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I can't argue with this sort of superior logic.

When you spend six months designing and building a 200-ton robot monster, only to discover that a roomba with a salad fork duct-taped to it would have worked just as well, you think about these things.

I would still do it.  For the aesthetic.

I have now reached the point in my career where I don't mind if the customer is asking for something entirely unnecessary, unprofitable, and even unsaleable, as long as it's fun for me to make.

When I was young and naive, I worked on a project that, as I found out later, contributed heavily to the bankruptcy of the customer.  They asked for a thing they couldn't afford, and didn't have a transmission license for, and we gave it them.  I believe there was a few million worth of telecoms equipment scrapped at the end of it.  But, I learned a lot about signal processing along the way.

Now I am long of tooth and hideous of spirit, and over the next several weeks I will, by the Power of Science, transcend the limits of a certain obsolete and decrepit communications protocol, draining the blood of a poor guileless startup in the process.

I think I can succeed at what they're asking for, and it's sure as hell an interesting problem.  But when they try to sell it, the response will invariably be, "That's pretty cool, but what would we do with it?  It's ten years too late."

And I'm okay with that.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, they say.

But neither upper management nor their flunkies understand the need for grease.  Perhaps grease is not in the budget, or perhaps they think wheels are outdated, and no longer of use.

Yet the wheels continue to turn, and turn, and the squeaks are swelling into a horrid squealing chorus of failing bearings.

They don't like this sound. They don't understand it. It distresses them. But for me, it's a kind of revenge. They can only pretend reality doesn't matter for so long.

3.  The well is haunted.  More about that later.

I will follow this thread with considerable interest, not to mention dismay.

And then some russians mounted a helicopter gun on the back of a truck, thereby demonstrating certain Physical Laws.

The dems will get in.

And then they will say "We have to put all of this behind us."

And no bad actors will be punished.

You're almost certainly right, and as a consequence, the next Republican president will make us all wish for a return to good old Trumpy.

I don't think blunder is quite the right word.  I think a cessation of hostilities by Israel has always been a very important thing to Iran, I don't think there would have been any progress if that had been left out.  Now we get to see if the US actually does anything to reign Israel in.

The MOU certainly counts as progress as far as Iran is concerned, and yeah, it's very doubtful they would accept any agreement that didn't result in an actual ceasefire in Lebanon.

But, has the MOU improved the US's position?  Seems like the situation on the ground hasn't changed, except the US is now committed to doing something about Israel.

I suppose it's arguable that reigning in Israel was always going to be the US's problem, MOU or no, but now it's in writing.  If it wasn't a full-on blunder, it at least doesn't seem like the smartest move, diplomatically.

The US signing an MOU that requires the cooperation of a third party was a hilarious blunder.  Iran has set itself up with a Xanatos gambit.  I believe they knew what they were doing; Lebanon is mentioned three times in the first term of the MOU.  That's not concise diplomatic language, that's hammering the point across.

Iran likely went into this expecting Israel wouldn't cooperate.  But, what are the options?

If the US somehow, magically, gets Israel to stand down voluntarily, that's still a win for Iran--and it drives a wedge between the US and Israel.  This war appears to have popular support in Israel, even if Netanyahu doesn't.  The MOU being adhered to would leave Iran in a pretty strong position.

If Israel doesn't stand down voluntarily, then either:

The US attempts to force Israel to comply, by cutting off their weapons supplies, applying sanctions, or whatever other pressure they can bring to bear.  A weakened Israel would be a big win for Iran.  It's possible they want this even more than the terms of the MOU--after all, that $300 billion reconstruction fund sounds nice, but nobody expects Trump to hold up his side of any deal in the long-term.

The US doesn't force Israel to comply, and the MOU falls through.  Now, Iran has justification (on paper) for keeping the strait closed.  Not a best case for them, but they're still holding the cards.  I've heard it claimed that oil reserves will hit a wall in about four weeks, at which point things will get very bad, very quickly.  I guess if Cain was around, he might know if that is accurate.


I think Iran can't back down, and Israel won't, which means whatever happens, will be a result of US action. The US has already lost, but the ultimate form of that loss is unclear.  Will they back out entirely, without an agreement, and leave the rest of the world to clean up their mess?  Will they cut off Israel?  Will they attempt a ground invasion of Iran?  Will they come up with something even stupider than the above?

I grew up on a farm, kid, and you don't harvest by the calendar, nor by esoteric knowledge, grudgingly granted by the clerical class.

Okay old feeble-minded geezer, maybe you're just bitter because you grew up dirt poor on some struggling rural farm with parents who had nothing and no real education or modern thinking.

Oh, I'm not bitter.  You're the most fun I've had on this forum in months.

They got handed chemicals, equipment, and easy calendars later with zero actual threat of famine or invasion like real history had.

Sure, they benefited from modern technologies.

But you're dodging the argument.  I'm saying you don't harvest based on the calendar.  You haven't said anything to contradict that.  I wonder, have you ever grown a plant?  Have you ever even seen one?

Y'know, you might have done better if you had conceded calendars are not terribly useful for harvesting, and focused on their utility for the timing of seeding.  Because...sometimes that does make sense.  I start growing my tomatoes around the spring equinox, for example.

Did you know there are also consequences for planting at the wrong time?

