why would you ever need aligned storage for a single object that just holds a couple of references?
the aligned storage
https://github.com/OpenBW/openbw/blob/master/sync.h#L1019
the class it's used with
https://github.com/OpenBW/openbw/blob/master/sync.h#L354
is it some kind of "as long as it's aligned it's atomic" x86 nonsense? tempted to just nuke it all...