FLEA

I'll add this too. Don't be afraid to speak up and ask questions, even seemingly stupid ones. For some reason a lot of people in UPT, myself included, get weird there. We forget it's supposed to be a training environment and focus more on the competitive aspects. Then we get this weird idea that we don't want the IP to know that we aren't sure of something or we might be making a mistake so we just stay silent about it and hope it goes away or works itself out. If that's you dude, speak up. You might get lambasted once or twice for weak GK but often you will find the concepts you struggle with, or the things you have difficulty retaining, so did many others. Even something simple like an ops limit, speak up. Maybe that IP also struggled memorizing that number and he will tell you a stupid limric or story that will make you laugh, but guess what, you'll never forget it again . Furthermore, better to nip those lose ends in the bud when they expose themselves to you early, than to let them build until the end of a block or a check ride. If you get to the end of a phase and still have basic questions you are never going to catch up. Ask questions early and often. People have way more patience for stupid questions with a week 3-4 trainee than with a week 20-21 trainee. I dunno. Maybe that's common sense but for me it took like 6 years in my career to figure that out and I looked like an ass every flying training program i went through.

I've noticed a few REALLY old guys are big on VSI and roll indicator when they teach instruments. However I've never met an instructor that didn't teach attitude indicator 90% of the time. (Or visual references if you're vfr)

We should do a baseops charity calendar like firefighters but instead of cut chip n Dale's you have dudes with beer guts hanging out a low cocked zipper with a full can of Skoal in their mouth. I'm sure my wife would buy haha

I've avoided paying as much as possible and try to wear issues flight suit to the max extent possible. I had to buy ABUs to go to SOS though as my commissioning source gave me BDUs that phased out a year later. I want to avoid buying OCPs but I have a feeling that will catch up with me as well. I don't understand the intention behind officers buying their own uniforms. Like I understand we make more money. But I feel like having us buy our own crap was a rule that was thought about when we were in the same uniform for decades and didn't decide to find the newest fashion every 10 years or so.

I'll send you a PM. My airframe is unique and a small community; i dont want the bobs to know im thinking to leave yet.

I've worked corporate before and detested it. I was an intern in the financial sector in college and it just wasn't for me. I think my biggest fear is it's going to feel the same going back. I have no doubt I'll find work but it's all up to 1.) Will I get a salary that's competitive with what I'm leaving the military with (with flight pay and if I would have taken the bonus) and 2.) What's the quality of life? I'm willing to take a substantial hit to #1 if #2 is substantially better. But I'm afraid it will be like I remember as an intern in which case its really going to suck. That said, I can't watch my wife's mental health deteriorate any longer. So I'm absolutely committed to leaving after this tour. I've had several people reccommend real estate so I think I'm going to look into that.

Bringing my conversation to this thread so I don't derail the airline thread. Question on guard/reserve jobs, my understanding is it's very difficult to get hired on guard/reserves as a Lt Col due to the limited number of billets in a squadron for O-5 and the unit preference to award those to people that grew up in the unit. Am I wrong though I'm assuming that advice is mainly geared toward flying jobs? It seems to me that there are staffs out there filled with reservist, where an O-5 would be more appropriate.

You can get more than your needs off Amazon. Unless you are routinely putting 4 plates on each side of the bar a gold's gym squat rack/bar will do just fine with an adjustable bench. Ive squated as high as 305 and the Golds rack/bar I'm using now is more than suitable structurally. I wouldn't fawn off on the gimmicky nature of some of these brands. Rogue is nice stuff but was designed for commercial CrossFit containers. A simple Olympic bar, squat rack and adjustable bench will get you 95% of everything you need. You can add a power tower later for dips and pullups. What kind of programming are you guys into? I started out on Strong Lifts 5X5 and stuck with it until about 1.5 years, then I started building my own. Strong Lifts was by far the single best workout program I ever tried in my life though. Highly reccommend it, especially for new lifters.

You are right, that word confuses me sometimes because of its similarity to suffering. Thanks for the correction.

Thanks everyone. Lots of good advice on here. I'm sure something will work out.

Had one prior to all this so was lucky when my HHG showed up the week the gym closes here. I'll be honest though, even with a very complete home gym I find myself working out on base more often. I realised I usually lift for the community and it just doesn't have the same feeling being by yourself.

Extraordinarily tough. If I stay longer I will promote and burn quite a few guard/reserve possibilities. If I get out guard/reserve is easier but I have little civilian oppurtunity to float me until the majors. Regionals will be tough with kids simply because the pay cut. I don't have the financial stability to float that for more than 6 months to a year. I think I'm definitely set on getting out because the reality is AD lifestyle is slowly eroding my family to a place that I don't like where it's going. But I'm starting to think Airlines aren't the best option. I just wish I had some sort of credentials that actually meant something anywhere else. Unfortunately, Amazon and Google aren't really impressed by my ACSC in correspondence certificate. Thanks to those that have responded.

