DBDr
1yr ago
Perfect suggestion; they are for sure ready for some comics. I'll find some inofensive manga that they can binge if they like, maybe Dragon Ball. Some good clean slapstick and ultraviolence but fun.
Re. Tomes: The older one is about the age where I found a Wheel of Time book in the elementary school library for some god damned reason and was permanently afflicted with a love of 1500 page fantasy doorstoppers, but I don't want to scare them off.
DBDr
1yr ago
Convergent evolution is real!
Amazing how there is one optimal way to do SOCOM shit, and it's copying the SOG and SAS's homework from 60 years ago.
DBDr
1yr ago
Good post, I like the straight Japan perspective.
+1 Tsushima provided false weight to japan (and everyone else kinda) re. decisive battle doctrine.
Some other things weighing in on decisions (IMO): the perpetual and inevitable rise of gearfuckery. Our planes are so pretty, they fly so high and fast, their cannons are so BIG and STRONG and ERRECT! Our ships sail so well, are so beautiful, surely nothing could oppose them!
Helped along by the fact that they were early adopters and actually did lead the world for quite a while in naval aviation (and military aviation in general, arguably). Just not by as much or for as long as they may have thought.
DBDr
2yr ago
I've been on the buissnes end of this and that shit is REAL.
Engenier fuckups can be fucking crazy; down to the acredited guy not getting a harsh enough struggle session with the environmental guy followed by me and 7 other guys looking at the road (.75" higher), then looking at three houses down the slope (previously got by with no consideration for drainage) and predicting the damages in the lawsuit (I never found out, but they were all million-ish dollar value, and they all got flooded pretty bad next time there was 3 days of rain in a row.)
Also, as-built are lies from SATAN, fuck an as-built. Copy of a copy of a copy of a pure fabrication. I only ever had to be concerned in so far as not digging up gas or electric lines, and it still sucked
I love having a fake job now. much better
DBDr
1yr ago
No, you right as hell.
You start with following the recipe exactly, measuring hydration, etc and so forth to get your eye in; then once you know what good feels and looks like you do that shit by eye.
Optimal results can never be achieved by measurement and recipe, because that recipe was written for 800 ft. of elevation at 30% humidity and 68 degrees; and you are at sea level 40% and 78 degrees, and that shit matters.
DBDr
2yr ago
Don't be. (speaking form a blue tribe bubble and a leftist position here)
Trump is uniquely bad to the libs among us because he is a norm violator and has the affect and language of a low IQ prole type AND is also a tacky tasteless fat rich guy; a fucking unforgivable combo. Ron on the other hand is your standard political reptilian. Boring, in other words. Too bad for him, he is really on the horns here.
His problem is he needs to assume some of that trumpian glory and make himself exciting; which will also make people excited to vote against him. Him going full speed ahead on his culture war arc has the libs and the left taking notice; too many photos of empty library shelves and pallets full of books being removed, too much rhetorical light surrounding the don't say gay bill (eg; "its only grades 1-3/5/12/colleges also now) ; regardless of the how fake the whole thing is.
It's all great ammunition, and trump still being around is keeping the spirit alive in the base. I've been at socal wine tastings where the toast was "To trump and bidden: please don't die before 2025".
Basically, in order to inhabit Trump as a spirit totem, he needs to become more trumplike and piss off all the boring lib centrists out there.
DBDr
1yr ago
Pretty much all of them: The service is substantially shittier to use in general; and slightly shittier to use from a technical perspective.
The general shittieness has risen to the point where I actually use it much less.
Bluecheck morons getting top billing instead of whoever has the best one liner has killed my interest in using twitter as twitter; I now only use it to follow specific people for updates on scheduled appearances/articles/ FILTHY FUCKING PORNOGRAPHY.
I'm shocked by what a difference this makes. I went from scrolling for a couple mins. each time i checked my feed for the latest incredibly specific porn / current events in the Palm Oil Killings / when is video game coming out to basically never actually going deeper than the very top level of the thread.
He has turned it into a more expensive rss feed for me.
DBDr
1yr ago
Netanyahu has been fucking the security state over a barrel for political reasons; normal bullshit that crops up all the time in these types of situations.
The types of boring prescription lenses in aviator frames wearing megadeath calculating blood drinking reptilian motheruckers you need to run an effective 1st rate military don't do well in particularly ideological regimes.
You gotta have the type of bastard who isn't a sociopath but can imagine a mile high pile of corpses and not feel bad or need to justify it to plan out how they are gonna get the pile high enough to reach god.
