Xerodin

Forcing people out of the military for a policy that wasn’t around when they joined gives the service member some leeway. There’s usually a period of voluntary separation where they can opt in to receive a severance pay and streamline the process. If the service member doesn’t opt for voluntary separation, they are involuntarily separated. This involves a little more paperwork, a longer process, and half the severance pay of a voluntary separation. In both cases it’s an honorable discharge (unless there’s something else criminal at play) and they keep all benefits and entitlements.

I’m more familiar with Navy regulations, but here’s an example from the DEI rollback from March (TW for the shitty title of the message).

Paragraph 5 stipulates the terms of voluntary separation. More specifically:

b. Any remaining military service obligation will be waived for members requesting voluntary separation; any bonus received prior to 26 February 2025 and subject to a service obligation will not be recouped. Absent any other basis for separation or disenrollment, USNA and NROTC midshipmen will not be subject to monetary repayment of education benefits.

d. Characterization of service will be honorable except where the member’s record otherwise warrants a different characterization. The applicable separation program designator codes and associated narrative reasons for separation will be provided at a later date by an appropriate official of the Office of the ASN(M&RA) in coordination with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.

e. For military personnel requesting voluntary separation and eligible for voluntary separation pay in accordance with references (h) and (i), CNO and CMC will authorize voluntary separation pay at a rate that is twice the amount of involuntary separation pay for which the member would have been eligible in accordance with reference (j). Voluntary separation pay is not payable to those with less than six years or more than 20 years of service. No member receiving Voluntary Separation Pay in accordance with this ALNAV will be required to serve in the Ready Reserve.

f. CNO and CMC are authorized Temporary Early Retirement Authority for members with over 18 but less than 20 years of total active-duty service eligible per reference (k) and separated in accordance with this ALNAV.

If you have friends, family, or acquaintance who are US military members, please use this information and opportunity to educate, agitate, and organize. Some of these people are about to lose their stability and routine, and it’s important to direct their frustration and blame at the racist policies of this administration, linking it to other intersectionalities, and building camaraderie.

Veterans were also victims of the orphan crushing machine, usually recruited from impoverished areas with the promise of a stable job, health care, and education. They were once broke high school kids from podunk towns with zero opportunities for upward mobility. I think the left in America is missing a huge opportunity to take advantage of the fetishization of veterans. A few charismatic veterans who espouse a leftist platform can lend a lot of pathos for the cause from the view of the average ‘red-blooded American.’

We’re drinking from a firehose of bullshit and you want me to talk about the turd I swallowed three days ago? Buddy, I won’t forget that turd, but there’s literally newer and more horrifying shit coming down the tube. It’s amalgamating into a giant shit mountain and crushing us underneath it. C’mon, my dude. Redirect your angst somewhere else.

Imperial/metric flame war! Fuck it, let’s get even more pedantic and go back to using decimal time. 10 hours a day, 100 minutes an hour, and 100 seconds a minute, all altered in duration to fit into their superlative hierarchical tier. A day would then be 100000 decimal seconds. Does that make the metric powers of 10 part of your brain happy?

/s for fake passive-aggression. I’m not actually upset, your comment just reminded me of decimal time.

On a related note, 60 (seconds per minute, minutes per hour) is a cool number because it’s divisible by so many factors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. It’s because 60 is divisible by so many numbers that we can have increments of an hour be in while numbers of minutes without decimals. A quarter hour is 15 minutes. A third is 20 minutes. One tenth is 6 minutes. Base 60 seconds and minutes are flexible and convenient.

Anyways, that’s enough late night rambling. Enjoy your day, internet stranger.

Holy shit, I haven’t thought about this in years! I remember back in 2008 I had a copy of Stepmania on a flash drive and played it on school computers during class.

I had the exact same thought when I read the premise. One of my favorite indie games of all time.

The second sentence of the Wikipedia article literally says about 2/3 were American citizens.

The section on ‘Exclusion, removal, and detention’ says “[s]omewhere between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were subject to this mass exclusion program, of whom about 80,000 Nisei (second generation) and Sansei (third generation) were U.S. citizens.”

So yes, second and third generation Japanese Americans, natural born citizens, were held in American concentration camps.

British Columbia, a Canadian province.

