Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
A mundane example would be something like identity theft. Freezing/closing compromised/fraudulent accounts can be time consuming, and paper currency can bridge the gap until new accounts can safely be established.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
Currently, we have two male cats, both around six years of age.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
I have a few thousand, which might be too much, but zero feels like too little.
Same, and my brain won't shut up about how it would make much more sense for me to add it to my mad money brokerage account and reap the extra GAAAAINZ. But then, it's emergency money, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
7d ago
About to start Shatterdark: System of Nil book 2 by Tim Paulson. Still would rate the first as 3/5, but want to see what the author does with the world and the characters he created. Of course, I had to devour Out Law: A Dresden Files novella by Jim Butcher, since it just dropped, and I'm happy to recommend it to fans of the series.
Finally, shout-out to @FtttG, who let me beta read the book they'd been working on. Fun!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
12d ago
Have I got a link for you!
I mean, the Irish are the blacks of Europe, and the Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, so...
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
14d ago
Baneslayer: System of Nil Book 1 by Tim Paulson. 3/5, mostly because the MC is progressing unbelievably fast by defeating mobs that are much higher than his own level. Normally I'd probably dip out on reading the larger series but alas, I bought 5 of them on Kindle Countdown Deals so as long as it stays decent, I'll probably continue to read it. Alas.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
15d ago
It reminds me of all those show runners that end season 1 on this show altering cliff hanger/climax, and then completely chicken out and backtrack in the first episode of season 2.
Preach!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
21d ago
I remember back during the war on terror, one right wing blog or another, maybe Little Green Footballs (whatever happened to that guy?)
He ultimately went back to hugging his television and deciding never to fight again.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
21d ago
The Pilgrims of the Damned: The Assembly Book 3 by Steve McHugh. Book 1 never did get too political, and the writing is still pretty snappy, so we're going with it. MC is looking more and more like an expy of his previous MC as time goes by, but it's been long enough since I've read the Hellequin chronicles that this isn't an issue for me.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
23d ago
The Commitments
"It's roid, Sally, roid, not roy-id, Sally, roy-id!"
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
24d ago
Humans like to feel like we are at the top of the chain when it comes to the complexity and depth of our emotions, but it’s possible that God sees our grief, our suffering, our deaths, the same we see the pain and death of animals. We have pets we love and want only the best for, but from their perspective, we do unexplainable actions that cause them pain, like taking them to a bad place where a stranger pokes them with sharp painful objects.
I can't help but be reminded of my favorite formulation of this general viewpoint and quote it directly here, where a believer is directly addressing the doubts of a doubter:
Seems to me that you assuming something you shouldn't assume. That God sees the world like you do. One thing at a time. From just one spot. Seems to me that He is supposed to be everywhere, know everything. Think about that. He knows what you're feeling, how you're hurting. Feels my pain, your pain, like it was His own. Hell, son. Question isn't how could God care about just one person. Question is, how could he not.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
24d ago
What kind of novel is it? I'm not an editor or anything, but I read voraciously in general and 5k doesn't sound like a huge lift to read, especially by Motte standards...
Those Who Dwell in Darkness: The Assembly Book 1 by Steve McHugh. Well written and engaging thus far, though it also seems to be flirting with the, "does this remind you of anything," trope just enough to consistently ping my awareness while not actually veering into thinly disguised political commentary.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
25d ago
Turned out to be more complicated, but unsurprisingly parents in the all-too-common autist/cluster B pairing managed to produce a bunch of weirdo kids.
So that's why the other kids kept duct taping me to the flagpole...
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
You left out the part where over a period of time the private server is highly likely to devolve as the politics between the mods unfolds and evolves. Alas. :(
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
The early 2010's kind of feel like it was a peak of information availability/quality. And things seem to have deteriorated back to everyone being in the dark about world happenings.
Funny, I'd go no further than the late aughts, personally. In my view, the witches' brew of social media plus SEO had already matured enough to the point that said brew was being used to greatly amplify information ops bullshitting and spin doctoring by the teens. Regardless, I'd firmly agree that we're in a wilderness of mirrors at this point and have been, in my estimation, for about a decade now, if not longer.
Most recent American wars didn't turn into forever wars, though. The first Bush's Gulf War
I mean, there were the over 280,000 sorties flown to enforce the no-fly zones that were created to protect the Shiites and the Kurds, the attempted assassination of Bush 41, resulting in a cruise missile strike in retaliation, Saddam mobilizing troops and sending them to Kuwait in 1994 because of the sanctions, which in turn prompted Operation Vigilant Warrior to encourage those troops to go back, Operation Desert Strike in 1996 in response to Saddam's mobilizing troops (again) and sending them to Arbil (after which the no fly zone was extended to the 33rd parallel), and then Operation Desert Fox in 1998 after Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors and called them CIA agents, and after which Saddam stopped respecting the no-fly zones at all, started firing at coalition planes, and offered bounties for any planes that were shot down, a situation which continued right up until the second Gulf War, so there was plenty of military action to go around. Now whether or not that amount of military action amounts to a forever war is, in my book, squarely in the eye of the beholder. Call it fire-y but mostly peaceful, maybe.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Wow. Appreciate the context, fellow Mottizen, and after that I'd agree that it'd be a great top-level post. I was divorced enough from the Culture Wars at that time of the fire to only be aware that there were allegations of sabotage and that the prosecution of Mays was total bullshit, and this is the first time I've seen any of that detail. I am guilty in this case of cross-referencing Wikipedia, despite being well aware of their general biases, again because I wasn't aware of a connection to the culture wars. As you say, Mays' name is on the wiki 5 times, while McGovern's name is completely absent from the page. If even the NYT and CBS are covering that angle then I know it's bad! And I wish I could say that the Navy's behavior surprised me, but honestly, that sounds way too much like SOP these days.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch.
Strongly agree. Sure, there's too much external pressure that creates and distorts the excessive and conflicting priorities and too little time to actually attend to all of them, but it's still always a "leadership failure" when the inevitable Bad Things happen. The solution to the problem of too much bureaucracy is, of course, more bureaucracy.
Ignoring that fires do, in fact, "just happen" sometimes on aircraft carriers
Indeed. I realize that technically it was an "amphibious assault ship" but the fire that wrecked the Bonhomme Richard was only a few years ago! According to the wiki, pretty much all of the usual suspects were to blame for the fire. New and improved Naval safety protocols weren't being followed, "leadership failures" in the chain of command, poor communication between sailors and officers, the various firefighters and civilians, etc. etc. etc.
I am not a military bird, and I know this is my own nature and bias speaking, but whenever I see those sorts of "after action" reports I can't help but read between the lines and suspect that over-emphasis on $LATEST_SHINY_THINGS as the underlying culprit to these sorts of things, which is to say that when there are too many priorities, then nothing is a priority. The Dilbert Principle is universal. Update: Looks like it was sabotage after all, see Bleep's response below. Friends don't let friends trust Wikipedia, and I can't even blame Gell-Mann amnesia because I knew better.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
That's the "just-so" story that's often cited as the reason, but in reality, MacArthur was fired because he expressed to various parties that he fully intended to bring the war to communist China and win it, something that would have been in direct opposition to Truman's own public policy.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
For a full-blown example, MacArthur was fired by Truman in Korea.
In our case, we've kept our finances largely separate for our entire marriage, and it continues to work relatively well for the two of us. When we first started dating, my wife had a sizable inheritance that I was conscientious about leaving in her hands and not accessing, so we just split the bills and evolved into each of us paying for certain things and not questioning the other's spending habits too awful much, excepting some big ticket changes, of course. If we had managed to have kids, that probably would have changed things, but here we all are.
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