Hi Lil. Hope the best for you.

I just had my tracheotomy tube removed. 14 months of Stage 4 terminal larynx cancer was fairly unexpected after my organ transplant. I've battled 5% and 1% chances of even living and I'm still here somehow. Just gained 47 pounds. Strong as ever. Hope everything goes as well for you. :)

1. 56 Weller Crescent.

2. I think I am but no one reads. Having been terminally ill for 5 years... no one reads that series.

3. Very long story. No one has given me support except one of three.

4.

5. I'm not invincible. I've always done death defying feats but.having a heart attack, organ transplant and cancer within 10 years should humble me.

6.Yes I'm kinda resentful of my oldest friend who said some hurtful things over covid and the so called freedom convoy. I'm sad about that.

7. Am I going to still have cancer?

8. Professionally, changing case law and textbooks

Being quoted by the Supreme Court in a fundamental case.

Personally... getting all my neices and nephews to go to uni and paying for it.

9. Bukurije. My first girlfriend. We cool.

10. To be continued. I'm loving life right now

The vast majority of conservatives bitching about cancel culture are simply upset that there is now a social stigma and actual repercussions for saying the hateful shit they used to get away with.

My favorite part of Adams' rant is when he was like "I'm gonna back off from being helpful to Black America". LOL, I cannot fathom what Adams thinks he was previously doing that was "helpful". Maybe barely restraining himself from yelling the you-know-what-word whenever he had the courage to venture into an urban area and saw one single Black person? Is he... helping Black America through a newspaper comic strip about a white guy working a white collar job? Did he... not call the police when a wealthy Black couple showed up to a dinner party? I wanna know!

What's scary is that instead of admitting an objectively bigoted rant is over the line, conservatives have largely rallied around Adams. Including Elon Dumbfuck Musk. (p.s. I love that Hubski could smell Elon's shit from a mile away 5+ years ago)

edit: update, hahahhah, new favorite part of the rant, where he says "I'm so sick of seeing videos of Black Americans assaulting White people on social media". Dude, lol, he really doesn't realize that he's getting served that shit because he engages with it and subscribes to people putting out that type of content?!? This guy's such a fucking idiot, holy hellllllllll

edit 2:

Got my booster yesterday. Dying today. No exciting holiday plans beyond homework. First final is one week from today. All done December 13th. Might plan for a Dec 15 or 16 virtual happy hour. Haven't done that in forever (sorry) and that is damn near the 11th hubskiversary. So keep your eyes peeled for that!

Astronomy is a hobby for old people, mostly men. It also is a hobby for people with time and disposable income, but that is a separate rant. The median age of an amateur astronomer given by people in marketing is 54. Visual astronomers, like me, are a decade older. And we are dying off. The number of people buying high quality large visual telescopes is numbered in the hundreds per year. AstroPhysics, one such vendor sells under 200 telescopes a year most going to research universities. Stellarvue, another company of high quality gear, sold about 300 telescopes last year. The number of companies building these devices are in the single digits. Two companies building large Dobsonians style telescopes for visual observing see the writing on the wall, took their final orders and are closing forever. The three best mirror makers are no longer taking orders for visual mirrors, focusing instead on equipment for astrophotography and university research institutions as they upgrade decades-old telescopes. Looking at what Celestron offers and has in stock now, you have gear aimed at the instragram astrophoto community (median age 40) and shit-tier beginner garbage.

The pandemic ripped a massive hole in the astronomy community. So many older people either died or won't go to club events or star parties due to the Pandemic risks. We are a tightly knit community of weird people with a weird hobby and any loss of one of us is a massive loss of talent, skill, and knowledge. There is about to be a flood of good, higher end, visual astronomy gear on the market, but no buyers. Visual astronomy is hard, and very few people any more want a hard hobby. In the next few years there is going to be some high end gear that ends up donated to the dying astronomy clubs where it will collect dust until it is thrown out because it is taking up space. I saved one such device, rescued from an estate sale from a man I never met but talked to for years online. The 'scope is in my car outside this library I am using for wifi. I have a pad for it, and once lumber is not worth more by weight than platinum I intend to build a home for the telescope. I need to buy a few car batteries on the way home now that I think about it so I can power my new gear.

