busdriver

Americans have been obsessed with race for far longer than 2008, not without cause. The GOP was founded in opposition to the expansion of slavery. I've been thinking about how this thing might turn out. The 1960's were similarly tumultuous, and the republic came out the other side better for it. The Iranian revolution was ostensibly led by both secular leftist and religious thinkers, but fed by large numbers of unemployed men. Obviously the Ayatollah ended up as the leader of record. I'm seeing a lot of similarities with Iran, with respect to varying ideologies within the political parties. I suspect things will get worse before they get better. I think the DNC and RNC as we know them now are finished. I think it's just a matter of time, with my only question being what comes out the other end?

To be fair, the first part may have been very much already escalated, intentionally by portions of the protester group. There is a lot we don't really know about that whole situation. The dude looked to be wildly inept at firearm handling skills. Depending on what was being said to them, his wife may have committed an assault. You calling them "shoe-less" is as much "othering" language as his.

I can't remember which podcast/youtube video I saw this in, but I seem to remember Brett Weinstein making the argument that the college kids were indoctrinating themselves to a certain degree.

Kaepernick was an employee that made public statements that pissed off the customers, who viewed his statements as offensive, who made noises that implied they would stop being customers. That's it. He certainly wasn't the first person to lose a job over that sequence of events, and it seems to have become quite common these days. Just one more example of the mass hysteria afflicting our society.

BLM has an agenda. Most people in the streets and on facebook saying "black lives matter" are supporting the sentiment not the organization, or are only vaguely aware that the organization is more than just the sentiment.

There are plenty of words that already exist to describe the points that are trying to be made, none of those words are loaded with the emotion and horrific history of racism. Adding another meaning to a word that is so closely tied with lynching and Jim Crow is an organizing tactic. Not to mention so overly broad as to be almost useless as a tool for making any productive changes. unconscious bias agency structure lack of economic investment, [leading to] endemic poverty and crime [and] self destructive cultures and practices See plenty of words. So yes language evolves, but to claim that in this case it's due to a lack of ability to discuss the problem is a fallacy.

It's literally in the definition du jour. The woktivist arguement is completely tautological. From the Aspen Institute: https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/files/content/docs/rcc/RCC-Structural-Racism-Glossary.pdf Structural Racism: A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. Racial Equity: Racial equity refers to what a genuinely non-racist society would look like. In a racially equitable society, the distribution of society’s benefits and burdens would not be skewed by race. In other words, racial equity would be a reality in which a person is no more or less likely to experience society’s benefits or burdens just because of the color of their skin

A single CPI based estimation of real wage growth or decline is flawed. Everything is not inflating at the same rate. I also don't think income inequality is a very good measure of anything by itself. It might be a good indicator to look deeper, but by itself doesn't tell you much. It's like chasing metrics. An increase in minimum wage also isn't going to do much (if the underlying problem is a loss of manufacturing jobs) other than help drive inflation. Service industry jobs are already low margin sectors of the economy (the restaurant industry as an example). Thought this was interesting, I obviously can't vouch for accuracy, but it at least seems to match my own anecdotal experience (mainly that the fun stuff is far cheaper now). My main thoughts: -"Higher education" has become a scam box-check requirement for no good reason. - What is actually driving up the cost of healthcare? Nationalized healthcare seems like a great way to keep paying ever increasing costs without solving the root cause. Maybe Andrew Yang is right and we'll all be served by robots soon, better get on some nuclear power plants to power it all, Star Trek here we come......

The issues at hand are far more complicated than a simplistic and overly broad platitude. But thoughtful, nuanced discussions don't work with the advertising model and no one's righteous indignation fix will be met when it turns out that everyone is to blame.

That SCR with a rifle length wood handguard would be pretty. I'm envisioning a free float handguard that goes all the way out to the muzzle of a 16 inch barrel, kind of like a manlicher fore end. You'd probably have to glue the wood to a fiberglass inner tube.

The helos fly red air at WIC during the DCA vul every year, shot kill is sketchy trying to simulate a MANPADS, but it's not complete bullshit. Every couple of years a WUG will get the idea to drop down and try to gun one of the helos for shits and grins, it usually doesn't turn out good. Then the lesson gets learned for a few classes and they just sit off and snipe us with AIM-9Xs where we die before having a chance to react. So yeah, exactly like Zero says.

Actual studies/experiments, both pre-date the current insanity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843945/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2

I would assume there's a huge variable in population density and general culture that can't really be accounted for in the models, since they're just best fit curve differential equations. The public national policy making conversation centers around the major urban areas. There's lot of stupid running around these days though; the doc on base made a point of telling us someone had done a study to determine that temps would have to get up to 150ish degrees to kill the virus so the summer wouldn't be helping........... I'm not really sure why "they" thought that air temperature in the summer was the key variable instead of a change in human behavior, but what do I know. In any event, if my sarcastic cliff's notes is about what they're thinking, it's probably not a terrible way to calm the nerves of the panic monsters in the major urban areas.

