domain:novum.substack.com
plural
2d ago
As well as what others have said, I imagine its a unit cohesion thing as well. Exempting people is going to make others that don't get exempted take exception to those that do. But I don't really have any strong opinion on this.
Really, I just wanted to post some Generation Kill John Sixta: "This what happens when you don't enforce groomin' standards. The mens gets all lax. And then other standards fall. Devil Dog here stops using his chinstrap - goes over a bump, kevlar goes flying off his head - and our protective posture is weakened."
Police that moostache! Ya'll lookin' like a bunch of Elvises!
Why put so much effort into pretending you're not exercising power?
You can say whatever you want. That doesn’t mean what whatever you say must be published by loudspeaker media institutions and promoted by social media algorithms.
Megaphone media has the excuse of limited resources, but SocMeds have no justification for manipulating the kind of content their users will see. Technologically it's perfectly possible to let every user write their own algorithm, but at the very least people should be given the option to switch to a basic "people who liked X also liked Y" algorithm.
RenOS
something is wrong
2d ago
The point of Christianity is to become like God. "God became man so that man could become God."
That sounds like a heresy, mate. Better let a specialist check it out. There are catholic priests in your vicinity.
I’ve only heard one side of the story ... obvious ... innocent
You've been had.
the Nisour square incident
- bomb went off by a meeting
- the meeting was called off
- 4 Blackwater trucks got ready to secure an evac route
- they were ordered to standby in the Green Zone
- they disobeyed orders and went to Nisour square
- they disobeyed further orders to return to the Green Zone
- in Nisour square, they were ordered to halt traffic for another team leaving the area
- a civilian car approached
- they shot 40 people in response to 1 car with 2 people inside approaching ... because they freely shot into traffic and at police while driving back to base
- Paul Slough in particular shot most of these people, firing wildly into traffic, ignoring orders to cease fire, until a colleague pulled his gun on him
- this in fact blocked the evac route, so the convoy they were on standby to maybe help, waited 30 minutes, blocked by blown up cars
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2d ago
You don't see why making it impossible to operate as a small business online is a big deal?
striker
2d ago
Some people seem to equate “freedom of speech” with “freedom of reach”. You can say whatever you want. That doesn’t mean what whatever you say must be published by loudspeaker media institutions and promoted by social media algorithms.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2d ago
"Maximum lethality and authority" by definition trade off against other things (for example, avoiding war crimes).
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
I recently picked up a Longer Ray5 5-watt laser engraver for $170 on an Amazon special on a lark. It required a bit of assembly but was fairly straightforward. So far I am impressed with its capability. It has a large, roughly 2x2 ft work area. Using Inkscape and the free LaserGRBL program, I have been able to generate a variety of engraving and cutting patterns. I have successfully engraved wood, stone, painted metal, and successfully cut cardstock and thin pieces of wood. It doesn't really make a dent in any polished metal and I have yet to test many plastics, although it should be able to cut 3mm cast acrylic. The best thing I've made so far is an A4-sized cardstock stencil of the Paris Metropolitain logo. I also haven't tried engraving any grayscale images, though it should be possible with paper and certain types of wood. One thing I hope to be able to use it for is to make my own serial tags or controls panel layouts, by engraving a black painted metal blank and then rubbing in white paint.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
You! I don't know whether you went to some knockoff Oktoberfest or a tourist trap, but if you think German food is bad then your opinions are wrong and your taste is bad!
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
You should be able to get Dell or HP micro-desktops off a five-year lifecycle pretty cheaply at this point, which is more than sufficient for running Debian + Home Assistant. Upgrade the RAM to 32 GB and Proxmox might even be practical. Or, get a laptop with a broken screen or keyboard. You should be able to find one for very cheap or free, you can configure it with peripherals attached to work around broken bits, and then it has its own built-in UPS.
