nsplayr

It seems like overall you have a lot of California-specific net-metering gripes that I'm not equipped to debate about since I don't live there. But the above...what universe are you living in? New utility-scale solar PV and wind installations and planned projects vastly, vastly outnumber any other tech. The cost of wind and solar have plummeted to below fossil-fuel levels while nuclear costs have risen (unfortunately) and fossil fuels have stayed flat. Look, I'm a huge fan of nuclear power, both fission and especially fusion once we get that figured out at scale, and we should do way, way more nuclear. BUT, solar/wind technology, scale and cost improvements are massive wins for humanity and are expanding rapidly not due to some lizard-people Liberal conspiracy, but because they're now the cheapest ways to generate electricity, and humanity is going to need a lot more electricity both today and especially in the future.

Disagree that net metering is somehow a government handout or a liberal scheme. As @FLEA said, power companies benefit by having additional distributed generating capacity on the grid, they should reimburse homeowners who are net generating power. I’m not saying it always has to be 1-for-1 at the commercial rate, but there should be some reimbursement because as a homeowner with solar, if you are exporting watts to the grid, you are helping the power company out - it seems fair to be paid for that. Whether changes in the law or policies make the economics of owing solar panels better or worse is a risk you as the purchaser of the system take…laws and policies change all the time and sometimes it works out for you and sometimes it doesn’t. But on the whole solar power works great within known limitations, is now the cheapest way to generate electricity, and individual homeowners have the ability to gain some independence and resiliency from outages and price increases by putting panels on their roof, which isn’t an option with many other methods of generating power. It’s a net plus for a lot of homeowners, myself included starting this week, and for humanity as a whole.

So long as the orders flow I don't personally care if we stare at a single solitary rock in the dessert for 21 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the next decade 😅 Ok that's hyperbole but still...MPA is still relatively unchanged for now which is ultimately what matters to my bottom line. Agreed that "actual war" is down dramatically, but I'm ok with that too. Can't say we were winning exactly when we were murking dudes every single night, let's try just monitor & assess for a while, that's fine by me for real.

For MQ-9 there's still plenty of "war" to be had. Nothing like the heyday of strikes and ops every day/night but still enough to stay busy. In all the familiar places, plus some new places keeping an eye on other bad actors. Inshallah we'll still keep flying/fighting/winning (? on the last one) for approx. 10 more years so I can retire the way I'd like to. The young kids do indeed need to stay in the sim and on the range to keep sharp but that's what instructors and training plans are for. YMMV per platform I'm sure.

FWIW BAH is based on home zip code for long-term MQ-9 title 10 MPA orders. Not sure why or how, but it’s another situation where it’s home vs. base zip that matters.

Phrasing.

Because the MQ-9 is the only platform they can fly and at some point before the end of the careers of currently serving RPA pilots, the MQ-9 will be retired and there is no clear replacement platform. BL: you have a large group of RPA pilots who could fly other platforms with the right cross-flow and additional training, but we're still at square zero where instead they'd just be hung out to dry. IMHO.

I’m also largely Scottish with some Irish thrown in and Catholic…so I’m surprised you are unsure who you can blame for your family’s plight. The British! You can and absolutely should still blame them. Screw King Charles the Turd and his whole wanker family. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇮🇪 This is also a classic American view that the Founding Fathers would 100% endorse 🇺🇸

1. "America, nobody can serve God and the military. You can’t serve God and money. You cannot serve God and mammon at the same time. America, choose ye this day who you will serve. Choose ye this day." That's the full quote, referencing Matthew 6:24, and I would tend to agree. Unfortunate that he would choose to pick out "the military" rather than just "your job/career" but he's the preacher and I'm not, let him cook. 2. Oh no, the black preacher from Ebenezer Baptist is getting political and I don't like it...when has that happened before? 🧐 White people may not feel comfortable with some of the messages on race and politics being preached in Black churches (and vice versa FWIW), also breaking news, the water is wet. Look I'm not super religious and I don't really like religious figures who are political all that much anyways...but I accept that it's not my flavor and move on. There are tons of other religious figures taking overt political stances and that's fine in a free country. Also, tax the churches. It also might be semantics, but calling Warnock a "fake 'Reverend'" seems weird...he has a MDiv, MPhil and PhD from Union Theological Seminary and is the full-time head pastor of a church. Seems to me like he's earned the title even if you don't like the messages in his sermons! All that to say, I like Warnock in general! He is a middle of the road Democrat who seems well spoken on policy and connects with regular people. I think he has a bright future in the party and the fact that he won GA now 4 times in 2 years kinda shows that voters even in a relatively conservative state tend to agree. Better luck in 2028! The GOP should try not to nominate a totally soulless corporate nobody (Loeffler) or an unfortunately brain-damaged college football star with a lot of hidden kids, abortions on his credit card receipts, and fake police badges (Walker) 😎

Yea, like I don’t know him personally but am somewhat familiar with his voting record and the outlines of his personal and professional life before his election in 2021. I’m open to hearing more! Why in particular is Warnock worse than say, Ossoff or some random other replacement-level Dem senator (Hickenlooper, Murray, Coons…those are the most boring ones I can think of.)

