nsplayr

At this point IDGAF about people declining the vaccine. We're still supply-constrained and demand is far outstripping supply. Let's get that solved ASAP. I've said this before and I'll say it again...with the vaccines being so effective against the original strain I'm 100% willing to let other folks win the Darwin Award by refusing to get protected against a deadly virus that's already spread everywhere. Once we knock out all the folks who do want the vaccine, which is the majority, then we can have a conversation about folks who originally declined, primarily focused on how the vaccine is safe, effective, and will allow everyone to get back to normal. I personally know a handful of "wait and see" folks and by time we've vaccinated 69% of the country and it's next fall, that seems like plenty of time for them to have done just that. "Hard decliners" (sts)...well, unlike Pokemon, you can't realistically expect to catch 'em all...

Been living rent-free in this man's head for years and I didn't even know it haha. Kinda sad when someone goes off the deep end like he did TBH. Proud traitor* over here, glad to be in the company of so many others in this august forum *normal person

Yet another success story. Thanks to everyone at Trident. Smooth closing, just like my last 2 with them. I only came down half a point because they did such a great job last spring for me, but it was still worth it. 2.25% with no points and no hassle. I think I paid, literally, $69 at closing and spent about 20 minutes with a notary. Highly recommend.

This is quite literally a big part of Biden’s immigration plan in a nutshell. As I’ve said a bit before, I’m even more of an immigration maximalist than your typical Democrat. If I were King for a day I’d sign into law the “Mas Trabajo Por Los Todos Act of 2021” and get some smart folks to translate that into Chinese, Vietnamese, French, et al so everyone knows that the USA is open for business and ready for many new workers and eventually citizens. But I’m perfect willing to take steps in the right direction. Expanded refugee entries, expanded guest worker program, pathway to citizenship, vigorous enforcement of E-Verify and better & smarter border security all sound great...just like they did back when W got pretty close to passing the exact same stuff back in 2007.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!

Just so you know, MattY has a face for radio and a voice for print if ya know what I mean. He's incredibly annoying to listen to IMHO even though he's a successful podcast host (The Weeds), so try not to be turned off if you listen to the book on Audible haha...I know I would be! I like his work but I literally hate his voice. I'm not sure that characterization is fair but making sure folks are integrated is an important aspect of successful immigration. Luckily the USA is pretty uniquely great at that! We're a creed-based nation with barely any truly "native" population and we're already a successful multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy despite some bumps along the way. All of that is not true of China, India, Russia, or even most European countries. I genuinely believe that I, as a European-American with some recent immigrant roots on one side as well as some pretty lengthy American heritage on the other, am no more "American" than the Chinese/Ethiopian/Russian/South African/etc. person who's relatively right off the boat, living here and working hard. That's part of what makes America great and it can be a huge strength if we would just be more up front about embracing it. I guess I just don't share the Luddite view that technology will destroy all human labor or the need for human labor. Just like all technologies in the past, new technologies will supplant some jobs while creating others and very likely making us all richer, live longer, and prosper more at the same time. The idea that immigrants are uniquely vulnerable to this centuries-long phenomenon is also spurious at best. FWIW, this is an even more impressive Boston Dynamics video. Look out stage performers...robots are coming for ya!

I actual have a personal jihad against self checkout at stores, especially grocery stores when I always seem to have a ton of items in the cart. I do not work at the grocery store, nor do I want to! Self checkout in grocery stores is more convenient for the store, not for me. FFS, I do not want to self checkout at a tiny kiosk when I have a week's worth of family groceries, but usually all but 1 of the "normal" lanes will be closed. I want to see the Grocery Store Clerks Full Employment Act (GSCFEA) of 2021 passed post-haste!