DBDr
1yr ago
I'm taking my third month long vacation in the past 12 months; given that we are probably seeing the very end of the covid price extravaganza that let me go to japan and london from Socal for a couple hundred bucks; this time filling out my map of Europe with Romania, Bulgaria, and greece (which I somehow managed to avoid up until now.) If I don't go now, I'm probably gonna not go for a long ass time; prices look like they are bouncing wayyyy back up.
I'm really gonna miss covid; that whole situation was so fucking convenient to me. Cheap plane tickets, cheap lodgings, cheap car rentals, incredibly cheap train tickets (including that summer ticket in Germany that was all local and national and some international rail with unlimited rides for like, 12 dollars or something. Shit was wild; I hope they do that again.), and short lines.
I guess It has to end eventually though, or all the places I like will go bust. This is me bidding a fond Farwell to the Coronavirus era, I really hope the people who want me to eat the bugs and live in the pod don't also make me go back to the fucking office.
DBDr
1yr ago
Part of the process of negotiating resource allocation via negotiation within a framework of laws, traditions, and norms.
Why, what do you think it is?
DBDr
1yr ago
Modern Christian music as a genera is (ironically) 100% soulless garbage retreads of pop but with all the nono words and impure thoughts stripped out.
There is really good Christian music (Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around for example); but it isn't categorized as Christian.
That said, there us about 1200 years of really excellent liturgical music to be had if you like choral or classical or bluegrass stylings.
DBDr
2yr ago
As a lefty: It is a real shooting fish in a barrel type exercise, but it works 95% to score cheap points.
If I get into a "Heated Exchange In The Free Market Of Ideas" and my interlocuter says "woke" or "pronouns" or any other conservative buzz word outside of a conservative safe space, I can make them look real stupid by forcing the conversation to a screeching halt and having them explain it to me.
Either they try in good faith and look stupid, or they blow right through and look disingenuous.
DBDr
2yr ago
I never get the calls for the west (the USA) to understand this or that about russia. We get it! This whole thing is kinda miraculous in a great power realpolitik way, even as it's a humanitarian disaster.
Russia is Pounding nails through their dick into Ukraine saying "We're crazy! We'll do it again" and uncle sam is just standing there like "Well, if you insist"
DBDr
2yr ago
I'd say yes.
The execution is good, the content is totally absent. It is teir 2 wizard van shit, not truth and beauty.
That said, it is Really good as a wizard van panel generator, hot damn.
DBDr
2yr ago
Since it seems that the situation has settled into another quite period while the sides sort their shit out, any other other DISGUSTING GEAR FUCKERS want to make predictions about the Special Operation?
Last time, I did better than most but still got blown the fuck out 'cause of shocking aggression from Ukraine and surprising incompetence from Russia, but Russia is running out of easy room to be incompetent and Ukraine is reaching the limits of easy aggression.
That said: Newest aid packages to Ukraine add capabilities that they did not have before, eg, a tank with a computer in it that was designed after the end of the cold war that doesn't explode if you sneeze on it, and Russia just dismissed the dude that organized the super clean double retreat across the dnipro (which was shocking; I wasn't sure it would happen but if it happened I thought it would be some combination of snafu and bloodbath).
None of this might matter given the fact that Russians are settles/behind a river.
Even with all this, it seems like the war will not end for the foreseeable future baring Putin dying of cancer and maybe not even then.
95% the war continues into 2024 in some regard
GIVEN PUTIN DIES in the next 5 months: 80% the war continues into 2024 in some regard
85% the war is HOT into 2024
90% no major territorial changes in the next 1 months
70% no major territorial changes in the next 3 months
40% no major territorial changes in the next 11 months
99% no nuclear action taken by Russia over the next 11 months.
60% Ukraine gets ATACMS in the next 3 months.
DBDr
2yr ago
Boris is your usual populist idiot political toad. He is dumb as hell and has a mile long trail of stupid decisions, blatant lies, obvious hypocrisies and general ineptitude, but gets elected and even does pretty well sometimes because the opposition has swung so far away from populism their ivory tower is about to hit the moon.
Doesn't matter in the face of being a total fuckup though, which his handling of Brexit really showed. Shit or get off the pot, my dude.
DBDr
2yr ago
If the Cowboys have a million haters, I am one of them.
If the Cowboys have ten haters, I am one of them.
If the Cowboys have one hater, I am him.
If the Cowboys have no haters, that means I am no longer on this earth.
If the World is for the Cowboys, I am against the World. I will hate the Cowboys till my last breath.
Dallas Delenda Est, is what I'm saying.
And even better it's against the 49ers; who I am obligated to by family tradition.
If you can keep it contained to a triviality instead of just generally becoming a hater, I agree with your greater observation as well. I've enjoyed many long blood feuds about which piece of consumer electronics is superior.
