Posts Tagged ‘Navy Grade 36’

I’m tired of polishing turds in the Navy

Posted: September 23, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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When I first joined the Navy, I served onboard the USS HAMPTON, a nuclear fast-attack submarine. You would think that would be super cool. My non-Navy friends were certainly impressed. But the sad reality was that being on a submarine sucked.

I started in the shipyard, which was an absolute hell-hole of a place to work. Our submarine was torn apart, and we had to always be ready for the shipyard workers to stop by to begin working. Instead of scheduling a time, they would often come down early, and if we weren’t ready, would then tell their boss it was our fault they couldn’t work. They did this to score overtime work on the weekends or after hours, while making us stay late. My days started at around 5:30 am and didn’t end until 6 pm. That didn’t include the drive time either.

At least I wasn’t a woman…some of my fellow female officers would get constantly cat-called and risked sexual assault walking into some shipyard environments. We’re talking legitimate, in-your-face sexism, not the made-up stuff of college students at Harvard. On top of that, if you didn’t leave before the sun went down, you risked your car’s windshield getting smashed in. Good-ole’ Portsmouth, Virginia! Thieves would smash in your windshield just for fun and not even steal anything, and the shipyard and Portsmouth police did nothing.

If you wonder why I wasn’t surprised that Sailors committed suicide in Newport News shipyard…well, now you know.

That whole time, I was told to suck it up and make the best of it. The situation is a big, fat turd, and my job was to polish it and make it shine. The smart people above me, the Captains and Admirals of the world, assured me they were doing their best to make it better. I couldn’t possibly question them!

Image generated by Bing AI

So polish I did! And I made it work.

During my flying tour, I spent 10-11 hours in a plane that had no working toilet. They had a toilet, but the Navy wouldn’t send the equipment to pump it out, so we pooped in a bag and pissed in a tall cylinder that we hand-carried out and dumped in the grass. Even the ladies peed in the tall cylinder (and I have no idea how they did it). The Navy HAD pumping equipment, but the powers that be said we didn’t need it, so we never got any. Now, next to us was an Air Force plane that had pumping equipment and didn’t hand carry out their piss in a giant cylinder after every flight. We were flying out of Greece, so it’s not like the plane landed in a hard-to-resupply area.

Polish that turd, I was told, by the supposedly smarter Captains and Admirals. So polish I did!

At a large staff, I put up with a tyrant Captain who seemed to simply enjoy screaming at us over nothing. He played favorites with the staff and pitted people against each other until he was finally fired. You would think that would make it better, but it didn’t, because then I had to help restructure and fix everything he broke.

Polish that turd, I was told, and I did, a bit begrudgingly this time.

Later in my career, I ran a small detachment of Sailors and worked to fix their aging building. The basement ceiling would literally shake when we operated machinery, and the base’s engineering team simply added some scaffolding to hold up the ceiling.

Yup, scaffolding. “It’s a bad situation, that’s the best we can do. You’ll just have to polish that turd.”

Well, I challenged that notion. I worked an engineering study and eventually secured the $6.6 million to fix the building, despite the obstinate objections of the base engineering team. That’s when I realized I’d been polishing turds for no reason. The Navy HAD most of the resources to fix these issues, but they spent them on fancy Admiral events, attended by the smartest Captains, who smoozed up to Senators and Representatives to get their pet projects funded. Whether it was the Littoral Combat Ship, the F-35, or a host of poorly designed boxes whose primary job was to send money into the pockets of Lockheed Martin while claiming Sailors were too stupid to operate them, it was all the same: wasted money that would be better spent elsewhere. This is the same Navy that was happy to use command travel money to pay for travel expenses for Sailors to get an abortion, but couldn’t find the money to fix barracks room issues at the shipyard.

So now I’m at my last command. My hope was to do something useful on my way out the door. Instead I found myself being stuck with all the crappy jobs nobody wants to do, then getting told I’m an idiot by a Captain that definitely acts like he’s smarter than everyone in the room. “You’ll need to polish that turd” he told me the other day.

I didn’t join the Navy to polish turds. I’ve been constantly told to make other, stupid ideas work while the “smart” people get fancy offices and plenty of resources. I’m not alone in this either. All of the officers I looked up to, the one’s I would willingly go into battle with, are all leaving in droves. They tell me they are tired of putting up with mediocre leadership that won’t put in the time to build real solutions, but instead look for “quick wins” (oh how I hate that term!).

