Pooter

https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 Jon Stewart on the lab leak theory. Absolute gold. A few thoughts in no particular order: -I really miss Jon Stewart on tv and his show was genuinely the last time a parody news show was funny. Definitely didn't agree with him all the time but you could tell he thought critically about things and formed his own opinions. -Pretty wild that the lab leak theory is now mainstream after being a cancellable offense only a few weeks ago. -Maybe the lab leak would have been taken more seriously by everyone involved if trump and fringe right wingers hadn't immediately equated it with an intentional release of a bioweapon. That was one of trumps biggest weaknesses. He said plenty of true things but most of them were buried under a mountain of horsesh!t and/or packaged in the dumbest way imaginable.

Lohmeier is a clown. Everything he says sounds like it came from a Ben Shapiro random phrase generator. I'm not saying he can't think those things but going on a podcast and spouting off about them while in command is wildly, unbelievably, preposterously unprofessional. Let's reverse the situation and see if it holds up. How professional would it be for a sitting squadron commander to go on The Young Turks and spout off about trump admin policies and general grievances about the Republican Party? Something tells me you would struggle to extend the same benefit of the doubt. The slippery slope argument resonates with me to an extent. But I, like others in this thread, think that bridge was crossed a very long time ago with the patriot act. Could this be taken in a very bad direction? Yes. But I have not seen evidence of that so far. Twitter mob cancellations and the literal gestapo rounding up political dissidents are two very different things that Republican political alarmists love to conflate.

Yes. Military funding, rules of engagement, the entire national defense strategy, and even top level policies that impact us socially all change when administrations change. I'm sure whatever liberals there are in the military weren't thrilled with the political wind direction of the last four years too. Tough. Deal with it. You decided to join a military in a country where the elected civilians are in charge of us.

Here's the catch though. You volunteered to be in the military and signed on the dotted line agreeing to be subject to a different set of rules above and beyond your average civilian. You can be sent to jail for all sorts of things that aren't illegal for regular people like desertion, adultery, insubordination, fraternization, and conduct unbecoming just to name a few. And the UCMJ does have specific limits on speech for military members already. You are correct that the implementation of this policy is going to be messy and difficult. And as always the devil is going to be in the details. But acting like this is some gross overreach that is new and different from the restrictions you've already agreed to is a bit alarmist in my opinion.

It's not nearly as bad here. Some threads get a little echo chamber-ey but there's nothing stopping more liberal users from chiming in if they want to. And they usually do. In contrast, my comments which aren't even that conservative would be blocked for even a slight deviation from the orthodoxy. Or the grave crimes of asking a probing question or playing devils advocate. Trust me it's much better here, but that isn't to say we can't be careful and always think critically to ensure we don't go in that direction too.

