Rusty

I seem to have rather unexpectedly gained some new followers recently. In the spirit of managing expectations, please understand that I will disappoint you in some way, and more likely sooner than later.

The thing that they're missing is that the English-speakers didn't name them after the bird, we named the bird after them. So, okay, fine, let's say we do change how we spell the country name. Whatever. We can still spell the bird to match. (but also, no, I'm not changing the name.)

There are no umlauts in English. The nation that occupies Byzantium and its capital Constantinople is called, “Turkey.” Once you start spelling Munich, München, and Cologne Köln, then we can discuss otherwise.

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

@Bhess @USN_Submariner Just had to make sure you always kept a paperclip on hand so you could press those tiny-ass buttons!

@USN_Submariner I got this Casio calculator watch in the 80's when I was in the Army. It would also store phone numbers for you which was very important back then because you had to write them down back then.

Almost wore the keys out on this bad boy entering the phone numbers of all the ladies it attracted

@HelldiversAlert Was this recorded on a potato? I haven't run into one of these yet, and don't know what he was shooting at.

Boss weakspot discovered… and it’s NOT where you think 👀 #helldivers2 📹u/Firaxyiam

@StevenT1130855 @UpdatingOnRome Oh, certainly not. A hoax would be absolutely unheard of. Nobody does that kind of thing in such a serious discipline.

@LieutenantRusty @UpdatingOnRome Basically, it’s just contamination so either it was brought over by an invader or it was mixed with other things and got mixed in. You’d never guess that somebody would want to hoax the locals using that for fun. 🤩

@StevenT1130855 @UpdatingOnRome Ok. That's been the state of things for as long as I've known about it. Was wondering if there was something new that I hadn't heard yet.

@LieutenantRusty @UpdatingOnRome Short answer: No—there’s no solid evidence that the head found in Mexico is from ancient Rome. Bottom line •The artifact may resemble Roman work, but •There’s no credible proof it actually came from ancient Rome or that Romans reached Mexico

@SCShipyards For the person who spent so much money making their cheap shit glock into a tacky masterpiece that they can't afford to get a good optic!

Is that the hangar for the little microdrone that goes out and provides targeting telemetry back to your sidearm?

@StevenT1130855 @UpdatingOnRome Is this opinion or is there some definitive debunking?

@UpdatingOnRome It’s a hoax, but enjoy.