DBDr
2yr ago
No. It used to be that you got punished for violating norms by getting banned from the club; having to cry alone in your mansion instead of drinking cocktails at the gala style thing.
That boat sailed with Grover and Gingrich and finally Mcconnell proving positively that norms aren't real and rules that require a majority vote are just loyalty checks.
Just like conservatives are picking up some lib tactics in the culture war; libs are finally waking up to the fact that political compromise is fucking stupid and you can just lie to your opponents and it will never actually come back to you.
DBDr
2yr ago
As Musk is a certified Very Smart Man^tm (IT must be true, a verified dude in his truck wearing sunglasses told me so!) I bet it's actually a legitimate hail marry attempt to get some money out of the site.
This is based purely on vibes because the MuskMan clearly wakes up and throws the bones to determine all his choices for the day eg. challenging a reptilian to a wrestling match before getting his card pulled by his mother.
DBDr
1yr ago
Palestine wonks I know say that kinkos printouts of orders are very unusual; that hamas usually has more informal and deniable chains of command in these situations eg, never never never commit anything to ink or bits that might make them look bad if it comes out. They might have messages saying "Break through at such and such" and then a dude would drop by tell you face to face the level of war crimes they expect out of you.
Native speakers I know say that could either be a machine translated text of some language with weird clauses (not english); or it could just be written awkwardly as all such documents are.
DBDr
2yr ago
Technology Connections has detailed dives into common technologies (Coffee pots, CRT tubes, lightbulbs, ev chargers, etc).
He has a good video with testimonials from a cold as fuck place re. heat pumps, and another couple hours of discussion in other videos about application questions. I found them interesting enough to watch just for fun, but I am also autistic so grain of salt.
Link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7J52mDjZzto.
I recently installed one for cooling purposes, and it is WAY more efficient than any option available at a massively lower price, if you can do all the work yourself. I had the punches, hole saws, pipe flaring kit, and wiring paraphernalia to put in a 240 sub panel and run coolant lines, you might not. Took me 8 hours over a couple days to complete, but that includes lots of time monkeying around with conduits in a 70 year old house with no attic.
I got a former coworker to charge the lines for me with his vacuum pump in exchange for helping him drop a submersible pump; you might have to pay someone if you choose to install one yourself.
I know that they sell precharged systems, but I'm paranoid about shit that is marketed as DIY so I went with a Lennox because they are cheep as fuck and I only need it for a couple weeks a year. Been working like a charm, and has not raised my electric bill at all 'cause I replaced a couple fans with it.
Last thing: IMO, DIY heat pump systems work best for single space use. I have one unit indoors in one room, so when we need to cool shit off everyone just goes into that room and shuts the doors. If you want multiple zones, you will probably have to get it installed professionally, which is $$$$$ depending on your area.
DBDr
2yr ago
As a former tradie: Hell yes it is. (NOTE: This is a SoCal perspective, where the infrastructure is generally better and governance is more responsible vis. putting off essential maintenance in that it only does it as a treat(NOTE NOTE: This does not include anything that is privatized and not sufficiently regulated, which is a horror shit show as it is everywhere))
We could fix every god damn bit of decrepitude and disrepair (THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE RAILROADS, I DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT RAILS) without hiring anyone new and without going into wartime style crash programs in about 15-20 years; if we hire new people we could do it in less time, if we invest a zillion dollars in equipment even less than less time.
If we fully employed everyone who could swing a shovel in useful work, we'd run out of even marginally valuable shit to do after at most 30-40 years.
The problem is in order of severity: Political will, privatization, and regulation. Even taking contracting out of the hands of the contractors and giving it to civil engineers would vastly speed up and slim down timelines and budgets (until they got in on the contractor grift. Profit motive is a bitch, aint she)
DBDr
2yr ago
As a woke leftist myself:
You can't, because you are wrong.
But for real: You still can't, because this is a scissor-ish style of statement that has too much cultural impetus behind it for any counterargument that can be delivered in anything less than 1500 pages to be convincing.
Eg, you can be as rational and as reasonable as you like, but all it takes is ONE (1) clip from fox news about current culture war issue, or someone reminding them about whichever black guy most recently got executed by the cops on the street, or just remembering that a defacto legal racial caste system existed in the US until 1964, and they will instantly revert to priors: that is, you are either a bigot, or politically motivated to believe things that are demonstrably untrue.
Don't give up, live your truth and etcetera, but understand that for every "affirmative action is a prejudicial concept that infantilizes racial minorities unjustly and unfairly", there is a "there are millions of people alive today that were forbidden from owning high value property because they were not white".
Shit, I'd take ANY evidence at this point. A single crumb of empiricism.
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