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I'm a dirty STEM major, so this is where I take a knee.

I wonder how many people in my grandparents or parents generation said "yeah, that's not what actually happened in WWII / Vietnam." Again, that's not to question your authority but to observe how history gets twisted, even by actors who attempt to remain objective.

We have now had multiple CNOs who couldn't get their force-structuring vision through Congress. It's all fun and games until it requires turning off the taxpayer spigot to their constituents to pay for something else.

I appreciate the first-hand perspective. I think the interesting thing is that what got recorded in history is that de Baathification was largely the brainchild of Mr. Bremer, and makes it sound like the people providing security and government services would have remained intact if not for the...

The political objectives in Iraq were pretty clear. If we didn't pursue de Baathification to include disbanding Iraq's entire military and civil service, it's possible that we could've been able to withdraw before the 2008 election cycle. Interestingly, even today no one in the former Bush...

Yes, but perhaps the issue is that we are playing too fast and loose with them? I'll admit, before this thread, I never really bothered to look into the no-shave chit policy. Always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt that if they had a beard, they had a no shave chit. Because I like to...

The key difference is that Hegseth is signing policies into effect that actually impact people. And most of his policies are indicative of someone who just believes the hot air he was spouting for his newstainment base despite the fact that SMEs in the beltway are undoubtedly telling him that...

Apparently, they've grown to the point where they are a legitimate governing body inside of Yemen. https://warontherocks.com/2025/02/defeating-the-houthis-will-require-more-than-killing-their-chief/ And they're backed by Russia... https://warontherocks.com/2024/10/russian-roulette-on-the-red-sea/

People who have more credibility tend to get more rope to make mistakes. And for all the hand-wringing about Austin's missteps in communicating his health issues and putting risk mitigators in place, nothing actual tangible came from it. It merely could have. We're a results-oriented society...

The problem with whataboutism is that it almost always ignores key details to draw false equivalencies by relying on sensationalist headlines. In this instance, @Swanee was criticizing the lack of qualifications for a key cabinet member who is writing 'shoot first and ask questions later'...

It's clearly coming from the top - POTUS. The administration so far is extremely impulsive at implementing policies without doing their homework first, and it's causing them to have egg on their faces more often than not. Although there's a significant component that Hegseth obviously believes...

The Marines issued a policy that if the member can't get better after a year of treatment to maintain a clean shaven appearance, that it's grounds for medical discharge. That seemed really extreme so I looked up the treatment. Lo and behold, no shaving for 4-6 weeks is supposed to be followed...

I was making a tongue-in-cheek joke about the PRT max waist circumference and people's complaints that it's too restrictive.

Their waists aren't > 40", so clearly they are combat ineffective.

Be careful what you wish for. Lower wages (private sector) / NJP for men with > 35.5" and women with > 33.5" waist? People are complaining that 40" / 35.5" is unreasonable. The Japanese don't mess around with people who break the law.

Not something I said or even implied.

@Swanee, I agree with everything you're saying. Standards just become punitive if there isn't a holistic organizational approach to ensuring that the vast majority of people can meet them. Also, as an over 40 year old, I've had to learn the ways of cyclic intensity and load management. Aging sucks.

Look, let's strip away the silly attributional language that no one is saying. If you can't make weight and you can't pass the abdominal circumference tape test and you can't pass the bodyfat tape test, then you are statistically a readiness risk to the Navy by proven scientific research. Fat...

You can't pass the tape tests??? I'd wager "I guess I'm an idiot, I only have a 3.8 gpa in college" wouldn't pass muster as an excuse to fail a Navy written training exam.

I disagree there, although it's significantly more difficult in the taller (6'1" or higher) end of the spectrum. A male body can usually carry around 7 lbs more lean mass per inch, but the scale raises at ~4 lbs per inch. Meanwhile, the shorter end of the spectrum is extremely generous for the...

The BCA height / weight standards are what a healthy human looks like. People like to hate on BMI because it gets confused with bodyfat %, but it is a strong indicator of heart condition risk, especially as you get over 40 years old. Doctors still use and record your BMI today as part of a...

The Royal Navy gives people two weeks and then they have a beard board to make sure that their beards look professional. That would go over like a fart in church in the USN.

The point was that alt cardio wasn't around 30-40 years ago during the "easier" PRT. As for planks, I'm talking about the difficulty for an untrained person to pass, not the difficulty to do well. Holding an isometric exercise like planks for 71 /61 seconds is merely a test of mental willpower...

That was 40 years ago, and it was largely based on years and years of research conducted by the DoD since the first PRT standards in 1986 along with the integration of women: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA375322.pdf I think we know more about fitness today than we did in 1998. Besides...

