2D3D
2d ago
Staffing requirements usually put 4 infants to 1 caretaker. At a legit facility rent admin and janitorial staff wipe out even a fully subsidized package, without accounting for incidentals and capex. Probably need to hit at least 12 infants to start breaking even, and then your capex soars too. Daycares are not automatic money printers because kids are delicate and staffing is difficult.
So the easy scam is to just put pretend kids in and unqualified staff in place with fake credentials if ever interrogated. No auditor will investigate on their own and the local vote boss just says ' I will take care of it'
When the govt was not a fat cow worth milking taking care of it meant having to offer a sacrificial scalp to the other local bosses. Now the govt is this depersonalized money printer far away, and its also run by whites who are not only the enemy but also one that are self declaring the nobility of self impoverishment. Why would you deny them the opportunity to feel good.
2D3D
2d ago
The consequences for the pakistanis are miniscule compared to the personal satisfaction they enjoyed ruining the children of the enemy and getting paid to do so. So too will be the censure for the Somalians since the US is already a low punishment society that can barely punish the most easy criminals to indict, let alone anyone with a racism shield to deploy. The only way out is unspoken societal segregation, a hope that islands of sanity will be unmolested by the courts for the crime of being too prosperous and capable. As an overall polity there is no appetite to recognize the beast of racialized hate coming from foreign ethnics and less to address it.
Actually wait no there is one way out. Elect a capable non-scammy minority ethnic that is free to name the beast and act upon it. They will have a short but actionable runway to try and right the ship. A decisive window to act can arrest the decline. If the opportunity is squandered or fumbled (Obama capitulating to progressives after the 2nd midterms) then things get permanently worse. So, good luck with that.
2D3D
3d ago
You're right, but by preliminary I am referring to the months long campaigns in Iraq that suppressed and destroyed pretty much everything large enough to fit a box and the boxes themselves. A tactical DEAD on short window still lets a rapid evacuation occur so the combination of cyber warfare to paralyze all comms and cnc definitely expanded the window of opportunity from minutes to maybe half an hour. Still a lightning raid by any account, though I do take back the strength of the word "preliminary".
Regarding air defense, I mainly attribute the lack of response to the fact that low alert troops on midnight duty are always going to be sleepy shits and likely not on post. If they were on post they weren't hauling the MANPADs everywhere and if they had the MANPADs available they might have preferred to wait for command authority: what if the flying helo was Maduro making his escape? Mass defections are not likely but lazy troops as tripwires rarely succeed in defending an asset, a QRF tasking typically gets the actual job done if the tripwire does its job of slowing the advance.
Whatever the case is, the military comes off looking horrible. Now the Generals have to figure out who is to blame, and the ghost soldier paradox will bite them in their ass: is Pfc Gonzales a real guy on duty or is he someone I invented to fund the downpayment for my yacht?
2D3D
3d ago
its a good play. China can make a big show of its buildup and they are a serious threat, but a reminder that the USAs military stumbles in the 2010s was due to political constraints and not inbuilt capability is always good to hang over upstarts.
2D3D
3d ago
100% agree, no notes.
This is as close to a total regional fait accompli as you can get. More than that, the ecstasy from the Venezuelan and most of the South Americans is palpable. If it results in Venezuelans queueing up to self deport, even if its just a registration of intent, it secures Trumps decisiveness as the key unlocking US regional primacy. The US always COULD do it, it just never chose to, and it resulted in ill for itself as well as the region.
USA being a massive rich country that refused to crack down on its own people that partook of narcotics freely flowing across the border is what crippled South America (ok fine one of many things). If US could just LOOK decisive occasionally it changes the calculus for any actors that wish to exploit.
2D3D
4d ago
At this point I'm convinced whoever was on air defense duty was told to go for a midnight taco raid and the presidential guards rushed maduro out made a wrong turn straight into a delta team and oh no the clumsy americans dropped a usb with 10 bitcoin on it what clumsy fumblefingers they are.
2D3D
4d ago
Honestly, pretty based if USA immediately smacks Maduro immediately after Maduro gets assurances of Chinese support. Really fucking funny anime style twist you could have seen coming a mile away yet still lands because the execution is chefs kiss.
If this fails its just a comedy, so win win for me either way.
2D3D
4d ago
Yea its already over; either the HVT objective has been met or a new narrative spin will be executed to justify why the shock and awe is a sufficient first demonstration. Either way, bringing in rotary assets unmolested into Caracas is fucking ballsy and signals total degradation of any Venezuelan air control, especially given the lack of even preliminary SEAD/DEAD.
