FLEA

Thats all this stupid uniform board is. We convene it every year and every year all they do is circle jerk decisions from 5-10 years ago back into style so that someone else can change it back in 5-10 years. If Green bags were still common I guarantee sleeves would have to come back down next year but since that isn't happening my money is that hands wont go in pockets anymore and you can't talk on your cell phone again. This shit is just stupid..... do we really pay people to give us their opinion on what they think looks professional in their completely biased and sheltered opinions?

I think it should all be weighed but the two competing interest here are 1.) would release help, degrade or do nothing for US interest and 2.) does the public interest in the events outstrip any potential harm. My only point is I can see the case can be made that release could be made that criteria for #2 may not be met.

Well..... this isnt political: https://abc7news.com/chinese-spy-balloon-donald-trump-balloons-news/12777025/

I remember flying at 220 or 230 once over NM and I saw a bright red "pennywise" balloon just go right up maybe 100 feet in front of us and I was like..... nope...... not diverting to Albuquerque......

Yeah but to be fair lets not pretend the DoD cares one iota about that. Like.... I will give you a lot of this is nonsense, but lets not pretend that suicide ideation in troops is something the DoD views as a problem.

Theres a big difference in the decision change for a grunt taking out a bunker in a tactical situation compared to the nervous system response of the entire north American air defense system. But most presumably, none of these shoot downs happened without White House approval, which is a way bigger deal than NORAD/AWACS/etc..... How long from detection until shoot down did that process take? And to put it a different frame: we know publicly that the US detected--late--a balloon of a specific size moving at specific altitudes, specific speeds. Its probably more than public knowledge that most people in the security community view gaps in that recognition, and in response the US made changes to their C2ISR apparatuses to improve response/sensitivity. Then, the US shoots down three more objects...... of what size, speed, altitude, etc.....? How were those apparatuses adjusted for sensitivity and how honed was the accuracy on those adjustments? Was the US close to be successful with their adjustments? Or were they based on poor assumptions? And can I expect the US C2 apparatuses to use similarly successful or poor processes to make decisions in the future.

I think the bigger issue is the over or under reactions the video would more or less display would probably be invaluable to China/other competitors on how reactive our national decision making chain is. There is already some holes in that response that are very public now. No reason to widen those holes with additional data.

There is a problem currently facing society that the most vocal get the most spotlight. Its not just main stream media, hollywood, and big broadcast...... social media has a similar effect. Take this as an example: Compare this post from r/whitepeopletwitter to the video above. Nothing in the tweet or the retweet suggests Donald Trump said anything calling for violence, insurrection or harming police officers. Yet an anonymous redditor (which I believe everyone on this forum recognizes as a cesspool of humanity, albeit an unfortunately popular cesspool) will post to a far left leaning audience that this is exactly what this tweet means and recieve 33K upvotes in a few hours and 4.8K supportive comments. This is more than hypocrisy. This is about BAD actors on the extreme political ends of the spectrum trying to manipulate language, platform and ideology, to promote political agenda. And the sad truth is the vast majority of Americans in the middle are powerless to speak up or say anything about this type of nonsense at risk of being socially cancelled.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/29/us-civil-war-fears-poll This is likely the poll brabus was referring to. Posted just for reference.

Show me where? That's all I'm asking.... Still looking for the ROTC policy memo that states you get extra points on your order of merit if you are a minority or woman.... Or the Academy memo that directs ascensions to only come from one category. I work in the tech sector now. (Decided not to go airlines) and I'm not seeing it. Youre making a huge leap from "talent recruiters told to focus women and minorities" to "hiring authorities told to favor minorities." There just isn't any data to back up this assertion that it's happening except all this anecdotal evidence that people once knew a minority pilot that sucked at their job. I mean I knew a lot of white male pilots that sucked at their job too..... It doesn't really mean anything. At some point that person completed multiple training programs, passed multiple checkrides, earned and ATP..... Were every one of those hiring officials, flight examiners and instructor pilots all on in on this DEI conspiracy or is it possible maybe just possible, that you get some pilots who just fall through the cracks regularly......

