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956 Worldwide

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Posts posted by 956 Worldwide

  1. 10 minutes ago, bolverk said:

    One would think that. Around this time last year, I made the permanent move away from Austin, where I’d lived for 28 years, to a rural area. My long-dormant Facebook account has become a lifeline for getting information about what’s happening around town.

    There are no local TV stations. We do have a handful of local radio stations BUT they're mostly canned iHeartMedia stations that pipe in shitty country or classic rock with a local person only coming on air in the morning or at noon to talk about the happenings at the dry feed store or that someone's dog got loose. The local newspaper? Fuhgeddaboudit.

    Out here, FB really is treated like some combination of Next Door/Reddit/Xitter/eBay all rolled into one with a few groups people have put together to rant and rave about shit or rumor monger. Still, everyone also turns to it for crises. It's not an exaggeration to say that the site plays a critical role in official city and county communications, which is kinda fucked up.

    That's why the emergency cellphone system that the state has, or some sort of alarm system, would've been the best way to warn people. Well, that or having one of those NOAA radios out at the camps.

    The last three feet to the audience are always the most critical and most difficult. If you’re not on Facebook at 2AM, then a Facebook or Twitter post doesn’t help you. Radio is the gold standard. 

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  2. 9 hours ago, elfenix said:

    The Smithsonian installation is perfect. Behind the other coolest thing America ever built. 

     

    IMG_20180430_1037082.thumb.jpg.d95190c137ce059a698fd7ffc0a0ddb4.jpg

     

    IMG_20180430_110800.thumb.jpg.5b3741dfc0d2e285d57ab02739765c86.jpg

     

     

    Completely agree.  The Udvar-Hazey Center is likely the best flight and space museum in the world and an orbiter belongs there with the rest of America’s treasures. Moving it will simply deprive generations of aviation lovers and future aviators or engineers from marveling at what America can do. 
     

    The correct answer for what to do was to put a line in a budget a decade ago to install the NY orbiter in Houston properly cared for. To fund NASA to tell its own story. Obama should have asked for it and Congress should have voted for it.

    This is just sheer idiocy at this point, they don’t like the “woke Smithsonian” and so the shuttle ends as it lived- far underfunded and directed at the wrong mission. 

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  3. 41 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    The Islamic religion has a lot of problems that make many of its adherents problematic.

    The precise same thing can be said of Christians, and the problems are very similar in origin (ancient texts selectively interpreted by uneducated clerics and followed slavishly by uneducated adherents).

    The difference being that often, practitioners of Islam are brown, while practitioners of Christianity are white.  But even this isn't really true so much anymore.

    And Islam is not a minority religion.

    It's kind of like what is actually antisemitic and what is legitimate criticism of Israel.  Curiously, hardly anyone levels criticism at Judaism, per se.

    Islamophobia is a whack term.  It’s usually deployed in one of two ways:

    1. As the accepted term for anti-Muslim bigotry (which is a real thing), although “anti-Muslim” would suffice. 

    2. As a subtle way to try and blend the lines between legitimate criticism of some types of Islamic belief and practice with anti-Muslim bigotry. 
     

    Among some types of academics and commenters there is a pervasive effort to make people think they are talking about 1) when they mean 2); and to use it to immediately silence any justified scrutiny of Islam. 
     

    Similar playbook to “Russophobia,” it’s possible to be an anti-Russian bigot who hates Russian people but “Russophobia” as a concept is just a way to try and silence any legitimate criticism of the Russian state, Russian state ideology, and Russian behavior.

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  4. 43 minutes ago, Degenerate Gardner said:

    My brain reels as we head to Trump’s fifth 4th of July as President. 

    For the first time, I identify with Patricia Arquette in Pulp Fiction. America has been carried in by Vincent Vega in the middle of the night, overdosed and near death. With no reliable medical skills, I’m in the background watching with sick fascination as we head into uncharted territory with an adrenaline shot to the heart. I wonder how long the old girl can hang on.

     

     

     

    That’s Uma Thurman my man. 

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  5. Excellent thread by David Frum and the interview with former Ambassador Brink will be worth listening to.  He is correct at the core:  Every decision to slow-roll aid and belief that the war could be delicately managed to avoid angering Russia too much set up the abandonment of Ukraine.  
     