It might be a fait accompli if Maduro stayed put because he believed his own copium regarding air defense or bigbrains asserting that USA doing this was retarded. For all the degradation of the US military as a strategically independent thinker they do at least maintain kinetic capability and wont put boots on the ground without a decisive vetted go signal. At least for their sake I hope so.
2D3D
11d ago
Unless NSA overpays relative to FAANG and keeps everyone on an ideological leash the talent simply wont flow to the US state. The smartdicks with some vague natsec aspirations might go join Anduril to pretend at building Cyberdyne systems skynet. And thats only if Anduril stays off the DOD security asset whatever list so the staff dont get flagged at every port of exit.
2D3D
11d ago
The left absolutely subscribes to America being number one, its just their version of America instead of what America actually is or what the right and normies say they want. What the left wants is hard to pin down, but I'll stake it on some form of vague internationalist semisocialism that serves primarily to keep their own enemy, the right (kings, kulaks, landlords, their dad) in the ground and they themselves on top - with a similarly vague hope that everyone else who helped the leftist get on top of the pecking order will accept that leftists ascension as a fait accompli.
2D3D
1mo ago
While I'm sure most work being bullshit was the cause of capability requirements withering, I also think that our favourite bugbear here of DEI or rather its predecessor of Affirmative Action plays a role. Reducing the need for someone to actually know the broad based technicals of their job in exchange for being capable of doing something specific makes jobs lottery tickets for the incapable. As long as someone is not an active fuckup or active liability they can be held on payroll forever since their actual outcomes are materially unimportant. Annual KPI exercises are so easily gamed that you have to be an actual retard to fail in a firm that is able to plod along, and so if KPI isn't a way to get rid of someone then its just Team Spirit. And on soft metrics like that then theres no way they're getting rid of someone in the Protected Classes.
2D3D
1mo ago
Social media made it easy to pierce the social veil. Your boring nonwork life is no longer hidden by default, it is assumed to be public. Thats the blurring between personal and work, which means your boss can know if you're a true believer outside of work. I don't think you can even put Dilbert comics on your cube anymore, mainly because cubes are now dead thanks to 'collaborative spaces' that were the rage precovid.
Thats the big difference, not just COVID and remote work. Social media is the arms race for 'authenticity' and so you have to fake authenticity to fit in with the culture. Are you secretly a heretic? You can't be private, you have to declare your adherence openly, because other people are more enthusiastic than you.
But therein lies a question: why the arms race for authenticity, instead of just, you know, being good at your job. We need to realize that it is entirely possible that being Good At Job is simply becoming less and less important these days. Opportunity to not fuck up is more important than grindmaxxing. So many bullshit tasks in office are busywork to pretend one is productive, when most of it is not actually accretive to task fulfilment. Meanwhile many actual work deliverables that need bullshit microchanges as it is being worked on - coding, writing, drafting, anything manual - were made efficient by productivity tools and then it became representative of our own executive microfailures to use the tool rather than the difficulty of using the task itself. Random fuckwits can do a due diligence of a company financials for fundamental analysis just by ratiomaxxing, you don't need a genius to do it, just grind the formulae out diligently. Good is less important than discipline, and since discipline is only visible by outcomes that are beyond ones control, performative performance is a visible proxy.
This is the world we live in, outcomes divorced from inputs or at least sufficiently muddled by layers that our own roles as cogs are known to be unimportant. To not be swapped out we gotta pretend we believe the mission of the machine, and the incentive to publicly deepthroat the corporate mission is so high precisely because it is easier than actually trying to do great work. Who knows, we might end up liking the sensation of being choked out by slogans. Enjoy your corpospeak ASMR, piggies.
2D3D
1mo ago
We followed the man because he embodied the virtues of office that effect the manifestations of success within ourselves, and we replaced the man with tbe office hoping that virtue can be embedded within the wall and text like words of power. Modern failure is due to the office being sacrosanct and the selection of men to enter such offices is done by chicanery crookery or chance. The corner office is degraded by the incompetent holding it as his own, but the failure is to let the incompetent drape himself in the trappings of virtues rewards without the work. The gatekeeper to the doors of office are what maintain or degrade the virtues desired, and when the office is hollowed then other offices are made to do what is necessary without the gatekeeper being present.
The great man and great leader works fantastically for small group organization where personal affect can be sustained, but it fails to scale horizontally or linearlly past death. Old boy networks held the line when mass labour mobilization and consolidation let in incompetents, but those networks had to be hidden, impossible in modern digital communication.