I know the argument incoming. But space is popular. No, it is not. Useless celebrity cunts like Neil Tyson are popular. I've met him before he was THE Neil DeGrasse Tyson back at TAM6... geezus that was only 8 years ago?

The last star party I helped run and organize ran afoul of the local college social media religious fanatics because we did not have "women friendly" facilities. At a primitive campground in a national park with no electric, running water or cell service. A place chosen for its off-grid location and lack of lights, electricity, and its isolation from even aircraft overflights. This was a shock to the dozen or so women astronomers that had been attending the event for a decade, the wives that tagged along for the peace and quiet and the two wives of the organizers running the organization since the 80's. We lost the financial and in-kind support from the local college because the lack of conveniences was "exclusionary." When the college pulled out, we lost the park service assistance with permits and the other hundred little things you need assistance with to make an event like this work. The state agency that had been helping us with portable toilets, traffic control, signage etc stopped returning our calls. From what we were able to gather, there was some popularity on social media for astrophotos in 2018-2019 and the group that wanted to participate were pissed they could not upload images to their websites or charge their phones and equipment. They complained to university officials and the state park service about us. There was a demand that we lug in a generator and build showers. The star party no longer exists; the two older couples all but said "fuck this shit" and noped out. They blame the pandemic, but the real reason is that none of the older volunteers feel like dealing with this crap, a lot of work for ungrateful people, no money and all the joy having been sucked out.

I got forced back online to buy gear. Since I am online, I reached out to some people I know in multiple clubs across the country. People bought telescopes during the pandemic, saw the hobby is hard, and dumped that gear on whatever organization showed up when someone googled "local astronomy group." The clubs that saw massive growth in numbers of members are now struggling with the loss of the clubs culture as people that have been around for years are pushed out by the flood of new people. I hope they ride the wave, get tons of new blood, volunteers and cash, but I've seen this before and these types of clubs will rarely last once the old timer volunteers are gone. The death knell of any niche hobby is popularity. If you are into a small hobby with a close community, pray to your deity of choice you never get noticed or popular. Its a shame because with the internet, the 10 people in Idaho into blacksmithing can get together virtually and learn from each other. They can share tips about gear, technique and design, and get better with effort and passion for something they enjoy. Then some big social media celebrity gets a following of people, notices you guys doing your own thing and seemingly enjoying yourselves and now your hobby is shit and you cannot buy equipment, your forums are flooded with new people without a clue drowning out the people with knowledge and those 10 original people all slip away offline and won't talk about their achievents and passions due to the connection with the influx of toxic shit and idiots. This story may be anecdotal fiction, or it may be a second hand account from the guy that moved my trailer to the property and helped me tie it down. Go find a knitting group that has been around 10 or more years if you think this is only a dude-bro issue. Because damn, those poor people got fucked over, hard, by the newcomers with their "bitch and stitch" stores and runs on yarn, thread, canvas and equipment. Back before I moved, a lady into video games and knitting told us all how she was kicked out of her knitting group because her being a 60 year old woman with grandkids and a husband of 40ish years made some of the new people uncomfortable. (The new people kicked her and her two "grandma" friends out of the facebook group and changed the venue on her) I watched cooking groups implode in real time due to the popularity of the terrible cooking channels and youtube famous "chefs." Giant 1000 people LAN parties died the same way, popularity of video games killed them and nobody will volunteer to run them any more. The new people that think they can get famous gaming do nothing but whine and stir shit swamping out the old timers; the culture that made these events fun died.

