The US will lose WW3

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GlassEye-Boy: Jul 12, 2001

China rejexta your lumber brutalism and instead goes for concrete trees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzjpK2BYGCQ

# ? Jan 4, 2024 03:37

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# ? May 27, 2024 15:36

The Oldest Man: Jul 28, 2003

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

interesting video, and 8 months later, looks like no info on the question raised

Actually they did the stupid thing they wanted to do and now we get funny rear end declining empire headlines like this about it

# ? Jan 4, 2024 04:08

DancingShade: Jul 26, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

The Oldest Man posted:

Actually they did the stupid thing they wanted to do and now we get funny rear end declining empire headlines like this about it

Please fall over dramatically with a comical piano crashing noise.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 04:20

stephenthinkpad: Jan 2, 2020

Leaning Tower of San Fran. It's going to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 04:26

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Point a webcam at it before the next earthquake

# ? Jan 4, 2024 07:59

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

DancingShade posted:

Please fall over dramatically with a comical piano crashing noise.

My most anticipated Well Theres Your Problem episode

# ? Jan 4, 2024 08:13

OhFunny: Jun 26, 2013; EXTREMELY PISSED AT THE DNC

The Oldest Man posted:

Actually they did the stupid thing they wanted to do and now we get funny rear end declining empire headlines like this about it

They stop it from sinking too or just tilting?

# ? Jan 4, 2024 09:17

palindrome: Feb 3, 2020

I think I'd find it rather unsettling to try and live in that tower. just try and put it out of your mind. go to sleep, don't think about the condo collapse videos and earthquake footage you watched, etc.

I listened to a talk from someone who lived in the SF bay area and he mentioned how he and his girlfriend live several dozen floors above the ground in some kind of tower. they have a "go" bag containing emergency supplies they plan to grab as they run out the door in case of an earthquake. how many flights of stairs do you think you could descend in a couple minutes? it would make an exciting escape sequence and if you survived you'd be stoked that you had extra cell phone batteries, jerky, ponchos, and a whistle.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 10:00

DancingShade: Jul 26, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

palindrome posted:

I think I'd find it rather unsettling to try and live in that tower. just try and put it out of your mind. go to sleep, don't think about the condo collapse videos and earthquake footage you watched, etc.

I listened to a talk from someone who lived in the SF bay area and he mentioned how he and his girlfriend live several dozen floors above the ground in some kind of tower. they have a "go" bag containing emergency supplies they plan to grab as they run out the door in case of an earthquake. how many flights of stairs do you think you could descend in a couple minutes? it would make an exciting escape sequence and if you survived you'd be stoked that you had extra cell phone batteries, jerky, ponchos, and a whistle.

Well ideally it would also involve a quick time event and some dramatic music.

Most realistically if it suddenly collapsed it would be so fast that running would be irrelevant. Crack. What? Crack, bang. Would you like to restart the level?

# ? Jan 4, 2024 10:04

FirstnameLastname: Jul 10, 2022

palindrome posted:

I think I'd find it rather unsettling to try and live in that tower. just try and put it out of your mind. go to sleep, don't think about the condo collapse videos and earthquake footage you watched, etc.

I listened to a talk from someone who lived in the SF bay area and he mentioned how he and his girlfriend live several dozen floors above the ground in some kind of tower. they have a "go" bag containing emergency supplies they plan to grab as they run out the door in case of an earthquake. how many flights of stairs do you think you could descend in a couple minutes? it would make an exciting escape sequence and if you survived you'd be stoked that you had extra cell phone batteries, jerky, ponchos, and a whistle.

do they think earthquakes are in movies where the shaking starts all slow lol

# ? Jan 4, 2024 10:32

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

FirstnameLastname posted:

do they think earthquakes are in movies where the shaking starts all slow lol

Hollywood has sold us a vision of earthquakes where the crack on the floor starts far away from you and gets closer and as long as you can run faster than the crack on the floor you're safe

# ? Jan 4, 2024 10:52

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Halloween Jack posted:

I wonder what it's like to make $200,000 a year and live in a high rise apartment that's mostly empty because the other tenants are investors.

