Posts Tagged ‘NG36B’

Style vs Substance in the Navy

Posted: April 13, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Blame Biden Administration
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When I reported to my first submarine, the torpedo division was responsible for the maintenance of all the small arms onboard. Despite having grown up in a hunting and shooting family, they took me to the range to show me how to shoot both pistols and shotguns in their style, since they needed small arms qualified people to stand watch. A few years later on shore detail, a group of us would regularly visit the nearby rifle range on “Warrior Wednesday” to keep our shooting skills sharp.

Since then it’s become harder and harder to find ranges where you can practice shooting, and there is less “gun culture” in the military now then even 5 to 10 years ago. That’s why this headline didn’t surprise me one bit:

My torpedomen would have never let me do this, at least not without cracking a joke at my expense. There’s even a rumor that the shell casings are photoshopped in, although at a minimum the scope and handguard are mounted incorrectly, plus he’s holding the weapon really high, like uncomfortably high, in his shoulder. Plus, why is there a hand on his shoulder? I don’t normally touch people that are firing automatic weapons.

Sadly, here’s the bigger problem: he’s probably my age. The folks like me that grew up with guns, love our country and care about being technically competent at their jobs have been run out of the Navy, replaced by those that care about climbing a corporate ladder and looking good. This picture captures this beautifully. We see a Navy DDG Commanding Officer, someone who should be technically savvy and have our respect, firing a weapon in what should be an awesome picture, but the minute we look deeper we see someone who has no clue about weapons posing for a cool photo, likely to move on to something else a few seconds later. Those that can do are replaced by those that look good doing and toe the party line.

The next time the DoD cries about money, remember this and start demanding that our Admirals get replaced by real warfighters.

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.

We should pay more attention to our local governments

Posted: March 30, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in business
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The company DroneUp! made the news in 2021 when it announced that it signed a deal with Walmart to do drone delivery. Recently it announced it a new all-in-one delivery service that could be rolled out to any store and deliver packages within 30 miles and under 10 pounds, all while automatically maintaining flight safety rules. In their spare time, they also manage to release the occasional cute video, like this one, on Facebook.

With all this right around the corner from my house, and with the fact I buy a lot of things from our local Walmart, you’d think I’d have a never-ending stream of drones dropping off items on my front porch.

And you’d be wrong. Why? Because I don’t live in Virginia Beach.

See, DroneUp! approached my city about adding drone delivery, but my city insisted that every drone position be operated like an airport. Yup, that’s a thing. Essentially my city council wanted every Walmart to run under the same restrictive rules that airports do. Never mind that the FAA doesn’t insist on this. Never mind that there is more restricted airspace in Virginia Beach then my city, with the nearby Oceana and Norfolk airports contributing to plenty of civilian and military flights everyday. Nope, my city insisted on stupid antiquated rules.

So instead of drone delivery, we get nothing.

Local government elections get ignored too often. As a society we argue over national elections, but fail to show up to local elections. That’s how we get crummy school boards that push pornography in school libraries, crummy state prosecutors that let criminals run free, and crummy city councils that equate drone delivery to running an international airport. On a bigger scale, we’re seeing some states, like Florida, tackle issues like squatting head on, while other states allow criminals to kick people out of their homes and trash them. We’re seeing some states like Georgia get ahead of election security while others allow it to falter.

If we don’t pay attention to our local problems, it’ll be impossible to solve the national ones.

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.

“Squatters rights” will result in vigilant justice

Posted: March 23, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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There has been a sharp increase in squatter claims making the news. If you aren’t familiar with “squatter’s rights,” its an area legally called adverse possession, where someone can lay claim to a space after occupying it for so many years. The average person would think this is trespassing, but there is a legal distinction in that trespassers don’t claim to own the property, but squatters do. This allows someone to break into an abandoned home, act like they own it and thus become impossible to evict.

If you think this sounds crazy…that’s because it is. But we live in the world of crazy, such that someone can break into a 4.6 million dollar home near Lebron James and simply occupy it, even throwing parties and renting out spaces. Or one that allows a squatter to put a Temporary Restriction Order on the owner of a home and kick him out in Washington.

We do, seriously, live in a clown world.

