Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Facebook isn't ruining it. A lack of personal discipline is causing the trouble. Even some basic training in how to think in a digital world in the military is somewhat lacking.
Who watches the watchmen?
Oh, bother.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I have no intention of softening my opinion of Facebook. It's a shitty company with shitty business practices that treats its lower level employees like crap that has been startlingly irresponsible with user data and uses psychological manipulation to keep people hooked on it. Its founder Zuckerberg is a sexist manchild — Facebook's origins are in an immature sexist site he made in college meant to humiliate female students.
There's a reason a lot of former Facebook employees are disillusioned with it and have deleted their accounts.
That said, I'm not going to fault anyone who uses it for relatively harmless stuff and to keep in touch with friends. My issues are with Facebook itself, not its users.
I chalk it up to most people still not fully realizing just how much data they give away whenever they use social media and apps.
Edited by M84 on Sep 15th 2018 at 4:14:17 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Cape Malleum Majorem
I remember seeing one of those "Evolution of Man" posters, in which the last figure was a balding, bespectacled fat guy hunched over a keyboard and squinting at a computer monitor. The caption read: "Something, somewhere went horribly wrong..."
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
Oh, bother.
If we're talking about the way survival of the fittest actually works, that would only really be true if said bespectacled fat guys at their computers were the ones getting laid on a regular basis and fathering kids.
Cape Malleum Majorem
True, that. In addition, our present-day society isn't encouraging survival of the fittest, because we expend a lot of resources in caring for the sick, the elderly, and children with developmental disorders, rather than simply letting them die.
But that's the price we pay for being the nice, caring, compassionate people that we are.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
Oh, bother.
It's worth noting that evolution and survival of the fittest isn't meant to be a map for the future. It's not about trying to reach some goal of becoming a race of superhumans.
It's a way of learning about the past. We look at the specimens of the present day and fossil records and use those to figure out what life was like back then.
After all, if evolution was "supposed" to lead to awesome badasses, we would still have the dinosaurs. Instead, we have chickens.
Really, the true measure of "fitness" from a biological standpoint isn't based on anything but how well you are able to propagate your genes. In other words, if you want to be "fit" you better start making babies and ensuring they survive so they can make babies in the future.
Edited by M84 on Sep 15th 2018 at 7:16:59 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Cape Malleum Majorem
I know that. It's about the survival of the species as a group, not the survival of the individual. But forward-thinking people who misunderstand the concept come up with skewed ideas like Eugenics, Social Darwinism, and Transhumanism.
Anyway, this subject is off-topic for this thread. Back to military matters...
Edited by pwiegle on Sep 15th 2018 at 7:20:07 AM
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
Oh, bother.
That same Cracked article did point out that gamers also make better drone operators.
So maybe obesity will not be quite as problematic as war tech becomes more and more advanced.
Edited by M84 on Sep 15th 2018 at 7:34:25 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
So maybe obesity will not be quite as problematic as war tech becomes more and more advanced.
If a lack of outside air, diabetes, and heart attacks don't get them that is.
Is it still circular cuts underneath the service uniforms or is it now v-cuts?
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
M84: That is partly why I say a lack of training in just how to think in a digital world is lacking. We had to undergo some training in that regard for work to avoid things like social engineering, revealing too much info or any, or even fall for fishing scams.
Who watches the watchmen?
See the recent story about fitness data giving away positions in Africa and the Middle East.
Policy and training need to be updated continuously, it’s easy for them to fall behind in places.
They should have sent a poet.
The law in the night
When I left college, I had something around 99Kg to almost a 100 (210lbs), it took me some serious rework in my eating habits and adopting an exercise routine to shed something like 17 Kg worth of fat.
Though when it comes to eating habits, out of college I stopped eating too much junk food and stopped drinking beer in a daily basis.
Though Brazil has a much easier access to healthier foods than the US does though.
Still, physical aptitude tests here are quite demanding and the last one I was at, more than half of the candidates failed .