This rant is not just about a hobby I love dying (in this case literally). Its an old man rant on the state of the world and how social media is evil. Fame is a moral evil and social media feeds off its pursuit. Fame is the death of honor and dignity. Nobody chasing fame is a decent human being in my opinion. The character needed to dig in and get good at something, that mentality of put in the work with a plan to get good at something, that drive, that passion, that "This is fun and I don't give a shit who else cares" attitude is fading. Post a stupid video that hits the right algorithm on social media and the next thing you know you are being flown to be on a talk show and now can sponsor some crap product and cash out for simply existing. I've heard kids say they want to be youtubers, not realizing that those famous people work 100 hour weeks and the only reason they got famous is pure stupid chance. Tell them the work that goes into making a video worth watching, and you can see their face try to process a foreign concept for the first time. Social media is a moral evil that gives the unaware the idea that fame is good and easy. The few good parts of fame are shared and normalized; the bad, the struggles, the work is shoved into a memory hole because it only got three upvotes or likes. Everything worth doing has been converted into an instant gratification treadmill and that is why social media is terrible.

I am not sure anymore if the concept of "happy" exists. I think this idea is something we have a faith-like dedication to, to our detriment as a society. There is an emotion attached to accomplishment, not quite self-esteem, but something along those lines. You want to find a "happy" kid in a school? Find the kid that busted his ass to get a good grade on a test and ask him how he did it. Watch their face light us as they talk about the work they did. Is that happiness? Or is it something else? Find the kid that just completed his first skateboard trick. Find the kid that just built her first 3-D printed model from scratch. Find the guys in whatever shop class still exists and ask them about the stuff they are building. Find the kid that just nailed a guitar riff after 20 hours of trying. Find someone that just baked their first sourdough that does not suck from scratch. Those people will light up like a commercial parking lot if you get them talking about what it took to be successful. Is that "happy?" Or is it something else? Excluding the people with medical issues that need help, I think one of the reasons so many people are down, depressed and unfulfilled is because people are not DOING anything any more. Watching a movie is not DOING something. Consuming products is not DOING something. Merely existing is not DOING.

Hobbies are dying, and go ahead and argue if you want but I've seen the sales numbers. This could just be the ramblings of an old bitter jerk that walked away from a good job to go live in BanjoStan in a 700 square foot off grid trailer to watch the world die as he prepares to dance with the Reaper. Or it could be the observations of someone that first hand saw the decline of union labor, the stagnation of wages, the destruction of the middle class, the implosion of the nuclear family, the housing crisis and rent affordability bomb, all that big picture stuff no longer serving people that need or want to work for a living. If you are working two jobs to pay rent because multi-billion dollar hedge funds are destroying house affordability, you won't have a passion project. And guess what folks, overwork and no down time are not going to make you happy if all you are doing is treading water. One thing I picked up from the pandemic is the number of people that were forced to stay home, then started feeling better. They cooked at home, they worked out a bit, they felt less stress. Now that people are going back to work, I hope they can keep any hobby they picked up and use that to get a sense of accomplishment and feel good about themselves. and it makes me happy as hell that shitty service providers like restaurants and retail are closing because they won't pay their people and treat them with respect. Out here, the local wallmart is cutting hours because even at $18/hour nobody will work for them. Better to make $15 in construction outside and not deal with screaming idiots, mentally ill church people with entitlement complexes, and a management structure that sees you as sub human.

Life is way too short to hate your situation; I'm still angry it took me this long to figure that one out.

Moving in two weeks. Excited to be not living with my roommate anymore who doesn't know how to clean up any common area but can also clean his bathroom damn near weekly. Also excited to not be living with him because he makes a very hostile living area by just not saying anything which always makes me feel like I pissed him off somehow. Like dude we live together say hi or something. I can go weeks without talking with the guy. Much less excited to be moving back in with my parents, but the saving grace is I know it's very short-term. Not going to rent for a few months it's time to save like there's no tomorrow because I'm going to be heavily in debt in a year so now's the time to save. Gotta break the eggs to make the omelette. So that's the sacrifice I'm making.

Also, if y'all didn't see, I set up a NCAA March Madness bracket for full bragging rights if anyone chooses to join. Looks like we did one successfully 9 years ago and there was an attempt 8 years ago that was unsuccessful to get people to sign up, and nothing since. I'd say y'all are going down, but I'm guessing just as much as y'all are.

