random_scrub

Alright, I'm finally going to collect all of my military history book threads into one master thread-of-threads to pin for easy access... Starting with, of course, the Franco-Prussian War. twitter.com/random_scrub/s…

The “US manufacturing renaissance” guys are too over-aligned on military production. It’s ultimately a small market. If you want to be a major manufacturing power - which, to be clear, the US is - you need to be thinking about production for the civilian sector. Military potential is a derivation of the civilian economy There’s a reason why the most important US military innovation in recent years - Starlink - came out of the civilian market, and not the other way around

After the breakup of the USSR, the Lithuanian basketball team couldn’t afford to participate in the 1992 Olympics, so the Grateful Dead funded the team’s expenses and sent a box of tie-dyed outfits in Lithuania’s national colors. They went on to win Bronze at the Olympics.

Airline pilot here: I’ve made a few posts, for posterity it seems I should combine them so here goes: I guess I should lead with the fact that I know LGA really, really well - And having 1 controller working both ground and tower; late… on a Sunday is straight up normal. Anything you’re hearing about a controller shortage is BS. Should there be 1 guy working? No - But it’s been that way as long as I can remember. Second, if you listen to the audio. You can hear the controller try to stop the truck. Which means a few things. The truck took too long to cross after the initial clearance was issued. In LGA shit happens quickly. If you can’t execute you’re immediately stopped. So looking at the truck. He took too long to cross.. which means that he was either in the wrong position when he first called, or he was going too slow. BOTH are wrong. That’s problematic. So if you listen to the guy IN the truck.. he’s nervous. Classic low confidence read back. What that says to me? He was in training. Let’s investigate that a little further? If the fire department was going to train someone… you’d do it when it’s “quiet” right? Well, LGA is never more quiet than late, on a Sunday - You starting to see it yet? Now, the controller. Was task heavy already (being by himself) working two frequencies in low weather. But again, nothing new there. Especially that guy. I recognize his voice. He’s a rockstar. He can handle it if anyone can. Now… BEFORE the incident with the truck. It’s important to understand the truck was rolling in response to an emergency. There was already a United flight that had supposedly aborted a takeoff due to a fume event on the other side of the field. Usually not something they roll CFR for, BUT if you listen to the earlier audio it’s pretty apparent the United flight crew was basically losing control of the cabin. The flight attendants were running that show. The United pilots, then respond by (incorrectly) pressing the Controller for a gate - That’s important to recognize the United crew was pressing the GROUND controller. Because it’s important to recognize that ground IS NOT in charge of gate assignments… so the United crew was pressing the wrong controller, which then put him (the controller) into a spot of trying to coordinate FOR THEM because apparently they don’t know how to do their jobs. The controller. Went from task heavy to what we call “task saturated.” Add that little fiasco into the truck moving slower than it should’ve been… poor radio discipline on the truck… We’re starting to create a scenario, yeah? Now finally the flight crew. Could they have gone around? Should they have gone around? Now we’re getting into Monday night quarterbacking. Yes to both… in hindsight. The reality is. The weather was low. So maybe they couldn’t visually verify that the truck had crossed. I will say, defacto; a go-around is always an option. Until It’s not. And it’s not once the reversers are out. So to be at 100kts ground speed… the reversers were out. To see what they saw, you’d have to be in the plane with them or re-create it in a sim. I will also say.. the truck. DEFINTELY SAW THE LIGHTS COMING DOWN THE RUNWAY. So, as usual. Multiple things played into it. …it’s never just one thing, right? But… There’s gonna be a lot of focus on the truck -

So many people try to do Yes, Prime Minister parodies, and fail. This succeeded admirably. I laughed. I could hear Nigel Hawthorne's voice.

@OPTester_Chris I’m making a PowerPoint RIGHT NOW

I have a dream... That dream involves not having people READ EVERY SINGLE WORD ON A POWERPOINT SLIDE READ TO ME!

@CoryLaflin @OVTweetmarck From your lips to God’s ears!