Inter arma enim silent leges
rollin' on dubs
For Some Soldiers, New, Tougher Army Fitness Test a Jarring Wake-Up Call
that the new six-event ACFT will become the mandatory test of record in 2020 was a jarring wake-up call for more than a million soldiers accustomed to the comfortable norm of the four-decade-old APFT's pushups, sit-ups and two-mile run. Over the next two years, the Army has pledged to refine the new fitness standard; prepare active-duty, National Guard and Reserve units to administer the new test; and figure out what to do with soldiers who fail to meet the new standard.
"The purpose of ACFT, first and foremost, is to make sure our soldiers are ready for the rigors of combat," Army Secretary Mark Esper told Military.com. "We do have to sort through all the policies that come with a physical fitness test. I will tell you though ... at the end of the day, if you can't pass the Army Combat Fitness Test, then there is probably not a spot for you in the Army."
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Sounds like an Army Version of the USMC Combat Fitness test. Neither will be easy and are a bit hard on the body. Good on the Army for stepping up on that.
Who watches the watchmen?
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
(NPR): High And Dry: Swiss Army Airlifts Water To Cows In Drought-Stricken Mountains
There's a distinct sound to summertime in Switzerland. I first heard it driving up a winding mountain road at night. A curious tinkling sound was coming from the darkness around me. It got louder and closer, until I realized it was the clanging of cow bells in the surrounding pastures.
For centuries, between late May and early October, dairy farmers have been bringing their cows up to graze in the high mountain pastures. But this summer, because of a severe drought in July and August, cows grazing in mountain pastures haven't had enough to drink. So water has been delivered to them.
Dairy farmer Dominique Rochat, who has 110 cows, says the grass is succulent up here at 4,500 feet. Rochat spends the summer with his cows, staying in his 17th-century chalet. He says the tradition of grazing cows in the high pastures in summer also gives farmers a chance to harvest enough hay in the plains below for their cows in winter. But this summer could have been a disaster, says Rochat.
"A milk cow can drink 40 to 50 gallons a day, so my herd consumes up to 1,300 gallons a day up here when it's hot," he says. "But our government reacted just in time with these water deliveries, because it's allowing us to keep our cows in the high mountains through the end of the season."
Rochat says that's doubly important during this drought, because there is no hay to spare from a sparser than usual harvest down below.
Rochat's chalet is about an hour's drive north of Lausanne, up a narrow, twisting mountain road much too perilous for a water truck. So he gets water deliveries by helicopter. This morning's delivery, which I've come specifically to witness, is canceled at the last minute due to fog. But Rochat shows me a video he took of last week's delivery on his cellphone. He says the Swiss army helicopter scooped 2,000 gallons from Lake Neuchatel in a giant red bag, then flew it up the mountainside.
"Look, it's spectacular," he says, pointing to the screen. "The way the pilot lowers the copter down and the vigilance of the people on the ground who control the water bag so we can fill up my cistern. It's not something you see every day around here!"
But water deliveries by helicopter and truck took place almost every day in Switzerland this August. Traditionally, farmers collect rainwater and snow-melt in cisterns for use in summer months. You see the centuries-old round stone cisterns near every chalet. But that system was no match for the scorching heat wave this year.
According to the Swiss weather service, July and August 2018 are the driest on record since 1921, while recent temperatures haven't been so consistently hot since the 1880s.
"In the 20th century, heat waves of this intensity would occur once in 10 or 15 years," says Martin Beniston, a climatologist who recently retired from the University of Geneva. "And now we've had like four or five since the big 2003 heat wave. Things are changing rapidly, as if we are having a northward shift of the Mediterranean climate to north of the Alps."
Jean Claude Pittet is a second-generation dairy farmer. He hopes to pass his dairy business on to his son. But with the increasingly frequent droughts, he says he doesn't know what's going to happen.
