“Who are you to come here and test me? Do you think you can achieve anything by probing beyond the outer layers of my persona? How do you know what ‘being’ is? If you’re what I think you are, then I’m the one who should be disappointed…because you can’t even come close to putting my convictions on trial. But yet you try. You try because you have a senseless obligation to yourself to attempt to control everything around you, URD! I asked for help from a Goddess, and instead I get the Queen of Shrews…YOU!” I belligerently accosted.
So, you’re the best horn player in Japan. I’m so proud of you! I’m so happy that you defeated all the Japanese kids.
I guess I’m in the minority here but I don’t think Grandma has gone far enough.
reblog if u are ready to join the T W E L V E O R D E R S O F S O I L T A X O N O M Y
(via kitswulf)
Henry Patrick Raleigh (American, 1880–1944)
At the Opera, The Saturday Evening Post story illustration, 1924.
(via citrusina)
Patient self diagnosed as dead. EMTs didn’t believe him. He was quite insistent though, and wanted an ambulance ride because he thought a dead person ought to have one. The EMTs argued with him, stating that he was both standing and talking. He countered that he was in hell.
— (via rangi42)
If you take seriously the familiar right-wing / libertarian argument (used against governments, universities, and NGOs) that “organizations become inefficient and bogged down in bureaucracy when they don’t have to make a profit,” you would conclude that militaries are inefficient and bogged down in bureaucracy. Are they?
(Of course, you’d expect efficiency in the cases where inefficiency means you die, but those are a very small fraction of what many modern militaries actually spend their time and money doing.)
A bunch of people immediately responded to this with “yes, they famously are,” and I’m aware of (some of) that, so I guess I should be more specific
I’m thinking about some of the specific tropes you hear about non-military bureaucracy and waste, which I rarely hear about in a military context. For instance, the idea that bureaucracies create a lot of useless jobs, employing people to do things that don’t need to be done – contrast that with the reverent treatment given in America to anyone who’s served in the military (even w/o seeing any combat). Note the giant gap between the suspicion shown toward “working for the (non-military) government” and the positivity toward “working in the military”
Or the idea of the meddling bureaucrat, who never adds any value but uselessly stops things from getting done. If this was a recognized military trope, I’d expect to see them appearing as second-tier villains in war fiction, trying to stop the heroes from fighting the real bad guys. (Maybe they do, and I just haven’t seen enough war movies?)
I’ve been listening to a podcast by a set of leftist military dudes, complaining about that shit is a major part of what they do. Some episodes, like “The Ballad of Sgt. Maj Bofades“ about sgt-majors who pointlessly hassle people and “Afghanistan bound…Again“ that includes a bunch of uselessness in Afghanistan and has some real harsh words for the “Fobbits,“ the term for military personnel who are afraid to leave their base and you could probably find a lot just by googling that.
Also, I haven’t seen it myself, but I think that last paragraph is basically a description of 13 hours.
Like, I was trying to phrase that post so I wasn’t just saying “lolol the right wing is hypocritical guys,” but it may help clarify my meaning if you imagine (correctly) that I started with that thought and then attempted to evolve it into a constructive, non-rhetorical question
If you take seriously the familiar right-wing / libertarian argument (used against governments, universities, and NGOs) that “organizations become inefficient and bogged down in bureaucracy when they don’t have to make a profit,” you would conclude that militaries are inefficient and bogged down in bureaucracy. Are they?
(Of course, you’d expect efficiency in the cases where inefficiency means you die, but those are a very small fraction of what many modern militaries actually spend their time and money doing.)
A bunch of people immediately responded to this with “yes, they famously are,” and I’m aware of (some of) that, so I guess I should be more specific
I’m thinking about some of the specific tropes you hear about non-military bureaucracy and waste, which I rarely hear about in a military context. For instance, the idea that bureaucracies create a lot of useless jobs, employing people to do things that don’t need to be done – contrast that with the reverent treatment given in America to anyone who’s served in the military (even w/o seeing any combat). Note the giant gap between the suspicion shown toward “working for the (non-military) government” and the positivity toward “working in the military”
Or the idea of the meddling bureaucrat, who never adds any value but uselessly stops things from getting done. If this was a recognized military trope, I’d expect to see them appearing as second-tier villains in war fiction, trying to stop the heroes from fighting the real bad guys. (Maybe they do, and I just haven’t seen enough war movies?)