Republicans won every state-wide race in Georgia this cycle except the Senate race, which they ultimately lost by 3 points. Gov. Kemp, in the same election, was re-elected by > 7 points over a Dem candidate who was a darling of many in the national party and had very high name ID. Seems like candidate quality really mattered! Honestly I think if David Perdue had run for Senate again rather than his suicide primary campaign against Kemp he could have won the race against Warnock.

Is he not a long-time head pastor of a very famous church in Atlanta? I don’t get the critique maybe…he seems perfectly reasonable, we’ll spoken, fluent on important policies, and free of notable personal scandal. Of all the Dems to really single out and hate, he’s a very odd choice IMHO.

FWIW the polls this cycle were quite good, especially if you followed the credible aggregators and especially if they took some of the Trafalgars of the world with a grain of salt. A small Dem over performance that tipped many close senate races their way doesn’t discount the value of polls, especially when considered as a whole. https://www.axios.com/2022/11/11/polls-performance-midterms-results

It’s fine, we’ll only buy 3 of them and they’ll cost $6.9T a piece once you factor in R&D costs 🤣😑 But nah we can’t possibly pay pilots more to stay or even just execute on pay changes already authored by law…

I’m genuinely curious if you just think all Democrats are POS scumbags or if you have some issues with Warnock specifically.

Yea, that’s what I was implying when I said it was all a mess. There’s zero capacity to train 18Xers to manned even if we wanted to right now. For my situation (age/rank/TAFMS/etc.) it would be a tough ask to go to full-up UPT and then IQT/MQT for a new platform if god forbid my Guard unit had to change missions/platforms again. Then again like you said, a lot of dudes would love it and relish the additional hours. My argument is that if you can take someone off the street and make them an 11X in ~6 months, surely you can take an 18X and make them an 11X faster than that, and the AF should invest the resources necessary to make that happen at some point before sunsetting the MQ-9 with no clear replacement.

I’m not sure that anyone can answer those valid questions. The AF at this point should stop making 18X and send everyone to UPT 2.5, but the whole thing is a mess. They also need to rapidly develop a 18X -> 11X TX course of some kind. I don’t have my instrument or commercial but have friends in the squadron who have gone out and got theirs. I don’t know the latest on what the GOCO companies are looking for but then again they’ve drawn down quite a bit lately and all of our guys who were out doing that are back at the orders trough.

Has there been any progress on seeing an entire month’s or flight pay for just attending drill for DSGs? I thought that was part of the last NDAA but maybe it was only talked about. I’ve been on full-time orders for a bit so I haven’t kept track super closely. My going assumption is that it’s the law but DFAS somehow can’t execute it so…fuck us apparently 🤷‍♂️

Not saying the GOP is particularly complicit, this one truly is "both sides." Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) is leading the charge for a new bill that I think would help. I'd love to see all federal elected public officials (including the President/VP/Cabinet) and state/territory governors required to fully release tax returns, disclose investments, and place those investments into a blind trust until they are out of office. Clearly the benefits of and temptation to trade on insider information are overwhelming.

Yes I think it will pass. Many conservatives advocate for increased defense spending and the defense budget increased every year under Trump and in fact the vast majority of years since WWII. The only sustained downturn was 2011-2015 and that deal was (oddly, stupidly) bipartisan in nature.

I am super in favor of banning Congressional members from trading individual stocks. I’d be happy to see the GOP House pass something to that effect next Congress and I’d encourage Democrats to continue supporting that idea. I won’t hold my breath though! 😅 CHIPS is still really good and I look forward to the US being the world leader in microchip manufacturing in the future.

Yes, 100% agree with this. Masks help stop the spread of a lot of respiratory illnesses…it’s partly why they’ve been worn in medical settings for decades! Everything @FLEA said above is totally reasonable. Then again there are people like this who seem to think people voluntarily choosing to wear masks makes them Nazis 🙄 I don’t wear a mask except where required (many but not all medical facilities it seems like) and rarely see others wearing masks in Tennessee…but if folks want to by all means go for it! It does not affect me in any way whatsoever and I make no real judgements either way. People that don’t share that mentality at this point I think are clearly in the wrong.

Signed the legislation that brought all that critical chip manufacturing to the USA though…😎 The CHIPS and Science act is really a good law and I’m glad it got done. Thanks to the 14 Republican Senators who came on in for the big win as well as all 50 Dems obv.