That fantasy looks like the Western government offering tax cuts and incentives for a private company to set up shop in a rural town, hiring a bunch of employees for as little money as possible, cutting corners in safety and quality to boost their revenue from the investment, and ultimately delivering a shit product by comparison. Then, when the public finds out, the company will “downsize” by laying off most of the employees they hired, stranding those that are laid off in a rural town they can no longer afford to move away from while protecting the company’s profits.

The CEO gets a bonus for record profits, a couple hundred people’s lives are ruined, a small town has to deal with the fallout of high unemployment and the socioeconomic issues that come with that, and the Western government is at a loss of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Lawmakers get their kickbacks from the company in the form of political donations and lobbying vacation trips.

I’m sorry, my internet friend, but I have little hope for that fantasy without significant change to the system at large.

For single player fantasy, Outward is my favorite game to get immersed in. It has a bit of a steep learning curve, but the survival mechanics and lack of a leveling system really aid in the feeling that you’re getting better at playing the game as your gear gets better. The combat encourages patience and preparation rather than jumping into the fray and swinging wildly. And the magic system, good lord. There are several vague categories, but the best way to describe it would be ‘ritualistic.’ There are spells with fairly benign effects on their own that, when used in conjunction with other spells or effects, produce deviating or beneficial results. And the NG+ mechanics are fair and balanced while offering a boost to follow-on playthroughs.

The most significant barrier to entry is the learning curve, mostly learning about combat, patience, and the stability system. But it’s my personal favorite.

Unrelated, but I fucking love Cross Code.

A little mixed up, there. The French were meant to have the contract to build nuclear powered subs for Australia, but the UK fucked the French by taking the contract, with some US help.

The creation of the partnership spelled the end of a French–Australian submarine deal. On 17 September 2021, France recalled its ambassadors from Australia and the US; French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the partnership a “stab in the back”[10] following Australia’s cancellation of the deal worth €56 billion (A$90 billion) without notice,[11][12][13] ending recent efforts to develop a deeper strategic partnership between France and Australia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUKUS

In political party terms, a liberal is someone who supports the economic system of capitalism but wants to give concessions to the general population (free healthcare, cheap public transportation, etc) to placate the people from changing the system. The idea is if people are making a somewhat decent living then they will be less disgusted with the ludicrous amount of money the actual wealthy make and won’t revolt. Messaging from conservative parties has purposely conflated liberals with leftist (socialism/communism) ideology in order to tie it to the Red Scare and convince lower income people that the idea is meant to take more from working class people.

tl:dr - 2021 Ever Given shipping blockage but worse

It’s much more complicated and impactful than that. Commodities may take multiple trips through the canal in different forms before they become final products, and more sophisticated products that require multiple raw material sources spread across several vessels multiplies this problem. Vertical monopolies have min/maxed costs and revenue such that they’ve determined it’s cheaper to refine one material in country x, pay to ship it to county y for further refinement, then pay to ship it to country z for final assembly before shipping it a fourth time to where it will be sold. Companies that are not vertically integrated simply buy the materials they need to make their product but those materials have already been on a similar journey being sold from one company to the next, the price going up for each stage of refinement.

The alternative route around the southern tip of Africa adds roughly 2 weeks to shipping time. Many companies rely on materials constantly arriving in a timely manner so they can continually produce products to be sold. Adding a 2 week delay to receive a material and a 2 week delay to ship their product immediately puts a company at least a month behind on production.

If a product would require materials that went on multiple trips through the Suez canal then attempting to shift to an alternate route would dramatically increase the time it would take to produce. Simplistically, this causes a supply shortage and results companies losing profit and raising prices across all sectors.

The Houthis are trying to stop the Palestinian genocide by hitting capitalism in the balls. In a nutshell, if large companies start seeing a significant hit to their bottom line then they’ll begin pressuring the lawmakers and world leaders that benefit from those companies to stop the genocide.

Genocide stops -> Houthis stop attacking shipping -> companies get their profit

This doesn’t even touch the quagmire of politics in the region…

I’ve heard “jilling” used. I like it because it mirrors the term “jacking.”

Poe’s Law is in full effect here.

PSO was one hell of a game. The nostalgia hitting, good lord.