Lex Ruger

@FINALLEVEL Look.. we know your scared about the shift.. getting left behind is not an easy thing to live with, but you wanted this

I’ve got a great idea… Just rename this app to ‘HATE’

@RSE_VB I was ships company 94-97. She went to Bremerton about a month after I got out and then to Japan

#TomcatTails Number 37 #TomcatTuesday “You’re Signal Divert. Miramar Bears 070° For 85 Miles” or “Weather Sucks; Go Home.” I’ve spent quite a few words talking about landing on an Aircraft Carrier (“the boat”), relating how it’s recognized as one of the most difficult feats in aviation. While daytime Carrier Ops can be quite fun when the weather is good and your jet’s operating normally (we called it “the sport of Kings” on those days), if you have system problems, or the sun sets, or the weather and sea state trend toward “varsity”, it can rapidly ratchet up from “fun” to “terrifying” pretty quickly. Most Naval Aviators have their “Night in the Barrel” story, meaning that ONE night they’ll never forget where all of the above distractions combined into a truly memorable, adrenaline-laced struggle to get the jet on deck safely while battling “snakes in the cockpit” as we would say. Dark no-moon-night, weather, heavy seas, and pitching deck can (and often do) make for supremely challenging conditions that test your mettle behind the boat. While Flight Pay was a nice little $-bump, I always said that Navy Pilots earned that year’s extra pay on that ONE pass. And when you factor in Blue Water Ops (too far from any land to go anywhere else), that calculus gets exponentially harder. Recall too, earlier discussions about the normal landing parameters aboard the ship. The landing area is about 700 feet long and 80 feet wide (Tomcat wingspan is 64 feet…..you got eight feet each side) and the arresting wires decelerate you to a full stop in about 320 feet (150mph to 0). The deck is angled to the left 10° so it’s moving away from you at an angle. If everything is perfect and you cross the back of the ship (“the ramp”) exactly on altitude, exactly on speed, exactly on glideslope (3.5°), and exactly on centerline, your tailhook passes over the ramp at about 14’, the body of your jet at about 19 feet. At 150mph. That’s it. If it sounds really challenging, that’s because it is. This one feat alone sets Carrier Pilots apart from all others. “But Corky. What if the weather is bad and the sea state is really wavy?” Well, then the deck starts to pitch, up and down, up and down. Deck pitch can be minor like 4-5 feet, or it can be really bad, like 15-20 feet. “But doesn’t that eat up any safety margin?” Yes. Yes it does. Factor in as well that along with deck pitch in heavy sea states, the Carrier will also roll a bit (or a lot), and also “heave” where the entire ship lifts up. One of the more interesting things about this cyclic movement is that every Carrier has a unique signature in heavy sea states. There are a variety of elements that form that signature. There are plunges, where the bow of the ship goes down (ramp comes up), rolls left and right based on direction of the swells, and often a little “shimmy” where the ass end will wiggle a bit. And all of these elements form that particular Carrier’s signature. What’s also interesting is that Carriers are so big, they’ll execute their signature series of movements, and then magically stabilize for some number of seconds (10, 20, 40…etc.) and smooth out…..and then start all over again. LSOs (Landing Signal Officers) are uniquely attuned to their boat and they know when that smooth part is coming so on a rough night they can determine if a jet on final is going to clear the ramp at the right moment in time (up, down, or steady) and not hit the back of the ship (ramp strike). If it looks too dicey or the timing is off for a particular jet, they can wave them off at the last moment so they come around and try again (thanks, Paddles!!!). This particular #TomcatTails is about that timing and how sometimes you just can’t make it work out. The year was 1994 and we were between cruises in the VF-24 Renegades out of Miramar. As often happens, a Carrier will head off the coast for CQ Ops (carrier qualification) primarily for training for the RAG students landing for the first time. It’s also training for the Carrier deck crews and everyone else on the boat too. And if there’s a chance to work in any fleet bubbas, the ship will offer it up and squadrons will go out to CQ just to get some off cycle practice. Such was our chance in January of that year. My logbook shows that it was January 19th, 1994 and the boat in question was the USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63), a boat I’d get MUCH more time on when I was stationed in Japan 1998-2000. It also shows that it was 2.6 hours of flight time, and I got 2 traps, 2 bolters (missed the wires) out of a total of 7 approaches. The Kitty Hawk’s signature (from what I recall) was kind of a plunge….plunge…..plunge…..a little shimmy……then she’d steady out for 30 seconds or so and then start all over again. The night in question was what we in the industry call “dog squeeze”. Dark, heavy overcast, rain, and a very difficult sea state, like maybe 10 to 12 foot swells. Naturally, as she was doing her dance the deck was pitching about 15 feet either way, so the timing would be critical to successfully landing (or “successfully not dying”). This "timing" by the way is not something you can affect. It is what it is on arrival. All you can do is react to it. And the sky conditions made for complete IFR approaches in the clouds (total blackness) and somewhere along the approach at a mile out you’d get under the clouds and see the ship in all here plunging and shimmying glory, landing area lights and centerline lights just a-wiggling all over the place. Neat. What made this night unusual was that most of the other jets had gotten sent home, and me and Trigger were the lone Tomcat in the pattern, trying to get aboard on multiple attempts. He and I flew together quite bit and made a great team. If anyone could have gotten any valid training out of those conditions, it would be us two. As we headed out to the boat, we had the distinct honor of checking into our approach frequency right when paddles was delivering a screaming power call to some unfortunate aircrew that were probably just a wee bit low on the glideslope as the deck was coming up. Nothing instills confidence like changing to the