PokerPirate
16hr ago
The US, via politics and bad strategy (read up on William Westmoreland if you're interested)
That wikipedia article was an interesting read, thanks. The most fascinating thing to me is how he jumped around in rank. He went from O2 -> O4, O6 -> O3, O4->O7->O5->O8. I can't fathom a military career like that these days.
PokerPirate
21hr ago
Overall I agree with everything you said. But I'd love to see a source for the following claim:
this is based on studies done during IIRC the Vietnam War that found that carrier landings caused more stress than taking enemy fire
I really doubt this is true. I've been around naval aviators a bunch and never heard anyone say this. But there's a huge range of carrier landings (night, storm, low fuel) and a huge range of enemy fire (small arms, dog fight machine gun, SAM). I'm certain that an F8 landing on a carrier in a storm would be more stressful than the same pilot being shot at by an AK47 while on mission.
PokerPirate
2d ago
You have cited these international building codes in a lot of discussions. It's never been clear to me, however, how they relate to real world construction. What countries actually follow these regulations? Are they effectively law in the US? Would a general contractor in Southern California know/care about these changes? Would my city's building inspector? An architect?
PokerPirate
2d ago
Does Latin content count?
I got my kids into watching minecraftium and magister craft. Both channels use minecraft to teach kids latin. It's not a full-blown course, but it's rather fun.
PokerPirate
3d ago
This is a truely excellent take.
Up next is China and the US jointly implementing Yud's plan to prevent AI takeover.
PokerPirate
3d ago
My guess is that a well-placed if statement/flag should be able to make the light only affect living sprites instead of dead ones. I think that'd be a cool looking effect.
PokerPirate
3d ago
I like the banhammer flair that got added to the offending post. Is that feature new?
PokerPirate
5d ago
I haven't been following along, but I just watched the video. I like the light cone effect. I haven't seen that before in an asteroids clone (maybe I just haven't played enough). The one thing that strikes me though is that there's no easy at-a-glance visual cue of if a bug is dead or not; maybe the light cone should only highlight the living bugs instead of the dead ones?
PokerPirate
5d ago
Oh, I see. You're asking about the bottom link there without the +7. I don't have a way to see if I've previously visited a link or not, but I've never not remembered if I haven't visited.
This is an easy 1-line CSS change to fix, but most users these days don't like the distinction of visited/unvisited links looking different and so webdevs turn it off.
PokerPirate
5d ago
I'm on a laptop, so different UI than mobile.
PokerPirate
5d ago
Umm... mine shows me how many unread comments I have...
PokerPirate
5d ago
I did swing/salsa/ballroom/etc dance classes off and on at a UC school from 2011-2014. Every single class session had more men than women :(
PokerPirate
7d ago
I'll eat my hat if 10% of Americans could define sedition. The reason people call it treason is because modern Americans have lost the vocabulary to communicate subtlety.
PokerPirate
9d ago
I love the phrase "good morning".
As a young sailor in the navy, I loved going around ordering the nearby captains and admirals to "have a good morning" and dare them to either:
- obey me and internally admit my superiority
- call me out for disobedience and look like an asshole, or
- disobey me and have a genuinely bad day.
Done with the right attitude and the right other people in attendance, this is quite the power play.
Edit: Just read the post @HereAndGone2 and I do believe I found a meaning of good morning that Tolkien missed!
PokerPirate
9d ago
Yes, but not in the way the phrase "good luck" is used in English. You would never say "mazel tov" to someone before a sports game to wish them good luck; you say it afterwards to acknowledge they've had good luck (i.e. congratulate them).
PokerPirate
9d ago
Mazel Tov!
This means roughly "congratulations!" It's kind of weird to congratulate someone for lurking for 2 years.
PokerPirate
10d ago
This seems like a decent question in the context of a 20 question quiz. But if you're going to pick only 1 question there's lots of better ones. Off the top of my head: Who deposed the Shah? How many casualties in the Iran-Iraq war?
PokerPirate
12d ago
Thank you for the reference! I concede that there were people who said that the JCPOA "front loaded" the benefits. I do think, however, that it is disingenuous of this group (and you) to call lifting sanctions a "front loaded" benefit.
PokerPirate
13d ago
I don't think this is true. (But would very much appreciate a correction if I am wrong.)
I recall following these negotiations closely when they were occurring and don't remember anyone citing upfront concessions as a reason not to do JCPOA. Everyone of the negotiators was familiar with the failure of KEDO in North Korea (for promising nuclear reactors now in exchange for disarmament later), and a lot of effort was spent to avoid this failure mode. Skimming the Congressional Actions section of the wikipedia article on JCPOA, I don't see any mention of legislators saying they won't vote for JCPOA because of upfront concessions, and this wapo article from the time about reasons people won't vote for it does not mention upfront concessions.
There are of course other reasons that Republicans did not vote for and eventually withdrew from the treaty, but again I do not think time-based concessions was one of them.
PokerPirate
13d ago
No, I'm observing that many governments think that the US acted in bad faith with previous inspections. This naturally results in these governments being skeptical of granting the US "anywhere/anytime" inspections even if they would be otherwise warranted.
These "other governments" don't include just Iran, but most of the UN.
PokerPirate
13d ago
Well do you agree with the criticism that the JCPOA contained a sunset clause, i.e. the restrictions on Iran ended after 10-15 years?
Is this an actual criticism that anyone levied? It's pretty standard practice for treaties/laws/contracts to sunset after a period of time with the understanding that they will be renegotiated before the term of the contract ends.
PokerPirate
13d ago
The JCPOA was negotiated after the US invaded Iraq due to patently false claims of WMD. It is widely understood that the WMD inspections led by the US/IAEA helped the US invasion in identifying/destroying military targets.
Therefore given the US's actual behavior, this restriction did (and still does) seem pretty reasonable to a majority of the outside world.
PokerPirate
13d ago
I think you are technically incorrect. Which wouldn't be a problem except that you were so pedantically annoying to the other poster.
Here is the text of FISA. It does not contain the word PRISM anywhere. PRISM is a code name for one of the tools that Section 702 authorized. (I believe your comments are blurring the distinction between being something and authorizing something.) The fact that PRISM is a code name and was classified justifies calling it a "black program". Also, I interpreted the phrase line item from OP to be budgetary, since I have only ever heard that term used in a budgetary context before.
In general I'm sympathetic to the idea that most pro-Snowden/anti-NSA folks don't actually know what they are for/against. But I don't think you ranting at them in only semi-correct formalisms is helpful.
PokerPirate
13d ago
There's no statutory line item for PRISM
I'll just jump in here to say that this is the first outright false thing in this comment.
Are you sure? I would love to see the congressional budget that funded PRISM. I genuinely don't see how there could be one for a classified program like this. My understanding has just been that NSA gets $XXX billion in the budget with nothing else said.
After all the temporary ranks he goes back to the "normal" rank. These read like wartime field promotions to me where they need someone to fill the spot and he's the only one available. I just never heard of anyone getting demoted after those. Going from colonel to captain, or general to major is mind blowing.
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