Nobody joins the Navy to polish turds. We should stop asking our Sailors to polish poop and actually put resources where they belong.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

AI will only take your job if you’re a crappy journalist, an Admiral or General, or a moron

Posted: September 16, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in tech
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There seems to be a lot of angst about Artificial Intelligence stealing people’s jobs. Already there are reports of journalists and reporters being laid off and AI used to produce click-bait headlines and bland content. The Screen Actors Guild is still on strike, something I get constantly reminded of while I browse YouTube, and its partially over AI-created content. Even the anti-work subreddit has posts about ChatGPT affecting workers.

As someone getting ready to leave the military, I’ve been asked if I think AI will make it hard for me to find a job.

My answer is a resounding NO.

First, as an author, I’ve used ChatGPT 4.0 to generate content for an upcoming training book. While ChatGPT is great at condensing materials and giving me a good starting point for technical books, it doesn’t produce interesting content. I still have to tweak what it outputs to turn things into compelling stories that people want to actually read. If you’re an author that cranks out multiple crappy books, then yes, ChatGPT is going to replace you. But if you write compelling stories that are interesting to human beings, then its unlikely you’ll lose your fan base.

BTW, shameless plug for you to buy my book, or the audio version if you need something to listen to in the car on your way to work.

Second, as a guy that installs networks and WiFi in my spare time, AI is no-where close to doing the renovation work I do. There are some robots like Spot that can perform some functions, but these excel at things that are repetitive and mundane. Problem solving work, like figuring out how to run an ethernet wire from one end of a historic church to another, still needs a human being to both figure out the solution and manually put it in.

The same goes for plumbing, electrical, locksmiths, and even painters. Those jobs that the laptop class looked down on because they don’t require four-year degrees are still very much in demand and won’t be replaced by AI anytime soon. AI can’t wire an outlet, plumb a faucet or change your locks, but it sure can analyze spreadsheets, manage social media accounts and write poorly sourced stories, so if that’s your job, you might want to update your resume.

Funny thing, the same people thumbing their noses at Joe the Plumber and telling them to learn to code are now being replaced by AI. Perhaps they should learn to work with their hands instead of getting expensive manicures?

In the military, AI could replace the hoards of worthless Admirals and Generals we have. Hey, maybe Senator Tuberville should propose cutting 50% of our flag officers and replacing them with a multi-license copy of ChatGPT 4? If we add the PowerPoint integration, we’ll get better products in less time and are far more effective!

You think I’m kidding, but you haven’t seen the idiocy that hides behind the stars on the collars of our top “leaders.” While I was attending class at a nearby staff college, I used ChatGPT during a flag officer lecture to see if I could guess what that person would say next. By typing his words into the ChatGPT prompt and asking for predictions as to the content of his next paragraph, I got a 75% match. In many cases, what ChatGPT said was far more interesting! Weeks later at the same college, I used ChatGPT to generate actions that China would take in a simulated war game and asked it to generate speeches that particular Chinese leaders would make based on actions that other players took. It was amazingly accurate, despite not having access to classified data, and was better than many of the summaries I’ve received from senior officers.

Trust me, I’d welcome my new robot overlords over most of our current flag officers.

Your job will get replaced by AI if what you do is repetitive and monotonous, or if you are supposed to be creative but only generate junk, like say most of the so-called journalists. AI tools are incredibly powerful, and I use them to enhance what I do, but so far they are still well behind true human ingenuity.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, Skynet, or any other government agency.

More disincentives for veterans to report mental health problems

Posted: September 9, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Afghanistan war
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As a military member, reporting mental health problems is a Catch-22. On one hand, everyone is encouraging you to speak up when you need help, but then you tend to get punished when you do.

For example, it used to be if you claimed any sort of mental health problem, from depression and anxiety to even trauma due to a sexual assault, it would cause your clearance to be suspended. Thankfully, that isn’t true anymore, and on my last security clearance questions, I noticed that the interviewer only asked if I had schizophrenia or other delusional-type illnesses.

The stigma is still very real, and most vets won’t seek treatment because they think something bad will happen to them. And for those that are pilots, another shoe dropped. From the Washington Post:

Federal authorities have been investigating nearly5,000 pilots suspected of falsifying their medical records to conceal that they were receiving benefits for mental health disorders and other serious conditions that could make them unfit to fly, documents and interviews show.

The pilots under scrutiny are military veterans who told the Federal Aviation Administration that they are healthy enough to fly, yet failed to report — as required by law — that they were also collecting veterans benefits for disabilities that could bar them from the cockpit.

Sounds bad right? So what sorts of disabilities did they find pilots not reporting?