LMK if you want to actually read the book itself & discuss! I disagree with that characterization and in fact think the opposite is true; China and India are trying desperately to become richer & more like Western nations in terms of per capita income and purchasing power, and the entire point of Yglesias' book is that if/when that happens, America will inevitably decline in importance unless we get significantly richer (very hard to do), or significantly bigger (easier than you might imagine). I would very much like America to remain the #1 nation in the world for the rest of my lifetime and ideally for my daughter's entire lifetime as well. After that, I'll have long been made dust again, so GL to everyone who remains haha! A world order where China is on top will not be as good, especially for us as Americans. A nativist, small-minded, bunker mentality of closing America and stagnating ain't gonna keep us #1 IMHO because China et al will very likely continue to grow and get richer and honestly that's a good thing. Ending dire poverty around the world is good. But, let's allow them to do so while still keeping our relative power and let's do it through something both conservatives and liberals used to agree on - growth.

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I'm reading this book now and so far it's excellent. I support allowing far more immigrants into the United States and firmly believe it will make the country richer, stronger and better for everyone. https://www.amazon.com/One-Billion-Americans-Thinking-Bigger-ebook/dp/B082ZR6827 TL;DR: The hypothesis is that America should try hard to stay #1 in the world, and growing the population significantly is one of the surest ways to stay on top. Policies that support families having as many children as they would like as well as policies that encourage more legal immigration can get us there. The benefits of doing this would greatly outweigh some of the problems that arise when a population is growing quickly, and America in particular knows how to solve those problems because we've grown quickly in the past. Happy to discuss!

From what I saw being Air Guard and witnessing Army Guard get vaccinated at the same time, it looked like everyone had a DHA Form 207. On that form you either check the box that you want to receive the vaccine or that you don't. See attached (must open in Acrobat Reader to work right). DHA Form 207 Blank.pdf

@VMFA187 Like I had previous mentioned, I originally wrote an angrier post but deleted it and tried again. Just another data point to add: I lost my grandpa and great-aunt to COVID, and my mom and I both unfortunately picked up the virus attending the funeral. Hopefully you're keeping a running list of all the folks here who have loved ones who died so you can, ya know, update your worldview.

Ya know I wrote this whole angry reply but I deleted it. Here's what I think: A) I'm glad COVID hasn't affected your family much; count yourself as lucky. B) If you want to end the pandemic-mitigation measures, I hope you're getting vaccinated ASAP and encouraging everyone you know to do the same. I sure am! C) I would tread a bit more lightly re: "Well I don't know anyone who died..." because many, many of us do and it's kind of a dick move to base your entire world view on the extremely narrow lense of your own personal experiences.

Hey y’all, just reporting back that I got my first dose of the vaccine and I’m happy to say I’ve got full bars of 5G already and I streamed the game last night directly into my eyeballs. It was fantastic! Roll Tide. J/K obviously, but everyone please go out and get the vaccine as soon as you can so we can end this terrible pandemic. Science FTW.

I swear to god we had damn-near solved queep during the early weeks/months of COVID, and now we have purposely allowed it back into our organizations. After finding out what was truly mission essential and what as not, I'm just floored at the number of people that gleefully welcome back all the self-licking ice cream cones, asskissing briefings & awards, and plainly non-essential tasks back in to our everyday lives.

LMGTFY: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-told-supporters-stormed-capitol-hill/story?id=75110558 Feel free to read the entire transcript but you can also Ctrl+F "Capitol" to speed things up. Some quotes: Fun fact: he was very much *not* there with them. Safe & sound in the WH after "leading" his supporters into a lawless and dangerous insurrection. Very direct and explicit instructions for the assembled people to march down to the Capitol. Now there's not like some movie-plot quote where he says, "...and when you get there I want you to break in, kill a cop and injure several more, halt the workings of the legislative branch of government and also maybe attempt to murder most of the direct line of succession!" But ya know...some of these folks are not our best and brightest and that's exactly what they did. I mean technically the match is what lights the gasoline on fire, but you don't get a free pass if you're the person holding the match & opening your hand to let it fall. You don't get to blame gravity here.

