eaandkw2

Good. Maybe I can start shopping for graphics cards again.

Going to war in Iraq a few times I have heard and experienced a lot of loud sounds. Being about 20m away from the impact of a 105mm canon from an AC-130 was pretty loud. Being right next to a M1 Abrams was probably the worst. A Marine near me actually had a collapsed lung from being in the blast zone. I also RSO’d for a range that shot off 41 SMAW rockets. I had a bad headache for a couple of days after that. Then there was that time that I parked my LAV-25 about 100m from an artillery battery right before they fired a mission where they had to be using a charge 8 or something because a kept losing my train of thought for a minute or so every time they fired a volley.

And yes my hearing is pretty bad now. Hopefully I can get hearing aid later on.

Edit: changed ear plugs to hearing aid.

I’ll be alright. I’m about to make a pretty big change retiring and all. It will either go really good or really bad.

Off topic but I will say that it is almost criminal how many drugs that the military gives you for problems. Went in for sleep issues and came out with about 8 different meds.

Worst case I’ll just move to Alaska and become a mountain man like Jeremiah Johnson. Just kidding...sort of.

I’m actually pretty scared of working with women. To give context I’m about to retire from the USMC. I was also in infantry so I was never exposed to working with the opposite sex. I think I will have to change almost everything about how I interact with people when I retire because I don’t think anyone can or will understand the darker humor that the infantry has.

I kind of identify with your father. I am in my 40's and about to retire from the military. I do not have any "friends" that are not part of work even though I work with them every day. I don't know if I was ever liberal when I was younger but I have gone more right-wing so to speak. Although I have cut almost all news and TV. I mostly read the headlines and that is about it because just about everything is B.S. and nothing is going to change anyway. I might even be suffering from some kind of ptsd or social anxiety or something, who knows. Just the thought of going out shopping or driving around makes me not want to even leave the house. Oh, and I like guns to. But guns are part of my job.

To be honest I don't know how you would unwind the system. For instance the Hollywood industry employees a ton of people and likely pays a lot of taxes to the California government. If everyone stopped going to movies and basically boycotting the celebrities that would have a lot of second and third order effects. Same with the banking industry and the government/ military industry complex.

It is kind of like the concept of minimalism. It would only work if a small minority of people adopted it. If everyone adopted it the economy would collapse.

Until I start seeing people from Washington, Big Corporations, and Hollywood actually go to jail when they clearly are breaking a law I have little confidence that things will get better.

I totally understand. It actually sounds a lot better when you say "you are not allowed to reside anywhere without permission."

It would be nice to be able to travel around the world without restrictions.

I’m not saying you are wrong, but something really annoys me when I here you can’t become stateless. It's like saying you can’t not have an owner.

While I do agree with you in spirit, I think it will just leave society more polarized by people self segregating into groups they believe and trust. Kind of like the divide and conquer thing. Hopefully you are right. I just have a lack of confidence that the superpowers (I.e. countries and mega corporations) would let that happen.

I don't think that there is any point to having a minimum wage if the Federal Reserves' mandate of price stability is 2%.

That isn't always true. If everyone started eating healthier and started exercising the world would benefit from a smaller demand of health care. If everyone stopped polluting the environment would be cleaner.

I think what is being talked about is something along the lines of if everyone became a minimalist then most people would be out of a job.

I have found some pretty good wine from Australia that is only about seven dollars a bottle. Merlots and Cab Sav are my favorites. I got a bottle of Merlot from Portugal for so little I thought it would have tasted terrible but in fact, it was great. Now, I am not a wine professional by any stretch of the imagination but I think you can find some great wine for ten dollars or less.

Just don't buy a bottle based on how the bottle looks.

Dumb idea. Great idea however, for anyone wanting to hide an ICBM on an airline though. I’m sure North Korea would endorse the idea.