“If they’re going to shine a light on veterans, they need to shine a light everywhere,” said Rick Mangini, 52, a former Army pilot who has been grounded from his job flying for a cargo company since his medical certificate was not renewed last month. The FAA notified him in May that he was under review for failing to disclose sleep apnea, for which he receives VA disability benefits, Mangini said. Although he checked the box on his application that asked if he receives any government disability benefits, Mangini, who lives in Killeen, Tex., said he was not aware he had to provide specifics.

Sleep apnea. Yup. They also look for depression and anxiety, but its not an automatic grounding if you have those:

Pilots who have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions are not automatically prohibited from flying. But the FAA requires them to be closely monitored because their conditions and medications can affect their ability to safely handle an aircraft.

Now, you would think given the size of the investigation that we have lots of suicidal pilots out there, but according to the article, we haven’t lost a passenger plane since 2009, and while the article indicated there is suspicion that some pilots may have deliberately crashed in other countries, its not 100% confirmed.

So what’s going to happen? Well:

  1. Military pilots will stop reporting mental health problems, and will not get the help they need.
  2. These guys and gals will pay a lot of money to people that specialize in VA claims that will get them benefits without having to be reported.
  3. At some point, a veteran pilot is going to commit suicide and leave a note that says he was afraid of getting help because he wouldn’t be employable anymore.

There is already a stigma that being in the military causes mental health problems, and this is going to further push people away from joining.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Lying about reproductive health

Posted: September 2, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in catholic
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As a man, my doctor never talks to me about women’s health. Maybe that’s because my doctors don’t ask me my preferred pronouns, maybe it’s because I just don’t bring it up, or maybe because we just don’t talk with married men about sex…who knows? I sure don’t.

Recently this changed a bit, because my wife asked me to accompany her on one of her doctor visits. Easy enough, I sat and mostly just listened. But while we were waiting, I noticed an interesting poster on the back of the patient room’s door.

Well, isn’t that interesting, I thought. Because my wife and I use the Marquette Method of Natural Family Planning, I already knew that the “Fertility Awareness” stats were bogus. A quick DuckDuckGo search will show the following:

So how do they get 88% effectiveness? Well, if you roll in a bunch of not-as-effective methods, such as temperature and calendar methods, it brings the numbers down. I confirmed this at Planned Parenthood’s website and at ContraceptionChoices.org. Interestingly, none of them referenced Creighton or Marquette. Why would that be? Wouldn’t you want to “Follow the science” and give women choices that don’t involve chemicals?

When you view the medical establishment as a bureaucracy interested in making money, this becomes a much more interesting chart. Everything in the “Works Best” and “Works Pretty Well” category requires a doctor and is covered by insurance. Why would a doctor want to prescribe the Creighton or Marquette methods when they won’t get any money or kick-back for doing so?

Conservative men, especially lawmakers, have dropped the ball here. We’ve created a medical system that promotes pumping women full of hormones and chemicals to stop pregnancy, then promotes the same system to pump them full of hormones and chemicals when they want to get pregnant, and we make insurance companies pay for it. We then have a just-as-effective option that doesn’t involve chemicals, and we allow the medical establishment that has zero interest in promoting it to demonize and dismiss NFP as something those crazy conservative kids do that doesn’t really work all that well.

For all the men reading this, your wife and daughters are reading that poster every time they go to the doctor. They are being manipulated on every visit to the doctor. I’m guessing you don’t talk to them about it because, well, you’re a guy and we’ve allowed society to say you don’t have a voice in this discussion, and that only a doctor with a self-interest in prescribing medication can talk to your daughter about this topic.

Thinking about it, maybe that’s why my doctor never talks to me about women’s health….

Sun Tzu talked about winning without fighting, and it looks like the medical establishment is doing just that. The poster says “Your body, your choice,” but all the “good” choices push money into the system, so do you really have choices?

Conservatives need to push for laws that require insurance companies to cover natural family planning costs, such as a fertility monitor and the cost of visits to an NFP practitioner. Sure, plenty of families can afford these costs, but not everyone can, and more importantly, it puts money into a far better solution. Planned Parenthood can muster a ton of money when doctors and your insurance company are feeding them insurance dollars, so imagine a world where NFP gets similar treatment. I like that world a lot more than our current world.

On top of that, every Catholic Church should have a rolodex of NFP practitioners. Priests should be taught about the different NFP methods and should refer their parishioners to them. They should have the occasional sermon on NFP, and it should be a topic in pre-marital counseling. You know how many priests I’ve heard talk intelligently about NFP?

Zero

…and that’s a problem. We need to stop being squeamish about this because when we don’t talk about it, someone else fills the void.

Stop pretending men don’t have a role in reproductive health, and stop letting the establishment lie to your face about NFP.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. BTW, Tricare covers everything but NFP as well, how about we start by changing that first?

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