For Cumol

It's a two part recipe. Fancy up tahini and the actual hummus. Tahini will be first, followed by the hummus. I tried to find it online but all of them were ever so slightly off in one way or another. This is what the book says, plus the little changes I make.

Yield 4 cups, which is about double what you need for the hummus recipe, so I always halve this part.

1 head garlic

3/4 cup lemon juice (~3 lemons)

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 generous cups tahini (Find super high-quality stuff, I got a dude near me that uses his parents' sesame crusher from Syria and stuff is phenomenal)

1/2 tsp ground cumin

Ice water -- variable amount

Don't peel the garlic, just rip the cloves apart and throw that, the lemon juice, and 1/2 tsp salt (other full tsp will be used later) into a blender. Blend it so the garlic is broken into a coarse puree. Only takes a few seconds. Then let that rest for like 10 minutes or so, allowing the garlic to mellow.

While that's sitting for 10 minutes, in a bowl throw together the tahini, rest of the salt, and cumin. Once the lemon garlic is done with its ten minute rest, get a very fine mesh strainer, and pour the lemon juice through it into the bowl with the tahini. Press down on the garlic chunks to get as much of the liquid out as you can.

With a good whisk (I've broken crappy whisks before doing this) start mixing that like there's no tomorrow. It's going to get really tough. As it thickens and toughens up, add ice water bit my bit (per the book ~1 1/2 cups, but I never measure I just keep adding until it's right. And it'd be 3/4 since I halve it, but again, you do you). Keep adding until it's super smooth. It'll lighten up in color and when I say super smooth I really do mean it. It'll be smooth and creamy and you'll have to stop yourself eating it all with a spoon and actually putting it in the hummus as it's supposed to be.

So now that we're done with that, we got the hummus recipe. I don't follow it perfectly because I think there's one step that's unnecessary but again, you do you.

1 cup dried chickpeas

2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups tahini from above

1 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp ground cumin

Okay so here's where dude gets crazy. He wants you to soak a cup of dried chickpeas and one of the two tsp of baking soda in a bowl covered with at least 2 inches of water overnight.That's what I feel is unnecessary. I just use a can because it's damn near the same quantity and then I don't have to actually plan ahead. Idk can size in Europe, but over here a can of chickpeas is 15.5 oz and that size works perfectly.

So then he has you throw the chickpeas into a pot with the other one tsp of baking soda and bring it to a boil, then cover and lower to a simmer for an hour. I've forgotten the baking soda before, don't do that. It helps the skins all fall off in some magic science way. So as all that is simmering for an hour, skim the skins off every once in a while. Make sure they're all covered in water the whole time. And if they go longer that's totally fine the goal is to really cook them through and make them very tender and damn near fall apart. You'll probably have some fall apart that's fine.

While all that's boiling, put the tahini, salt, and cumin in a food processor. I use all the tahini not just 1 1/2 cups, not worth keeping that extra bit I wouldn't use it for anything, though I'm sure it'd have plenty of good uses, like a salad dressing or something, or just a straight spoon. Once the chickpeas are done boiling and you've skimmed off a good portion of those skins, dump them in a strainer to drain them, and then throw the cooked chickpeas in the food processor with the other stuff. Turn that on and let it run and run and run. I let it go for a few minutes just really make sure it's all really super smooth. And then, since you were boiling the chickpeas, it's still nice and warm at this point and you should really just eat it all in one sitting :)

I don't like it. I feel as though I should be able to remove as much as my presence as possible when I delete my account on a website. It's one thing that comments remain. Now usernames remain attached to them?

You may as well not have the delete account feature because at this point all it will do is just remove access to the account for the user in question.

Y'all can just skip the rest of my comment here, because I'm going to be talking about something that literally nobody will click on, and will forever taint everything I ever post again to Hubski with a stain of "ok, sure goobster, but you made that one post to the weekly music post, remember? So we can't really believe anything you ever say again..."

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I've been listening to a lot of Blue Oyster Cult recently. They were one of my three favorite bands as a kid (Sabbath, AC/DC, BOC), I've seen them live multiple times in multiple different decades, and I've owned a large portion of their catalog.