Not surprisingly, because the police either can’t or won’t stop this insanity, it is spreading wildly, especially in deep blue states like New York. In every part of the world where I’ve seen private property rights degrade, the sequence goes like this:

  • Criminals go from individuals to gangs that are well organized
  • Private citizens begin offering services to counter the crime
  • Criminals begin to get violent
  • Private citizens begin to “disappear” individuals

We’re already seeing organized squatters, including a lot of illegal immigrants, targeting wealthy homes in groups. We’re also seeing other citizens develop businesses around evicting squatters, including a self-proclaimed “squatter hunter” who charges $5,000 or more to kick out squatting parties. Sadly, we’re seeing a death toll too, as two squatters beat a woman to death for simply trying to reclaim her home.

The next step is squatters will start disappearing. Contrary to popular belief, police exist to protect the guilty, especially people accused or guilty of serious crimes.

Think about it, if you thought your neighbor sexually molested your child, what would stop you from beating them to death? I mean, if your kid was abused and scarred for life, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t at least contemplate burying the culprit 6 feet underground. The police and your belief that justice is best served in a courtroom are what stops you from pursuing this.

As we remove cops and courts, mark my words, we’re going to see squatting stop, because people are just going to disappear. Squatters are going to get beaten to death by angry mobs of property owners and their bodies dumped in the street. Nobody will say anything, just like people in Italy were silent on mobster killings. Vigilante justice will fill the void, and with it will come the settling of petty disputes and rivalries at the end of a stick and a gun.

Some people are cheering this on. They are thinking “Yes, finally, I can settle my score with so and so.” To that I shake my head. We all think we’ll be the ones on top when the world shatters, but in reality, in a world of might makes right, the most despicable people rise to the top. Look to the French Revolution if you need an example.

Some states are getting ahead of this, namely Florida, which passed legislation to allow police to kick off squatters. Even New York is beginning to modify its laws, likely too late to prevent the mass exodus of businesses.

More so than politics, we need to get a handle on squatting before it turns decent people into crazed vigilantes.

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.

Using AI for homeschool

Posted: March 16, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in opinion/news
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The implosion of public school during COVID created a whole new batch of homeschooling families. While this is great news, it also means more than a few families are discovering the difficulty in homeschooling children, especially when the child has difficulty in subjects the parents aren’t familiar with.

That’s why I encourage all homeschooling parents to use AI. I use CoPilot since its free, but you’re welcome to use OpenAI or any other AI. Now, we aren’t going to try and look up gender studies or DEI subjects, because parents should talk with their children about those topics. But what about math?

Let’s be honest, unless you happen to work in engineering, integrating a function is likely something you haven’t done recently. AI makes this really easy AND it explains the work.

Remember diagramming sentences? I don’t because I’m sure I slept through that portion of school. So what do you do when your kid is confused about diagramming sentences?

Problem solved! But what about foreign languages?

Too bad for CoPilot! You have to have a Microsoft account of some kind to make this work

If it can diagram sentences, it can definitely update your work too!

What about chemistry? Balancing redux equations in high school chemistry is something I haven’t touched in years.

Another great use of AI is technical help. If something doesn’t work correctly on your computer, AI makes it easy to troubleshoot. I had a lot of problems getting rid of the kid’s google accounts from my wife’s laptop. I would go to a website and their account, vice my wife’s, would load and be heavily restricted. AI helped me solve that problem.

Another great school use is Excel functions. Microsoft Excel is extremely powerful, much more so than Google Sheets, but the syntax and formatting can get messy quickly. CoPilot is especially good at taking what you want to do and spitting out a function you can copy/paste. Even something complicated like pivot tables falls to the power of AI!

I think Microsoft captured AI, especially large language learning models, with the phrase “CoPilot.” Yes, AI can generate some pretty humorous poems and the occasional rap song, plus create some very cool images, but human beings are still far better at imagining unique things. Where AI shines is rote work. How many times have you Googled different Excel formulas, or how to integrate a function, or where some setting is in PowerPoint? My kids have tons of weird questions that pop up, ranging from English and Math to Biology and Chemistry. Anything that is straightforward will easily be answered with AI.

One caution: I always encourage people to have a discussion with the AI. Just popping in a question and getting an answer is dangerous, because the AI, like human beings, can get it wrong. This happened on an English question my daughter had. The first answer didn’t make sense, and she was ready to write off AI. I had her put in a few more prompts, and then the AI (in this case, CoPilot) gave her the correct answer. Treat it like a really smart human and you’ll do great!

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. And besides the pictures, nothing else in this post was generated by AI.

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