Glonzo the Bureaucrat 🇬🇱 🌹

wave to @jerrybeach73.bsky.social, because holy shit Hofstra's dancing!

Minesweeper but it's the Strait of Hormuz. Source: sweepthestrait.com

Chat, what does it look like when a San Antonio-class takes a leaker Silkworm to the stern?

i am being absolutely serious here: CENTCOM had one job and it was literally to prepare for an Iran contingency

Did Australia scrap theirs already? The Anzac-class, I think?

Sleepin' with the fishes (and the sport divers...)

CENTCOM: Hey Navy, send me some modern escort frigates capable of defending a convoy from Iranian stand-off weapons.

CNO: Sorry, best I can do is a 40-knot corvette with a helicopter and a deck gun. 🤷‍♂️

A sticker on the bottom of a wastebasket that says Federal Prison Industries, Terminal Island, Calif. - MF'D 1968

My old office in South Dakota had a steel wastebasket with this sticker on the bottom. Don't make 'em like they used to.

"but all those pulp mill jobs..."

bruh you still can't eat the fish that come out of Ward Cove and it's been 30-some years since the mill shut down.

If we can continue to use technology to generate more food from less land, that means we can increase the proportion of land reserved for conservation purposes, just as increasing the density of human population in cities prevents the need for sprawl into undeveloped areas.

Yes, we need to decarbonize agriculture. Good news: we're rapidly figuring out how to harness the practically-infinite energy provided by our nearby nuclear fusion device known as the Sun. We can power tractors and combines and drones with solar-generated electricity.

Backbreaking farm labor is not equivalent to being a steward of the ecosystem. Technology is not the enemy of sustainability; it can be used for both evil and good.

Where and how do you draw that line?

What do we even have left that's capable of mine countermeasures?

Humans invented the plow maybe 8,000 years ago because it was less work to use the power of an animal to rip open the ground to plant seeds than to use a hoe to manually turn the soil.

No, it is not "colonialist" or "capitalist" to seek ways to grow more food with less labor.

Colonialism and capitalism began in Mesopotamia 12,000 years ago?

USCENTCOM’s entire reason for existence for the last forty years has been to prevent exactly THIS ONE THING from happening

and yet

I don't think it's true in the least.

We tried a world where the United States is aloof and isolationist. During that time human civilization fought its two worst and most destructive wars of all time.

That's true. Guess what? We need more taxes. And everyone needs to pay more of them.

I want a Nordic-style social democracy in the United States. To get there, EVERYONE is going to have to pay more taxes. That's just fiscal reality.

(When the Sun runs out of hydrogen, we have... other problems.)

You're absolutely right that we have to decarbonize to protect the planet's climate. But we can make those machines powered by electricity now. And we can generate practically infinite amounts of electricity for as long as the Sun has hydrogen to fuse.

If for no other reason that it prevents the polarization and demonization of these people as "takers, not makers."

Everyone contributes according to their ability, and receives according to their needs. Everyone has the ability to contribute something and the need to receive something.

Yes there is; everyone needs to pay taxes. Nobody should not pay taxes. It is a societal obligation to contribute to society.

Now, people who have low incomes will get more in benefits back than they pay in taxes - and this is good, to be clear. But they should still pay something.

I've read the article, and it is ludicrous nonsense.

a few thousand dollars less than the median household income in one of the wealthiest nations on Earth is not "desperate poverty." like, no, it isn't. you're making that up.

fuck yes. get 'em.

You're only supposed to process multiple ingredients where God intended: your stomach.

Street Track Failures: Episode 6 - San José YouTube video by TyDye RacingGaming

Yep, they ran the circuit right across light rail tracks in downtown and it would launch the cars every time.

Did you like all the passing at Phoenix? No? You thought it was lame and you want the pole sitter to lead every lap? Well, we've got the race for you!