You know, that’s exactly what I’ve said, every single time I’ve eaten beef, anywhere in Europe…“What weak beef! I bet that cow couldn’t have done more than 20 push-ups. I can actually taste that a 2-hour run would have taken that cow the better part of an hour.”

🙄

We were told at the time, that the Brits has a surface group in the area, and didn’t want a sub submerged in the same area. Neither we, nor our radar saw anything. But in 21 years spent in the navy, I’ve never seen seas like in that 1st deployment. Modern subs, with round hulls, are optimized for submerged steaming, only cruising on the surface when arriving/departing ports or when operationally necessary (i.e. shallow waters or transferring personnel).

I’ve probably been out in seas just as bad as that 1st deployment - when the boat is rocking at 600-800 feet submerged depth, it has to be really, really bad on the surface, but being submerged, I really didn’t get to see it on those occasions.

There were about 6 of us…you know, 5 making fun of me. We were offroading on trails in a wooded/forested area versus open mud/sand fields. As I was choosing directions on which trails to take, I used signals as was habit.

My first deployment in a fast-attack submarine, in the fall of 1991. We were working under British operational control, and they ordered us to cruise surfaced, in the North Sea. I was standing watch as a lookout, with another lookout and the Officer of the Deck (OOD), in the sail superstructure of the boat. We were wearing body harnesses and lanyards, clipped into the superstructure - normal procedure.

I was a sailor aboard USS SUNFISH (SSN549), a Sturgeon Class boat, where the sail superstructure was 25 feet tall. We were in 48 foot seas.

The 3 of us on watch that night were washed overboard more than 10 times each. Often all 3 of us at the same time… flung overboard, hanging by our lanyards, trying to roll around and grab onto the ladder rungs, or one another, to get back into the bridge pooka. None of us broke any bones or lost any teeth, but we were pretty battered and bruised by the end of it.

That was the first time I got to see the entire boat out of the water… at the top of the wave, I could see the stem planes, stabilizers, the end of the towed-array housing, and the propeller. At the bottom of each trough, we’d see just a tiny hole of sky, through the water, as it all crashed down upon us, and we all hold on, trying to stay inside the superstructure.

We pulled into the Navy Base at Rosyth Scotland the next afternoon. The windshield, booked in for surface operations, was completely missing, as well a the port running light. We sustained damage to our observation periscope and main communications antenna as well.

The experience was both scary and exhilarating.

Predictability is so much more important than being nice. Just follow the rules.

I’ve been made fun of, signaling while offroading.

The way of the future…VCRs went away. DVDRs went away, replaced with DVRs and membership streaming, where you can “buy” a movie on Amazon Prime, but if they lose the rights to the movie, so do you - oh well. Your Tesla will brick, if Elon gets mad at you, and your video games will stop working if “the man” unplugs the server. Oh, and dont get caught pulling out your old dusty VCR to record the Super Bowl to watch later…thats a copyright violation. The oligarchs want to make sure the plebes eventually own nothing. If the masters can take it all away, the peasants will do what they’re told, be quiet about it, and smile when in sight of the masters.

“We have many values, but the most valuable value to us is profit, far and away. As a business pursuing profit above all else, supporting this administration, and always being ready and willing to bootlick, anywhere, anytime, at a moments notice, was thought to be our best shot at the highest profitability possible for our members. Unfortunately, like most of the supporters of trump, his administration, and his best-picked people, we’re left embarrassed, and holding a (figurative) bag of shit, with nothing to show for it except for smelly hands. Sorry. Can we get a do-over?”

I have a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30 with Ubuntu on it. IIRC, it’s 18, and the specs don’t support upgrading it anymore with Ubuntu. I was thinking of going to Mint, but I haven’t really kept up with the various available Linux flavors, for the last few years. 2 of the 3 USBports have stopped working, but that’s a $30 part replacement. The wifi see,s really slow as well, but I’m not sure whether that’s a hardware or software issue.