Quiet, calm, sincere.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 10:59

FuzzySlippers: Feb 6, 2009

the biggest earthquake I experienced while living in California was just long enough to get confused about wtf was going on, realize, and then it was over. Maybe time to dash to a doorframe but not a lot of dramatic running downstairs in a big rear end dumb tower.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 11:04

palindrome: Feb 3, 2020

In the absolute best case, you will first feel the faster moving seismic "P" waves as kind of an advance warning. I've only been through very weak quakes and it's just long enough to go "wait did anyone else feel that? Was it the wind or a low flying plane? Did something shake the walls a little bit or was it just me?" Well if the big one hits that's your queue to run outside screaming and prepare for tall buildings to fall down on you if you're in a city.

The "S" waves arrive shortly thereafter and are responsible for the shearing effects and serious damage. There are also seismic detection systems and alarms on the coasts, I guess? I haven't heard them drill or know what they sound like but maybe you'd get a loud siren or something in SF.

I'm no expert, maybe a seismologist can lay down some serious knowledge. I read a California website designed to make me feel better prepared. Shits hosed though, nobody is rescuing your rear end for weeks so hopefully every man woman child and pet has ample drinking water and survival gear.

Sounds a bit like a similar situation to a low yield WW3 nuclear strike or maybe heavy conventional bombing, in that a tall poorly constricted building is not a great place to be.

palindrome has issued a correction as of 11:28 on Jan 4, 2024

# ? Jan 4, 2024 11:26

Pistol_Pete: Sep 15, 2007; Oven Wrangler

DancingShade posted:

Please fall over dramatically with a comical piano crashing noise.

Felled tree cracking and crashing sound, like in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 12:17

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

palindrome posted:

I think I'd find it rather unsettling to try and live in that tower. just try and put it out of your mind. go to sleep, don't think about the condo collapse videos and earthquake footage you watched, etc.

I listened to a talk from someone who lived in the SF bay area and he mentioned how he and his girlfriend live several dozen floors above the ground in some kind of tower. they have a "go" bag containing emergency supplies they plan to grab as they run out the door in case of an earthquake. how many flights of stairs do you think you could descend in a couple minutes? it would make an exciting escape sequence and if you survived you'd be stoked that you had extra cell phone batteries, jerky, ponchos, and a whistle.

oh do i have the solution for you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXTSx0RvwEM

# ? Jan 4, 2024 12:21

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

the last couple of earthquakes I experienced in the East SF Bay Area before moving were really short and sharp. I kept thinking a truck had hit the building or something like that. the quakes that really gently caress things up seem to last for a minute or more though

# ? Jan 4, 2024 12:50

FuzzySlippers: Feb 6, 2009

a few years ago a big rear end douglas fir (100+ft) fell on our house right above my dumb head. Smashed through the roof, attic, and only stopped by the thankfully strong walls. Actually blew the nearby attic door into the hallway in pieces.

I fell backwards out of my chair in panic and my brain resolved the elements of (massive shaking worse than any earthquake I�d felt) + (booming thunderous detonation like the nearby artillery range back home) + (crashing and destruction) = artillery is firing at us. We�re being shelled.

While my brain tried to wrap itself around the new reality of a war torn pnw I definitely wasn�t thinking about grabbing any go bags or implementing any plans. Then I noticed the tree limbs poking through the ceiling and realized the actual more mundane reality. I ran off to check on everyone who was thankfully okay.

Per the discussion of the last few pages I�m glad the house was built in 1980 during the waning days of American ability to build anything properly or presumably I would�ve been pulped.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 14:12

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

ive been through several long strong earthquakes, 5-7 minutes of slow shaking that crescendos into a pretty scary set of shakes - and i still think that go bag is better for fires or something else

# ? Jan 4, 2024 17:53

JAY ZERO SUM GAME: Oct 18, 2005; Walter.
I know you know how to do this.
Get up.