Jesus, that video is patronizing. So to be clear the short version is: don't open the go back to work tap all the way, keep the stream of folks going back out to a medium pace so that when people start getting sick there isn't a huge pool of potential infectees to feed a spike and more tests available to catch a spike earlier (hopefully before it become a full blown epidemic). And support and feels and stuff.

Almost every politician has been a panicky shit sandwich. Organizations have twisted the truth (with good intentions in their hearts) in an attempt at modifying people's behavior, but it's still bullshit. The media is behaving like a cat chasing a laser pointer, knowing they want to craft a narrative but can't figure out what it should be other than A: Trump is evil and Fox News sucks or B: Trump is awesome and CNN is evil. The people need to be told the truth, then allowed to make decisions. If the people can't be trusted to act responsibly of their own free will, what's the point of having a free society? Yes, I realize that statement is lacking in a lot of the nuance that is actually necessary in making a functional government. Then again, telling people who lost their jobs because the government shut down their employer to just fucking stay at home and stop bitching is pretty fucking obtuse. The reality is this will continue in waves until a vaccine is developed or the pandemic has run it's course, either way ending in herd immunity or a virus mutated for lower mortality that we just learn to live with.

Old engineering cliche: All models are inaccurate, some are useful. The data is seriously crappy. Given the apparent wide range of symptoms (asymptomatic all the way to knocking on death's door) and the limited amount of testing that is triaged to more serious cases, the case fatality rate is inflated if you just divide deaths by total verified cases. The lower CFR being reported is (I assume) an estimate based on epidemiological modeling. As an example, if you just take total verified cases in Italy, the CFR is something like 12%. But that same number also results in only a quarter of a percent penetration into the population, New York state is around 2% penetration. Which seems like an insanely low percentage given the Ro estimate of 2.5ish. Even more so when you consider the seasonal flu is around 1.3 and the 1918 pandemic is something like 1.8. For reference, I scrounged around google and found a paper (published years ago) on selective social distancing to control a flu epidemic. Based on a "small town model" of 10k residents and an epidemic meant to be representative of the 1918 flu (natural progression 50% of the population would get it before herd immunity did its thing), they applied a handful of different techniques and managed a maximum reduction down to 15% getting it. They assumed kids and teens were the primary vector so restricted their movements (closed schools and kept kids/teens at home). Would a total societal application get that percentage down to the 1-2% range? Maybe? The information from people who know things is being filtered through communications majors who don't have the aptitude to understand any of it. They are incentivized to freak people out, it sells ads. So take it seriously, but freaking out and destroying everything because we're scared isn't a good idea either.

Checkout "1" on amazon prime or netflix. Almost a remake of "The Formula 1 Drivers: aka The Quick and The Dead" Both good

Unless you're close to the highway and your destination is as well, everywhere takes 30min in Tucson.

This will either pop then go away like a zit, or it will be how the Iraqi civil war begins. The advantage of Iran's strategy of using surrogate forces is plausible deniability, mainly that they can back down without losing face internally by denying their involvement. The direction this goes will be about Iranian leadership maintaining power, and the internal messaging required to do that.

I was out riding around Tucson today and happened to see a four ship that looked like they were setting up for a missing man formation (or maybe it was my imagination) and I thought of this thread and Pyro, even though I never met the man. That moment had me thinking about this military aviation family, and all the things society fights about that don't mean anything. It was a sort of Zen moment, I'm grateful for it, and I'm damn lucky to be in this family. Life is too short to not live it. Him, Him.

The AFSOC fleet isn't nearly big enough to do what these guys are talking about, and helos don't have nearly the range. Logistically supporting an AOR wide aircraft dispersal plan would not be any easy task.

I'm not pretending anything. In that theater, AF CSAR is 100% responsible to the CFACC, and weren't their to cover western Iraq. Moving assets to support a CFLCC mission lengthens response time elsewhere, the decision to do so, or not rests with the owning component. You're barking up the wrong tree. I realize that things look stupid and byzantine when the closest guys aren't the primary responders. We all don't work for the same Bobs, and "the joint fight" isn't as joint as the shiny brochure would have everyone believe.

Your concern is the land component didn't plan/resource for it's needs and then complain that the air component didn't plan/resource to cover the entire joint force? My point was that there are a ton of RFFs for PR forces, and everyone (including the joint staff) is happy to have the AF fill them, but we aren't resourced to be the joint community's CSAR assets. When we're filling everyone's requirements, we're not maintaining proficiency at contested CSAR, and we're stuck doing other things when the balloon goes up. Which is what happened in Iraq. Joint doctrine makes it every service/component's responsibility to provide for their own PR needs.

People are confusing fancy new aircraft with airmanship.

When you only pay for partial coverage, but commit to covering everything, then there isn't enough peanut butter to spread around.