If anyone doesn't want their vaccine, at this point, fine. I'll take yours and if there's more to dole out I've got plenty of friends and family that want theirs ASAP too. While we're still supply-constrained and bottlenecked at distribution here early on, I honestly don't care if people decline it or not; that's on them. With a vaccine that's 95% effective honestly the people who get it don't have to give a f*ck if other people don't. I'll happy take mine and once my family is all vaccinated we can put the pandemic behind us while the Darwin Award winners of the world continue to be vulnerable. Unfortunately the people who get hurt most by that ultra-individualistic mindset are those who want the vaccine but are ineligible to get it at all (weird health conditions, etc.) or are so far down on the priority list that they won't have a chance for many months (young kids). I'd attempt to make the argument that, "Hey, everyone should get it to help your fellow man blah blah blah so we can reach some level of population immunity," but that ship has long sailed for far too many Americans. As a wise person once said, I don't know how to explain to you why you should care about other people. IMHO we should continue to follow the mostly age-based & somewhat job-based distribution plans but speed things up as much as humanly possible. If there are leftover vials at the end of the day, just jam that shit into anyone who wants it. 24/7 vaccination centers, etc. Don't let a single drop go to waste & try your best to make available vaccines = vaccines administered. It ain't doing anyone any good sitting in the fridge.

Phrasing

I mean, we do this now, there's just not a direct pay-for. Very few programs have that. And at the end of the day money is fungible - if you have a dollar in the bank and you spend a dollar it doesn't particularly matter where that dollar came from or what you had planned on using it for, it'll spend either way. I would rather see universal national service (mil + civ options) for all young people. Re: "excessive adventures," in theory congress should be more responsible and take back warmaking powers from the executive, but it's very hard to get a group of 538 people to be collectively responsible when you can just shirk and let POTUS either sink or swim with the decisions. IMHO if we want to remain a global superpower some level of adventurism and/or significant financial and mil power projection is going to be required, so let's just try to do it the best way we can. Take a look at the UK; TL;DR they for various reasons stopped spending blood and treasure in maintaining a far-flung empire and now no one really gives a shit what they think. Not convinced it's a worse deal for the average Brit, just a different experience than being the hegemon and "indispensable nation." A 20+ year land war in Asia...I heard somewhere that was foolish...

From what I've read the Pfizer & Moderna vaccines (the two that are approved in the US right now) should still be relatively effective against the new UK mutation. Both the OG virus and the UK mutation use the same spike protein to latch on to cells and those two vaccines use mRNA to instruct our immune systems to attack that protein rather than other potential ways to get at the virus. YMMV on the details, I'm not a doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. FWIW this is a good article on the expected side effects of the COVID vaccine. It was worth the time spent reading it. https://www.vox.com/22158238/covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-explained TL;DR: people should expect mild/moderate reactions to both vaccines although perhaps less so with the Pfizer one, not unlike many other vaccines. True story, I got 5x vaccines all at once before a deployment and one of them was even non-standard one (Japanese encephalitis virus). I went back to work and about 30 minutes later felt like I got hit with a tranq dart like Will Ferrell in Old School. I drove home but felt absolutely crazy and slept straight from 2pm until 9am the next morning. And that's to be expected haha, it's a lot to ask your immune system to spin up against that much shit at once! Get your vaccines people; they save lives and we can end this pandemic sooner rather than later.

Indeed they do not. mRNA vaccines are very cool technology and I’m glad we’re able to field something new and highly effective against this global threat. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html

I mean shout out to all my 60/70s/80s/90s babies who died from polio...oh wait! The science seems good here and I can’t wait to take the vaccine and end this long, shitty pandemic. There can always be problems, but the alternative is currently extremely problematic so I vote we go with a very promising solution.

I for one cannot wait to get the vaccine so we can defeat this deadly virus. Literally inject it directly into my veins. Science FTW.

Down for a second straight year in the Nashville area, this year -$141 at my rank for w/ dependent. Despite housing prices up 8-10% YOY and sale-to-list at 99% but WTF do I know. It is slightly up for single guys so YMMV. When I was on active duty I did not realize that for my Guard brethren, a break in orders (or just a change in colors of money) meant the loss of rate protection. Here's to staying on one set of continuous orders 🍺🤞 While I like the attempt at empiricism that goes into the BAH calculation, if they're not transparent with the data that goes in I'm inclined to believe it's all a bunch of made up bullshit. Monkeys with typewriters etc. Money is fungible people...just raise rates 0-3% per year like basic pay and be done with it.