I’d sure love to see Canada and the UK simply shut X down within their borders. There were some grumbling awhilemago, in the UK Parliament of naming Musk as an extremist, based on his ability to not only buy influence, but his ability through X to promote or censor speech as he likes, influencing elections, or even overthrowing governments.

I love how a billionaire “puppet master” can think so low of everyone, like nobody is intelligent to think for themselves, instead, relying on some unnamed “puppet master.” Yet he cannot name any alleged puppet master leading the over 1000 protests. What a freaking Muppet. Sorry - I don’t mean to insult the Muppets.

The thing is that they don’t govern. The MAGA crowd does nothing. There’s no constructive legislation. Everything proposed is to remove some imaginary barrier that keeps society from running well, but they make things worse. Even with good legislation, some people are wronged, and get left behind. Conservatives use the bad stories to justify doing nothing good.

The whole narrative with firing “unelected government bureaucrats” who are ruining our lives is BS from the start. The “unelected government bureaucrats” are simply employees doing the bidding of our elected officials. Trump has every right to pursue an agenda of shutting down institutions and culling the herd of government employees - he won the election. The correct way is through Congressional legislation. The problem is, that he and Musk/Doge DO NOT have the support of the people. The MAGATS know the legislation would never pass with the approval of the people, through their elected representatives - so they go about doing things illegally.

I’ve enjoyed Linux since Windows MEllennium Edition convinced me that I didn’t like paying a lot, in money and time, to be an unpaid product testing guinea pig. A work friend put Windows 2000 on that laptop when ME went bad. I used it until a got a blue screen of death one day, and switched to Linux. The 1st was a $230 ePC that could be had with Windows XP or XanderOS (a flavor of Linux). I chose the latter, and had a great time of it. I’ve since used Mint and Ubuntu.

I still read the same things I used to…there’s just a red banner indicating that I’m banned, and I can’t comment. Since they banned me, I’d be happy to leave entirely, if I found the same variety of content. That might be here, but I’m simply not that familiar with Lemmy and how it’s set up, and have too much on my plate with other commitments to spend much time investigating, especially when I only have a few minutes to kill, and know what I want to read or see.

I’m permanently banned from Reddit. I don’t like Lemmy nearly as much, but it’s probably just that I’m less familiar and haven’t figured it all out. Finding subs that I liked in Reddit was much easier, but there’s the obvious moderator issues with Reddit - mainly that I’m banned.

The problem could be that, with all the advancements in technology just since 1970, all the medical advancements, all the added efficiencies at home and in the workplace, the immediate knowledge-availability of the internet, all the modern conveniences, and the ability to maintain distant relationships through social media, most of our lives haven’t really improved.

We are more rushed and harried than ever, life expectancy (in the US) has decreased, we’ve gone from 1 working adult in most families to 2 working adults (with more than 1 job each), income has gone down. Recreation has moved from wholesome outdoor activities to an obese population glued to various screens and gaming systems.

The “promise of the future” through technological advancement, has been a pretty big letdown. What’s AI going to bring? More loss of meaningful work? When will technology bring fewer working hours and more income - at the same time? When will technology solve hunger, famine, homelessness, mental health issues, and when will it start cleaning my freaking house and making me dinner?

When all the jobs are gone, how beneficial will our overlords be, when it comes to universal basic income? Most of the time, it seems that more bad comes from out advancements than good. It’s not that the advancements aren’t good, it’s that they’re immediately turned to wartime use considerations and profiteering for a very few.

Or use Amazon (I’m guilty), or shop at Walmart (sometimes guilty, but not often), or shop at Target, use Tiktok, use Facebook (reunion coordination only - but still guilty, I guess), use PayPal (very guilty), use LinkdIn, use Google (guilty).

It’s really difficult to live a modern life, without being guilty of using anything exploitative of something. Of course, all the things (and many more) mentioned above are made to make people reliant on them by design.

Amazon operated in the red for over 7 years, before turning any profit, often selling and shipping items for a lower cost than they purchased the items for. But after that 7 years, they’d driven much of their competition out of business. Now there are fewer choices with regard to finding some items, because Amazon drove everyone out of business. The cheaper prices on Amazon? Nothing like what they used to be - they don’t have to compete.