Meh, I don't really care about beards. I know it's an internet fad, but I think it's one of those things that's overblown by a vocal minority that actually cares about the issue. We have, however, let fitness standards fall completely by the wayside in the Navy.... and they've declined in other...

My back and forth with FadedFloatCoat that led him to call me a contrarian was for being in favor of means-tested assistance for government subsidized school lunch.

Not always. You can get reduced utilities in SOCAL with a few clicks on a website. No proof of income required. Oh, and free school lunch for the kids, too. Tom, the bioengineer and Jane, the school administrator, need that free school lunch to feed Kayleigh on their $375k AGI. It's the only...

Means-testing government assistance programs is cool-kid contrarianism these days?

The appropriations bill is supposed to go to vote in the House on Tuesday. https://taxfoundation.org/blog/house-budget-resolution-tax-cuts-spending/ If the debt limit isn't raised along with passing this plan, the 'extraordinary measures' will continue and the X-date for default is somewhere...

I actually like the government travel card, especially for large / lengthy travel. I don't have to sweat paying a dime until I get reimbursed, and if it takes too long the triad gets shitograms from ISIC... which tends to motivate the YNs / PSs to process everything expeditiously.

I'll drink to that. Cheers 🍻.

Sorry, but I don't know a Russ. Nice talk anyway.

The money we give school districts to provide universal subsidized lunch would be much more efficiently spent by expanding SNAP and WIC so the children can bring their food from home, and it would more accurately reach the children who actually need it. And we would avoid the issues that come...

I'm comfortable questioning shitty data sets with nebulous terms that don't have empirical measurements associated with them.

My stance is that the vast majority of 'food insecurity' is a combination of parental neglect and children being picky eaters, and that's not a problem we should be solving through education funding.

Yep. Unfortunately, the issue is familiarity. Small adult anecdote: I grew up hating scrambled eggs. Always thought they were dry and tasteless. A few years ago, I was introduced to french scrambled eggs and realized that we (Americans) just burn the fuck out of them, which zaps away all of the...

My issue isn't feeding children that need it. My issue is that for every district like the one you help out, there are at least 10 that are claiming that their children will starve without universal subsidized lunch despite having almost no one making household income beneath 150% of the poverty...

I admittedly should have used 'former slave states.' @IKE, no, I can't find more detailed data on the subject. See earlier about my angst about funding research that goes against the status quo answers. But it's an unexpected result, both because of Jim Crow laws in the south and also because...

Good on you for giving back (seriously). But you have to realize that the 'small district, very small' of less than 3,000 kids does nothing to refute the aggregate data. Means-tested subsidized school lunch was always available in the vast majority of school districts.

The drastic increase in 4-year university tuition costs was, in large part, due to a significant decrease in state funding for higher education across the nation in most states in the 00s. Since 2014 or so, the per year increase of public university tuition is in-line with inflation. Today...

A side effect of NCLB and ESSA is that classes that weren't tested went by the wayside. They were viewed in many states as a distraction toward obtaining funding. Surprisingly, CA is a huge offender of this despite being a 'blue' state, but that's also because Prop 13 wreaks havoc on the state's...

Today, black Americans living in the old South, on average, are more wealthy than black Americans living in the north and west, which had no Jim Crow laws or lynchings. Keep going with the tropes that don't explain the empirical data and trying to make me feel bad about shit that happened when...

Vouchers siphon money away from the public education system and invariably create a two-tiered education system where the 'good' schools are private education and the 'bad' schools are public education. https://www.epi.org/publication/vouchers-harm-public-schools/ As for the cranky old couple...

I linked an actual report of over-diagnosis of ADHD. Another report is upwards of 20% of autism diagnosis are faulted. That is a huge misdiagnosis rate, enough to make most other doctors lose their licenses. Has nothing to do with the people I know, although it anecdotally confirms the broader...

I'm not discounting people's educational needs, simply pointing out that there is a severe propensity to misdiagnose mental disorders in young children. My cohort of parents, usually moms, often view this as a way to give their children an advantage instead of telling them to work harder. As...

Good point there. https://www.law.georgetown.edu/poverty-journal/blog/overturning-roe-is-a-poverty-issue/

President Obama thought so. Yeah, like I said... everyone has converged on canned answers that don't hold up to scrutiny now that immigration patterns have caused a demographic shift in the U.S. How do you explain that, when you control for household income and parental educational attainment...

Sorry, but I'm waiving the bullshit flag on this one. One of the largest problems facing low-income families is obesity. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7416135/ In the vast majority of cases, the parents can afford to send the children to school with lunch - they just choose not to...

Our education system is fucked. No Child Left Behind wasn't perfect, but it was a huge step in the right direction to set a baseline standard across the nation. The Every Child Succeeds Act gutted it by placing an emphasis on graduation rates vice academic achievement for funding, then Trump in...