Happiness, Not In Another Place But This Place...Not For Another ONT, But This ONT

Greetings and felicitations Horde! It's Thursday night, let's have a little fun!

Retirement Procedings

Lt. Colonel Robert Maclaren retired from the British Army in 2001 after a long fulfilling career. On the day that he retired he received a letter from the Personnel Department of the Ministry of Defence setting out details of his pension and, in particular, the tax-free ‘lump sum’ award, (based upon completed years of service), that he would receive in addition to his monthly pension.

The letter read "Dear Lt. Colonel Maclaren, We write to confirm that you retired from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards on 1st March 2001 at the rank of Lt Colonel, having been commissioned into the British Army at Edinburgh Castle as a 2nd Lieutenant on 1st February 1366. Accordingly your lump sum payment, based on years served, has been calculated as £68,500. You will receive a cheque for this amount in due course. Yours sincerely Army Paymaster”

Colonel Maclaren replied; “Dear Paymaster, Thank you for your recent letter confirming that I served as an officer in the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards between 1st February 1366 and 1st March 2001 – a total period of 635 years and 1 month. I note however that you have calculated my lump sum to be £68, 500, which seems to be considerably less than it should be bearing in mind my length of service since I received my commission from King Edward III. By my calculation, allowing for interest payments and currency fluctuations, my lump sum should actually be £6, 427, 586, 619. 47p. I look forward to receiving a cheque for this amount in due course. Yours sincerely, Robert Maclaren (Lt Col Retd)”

A month passed by and then in early April, a stout manilla envelope from the Ministry of Defence in Edinburgh dropped through Col. Maclaren’s letter box, it read:

Find out what it said here

On Melting Pots

The Melting Pot Myth Is Destroying America

As for what, precisely, “America” is — other than a set of “unifying beliefs and political ideals” — Thornton didn’t deign to explain. Very few of these apologetics ever do, save for obligatory hand-waving about “ideals” and “beliefs” and “creeds.” That is a feature, rather than a bug, of the concept: When you reduce your country’s identity to a shapeless, inchoate ooze of incoherence — a pot that melts away all that is concrete and distinctive — it becomes impossible for that identity to mean much of anything at all. The melting pot abstracts America out of existence.

In fact, the “melting pot” theory of American identity is far broader and more abstract than any actual melting pot — or, at least, any melting pot whose contents are worth serving. The dishes one prepares in a melting plot have a distinctive flavor — ideally an appetizing one — requiring that the cook carefully choose what to put in to them while simultaneously leaving many things out of them. Not only that, but the mix of what the cook adds must meet a specific, predetermined balance; too little salt leaves a dish bland, and too much makes it inedible.

He misses the point. I wrote about the melting pot concept (checks date. Oh god, ten years ago).

Having tortured the analogies beyond reason, let's leave them for a moment and introduce humans to the mix. There are any number of tendencies that are inherent in human beings, but one of the most basic is that we are tribal by nature. The founding fathers recognized this and realized that the great American experiment could very well fail if its citizens retained their preexisting tribal loyalties in their new country. There had to be something to supplant the old tribal affiliation, and thus the melting pot concept was born. Nobody was denying that individual citizens had been Dutch, or English, or Spanish or French, but now they were American. The previous tribal identities became part of a larger, better identity that superceded the old one. Salt does not lose its saltiness when it becomes part of the soup, but the soup is greater than the salt alone. Everyone loves soup. Who eats straight salt?

He simply hand waves away inconvenient things about the melting pot that make it work. I can easily explain the political ideals that make this country work, so can most of y'all. The founders debated about them endlessly. Here he just declared them undefined and moves on. Second, yes, absolutely it means leaving things out. You can not become an American while simultaneously thinking that you effectively own your wife and daughters. That goes away when you swear to abide by the laws of this land. It's why I deplore terms like Irish-American or African-American. They're backwards. I know we don't expect this anymore, but we should. The article mentions Ilhan Omar, and quotes a speech where she clearly indicates that she considers herself a Somali, not an American. She's violating her oath of citizenship. It should be stripped from her, and she should be deported back to Somalia. It won't happen, of course, but it should. The melting pot would work just fine if we defended the end result (the American “soup” ) from ingredients which poison it.

Utopia

Starvation, Surveillance, and Back-Alley Abortions: Romanian Dissident Reveals Horrors of Living Under a Communist Regime

“In sixth grade, I remember it was the first time when I had to stay in line for sugar,” she said. It was a hot summer day, and Ionescu said that after three hours of waiting, she fainted. “You could stay in line for four, five hours, six hours, seven hours waiting for the car to arrive with produce for the trucks. But that didn’t mean that everyone was able to get something. You never knew. You never knew if it was meat, sugar, or oil.”

The woman being quoted in the article is a good friend of mine, as is her husband. He's so virulently anti-communist that he makes me look like a red-diaper baby, and I think all communists should be given free helicopter rides. December 25 is a double holiday for them. Christmas, of course, but also execute the dictator day. I'm really not sure which they relish more.

World Down Syndrome Day

Today is World Down Syndrome Day. I love this woman. She's kicking all kinds of ass, and I'm over here cheering her on. Put that bit in your teeth and RUN WITH IT! LET'S FUCKING GO!!!!

I Need More Details

Father of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley convicted of involuntary manslaughter for son's crimes

On Thursday, a Michigan jury reached a guilty verdict for James Crumbley, the father of school shooter Ethan Crumbley, for four counts of involuntary manslaughter. The charges stemmed from his 15-year-old son committing a mass shooting at a high school.

The Michigan parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were both charged in the case with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, according to a report from Fox News.  Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of the charges in February.

The Crumbley's legal defense lawyer, Keith Johnson, pointed out the precedent being set in the case by charging parents for their child's crimes, saying, "This is a historic case because the prosecutors are seeking to hold a parent responsible for the actions of a child … the violent actions that led to the death of other children. And so this is a test case to see the limits of parents' responsibility for the actions of their children who are of a high school age." 

I need to know what legal justification there is for the verdict. I'm not saying that there isn't one -”Dad, I wanna kill the kids at my school” “Ok son, here take my gun” would do it, I suppose, but this is a very slippery slope.

Old Reliable

Here's Why a Home Landline Phone Is a Good Idea, Even in 2024

On Thursday morning, AT&T users in many of the most populous cities in the US woke up to no network service on their phones. The major outage appears to have lasted more than 12 hours, leaving many people without one of their most critical lines of access to the modern world.

The carrier quickly apologized to customers.

"Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future," the company said in a statement.

AT&T also assured people that the outage was not the result of a cyberattack, and in fact blamed "the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network."

For many customers, the outage was also a reminder of the perils of relying only on mobile phones, and it may have made some people rethink the place of a home device that used to be standard issue but is now nearly obsolete: the landline telephone.

We had a landline when we moved here. Had dial-up internet too, it took Sudden Link like 3 or 4 months to get “high speed”(my ass) internet installed to the house, but we discontinued it after that happened. Maybe we should re-consider.

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by conspiracies:

posted by WeirdDave at 10:00 PM

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