They are the original swords-and-sorcery bar band. Their songs are often mystical Tolkein-esque stories of magic and swords and other shit I have zero time or patience for. Their musicianship is basically the best bar band in the world; they can play like motherfuckers, but don't show off. They just execute, and produce rockin', interesting music.

So here's my BOC playlist for those who have only ever heard "Godzilla" or "Burning for You" from Saturday Night Live.

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Veteran of the Psychic Wars

This one surprised me. I know the song well. But in a COVID world, it takes on a real poignance and timeliness that the original song didn't have. It struck me.

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Black Blade

Just a great rock song... the story would be a fantastic movie. The hero just wants to be a Casanova, but he happens across a dark sword that takes over, and turns him into a hellion of murder and destruction. A fun twist of the genre that let's you look into the "bad guy" and see the world from his perspective, rather than the good guy, who needs to defeat him.

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7 Screaming Diz Busters

No, I don't know what a Diz Buster is. But this is some virtuosic 1970's lead guitar riffing that any band of the era would be proud of. Lyrics are funny as shit, too.

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The Red and the Black

What band has EVER recorded an ode to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and their ability to "always get their man"? And NOBODY has ever rocked as hard whilst doing so. (Greatest song intro, too!)

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Career of Evil

Is completely unexpected. Just read the lyrics.

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Astronomy

Finally, this is BOC's magnum opus. A Pink Floyd style wide-ranging song with an almost orchestral arrangement of parts and sections. The live version from Some Enchanted Evening is transcendent, and the definitive version of this track. Just wonderful.

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(NOTE: Blue Oyster Cult stopped writing new music in 2001, and still spends 11 months of every year on the road. It is what they do. It is who they are. They are a road band that plays live. And their catalog of good songs is so huge, they don't even have setlists anymore. They just play whatever they want to on that particular night. They sell a single piece of merchandise: a t-shirt reminiscent of their first album cover that says "Blue Oyster Cult - On Tour Forever".)

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZwWpjanNz13Pjm3u8

Hey Hubski. So, the other day my daughter asked me if she could record a song. I was ecstatic. But, I was very careful to just be the engineer on this. I didn't want to take over her creative process. She's 9 years old and she arranged and wrote the music, lyrics and melody. It's a simple tune but I was very impressed with how catchy it is and her intuition re how to structure it. Verse, bridge, Chorus etc. Allowing for pauses and adding in instruments in a subtle way throughout. I'm sure she will want to do more. She enjoyed it.

My professional life is a whirlwind right now and society seems to be on fire all around us but this was a very bright light in the midst of all that.

So, I give to you "The Tiger of Fire"

Cartographers are “quite meticulous, really high-precision people,” he says. Their entire professional life is spent at the magnification level of a postage stamp. To sustain this kind of concentration, Hurni suspects that they eventually “look for something to break out of their daily routine.” The satisfaction of these illustrations comes from their transgressive nature— the labor and secrecy required to conceal one of these visual puns.

So this is Seminar II. I designed the AV systems for it in 2002-2005. There were over fifty sheets. Evergreen asked for "fiber optics" for their AV plant and we said "single mode or multi-mode? What are you doing with it?" and they responded "we don't know give us both." This is the equivalent of saying "we don't know if we need a freight train or a dump truck, bill us for both."

Seminar II has, in a few places, a green roof. It used to have an entirely green roof and then budget cuts happened. One of the running jokes at the meetings was how the green roof was going to be kept tidy; this was before everyone knew that green roofs were basically "sedums eight ways" but once you've worked on a green roof project you know this. My boss, who was a loathsome man, suggested a goat. Everyone laughed. The goat became a running in-joke of meetings. My boss, who was a loathsome man, did not know it was a joke.

