psunavy03

I don't need art that reminds me of how shit the real world can be. I see that every day. Why would I need to have my face rubbed in it? No, there are people who can aspire to greater things and people who think nothing can ever get better, and their art reflects it.

Nihilists who call themselves "sophisticated."

It's to the point where grimdark fiction, for me anyway, is gauche and a cliche. At this point it's countercultural and transgressive for characters to go through hell and high water, but then have a happy ending.

Too many modern writers would have ended The Shawshank Redemption by having Andy Dufresne get shot by a prison sniper the minute he got free.

Yeah, Littler is one of THE union-busting, anti-worker law firms out there. Their website specifically notes that they specialize in labor law from only the side of representing management.

> “There’s roughly 100 firefighter arsonists convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists, which means three or more fires,”

OK, so why should I care? A brief Google shows the population of North America at ~600 million people. And the number of firefighters in North America at ~1.3 million. So your likelihood of being victimized by a serial firefighter arsonist is about the same as being struck by lightning, dying in a plane crash, or being killed by a falling coconut.

At my (now former, thanks layoffs) company, we used to gripe about getting nontechnical management to understand how stupid it was to skimp on pre-prod funding . . . because pre-prod was our prod.

It's also possible to point the AI at legacy spaghetti and say "document this in detail" as a starting point for unspaghettifying it.

As someone who has been both a software professional and a jet aviator, the same process is going to occur in both. Humans will still be in the loop, but the span of control and effectiveness of each individual human will explode. There's a reason the current plan is to augment manned aircraft with "loyal wingman" drones and smaller ones. Even in the Russo-Ukrainian War, manned aircraft are still A Thing. They've even hauled old prop trainers out of storage to put a guy in the back with an assault rifle to shoot down Shahed drones, because they're too slow for fighters.

Software is going to go through the same adaptation and exaptation process as military aviation.

With respect to assessing whether an AI-controlled aircraft using only available onboard sensors and datalinks can defeat a manned aircraft in BFM, it's not even in the same ZIP code. You've never flown BFM, have you? I have.

The simulator is not the aircraft.

Because the most powerful military in the world can only do so much when ordered to execute a crap strategy by civilian leadership. Desert Storm worked because it followed the Powell Doctrine and was bounded to ejecting Iraq from Kuwait. Iraqi Freedom muddled through incoherently because the Bush and Obama administrations didn't want to understand the actual problem set they were faced with, but ultimately ended up with a reasonably stable country after way too much effort and time. Iran is what happens when you have an administration who thinks you can win a war by "just bombing things," which is ironically the stereotype most of the internet has about any kind of military action.

So many people in this thread not understanding what a luxury and a privilege "staying put" for decades is in this era of layoffs.

I wouldn't call it a "long time." MAGIC CARPET per se, especially as a default mode of operation, did not become mainstream until the last 10 years, and that's only for the aircraft that have it.

Citation is my professional network as a former Naval Flight Officer who flew off aircraft carriers, and it's not the deckplates, it's the nonskid coating that goes on top of them. It's expected to wear and be replaced every so often, but when you have to do it more often than that, it becomes a pain logistically and operationally.

And the entire point of the system is to counter the dispersion the ocean provides, much like a Naval Aviator is already required to in order to trap successfully. You are literally flying through a very narrow window that is moving in three dimensions.

I'm sure Google Maps has had to put their thumb on the scale in numerous instances. I recall reading articles about it "discovering" more optimal routes between Point A and Point B only to find things like the new "optimal" route being down a neighborhood street, and then the locals started squawking.

It already is.

The DOD is not using "flagrantly using Signal." The Secretary of Defense, whatever his preferred pronouns are, is breaking the law.

IIRC, there was a similar problem on aircraft carrier flight decks, where they had to induce some randomized amount of dispersion to keep the tailhook from hitting the same spot over and over again.

People can't even have a conversation about any kind of societal issues these days without pointing at the other political tribe and casting aspersions about "what they really meant" instead of engaging with what's actually being said.

Forgetting that if you really can hear a dogwhistle, you're also a dog.

As a former Naval Flight Officer, it's somewhat ironic how the private sector is more "sir, yes sir" command and control than the military ever was, and they're the ones who stereotype servicemembers for being drones who can only follow orders.

The other thing I've seen incredibly less of in software than in uniform is a bias for action at all levels. Combined with understanding the mission, a mentality that "in the absence of being told what to do, I will act." Better to ask forgiveness than permission, etc. etc. So many people in the private sector just wait for the boss to push them around like chess pieces, and I can't understand how they're OK living like that.

This is how these kinds of articles always go.

Tell that to the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, the Viet Cong, Mao, and George Washington.

Just because the government has tanks does not mean "we have tanks and nukes, therefore we'll win" has proven true across military history.

Yes. That's what the impeachment clause is for.

The President made a nomination. The Senate refused it. It's the Senate's prerogative to deny confirmation to the nominee.

The Supreme Court has told Trump to pound sand as often as it's upheld his policies. As dangerous as many of the things the Trump administration is doing are, there are other dangerous narratives out there, and the caricaturing of the Supreme Court is one of those.

There's a huge difference between "I disagree with this legal rationale" and "this court is illegitimate." Like it or not, every Justice on the Court is there legitimately. One of them via bare-knuckle hardball politics, to be sure. But according to the rules.

There's a great generalization that conveniently excuses you not having to engage with viewpoints you disagree with.

I frankly can't see how someone can look around at the world in 2026 and come to the conclusion that "military" == "automatically bad." There are bad actors in this world who would be more than happy to kill you and take your stuff because they feel like it, and these days some of them run countries.

"Bothsidesism" is a lie that is used to avoid criticizing one side when the other side is also bad. Just because one side is awful does not grant the other side a free pass to be immune from criticism or to get their way on everything. The idea of "bothsidesism" forces a false dichotomy and then forces you to pick a side, when there are almost always more than two choices. It's what partisans use to beat down people who say "I pick 'None Of The Above,' because you both suck."

"Bothsidesism" is a tired argument. Somehow if you don't think that one side of a debate is utter evil and the other side is as pure as the driven snow, you're engaging in "bothsidesism" if you acknowledge there are any shades of gray in the world. Which is a childish argument for anyone older than a high school sophomore.

> IMO the sort of person who wants a vehicle like Elon's dumpster has a strong overlap with Elon's politics. Basically everything about its design and marketing was aimed at the sort of person who is focused on presenting a masculine image, who thinks they're going to be in a war zone on their daily commute, who wishes they could drive through a crowd of protesters, etc.

Elon is an ass, but this is still the most crudely and childishly stereotyped thing I've read on the internet today. Congrats.

Until someone who hates Elon (not saying that's wrong per se) throws a brick through the window (which IS wrong per se) and you're on the hook for paying for it.