Right now the gatekeepers are the masters of the offices and the great men are replaced by what the gatekeepers deem relevant. With the rewards still accruable to the islands of competence, what incentive is there for greatness to subject themselves to the struggle session of gatekeeping proles or bureaucratized academica? The obvious problem is that the system as a whole rots, but thats the fault of the system for ennobling asskissers and tokens.
2D3D
1mo ago
I do consider this an arrogation of authority! I also consider the JAQing off about "if the military is given illegal orders shouldn't they disobey hint hint hint" an arrogation of authority as well, compounded with cowardly evasiveness.
Grant was ordered to kill 100k US citizens, and that should have triggered a supreme court crisis right from the outset even with the generals who were first mobilized. That no such challenge was sustained proves only that the durability of legalistic restrictions is a choice, one that Trump has clearly shown can be steamrolled over de facto by just simply fucking doing it. To be bound by the laws is a choice if unbacked by kinetic measures, and the chief wielders of kinetic force (army and police) get a say in whether they want to follow the rules. Right now the US security establishment has leaders prefer to resign with dignity intact rather than stage coups to enforce or resist "unlawful" orders. For democrats to hope for a noble cincinnatus to overthrow Trump and restore the republic to the exiled senatorial class is Sorkinian fantasy. Sucks but it is what it is. If the leaders don't want to actively resist orders, what chance some E4 giving a single shit about the legality of his actions.
2D3D
1mo ago
I'm reflecting line of argument upthread. I don't actually believe it, but the democrats are signalling that they expect the military to oppose trump to ends beneficial to democrat political objectives, the bare minimum being preventing the military being a + point for trump.
The democrats statements are cowardly weaselling: we expect the military to disobey illegal orders proactively but we are not actually saying trumps orders are illegal, we expect the military to make that judgment for themselves to achieve a political objective benefitting democrats. Oh and the reverse implication is that the military is conducting illegal orders under trump by executing the missions.
If the orders are illegal state it openly as such. Why make a statement decrying the consequences of illegal orders if there are no illegal orders. Democrats clearly hope to gain political capital out of this but are too cowardly to actually openly declare their affirmative stance.
2D3D
1mo ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/math-decline-ucsd/684973/
At the same time, the UC system eliminated its best tool for assessing students’ academic preparedness. In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfairly privileged wealthy students.
Anyone remember the greatest hits of racialized education from the mid 2010s? Math is racist. Decolonize science. Genetically transmitted racial trauma. Social promotion for underperforming (especially "minorities") so that they won't feel bad.
Much of the above arguments were created by progressives and embraced by administrators seeking to avoid hard metric accountability to keep their funding alive. Real high impact success required tracibility and accountability, like Roland Fryers Promise program in Harlem that closed achievement gaps significantly. Naturally that all gets abandoned because it required work, which is apparently racist.
Well, its all coming home to roost. The first crop of pandemic + zero accountability + AI kids are coming into college, and the results aren't pretty. Fully 50% of entrants cannot write an essay or do high school math. Institutions that have self respect have pivoted back to some form of standardized testing, but it may be too late. The value signal of a bachelors was already diminished pre pandemic because too many incompetents were getting degree mill slop, saturating the job market with useless cultural studies slop churned out by universities soaking in those sweet Pell Grants. The 30% of the cohort getting bachelors is still unimportant compared to the top 5% in Ivies. The lack of critical mass of competence seems real this time.
So does education matter? Can you simply git gud with an Agile cert and a self built site with 1099 proof of taxable income from a successful venture, as opposed to educationmaxxing? If the value signal is degraded, can it be restored? Has the era of mandatory rectification of disparate outcome with forced racial redistribution ended? Is all this unimportant in an AI age where Scarjo can whisper ASMR opium?
2D3D
1mo ago
What is the 'it' they fear? A military that disobeys unlawful orders without any legal process, which curtails Democrats own ability to issue orders of dubious legality like Obama drone striking a US citizen? Or the orders being executed that actually are lawful but unpopular for Democrats?
If I threaten to take my childs spoon from him after I issue the warning, I am the one exercising the threat. The democrats are saying the orders may be unlawful and the military itself should exercise judgment on the unlawfulness to remove trump. The responsibility is borne solely by others and never by the democrats for affirming an active course of action. It is yet another example of cowardice in action and intent, cloaking desired outcomes behind someone elses actions and preparing oneself to take credit later on.
2D3D
1mo ago
Fuck that in my company there was a guy who faked a pregnancy in basic. The others in his gang claimed he was possessed by a female spirit and would commit suicide (kill him)if she lost the baby, so he had to be on light duties till the baby came to term. Our top hat accepted it and instructed him to be locked in the infirmary till delivery, then he could resume training. As skaters go that was a particularly stupid one, but not the last by any means.
