How to not water the troops

My son served in a maintenance unit in the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Cavazos (nee Hood). They participated in weeks-long exercises out in the brush of the maneuver areas regularly. They rotated through training cycles at the Fort Irwin National Training Center (NTC) for at least one month every year. NTC is in the middle of the Mojave desert in California, by the way.

At no point during his three years in that unit did anyone in his command deliver water or food to the soldiers out in the field. Nobody. Not even once. In three years.

Troopers died out in the desert. They died of dehydration and heat stroke.

And nobody in his command cared. Not the officers. Not the senior enlisted. Nobody. Not even once. In three years. It never even crossed their minds that they should.

One summer at NTC, one of the Observer-Controllers (think of them as referees) took pity on my son’s poor unit of maintainers, and ordered a water buffalo delivered to them. It arrived just before their Company Commander made one of his rare checks on them. “Just what I needed!” Then the Captain stripped down, opened it up, and took a bath in their only potable water source.

https://www.armyproperty.com/Equipment-Info/Pictures/Water-Buffalo.jpg

The troops learned a valuable lesson from all this. They learned they had to fend for themselves. They learned to abandon their posts and drive into town to buy food and water. But most of all, they learned that their leaders were both incompetent and uncaring. Nobody cared if they lived or died. Not even once. In three years.

How to not feed the troops

DOGE uncovered the fact that 60% of the money taken from troops’ pay to feed them was used for “other purposes”. That’s not the half of it.

My son joined the Army in the fall of 2020. Not great timing, but what are you going to do? He went to Basic at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, during the winter of 2020-2021. The “dining facilities” (mess halls) were all closed due to a strike and Covid restrictions. That left all the young troops eating nothing but MREs for their entire time in Basic Training. MREs that were stockpiled in sheds. In Oklahoma. In the winter.

These MREs were frozen solid. That’s not too bad, since every MRE comes with a heater pouch. Just add water, and it will warm everything up. Except that the troops were not allowed to use the heaters, because “Somebody might get hurt!”

So they were reduced to bashing their frozen solid MRE meals with rocks. They smashed the packets with rocks until the frozen food was reduced to bite-seized chunks they could chew. Every meal, every day, for three months.

https://www.labroots.com/trending/plants-and-animals/3774/study-chimpanzees-travel-tools-gather-food

And let us not forget the idiotic masking requirements. The idiocy ran so far as to mandate the wearing of masks during physical training (PT). So, when it rained, the troops were essentially forced to waterboard themselves as they exercised and then ran for miles wearing sodden cloth masks. But that’s a different story.

My son was eventually stationed at Fort Cavazos (nee Hood). His battalion lived in brand new barracks. These barracks were so new, he never once had a valid postal address the three years he was there. Their compound included a nice looking mess hall. Which was open for a grand total of almost four weeks (not in a row!) during the three years he was stationed there. This was the mess hall his pay went to fund. If he wanted to eat anywhere else, he had to pay cash.

Were there other dining facilities on the fort? Yes, indeed there were. There were three others. But only one of them was ever open on any given day, with no schedule posted as to which one it might be. And there was no bus or shuttle service to move troops around. So, during their 90 minute lunch break, he could run 3 miles to the nearest DFAC, only to find it was randomly closed that day. And then he could run back to his duty location, still hungry. (Fort Hood has about 28,000 Soldiers scattered over 332 square miles, by the way.)

When the DFAC was open, it often didn’t have any hot food. Lunch was usually a cold table of deli meat and stale bread.  That's if you could get through the long, long lines to get anything at all.  And that's if they didn't simply run out of food before you got any.

No, of course you’re not allowed to cook in the barracks. Somebody might get hurt!

Troops with cars made pocket money as an on-post Uber service.

The US Army cannot or will not feed the troops or deliver their mail to them on permanent bases on US soil.  Why should we have any faith they can prosecute wars overseas?

How we almost started WWIII in 1989

I served my first enlistment in the US Army at Field Station West Berlin, 1988-1991. That’s a listening post on the highest point in the city, Teufelsberg, one of a pair of large hills made of war rubble. It’s still standing, more or less.

In the spring of 1989, Communism was tottering and preparing to either fall or cover Europe in blood. Nobody knew which way things would go, but everybody was tense.

Inside the Field Station, “the big dick on the hill”, there was a room called the Watch Office. That’s where all the messages between Berlin and the West were handled. Since the Field Station operated round-the-clock, we worked in shifts, plus a “day-ho” staff. The Watch Office usually had a staff of between four and six Soldiers, nominally lead by a Lieutenant, who was never there.

Once upon a time, a young, new Soldier showed up, and was assigned to work in the Watch Office. (No, it wasn’t me. I caused different trouble.) This young Soldier seemed intelligent and eager, so the shift leader, a Staff Sergeant, set him to copying out practice messages. These messages had different standard formats, and were printed out in a binder for reference. The young man diligently began copying out the message. When he would finish one, the NCO would review and critique it, then clear the screen and tell the Soldier to start working on the next one.

Lunchtime eventually rolled around. The young Soldier was busily copying a message, so the NCO and everybody else in the office went to eat. Major fuck-up number 1.

The young soldier eventually finished copying out the practice message, ensured it was correct, then cleared the screen and went to lunch. Leaving the Watch Office empty. Major fuck-up number 2.

This particular message stated that “the balloon had gone up”, the war was on, Group of Soviet Forces - Germany (GSFG) was advancing towards the West German border, and Berlin was under attack.

The “SEND” button was right next to the “CLEAR SCREEN” button. It also cleared the screen. Major fuck-up number 3.

About two minutes later, the phone rang. Nobody was there to answer it. Messages began arriving - and nobody sent receipt codes. And no new messages were being sent out. Field Station Berlin had sent a message stating that WWIII had begun, and then US Forces Berlin went off the air.

7th Army, AKA US Army Europe, activated their “no shit” plans and prepared to go to war. Every single unit activated, fueled up, and started drawing their war stocks of ammunition. 5th Corps requested permission to cross the 1KM DMZ. 7th Corps requested permission to counterattack into Czechoslovakia.

The Corps artillery units tried to pick up their nuclear rounds from the depots, and got into fist fights with the guards there, who had heard nothing at all about the war being on. These guards, you see, were on a completely separate communications system, and had a straight line back to the Pentagon. So they called, and were told that the situation was confused, but no nuclear release had been authorized.

Traffic everywhere was completely snarled up, as different units crossed each others’ paths trying to get to their ammunition stocks and planned positions. This eventually went to the good, as it revealed the flaws in the war plans.

And then everybody from the Watch Office returned form lunch and started transmitting messages again. After a few hours, things in the West calmed down. The Soviets, apparently, had no idea most of this ever happened.

Not too long later, the Staff Sergeant became a Private again.

This day was vividly recalled by everyone I have spoken to who was stationed in West Germany at the time, usually as “The day the First Sergeant looked scared.”

And that’s how, on the eve of peace, US Army Field Station Berlin nearly started World War III.

Who would change old census data, and why?

I've looked at the census data for the town I grew up in (Gahanna). Someone has altered it. I remember quite clearly that in 1970, our town had around 3,500 people. In 1980, it had exactly 18,001. (I used to joke the population was "18 thousand and me.") It was declared the fastest growing municipality in the country (by percentage). I remember when we legally changed from a village (population under 10,000) to a city back in 1976. So there's no way the place had a population of 12,400 in 1970, and we definitely had more than 16,398 in 1980.

So who is going back and altering old census data, and for what purpose?

Space construction checklist

What we need to do, in order, from a logistics and engineering perspective:

1. Build a "truck stop" space station orbiting Earth.
2. Build a space station orbiting the moon.
3. Build a temporary habitat on the moon.
4. Build a permanent habitat in the moon. 
5. Build a space station orbiting Mars.
6. Build a temporary habitat on Mars.
7. Build a permanent habitat in Mars.

You build temporary (ten years?) shelters on the surface, to learn local conditions and techniques.  Then you house the workers for the subsurface phase in the domes.  You make clear up front that this is a very high risk project, and that quite a few people will die along the way.  You pay the workers handsomely, with a healthy bonus for completing a full tour, and a very substantial death gratuity.

Digging tunnels down makes far more sense than trying to build radiation and micro-meteor proof domes on the surface for long-term habitation.

USAID

I used to travel the world, working for the government. I’ve been to more than 60 countries. In quite a few places, USAID had more employees and a larger building than the actual US embassy. They operated completely separately, with an enormous budget and essentially no oversight.

I thought it was hilarious when Congress made bribing foreign officials a federal crime. That was at least half the purpose of USAID. Not to mention, that’s how business actually gets done in most of the world.

I’m not saying the US Department of State is a good, or even pro-American organization. It’s not. I’m saying USAID is much, much worse.

All this isn’t even close to the insanity that is the US Peace Corps.

