I never know, year to year, how Memorial Day will feel. This year it is not great, but not the worst I have ever felt. But no Links – you will just have to have an open post. Comment section is all yours.
Memorial Day Open Post
About The Author
Swiss Servator
Currently serving at the pleasure of a Swiss multinational.
Previously a Soldier, rugby player, lawyer, bouncer, bartender, substitute teacher, risk manager, and cubicle mushroom. Will work for raclette.
David Friedman writes about growing up with his dad Milton.
When my parents got married, they decided that there were certain things that were difficult to say and should therefore be replaced by numbers. Only one survived in actual usage. In their family “number two” meant, in my family still means, “You were right and I was wrong.”
Obviously, it was only Mrs. Friedman who ever uttered this number.
Why did I choose TODAY to watch the Royals?
They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
We will remember them.
Response:
We will remember them
Lest we forget
And the band played…
I have that on CD, Mrs F brought it back from a trip and it gets listened to regularly. The times may have changed but the song is still current. Thanks for the reminder, GT.
Relevant
I’m still in contact with some friends from VN 1967. We were like brothers, depending on each other, for moral support, if nothing else. Some of the group are gone now but we survivors still remember them in our conversations.
OTOH, in ’71 I didn’t work closely with any of the other team members and have never had any communication with any of them.
De gustibus and all that, but good god that is a horrible rendition of a great song. I’m a huge Knopfler fan boy so I’m biased, but are they trying to sound like they are autotuned or computer generated or sommat.
I know Lincoln gets a lot of hate round these parts — but I’ve always felt the Gettysburg Address sums things up pretty well for those who fought for this country (and in my opinion, often the ideal of this country almost everyone wants it to be). All I can do is acknowledge their sacrifice – nothing I can say or do suffices.
So you are saying that Davis should have let Jackson siege DC after first Manassas. ///DrainTheSwamp
The Gettysburg Address is one of the finest speeches in recorded history.
I acknowledge I’m nowhere near a Lincoln hater. He did some odd things, but, uh…it was the fucking Civil War. He did a better job than anyone else could’ve dreamed, though I know I’m betting against possibilities that never occurred. Fun bit: Mom wrote and performed a one-woman play as Mary Todd. It was damn good, and not just Youngest Son bias.
(See also: I don’t love JFK and think he began the post-WWII path of societal destruction we’re on now. Vietnam, social shit, truly The Start of the TV President and the adoration (sometimes) lathered on. More, but his assassination ended it before it could really all end, LBJ gets much/most of that from me.
Cuban Missile Crisis. DAMN. A+++. That one play makes up for his Presidency’s miscues.)
For this one day at least, we should say their names, remember their faces, and honor them for what they did for those they left behind.
Capt. David E. Padgett 2-6-69 [Name and missing date on the POW/MIA bracelet I wore for a while when I was a kid. If I recall correctly, I was somehow able to get a letter and a photo from his family. I don’t know if those items are still among my memorabilia, but I remember the name and date.]
Until Valhalla
Taken too young. He came to our outfit straight out of training. Like many linguists, once they go into the SOF world they stay there and he was there after I transfered out.
The mystery continues. I bought one of those super-bright ledas for the garage, because it’s dark as a cave in there (metal quonset hut). Just like the two previous attempts, I flipped the switch and… no light. There is a “regular” led floodlight bulb in that socket, and it works fine. WTF?
It’s such a dingy mess, every time I go out there to do something I just get depressed and come back to the house. This sucks. I want my old shop back.
Beware super-bright swans raping your super-bright leads. 😜
Sorry I don’t know enough about electricity to give a good answer to your question. Maybe the super-bright requires a higher voltage/amperage than the fixture was originally rated for?
Super-bright ledas, lousy auto-correct. 😜
By Jove, that joke deserved better than the auto-correct!
Back on topic — yeah, my gut says either it is a “noisy” current (too much fluctuation) or not enough amperage versus a “normal” LED. I’d try to check it with a meter (after I checked on-line to try to remind myself of the various settings to make extra sure I didn’t electrocute myself because I almost never do this…)
I wired my Quonset with regular old fluorescents about 35 years ago. Rarely use them, never in cold weather (they probably wouldn’t come on). Still have the original tubes, work fine in warm weather.
is there a dimmer on the circuit?
the only thing I know is that LED equipment obviously pulls fewer amps than incandescent; if anything in the circuit is not old, passive, plain old E = I x R, and requires some certain drop across the circuit, they may not dance
I don’t know which practical device descriptions or amp levels could be in play that would mean the regular LED works but others don’t, but I can imagine it theoretically
This might be stating the obvious, and it may not be as relevant with your LEDs, but I know some that take a while to “warm up”. And it might be worth it to switch it on and come back in 5 min and see if that makes a difference.
Did you reboot it?
Nowhere am I reading that a hammer has been deployed. Sad.
I’m feeling the need for some comic relief today, so here it is:
LEAKED VIDEO: Russian Navy Seals Training
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G7CreWShPU
I just finished burning a winter’s worth of cardboard boxes. I’m about medium-rare in front, still raw in back. Great day for a fire.
I had the little gas stove on all morning in my office. Raining, cool, the humidity seems to eat away at the body. Getting old needs more heat.
So I get that this is technically off-topic, in the sense that it’s not about what Memorial Day is really-really for, but it’s on-topic-ish in the sense of being what I’m thinking about today: Part of the (Georgia National Guard) infantry regiment that XY#1 is in has been active since December. They did workup at Ft. Stewart and then desert stuff at Ft. Hood till like February, and then off to CentCom till about the end of the year. So several Johnnies that I know, including XY#1, one of his good buddies from school, the buddy’s b-i-l who’s married to a girl he was also friends with, and his Master Sgt. who’s also a local friend, are all over there. They split them up as soon as they left Hood, so different platoons went to different places. And then after a couple of weeks in the desert XY#1 and everybody with his specialty got formed into a totally different unit and radically relocated. At least his MSgt was along too. All of them are ordered that they can’t tell where they are; clues are dropped occasionally, and if you pick them up right we know where they are. Anyway, there ya go.