approach freq and hearing “POWER-POWER-POWER-WAVE-IT-OFF-WAVE-IT-OFF!!!!!!!!!” I’m sure Trigger and I joked “Well, this should be fun” as they told that guy to go home. We got our marshal instructions (radial, distance, and altitude to hold) and headed for it in the goo (clouds). We took one turn in the holding pattern and the boat came up and said “Your signal Charlie” which means “c’mon down and land.” We got settled into the Case 3 recovery, a 1,200 foot straight in until you hit about 1.2 miles and you started your decent approach based on instruments. I’d generally fly ILS (or “bullseye”) which was a glide slope needle and an azimuth needle on the primary attitude display. While all the Carriers also had ACLS (Automatic Carrier Landing System) which put needles on your display AND they could fly the jet for you, when the weather was especially sh*tty I’d opt for ILS. Reason being that if you set your switches for ACLS and it dropped lock on you, the needles went away. Naturally, that seemed to happen only when you were getting close to landing and were assholes and elbows flying the jet. And when it did, you had to switch hands (left on stick to fly the jet) and manually toggle over to ILS bullseye with your right, then switch hands back. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take ILS for the win here. While I can’t recall the order of events throughout the 7 approaches, I can VERY specifically recall the LAST one that I’ll get to in a few paragraphs. Our first look at the boat was about what we expected. We came out of the clouds at about 1 mile and sure enough the Kitty was doing her dance. Interesting to note as well that the visual landing aide (the “ball”) system was gyro stabilized to a certain extent, meaning that the ship could move around some and it would still give you correct glide slop information. Up to a point. And that point was about 10 or 12 feet (any Paddles here to confirm?). Our first look seemed relatively OK, and we continued the approach but you could definitely see the deck was moving pretty good. We crossed the ramp a little high and a little fast as it was dropping and boltered (missed the wires). Paddles called out “Bolter, bolter, bolter….hook skip”, meaning it wasn’t our fault for grading purposes. Made sense given the conditions. We got back in the pattern and came back around for another try and got a trap. Cool. So it’s actually possible. While on the deck and taxiing to the catapult, Trigger and I talked back and forth about the obvious motion on the deck and remarking about how being the “sacrificial Tomcat” was always so fun. This meant the ship would work a Tomcat longer than anyone else because we had the legs (gas) to stick with it longer than most. That’s a blessing and a curse, as you may expect. We banged off Cat 1 and back into the dog squeeze weather for some more fun, coming back around for pass # 3. As we broke out of the clouds, the deck was moving pretty good again and we pressed the approach to the in-the-middle position when Paddles called “Wave it off….pitching deck”, indicating that the wave off wasn’t due to pilot technique. These “sugar calls” are important for the Pilot and RIO so we can keep our heads in the game. Basically, “you’re doing fine, keep it up.” After another 3 tries in which we got a bolter, a trap, and another pitching-deck-wave off, we were getting a little skosh on gas (/skōSH/ or “low”) we figured we had one more to go. This was the memorable one. We came around the pattern, hit our final bearing and cruised in for one more. I didn’t really notice if the sea state was getting worse but apparently it had been deteriorating from bad to holy-crap. As we broke out at one mile, I noticed that I couldn’t see the ball. I immediately called “CLARA” which tells the LSO I can’t see a ball on the lens. Paddles comes back with “Deck is down, you’re looking good.” And then I looked. At the deck. First rule in Carrier Aviation is NEVER look at the deck on the whole. Look at the ball, look at the centerline, and look at your speed. Meatball, lineup, angle of attack. Over and over and make the appropriate corrections to keep those centered, on lineup, and on speed respectively. But you NEVER focus right on the deck. You’ll just scare the sh*t out of yourself, which I did. My memory can literally SEE the deck being WAY down and my mind tells me I could literally count the arresting wires because they were SO visible, almost as if I was looking straight down at the flight deck. “Oh look. One, two, three, and four wires” followed by “Oh shit, I’m not supposed to be able to see that.” Paddles then said “hold what you got”, meaning do NOT chase the ball downward by pulling some power. That would be ramp-strike-territory. OK, Paddles. I’ll see your “hold what you got” and raise you just a teeny bit of extra power ("for mom and the kids" as we used to say) n order to avoid ending up as a flaming fireball in the jet shop on the back of the boat. And then the deck came up. WAY up. The memory in my head recalls that I saw the top of the screws of the boat come out of the water. The. Screws. I’m just outside the in-the-middle phase, about 15 seconds from landing and my eyes have lost all discipline as I’m staring at the water being roiled up by these massive screws on the ol’ Kitty. Gulp. My mind could be filling that picture in a bit, but I don’t think so. It was at once an awe-inspiring spectacle at the sight of it, and a shot of cold piss to the heart (maximum fear inducing). Paddles must have sensed that huge pitch because he hit the wave off lights right after his call. Honestly, I think I was probably already on the way there recognizing that a safe landing here was not in the cards on this pass. The funniest part here is when we’re waving off, Trigger says something like “WTF, man? Why the waveoff??” I came back with “Uh, no. That was good one, a good idea.” He knew right then that if his buddy Corky is thankful for a wave off, then it sure must have been a doozy of a sight picture. We got the “Your signal divert; Miramar bears 070° for 85 miles” call and headed home. We landed, and then went to the O’Club for the debrief and I described that final sight picture in detail. Conveniently, it was a Wednesday night at the Miramar O’Club so a good time was had by all. Unsurprisingly, our wives had to come get us that night. For all my Hook brethren and sistren out there; ain’t night carrier ops grand????