Project design goes through a few stages - "SD" (systems development), "DD" (design development) and "CD" (construction development). Typically you get one or two sets for SD, then a 50% DD, a 75%DD and a 100%DD, then you might get a 50%CD, a 75%CD, a 90%CD, a 100%CD and a bid set. For those counting at home, that means I had to draw fifty sheets nine times. Except at 90%CD Evergreen asked why their roof, with their marvelous gardens, didn't have any guard rails to keep the fine children of Olympia from plummeting five floors to their deaths. The architect said that guard rails weren't aesthetic. The school said that guard rails were a requirement of the Uniform Building Code. My boss, who is still by all accounts a loathsome man, asked about the goat. Everyone looked at him and said nothing. The architect argued that no part of their contract required them to adhere to the Uniform Building Code and Evergreen, being Evergreen, agreed to pay them to redesign the whole thing with guard rails. We, as subcontractors, saw none of that money. So we went to 90%CD and then went back to 50, 75, 85, 90, 95, 100, 100 again and then bid. For free.

I was not in the initial meetings. I was given "the goat" as gospel truth. I had a few conversations with my once loathsome, always loathsome boss about the goat - he wasn't sure where the goat was staying, how the goat would be brought up there, penned etc. At one point I was on a phone call with someone at the architecture firm and said "there's no goat, right?" to which I got laughter.

So at 75%CD (the first time), I added a goat to the roof.

Something you should know about architectural drawings. They use XREFs - "eXternal REFerences" - which are generally the things drawn by the architect. You put them in as a non-editable layer and draw your stuff on top. Architectural CAD requires decent file hygiene or else you're fukt. And, of course, part of development is importing the XREFs from the architect each time, looking to see what's changed, and making sure all of your design still fits. You then upload everything to a folder and everyone can pull down your shit and make sure it works. I was dependent on Electrical, for example, to make sure that I had power everywhere I needed it and Electrical was dependent on me to make sure they captured my conduit etc. So my routine became 1) Get Xrefs 2) Crack them down so they were compliant with the layers we were using 3) bring them into my drawings 4) update my drawings 5) painstakingly go back and add the goat to this one sheet using the same layers as the green roof. That way the goat was screened back and subtle and I didn't need to worry about it. Also, the goat never showed up as an AV object that needed addressing.

So. Sixteen sets of drawings, eleven of which had a goat in them. Nobody noticed.

Until the bid documents went out.

There were four AV contractors bidding on our stuff, two who were incompetent, one who was an asshole and one that didn't do stuff this big generally. The little guy called me up about two days after it went out to bid to say "tell me about the goat" and I had to say "we'll talk about that in person when my loathsome boss isn't in the next office over." I called him later and relayed the story - we laughed - and I mentioned that I hope he got the bid considering he was the only person in three years of design that had ever noticed the goat.

"Oh, it's yours?" he said.

"Uhh... yeah?" I said.

"That's weird," he said "because it's on the electrical sheets, the mechanical sheets, the lighting sheets, the fire protection sheets..."

Near as I can tell, everyone else had gotten so lazy about dealing with the architect's Xrefs that they had gotten in the habit of just stealing mine off the server. After all, mine were already cracked down. Probably saved them three days of work. And when the architect often doesn't give you what you need, you find shortcuts.

So. Although I drew one (1) goat to be on one (1) sheet out of 700, the goat ended up in the bid documents at least two dozen times.

And nobody noticed but my AV contractor, who got the job by the way. Fifteen years later they're the only ones still in business.

related link

Alright.

Regarding the quoted death statistics: I agree that people who die in combat are often people who put themselves there, but it's undoubtedly true enlisting in the military carries some risk of a life of violence. But regardless of whether I'm off-base about inherent risk of violence (which I concede I might be, and I welcome correction on this), a long-term study on the health of 30,000 OEF/OIF Veterans and 30,000 Veterans from the same era who were not deployed (done by the National Health Study for a New Generation of U.S. Veterans) found that 10% of even non-deployed vets develop PTSD, and 13.5% of all OEF/OIF vets. To quote the abstract, "PTSD is a significant public health problem in OEF/OIF-era veterans, and should not be considered an outcome solely related to deployment."

