Update 1/19/23 fixed a duplicated portion of the story.I’m not a tank expert. But I am capable of both levels of pedanticism, and passive indifference few mortals can ever reach. Context determines when each personality trait comes out. An apartment isn’t a house, but if someone invites you over “to the house” for dinner, quibbling about names of building structures is needlessly pedantic. In most day-to-day contexts being a little imprecise with language is unproblematic. An SUV can be a “car”, a thumbtack can be a “small nail,” and so on. In most conversations, those labels don’t matter. If someone is giving you directions, trying to buy a vehicle, or sending you to a store with a shopping list, calling things what they are matters. If a kid gets under the kitchen sink and drinks from a bottle of something poisonous, what they drank matters to the medical providers a great deal. But telling the story to grandma after the fact, the difference between Windex and Stoner Invisible Glass cleaning solution is negligible. A reporter focused on accuracy would probably lean generically, saying simply “household cleaner” in their story. To reporters covering hawt military on military action, correctly describing equipment matters. And when a reporter doesn’t know the name of the equipment, it’s safest to lean generically, as I will do with the following story. A friend of mine is a hardcore military geek. My understanding of his resume is he started as a grunt in a light-heavy artillery unit…What Is A Tank And When Is It Pedantic