Into The Afternight: Our 3rd Shift O/T
22 repliesIf you’re still up and want to talk Chiefs, or just hang with fellow citizens of the Kingdom, this is the place.
I had ideas, but the Wild are playing, so have some semi-educational randomness.
I don’t really expect many to watch them tonight, but I expect there are still some who check in the next morning. Yes, lurkers, I haven’t forgotten you. Now, it’s time for the open mic.
With that, time’s yours.
Thanks, BRAG. Love the content. This up’s for you!
On a well-deserved lighter note,
That was awesome!!!!! How cute.
When you get down to cases, history consists of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Don’t count on having been taught all three unless you have a degree in history, and maybe not even then.
Not exactly uplifting, but this is actually national news-worthy, since after all Hawaii is one for the 50 states. Nobody’s currently in danger, but good luck predicting what a volcano will do. Given past eruptions, things haven’t gotten explosive, but it bears watching.
Update on the flat tire debacle. I do not actually have the tools to put the spare on, as I thought. I have a good 100+ piece socket set, but I need a specific 6 spline 19mm socket because these fucking custom wheels require it. Normally I’d go local, but Amazon will get it to me tomorrow. Also, I can’t get new tires until Monday. I can get the exact same tires at a good deal on Monday, but I need to get the spare on so I can drive over.
Damn, talk about a perfect storm of dominoes. Hope things get better for you, pronto.
This car is great except for all the custom shit that’s not working, from minor annoyances, to pains in the ass. It was someone’s project car that was in great shape with less than 50k miles for a 6 year old car. All the custom changes were and still are quite nice, but I am not a car guy.
Ouch, but it was a package deal. Buying a car always is, at least on the used side of things. Hidden problems at no extra charge.
I realized for myself a couple decades ago that far from being the butcher that CW termed him, Grant was anything but. Did he take higher casualties than many of his contemporary Union generals? Surely, but consider that McClelland’s Peninsula Campaign every last Union man killed died to no purpose, because McClelland simply retreated, ceding his meager gains back to the Confederacy. Compare and contrast that to Grant, who while taking heavy losses in the Wilderness (shoulda called it the Nightmare), instead of retreating, Grant advanced, forcing Lee to give ground. After a series of battles that were technically Union defeats, Grant drove Lee back to Petersburg, and from there it was just a matter of time.
A much misunderstood and much-maligned man, Hiram Ulysses Grant deserves a much closer look these days. What you thought you knew from K-12 was tainted by Lost Cause propaganda, a piece of historical propaganda from racists of the past that we still aren’t free of. Shit like that is why I despise activist revisionist history. From either direction, telling lies now to “correct” the lies of the past only means that nobody trusts anything other than what they believe. Bah.
If anyone happens to recall, I mentioned that I have long held an interest in the ACW, and even the eventual traitor of a co-author agreed with that. I know that era a lot better than anyone who has only spent a couple years looking into it, and I brought a military history perspective to the task, as well.
As I’ve said a time or two, to truly study military history, you have to come to understand its context. That’s much more demanding than ordinary History.
I can’t spare this man. He fights.
Among other things. In the field, he’d more often than not be wearing a private’s tunic, which caused some consternation in places, but he was a fighting man, and where he met subordinates that were also fighting men, he got on well with them. Contrast that with Braxton Bragg, a man who, once you read up on him makes you wonder why there was ever a Fort Bragg in the first place. He was a lousy general, since he fought constantly with his subordinate generals, suspected about everybody of being up to something, and so could never formulate a solid battle plan.
Never shoulda happen, but once again the Lost Cause had its effect.
Confederates should never have federal installations named after them. Ever.
I won’t argue with that much, but OTOH there has to be a limit somewhere, or we’ll end up whitewashing our own history, and lose the understanding of it. Woodrow Wilson was a bigot of note, and T. Roosevelt wasn’t much better either, but that doesn’t mean that everything they touched is tainted, and that they should both be stripped of any appreciation at all?
As I said, context matters, and the legacies of those two are webs of goods and bads, same as their contemporaries. Our politicians’ lack of morality is nothing new, so we should remember that the big names of the past were also flawed. I mean, I like Patton, but his attempt to cure PTSD by slapping the man was dumb from several angles, his common-sense intent aside.
I understand. I’m not interested in whitewashing history either. There’s obviously a lot of nuance and historical context required to judge great figures of the past. The main questions I ask myself are “Did they leave a legacy that brought more benefit to the world than detriment?” “Is what they are known for doing related to an opinion or action that offends me?” Know what I mean?
I likewise understand. From the sound of it, we agree more than we disagree, and our respective preferences have no real weight in the world anyway. A topic for another day, perhaps, no rush.
Did I ever tell you General Sherman’s in my family tree? He was an uncle of sorts. Roger Sherman was as well. He was the creator of the Great Compromise during the Constitutional Convention.
He’s another victim of the LC propaganda. There are still those in Georgia who will swear up and down that Sherman’s troops pillaged their place and left smoldering ruins who were never within even a day’s march of Sherman’s actual path. That and the falsehood that he burned Atlanta to the ground therefore make up a lot of his undue reputation.
I wish I knew how to express how deeply learning about how the LC had deceived had me ended up enraging me, but that got focused instead on anyone else presenting falsehoods of history to further an agenda. That especially includes currently, and far-Left activists have taken up that banner, but loyal Dems simply do not care to police their own.
going to the office tomorrow to bring work home…nite
Folks say things about being disciplined about working from home, but if that happened to me in my line of work (not possible), I’d be delighted, because then I could knock it out fast and without sacrificing quality, and call it a day early. Quality’s key, of course, because with avionics (aviation electronics, duh. 😉 ) lives could depend on the unit working properly. That’s not from corporate, that was my OWN standard, and I refused to deviate from it.