Except none of that is actually happening. Noone is hiring based on race or gender. This is a hysteria some people are hung on and it is simply a myth a overwhelmingly large proportion of the time. Hiring based on race and gender is against federal law, has been against federal law, and will continue to be against federal law. And this idea that the main stream DEI crowd is trying to overturn that law is not in touch with reality.

Because they are typically the high paying ones without significant personal danger or health consequences. Pretty obvious.

I don't read that as a direction to hiring manager to pick only minorities or women--which would be unlawful under existing federal statutes and no company would risk doing it. This has been litigated several times and a hiring authority has never won a case trying to justify taking race into account in its hiring decisions. If the HR department is functioning properly, the hiring authorities should never receive candidate information on race/gender/etc..... A separate arm of HR collects that and it is kept highly confidential. I read that as a direction to talent recruiters to spend more time in the space of women and people of color to ensure a higher number of applying, thus increasing the probabilities that someone who is qualified for the position from one of those sub-categories applies. Remember, talent recruiters have absolutely 0 bearing on the hiring decision for a candidate. Their soul purpose is to find people to put in front of hiring managers. I also read it as a message to ERG's to spend more time doing community outreach, mentoring and working with applicants, to give them guidance on what types of things they can do to prepare to submit the strongest application ever. Again, ERG's have nothing to do with a hiring decision. They are there to internally support workplace culture and to help provide external influences to promote their affinity group. I dont think you would find either of those two things problematic.

Gotta start by recognizing DEI is trying to do both. So if you say "I want to get rid of DEI" you are also saying "I want to continue to keep up artificial and stupid barriers that make it harder for certain people to succeed." Lets start the conversation by acknowledging most people on here are specifically annoyed with the perceived notion that DEI is pushing hiring people based on a certain skin color or gender over someone who might be more qualified. Then we need some data to show that 1.) that actually happens in a significant volume. 2.) those individuals weren't hired over people who were overqualified. Because you can be overqualified for a position and you should not expect to get hired into something you are overqualified for. (Unless you deliberately alter your resume and work history to remove those overqualifications.)

Fair enough, I was more focused on the act than the actual value. Looking up Becker's salary, he sold off approximately 3/4 of his entire years equity pay. Its still an eye brow raise. But on to a new question--and I can't really think of another place to ask it.... does anyone use Ground News? And if so, how would you rate it? Im interested in the concept but not sure I want to pay a subscription price for it. Do you actually get access to the content or articles they post or do you have to pay for those subscriptions as well?

Dont worry.... they will find a way to manage to take a trip what seems like every weekend to either, LA, NYC, or Las Vegas anyway...

You've never heard of Hiring Our Heroes? Its probably one of the largest nationally funded DEI initiatives in existence. Edit: Also probably one of the most successful if you compare KPI's pre 2012 to 2023. As of last year veteran under employment and unemployment is now statistically negligible from civilian counterparts.

Also worth noting the legal implications of LOAC are somewhat meaningless... what really matters is the strength of support whatever action has among the International Community. Lawyers will legal-jutsu there way through a maze to make something sound like it makes sense, and if you get enough western countries that want something to sound a certain way they will certainly make it sound that way.

I'm admittedly not familiar with the theater anymore--since I separated last year, the current SPINS, etc..... However..... if it were the US in Russia's shoes, prosecuting a war in a country with coastal lines in the Black Sea..... a water body that encapsulated critical sea lanes necessary to our supply chain, we would have declared a JOA that likely would have incorporated large portions if not all of the Black Sea. There would be NOTAMS and other types of communications circulated to the international community that the geographic confines of the JOA were apart of an armed conflict between us and whatever state we are warring with and warning third party air traffic that flight into the conflict zone would be extremely high risk and safety couldn't be guaranteed. I'm trying to imagine this in the context of Korea, where if we kicked that off, we would likely declare most of the Yellow Sea and parts of the East China Sea as part of that JOA. And if we knew, for instance, China was operating assets in that JOA that were offering materiel wartime support to North Korea, how would we address that. Especially if we knew that support included information that directly contributed to the kill-chain cycle of the state we are warring with. TBH I don't know? From another lens: Geneva only describes two statuses for "people" in a conflict zone. They are either combatants, or non-combatants. And either status can operate either legally, or illegally. It doesn't really outline the case of an RPA though that is not a person and is simply a materiel asset. However, with a manned aircraft, in international waters, from a non state party to the conflict, those members aboard that aircraft would be considered non-combatants. The general thing about Geneva from my understanding is that to maintain lawful status, non-combatants are expected to act as non-combatants which means not performing actions that directly involve themselves in the conflict. Providing intelligence that relates to targeting to one party of the conflict would almost definitely undermine that status and I think the case could be made at that point that you might be a combatant or an illegal non-combatant. With the former you could be lawfully targeted, with the later, you could be held criminally accountable.