I agree with pigeon this seems like overkill for this particular application, but this is the kind of project that can start to snowball, particularly if you are going to need Internet access anyways to trigger the preheat cycle. If so, the latter option might be better to dip your toes in. You can always set up a Wireguard tunnel to Home Assistant running someplace more convenient in that case.
NewCharlesInCharge
2d ago
Being hamstrung by dumb rules of engagement is a common complaint of GWOT veterans.
Jocko had a short solo episode in response to the Kirk shooting where he discussed this. He offered an example where his unit had received intel that a notorious bad guy was going to be at a certain time and place and wanted to take him out. They couldn’t do this on their own since the RoE demanded that someone display hostile intent. Basically if the guy didn’t pick up a weapon, then he wasn’t fair game. And he was leadership and not dumb, so he probably wouldn’t pick up a weapon.
They needed a declaration from higher ups, I think flag officers, that this man was to be considered hostile. With such a declaration they could engage him without him displaying any hostile intent. They ran it up the flagpole and were denied.
The Kirk link was that they accepted the decision, Americans abide rule of law, and that’s a good thing. It’s a bad thing that one guy on his own got to declare Kirk hostile and take him out.
OliveTapenade
2d ago
I don't see what the word 'Christian' can be other than a group identifier, really. What else is the word for? I suppose my feeling is that the Christian community, in a historical process whose most visible products were the ecumenical creeds, established and defined its own boundaries. Some people around the edges disagree, but I would defend the community's right to do that.
It is correct to say that in itself this process does not establish anything about salvation, or about who's theologically correct, or what have you. At that point we would presumably need to have a discussion about the doctrine of the Trinity itself, or about Christology, or about the basis of Mormon theology, on their own merits, and that's something we can't really get into now.
Thank you for the productive conversation, though, and I wish you all the best for the future!
OliveTapenade
2d ago
The point of the metaphor is to be illustrative of a principle.
To wit, the purpose of military action is to impose your will on another party. It is to threaten, induce, or compel another party to accept your will.
Frequently it is desirable to do so using the least amount of force possible. This is partly because it is frequently preferable to injure the enemy the least amount necessary; for instance, if one conflicts with an enemy with whom one has a trade relationship, one may not want to shatter their economy entirely, or if one is conquering a piece of territory, one probably wants to preserve that territory in as good condition as possible. It is also partly just because of expense on one's own side; if your goal can be achieved with a special forces operation, that is much more affordable than a full-scale invasion. One can get maximum value, so to speak, from one's own military by using the smallest amounts of force necessary to achieve one's goals.
If your military has only two settings, zero and one hundred, you lose a tremendous amount of ability to meaningfully compel one's rivals. If I'm a rival of the United States and I know that the only military force the United States will ever deploy is total nuclear annihilation, then I am free to do anything I like without fear of retaliation as long as I stay below the nuclear death threshold. According to your own words, the nuclear death threshold should be extraordinarily high, so in practice I can do whatever I like. The US has effectively disarmed itself.
It does not seem in American interests, to me, to disarm itself.
Look, the idea that the US has used its military force badly over the last thirty years is extremely defensible and probably common sense at this point. But you are overcorrecting to the point of total absurdity. Has the US military not been used well recently? Certainly. But I don't think the correct response to that is to rule out the possibility of using the US military to do anything.
Er, are you advocating that the US should only do nothing or destroy its enemies utterly? And if the standard for utter destruction is astronomically high, doesn't that imply that most of the time the US should do nothing?
Errr... um...errr.... ummm....uuuuur... Correct. Time for the midwit poly-sci majors playing games "inadvertently" getting half a million people killed, with no moral accountability to be out of work. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
Do we need to either cut the baby's head off, or let the baby act out for as long as it likes?
I'm talking about military action not disciplining babies.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3d ago
... Because they did come up with it? I'm not seeing the problem.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
Drones aren't quite like guns since they require conversion and some significant level of skill to weaponize. Petrol-bombs are a thing but we don't worry so much about petrol like guns. Fertilizer -> explosives is a thing but fertilizer doesn't require special licenses to buy, though there is monitoring.
