Mantergeistmann
No bio...
User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
What makes my blood boil is when all the same people who came up with concept of appropriation and wrote articles like the above turn around and carefully, deliberately do exactly the same thing. And now it’s okay because it’s the right people being erased.
For instance, suppose they made a set of Marvel tie-in MtG cards, and Nick Fury (notably played by Samuel L Jackson) was white. I have a hunch there'd be a ton of outrage... despite my understanding being that there's precedent for Nick Fury to be white.
Mantergeistmann
11mo ago
I wonder who the market is for these long-form New Yorker and Atlantic articles? You know the ones that start with long rambling sequences like: "Susan Hernandez was enjoying her coffee sitting at the Whistlestop Diner as was her habit on Tuesday."
That sort of writing is how you win a pulitzer/other awards. "Writing for Story" (unintentionally) discusses that sort of shift, from news/facts to long-form journalism. The idea is that giving it that human element draws the reader in.
Mantergeistmann
11mo ago
Every now and then you see people arguing that Taiwan should follow Hong Kong's example. I will admit that I find it difficult to come up with a charitable explanation beyond uninformed, dangerously optimistic, or shill. Maybe that "It'll happen eventually anyway, might as well take the best terms possible even if the agreement likely to be broken"?
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
The Veterans advocacy group at my company was once told that they didn't have enough diversity on their executive board. Their response was something to the effect of "What are you talking about? We've got both kinds of people, veterans and civilians."
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
All this makes sense given that aircraft carriers are now more or less sitting ducks in the SCS given China's massive and rapidly growing missile inventory, many who can hit moving targets and that's even excluding hitting stationary ones such as airbases on islands,
You're operating under the premise that only China has long-range weapons and the will to use them. Possibly true for the latter part, but if you're China, do you take the bet that your A2/AD is sufficient to prevent the US from interfering with your (incredibly vulnerable) amphibious operation, or do you take the first strike and hope that whole "awakening a sleeping giant" thing was a one-off that only works against Japan?
Mantergeistmann
6mo ago
I'm pretty sure it will just be interpreted as "here's yet more proof that Israel is a colonialist/apartheid state, they don't even allow the Palestinians to control their own basic human needs like food and water!"
Mantergeistmann
7mo ago
The reporting there is fascinating. I appreciate how long it takes for them to actually name the hand gesture in question. Uncharitably, because they know their readers would take it less seriously if they used the phrase "OK sign".
Mantergeistmann
7mo ago
There was something something pressure and corruption and scandals and such, or possible two such incidents that I'm conflating (Burisma, Hunter Biden, corrupt prosecutors, military aid being blocked?), such that the left was generally "Ukraine establishment good" and the right was generally "Ukraine establishment corrupt". That and the fact that once Biden was Pro- arming them, the Right had to swing against him, and then the Left had to get in line.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
I'm reminded of my favorite counter-factual: suppose that the BLM-adjacent riot at the White House that one night in summer (which resulted in dozens of injuries to the Secret Service) had succeeded in breaking down the doors. Would that have been an insurrection? I feel like the current battle lines would, for the most part, swap entirely.
Mantergeistmann
9mo ago
I mean, if i recall the Battleship movie got panned horribly, but I do kmow that someone has the movie rights to Asteroids and Risk...
Mantergeistmann
10mo ago
Part of the problem is that "Nazi, fascist, far-right extremist, white supremacist" have been so over-used that people are now reacting "If that makes me a Nazi, okay I'm a Nazi" instead of falling over themselves trying to deny it or dropping whatever argument they had been making.
It's weird how nobody seems to recognize this, from either side. The right keeps diluting "socialism", and then the left calls them on it... and proceeds to dilute "fascism".
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
what's up with nuclear waste? Specifically, if the waste is really a nothing burger, as I see argued often, why do I see (other) experts talking about how to communicate how bad it is to people ~10k years in the future. What are those other experts thinking and why are they wrong?