Lets take a minute and recognize the fact the DEI encompasses a lot more than race. DEI is focused on anything that is a protected class. So gender, age, disability, national origin, VETERAN STATUS..... etc..... You are focusing on one aspect of DEI that you do not particularly like but there is a lot of other stuff out there. Most people on this forum directly benefit from DEI efforts based on age and veteran status. Many other veterans benefit off of DEI efforts protecting disability statuses.

So one thing I recognized in this whole debate is there are really two cultures in hiring in the corporate world. The first one is, you have a role, and a job description, and you are ideally going to fit the person with the highest pedigree of qualification in that role so that they can provide the most value add. The other perspective is you have a role, and a job description. The job description is the minimum bar to complete the job and the job as its described is all thats being asked or needed of the employee for the company to meet strategy. Any candidate who meets the minimum qualification is equally qualified with any other candidate because at the end of the day no matter how amazing they are, they will only be asked to do the job as described. Most all of us, think in both ways at one time or another. We are all cautious of job creep. For example, nearly everyone has been critical of airlines offering perks for things like masters degrees since its well known that for most airline pilots you're never going to be asked to make a quantitative management decision that steers the direction of the company (I know thats not 100% true and there are management pilots but this is a generalization to MOST pilots). That masters degree is then in actuality a 0 value add for that position, its just a recruiting barrier. Similarly, I was reading a post on reddit today about a C-suite executive for a major healthcare firm who wants a lower stress job and is willing to take a pay cut but recruiters won't talk to him. To some extent hiring over qualified people is problematic. For example, can I legitimately hire a former COO of a F500 to be a Project Manager? Thats likely more problems than answers. Sure his management is probably on point but whats going to be their capacity to accept authority and to not try and steer the strategy of their own management. The reason I bring this up though is because I've noticed that people who support large DEI initiatives tend to fall in the second camp more often than the first, and people who are critical of DEI fall in the first camp more than the second. This is just a personal observation, nothing empirical. But the DEI crowd tends to fall back a lot on "if I have 10 candidates, and all are capable to do the job as advertised, why not give the job to the person who has likely had more barriers to get here?" Where as people against DEI would further scrutinize those 10 candidates and say "well yes, but candidate A, D and F have masters degrees, and Candidate G got a 95 on his PT test, so clearly they are more qualified." I dont think either approach is wrong really. Job qualification creep is a real thing, but so is getting value add by hiring employees that have unique qualifications others dont.

Definitely on my to-do list now. The whole story is quite incredible. I've spent a few trips in Thailand and have always been impressed by the resilience of that culture to come together in difficult measures. The story of the 13 is a really good illustration of how hope and grit personify that nation.

I watched "13 Lives" on Amazon the other night. Disclaimer: Im an avid diver and love scuba diving. The movie was fantastic though. A very emotional story about the recovery of the Thai soccer team that got stranded in that cave in 2018. There were some surprising things about that rescue that were kept hidden from the public at the time that I only learned through the movie, but fact checked afterwards and it was all true. Amazing stuff.

So admittedly I don't know where I got 200M from, probably just poor memory, big numbers and getting old. But here is the visual capitalist article on the timeline I was thinking about. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/timeline-shocking-collapse-of-silicon-valley-bank/#:~:text=While the collapse of SVB,to help buoy the economy.

Are we certain of that? I've seen it mentioned now in several places including visual capitalist. I just googled it though and Bloomberg says it was $3.6M.