"I don't know if my son will be able to do this his whole life like my father and I have," says Pittet.
Pittet and his wife, Mireille, are driving their tractor up to even higher pastures where one of their cows has given birth. The couple say luckily they have been able to get water delivered by truck this summer. Mireille points to where the rainwater is collected in gutters along the slanted roofs of the chalet and funneled to the cistern. She says usually it's enough. But not this year.
"We would have really had problems without those water deliveries," she says.
Around the back of their chalet, the couple's cows are milked twice a day inside a small barn. They sell double-cream butter and the famous Gruyère, or Swiss cheese, in a front room.
Eric Treboux, a forest ranger in the Swiss canton [or state] of Vaud, says repercussions of the water shortage go beyond cows.
"Switzerland is known as the water tower of Europe, because we have the Alps with all of the glaciers," says Treboux. "Snow melt and runoff from the glaciers feed rivers like the Rhone, the Rhine, the Po and the Danube. Europe's major rivers all have their source here in Switzerland."
Treboux says less snow and receding glaciers will continue to affect agriculture. But the phenomenon will also influence other activities dependent on those rivers, like tourism and hydroelectric power.
Climatologist Beniston says melting glaciers are probably the most obvious evidence of rapid climate warming. "We know that the Swiss Alpine glaciers have lost one-third of their volume since the beginning of the 20th century," he says. Beniston says as temperatures heat up, as much as 90 percent of the glaciers could disappear by the end of this century.
"If the glaciers would disappear entirely, it would have major implications for seasonality and the quantity of water flowing from the Alps and supplying low-lying areas in France, Germany, Holland and central and northern Italy," he says.
Back at Rochat's mountain chalet, Jacques Henchoz, director of agriculture for Vaud, says the Swiss are a nation of herders. "Our agriculture economy is based primarily on grazing and milk and cheese production," he says. "But with the weather getting hotter and drier over the last 20 years, things are changing."
Henchoz says providing water in the high pastures for dairy cows is going to be the biggest challenge facing Swiss farmers this century.
Regarding the shirts with the service uniforms: It varies.
Air Force requires a V-neck shirt if you are wearing your service uniform with an open collar (short sleeves only). With a closed collar and necktie, either a v-neck or t-shirt is acceptable. Other branches have different requirements.
Meanwhile, for our camo fatigues, Air Force requires a t-shirt (no v-neck), but I understand the Marine Corps doesn't technically require any shirt at all, something which some Marines take advantage of because they're Marines.
From what I remember from some studies done on combat sports, every knock-out delivered in any number of ways causes brain damage (impact, choking, restricted blood vessel etc.). It's why a huge amount practice goes into control.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Oh, bother.
What makes this particularly insidious is that the damage builds up over time. It isn't caused by a few major blows, although those can and do make it worse. Every single impact contributes to it. It doesn't even have to be blows severe enough to cause concussions.
The body — especially the brain — just isn't built to handle that kind of repeated damage.
Edited by M84 on Sep 17th 2018 at 8:15:01 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
We already knew Traumatic Brain Injury was causing lots of issues. This is just a rehash of that with a different name. What we really need is to try and find help for the injured.
Who watches the watchmen?
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/17/politics/syrian-regime-shoots-down-russian-plane/index.html
CNN got news out that Syrian AAA shot down a Russian air force plane by mistake after coming under attack by Israeli air strikes.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Man, somebody is in some big trouble
Edited by LeGarcon on Sep 17th 2018 at 12:15:33 PM
Oh really when?
The law in the night
A bit old but...
Inter arma enim silent leges
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
They seem to be going all in on the T-90M which has a number of Armata's features backported to it.
Oh really when?
Hey, don't knock Facebook-or at least not too hard. I spent much of my life completely friendless until I got a Facebook-I honestly can say I wouldn't have much of a social life at all if not for it.
Edited by Protagonist506 on Sep 15th 2018 at 12:16:25 PM
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"