@ThrillaRilla369 @SGTWipper1Each 2005 BMW X5

Have you ever driven faster than 100MPH and if so what were you driving the first time?

@alppouch @DailyCaller Great!! I’ll be able to sleep tonight

🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨: The Stolen ALP Drifters Have Been RECOVERED. A Thread 🧵

@Old_SchoolEddie Atleast half of the ones I type end up like that

As a Boomer or Gen X'er, how many times have you started a response to a post and, in the middle of writing it, you realize you just don't care enough to finish responding to it?

@godhatesagate @TroddenTrail Why is the final 3 million?? Is it because the way construction proceeds in this country?? Pre bid Bid Government Pre construction Subs By the time you get through all that prices could be 10% higher..where could prices be towards the end of the project that was bid 5 yrs ago

@MizunoMP60guy @TroddenTrail It's not the construction company's fault. We just do what is asked of us. I'd look closer at the people handing out the contracts. Every job is the same. Engineers bid: 1 million Winning bid: 800k Final cost: 3 million

Because you wanted a Francis Scott Key Bridge update. *collapsed 2 years ago *primary contractor fired *budget initially 1.8 billion now 5.2 billion *completion initially 2028 now late 2030. Posting this in pencil.

@ParaChainz @TheDefiApe @brian_armstrong Wrong.. greed Greed is the only downside to capitalism

@TheDefiApe @brian_armstrong Capitalism! If he can get rid of everyone and make billions he'd do it.

