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Monday’s Forum
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25 responses to “Monday’s Forum”
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To put a face on the reality:
The Department of War announced the death of two active-duty Soldiers who were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve.
1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii was killed in action on July 18, 2026, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, was killed in action on July 17, 2026, during an enemy attack on July 17, 2026, at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan. The incident is under investigation.
1st Lt. Feehan was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Pvt. Gonzales was assigned to 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command, Ansbach, Germany.
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The best team won. Spain allowed just one goal in its eight World Cup matches. But despite Spain’s dominant play yesterday, Argentina had several chances to equalize late in extra time.
Not sure what to think of a couple of the new rules — the “mistaken identity” review, and a straight red card for covering one’s mouth when confronting an opposing player. There were only two mistaken identity foul reversals, but each of those was actually changed to a different foul (a card for diving) for the other team’s player. There were also just two “covering mouth” infractions called. And it turns out that Miguel Almiron of Paraguay was one of the two players penalized under each of these new rules. Yesterday Messi appealed to the referee to have Spain’s Cucurella sent off for mouth covering, but perhaps his hand was not sufficiently covering his mouth and/or his position and demeanor were not sufficiently confrontational.
Maybe FIFA needs to work on its rules. And it could use some technical improvements — get the camera cables out of where a ball might be in play, speed up the semi-automated offside review graphic so that fans can see the result before play resumes (not several minutes later), and reconsider using the sensor in the ball to determine if a player has made contact. The HD video should be adequate for determining whether the path or spin of the ball has been altered, and the data presentation is way too late and lacking context to convince fans the correct decision was made.
And Cape Verde was magnificent. They played four matches and held each opponent to a draw after 90 minutes, including matches against both Spain and Argentina.
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I watched only a few games, so maybe I’m not the target audience, but I found it incredibly deflating just how often goals were called back because of very minor offsides, with a couple in the middle of a box full of players on both sides and absolute chaos with the ball caroming off multiple players in a couple of seconds. No ref would have called offsides in that situation, but the computer was relentless. And a few more were called back after what seemed like minutes of review for other reasons. It’s getting to the point where there’s no point cheering a goal in the moment.
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The number of goals called back is partially due to the fact that the review technology exists and therefore assistant refs are instructed to keep their offside flags down if the offside isn’t completely clear in the runup to a scoring opportunity. They’d be flagging more offsides in real time if there were no review. Meanwhile, players are trying to gain that slight advantage and in doing so, create a lot of barely onside/offside situations. I don’t know how to do away with some delayed calls, but surely the delay can be minimized.
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It’s also something you get used to… the ball’s in the net but it looked possibly offside, so you wait for the review. There are frequent similar situations in football all the time, such as at the boundaries and whether possession is maintained. I went to a Colts game several years ago and was sitting the upper deck, but a could easily tell that the Colts RB touched out of bounds at least a yard before reaching the end zone. The officials didn’t see that and called it a TD, the horns went off, the indoor fireworks shot off, and the crowd went crazy. Unlike in soccer, they were in good position to score on the next play, but I thought the premature celebration was not necessary.
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I’m working on a series of stories that involve a human civilization whose ancestors were taken from Earth to another planet many thousands of light years distant.
My reason for this setting is to have humans develop differently (and in a way I choose), and to have a human civilization develop science earlier.
Well enough, but as per my rule that the author must know at least all the important points of her story universe, the question remains why the aliens would do this. And not only that, but what would they then avoid contact with these humans. And why move them to a new home but not provide them with some knowledge or guidance.
There are the obvious: study, conservation, lost a bet with the Vorlons, future livestock, future canon fodder, reserve pantry, etc. I tried to come up with something long term, profound, and completely alien. I found the Jack Ryan Intelligence Analysis Principle helped (it may not make sense to us, but it has to make sense to somebody). I think I came up with something that works, especially if the reader never gets told what it is.
What also helped was to run the notions past LLMs. Not so much for that they said, but just because they said anything. Ignoring the sycophantic praise*, their replies helped think the idea through. I’ve had similar experience when telling my ideas to someone, too. The advantage of using a bot, is that one can quite easily ignore their questions, and one need not keep them off topic. That is, if they go off topic, I can just ignore that too. It’s rude, but the bots can’t care and they remain helpful and willing to listen, so to speak.
*It’s not that easy. You come up with what you think is a good idea, and they call it brilliant, insightful, etc. The tendency is to accept it as one’s due and fish for more extravagant compliments.
See, an LLM would never have told the Evil Queen she wasn’t the fairest one of all.
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Anyone who needs some schadenfreude in their lives:
Sculptor spends $100 grand of his own money on a Carlie Krik statue, and no one wants to buy it.
I’d say selling Krik’s likeness in New York City is kind of like setting up an all-pork restaurant in Mecca. Except Carlie’s statue won’t get him arrested and/or beaten up.
He should peddle it around Dumbfuckistan. It might even fetch a higher price if it comes with urine stains from average New Yorkers.
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Like many of you, I’ve been reading about an outbreak of cyclospora parasites causing severe diarrhea. Then, a few days ago I read that the FDA had identified Taylor Farms de Mexico as the supplier of contaminated lettuce to Taco Bell. This morning we were told that the tests on the lettuce were false positives, and the FDA apologized to Taco Bell. Under the current administration, the FDA has cut off 3800+ employees (leaving 16000 or so). Are these staffing cuts damaging the agency’s ability to do its mission? Just another Trump job like the reflecting pools, the new presidential airplane, and the war with Iran? We need to cut one job to improve our country.
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It’s not so much the jobs that were cut, as that the FDA, under the ignorant yet deranged guidance of RFK Jr., stopped monitoring several parasites and pathogens, including cyclospora.
Since nothing short of actual death will remove El Taco from office before January 2029, even if he died right now, would JD Couchboy remove Jr. and all the rest of the cast of incompetent beneficiaries of white supremacy from his cabinet? And risk the wrath of the MAGAt base?
I’ve my doubts.
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That’s standard. They don’t want to imply an “all clear” on anything yet, because despite the sample that threw the false positive, it could still be the culprit.
Or not.
And yes, this whole mess has been exacerbated by the firing of employees and the dismantling of systems designed to detect these outbreaks early.
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Not to get in the middle of the misunderstanding between Daryl and Scott, but that is what it is a misunderstanding. Scott, it feels like I have seen enough posts on this site by Daryl to point out that he is taking potshots at our President and Secretary of State, not our troops.
At the end of the day, our Sec Def did indeed say he was was going to review the testosterone levels of our troops to make sure the levels were at the right level for what he considers a proper warfighter. It is nuts that our SecDef said that, just nuts.
We really live in a surreal timeline.
Also, being concerned with the “right” levels of testosterone in one’s body, that does seem like he is forcing gender affirming care on our troops, which is something I thought our President and SecDef were vehemently against, but I guess not.
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Trump sells early access to his Truth Social posts to Wall Street traders.
The Grift is strong in this one….
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