THE KIROV STORY Before we start, I need to make it clear that nothing that happened was my fault. Totally not my fault. So you may or may not have heard of the "Kirov." This was a Soviet battleship straight out of Star Wars. It bristled with radars and every weapon imaginable. To see it out the periscope was to see your life flash before your eyes. It was that terrifying. The background music, Darth Vader's Death March. And Kirov was at an anchorage. The problem? The anchorage was on what was, for us, the wrong side of THE LINE OF DEATH. See, there's a bay off Libya called the Gulf of Sidra. The Line of Death is an imaginary line segment from Benghazi to Tripoli. The water is shallow with a smooth sandy bottom. And the evil dictator of Libya vowed that any American vessel intruding beyond the Line of Death would be fired upon, and that was not an empty threat, since he had the Kirov on his side. So, you might be asking, Mikey, if the Kirov is on the bad side of the LINE OF DEATH, why would you and your submarine decide to sail over the line? Well, I'll tell you why we sailed over the line. There was intel that a Soviet Project 671 Yorsh-class nuclear fast attack submarine would be surfacing and anchoring at the anchorage. We and NATO called the "Yorsh-class" the Victor-class, since, at the time, we in the trenches didn't know what the Soviets called it. You might be asking, Mikey, why would the Victor be anchoring at the anchorage? Well, I'll tell you why the Victor was anchoring at the anchorage. You see, all these Russian ships were from the Northern Fleet. A long way from Libya. And on a 6-month deployment, the boys need some R&R. Some liberty, as the American Navy would call it. And it's not like they could just go ashore to Tripoli or Benghazi. Rumor is, the women there were not (a) hot or [2] loose. You need the correct combination in a liberty port, see? So what did the Soviets do for sailor morale? Well, I'll tell you what the Soviets did. They sailed in a bigass cruise ship, painted gray, which they called the comfort ship. Comfort as in, friendly hot slavic women. VERY friendly. That's right, free hookers for every man Jack on the crew of the Victor. "Captain," I remarked, "I'd really like to go to the Russian comfort ship." So, you want to get in trail of a Victor submarine? Best thing to do is be lurking, waiting for him when he goes somewhere you know he's going to be. None of that open ocean searching. Trouble is, in a shallow water anchorage, how are you going to loiter on-station without being detected, surrounded by Kirov and its accompanying destroyers and frigates, all of them impressively versed in antisubmarine warfare, and, like the Kirov, bristling with weapons? Well, I'll tell you how you loiter without being detected. You sail our submarine DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH THE KIROV. Barely enough room to thrust under there without hitting the bottom or bonking the top of our sail on his keel. Trouble is, the Kirov has a sonar set in the bulbous bow that is so powerful that it boils water when it blasts out a sonar ping. This is not the "one ping, Vasily" bullshit. This is a continuous police siren sound, rising and falling in frequency and never stopping, the sonar electronics able to transmit and receive AT THE SAME TIME. This sonar kills any fish within 500' of it. We called it the Death Ray sonar. It was a terrifying thing. With the shallow bay and the power of the Death Ray sonar, the Kirov, if tipped off that we were inbound, would "snap us up" (detect us) and, emboldened by Libya, put some weapons on us to kill us. I know what you're thinkin'. The Russians wouldn't fire ordnance on an American submarine during the Cold War since that would cause escalation, perhaps even leading to a nuclear exchange. Yeah, tell that to the dead crew of the sunken submarine SCORPION. So how did we avoid getting snapped up by the Death Ray sonar? Well, I'll tell you how we avoided detection by the Kirov. We let it leak through sailors and prostitutes that we'd be sailing into the anchorage on Thursday. When, in actuality, we sailed in Monday. And we hovered and thrusted right under the Kirov's hull, with us rigged for ultra-quiet. Ultra-quiet is a blessing and curse. You tiptoe. No maintenance. If you're not on watch, you are REQUIRED to be in your bunky. But the galley is shut down. You want food? Content yourself with cheese and crackers, buns and cold cuts with mustard and potato chips. A few days at ultra-quiet, you start to miss hot food something fierce. And food on a nuclear submarine is impotent. In all the U.S. military, it is the best food. Closest thing you'll come to Aunt Maude's home cooking. So it's Monday, and we just linger there, underneath Kirov, waiting for the arrival of the Victor. As expected, at dawn on Thursday, Kirov lights off the Death Ray sonar, looking for us. And not finding us, because a sonar like that can't find an object closer than 300 yards or so, and certainly can't find an object directly underneath its hull. But that fucking sonar was blasting out for three days, and was so loud inside the hull that to communicate with someone, you'd need a pad of paper (shouting was bad form during ultra-quiet). Sound can exhaust and fatigue you, which is why it's used in torture. And man, we were tortured by that fucking Death Ray system. Every watch, we'd thrust stealthily out and pop up the periscope to see if we could see the approach of the anticipated Victor. If any Russian sailors would have been out on deck, leaning against the railing, smoking a cigarette, we'd be dead. "Uh, Captain, I saw a periscope." Finally, Mr. Kirov shut down his Death Ray sonar. Our ears rang for days afterward. I wonder how many VA disability claims arose from that event. And praise the Lord Holy God, Victor showed up and moored at anchor and offloaded his officers and ratings in shifts to go to the comfort ship. Eventually, when the entire crew of the Victor was fat, dumb and fucked out, he weighed anchor and sailed off, then submerged into the deeper Mediterranean Sea. With us right behind him. For 40 days and 40 nights, we trailed that Victor with him none the wiser we were there, except when we collided with him - and that was TOTALLY NOT MY FAULT. This was the 56-day run where we ran out of food on Day 40. Sorry kids. No grocery stores 546' beneath the tossing waves of the Med. It's apple juice and coffee for you. For 2 weeks. The captain ordered us to report to him the number of hours of coffee left aboard at the end of each watch. He said, when we got down to 80 hours, we were coming back in. You can't run a nuclear submarine without coffee. People think it runs on bomb-grade uranium. Nope. It runs on coffee. Eventually, P-3 ASW planes dropped sonobuoys at our direction, and another submarine, the SCULPIN, arrived to take over trail of the Victor. Once SCULPIN reported on Nestor UHF secure voice that they'd gotten the Victor, we broke trail and headed for the tender ship off Sardinia. I had a friend on SCULPIN. Later, over bourbon, he confessed that they had the Victor for 40 minutes before they lost him. The Victor sailed off, never to be heard from again. All that, for nothin'. And now you know...the Kirov story. Good day!