Got a story for you guys. This is going to be long and a little out of left field but I figure where better than to share it in this thread so I'll just go ahead. I have accidentally conducted a decade-long free speech experiment in the comment section of one of the most liberal leaning "news" sites in the world, and here are my findings. Let me explain. So there I was in college back in the 2010 timeframe and I got turned on to this fringe leftist news website called motherjones. Some of you might know it. They used to run an actual print magazine too. If you haven't heard of them just go check the site right now, they're running articles about how opposing dc statehood is racist, how much people like that Biden is "boring" and other standard leftist tropes. Compared to the bias in the MSM it's nothing particularly new or interesting, they've just been doing it shamelessly and for a lot longer. When I got turned on to this site in college I would read the ludicrous articles for fun and I immediately gravitated toward the comment section. It was a hive of activity with 40-50 comments on an average article and sometimes hundreds on the popular ones. I made an account and immediately started debating people. I never intended to troll, I simply enjoyed being in the minority there and trying to pick apart other peoples ideas. I became kind of addicted to playing political devils advocate in an ideologically homogenous place. Other quasi conservatives came and went, mostly trolls, but I was a semi active commenter for 7+ years. I had some legitimately good debates with people and I like to think I changed a few minds and had my mind changed about a few things too. The first time I noticed a change in the comments section was a few years back when they got rid of disqus (comment hosting software) and moved to a comment moderation/hosting service call coral. Coral is run by ... drumroll... Vox. So I think you can already guess where this story is going. The pitch was that the new moderation software was going to crack down on hate speech and inappropriate content. At first there was very little change, but then other users started complaining that the moderation was flagging them for profanity. I was always very careful not to swear in comments and didn't have an issue at first. But then I started having comments sent to moderation for no apparent reason. Moderation simply for cordially disagreeing or posting a mainstream opposing viewpoint. Some of my comments made it through the filters (with extremely careful wording) but then it got weirder as I noticed the bile filled responses to my comments weren't being blocked at all. Name calling, ad hominem attacks, death threats, and every label from nazi to the literal devil were thrown my way, laced with profanity the entire time. All the while More of my comments started getting blocked. Meanwhile comments from bots for porn sites and money scams started passing through the filter too. It became increasingly obvious that the sole purpose of the moderation was to shut down any opposing viewpoint no matter how it was presented. I tried making a new username but after 3 or 4 posts the moderation figures out you aren't a flaming liberal and just blocks anything new you submit. I noticed on my main account they even went back in my comment history and retroactively deleted some old comments of mine. It's simply not worth even trying to engage anymore because the moderation wall won't let anything through. So what is the motherjones comment section like today? Well it's 6-9 commenters that log on every day to violently agree with each other and say that conservatives are evil and the source of all problems. There are no dissenting opinions and the tone from the regular commenters is increasingly self-congratulatory. It's one of the most severe political echo chambers I've ever seen and a perfect microcosm of what our political discourse has become. Now I'm not going to complain that my speech is being infringed because of course motherjones is a private company that can do what it wants, but there are lessons to be learned here. 1. echo chambers are insidious. It's easy to look into another echo chamber and see the stupidity for what it is, but we need to be incredibly cautious with our own information diet to not end up in one ourselves. 2. Diversity of opinion is good for business. These days motherjones is always running some kind of pathetic donation campaign to stay afloat. I saw first hand what their idiotic moderation did to their comment section engagement and I'm sure those anti-speech tendencies are torpedoing the rest of their business. 3. Go to motherjones if you want to read some truly entertaining leftist nonsense. But I'll warn you, it will make you mad and you will want to comment. Don't waste your time.

The bigger problem than media bias or even outright lies is that most people don't have the self awareness to notice that they're radicalized on one side of the aisle or the other. I tend to think about one's information diet just like a food diet. You should consume a balanced variety of information just like a healthy diet has a variety of meat, veggies, carbs etc... The difference is that at least a shitty food diet will let you know it sucks because you'll get fat. A bad information diet is far more insidious because there are no objective outward signs of radicalization until it's too late. The other piece is people whose entire existence and sense of self worth is tied up in political views. And just like food, politics should be consumed in moderation. But moderation isn't the behavior media companies want. Fox and CNN survive based on engagement, and they know that outrage and inflammatory stories drive engagement more than anything else. Do we really think we're going to get for-profit media companies tone down their rhetoric when they know it will cost them engagement numbers? Is McDonald's going to purposely make their fries less tasty so you don't want to eat them as much?

Exactly. What do you do to improve a school system that's under performing? Cut funding even more? Yeah makes perfect sense. The dumbest part is that the defund movement isn't even logically consistent with the rest of the Democrat fiscal policy stances. They'll be the first to suggest increased funding for literally anything else that they deem a problem. Climate change? Throw money at it. Racial reparations? Throw money at it. The Biden administration is literally pulling off a time heist against our future economy to the tune of several trillion dollars to "fix" all sorts of perceived national problems. But when it comes to police funding, they're instantly fiscal conservatives because something something white supremacy.

In fairness the t-6 was developed during the steepest part of the gps learning curve (early 2000s) so it's not a huge surprise the kln900 became obsolete in a hurry. but that's no excuse for a broken acquisition system that can't figure out how to put something certified and relevant in the plane today when so many cheap great options exist. Sometimes I look down at the iPad on my leg and still think it's a miracle we actually got big AF to buy into foreflight.