2D3D
1mo ago
Ah thanks for the clarification, I've heard women bitch that men get more pay for combat and also complain that women are underpaid so I conflated the two in my above. Forgot that women want the pay without having to work it. Not sure I'd blame this one on feminism as much as shitbirds being shitbirds.
I understand that pregnancy out is a problem in the USN. An ex-chief complained to me that half his female rates get knocked op before any sail longer than 6 months, married or not. Not sure about girls wanting to get a train run on them while at sea, or even having enough demand from men. I still believe the YMCA is the accurate depiction of USN proclivities.
2D3D
1mo ago
Women prefer to have more kids when they are mothers and single women do posit married life as an idealized outcome, but women are pretty shit at playing the dating game as young stupid adults because the typical dating pool there is other young stupid adults.
Frankly, the idea that motherhood is necessary for the continuation of the state is a modern concept that strikes me as a loose end looking for a connection. There has never been a state that died out as a result of female population collapse because a surplus of males just means the males invade another land and take those females for themselves, like what Arabs and Africans are doing to Europe. Europe will survive and even thrive (demographically though certainly not politically) in future because the women will be forced into a natalist patriarchy, or they will be replaced by homeland imports that do accede to the natalist patriarchy. At this point the local women may wish they were in fact conscripted so that they can fight back against their fate, but of course without help from any icky men who may themselves be Potentially Right Wing.
2D3D
1mo ago
I wonder if this is reading too much into some pretty standard complaints about kid TV shows that existed since the 60s. Before Netflix parents had limited options even on devices, so kids shared a TV. Girl, guy, animal, older incompetent adult is a defensible permutation that prepubertal children can all enjoy equally. Shows that need emotional depth or interpersonal conflict are not parsable by kids in the same way being punched is, so action becomes default. The girlboss moments are irritating but its also a subset of kidbossing moments that dominate the show as a whole. Plenty of shows have the young disrespected kid of either gender show up the bossy adults or meaner kids. The boy ignoring his haughty crush and driving her mad because he's been lobotomized is an example of the anti-girlboss.
With regards to women in military, honestly its just hollywood optics. No one makes a drama about the paperwork grunts filing accounting claims in uniform. Intel briefs are not generated from spies downloading the USB inside the Chinese fortress mountain, its some dipshit shifting 20 million excel rows and trying to make Pivot table fit on a powerpoint. Men and women both are basically zombies fighting off the urge to OTH discharge early regardless of vocation.
We don't put many women in combat arms because combat arms already are fully staffed up (Ukraine is an exception because they are in a war and short notice conscription is pretty useless hence their manpower crisis). Women want to be in combat arms for that sweet combat pay, not because they're so intent on getting shot for their applebees discount. Since most combat isn't actually combat but rather patrol with random encounter chance and the fighting is 'shoot until you figure out where the attacker likely is before calling in an airstrike' the type of Vietnam era long endurance close range engagement is functionally over. Still need to boot on hill to hold, but there are plenty of backline vocations that need warm bodies there to begin with.
2D3D
1mo ago
Conceptually I think Kateleen Kennedy needed to escape the shadow of George Lucas's vision of Star Wars in order to keep the franchise bloom. Disneys purchase of Avengers hit an annual franchise value of about 2025USD3b/y (taking box office receipts and doubling it to include merch and ancillaries) 3 years after purchasing Marvel Studios and kept that hot streak going for 6 years before jizzsploding a 6bn double whammy with the Avengers finale. Lucasfilm stormed out the gate with 3bn right when TFA was purchased, but had a long tail of legacy stuff holding back development - canon itself was a drag. Or rather the sandbox kept retreating back to Jedi and Rebels. Abrams leaned too far into memberberries, Johnson composted the memberberries but also salted the earth, and Kennedy had no idea who was doing what.
2D3D
1mo ago
Crystal Star is so out there that I'm convinced that, along with many other books, are actually edits of preexisting sci fi works hidden in the deep drawers if authors that were repurposed to Star Wars as long as there was a spaceship and magic involved. Black Fleet Trilogy, Crystal Star, even Courtship fall in this category. Once new concepts totally unrelated to established main canon are introduced as standalone concepts, then the whole fanfic aspect becomes obvious.
2D3D
1mo ago
Agreed. Woke stuff is the sign to me that the writers room is too cowardly to push back on any potentially bad idea so the chance of a misfire increases exponentially. Peak woke resulted in absolute trash entertainment; something like The Society Of Magical Negroes would never have been greenlit outside of peak race grovelling.
Rubio is CUBAN, not Mexican. Geez talk about latinx erasure.
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