Next:

You see, the Army is just not making their numbers. In fact, they aren't anywhere close. And you know who's fault it is? It's the recruiters, for just not being able to reach these kids, get it? You don't make the quota of one recruit a month? Well then you're a piece of shit NCO and your performance record will reflect. And are you aiming for a promotion in a couple years? Better get a good report or you're shit out of luck. But you know what, sometimes it's ok. Because up till now, the military has treated you pretty well. You get a solid paycheck, health insurance, life insurance, dental, and education. You're better off for the army, so it makes you happy to help someone reach your status.

So then, kingsmudy, what do you think these people's motivations are? Are they silver tongued adults tempting our youth to their deaths? Or are they just regular goddamn people trying to live good lives? I respect the recruiters I know a hell of a lot more than many of my highschool friends who went off to work at facebook and google. At least they believe they're helping people, the FB and google people tend to solely be in it for the money.

I want you to know that I sympathize with recruiters, but this quote is exactly why I feel the way I do. The job as you describe it sounds like a nightmare. Their career is put on the chopping block, and only by pushing kids through the system can they avoid being a "piece of shit NCO" and maybe one day get promoted. If you find yourself in a struggling position through no fault of your own, what do you do? You find another kid. But you need this kid to join the military. What will you tell him to get him to enlist?

Is it okay to mislead someone if you genuinely think your lies could help them?

The gist of my opinion is this: I believe that most (if not all) recruiters truly believe the military is a good opportunity for young people. As you point out, most military recruiters aren't assholes, they're people trying to make ends meet. Nevertheless, they exist in a system that you correctly point out as brutal to their potential, endemically focused on number numbers numbers. I believe that this puts recruiters in a difficult position and incentivize dishonesty and manipulative behavior. Whether someone turns into the person the system seems to be (unintentionally) designed to create is up to their individual dispositions and the strength of their personal convictions.

As a supplement to this position, I'm providing this excerpt from an article published by the Army Times, discussing a study about why soldiers join the military. To summarize, it found that primarily people had joined because of familial relationships and expectations, but that many soldiers felt misled by recruiters:

“Many recruiters perform admirably, but others may paint an unrealistic picture of day-to-day soldier life, thereby creating unusually high expectations,” the study says. “A steady diet of World War II action movies may likewise leave a prospective soldier uninformed about modern life in the Army.”

The stereotype of the embellishing recruiter is alive and well, according to the study.

...

“Many recruiters offered genuine help to soldiers seeking a job in the Army, but other recruiters (and recruitment materials) appeared to oversell an MOS and set overly high expectations for entering soldiers,” according to the study. “Though one-third of participants stated their MOS met or exceeded expectations, other soldiers were disappointed with aspects of their occupational specialty choices, complaining about boredom, about lack of field time, and about having to perform tasks unrelated to their occupations.”

This without the acknowledgement that many of the kids who can be helped by serving are only in that position because our society offers them no better alternative - because they've been deprived of services that are basic rights in other parts of the world. So recruiters can lie to kids about what the military can offer them (and the recruitment system encourages them to do so for the sake of their career), or they can be honest with them. I fully believe that most are honest, but the benefits are things that those kids should have anyway.

A 2017 Department of Defense poll of young people shows 49% of survey respondents indicated that if they were to join the military, one reason for doing so would be to pay for future education. “[Privileged people] have sufficient resources to meet their needs....They don't require joining the military to travel or learn a profession. They have connections to help them get into jobs that pay well and provide benefits. They don't need the military's medical insurance coverage that sometimes motivates low-income people to enlist.”

None of this is the recruiter's fault. They're using the tools available to them to encourage kids to make a decision they think will benefit them. But this idea that they're offering a pathway out of poverty and deserve praise for that frustrates me because it shouldn't be necessary.

Like I said to kleinbl00, "[Recruiters are] trying to figure out the best way to explain [how the military can benefit me], but those arguments end up being "Hey, you could escape poverty!" and while it's not the recruiters fault, it targets kids with little to no alternative. The military [is] a fantastic opportunity for those kids, but I wish there were more options for social mobility outside of enlistment, because a lot of them will be killed or crippled or mentally sundered by it. It sucks that they have to roll dice while I get to turn my nose up at in distaste, and maybe military recruiters just remind me of that inequality."