I said clearly in my initial post there is a gap between social activist femenism and academic femenism. I don't think a huge portion of activist femenist really know their own school well. I do think they like to crop certain principles from the theory that support their belief they are still not treated equally in society. Activist femenist largely ignore male suffrage or deny it's a thing. I would say right there that demeans their true femenist credentials because and academic femenist would be interested in why men suffer differently than women. I guess what I'm trying to say is the activist femenist says women are not treated equally. The academic femenist says women are treated differently with no respect to equality. I'm closer to the later because I do believe both sexes are treated differently and suffer differently and I do think we can do a better job of easing that suffering in certain aspects of society. However, I question how much of that is biologically based. For instance, I don't think males are behaviorly programmed by society to be protective of women I believe it's instinctual because there is an evolutionary recognition that female survivability is more critical to reproduction/population sustainment than male survivability. I think we naturally value women's lives more because we recognize they are essential to childbearing. The moral question is though, when the Titanic is sinking, is it still ethical to this day to declare women and children first? Whether it's biological or nurtured, should we treat actually women's lives as more important? The Red Pill is a good documentary on Netflix about men's suffrage if anyone is interested.

Yes....... this. I love the iconic look of the single piece but man if you are just a sweaty individual as i am, its a real pain in the ass.

No troll account, and I'm not saying I subscribe to this stuff but I do understand it. Femenism is one of multiple schools used to describe phenomena in society. Strictly speaking I don't think I subscribe to femenism because femenist largely seem to advocate we are behaviorly conditioned and I think they under estimate the the role of biological conditioning. But yes, femenist have some strong arguments about some phenomena. So how would you explain phenomena like the fact that a few male familial heads held the majority of power on the entire planet for nearly 6 centuries? How would you explain that we have certain biases about what roles women should have on society versus men? How would you explain that the value of male life seems to be lower than the value of female life? That men are expected to undertake more risky roles? How would explain how humans bacame monogomous when it's well known ancestrally we weren't? All of the above are observations. Femenism and concepts of patriarchy are just one attempt to explain them.

Curious what people's thoughts are on what I should do; advice, etc... Making some assumptions that the airline industry will have a solid bounce back by the time I'm eligible to get out in 3 years at 13.5 years of service. I'm really worried about my PIC time. I've done MQ-9s and staff. I'm on my 3rd MWS now and restarting as a copilot. I have 100 AC hours from my first MWS but I feel like I'm unlikely to finish the tour where I'm at adding more anymore than 100 to that. A lot of the career websites for airlines say that 500 PIC hours in a multi engine turbine is preferred but I'm not seeing myself coming close. Especially since getting PIC time as an AC is difficult since the minute you throw an instructor on board for training you lose the a code. Supposing a hiring environment in 3 years similar to the one last year what would you do? Apply anyway? Or should I start looking into other things? Staying in the AF is not an option for me. Nor is working for the federal government in any capacity. I value free time more than money but need to make at least as much as I'm making in the AF to sustain QOL. Just curious what other oppurtunity people might see in this situation from their angle.

It definitely does exist. Especially in the military, a primarily conservative culture. I wouldn't make that up if I didnt know there were people I work with that are pretty quiet liberals at work.

That's not what the patriarchy is referring to. It's referring to our monkey roots where humans are primarily an alpha ape led society. In chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest cousins, clans are led by a single alpha male who takes exclusive access to resources (primarily good) and mating. They will keep a harem of 6-8 female apes. Male apes who are not the alpha though have a choice, they either leave the society and explore the jungle solo, significantly risky, or they remain with the tribe as a second class citizen. The alpha male will eat first, then the females, then the additional males. The additional males will never have access to mating. The concept of the patriarchy is that as society developed from ape man we inhereted these structures into our own structures which is evidences by genetic behavior and the behaviors of our cousins. A very few number of males became the patriarchy and began to establish systems that ensured they remain in power, i.e. feudalism, endowment, property laws. Women and men both become equally oppressed to keep the few alpha men in power. Actually quite fascinating stuff that explains a lot on gender differences like why men are expected to give their place on a life raft for women and children go this day. (By devalueing the cost of male life you reduce the probability of rivals) or how monogomy came to form (turns out in a society thousands of sexless men become quite restless and start to revolt). Hence, I largely agree with you that the tale of human history is one of mutual suffering and cooperation. Doesn't mean a patriarchy doesn't exist though, and it's just not referring to you. The fact you are in the military, a predominantly male occupation with a historical expectation of risk, is evidence sir, that you are sadly not an alpha. In casual conversation you might bemoan that you are going to go to work for "the man" and you'd much like to stick it to "the man" but aren't really sure who this man is. Well, he is the patriarchy. So I mentioned earlier femenism is a largely nature vs nurture debate. The question is, do we still predominantly follow men in society because our genetic ape roots push us that direction, or do we primarily follow men because of thousands of generations of cultural institutionings? Edit: I should add too there is a significant difference between academic femenism and activist femenism.