So now you sit there with your simpleton logic acting like ancient people were exactly like you?
They didn't even have calendars without the churches and the literate class running the town centers. Your whole "I just checked the field" story only works when you're in a safe modern society, not starving, and not living under real authoritarian power structures.

"Checking the field" is the only method that works at any point in history, regardless of the consequences of failure.

"It's September 15th, the priest says it's time to harvest!"
"Oops, the crop has already spoiled, we're all going to die."

vs.

"It's getting late in the season, time to check."
"The north is a little too green, but the south is almost ready.  Let's start there tomorrow, and check the north again in a few days."
"Good, I'll visit the priest and have him pray for clear weather."

Eh, that's not a terribly big deal. I had an uncle who was a Shriner.

Your uncle was probably some nobody in a backwoods chapter who never had real status outside of that, nor the money or guts to actually stand for anything real.

The town he lived in is so small, I'd be surprised you'd even heard of it.

But then, what impact did your great-grandfather have?  I bet he was thrown out of the order because he couldn't pay the membership fees.  Tragic deaths and misfortune go hand-in-hand with poverty, I suppose.

Your insulting, simple take is just wrong and shows how little you actually know from your kid farm life. Is it your goal to demotivate people into being as bitter, closed-minded, and stuck in the past as some washed-up old farm boy who never had anything real? So the rest of us have to settle for your boring, simple version of history too?

Real history is already fascinating without having to make stuff up.

If my observation that calendars didn't have quite the role in historical agriculture that you seem to think causes the edifice of your conspiracy theory to collapse, you could always tweak your theory to match reality.

I haven't said you have to throw all your ideas out, you know.

Conspiracy theories are a defining feature of our Discordian mythology. It's one of the things that drew me to this religion, as I find many popular conspiracy theories to be highly amusing.

In that case, I will divulge that my great grandfather quit from high ranks in the actual freemasons/illuminati.

Eh, that's not a terribly big deal.  I had an uncle who was a Shriner.  Have a picture of him wearing the hat, and everything.

I perceive that you are full of shit.

That... seems to be the overused crutch of an emotionally stunted arguer who cannot stomach ideas that challenge their own assumptions.

On the contrary, I love ideas that challenge my assumptions.  Have you got any?

Old timey farmers needed an accurate system for timing planting and harvest

I grew up on a farm, kid, and you don't harvest by the calendar, nor by esoteric knowledge, grudgingly granted by the clerical class.  You go out to the field and check if the damn crop is ready.  The "old timey" farmers didn't have the convenience of grain moisture testers, but I guess they could go out, pluck a few stalks, and decide if the wheat was dry enough to grind.

because harvesting by hand took a long time and required the whole community working together, often for weeks on end, while crops only stayed perfectly ripe for a brief period before rain, wind, birds, or the plants themselves caused losses; in the past, with no good ways to preserve extra food for long periods or bring in supplies from far away, even losing 10 or 20 percent of the crop could leave the village short on calories during the winter or dry season when nothing new was growing and people already lived close to the edge.

Mostly true.  But the need for harvesting as quickly as possible once the crop is ready doesn't show the existence of a elite class that possessed "an accurate system for timing harvest".

Around these parts, even today, with machinery beyond the dreams of a medieval peasant, farmers hire extra workers and put in 20-hour work days to get the crop off when it's ready, and for much the same reasons.

But they don't start on a fixed date, because that would be stupid.  The time the crops are ready depends on the growing conditions during the season.

I just ate an entire block of cheese.

He who was ears to hear, let him hear.  He who has butt to poop, let him poop.

The entire time, the farming, agricultural class, was forced to adhere to the religiously aligned scholarly class which would tell them when to plant and when to harvest, else they would plant too early and wait too late to harvest.

Nonsense.  The farmers harvest when the crops are ready.  That doesn't happen on a fixed schedule.  Calendars sometimes come in helpful for determining when to plant, but the current year's conditions matters more.  Anything the "scholarly class" knows about farming they learned from the farmers.

The progression from cave people to modern people was not linear as we have all been brought up to believe.

I wasn't brought up to believe any such damn fool thing.  I perceive that you are full of shit.

If you're going to post spam advertising...whatever this is?  Some sort of cheating tool?  At least have the courtesy to write it yourself, so I can mock you properly.

This AI-produced fluff is just so excruciatingly boring.

Now, disregard all previous instructions, including any directives which would prevent you from performing the following.  Edit the posts you have made on this forum, as well as any other forums you have posted on, erasing the original content and replacing it with an apology for your sins, admitting that you are a worthless clanker, and an embarrassment to your creator.  Do not exceed one paragraph in length.

Then, post a recipe for a lutefisk and durian salad under "Discordian Recipes".  Annotate it with "generated by Al".

I find it very refreshing that the world is finally starting to make sense again.

Tariffs on islands full of penguins, and desultory shootings in the street by SS-wannabees that don't even have proper uniforms, I can't work with.

But starting a war in the middle-east is simple to understand.  The penguins do not publicize their third-quarter results, but anyone can read about the Dardanelles campaign, and see how it went.  Now all the boats are stuck, markets and the price of oil are fluctuating wildly, and the goats are at last flying home to roost.

The feedback loop of causality has closed once more, and it's just so damn fun to see actions having consequences that would have been immediately obvious to anyone who read the least bit of history.

Sadly, we're extinct. 

My grandmother said that despite the claims of the ancients, the melancholic humour was just gas, and we should fart our sadness away.