This has nothing to do with that SF story. We are talking about police forces writ large. And unfortunately, patrol level law enforcement on average is a low to middle income career field with relatively few entry requirements. Of course there are exceptions and there are absolute rockstars in any community. I'm sure the same holds true for police/SF. But if we're going to talk about the qualifications of the hypothetical "average cop" we have to look to measurable metrics like pay and hiring requirements. Much in the same way, you can look at the average pay and qualifications of your average Walmart cashier and safely assume they aren't about to be hired by Spacex. None of this is meant to be a dig against police. They're good people doing honest work. It's meant to be a dig against what society expects police to be and why the defund movement is so stupid. If we want police to be infallible, unflappable law enforcement robocops who can deescalate any situation perfectly, then why don't we start recruiting, training, and paying them like it?

Unfortunately the common denominator here is the brutal truth that both civilian cops and SF troops average to slightly below average people with average to slightly below average training. This is not to take away from their selflessness and dedication but let's be honest here and acknowledge this isn't the cream of the crop we're dealing with. If you have the aptitude to be a surgeon or a pilot or a navy seal you probably aren't going to be a cop. These people are not smooth operators who make perfect split second decisions in times of stress. This is why you should do everything in your power to never give the cops a reason to interact with you and ruin your day.. or much worse. I set my cruise control on base to 1mph below the speed limit and stop for excessively long a stop signs precisely for this reason. Do not give these jabronis a reason to enter your life. If you do get stopped, then you have to mind your p's and q's even more to keep the situation on the rails. This understanding seems to be lost lately as everyone would rather start flipping out and filming with their phone instead of staying calm. This fuels bad reactions on the part of the police, which then fuels a media narrative, when then fuels more bad behavior by suspects who are convinced they're going to be summarily shot for no reason. This self licking ice cream cone is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Of course not, I was just curious about the woke garbage contained in the survey.

Got a diversity and inclusion survey in my inbox today. Can't wait to tell the Air Force all about how difficult and unfair it is for women and minorities out there.. Oh wait, it seems I can't submit the survey because our computer networks are absolute hot garbage and it keeps crashing. #priorities

Boy that escalated quickly.. So let's go a step further with that New York post laptop story. What happened when Twitter suspended the account and "erased" said story? Did the hunter Biden laptop narrative drop off the face of the earth never to be heard about again? Of course not. Every conservative pundit this side of Jupiter got a hold of it and had a giant conniption shit fit about it. If anything The NYP story probably got more visibility. In the end conservatives all still found out about it and got super mad, while Democrats all ignored it... Weird, that sounds like exactly what happens any time a supposed scandal comes out in an election cycle. The party on defense ignores/minimizes/suppresses the story, and the other party acts like it's the next watergate. Do I like that Twitter tried to suppress the story? No. Do I think it made any difference whatsoever? Also no. You're calling people cry babies while simultaneously invoking the term "tech oligarchs" and acting like conservatives have zero power in the media sphere. Let's just pump the brakes a bit there. Some of these podcasts and blogs you dismissively refer to have viewership numbers that blow msnbc out of the water.

And I bet the day after that concert you went and carjacked someone because something something loss of morals/cultural decay. alternatively.. Matt Walsh just needs something to be outraged about to get views.

I'm not getting in some dumb semantic argument about what's the worst thing the US has ever done. The bottom line here is that delusional political extremists were actively encouraged by lies from the sitting president and stormed the capitol. And that is a very bad thing. I don't know where it places on the ultimate scale of national shame but it's the worst thing I've seen since I've been paying attention to politics. Almost as concerning is the sheer number of non-extremist republicans who continued on the trump bandwagon as he devolved into increasingly desperate political lies and tantrums. It shows how few Americans have actual principles and how many want to just pick a team and root for that team at all costs.

In a country of 300 million people there are enough things that happen every day you can craft whatever narrative you want with selective attention. If you want to pretend white cops killing black people is a super common problem you can find examples of that. If you want to pretend teenage girl tazer carjackings are a big problem you'll find instances of that too. If you want to make the case for widespread cultural rot, I'm sure at any given moment dozens of rappers are doing ill advised publicity stunts.. including but not limited to devil shoes. The point is that none of these things are evidence of any type of national trend, and in a country this big, the only thing that should matter to you on the right or left side of the aisle is large scale data. Unfortunately, humans are stupid, emotional creatures so we get moral panic on both sides based on a wide variety of fringe nonsense.