Here's my counter question: why do people talk about nuclear waste having a half-life as if it's a bad thing? Unlike basically every other toxic waste generated by things that don't get a second glance, it actually becomes less dangerous over time.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
he owns a private fleet of ICBMs
Last I heard, it's a lot harder to get a working warhead on a rocket these days than it is to get the rocket.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
That said, we've detonated nuclear bombs over the oceans in testing before so it's probably not an existential problem
There's also two US nuclear subs (Scorpion and Thresher) at the bottom of the sea, with no contamination.
We... dont talk about the Russian subs down there.
Mantergeistmann
13d ago
I believe the reasons are "Moldova is dealing with a Russia-supported separatist region, which makes it a prime target for action."
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
I dunno, I'm a big fan of "hide nuclear secrets in a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich to sell to the Brazilians, then tell the FBI agent that if he's willing to pay you more, that'll prove that he's not from the notoriously stingy FBI."
Also his wife then tried to pass him a secret message asking him to lie about her involvement while they were both in jail, which was equally entertaining.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I mean, you had pro-Palestinian protests all over the place immediately after Israel was attacked. I don't think there'd have been much appetite for "collective punishment" by cutting aid money.
Mantergeistmann
8mo ago
If i recall, that was the night after protesters had shown up with a guillotine for their demonstration. So depending on how seriously you want to take that or other generic "Trump must go" rhetoric... note: I don't think tbey were serious, personally, but I also don't think either that or Jan 6 rose to the level of "insurrection ". But if people are going to use the symbolic gallows that the Jan 6 protestors had as evidence, it only seems fair to take into account the symbolic guillotine.
Management isn't for everyone - I've known a few engineers who thought they wanted to be managers and then noped out and went back to being an IC, and are far happier for it.
Personally, I'm not management, but I've been in a position to be responsible for everything but salary, and have good visibility/insight to my management, and I found W. J. King's "Unwritten Laws of Engineering" helpful - particularly, in this regard, the section on management.
As far as I can tell, the biggest difficulty most technical managers I know have (aside from no time due to meetings) is hiring the right people, and enough of them. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that hiring and personnel development is their top priority... even if they have to fight tooth and nail against their own HR departments.
I will be brutally honest here, though: based on what you've written, I don't think you're the sort of manager I'd be interested in working for.
It might be a different translation that what I remember, but the closest I could find is, "for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy".
I'll try to keep looking, as I preferred the wording I half-remember.
edit: "When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason".
Note that it wouldn't surprise me if this wasnt actually Thucydides, but that someone said it was, like how everything gets attributed to Twain, Lincoln, or Disraeli.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
The interesting thing to me is, there was a black Boromir at one point, and there was zero controversy. I'm assuming that's because a) it was a musical, so it was simply the best actor who auditioned, b) it was done in good faith - that is to say, it wasn't "Let's make Boromir black," it was "Who's the best actor who auditioned?" and c) there wasn't an issue with verisimilitude.
entirely possible the art department for the game used reference photos of shofars as the basis for the drawing of the goblin horn
The thing is, as far as I can tell, it doesn't even resemble a shofar. I have difficulty processing how you could look at that image and think it looks like a shofar, even if youre trying to find the slightest hint of a dogwhistle. It's like if you said that the main character in RDR2 rides a sidesaddle. But thats what i struggle with. I know that a lot of people spread rumours without verifying, but what about the people that have seen both the game horn and a shofar? Is it a gutsy assumption that nobody will call them on something even if it's blatantly apparent that it's false? Is it a deliberate attempt to call a deer a horse, or make people say there are five lights? Or do they honestly, truly, in their heart of hearts believe it? It seems impossible enough that I feel like I have to be missing something, and the two horns really do have more in common than saying that a Cessna is clearly the Red Baron's Fokker Dr.I.
Mantergeistmann
1yr ago
If you're the US and you have the will, you conduct FONOPs during the blockade, and dare China to enforce it.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
Joe could have not banned religious themes from Easter egg contests for military families at the same time.
The Egg Board says this had nothing to do with Biden, though?
"The American Egg Board has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations."
And they need to be of similar type, to get Nth of a kind benefits. As one person once put it, the problem with the US nuclear industry is that "In France, they have hundreds of types of cheese, but only two types of reactors. In America, this is reversed."
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