And while they might enjoy some benefits while serving, I don't think it's heretical to suggest that our nation needs to treat veterans better. Here's an opinion piece that conveniently encapsulates my feelings specifically in the context of recruiting:

The VA is a perpetual mess, GI bill payments stop coming at random intervals, and the closest we’ve managed to come to engaging with the veteran suicide issue is videotaping ourselves doing push-ups about it for Facebook.

Recruiters today are faced with convincing people to serve while dodging questions about American foreign policy, the divide between our military and political leaders, the chances that healthcare and education service members are promised might not come through and of course, the fact that after wearing a uniform for a while, there’s a greatly-increased chance you’ll find yourself in such a deep depression that you choose to take your own life.

Recruiting isn’t going to get any easier as long as we see veterans as damaged goods, break our promises to them, turn on them as soon as it’s politically expedient, and expect service members to fight in conflicts that may start or end at any time based on politics, rather than direct threats to the nation’s security or an overarching strategy toward global stability. Right now, it doesn’t seem like we, as a nation, know what we’re doing. Why would young kids want to subject themselves to such hardship with no promise that it will benefit them or the country?

Finally, here's an article written by a staff sergeant who shadowed a recruiter for two weeks

Recruiters are unethical liars and manipulators by trade. Among military and probably even some civilian circles, recruiter dishonesty is nothing new or surprising, and is often a punch line or the center of a funny anecdote, like “I know a guy whose recruiter told him he could keep his long hair in the military, and he totally bought it!” or “My recruiter told me I would travel the world in the military. Ha!” However, the problem is far more sinister than that.

...

So what was I supposed to do when parents told me to leave their family alone? You would think I could cross out that name on the list, or mention in the log that this one is a no-go. According to my recruiter, respecting someone’s wish not to be harassed is for quitters. Believe it or not, my recruiter told me that when parents say their kid isn’t joining the military, and refuse to let us speak to him, I am supposed to shame them for being overbearing control freaks. Something like “Isn’t that his decision to make?” or “You’re not him – I’d rather he speak for himself” comes to mind as the scripted response. I couldn’t summon my inner asshole to bully parents, so I didn’t.

Recruiters obtain contact information through sketchy means, they use that contact information to harass families, insult parents and ignore their legitimate requests to be left alone, and then they try to make minors feel like terrible people for accepting their parents’ financial aid as they go through higher education.

...

Just a word of advice to anyone considering joining the military: joining is a huge life decision that cannot be taken lightly, and you need as much information as you can get before deciding. Recruiters are not legitimate sources of this information. Do your own research. Talk to a diverse group of people who are in the service and pick their brains about their experiences. Recruiters are not there to help you make an informed decision. They are there to sign you up by any means necessary and will say anything to make it happen. They are not the gatekeepers, they are the ones who hunt people down and drag them to the gates.

So, there it is. Military service is honorable, and it can help people. I don't like the system that recruiters exist in because it incentivizes the exact behavior they're accused of by people who serve. I don't like recruiters because the US Military built a system that encouraged the worst of their behavior, and in a just world their toolbox wouldn't include the basic rights that people should have access to without committing their livelihood to the government.

AHHHH. (This is another relationship vent brought to you by kantos)

5 jars of your most fermented jam. Throw in the whole trash bag too, please.

I'm my mind is numb from the level of face plant I just achieved.

   Invite girl over for dinner 
   Proceed to have nice meal
   Gets to that moment of make a move or not
   Ask bluntly after a nice night if she's looking for a relationship
   "Not particularly"
   Land softly with a couple minutes of not awkward conversation
   Exit the girl

Gonna ride out the feeling of the L for the duration of the evening. Then call friends in the morning to get back on the buck.

Fortunate enough I can bounce back with a game plan, but damn that was rough.

I'm taking a warm shower, and going to bed for a mental reset.

Night hubs. o7

I'll meet you halfway: