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If people were fundamentally evil, society would trend downward. It hasn't. There are evil people. There are more good people. Over time the good have beaten the evil. Our system protects the good from the evil to allow the good to flourish and continue doing good. If you've seen little evidence of altruism, you've been limiting your view to a TV screen. Look around, it's literally everywhere.

And that's exactly why the American system works. Because if people are left to pursue their self-interests, their fundamentally good nature will be freed to impact those around them. But we will suppress that good nature if required in order to protect our self-interest. Thus the failure of communism over capitalism. Even the best mannered dog will bite you if provoked enough. Doesn't mean it's not a good dog. One of the most unfortunate results of the era of limitless and instant communication is the proliferation of bad news over good news, even though the latter exceeds the former in every way. Can you even name a movie or TV show that is set in the future that doesn't have some sort of dystopian hellscape as the backdrop? For some reason we are fascinated with the idea that the future, even the immediate future, is doom on our doorstep. Yet overwhelmingly the evidence is that across the globe it has only gotten better for humanity over time. Anyone who's interested in the data supporting this concept should read "Enlightenment Now" by Stephen Pinker. Great book.

Since you are the only forum member who responded to this article, I'm guessing you're flabbergasted that you're arguing with yourself about this article.

Started retirement in Mar during the first wave of shutdown. Couldn't agree with this statement more. You do not want to be figuring this shit out, TAP'ing, job hunting and dealing with whatever relationship issues you may/may-not have in the mean time.

Nah. The best deal is a simple and clear foreign policy that states "You can't have nuclear weapons. And if you build them, we'll take them away from you and destroy your government."

Hey, China: Supersonic F-35s droppin' nukes. "ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A mock B61-12’s strike in the dusty Nevada desert successfully completed the first in a series of flight tests with the U.S. Air Force’s newest fighter jet, demonstrating the bomb’s first release from an internal bomb bay at greater than the speed of sound." https://share-ng.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/b61-12_flight/

Evil might be a poor word choice. Self interested probably describes it better. Society hasnt collapsed because cooperation is still a better security strategy than lone-wolfing it. However, the minute that cooperation begins to stretch a person's values outside their self interest they will cease to cooperate. It doesn't make the world horrible. Its just nature. And people will justify horrendous acts on a platform of moral virtue because they will try to uphold their own self interest.

Don't forget that generally the winner in conflicts get to write the history, and pretty much everyone sees themselves as good and their opponents (who lost) as evil. There's a super fine line between a freedom fighter and a terrorist, just depends on if you win or not. And the US isn't exempt from this either-we've done stuff throughout our history that could be viewed as evil, or at the very least makes us have to question if we were the "good guys" at that point in history in retrospect. Some of that could be tempered by a belief that a state/country will act in its own best interest, and conflict is messy, but to ignore the darker parts of our history allows it to potentially happen again.

showed my wife the Senna documentary last night, then this happened today. It's amazing how far they've come to protect drivers. A wonderfully engineered miracle.

https://www.facebook.com/acombatveteran/videos/816382629187384/ Please let it be known my religion is now the Joe Rogan Experience! LMAO!

A lot can happen in a decade delay. Just because it's controlled by a extremely conservative religious group and they want to impose their ideals on others doesn't mean there isn't a younger more forward thinking generation of more liberal minded individuals who will want to go a different direction. Wait...are we talking Iran still? Viper is the warhawk, not Trump. I don't think Trump cares about war unless it makes him look good, gets him rich or reelected. He knows enough to know it does none of those things. I honestly don't think he even cared about the details of the Iran deal, but he was told to destroy it, and it had Obama's name on it so he broke it with the empty promise of something far greater like he did with literally everything he touched. Honestly Iran could have nukes right now if they had appealed to Trump's ego 4 years ago like lil Kim did, but the whole saving face thing gets in the way. I don't disagree with your Libya comments, but in the end I don't think it would have stopped things, it only sped them up.

I think this demonstrates that you don’t.

My recruiter reached out to me about 10 days after my selection with some medical screening/MEPS forms for me to complete. The holidays will make things harder, but if it takes too much longer, I'd reach out the your POC with the hiring squadron and get clarification on what to expect. It shouldn't take a month to send a few emails. Throughout my process, I tried not to "bother" the pilot they told me would be my POC and trust recruiting to do their jobs. If I'd reached out to my POC when things weren't passing the smell test, I'd have gotten to OTS and UPT about 6 months earlier than I did. Don't call every day, but annoy the recruiter and make them get your shit done. If you're getting no movement, get your hiring squadron involved. Sure, it might rub the recruiters the wrong way, but it's better than sitting on your thumbs for 2-3 months waiting for them to finish something that should take 2-3 days. Bottom line, no one cares about your process more than you do. This process is long enough without added delays created by the recruiters being lazy. Sent from my SM-N975U using Baseops Network mobile app

Maybe it was removed because it was bogus? That student article, produced by an undergrad with literally less qualifications than anyone on this forum, has no basis in real statistics. The TRUTH is that we’ve had over 300k excess deaths just until October, and probably tens of thousands since then. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm This is a bullshit quote from that article: ”All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,” Briand concluded.” Wtf are you guys posting? Heres another dumbass quote: ”Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.“ What? This article makes literally no sense. You guys really want to believe in the Illuminati and superhero’s and finding the “real truth.” Get it together. The truth is, excess deaths are calculated without any respect to cause of death. And every analysis of excess deaths - by the way, in dozens of countries - shows that there have been hundreds of thousands more deaths this year than there should have been, with a large portion being from folks 60+.

He can thank Niki Lauda for that! Racing Firesuit

Exactly! It's been several weeks now and this is getting ridiculous. Could you imagine if a large percentage of the news pushed by media outlets was based on election hearsay rather than hard evidence for, say, the next 3 years?

Going IMC in a glider with no ADI. I don’t understand how they’re not dead.

Good news the Federal Housing Finance Agency just released the updated county loan limits for next year. The baseline limit is going up from 510,400 to 548,250 for loans closing after 1 Jan. That's great for a few reasons: 1) If you are buying a house the transition point to a jumbo/high balance loan will be higher so if you stay below 548,250 you'll get a better rate 2) If you have a VA loan outstanding now you'll get more VA entitlement to use on a second VA loan before you'll have to put any money down. Also high cost area limits have increased more too which means more entitlement if you need a second VA in a high rent district. 3) If you're in a high balance/jumbo loan now that's above 510,400 but will be below 548,250 you can refinance out of the high balance/jumbo into a regular conforming loan and get a better rate. If you don't have any outstanding VA loans then you can still buy without any loan limits as long as you qualify debt to income ratio wise. These higher limits only help people with outstanding VA loans. The VA typically certifies the new numbers early-mid Dec so we can't start doing loans based on these numbers for a couple weeks until the VA authorizes it. Below is the link where you can look up the limits for the county you're in or where you may be headed. https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Downloads/Documents/Conforming-Loan-Limits/FullCountyLoanLimitList2021_HERA-BASED_FINAL_FLAT.pdf Rates are still crazy low so if these new numbers help you refi to a lower rate please hit me up. Happy to sanity check any scenarios with minimal legwork on your part. Have a great Thanksgiving! Jon 850-377-1114 jk@mythl.com

The only way I'd go back to that part of the world is with a fully nuke loaded B-52/B-1/B-2 but I know a couple of guys who enjoy it over there.

Yep, had a contractor coworker start to get "chiefed" by an E-9 about sunglasses on his head. The look on the E-9s face after he got about four words into the "chiefing" was priceless.

Flying at HRT the Navy pogues from Pcola and Whiting would always trash our pattern, sometimes four or five at a time. After the three times being told to extend my base while doing two engine training in order to accommodate a T-34, I cleaned up my Gunship and departed VFR to the west. A few minutes later I checked in with PCola and reported initial Runway 25...it was a fucking bomb burst of white jets trying to get out of the way. After a low approach I requested closed and the tower was fuming (do they have a SOF?) I then requested to go tower to tower at Whiting. They initially cleared me but the tower controller must have called Whiting and told them what I did so they told me they were "saturated and could not accommodate practice patterns." I got called up to the OG/CC's office the next morning and he asked what happened...apparently the Navy wasn't too happy. I told him it was a continuing theme with them dorking up our pattern and how they ruined three consecutive two engine approaches (two engine work was challenging and you had to be low on fuel to get to the training allowed weight so you didn't get a lot of second chances). He laughed and told me to have a great day. I didn't see another T-34 in our pattern for two months.