You can do vast amounts of damage with a laptop and internet connection but they're not too regulated.
Whereas guns, rockets, knives, high explosives are easy to weaponize if you have them.
Supah_Schmendrick
3d ago
Er, I'm not a soldier, but at least to me that reads as a criticism of RoE which are badly designed, not of the concept of RoE generally. Otherwise, why specify that it's stupid RoE that you're jettisoning? Presumably there are "non-politically-correct" and "smart" RoE.
guy
3d ago
Were you trying to purchase the car straight-up full cost and they still wouldn't sell it to you ? Or were you trying to get financing on it?
Rex
3d ago
I’m curious if you know much about the Nisour square incident. If you do and you think those guys are guilty, I’d love to hear more.
I’m no expert on the military or counter insurgency. But I did watch a 3 hour interview with those guys on the Shawn Ryan show. It’s very obvious to me that they are innocent. Worse than that, it’s a case where a bunch of veterans were set up up by Uncle Sam in order to kill Blackwater and hurt Eric Prince.
I’ve only heard one side of the story, but they did not look mistaken about the facts nor did they come off as liars.
It seems a shame they’re still being used as examples here for trigger happy war criminals. Especially when we have so many legit cases to point to.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
3d ago
I'll give you German and Polish, and you can chalk up Spanish, Greek and maybe even Italian to a matter of taste, but to claim French cuisine is bad is either a grug-tier or a contrarían for its own sake opinion.
Tenaz
3d ago
I previously said, twice, that I don't think that Christianity is coextensive with the community of the saved. "You are not Christian" does not mean "you are damned to hell for eternity". I also said "I don't claim that no Mormons are saved or anything like that".
Sorry, I shouldn't have levelled that accusation. This whole discussion is intrinsically tied to the whole "different Jesus" debate--which is that, due to my more esoteric and less meaningful beliefs about the nature of Christ, I actually believe in a whole different (and nonexistent) person and my faith in "that Christ" is of no effect. I should not have associated you with that argument.
As regards Mormon beliefs - well, I would say that the early church seems to have believed that Christ being one in substance with the Father was a core part of Christianity. They believed that enough to put it into the creeds, and to exclude people who denied it. Presumably you take the view that they were wrong, and you can do that, but I don't think it's absurd or uncharitable of me to suggest that, by doing so, you have removed yourself from community with the people who believed that.
Honestly if you're just using "Christian" as a group identifier then define it how you will. What I care about is the underlying implication that frequently accompanies this identifier--that those unworthy of the label are consequently unworthy of salvation. You've been clear that this is not your belief so I don't think we meaningfully disagree on this.
MayorofOysterville
3d ago
Sure, but that also gets to the problem with Protestants. Treating a book as infallible that was created by a church you reject. You could make some apologism for this by pointing out the books of the Bible were really written separately until they were compiled but yeah I think it's a big problem for anyone not Catholic or Orthodox.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
And lest you say this is being uncharitable to Hegseth, as yunyun33 noted, he is on record campaigning for war criminals to be pardoned. If you think it's unfair to hold soldiers accountable for murdering prisoners, I think it's fair to characterize you as being pro-war crimes.
But "maximum lethality" is part of a list describing (I think), Hegseth's preferred RoE, also including "common sense" and "authority for warfighters" (whoever they are). Incidentally, this confusion is why we need the Oxford comma, dammit - the oxford comma makes clear that "maximum lethality" is distinct from "authority for warfighters," while without a comma there is confusion about whether it's one list item or two.
But assuming that this is a three item list, I agree that "maximum" is a trade-off against something, but presumably it's restricted by "common sense" (whatever that is), and "authority for warfighters" (which I presume means deferring to what the individuals on the ground are seeing and reporting, but am not sure).
I still think you're likely over-selling this.
On the other hand, I continue to be a fat-ass civilian, so YMMV.
More options
Context Copy link