Good riddance to bad cess.

Spacetime diagram

Here is a handy diagram of spacetime, with a brief explanation of how it works.

This is a diagram of the potential energy field, better known as spacetime.  At the center is a stationary particle of mass 8, along with curves showing its effects upon spacetime.  (Don't ask 8 what.  It's just 8 units of energy.  Doesn't matter.)  The horizontal axis is space (which is equivalent to time, because if it weren't, nothing would ever move or change).  The vertical axis is potential energy, which is equivalent to time.  Our particle is using up 8 units of energy, so it depresses the potential energy field by that much.  This is what work is.  (The total work done by the particle is mass plus kinetic energy.)  (In this graph, the top of the potential energy field is zero, where proper time = 1.  The bottom is somewhere, way, way off the chart, where proper time = 0.)

The red curve is the position of an approaching particle.  It's abstract, but the important part is that it can't be negative, because that would be inside our test particle.  So the effects of our particle begin at distance 1 from the center.  Don't ask what the units are.  Doesn't matter for the purpose of this explanation.

The purple curve is the force of attraction (AKA gravity) to another particle.  Any other particle.  Other particles are attracted to our test particle by empty space pushing them down the gradient.  Once again, just because the math shows the curve approaching zero in the center, doesn't mean it actually does.  The particle is a sort of discontinuity with radius 1.  Why is this curve following the inverse square law?  Because energy is conserved and the field is elastic.  The area above this curve is gravitational potential energy.  The field elasticity allows changes to propagate at a finite rate - the speed of light, c.

The green curve is the velocity of a particle attracted by gravity to our particle.  This curve is hyperbolic spacetime.  Just because the math shows it approaching zero, doesn't mean it really does.  The particle is absorbing 8 units of potential energy.  The curve crosses this mark at 1 unit from the center.  That's where the curvature ends.  Or, rather, where it turns into a spheroid of radius 1, because space is three dimensional, while our graph is not.

The slope of the green curve is really interesting.  The horizontal part is proper time and space contraction.  The vertical part is speed (which goes to the speed of light when the slope is vertical, and zero when the slope is horizontal).  The hypotenuse is a constant, c, the speed of light.  The trick here is that this green curve is the path that particles follow as they move.  The speed of light (propagation of change) is constant along this curve.  Not along the horizontal axis.  This has profound and weird effects, because what we perceive is three dimensional space.  We can't "see" time, only space.  So what we see is the vertical projection along the horizontal axis of what is really happening along the curve.  A 3D projection of the true 4D reality.  (Want to know what a tesseract looks like?  Look at a cube.  Now look at it again.  Tesseract!)

How does the particle itself move?  It has its own slope across its diameter.  That's why it is a spheroid, not a sphere.  It squishes along the direction of motion.  (Geometrically, it can be described as an ellipsoid, usually a spheroid.)  This is a locally hidden variable, but one we can easily observe the effects of.  (Bell's theorem is bunk and hokum.  It proves nothing, because it's a straw man argument.)

Imagine a small object near the edge of the graph.  It is forced towards the center by the gradient, picking up speed and energy along the way.  But as it gets closer to the center, the slope of the green curve increases, shrinking the apparent size of the object along the horizontal axis.  This is what we perceive as the time dilation and length contraction of general relativity.   The object's own contraction in the direction of motion due to its increasing speed is special relativity, and is caused by its own gradient.

Notice the green and purple curves cross at radius 1 (and at the given mass, in this case 8). No matter what value you pick for the mass, they always cross at radius 1, the same place the red position curve drops to zero.  This is not a coincidence.  This is what prevents singularities and infinities from happening in the real world.

• Space is flat (triangles add up to 180 degrees) and three dimensional.
• Spacetime is curved (hyperbolic) and four dimensional.
• Motion is along curves in spacetime.
• The propagation of change along the curve is finite and constant (the speed of light).
• What we perceive as motion is a 3D projection of the 4D reality.
• Particles are tiny, spheroidal discontinuities.
• The particle is work done on the potential energy field.
• The area above the force curve, outside the particle, is free (available) energy.
• Gravity isn't really attraction, it's empty space pushing down along the gradient.
• Every particle believes local spacetime is flat.  They're all wrong.
• Every particle has properties hidden inside the discontinuity, like velocity.
• Special relativity is caused by the slope of a particle's own velocity gradient.
• General relativity is caused by the slope of the spacetime gradient across a particle.

There are no infinities.  There are no singularities.  There are no contradictions.