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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: November 6th, 2023

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  • We were hoping you rubes would just take it, there’s c-suite pay and the market to worry about

    • President and Chief Executive Officer David L. Calhoun - $32,770,519

    • CEO of Commercial Airplanes, Stanley A. Deal -  $12,200,851

    • Chief Financial Officer Brian J. West - $11,910,638

    • CEO of Global Services Stephanie F. Pope - $9,537,503

    • CEO of Defense, Space & Security Theodore Colbert III - $8,963,171

    In each case, easily 75% of their pay package is from stock options - their loyalty is to the line going up, not steady and organic growth by restoring a solid foundation to the company and investing in their (little) people.

    Especially so in parallel with the $68 billion in stock buyback Boeing leadership has done since 2010. All done to boost stock price by reducing the float - $68 billion that wasn’t spent investing in the company’s future, safety standards, quality controls, the end product, or workforce.


  • But they know that, which is why healthcare costs have consistently increased higher than inflation.

    Healthcare is one of THE MOST demand inelastic commodities or services. People do not say “oooh that’s a lot of money - is there a worse doctor who is cheaper?”, instead they say “100% yes I will remortgage my home and sell assets to pay for the cancer treatment my child needs.” Nobody is at the free clinic by choice, they’re there because they cannot afford or borrow to pay for better care.

    Capitalism is incompatible with ‘rational consumer purchasing choices’ that apply to clothes, food, TVs, etc. because when there’s death or life altering negative outcomes, the only rational decision is to pay WHATEVER the price demanded is. Healthcare has a demand wall, not a demand curve.


  • The lesson he’s trying to teach, is that there is no ‘right’ lock, only ‘better’ locks. Layer your security and have an honest assessment of threats and replaceability. Locks really only:

    1. Keep opportunist thieves honest
    2. Raise the skill threshold needed to bypass, and
    3. Take longer to bypass, risking detection for the attacker

    #1 Can be achieved by the most bottom tier vendor-garbage stacked zinc/brass body lock #2 & 3 Is where most lock ratings come from, but nothing is perfect.

    This monstrosity is what the military uses on secure ammo dumps, vehicle storage, etc and that thing still gets other dudes with guns protecting it. If the Army left it completely unguarded, things like thermite, oxy-acetylene, or grinding would not have any trouble getting past.

    Inversely, your mid-to-good bicycle cable lock outside the corner store only really works because of the risk of exposure as people leave and enter the store. Bolt cutters might be a two-minute job all said and done, but there’s significant risk of discovery mid attempt.





  • Really wishing all the boomers had gone the way of Heinlein. Bobby was no saint and some of his views aged terribly (and others weren’t great even at the time) but a free-love humanist hippy who has a ‘realist’ grounding’? A lot better than the Reaganism, “greed is good”, and culture war pearl clutching we did get.

    I never understood how that generation could be given so much more than those before, grow up with all that opportunity, and become such cantankerous assholes.



  • maser is a device that produces coherent microwaves, through amplification by stimulated emission. The term is an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation

    TIL, thank you friend!

    There has been development of smarter jammers that’ll ‘listen’ for the frequency used, and pump out jamming to defeat it, but I haven’t heard of a steerable unit like that - very interesting.


  • Yup, air burst and lasers are the leading ideas atm. But you’re still dealing with a zone of protection a kilometer or so - not a big deal to defend the main command post or vital supply depots, but spreading that out to industrial areas, grid power stations and substations, seaport complexes, or cities and your ‘blanket’ of protection starts looking too small for the job of covering the ‘want to have’ as well as the ‘need to have’ protected.


  • As someone who’s been following this fairly closely since the Syrians started toying with it, and the Ukrainians threw it into hyperdrive… There’s no good counter when drones are cheap to make and can be programmed to run on a flight course:

    • Jamming has to fight inverse square so the radius is trash (and kills a lot of useful civil RF ranges like WiFi). Something like 200 meters is a strong system currently, and power needs ramp up fast.
    • ‘Kinetic hard kill’ like traditional air defense is way too expensive per shot, plus there’s issues with UXO, debris, and limited launching platforms. Legacy air defenses like Tunguska or FlakPanzer with programmable airburst rounds work best, but at very short range and make a lot of secondary fragments by design. Taking the guns out, interceptor missiles start at five figures.
    • Laser systems have a lot of promise with none of the explosive downsides whilst being cheaper per shot, but range isn’t great - you’re focusing energy to physically melt the target, and all light suffers from diffraction. It is better than jamming, but far too close for comfort.

    That assumes you know the drone is coming, mind you. Piston-engine flying wings aren’t silent, but they are generally made of polymers/laminates that are hard to detect via radar. Thermal cameras and acoustic sensors so far are the best early warning systems, but radar is still a huge help.

    And then there’s FPV and quadcopters. While a larger munition like Shaheed can be under $10k, even the more advanced FPV/quads with night vision (or even thermal) cameras frequently run under $1,000, up to a few thousand. Air dropped explosives have been fundamental in changing the course of the civil war in Myanmar for the rebels, it’s like having a budget Air Force and spy satellites on call.



  • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.eetoCurated Tumblr@sh.itjust.worksLoving USA Culture
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    15 days ago

    At some point to become a consumer your money and/or attention is voluntarily given to A Thing. That’s a choice. But with internet cookbooks, bandcamp, IMDb, CrunchyRoll, etc etc you have the ability to seek out precisely what interests you, with the only burden being discovery. Monoculture died with the internet, you being on Lenny is a testament to that.



  • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.eetoCurated Tumblr@sh.itjust.worksLoving USA Culture
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    16 days ago

    …then treasure yours and stop importing American culture?

    IMO the big thing that America offers culturally is choices that don’t fit in the box of existing cultural norms. There’s no “American Breakfast” or “American Music” in the same way you can visually identify Finnish cinema or spot the commonalities in French cuisine.

    And when I travel around Europe I see the influx of other cultures primarily via immigration (Berlin has döner, Britain has curries, Spain/Portugal has Moorish and African influence embedded) but at the same time I also see imported ‘American X’ without that immigration. Europeans have identified things they like that other cultures migrate with, but seemingly actively seeks out the things Americans make.

    How popular are hamburgers or Taylor Swift in your area, compared to other Euro offerings like Gorjira or handball? France has a strong arts scene supported by the government, but the Palme d’Or rarely goes to their domestic films.