The Oldest Man posted:

Actually they did the stupid thing they wanted to do and now we get funny rear end declining empire headlines like this about it

i mean, there hasn't been any information from the engineer about the strength of those plates. i know they went ahead and did the drat thing

# ? Jan 4, 2024 17:59

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Delta-Wye posted:

ive been through several long strong earthquakes, 5-7 minutes of slow shaking that crescendos into a pretty scary set of shakes - and i still think that go bag is better for fires or something else

it's good if the governor gives an order that everyone needs to sleep outside for a while until the aftershocks have settled down. I had put one together in 1999 before the earthquake that year and my parents made fun of me for it ("you're never gonna need this!!"). they got owned when we had to sleep in a tent with supplies that were all ready thanks to me.

# ? Jan 4, 2024 18:00

Tempora Mutantur: Feb 22, 2005

FuzzySlippers posted:

a few years ago a big rear end douglas fir (100+ft) fell on our house right above my dumb head. Smashed through the roof, attic, and only stopped by the thankfully strong walls. Actually blew the nearby attic door into the hallway in pieces.

I fell backwards out of my chair in panic and my brain resolved the elements of (massive shaking worse than any earthquake I�d felt) + (booming thunderous detonation like the nearby artillery range back home) + (crashing and destruction) = artillery is firing at us. We�re being shelled.

While my brain tried to wrap itself around the new reality of a war torn pnw I definitely wasn�t thinking about grabbing any go bags or implementing any plans. Then I noticed the tree limbs poking through the ceiling and realized the actual more mundane reality. I ran off to check on everyone who was thankfully okay.

Per the discussion of the last few pages I�m glad the house was built in 1980 during the waning days of American ability to build anything properly or presumably I would�ve been pulped.

in capitalist America, tree pulps YOU into paper!

# ? Jan 4, 2024 18:22

Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

Pidgin Englishman posted:

Even cooler:

i remember this level in red orchestra

# ? Jan 4, 2024 18:44

The Oldest Man: Jul 28, 2003

OhFunny posted:

They stop it from sinking too or just tilting?

It stopped sinking/tilting, then started again, then stopped again. They were advertising that this fix would tilt it back like 4 inches but it's closer to 0 inches. So the tower is now permanently tilted with no plan to get it back to plumb.

And the measured jacking tension of the external supports is decreasing linearly over time, which they are claiming is a) fine b) predicted and c) good

# ? Jan 4, 2024 18:57

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

The Oldest Man posted:

It stopped sinking/tilting, then started again, then stopped again. They were advertising that this fix would tilt it back like 4 inches but it's closer to 0 inches. So the tower is now permanently tilted with no plan to get it back to plumb.

And the measured jacking tension of the external supports is decreasing linearly over time, which they are claiming is a) fine b) predicted and c) good

we call this "art of the deal"

# ? Jan 4, 2024 19:02

JAY ZERO SUM GAME: Oct 18, 2005; Walter.
I know you know how to do this.
Get up.

typical san francisco, just obsessed with "jacking" and "studs" and never concerned about being straight

# ? Jan 4, 2024 19:10

Real hurthling!: Sep 11, 2001

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

typical san francisco, just obsessed with "jacking" and "studs" and never concerned about being straight

# ? Jan 4, 2024 20:39

hubris.height: Jan 6, 2005; Pork Pro

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

typical san francisco, just obsessed with "jacking" and "studs" and never concerned about being straight

# ? Jan 5, 2024 04:12

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

cross-posting from the Doomsday Econ thread:

https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-blog-about-military-matters/61085187-is-military-integrity-a-contradiction-in-terms-part-1

quote:

Frank Borman was a West Point graduate who commanded the Apollo 8 astronaut mission that was the first to go around the moon. He was asked to chair a commission that looked into the state of honor education and compliance at West Point in the wake of the 1976 cheating scandal. Here are two pertinent sentences from that report:

The standards of the Academy have appropriately been set at a level much higher than the lowest common denominator of society at large and, for that matter, of the "real Army." While the so-called "double standard" can be disillusioning, its existence must be acknowledged.

