Brewed Dudes, or, Excuse me, waiter, but my coffee has a pistol in it

 In order:
1) "SS" is "America's Coffee"? WTF? Hello? "Sounds better in the original German" much?
2) If you're calling the sound of a suppressed semiauto pistol "smooth" you either a) have never heard one, or
b) have no respect for the intelligence of your audience.
3) Ammosexuals are deeply weird people.

I’ve seen these guys around the Internet but I've never bothered with them because
1) we roast better coffee here and
2) I’ve never been comfortable around people with assault rifle fetishes because
a) if you’re gonna have a kink for God's sake have a sexual kink, because they’re more fun, and
b) I ran a battery of 105mm howitzers, fucknozzles, and I’ll see your pissy little 5.56 and raise you four goddam inches. 

 

Fire for effect, bitches!

Last thoughts on the whole idiotic "groomer" nonsense...

Good discussion over at Nancy Nall's joint. Which brought the following thoughts to mind (a lot of the conversation revolved around young people making choices about their sexuality or gender that they might regret...):

Are there people who are going to be troubled on the issues of sexuality and gender? Are there people who will be confused, or make mistakes, or do things that they might regret?

Yes.

(Or not. But that’s not really the point)

The point being; is any of that none of your business, or mine, or anyone’s business but theirs and the people who care about them?

Also yes.

People are complicated. All people – cis, trans, het, non-het, binary, non-binary. Some may be more complicated than others. But either way, it’s the height of arrogance to barge into their lives uninvited and start opining about them, their choices, their lives…

Like anything else that neither picks my or your pockets nor breaks our legs, our most appropriate posture is sitting quietly drinking a nice hot cup of STFU.

Let's think for a moment. This is about a tiny subset of the human race. Why are we even discussing this, other than a bunch of looney wingnuts are screeching about it in public?

Now.

Since the whole reason we’re even discussing this is because wingnuts are screeching about it, while we ponder the whole business it’s important to remember that:

1. Wingnuts in 2022 believe things about people, gender, and sex that would be embarrassingly vile and ignorant in a 15th Century Spanish Inquisitor, and
2. Wingnuts don’t want you to think that, so they’ll find something anodyne to cloak their vile ignorance in.

So the current hysteria about everything non-cis-het is all about finding ways to get their hatred and loathing of everyone they find icky into the conversation by linking “trans-people-gay-people-child-molesting”.

That’s as genuine as linking model trains with oenophilia, but they don’t care, anymore than they really care about their lies regarding the Affordable Care Act, Black people, the 2020 election, and the robust manliness of Donald Trump.

It’s performance art, pure bullshit, they’re good at it, and by spending time even discussing this (rather than telling them to STFU and leave other people alone…)

So. Bottom line?

I’m perfectly fine with everyone who’s not me living their lives the way they want (unless it involves stuff like driving drunk or experimenting with the public use of high explosives – y'know, picking pockets, breaking legs…) so I have absolutely nothing to add to the issues of human sexuality other than “Good luck. Call me when you figure it out.”

Wingnuts?

Same-same for you nimrods: sit down and STFU. 

If we ever need more tax cuts for billionaires we'll know where to find you.

Naval makeover! (cruiser-to-submarine edition)

 The cruiser Москва has passed on.

He is no more. 

(Russian naval vessels are by tradition "he's" rather than the "she's" of English or American sailor tradition) 

He has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet his maker. Bereft of life, he rests in peace, has shuffled off his mortal coil, rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

Okay.

Rule #1 of war is "Shit happens", and the fact that this vessel is now full of water is not in itself either shocking or particularly interesting. 

If one was in a snarky mood one might make the same sort of observation Bismarck might have made about continental powers like Germany or Russia wanting (let alone "needing") large capital ships: "...the fuck?" (only in the original German, of course...). 

If one was in a snarky mood.

To me there are two interesting parts about this, though.

The first is that the Russian official line is that the cruiser was lost "under tow in heavy seas after an internal ammunition explosion". 

