Gromnir

we got moral opposition to veal given the lack o' regulation o' the industry, but am posting 'cause we suspect more than a few kids with a birthday so close to christmas identified with young frank cross, albeit to a lesser degree. regardless, nitha-anpetu waste, and may you survive yet another winter. HA! Good Fun!

given the pervasive but understandable ignorance regarding the history and attributes o' fascism, there is a tendency to misuse the term. being a racist redneck don't necessarily make a person a fascist. likewise, so-called libertarians and far right conservatives screaming, "fascist," whenever oppressive laws such as mask-mandates-during-a-pandemic is enacted fails for being similar misguided. here in the US, all too often people believe fascism were initially a uniquely european problem which contributed to ww2 and then took hold amongst white nationalists in the US in the 50s. is disturbing rare to encounter people with more than the most cursory grasp o' fascism beyond a certainty that nazis deserve the fascism appellation. HA! Good Fun!

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tanks and stuff "Three key issues explain Russia’s tank losses: lack of warning and preparation, poor strategy that exacerbated logistics issues, and insufficient infantry to protect them. Tanks are among the most logistics-intensive pieces of equipment. They require routine maintenance, spare parts, and substantial fuel to keep them operational. Because of these requirements, logistics planning is more important for tank battalions and regiments than nearly any other type of military unit, but Russia’s disorganized invasion exacerbated these logistical challenges." ... "The wars in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh both show that mobile armored platforms with firepower are still important. They also demonstrate that tanks need to be employed with adequate combined-arms support. Otherwise, tanks, like any armament, will be vulnerable. Russian tank units lacked sufficient infantry, which left them vulnerable to anti-tank teams, and Armenia’s aging air defenses failed to protect its tanks from Azerbaijan’s TB2s, which led to their high losses. Indeed, the war in Ukraine has disproven the arguments that drones rendered tanks obsolete in Nagorno-Karabakh. TB2s have been effective in Ukraine, but they have not seriously threatened Russia’s tank fleet. Furthermore, tank units require significant logistical support to operate effectively. These are well-known lessons that were understood by tank commanders as far back as World War II." is only one opinion from one guy, but is a whole lotta big brains who see the announcement o' the main battle tank's demise as premature. then again, is a whole lotta folks who see the announcement o' the main battle tank's demise as overdue. as with the fighter jets, is not something we claim expertise. regardless, we found the article worthy o' a read. aside, this guy also agrees the mbt obituary has been written premature. you gonna argue with the guy who has a picard as napoleon portrait on his wall? HA! Good Fun!

hmmm. am thinking there is only a handful o' excuses for wearing the cape: 1) you are an opera villain 2) you are, in fact, liberace, elvis, or evel knievel 3) you just suffered a concussion HA! Good Fun!

we got one odd suit and it were gifted to us as a joke. a few o' our colleagues got tired o' our simple country lawyer schtick, so they bought us a seersucker suit. ... gotta admit, the seersucker is extreme comfortable. HA! Good Fun!

our vote for worst traffic chaos, based on personal experience only, is mumbai. those three-wheel black and yellow cabs ignore even the idea o' lanes and scooters dart in and out from behind busses on streets which narrow inexplicably or lead to "intersections" which we has no vocabulary to accurate describe. india represented our worstest traffic nightmares, with mumbai being the worst o' the worst. HA! Good Fun!

@Hurlshort needs to do a better job with you kids. the embrace o' fascism decreased in the US post ww2 'cause it were inextricably linked with nazi germany, death camps and hitler. find ten people you know who can define fascism w/o using an internet search engine. 'cause fascism is admitted so difficult to nail down, we tend to use real world nazi germany and mussolini's italy as exemplars w/o having a clear notion at to what is fascism. eugenics, a cornerstone o' the nazi brand o' fascism, were an american export to europe and the 1924 immigration act, designed to keep out undesirables such as italians and eastern european jews, were an inspiration for euro fascists. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/walter-winchell-nazi-rally-cbn5kx/15892/ not shocking, ww2 resulted in a bit o' bad press for would be fascists in the US and any kinda authoritarianism were, for a time, rightful vilified by the majority o' americans. yeah, american fascists existed before there were a word for fascism, and ww2 didn't end the existence o' such, but the defeat o' authoritarian regimes reflexive identified as fascist sure resulted in a chilling effect on fascist recruitment here in the states... for a time. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/viktor-orban-american-conservatism-admiration/671205/ see, the thing is, just as kp's history is wonky, most americans don't know what is fascism, or communism or even socialism. is a fail o' education which is gonna require decades to fix. fascism is bad, every american knows that. so if Bob is an avid fox viewer and tucker carlson is telling him 'bout the benefits o' testicle tanning, the righteousness o' a war on wokeism and how fantasmagorical is orban's hungary, then maybe Bob is less able to recognize the warning signs o' fascism, yes? as is so often the case, the solution starts with education. 'course the hard right conservatives is the folks fighting tooth and nail in local school boards across the country to change how kids is being taught. unlike most western nations, local level politics is far more relevant when it comes to education, which is why southerner history textbooks will baffle a minnesota or illinois reader. HA! Good Fun!