Borman was pussy-footing around. What he is saying is that cadets are honest, supposedly to prepare them to be officers, but officers have to lie. We ought to do something more about it than merely acknowledging it. How about getting rid of the double standard and making Army officers behave honestly? Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.

Borman would probably say that was beyond his authority as head of the commission. Typical bureaucratic answer if it is indeed what he would say. But certainly there are some people who have the integrity of the Army officer corps within their authority, namely, the Commander In Chief, the Secretaries of Defense and the Army, and the top Army officers. The current Secretary of Defense�Robert Gates�has paid lip service to integrity, indeed in a speech at West Point, but then he promoted a known liar, Stanley A. McChrystal�to 4-star general and head of Afghanistan. That sent a great �do as I say but not as I do� message to the cadets at West Point and the Army in general.

Business as usual in the �nobody here but us leaders of great integrity� U.S. military.

quote:

When I was a cadet, I did a one-month internship in July of 1966 with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, KY. All cadets did such an internship somewhere in the real Army back then.

One Friday at Fort Campbell, they told me I was assigned to take the weekly arms inventory. This was a poo poo job given to the lowest ranking officer. I was not yet an officer, but close enough. The battery I was in had an M-16 rifle for each of its soldiers. They were in an M-14 rifle rack in the arms room.

The paper I was supposed to sign said above my signature line that I not only counted the rifles, but that I also verified that each had the serial number on the written arms inventory.

The M-14 rifle rack was diabolically designed so that when you put an M-16 into it, a steel bar running the length of the rack was pressed up against the serial number on the M-16 preventing you from seeing it. To read the serial number, you had to unlock the heavy rack, remove the M-16, and turn it over.

This was extremely time-consuming. The arms sergeant told me that all the other officers just counted the rifles and signed the inventory. That was, of course, illegal, immoral, and dishonorable. I said I could not do that because I was a West Point cadet and to do so would violate the Cadet Honor Code.

We then spent hours, on Friday night after everyone else had gone for the weekend, checking the serial numbers. It turned out that we had the correct number of rifles, but one had a serial number that was not on the written inventory and one of the serial numbers that was on the written inventory was not in the arms room.

I figured we were done, but the arms sergeant informed me that this was a really big deal. An M-16 is a machine gun and the Army did not want any machine guns unaccounted for. He was going to have to call the battery commander. I said we�d better double check before we did that. So we went through the whole thing again. Same result.

Now it was relatively late Friday night. We called the battery commander. He called the battalion commander who called the brigade commander. Within a half hour, all these guys were standing in the arms room with me and the division commander�a two-star general�had been called and was on the way. They were talking about gathering the men not on leave and going out into the woods to the last location where the battery had trained to look for the M-16 in the dark that night with flashlights.

Turned out the missing M-16 had been sent to maintenance. The arms sergeant was supposed to have put a card to that effect in the rifle-rack slot for that rifle. He failed to and may have put an illegal extra rifle there instead. It is standard but prohibited practice for NCOs in the Army to hoard equipment secretly so they have extras if they lose equipment they are supposed to have. They generally get away with it because most equipment either has no serial number or because almost all officers falsely sign documents asserting they verified the serial numbers when, in fact, they did not take the time to do so.

The battery commander was a West Point graduate. He made no effort whatsoever to get me to sign the false document. Unfortunately, he was the only West Point graduate I ever served directly under in my entire time in the Army.

quote:

I was the battalion motor officer for one half day in one unit in Vietnam. Why for just one half day?

First thing on the first morning, the motor sergeant handed me a status report to sign. It said that 95% of our vehicles were in perfect working order. �Really!?� I said. �I always heard that about 85% of them were deadlined [undrivable].� �They are, sir,� the motor sergeant said. �But we can�t put that in the report. This report goes all the way to the Pentagon. There would be hell to pay if we put that in the report.�

As you can probably anticipate, I refused to sign it. I was by then an officer, not a cadet. The Cadet Honor Code no longer applied to me technically, but I decided it applied to me morally. I was also determined to live up to another thing we had to memorize from Bugle Notes: the Cadet Prayer which said in pertinent part,

Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing...Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won. Endow us with courage that...knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy. Help us to maintain the honor of the Corps untarnished and unsullied and to show forth in our lives the ideals of West Point...