Not because nasty enemy missiles turned him into a flaming pyre, no, no! Just your basic head-on-collision-twenty-car pileup of fucked-up munitions handling and/or storage, piss-poor damage control, and incompetent seamanship.

I kind of get the dictator-grade level of "not wanting to admit that your enemy hurt you" propaganda. But to want to make the story "our sailors are lethally incompetent" seems...a bit louche' at best. Tell me...how does that make things in your navy sound...better?

Now, that said; damage control at sea is goddamn hard. It requires constant, repetitive, realistic training led by good petty officers and planned and overseen by competent and demanding officers.

Even the best navies have their bad days; we saw that back in 2015 when we talked about the loss of HIJMS Taiho during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. 

The 日本海軍 Nippon Kaigun - the Imperial Japanese Navy - was one of the best-led (at the tactical level, at least...) and best-trained in the world in 1944. But that didn't prevent the sinking of one of their newest carriers because of poor damage control after a single torpedo strike.

On the other end of the military scale, though? Damage control is one of those massive-training-fail issues that seems to be endemic in "gangster" military organizations. Think Idi Amin's or Saddam's "armies" if you want a model. 

If nothing else this Russo-Ukrainian War has done a pretty good job of throwing a nastily bright light on exactly how fucking brutally bad the Russian armed services are. As bad as the Ugandans or the Iraqis.

Turns out that when your national model is "kleptocracy" your national military is just about as good as you'd expect based on that. 

When your soldiers and sailors are "led" by people - from petty officers and NCOs through general officers to their political masters - whose whole mode of thought is "steal what you can, neglect what you can't, and lie about everything to everyone both above and below you"  and those troops are either not trained for shit (or completely untrained) and their "leaders" are often incompetent, either because the system is designed to ensure the leaders are piss-poor, or unable to demand they aren't, to find that the entire organization those soldiers and sailors are part of ends up being criminally incompetent at the difficult business of war, including the difficult task of naval damage control, should hardly be shocking.

If you choose shitty crooks to "lead" you, you shouldn't be shocked when they "lead" you into shitty crookedness. 

Which leads me back from the shores of Ukraine to the shores of North America.

Because you'd think that this sort of military clusterfuckery would be a cautionary tale for those of us here on the sidelines in the United States about the whole business of being all enthusiastic for dictators because, say, they hate homosexuals and you do, too. That getting your dream of "leaders" hating on liberal soy-boys and darkies and uppity women isn't worth the sort of incompetent "leadership" that ends up getting your sailors killed and their capital ships sunk. 

Even for the most foaming-mouthed-rabid MAGAt groupies of Tubby and his crooked little weasel pals.

But, no.

They won't believe that.

Ever.

And that's a problem, a problem deeper than the bottom of the Black Sea, where the Москва now rests.

The Boxer

One of the things that's been so difficult and frustrating for me to watch is my country seeming to be intent on re-fighting fights I thought had been fought (and won for the good...) long ago.

The current insanity of the wingnut Right for all things other-than-heterosexual is one of them.

First, I don't get it.

Do these fucking C.H.U.D.s think that they can just scream and stamp their widdle feet and legislate other-than-heterosexual people away?

Obviously, yes, because that appears to be the idea, such as it is.

That's nuts.

That's like saying that if I close my eyes long enough that the table I'm sitting at will just...go away.

Gay people are...people. Lesbian people, non-binary people, trans people. They're just...people. For fuck's sake, cis-het whacko Christian "conservatives", it's like you're trying to pretend there's nothing in this world not like you (or what you want it to be). 

There's all sorts of people who aren't fucking like you. People who like model trains. People who sleep in Sundays. People who hate green beans. People who like (or love, or lust after) people who may not be the ones you "think" they should.

To insist otherwise?

That's utterly bugnuts.

No, actually, that's worse. Because "wishing people away" is how you start down the road that ends against walls, in shallow graves, or in ovens.