How many small towns have Walmart as virtually the only place to shop and/or the only employer?

It’s very important in our modern, separated society, for people to return to basics…get to know your neighbors, stick together, become friends, and help one another out. Reddit used to really drive me nuts, in the work-related subreddits, where everyone used to say, “Your co-workers are not your friends.” I wondered if many people ever looked past that, to ask if that’s how HR wants things. How do you ever achieve solidarity in the workplace, when you walk in with that attitude? I’ve certainly had my share of hated co-workers, but much more often, I have been friends with many of them. Co-workers are a great resource to vent, problem solve, find out what’s going on behind the scenes, and if there are problems - a great co-worker can be honest and let me know if I might be the problem, or not.

But, separated and isolated within our own little tribes/families, too busy working too many hours, for too little money, trying to keep up with too many financial obligations, is exactly how they get us exactly where they want us.

My mom (boomer) has been scammed twice, and it’s not been a simple issue of naivety or even stupidity…it’s been that, and a bit of greed, thinking more about what she’d get out of the deal, than how much sense the whole thing made, in each case. The underlying thing that attracted the scammers in each case, were her Facebook posts about going on multiple vacations and cruises.

The first one was the scam about an inheritance in probate, in Nigeria. She just had to send the money for the courts to get past probate, and then she’d be able to claim the inheritance left by her mysterious relative. Now, the maternal side of my family is Polish and Romanian, and the paternal side is British and German. I just don’t know who she may have thought bounced over to Nigeria and keeled over.

The second scam was the Exxon executive, who woke up in a hospital bed after a car accident, missing his wallet. The hospital was holding him captive in his hospital room until he could pay his bill, which somehow she could help with, by sending Amazon gift cards. The greed part comes in with him apparently having his phone, and being able to send her pics of his cars, properties, and bank statements. The stupid part comes in from about a thousand different directions and 4 dimensions…I mean, she even met his “daughter” in a video call, and adoption was discussed (the mother was apparently long dead). My mom spent a full career as a RN - in hospitals (in the US) - where they don’t incarcerate people until the bills are paid. Additionally, one would think that since any Tom, Dick, or Harry, missing their wallet, but with their phone, would be able to get ahold of someone - anyone, who might be able to contact a financial institution or work colleague, to secure proof of funds availability, replacement credit cards, or access to their finances. An executive with Exxon should definitely be able to show at least enough bling to pop themselves out of “hospital jail,” one would think. Finally, Amazon gift cards?

With my sister going through their correspondence, we found the name he gave my mom to be one letter off the correct spelling of the Exxon executive in the photo of himself that he sent her. The location of his grand home, on Google Earth anyway, appears to be the pool maintenance shed at a motel in TX.

Me: “Mom! It’s a scam.”

Mom: “No! I love him, and he loves me! I’m flying out to meet him, and help him out of the hospital. His daughter is picking me up from the airport.”

Me: “Wait. You said you were thinking about adopting his daughter when you got married - to this guy you’ve never met in person. The daughter is an adult?!”

Mom: “No. She’s 16 and has her driver’s license.”

Me: “So wait…she lives in his house with no adult supervision, since her father is hospital-bound. She has access to the car, but somehow can’t help with transportation, banking access, or the replacement credit card/replacement ID situation?”

Mom: “You’re so negative. You just don’t want to understand.”

Me: 🙄😒🫤

Wow! We have 5 vehicles in our household, a camper, and we used to have 2 motorcycles. 1 vehicle was inherited after a death on the family, 1 vehicle was found in a sales-paper/magazine called “The Trading Post.” The camper was bought new from a dealership via eBay, and we saved $13.5k buying the 5th wheel version of the same camper that we walked through locally in VA, in its tag-along version - I just had to drive to IA to get it. The 3 other vehicles and 2 motorcycles were bought through eBay, and they’ve all been good experiences.

Bad headline…should read, “doesn’t care to do anything, with regard to getting him back.”