The motor sergeant assumed I did understand how the �game was played� and patiently explained to me that signing false documents was routine in the Army and that it had to be done every day and that I was not going to change the Army.

I still refused. He excused himself and disappeared. A little while later, the phone rang. It was the battalion commander telling me I was no longer motor officer. I had been relieved after about 12 hours in the job, a period which primarily involved my spending the night sleeping and in which my only motor officer act was to refuse to sign a false report. In addition to being immoral, signing that report would have been illegal. I could have been court martialed if I had signed it. Had anyone relied on it�remember this was in a combat zone in a war�men might have died as a result of it.

Shortly thereafter, I was transferred to a more forward, more dangerous assignment which I always felt was to show the other lieutenants what happens to a junior officer who refuses to �play the game.� The new unit was the one where I drove through a North Vietnamese ambush near the Cambodian border. (I described that at my military home page.)

quote:

I chronicled McChrystal�s misbehavior in two articles about the cover-up of the friendly fire death in Afghanistan of Army Ranger and former NFL player Pat Tillman:

� Lessons to be learned from Pat Tillman�s death
� The Army gets away with whitewashing Pat Tillman�s death

You can read more brief versions at various Web sites including McChrystal�s Wikipedia bio.

Basically, McChrystal was the main liar in the Pat Tillman case. It was he who wrote the Silver Star citation saying falsely that Tillman was brave �in the line of devastating enemy fire.� In fact, Tillman was shot in the forehead by his own fellow Army Rangers when he relaxed and stood up thinking they had finally figured out that they were firing at an American.

It was also he who wrote the infamous cable to General Abizaid urging him to warn President Bush not to praise Tillman�s heroism because it might later come out that it was friendly fire.

Both of those are described in more detail at the above two articles of mine. But the greater issue is how the United States Army responded to McChrystal�s dishonesty in the Tillman case.

The point I make here is that the problem is the whole Army. The Army simply does not tolerate honest officers. On the contrary, they demand that officers comply with what I call O.P.U.M. That means Officially Prohibited but Unofficially Mandatory. I write about it elsewhere in this article.

In the Tillman case, officers were expected to cover up and put a positive spin on Tillman�s death. That violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice, not to mention morality, the Cadet Honor Code, the Cadet Prayer, the Boy Scout Oath, and any other perinent code that addresses integrity. In other words, officially, what McChrystal did in the Tillman case is prohibited. But I say that it�s really mandatory. To see if I am right, look at subsequent events.

There were five separate inquiries into the Tillman cover-up. None could get to the truth. All the officers including McChrystal stonewalled. They could not recall. General Kensinger retired and literally hid from Federal Marshals trying to serve a Congressional subpoena on him.

One of the inquiries recommended that eight officers be disciplined, including McChrystal. Not only was he not disciplined at all, on 5/11/09, he was promoted to the highest rank in the U.S. military�four-star general�and to the current most sought-after post in the entire U.S. military: Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), that is, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan.

To any who say I unfairly tar the whole U.S. Army because of the dishonesty of a few �bad apples,� I have two words:

McChrystal�s promotion

McChrystal is what the Army wants you to be. The three guys who promoted McChrystal were General David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Commander In Chief Barack Obama. The Senate confirmed McChrystal�s appointment.

quote:

In a 4/7/08 Newsweek story about Hillary�s sniper fire lie, Jonathan Alter says,

We know why politicians lie when they get in trouble: They think the consequences of telling the truth are too severe to bear.

Career military officers are politicians. At the lower ranks, they are like office politicians in civilian companies. As they move up, they become like the corporate politicians who maneuver and form alliances and play Machiavellian games to advance their careers. Refusing to lie when a superior wants you to ends the career of an officer. You may think that would not be allowed.

