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Puck the Puddle Pilot

@puckthepilot.bsky.social

1.5K followers 1K following 6.4K posts

Husband, Dad, Geek, Nerd, former Army WO IP (60s), current Coastie. Personal account. He/Him, White, Cisgender, Allosexual, Heteromantic, unmedicated Introverted Neurotypical.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · Apr 27

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."

Mark Twain

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 20h

I will be fine. I was never in any danger.

I personally (not professionally) support the shutdown.

Your advice is very solid though and I hope most others see it.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 20h

The explosion just happened. Wait for all violent motion to stop. Then assess the situation.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 20h

Seems like this hurts senate Rs positions. But who knows.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 20h

So... Apparently. We will be paid this Wednesday. Color me surprised.

To those US service members that were proactive in taking care of our family and attempted or succeeded in securing a loan before the money ran out or you HAD to have it.

Welcome to being a pawn in the game of life.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 22h

Getting a hard credit check from your bank to maybe give you a loan because the government broke their contract to pay you is fukn WILD.

a close up of a man 's face with a blue shirt on

Alt: Brennan Lee Mulligan surprised face.

media.tenor.com

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 20h

Apparently I will be paid Wednesday. Color me surprised.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 20h

Apparently I am to be paid Wednesday. Color me surprised.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 21h

Standing up for the rule of law in this case would theoretically be NOT paying the service members under their command. Knowing they will be summarily removed from command and probably stripped of all military benefits.

Hell of a moral choice.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 21h

Will they be? Or will they be pardoned for making POTUSs will come true.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 21h

I don't think I am. But the head of the chain of command is very convinced that they found a way.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 21h

I can't even answer that. According to SecDHS we are getting paid.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 21h

While the vocal few insist that THAT is the official guidance.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 21h

This whole muddying the waters of will we get paid or won't we get paid is doing wonders for unit cohesion.

Commanders waiting for official guidance as they field questions about what POTUS and Secretaries are live tweeting.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 22h

Oh. I forgot to add. It's a federal crime to just... Not go to the work that isn't paying you.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 22h

This problem doesn't get better with time folks.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 22h

Worse is the reporting on the number of people who are getting denied. For things like having recently used their credit to purchase other things.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 22h

Getting a hard credit check from your bank to maybe give you a loan because the government broke their contract to pay you is fukn WILD.

a close up of a man 's face with a blue shirt on

Alt: Brennan Lee Mulligan surprised face.

media.tenor.com

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

We jumped ship as soon as we realized that the interest rates and insurance were worse than every other option.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

You will never stop the toc from printing medals.

You can still get them for promotion points if you need to. But it's less of a dick measuring contest if it's the quality not the quantity.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

Don't care about your tab. Don't care about your unit. Don't care about your squad.

School houses can mess with headgear to denote instructors but that's the only wiggle room I have.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

Remove all flair.

Black uniforms for everyone in every service.

Center mass rank.

Slieve years in service.

Nametapes.

Collar devices right collar branch. Left collar job.

High 3 medals.

That's all. That's max dress silliness. Every work uniform is less.

Templedoom Peck 🎃🧛‍♂️ @templetonpeck.bsky.social · 2d

They went on Fred's Place (an internet forum for Coasties, back in the day) and complained about it, to which the aviation community started calling anyone who supported them getting permanent wings, "Former (or "Fantasy") Aviation Gunners."

So, this discourse has a long precedent.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

Tech bros need comicons to argue the finer points in front of them.

And humans to point out that their shitty ideas are shitty.

Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

What's wild is there are actual moral arguments demonstrated in both of these artistic works.

Thiel, a boy hell bent on destroying human created art and collective consciousness, misses all the moral arguments instead rewriting the stories and characters to fit his narrative.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

"you feel something weird?"

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

Oh God the jet a one...

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Puck the Puddle Pilot @puckthepilot.bsky.social · 2d

Get you an outdoor security camera with local storage.

jacob mouradian @jacobjmouradian.bsky.social · Apr 25

Not the main takeaway from the article – a sidenote, really – but this is why the Internet of Things concept terrifies me.

Black text on white background reading:

Ordinary American citizens are also feeling pressure from immigration officials for helping immigrants. Investigative journalist Radley Balko reported earlier this week about a lawyer in Texas who was asked for legal help by an immigrant family. Two days after he spoke with them, two men in civilian clothes—who never identified which, if any, law enforcement agency they worked for—knocked on the lawyer’s front door and questioned him about his assistance. The lawyer’s internet access briefly went offline while the agents were present, and they refused to give him their names or badge numbers. [light purple highlight] (As the lawyer told Balko, the suspicious timing of his internet outage ensured that the Ring camera on his front door could not capture the exchange.)

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