Random Thought Thread Part III: The Thinking

[Alex]

We've heard that one of our sections has a 40% PVR (basically handing in your notice) rate among its current personnel. Someone said that the sections were finally finding their feet. I agreed and said yes, they have found their feet and they are using them to walk out the door.

[ER]

I don't see how people stand being in the military nowadays, Alex. It's like society wants its killers to be warm, fuzzy, and woke, and a longtime co-worker of mine who did twenty years in army special forces was telling me he was actively discouraging his youngest cousin from going in, telling him if conditions when he enlisted in the mid-'90s were what they are today, he'd never have joined and never have made it past his first enlistment. Apparently the dropout rate among Rangers is so high right now the military has commissioned studies to find out why, and the conclusions are so laughable it exposes the heart of the problem, saying something like: "The military needs to be more inclusive and understanding in order to better reflect greater society, and show a sensitivity to the needs of all members of our diverse culture..."

Reminds me of of the incident where while getting a medal for bravery in Iraq in the '00s the dude I knew called Arabs "dune coons" and got in huge trouble. So you can get a medal for stabbing a man to death hand to hand after shooting his two comrades in front of him, but you better never call him an ethnic slur after he's dead, huh?

I try to be polite to everyone but I also think meddling from outside is making our military schitzy anymore.

[Alex]

Part of why I am leaving is because I feel a real disconnect to today's military. It really hit me just before Christmas 2021, when someone refused a legal order and instead of being charged, was given a hug and told that in the future they would take their feelings into account before deploying them, and then I got deployed in their stead. I didn't mind doing the deployment, but for someone to bunk authority like that openly and not end up being Court Marshalled still shocks me. I really wonder how these people will cope if (read: when) a real war breaks out. I don't agree with dropping bombs, missiles and rounds onto and into people, but I accepted it as part of the job when I joined up and left my conscience at the door.

I could have sat in my current easy job for another 2 years, earning decent money etc, but I just feel so far detached from the military I joined that it tipped the balance on the question do I leave now or stay a bit longer. When I got out of training, for example, you had to do 90 days in Iraq to get a campaign medal, during which time you'd run the risk of mortars, IEDs, snipers as well as environmental threats etc. Now you can get one for piloting a drone remotely from the U.K. and never go near a combat zone.

Sooner or later we will have another real war and an awful lot of people are going to get a nasty wake-up call on what that really means.

/endrant.

[Alex]

Today I learned a new word. Docqueted.

[ER]

I don't care what people say, pulling a band-aid off slowly has its merits.

[ER]

A great writer can make you see a rainbow on a black and white page.

[Trevor]

Looking at my avatar pic and going 😳😳😳😳

[Alex]

Thanks to Fallout 4 I ended up googling the lyrics to Cole Porter's Anything Goes. Then I ended up googling the people mentioned in the song to find out who they were.

[lester1/2jr]

went to White Castle for the first time this weekend. those burgers are really small.

was much more impressed with Raising Canes. no idea how they get chicken that tender.


I was in the mid west for my grandmas 103rd birthday. highlight of which was on of the other rest home patients going "Am i dead" and "help me" every 5 minutes

[Alex]

I wonder who (outside of porn) has had the most nude scenes in cinema history?

[Trevor]

I wonder who (outside of porn) has had the most nude scenes in cinema history?

Me 

[ER]

I wonder who (outside of porn) has had the most nude scenes in cinema history?

Me 

Respeck

[ER]

I wonder who (outside of porn) has had the most nude scenes in cinema history?

In terms of percentage of career films the actor was nude in, a good candidate might be Harvey Keitel.

[Alex]

The panic you get when you sit a urine sample down somewhere and then can't find it is quite unique and deserves its own name.

[LilCerberus]

Been pondering how the works of Mark Twain, Dr Seuss, Roald Dahl & Ian Fleming are being rewritten for the more sensitive readers, And it's started me wondering just how many bad '70s sci-fi flicks we're living out right now...