This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase: Team, Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the future. Why now Two forces are converging at the same time. We need to be front footed to respond to both. First, the market. Coinbase is well-capitalized, has diversified revenue streams, and is well-positioned to weather any storm. Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption, with stablecoins, prediction markets, tokenization, and more taking off. However, our business is still volatile from quarter to quarter. While we've managed through that cyclicality many times before and come out stronger on the other side, we’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient for our next phase of growth. Second, AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day. All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core. What this means To get there, we are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it. What does this mean in practice? - Fewer layers, faster decisions: We are flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create coordination tax. The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. Fewer layers also means a leaner cost structure that is built to perform through all market cycles. - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era. This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs. To those who are affected I know there are real people behind these decisions — talented colleagues who have poured themselves into this company and our mission. To those of you who will be leaving: thank you. You’ve helped build Coinbase into what it is today, and I am sincerely grateful for everything you've done. All impacted team members will receive an email to their personal account in the next hour with more information, and an invitation to meet with an HRBP and a senior leader in your organization. Coinbase system access has been removed today. I know this feels sudden and harsh, but it is the only responsible choice given our duty to protect customer information. To those affected, we will be providing a comprehensive package to support you through this transition. US employees will receive a minimum of 16 weeks base pay (plus 2 weeks per year worked), their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA. Employees on a work visa will get extra transition support. Those outside of the US will receive similar support, based on local factors and subject to any consultation requirements. Coinbase prides itself on talent density. Our employees are among the most talented people in the world, and I have no doubt that your skills and experience will be highly sought after as you pursue your next chapters. How we move forward To the team that is staying, I know this is a difficult day. We’re saying goodbye to colleagues and friends you've been in the trenches with. But here’s what I want you to know as we move forward together: Over the past 13 years, we have weathered four crypto winters, gone public, and built the most trusted platform in our industry. We’ve made it this far by making hard decisions and by always staying focused on our mission. This time will be no different – nothing has changed about the long term outlook of our company or industry. And most importantly, our mission has never been more important for the world. Increasing economic freedom requires a new financial system, and we’re building it. The Coinbase that emerges from this will be more capable than ever to achieve our mission. Brian

@JudgeJoeBrownTV Actually… we’ve all been exploited

Black folk can switch parties again They aren’t the property of Democrat Party masters any more—they’re free to vote as they choose Negroes are now being exploited for tranny Queen Rainbow—instead of King Cotton

@tommyda53620872 @TroddenTrail Yeahhhhhhh… speed of completion on a project like that isn’t that good. If it was a culvert and bridge I would be impressed

@TroddenTrail and yet China just built a 1 and 1/2 mile tunnel in 110 days

@SriouslyUnsrius @HotepJesus Close… the American people fall under those descriptions..a republican politician is no better than a democrat politician. Until this is realized, nothing gets better

As a new Republican, driven out by the Dems - I’m screaming for the diverse to join this side because it’s truly America first - this party is evolved from the typical conservative BS we were all annoyed at a decade ago. If you care about the country and are proud to be American, nobody gives AF about your gender, race, etc. Only the democrats label and segment our population for retarded identity politics JUST to convince you they care about you. They don’t. Republicans don’t pretend to care about you; they’re telling you they care about America and supports anyone who feels the same. That’s a lot more inclusive than being on the other side of the aisle worrying about what new slogan you have to start saying or feeling afraid of the language you use or the ‘flavor of the week’ cause you have to pretend to care about.

Black people could run America if they weren't tethered to the Democratic Party. Let's argue...

@trouble_man90 @HotepJesus Time to drop cnn and the view Guarantee life gets better when you do👍🏻

@HotepJesus Are you implying that Black people could prosper within the republican party?? The same party that struck down the Voting Rights Act just a couple days ago??? And declared a state of emergency so they can redraw the lines to wipeout Black representation in their states???

@c_rg_too @HotepJesus Until you understand that both parties aren’t worth anything then nothing changes.. it’s been known that for decades the American people needed an outsider to correct this country… we had Reagan, then Perot tried to warn us, now Trump. No more politicians is the answer

@HotepJesus What the republicans doing to help? I don’t see many black republicans doing much or even having positions of power while kissing MAGAs ass .

@MakeSenseMarie 🤣🤣🤣🤣 stealing plastic utensils

People like this are why we can’t have nice things. Now everyone else who plays by the rules will have to ask for these things from behind the counter. Instead of things like this being addressed and handled, they lock items up and other people have to pay the price. It’s not right.

@ThomasPayne_314 @omgsidewalks Well.. unfortunately I can attest to this.. had a 2005 4.4 X5. Loved that thing.. best suspension on the planet and the torque would put you in the back of the seat.. got to 265k and it just fell apart

@MizunoMP60guy @omgsidewalks BMW

Until you work in retail you will never understand the level of stupidiťy that exists in the world

@SeeRacists 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Chud The Builder

@PaxAmericana_ @Trad_West_Art @creepydotorg My favorite of all

@MizunoMP60guy @Trad_West_Art @creepydotorg Rots was a good movie

@Roger_dornJD That’s for when you really need to cut a dog leg and keep it really low at the same time🤣🤣

Am I doing this right? #LANK #Swingdox

@jackrwilkie Not by looking at my offer🤣🤣🤣🤣 I checked it out and immediately deleted once u saw the laughable offer

Sold a car to Carvana today and I have no idea how they stay in business. Inexplicable.

@bbstatsgolf Looks classy

Maybe I can find my #wife at the Time Out off 155