Who�s going to stop it? Your superior does not write �refused to sign false document� on your efficiency report. He just tosses in a little dig like �needs to work on loyalty� or even merely ranks you in the 97th percentile (what�s wrong with the 97th percentile?) knowing that the 97th percentile is really the 35th percentile to those in the know. (That�s the way it was done 35 years ago. No doubt the current method is different in its details, but the same in substance, that is, a seemingly innocuous compliment to the officer being rated is, in fact, the kiss of career death.)

quote:

When I spent the night at a fire base 5 kilometers from the Cambodia border in Loc Ninh, the battery was blasting away with their cannons for much of the night.

Me: �What are you guys shooting at?�

Lieutenant: �H&I.�

Me: �Harassment and interdiction?�

Lt.: �Yeah. But we can�t call it that any more.�

Me: �Why not?�

Lt.: �Word came down from higher. No more H&I.�

Me: �So what do you call it now?�

Lt.: �Confirmed targets. We say they are confirmed bunkers and stuff like that. We make it up. We have to call the RVNs and get permission to make sure there�s no civilians in the area, but they don�t even check.�

Me: �How do you know that?�

Lt.: �They give instant approval of everything we ask. They don�t look at a map or ask anyone.�

Me: �Do you shoot fewer rounds now because of the new rule?�

Lt.: �God no! They keep charts of how many rounds each battalion shoots each night at corps headquarters. The battalion commander doesn�t want our line on the bar graph to be any lower than anyone else�s.�

I was just the communications platoon leader of that battalion so I had no occasion to be involved in target selection or reporting on what was being shot at. Were any civilians being hurt by those rounds? I don�t know. I was never shown a map or anything that indicated where they were firing or what was there.

and this final section goes back to an earlier discussion we had:

Frosted Flake posted:

quote:
The relentless firing was being driven by a small, top-secret Army Delta Force group called Task Force 9. President Donald J. Trump had given the task force broad authority to use heavy firepower, and the task force applied it with savage enthusiasm, often bending the rules to hit not just enemy positions, but also mosques, schools, dams and power plants.

...

Sometimes, artillery crew members said, the task force ordered them to fire in a grid pattern, not aiming at any specific target but simply hurling rounds toward Raqqa, to keep the enemy on edge.
It's interesting that it admits the US fired H&I missions because that was denied for a long time as "ISIS propaganda".

# ? Jan 5, 2024 06:18

FirstnameLastname: Jul 10, 2022

Hatebag posted:

couldn't they just make a bit of cover like sandbags with sorbothane panels on them and fire the guns from behind those? it doesn't seem like it would be hard to avoid the blast waves. that's probably cheaper than churning through troops plus the weapons manufacturers get to make proprietary sandbags or whatever so everyone gets their bribes

it's harder than that, stuff like an artillery muzzle blast isn't a push, it's a clap like a bomb
you have to protect from cavitation on every side, just not as much as the side facing the muzzle

# ? Jan 5, 2024 06:39

The Oldest Man: Jul 28, 2003

gradenko_2000 posted:

cross-posting from the Doomsday Econ thread:

you know once a military can't do a basic function of mechanized warfare like keep solid track of its own inventory, its just a skip and a hop to that inventory vanishing completely

but that only happens in russia

# ? Jan 5, 2024 06:41

fits my needs: Jan 1, 2011; Grimey Drawer

https://x.com/CBSNews/status/1743240933829702069?s=20

# ? Jan 5, 2024 13:15

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

gradenko_2000 posted:

cross-posting from the Doomsday Econ thread:

https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-blog-about-military-matters/61085187-is-military-integrity-a-contradiction-in-terms-part-1

and this final section goes back to an earlier discussion we had:

The whole of the US is accurately described by the scenes of the Wire both in the police department and the school of juking the stats.

# ? Jan 5, 2024 13:35

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

It led to funny outcomes in Afghanistan where the stats of both people we were killing and not killing were being cooked as the contradictory policies measured success with contradictory stats. The score of �safety felt by local Afghans� rising at the same time as the �number of nighttime raids� would have clued anyone in but those were separate areas of responsibility. Both the hearts and minds and search and destroy people saw the numbers they liked.