Someone once told me, if you truly believe you are right, don't resolve to change someone's mind in a single conversation. Resolve to change their point of view in a 10 year friendship. Was great fricken advice and I have some extraordinarily close friends because of it. But in reality, I have found very few people deeply challenge their own beliefs passed college.

I'm not talking about the talking heads. I'm talking about every day people. I'm talking about the quiet dude in your office that everyone knows votes Democrat but he never really speaks up because he doesn't want to instigate an argument. Or your neighbor, who's nothing but friendly but keeps a BLM sign his yard. Those people don't have agendas. They are just living their life trying to be as good a human being as they know how. Talk to them and ask questions. Instead of saying "but blacks commit more crime" ask "there are statistics that show blacks commit more crimes, do you think that has anything to do with it?" I think you'll be surprised. These people didn't arrive at their conclusions in a vacuum. If its all the MSM why didn't you fall for it? Do you really believe you are smarter than roughly half the country? Or do you think your expereinces in life led you to be skeptical of MSM? Have you considered their expereinces may be reinforced by MSM? We're all just people man. Everyone is trying to live the best life they know how.

Nope. Thats exactly what they are doing. Doesn't make the necessity to dismantle those constructs any less moral. Words are power. Denialist got beat to the punch. A letter to Webster saying that "we want to preserve the repugnance of the term racism, a think that we think systematic bias will dilute" probably would not have been met with as quick a change but would have generated enough debate to alter the conversation differently. But to my point, this is what happens when both sides dont talk to each other earnest with an intent to understand what they are actually trying to say. Far too often in society we just make the assumption that everyone has "some agenda." 99% of people in this society are not organized enough to have an agenda. They are just arriving at their own moral conclusions.

That's one opinion. Language evolves. It's possible that existing language doesn't have the neccessary descriptions to discuss the constructs they are attempting to describe accurately. That doesn't mean the construct isn't founded in reality or it doesn't exist. This is a direct repercussion of denial. As you attempted to call me out earlier in a post and say "that's not racism" the retort would be "well then what is it?". Since no word exist and the phenomena is already associated with racism, it seems the scholarship of English literacy at Merriam Webster has decided for us.

In an interesting turn related to the power of language, the definition of racism will change, forcing discourse to change as well. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/dictionary-racism-definition-update-trnd/index.html

That is 90% of what all these conversations are about. Femenism and the patriarchy is mostly a nature vs nurture debate and how much influence each has in our life. Institutional racism is a discussion on how policies, principles and values influence behavior that reinforces racial disparity or dismantles it. Also worth noting many femenist do discuss disprortional sentences for males vs females in society. The concept of patriarchy is not that males have advantages over females. It's that some, a very few males, have a massive advantage over everyone, and they enforce a structure that treats people differently based on gender to remain in power. That's a hugely philosophical debate in its own right though.

Half of NATO isn't even sure there is Chinese influence. They are happy to buy on to their Huawei 5G plans and belt and road initiatives. NATO isn't going to win us China. If we could convince Korea and Japan to get passed grievances and sign a tri-latteral, we would be like that meme of a dude walking with NATO but turning back and looking at the hot chick that is Japan/Korea (#5 and #6 on the Global Firepower Index). Regardless, both countries are still committed to working with us, just not with each other. What Germany, and most of NATO needs to realize about the US and NATO, is at the end of the day, states are going to serve their interest. The US interest in NATO has been declining since the fall of the Berlin wall. Without a clear purpose, the alliance doesn't really do anything for us. GWB tried to define this GWOT thing but it fell flat with some countries. Because we keep adding partners, the ability to provide clarity of purpose for the alliance gets convoluted. What may have been easy common ground to find among 16 nations in 1999 is really difficult among 30 members today. The people in the Alliance we are closest with, mainly France and the Five Eyes nations, we have other partnerships with that transcend NATO. I think 10K troops in the Pacific will do a lot more for us against China than 10K troops in Germany.