film not a lotta down sides to Cal, but am sad to share that berkeley is not all that safe so am highly recommending on-campus housing. murder is low in berkeley, but violent crime in general is disturbing high and over the decades female students in particular has been disproportionate targeted w/o real efforts by UC or local police to fix the problems. am suspecting a considerable number o' assaults o' female students has gone unreported. am not trying to scare you unnecessarily, but am admitting we would personal be concerned to send a daughter to berkeley. while it should be obvious, avoid being alone at night is probable the best advice we may offer. on the positive side, even back in the 80s/90s, the Cal student body were extreme open-minded 'bout lgbt. HA! Good Fun!

we got an understandable bias in favor o' Cal, but if we had a crumb snatcher who were thinking o' attending a nor cal school, and they couldn't manage stanford, we would likely do what we could to subtle encourage consideration o' uc santa cruz. might still be a bridge too far, but acceptance is not quite as challenging as is berkeley. HA! Good Fun! ps am not poor, but am nevertheless shocked whenever we look at housing and tuition costs for US college students. UC is extreme cheap compared to similar quality alternatives, but is nevertheless distressing expensive and even back in the mid-late 80s we wouldn't have been able to pay as an out-o-state student w/o the benefit o' scholarships. two years o' jc could result in a major cost savings? after two years o' lower division nonsense, you are also far more likely to know what your major is gonna be.

it's disappointing how those kinda costs tend to come in painful groupings. our intent were to sell one our remaining properties in early may, but our tenant refused to leave and by late august it no longer made sense to sell. we became resolved to the probability that it is now a minimum 2-3 years before is again a right time to sell. so all those major items we has been holding off on replacing/repairing 'cause we were planning on the 2022 sale is almost certain gonna need being addressed before we do sell. why paint the house or replace hvac if you are selling, eh? we did dodge a bullet with ducts. had multiple contractors tell us +$5000 would be our cost to address a major duct issue... and then when we had our reliable guy finally take a look, he patched one section o' ductwork and our total cost were less than $100... though we gave the tech $100 'cause he effective saved us thousands. one o' our two remaining tenants is a licensed plumber who also does hvac, so that is nice as he is doing upgrades at-cost. the other tenants is a couple o' kids who had credit issues, but we wanted to give 'em a chance to repair their finances, but we discovered after they moved in that they is lacking any kinda common-sense and they believe the best way to deal with problems is avoidance. HA! Good Fun!

y'know, an easily overlooked aspect regarding the murder and devouring o' mr. kevin bacon in 2019 is that we have no recollection o' the headline from that time. is not as if we go looking for such stories, but is weird we didn't hear anything when the events was a bit more contemporaneous with what we would imagine were initial reporting. HA! Good Fun!

personal, am baffled by the point o' metacritic for pro reviewers o' media. the only value am having ever derived from critics is discovering one or two such individuals who appear to be simpatico with Gromnir's notions o' good and/or entertaining. warning: sweary once we discover personal useful critics, we read their reviews if am ambivalent 'bout a show or movie we has yet to see. otherwise... useless. meta? am not getting the value. HA! Good Fun!

‘A Pig Like You Can Never Have Remorse’: Michigan Man Sentenced to Life in Prison for Murdering Grindr Date and Eating His Testicles on Christmas Eve Shiawassee County Circuit Judge Matthew J. Stewart on Thursday ordered Mark David Latunski to serve a sentence of life in prison without the possibility for parole for the slaying and dismemberment of Kevin Bacon, who was killed just before Christmas in 2019, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show. grisly and unnecessary details, but 'tis the season, so... ... bench trial took two days.

Senators draft bipartisan framework to legalize DACA recipients and extend Trump-era border policy (dec. 5) fast-forward to dec. 14 were predictable as the gop didn't wanna give democrats any kinda win on immigration. even so, is too bad even common sense immigration legislation is doomed 'cause o' politics. HA! Good Fun! ps a few democrats were also opposed to the legislation 'cause it would maintain, for at least a year, a few o' the less humane enforcement provisions adopted during the trump administration when dealing with those who cross the border between designated ports o' entry. 'course this were a year-end and last-ditch effort at compromise and seeing as how with the gop taking the house gavel in january, is tough to imagine a better deal anytime soon. regardless, were another shot at amnesty for dreamers wasted 'cause o' stoopid politics.