     

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  6. On 6/30/2025 at 6:17 PM, Parliament said:

    I have read,  but have not confirmed, that the Morman faith is more prevalent in the military (percent wise) than the overall US population.  Mormons are called to serve, and many of them wanna join the Army instead of building houses in Guatemala.  Kinda cuts against the stereotype there.  As my Mormon buddy says, “We aren’t Amish.”

     

    8 hours ago, abuelo gringo said:

    LDS are pretty common at IRS.  Part of it is their commitment to service, which may also explain the military participation.  Many I met were exceptionally civil and agreeable, but I found many of the men very sexist and sometimes quite promiscuous (maybe not so bad for Surly.)  Probably no more than evangelical youth pastors.

    There are some other branches of government where Mormons are very disproportionately represented; the ones where speaking different languages and having a squeaky clean background get you a good chunk of the way to hired. 
     

    Mormons also believe that the Constitution is a divinely inspired document.  It’s a bit beyond just a penchant for service. 

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  7. Thom Tillis is being forced to retire because of Trump’s BBB and his recognition that voting for it would cost him re-election. But at least he did his job and confirmed Pete Hegseth to show loyalty.

    Only kind of leopards because he will go home and be comfortable and not personally hurt by all the awful things he enabled.  It is humiliating though and that’s something.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5375837-tillis-reelection-senate-north-carolina/

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  8. Loving the implication of the CASA ruling.  Trump can demand that every first-born be sacrificed to appease Stephen Miller’s wrath and unless you live in a lib state it’s happening for at least as long as it takes to certify a class. 
     

    America is broken. And the hell of it is that I fundamentally agree that it’s a stretch of judicial power to issue nation-wide injunctions and we are beyond the norm. But there’s also a norm against just issuing facially unconstitutional executive orders. And at this point it’s just 6 people cherry-picking the norms that should continue to apply (and it’s the ones that appease Stephen Miller).

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  9. 2 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

    I guess this is the thread for this. Two days ago, many sites reported on the Pentagon releasing tape of MOP “bunker busters” being tested. Yesterday, the reporting was that the US did not drop MOP BBs in Iran.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-didnt-use-mop-bunker-buster-on-isfahan-nuclear-site-because-facility-was-too-deep-report/

    One site didn’t get that ordinance, but two others did. The media mostly focused on Fordow (where they were used) but we also hit Nantz and this site. Submarine launched cruise missiles went to Isfahan. 

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  10. On 6/24/2025 at 1:40 AM, Vegas64 said:

    Thought this was an interesting thought about computers:

    Will aliens have computers? Deutsch’s question (Is there a (single) universal computing device which can efficiently simulate any other physical system?) is a simple, fundamental question about the nature of the universe. It’s the kind of question which alien counterparts to Deutsch could plausibly come to ponder. And the alien civilizations of which they are a part would then be led inexorably to invent computers.

    In this sense, computers aren’t just human inventions. They are a fundamental feature of the universe, the answer to a simple and profound question about how the universe works. And they have likely been discovered over and over again by many alien intelligences.

    Of course they have computers. We already know this. That’s how we win. 
     

    image.jpeg.b113d0420bf3b8bf9bb63c419ac32e31.jpeg

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  11. Needs to be said bluntly that this is absolutely insane. CIA director tweeting  blurry photos of a press release (why?) to satisfy a demand from POTUS. “Great sources at the CIA report that the emperor had clothes on and moreover they are the most fashionable clothes ever.”
     

    In real time we are watching the dismantling of the most effective and powerful national security apparatus, from intel to diplomacy to influence to defense, that has ever existed. By choice by bored people who elected the most boring and venal man alive.  

     

     

     

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  12. 5 minutes ago, bluto said:

    Thread turned fully boomer argument

    The truth on this is that Japanese intentions, the need to drop the bomb, and the motivations of Truman are bitterly disputed by extremely credible historians and specialists 80 years later to say nothing of the fog of war and politics HST had to work through at the time. Anyone who is dogmatic on this is arguing from ideology.  It’s also extremely true that the planners who dropped the bomb had no clear understanding of the long-term fallout (ISWYDT) aside from “big boom.” 

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  13. The really interesting countries for proliferation purposes are in Asia-Pacific and MENA, not Europe.  And the EU is not a real security actor.

    I’ve got a long post here that I won’t reproduce but the bottom line is that allowing Iran to have a nuke is likely more harmful for proliferation than targeted U.S. strikes. 

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