# ? Jan 5, 2024 14:48

blatman: May 10, 2009; 14 inc dont mez

Frosted Flake posted:

It led to funny outcomes in Afghanistan where the stats of both people we were killing and not killing were being cooked as the contradictory policies measured success with contradictory stats. The score of �safety felt by local Afghans� rising at the same time as the �number of nighttime raids� would have clued anyone in but those were separate areas of responsibility. Both the hearts and minds and search and destroy people saw the numbers they liked.

what if their safety felt during the day was rising so fast that it more than made up for the night raids

# ? Jan 5, 2024 14:52

Nothus: Feb 22, 2001; Buglord

Frosted Flake posted:

It led to funny outcomes in Afghanistan where the stats of both people we were killing and not killing were being cooked as the contradictory policies measured success with contradictory stats. The score of �safety felt by local Afghans� rising at the same time as the �number of nighttime raids� would have clued anyone in but those were separate areas of responsibility. Both the hearts and minds and search and destroy people saw the numbers they liked.

The same thing happened in Vietnam and was supposedly one of the "lessons learned", lmao

# ? Jan 5, 2024 15:25

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Nothus posted:

The same thing happened in Vietnam and was supposedly one of the "lessons learned", lmao

I feel like this is one of those things that's "learned until your boss is yelling at you"

# ? Jan 5, 2024 15:28

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

when I was in at the end of the fiscal year my unit would have a big budget Potlatch because if we didn't spend our entire budget would be cut and it was harder to justify raising it afterwards if you needed something. so we just made stupid purchases at the 11th hour of the FY to keep in place.

we'd update the TV in the day room, all the computers and monitors, new furniture etc. just Brewsters millions that poo poo.

even as an idiot 22 year old I imagined that same thing across the whole air force and dod and it didn't seem like a sustainable way to Do Military

# ? Jan 5, 2024 15:49

Milosh: Oct 14, 2000; Forum Veteran

Owlbear Camus posted:

when I was in at the end of the fiscal year my unit would have a big budget Potlatch because if we didn't spend our entire budget would be cut and it was harder to justify raising it afterwards if you needed something. so we just made stupid purchases at the 11th hour of the FY to keep in place.

we'd update the TV in the day room, all the computers and monitors, new furniture etc. just Brewsters millions that poo poo.

even as an idiot 22 year old I imagined that same thing across the whole air force and dod and it didn't seem like a sustainable way to Do Military

In my 20's I worked at a research lab that brought in tons of NIH money. They got so much grant money the only way they could spend it was on staff. So me and four other people just sat around and did crosswords all day and maybe did 4-5 hours of week a work. We also gave cocaine to people in research studies so that was rad.

# ? Jan 5, 2024 15:54

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# ? May 27, 2024 15:36

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

gradenko_2000 posted:

cross-posting from the Doomsday Econ thread:

https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-blog-about-military-matters/61085187-is-military-integrity-a-contradiction-in-terms-part-1

quote:
The M-14 rifle rack was diabolically designed so that when you put an M-16 into it, a steel bar running the length of the rack was pressed up against the serial number on the M-16 preventing you from seeing it. To read the serial number, you had to unlock the heavy rack, remove the M-16, and turn it over.

This was extremely time-consuming. The arms sergeant told me that all the other officers just counted the rifles and signed the inventory. That was, of course, illegal, immoral, and dishonorable. I said I could not do that because I was a West Point cadet and to do so would violate the Cadet Honor Code.

We then spent hours, on Friday night after everyone else had gone for the weekend, checking the serial numbers. It turned out that we had the correct number of rifles, but one had a serial number that was not on the written inventory and one of the serial numbers that was on the written inventory was not in the arms room.

quote:
Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing...Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won. Endow us with courage that...knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy. Help us to maintain the honor of the Corps untarnished and unsullied and to show forth in our lives the ideals of West Point...

The motor sergeant assumed I did understand how the �game was played� and patiently explained to me that signing false documents was routine in the Army and that it had to be done every day and that I was not going to change the Army.

drat, this nerd sounds like an absolute pain in the rear end.

# ? Jan 5, 2024 15:57

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