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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I watch NBA basketball and back in the day (1990s) there was exactly one player that was referred to by his initials: Michael Jordan. Nowadays fans use initials (with their jersey number occasionally tacked on as if that’s the cleverest thing to do in the world) for almost every player and it’s almost impossible to know who they’re talking about. For some players this is legitimate (e.g. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a mouthful so SGA is a good replacement) but for most it is not.



  • Chamberlain has gotten a bum rap from history - he did not think that appeasing Hitler was anything other than a temporary expedient to buy time. The British government at the time (not just Neville himself) felt that Germany’s modern air force was powerful enough to destroy them on its own and that they couldn’t challenge Hitler until they had enough modern fighters (Hurricanes and Spitfires) to defend themselves. In additional fact, the only reason Britain had these fighters in the pipeline at all was because Chamberlain had resisted the entreaties of Britain’s own “bomber mafia”, a group of RAF officers and industrialists who wanted Britain to build their own massive bomber fleet for offensive action in lieu of defensive fighters.

    In retrospect, the impact of the bomber was vastly overestimated in the 1930s, as evidenced by the fact that Germany ended up suffering a much more massive assault at the hands of British and American bomber fleets later in the war while continuing to increase military production all the while. Britain under Chamberlain should have stood up to Hitler much earlier, but this was an error of judgement and not an act of capitulation.



  • Well, I was WFH at the time and they didn’t give me anything to do so it was effectively that anyway. And really they had given me almost no work to do for the four months prior to that - which of course is why I was not even the least bit surprised by the layoff. My severance was to the penny exactly what I would have gotten from unemployment, so it effectively meant I got unemployment benefits without having to pretend to look for work. Also, they randomly sent me a check for $6K that I have no idea what for (not PTO or sick time compensation) and I used it to buy a school bus. So overall I can’t really hate them too much. Years later I found out my mother had thought I was working for Sysco (the food supply conglomerate) instead of Cisco.