And second, and fuckadoodledoo, I thought we'd settled this on let's-not-do-stupid-shit grounds.

It's plain commonsense; if We the People are going to hand out legal and financial goodies based on things like legal and financial marital status (and We the People want to at least pretend that our society is based on Equal Justice Under Law) then every consenting-adult has to have in on that.

So if I want to marry for the tax writeoff? Cool. If I want to gay-marry, or lesbian-marry, or whoever-so-long-as-we-can-consent for the same bennie?

Also cool.

If I want to love? Lust? Dress like? Be with? Think or talk or be? Someone not manly-man or girly-girl? 

What' s the fucking problem with that?

And, seriously, who the fuck does that hurt? Who is hurt because that's a thing, and that everybody knows and accepts it as a thing?

I mean...if a schoolkid is old enough to know that there's a thing like fucking Donald fucking Trump, he or she or they are old enough to know that Heather has Two Mommies (or Daddies, or whatever...) or some other kid may have guy parts but not really feel very guy-ish. 

Personally, IMO the first should shit-scare all of us waaaaaaay more than all that other stuff, but, whatev'.

I know a lot of this is about supposed-Christian-bible-stuff but, frankly, 1) we're supposed to be a nation under civil law, not a fucking theocracy, and 2) if you're gonna clobber other people with bible-stuff you better not be mixing fucking fabrics or eating a roast beef sando with a glass of milk. 

(There's nothing more despicable than notional theocrats who pick-and-choose their theocracy. You wanna be a nutty God-pesterer? You gotta be full-on-nutzo. Buy it all or nothing. No homosexuals? Then no shrimp and no charging interest. You own it all, you don't get to pick your looney bits.)

Point is...here we are. 

Every whackadoodle wingnut (which means effectively the entire American Republican Party) is screeching like their junk is in a vise about non-heterosexuals being pedophiles (Oh, hi, Roy Moore, Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, Denny Hastert, Gym Jordan! Ears burning, ma dudes? Yep, talking about your little, ummm..."problems") or "groomers" or every other awful goddamn sexual thing they can throw at the public wall to see if it sticks.

I'll be the first to say that there are troubling things that We the People should be deeply concerned about. Climate. The fact that here in the world's richest and most powerful polity there are people with more yachts than they can ever sail while a couple of miles away there are people who can't sleep indoors. Nonalcoholic "beer". COVID-19.

But the fact that Asami and Korra (and, yes, I totally shipped those two and still do...) love each other?

That's so far down the fucking list...no. Just no. 

It's not even on the fucking list.

It's just two people. Imaginary people, even. In love. Just like people, lots of people, real not-cartoon people, do.

And the fact that we're fighting over this?

Again?

Has me infuriated in a sort of angry-sick-and-tired-of-this-bullshit way.

One of the saddest and most irritating parts of having lived this long has been watching the worst people in my country return to the worst ideas my country ever had and dig up those ideas like a fucking stupid spaniel digging up the stinking remains of a dead rabbit.

Sexism.

Racism.

Homophobia.

I thought we were on the way to burying those sonsofbitches deeper than Newt Gingrich's morals.

Seems I was wrong.

Well, shit.

"In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him 'til he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains..."

~ Paul Simon

Belonging Task Force

 

 This morning I got a corporate-wide e-mail.

Now my guess is that this is intended to be some sort of "diversity/equity/inclusion" group, and that's fine. Frankly, entirely too many of us geologic/engineering types are straight white dudes.

But the branding?!? "Belonging Task Force"? Seriously? Am I the only one old enough to immediately channel Tom Lehrer's "Folk Song Army"?

"Oh we are the Folk Song Army
Guitars are the weapons we bring!
To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice;
Ready! Aim! Sing!"

But that wasn't my immediate thought; instead it was "Why is this a thing when the first question that comes to my mind when I think about my corporate culture is "What the fuck is your malfunction?"

Stuff like this makes me wonder if the people in the C-suites really have any clue what's happening out on the shop floor.