Aerospace engineer, history enjoyer, Lutheran, avid board gamer, and all-around geek.
Way Out In The Desert, CA
Joined August 2009
- Tweets92.5K
- Following1.8K
- Followers1.3K
- Likes293K
Pinned Tweet
Alright, I'm finally going to collect all of my military history book threads into one master thread-of-threads to pin for easy access...
Starting with, of course, the Franco-Prussian War.
xitter.cf/random_scrub/status/15…
random_scrub retweeted
My mathematician daughter was browsing in a used bookstore this weekend ... and found this:
writings.stephenwolfram.com/…
random_scrub retweeted
"University researchers built a satellite that tracks people from low Earth orbit and dispatches a 5 kg payload to within .1 meter of their position, traveling at Mach 25 to anywhere on Earth in under 5 minutes. They suggest it could be used to deliver greeting cards."
Purdue University's IDEAS Lab built an autonomous drone that tracks runners through dense forests completely without GPS or cloud networks.
By running 3D LiDAR mapping and obstacle-avoidance AI entirely on-chip, it can weave under tree canopies and predict target movement through blind spots in real time.
Massive implications for next-gen search & rescue and edge AI.
random_scrub retweeted
This warping of economic realities is made even worse in the mass firing of older developers who put decades into companies that are now worth trillions
We're living in a horrifying, fascinating new era of Silicon Valley where:
1. You can build a startup in 9 months, get acquired (but rly acquihired) by OpenAI, Anthropic, or Cognition, and walk away a multi-millionaire
2. You can join the right company at 22 and become effectively post-economic
And I don't think we've even begun to grapple with the degree to which this is warping an entire generation's relationship with money, ambition, work, and success.
When your peers are making generational wealth before 25, what does a normal career even look like anymore
random_scrub retweeted
Update:
They got married, and are here in New York City on their honeymoon.
My wife met them for lunch today.
They shared that they took my advice seriously, toned the wedding way down, and happy they did.
The financial intervention was worth it!
random_scrub retweeted
Imagine a drunk driver hits your kid in a crosswalk and you find out he would still have been in jail if not for his last victim fighting tooth and nail to keep him out
random_scrub retweeted
Fifteen points to Gryffindor
random_scrub retweeted
Today we lost Walter Koenig.
Some thoughts about a fine actor and an exceptional human being...
random_scrub retweeted
Absolutely delightful anecdote here. Idealism is a second hand marketplace
This is very good from, IMO, the most interesting modern political philosopher Joseph Heath.
josephheath.substack.com/p/r…
random_scrub retweeted
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve got a rather unbelievable [obnoxious] flight jacket. So today, I’m in a flight brief and one of the contract pilots showed up wearing this flight jacket. I’ve been punked before but this takes the cake.
random_scrub retweeted
One of the best things about Babylon 5 was letting Walter Koenig play against the type we all knew him for and really show off some range. Treat yourself and watch some Babylon 5 and see Koenig play an absolutely terrifying and delightful freak.
random_scrub retweeted
Decarceration is when a psychopath with an open warrant for strangulation punches a random guy onto the path of an incoming train, killing him, and the DA and judge ensure he doesn’t spend a single day in jail for it.
This is what every single Democrat supports. Decarceration is at the core of the left’s revolutionary platform and there is not one Democrat opposing it.
🔥👀 THE CURRENT STATE OF PHILADELPHIA.
What you are seeing here is Chaz Wearing punching a man onto the tracks in front of a train in 2024.
He was FREE on the street with an outstanding bench warrant from a 2022 Upper Darby strangulation case.
DA Larry Krasner’s office didn’t charge him with murder … they charged him with involuntary manslaughter.
He never faces a jury. Democrat Judge Diana Anhalt hears the bench trial and acquits him March 3, 2025.
That strangulation case? He pleaded guilty in June 2024 and got 11½ to 23 months in county jail with credit for time served back to January 2024.
A man is dead. Victim’s name & photo were Never released. Local Philly stations cover it for a couple days. Then silence. No CNN, no NYT, no national networks.
When he was acquitted by the Democrat judge Philly local media didn’t even cover it… just KYW Newsradio ran the story.
The judge Diana Louise Anhalt also presided over the FIRST EVER SAME SEX MARRIAGE in Philadelphia. She is up for re election in 2032.
Who wants to take a guess at why it appears the media buried this? What is this victims name?
random_scrub retweeted
My historical methods professor in grad school told us he was learning to code because "pretty soon," he said, "not knowing how to code will be like not knowing how to read."
Turns out he was right
Because now it seems nobody is going to be doing either of those things
random_scrub retweeted
I regret to inform you that the only political party who actually believes their own rhetoric is the Libertarian Party and this has had disastrous political, moral, and social consequences for everyone involved
random_scrub retweeted
RIP to the great Walter Koenig, who brilliantly played Psi Cop Bester on all five seasons of Babylon 5. A frightening performance by a wonderful man.
random_scrub retweeted
Well, it's Monday, I guess.
(His Bester was always better than his Chekov, but he was amazing in every role.)
random_scrub retweeted
Lots of things are like this
We recently decided that "marginalization", like "stigma", was universally bad, but it's actually an advanced social technology that makes liberalism workable
It has to be possible for something to be bad but not banned, that's a very useful space
random_scrub retweeted
There are two problems here that would need to be solved before you could get back to this being a relative nonissue (as it was roughly on the eve of 9/11 but not for long after):
—Most Muslims globally do not see their religion as a private matter, and are resistant to the American Unitarian consensus (where we say God Bless America and then change the subject), and this resistance grows the larger their proportion of the population - attempts at assimilation have to acknowledge and (somehow) manage this
—The American Unitarian consensus has collapsed; Americans no longer see enough in common with each other to have that convention, and are at loggerheads over not only religion but a host of religion-like matters; it is hard to assimilate anyone to a national concept that doesn’t exist or is in crisis
As per Fight Club, “You met us at a strange time in our lives.”