May they all stay safe.
Did you reboot it?
I turned it off and turned it back on. No diff. Then I put it back in the box.
There is another way.
great uncle 24 December 1944 USA KIA Belgium; Mom remembers his re-interment in family plot ~ 1951
great great great grandfather, wounded Vicksburg, 1864 CSA actually made it 170 miles and died at home six months later
since then we’ve generally volunteered less and kept our heads down more
I have a copy of my Dad’s Report for Duty/Physical Exam, dated Aug 9th, 1917. The war was over before he got called but he did get a physical.
simple stuff that didn’t make sense to me so I didn’t know; turns out:
US military disability benefits are for life.
It never occurred to me that they would continue and effectively double up earnings after retirement, so
I never thought to advise my father to apply for disability since he was born in 1940.
He goes in and gets 70% for hearing loss
Even though it worked, I figured it would have been years of medical and legal wrangling; twas an hour’s appointment.
Great, just got an error on posting re: disability. I should remember to Ctrl+C before I hit submit.
You can get approved for disability while in the reserves, but as long as you’re still in, your disability pay will come out of your reserve pay for that month.
Figure I’ll just wait till I retire to submit – no major issues at the moment.
I’m a 10%, it’s deducted from my retirement and paid from the VA. The only advantage is that it’s tax free whereas the retirement is taxable.
Anyone else notice how the air gets dusty when the bugler plays Taps? I had the honor of making remarks at a memorial to 15 USCT veterans lying in unmarked and untended graves in a nearby cemetery where private owner denies all access. It’s been more than 100 years since their names had been said on Memorial Day. As I said, there must have been dust in the air.
TAPS does that for me as well. A lot of old guys have a military honor guard at their funeral. From what I understand the younger vets are not so much into the American Legion or VFW, maybe because there are fewer now with the volunteer military and the northern tradition isn’t as strong as the South.
So the LP nominated a lockdowner? What a surprise. 2020 was quite shocking to see how the whole word and pretty much every political movement embraced the lockdowns so quickly.
Even many classical liberals and libertarians were fine with it. I was quite happily surprised that Jeff Tucker was anti-lockdown from the start. Jacob Hornberger didn’t oppose lockdowns at first. Initially he only bemoaned how the welfare state made lockdowns worse and later mocked the anti-lockdowners for being hypocrites. Lew Rockwell still publishes the lockdowners TomDispatch and Caitlin Johnstone.
Didn’t mean to be a reply. Being away from here for months sure has its downsides.
What a surprise.
Not really. It’s the Liberaltarian Party now.
“…every political movement embraced the lockdowns so quickly.”
Along with the majority of the cattle.
Fear is the mind killer.
USCT?
U.S.Colored Troops. ( Or, if you prefer, U.S. Troops of Color)
Damn. Bill Walton passed away. Great player and good guy.
Comment section is all yours.
Am I being detained?
Did you check the thermostat?
Possession is 9/10ths of the law.
You are the stupid cuntes that are escalating.
“If the Russians succeed in a strategic breakthrough in eastern Ukraine because the West is reluctant to help Kiev, the situation could escalate sharply. In this case, the Baltic countries and Poland will not wait for Russian troops to deploy on their borders, Baltic politicians warn, they will send troops themselves to Ukraine.”
Read the room.
Princeton students block a patriotic parade of Americans carrying the American flag.
The anti-America students ran onto the road and sat down to block the patriotic parade from going further while chanting “Free Palestine.”
Princeton students block a patriotic parade of Americans carrying the American flag.
Our best. Our brightest.
Spent the PM at the range, shooting the BSA #12. 10 pound barrel*, 8oz trigger. Getting the sights dialed in, so only 1″ groups so far as I needed to use the largest diopter to make sure I was doing what I wanted.
A good day to be an American.
*and my arm was wore out at the end of two boxes of ammo.
chambered in ?
.22LR
https://www.rifleman.org.uk/BSA_Model_12.html
Nice
my arm was wore out at the end
We’ve all been there.
Wtf have you done to my flag?
To put it differently than I put it in the earlier thread today: there is almost zero overlap between libertarians and Libertarians.
Bull – plenty of overlap. Not perfect but your view is a cliched one.
I suspect after years of capital-L Libertarian apparats shitting the bed on culture war issues, there’s a lot fewer people willing to say they are small-l libertarians.
Or maybe I’m just projecting. Again.
Nowhere am I reading that a hammer has been deployed. Sad.
I want my twenty bucks back.
Oops
A rocket launched by North Korea to deploy the country’s second spy satellite exploded shortly after liftoff Monday, state media reported, in a setback for leader Kim Jong Un’s hopes to field satellites to monitor the U.S. and South Korea.
Back to the ol’ drawing board.
Shot down by Jewish space layers is my guess
Jewish space lupus ?
Lazers aghhh!
I assumed you meant “Jewish space lawyers.”
No, Lazers like the crap from dark Brandon’s eyes
Those who die in battle get an honorary spot in Firsthalla.
Bro Dean did a deep dive on our family tree several years ago. I don’t recall anyone who died in a war.
The Marines practically begged Pater Dean to go to Viet Nam (well, Okinawa, but he would have wound up there) , and he passed on account of having two sons under 3 years old, and he didn’t want to ditch them on Mater Dean for a year or two (or more). That was back when US casualties in Viet Nam were very low. The only Marine he knew personally who died there flipped his Jeep while driving drunk.