The hilarious part is previous secaf Debbie James changed IFS to IFT because they thought women and minorities were "disproportionately" washing out... I'd love to see them go back to an IFS construct for diversity and inclusion purposes only to have it completely backfire again. But back on the selection method subject: I don't agree with the diversity push for diversity's sake but the way we generate PCSM scores right now is hugely effed up and the PPL is the biggest part of that. I get that a lot of dudes sacrificed financially to get one, and that shows solid dedication and planning. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with natural flying ability or the ability to adapt quickly in a training environment. As a prior UPT instructor, you having a PPL tells me two things. You have an interest in aviation and your radio calls might not be complete trash for the first few sorties. It tells me nothing about your hands, SA, or RM/DM. This is because UPT flying is such a step up in intensity that it renders a PPL pretty much useless after a few rides. The only prior experience Ive seen that made a decent difference was 1) Singaporean students who flew the PC-9, 2) prior strike eagle/b-1 WSOs 3) a few multi thousand hour regional airline pilots. And some of them still had airsickness issues.

Mainly the invasion of the capitol and the complete undermining of our election system. Do you need more than that? We can go chicken vs egg all day long on whether Democrats or Republicans ruined elections first, but trump certainly didn't help anything. As it became clearer and clearer he was going to lose, trump became more erratic and irresponsible. And it culminated in probably the most shameful moment for America in my lifetime.

I don't think anyone here views trump as a fascist. He's just an egomaniac who says stupid things and didn't take the office seriously.. which culminated in some pretty damaging stuff happening. but to answer your question, this is terrible policy from the left. They always try to leverage emotion after shootings to pass stuff like this and it's bullshit. But that's the democrat M.O... trash policies papered over by emotional appeals, media top cover, and coordinated messaging.

Some pretty funny stuff coming out about Sidney Powell's defamation lawsuit right now. Apparently the only strategy left for her is to intentionally dumpster her own lawyer credentials in the hopes a judge will deem her election fraud claims too far fetched to be believed by any reasonable person. ..which is true. No one with half a brain should have believed her. But she was serious at the time and that's what matters. Trump seems to have this weird effect on people where they, like him, think they could get away with saying anything they want. Here's to hoping trump and his merry band of idiots get absolutely cleaned out through these embarrassing lawsuits. Republicans need that if they want to take back control of their party.

😮This is my shocked face. So now we know he's a shitty pilot and human being. Newsflash: the raptor demo pilot ONE DEMO TEAM AGO was a black guy.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone here who knows more about the situation with this guy. My initial read is that something is a little fishy here. How does a supposedly shit hot raptor pilot/Harvard grad land himself as a line IP at the Randolph IFF squadron doing some innovation ball wash for AETC.. Is it because the organization with POC as the secdef, csaf, and cmsaf is viciously racist? Or is it because he pissed the wrong person off or was a douche in his community and was put out to pasture like so many other iron majors before him? Sorry dude, I know it hurts. But it's happened to white dudes too. In fact.. almost exclusively white dudes.

Apologize for any ambiguity. No I don't think you're combat deployable once pregnant. But that still leaves most of the flying that happens in the Air Force as fair game. I'm not sure why you're so intent on splitting hairs over this. Pilots should be flying as much as possible. 4-5 months out of the jet is a hell of a lot better than 9 months out of the jet. The Air Force has a policy that actually makes sense (for once) granting pregnant pilots some flexibility to continue to do their job. And now they've made a uniform so they can do that job comfortably. Both of those things are wins in my book.

Agreed that there are bigger priorities, but when has a president not paraded around for getting some low hanging fruit? And it really didn't take up much of anyone's time until Tucker decided to go wildly high aspect about this issue. Current guidance says non-ejection seat aircraft and it can go at least part way into the second trimester. Those regs have existed for a while so this is really just a case of uniforms catching up with already existing policies.