during that time.
Buying Twitter for 44B and renaming it to X.
Would be even more of a blunder if people just absolutely refuse to stop calling it Twitter.
Since December 1982, the O-rings had been designated a “Criticality 1″ item by NASA, denoting a component without a backup, whose failure would result in the loss of the shuttle and its crew.
Richard Feynman[:] “… [the shuttle] flies [with O-ring erosion] and nothing happens. Then it is suggested, therefore, that the risk is no longer so high for the next flights. We can lower our standards a little bit because we got away with it last time. You got away with it, but it shouldn’t be done over and over again like that.”
Taken from an excellent writeup of the fatal 1986 Challenger flight.
Never forget that Reagan heavily pressured them to not delay for political reasons
Russia invasion of Ukraine. They used to be number 2 army with sophisticated weapons. Now they are number 1 world laughing stock with weapons that works exceptionally well for invading Mars but not on earth.
As they say, from number 2 army in the world to number 2 army in Ukraine.
Now with a risk of becoming number 2 army in Russia…
Briefly number two in Russia even.
You still believing that? Wow
It is not a belief, it is fact.
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Didn’t really result in a loss, but a huge missed opportunity, when AT&T turned down an offer for them to purchase the early internet.
At least something we can all cheer about :)
This also reminds me of Yahoo turning down the offer to buy Google in their early stage! https://finance.yahoo.com/news/remember-yahoo-turned-down-1-132805083.html
The thing to remember with these examples is that those companies would have royally fucked up their purchases. Big companies always impose a culture and a mindset.
AT&T would definately have crushed the internet with a monopoly - we would have had to use AT&T approved internet devices, and they would have brought long distance type charges to it. Oh so your email is going overseas? That’s an extra 10c.
Same with Google and Netflix. They were all able to continue with the founders vision and create something special.
Target’s failed expansion into Canada. It’s taught as a case study on what not to do in business schools now.
Walmart’s attempt to break into the German market is hilarious
Burger King tried to open up in France and literally nobody would eat their muck. So when McDonald’s tried, they had to completely change their menu and service style. Hence, “McDo’s” in France is actually quite good
When I was in France this past spring I did see advertisements for Burger King so they must have had some success. I do remember McDonald’s having great dessert options.
Yes, BK lost a ton of cash, so learned from Maccies and reopened. The way they pronounce “Boorgehr Keeng” in the adverts make you want to cut off your fuckin ears with an angle grinder though
Ah I see. The ads I saw were on billboards so thankfully didn’t have to hear them. They were advertising some kind of “Louisiana” style chicken sandwich, which was ironic because the French find black pepper spicy. I can only imagine how mild it must actually be.
Oh aye, Texmex restaurants are few and far between, and the authentic southern American places have to chill out their recipes and leave a bottle of chilli sauce on the table. The Argentinian place near me is run by an older lady and you can see her die inside a little bit every time a Frenchman starts sweating from eating a tortilla
Haha, yeah we went to an Indian restaurant in Nimes because my friend has a severe gluten allergy. I had a vindaloo there that was milder than any food I’ve had in North America.
It was so weird when Target opened in my city. Everyone was pumped for the great deals Americans are always on about. The grand opening comes, and it was basically just a super expensive Walmart with half the products out of stock. Then they closed without notice like a month later. Employees came in the morning to open up and there were chains on the doors.
I’m not familiar with this story, could you give some details?
Empty stores, somehow, store managers had a perverse incentive to keep store inventory levels low. Their prices were really high as well. A rushed SAP implementation meant that executives didn’t have enough insight into business operations. You can read more here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Canada
Well, Russia, in 2022…