@random_scrub @OVTweetmarck I await the eventual collapse of the Disney Bubble.

What are we doing, man

Me if I worked customer service at one of the three terminals in Charles de Gaulle airport: “de Gaulle est omnis divisus in partes tres”

Lord, have mercy

I mean, who among us

We’re on the verge of shutting down our airports to save illegal immigrants from deportation.

A physicist, engineer and a statistician are out hunting. Suddenly, a deer appears 50 yards away. The physicist does some basic ballistic calculations, assuming a vacuum, lifts his rifle to a specific angle, and shoots. The bullet lands 5 yards short. The engineer adds a fudge factor for air resistance, lifts his rifle slightly higher, and shoots. The bullet lands 5 yards long. The statistician yells "We got him!"

the "translate tweet" button is the biggest thing to happen to Western-Japanese relations since anime dubbing and cheap reliable pickup trucks

@exQUIZitely @SandyofCthulhu Agreed. Something in the vein of “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, with a pile of barely-connected vignettes seems an easy fit with what’s already here on Twitter…

@SandyofCthulhu I know I might not be the first person to say/ask this, but OMG you need to write a book! These little gaming history nuggets need to be preserved!

My friend worked at Origin Systems. Now, my friend loved loved loved Gauntlet. To the point that he would often talk in Gauntlet-speak. For example, he'd stand up from his cubicle to go to lunch and announce it, "Fred needs food badly." Or when a co-worker gave him something he needed, he'd say, "I've not seen such bravery." Or if the co-worker had bungled something, he'd say, "Exit the room please." If a deadline was coming up, he'd say "Your life force is running out." That sort of thing. Anyway one day a new worker, an experienced coder who'd been in the industry, came to Origin Systems, and settled into the cubicle right next to my friend. Seemed like a nice guy, if a little quiet. Anyway, Fred continued his Gauntlet-speak hijinks for a few weeks. Then, one day Fred spilled his coffee or something and said, "Someone shot the food!" and the new guy cracked. He stood up in his cubic and started violently denouncing Fred, ranting about how Fred was constantly mocking him and he wasn't going to sit down for it any more and Fred better watch himself in the parking lot and and and ... During the rant, Fred came to realize that the new guy was ONE OF THE ORIGINAL PROGRAMMERS OF GAUNTLET! He though Fred was making fun of his game! Fred managed to calm him down, and convinced him that he, Fred, practically worshiped the guy and had no idea he'd been on the game. If he had he would have been quizzing him non-stop about his tasks, buying him coffee, etc. So they became friends. This kind of thing happened more often than you might think in the gaming world back in the day. There weren't that many professional developers so we'd see each other at conventions, or when we switched jobs. And there was usually no more than two degrees of separation. For instance, I only met Lord British himself once, but I knew two men pretty closely who later on went to work for Origins Systems and became top guys there (Fred mentioned above and Andy Hollis). Ask me anything.

@random_eddie Life imprisonment would be acceptable

How much does it pay? Genuinely asking. My experience from the US (where I grew up) is people pound the table about skills shortages and when you ask what they’re paying, it’s equivalent to working at Walmart in a no-skill job.

"Don't go after fraud, there's so little that it's not worth the effort" counted as Good Policy Thought for like 25 years

@GarrettPetersen x.com/random_scrub/s…

My children consistently refer to this as "maple syrup."

Wife playing Cyberpunk 2077. Goes to meet Panam, carefully parking her car. Agrees to go with Panam to do the mission in *her* car. Wife watches from passenger seat as Panam pulls out onto the street and absolutely obliterates wife's parked car. 10/10 both still laughing.

If you want to bring shipbuilding to the U.S. at the scale of China or South Korea or even Japan its not only going to take massive capital investment, but you also have to fundamentally change the way these businesses operate. You have to change the workforce. You have to change transportation. Change neighborhoods. Change waterfronts. This isn't a money problem, it is whole of system problem.