*sigh* again, even your own source says season 2 were less popular. freaking groundhog day. HA! Good Fun!

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_witcher/s02 hardly a definitive source, but a better starting point than personal recollections and feels. personal we weren't a fan o' the source material or the show. am embarrassed to admit the source material is something we woulda' enjoyed... when we were fifteen. kinda cringey. the show (at least early episodes o' season one) were an emo version o' kevin sorbo's hercules tv show from the 90's. even the production values for witcher remined us o' 90s hercules. we were not hoping for more witcher. as to cavill's superman, we had issues with the DC movies, but we thought cavill's performance were not a problem. HA! Good Fun!

am gonna suggest an alternative. in battleship you were typical competing with another player w/o being able to see their moves, which were as often as not the common lan dynamic. is also far more likely, given our guestimates o' shady approximate age that he at least once played battleship. additional, you could play battleship w/o pizza. lan and pnp role-play almost always involved pizza. original table-top wargaming actual discouraged pizza as it involved extreme valuable maps and/or models as well as precise ruler measurements which didn't necessarily mesh well with greasy fingered nerdlings. HA! Good Fun!

... to show how far down the nerd hole we has fallen, the first thing which came to mind when we saw "extracorporeal shockwave therapy" were the following: link and based on your description o' the recovery from therapy, am thinking our imagined expectations did not have us too far removed from the reality. your "good practitioner"? HA! Good Fun!

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for those faced with same/similar obstacle as @Gorth Cyndi Lauper Performs as President Biden Signs Respect for Marriage Act Into Law: ‘We Can Rest Easy’ When President Biden signed the act into law on the White House lawn, Lauper delivered a special performance of “True Colors” for the occasion. Sam Smith also attended for a performance of “Stay With Me.” Lauper has been a notable LGBTQ+ rights advocate for much of her career, having also founded the nonprofit organization True Colors Fund in 2008 to expand education on LGBTQ+ issues and help to end homelessness for LGBTQ+ youth. “Now we’re allowed to love who we love — which sounds odd to say — but Americans can now love who we love,” Lauper added at the White House. “Bless Joe Biden, and all the people that worked on this, for allowing people not to worry and their children not to worry about their future.” ... HA! Good Fun!

possible the best argument so far for support o' the marriage equality bill: do you wanna be on the side fighting against cyndi lauper? HA! Good Fun!

for us it were x-wing v. tie-fighter. HA! Good Fun!

“A fully autonomous Heron flying the entire airplane (system) is still quite a ways off,” he said, adding the goal is to see “if this is even feasible right now.” so, the answer to the initial query regarding the capacity to implement the requisite ai capability into a 2022 fighter is, "no." am unsurprised, but am curious what is a reasonable timeline for "quite a ways off"? given the unanticipated manner in which tech advances, is quite possible that by the time the current obstacles is overcome, the solution is rendered moot by some other new tech. is equal possible advances on the combat fighter aircraft ai end up producing more meaningful results otherwise unrelated to the original design goals. regardless, am a staunch advocate o' support for daarpa, jason, nasa and similar in spite o' recent administrations, democrat and republican, seeming dedicated to gutting such whenever possible. HA! Good Fun!

am wondering if the frankenstein/skynet fears is slowing a transition to fully unmanned combat vehicles, not to mention the fact that such complex ai is likely still scifi fodder as 'posed to reality. 'tween active and passive jamming capabilities, which will no doubt only improve, am thinking ai is the obvious solution to a remote piloted vehicle being predictable rendered somewhere 'tween handicapped and impotent. is tough enough to maintain signal at even limited distances during bad weather, but add contested battlespace conditions and am not certain remote piloting is a real solution as o' today. so, is it possible to install sufficient ai capacity into a 2022 fighter craft airframe? f-22 capacity is so not the same as a predator drone. how smart does an unmanned combat vehicle need be? a modern uav may be programmed to take specified actions when signal is lost to prevent the loss o' the aircraft, but real combat is gonna be complex, yes? no doubt is more than a few nato generals and admirals who don't feel comfortable with anything more complex than siri and alexa driving a 40 million dollar aircraft, but am thinking you need something a heck o' a lot closer to skynet to get the job done. but again, am kinda talking out our arse on this as am having zero expertise to draw 'pon. HA! Good Fun!