The world needs more pointless whimsy.

@monsterhunter45 @LaughingWolfOne Got started on it the other day. Haven’t finished it yet. Pretty good so far.

I try to inform my fans about a new book release, the algos go lol, fuck you, seven of your 50k followers will see this. I tweet a story from when I was a kid about Ceaser Chavez being scum, 2.1 million views now. But anyways, for the eleven of you who will see this, Monster Hunter Files 2 came out two weeks ago. :D

You know how they say to choose the lesser evil? Sometimes they're wrong.

@GenuineRex @SamaHoole I do some engineering work with the company that provides their beef. I can assure you: the only things that enter the building are cows, employees, and cleaning supplies. The things that leave the buildings are beef patties, employees, and dirty water.

@SamaHoole This gets hard if you don’t eat McDonalds. Are you sure that patty is even carnivore?

Eating out on carnivore, ranked by effort required: Steakhouse: zero effort. They have steak. Pub: nearly zero effort. They have a mixed grill. McDonald's: zero effort. No bun. Any restaurant in Britain: find the animal on the menu. Order the animal. Leave the sides. Airport: McDonald's is probably there. Motorway services: McDonald's is definitely there. Someone's house for dinner: eat what you're given. You are a guest, not a food critic. The diet survives a Wednesday pasta. The effort required to eat carnivore away from home is significantly lower than advertised. The main skill involved is identifying beef on a menu. This is not a difficult skill.

@CyborgPeds That's pretty much what we do, too.

The Heiress and I have been married for a quarter century. We’ve never had a joint account. We tend to alternate meals out vs split or pay each other back. We each pay different bills.

@UpdatingOnRome @markhill Up Aroostok County, the population density is still like .00003 people per square mile or something ridiculous.

@markhill Oh for sure

I hope this fella found a lady.

@WVmotoguy @MikeyDiMercurio That's brutal.

@LieutenantRusty @MikeyDiMercurio Worked with a guy who got custody of his 5 year old son. First time she had visitation she took off. For 13+ years he had no idea where his son was. Then he got hit for 13 years of back child support. She'd went there and sat on welfare.

A judge looked at my resume and levied child support and alimony amounts based on what I SHOULD BE making rather than on the reality of what I was making. Female judge…

@cixliv @david_vipernz Star Wars: Squadrons was peak VR.

@david_vipernz half life alyx was peak for sure

Meta considers VR a failure if Horizon Worlds isn’t successful. This is really bad. There is no way that dumpster fire of a platform is going to work. No matter how hard they force it on people. So after the Quest platform dies, who picks up the pieces? Valve?

@Theorhetorical @CoyoteUnclean And if the engineer is *really* good they’ll even be able to refine that unit of measure further to a red one / blonde one / Mediterranean one / etc.

CH's rule tolerance at the knuckle-dragger level of mechanical aptitude. Engineers worth their weight in field level experience stand by mechanics who provide these invaluable metrics. If you've never used CH as a gut level measurement, you likely are only good for light-bulbs and toaster repairs.

Whomever proclaimed this has never been on a mortar gunline.