“Ushered in by the police” CNN is a failed news organization for allowing this to be said unchallenged

It’s the D&D team at Wizards of the Coast, not at Larian.

There were a lot of things we couldn’t do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Intense, maybe. Even cerebral. But there was one day in our Sled experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment.

It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the front seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because we would soon be flying real missions but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Ripping across the barren deserts 80,000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet.

I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat. There he was, with no really good view of the incredible sights before us, tasked with monitoring four different radios. This was good practice for him for when we began flying real missions, when a priority transmission from headquarters could be vital. It had been difficult, too, for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my entire flying career I had controlled my own transmissions. But it was part of the division of duties in this plane and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. Walt was so good at many things, but he couldn’t match my expertise at sounding smooth on the radios, a skill that had been honed sharply with years in fighter squadrons where the slightest radio miscue was grounds for beheading. He understood that and allowed me that luxury.

Just to get a sense of what Walt had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Los Angeles Center, far below us, controlling daily traffic in their sector. While they had us on their scope (albeit briefly), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to descend into their airspace.

We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied: “November Charlie 175, I’m showing you at ninety knots on the ground.”

Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the ” Houston Center voice.” I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country’s space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn’t matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.

Just moments after the Cessna’s inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. “I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed.” Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. “Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check”. Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol’ Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He’s the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: “Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground.”

And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done – in mere seconds we’ll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.

Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: “Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?” There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. “Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground.”

I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: “Ah, Center, much thanks, we’re showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money.”

For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when L.A.came back with, “Roger that Aspen, Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one.”

It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew. A fine day’s work. We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast.

For just one day, it truly was fun being the fastest guys out there.I’m

I work in tech at a credit union and we’ve hit a weird full circle point where the new folks entering the job market need a lot of training on using a computer for this reason. It’s been very bizarre being back at a point where I have to explain things like how to right click because a lot of people have grown up only using phone/tablets.

Living that DINK life and still having trouble keeping out of debt. I can't imagine having to cover for kids, too.

Big recommend for ProtonMail for anyone looking where to migrate to

Being rude to restaurant servers and retail workers just because you can. Instantly flips my opinion on anyone who does this.

Also people who litter. It’s amazingly selfish.

100% agreed. He’s one of those ‘least worst’ options at this point which is never a good feeling.

“The most important step a man can take is the next one”
And
“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing”

I don’t care for him or his politics but he overwhelmingly supported Biden’s judges and helped keep the Senate blue so I guess I’ll miss him haha.

Are they? I got a 3% ‘raise’ again this year and that doesn’t seem like it’s keeping up with inflation. And yes yes get a different job, blah blah.

The AI team knows Google would just kill off the Reddit clone within 18 months if they went that route.

RIP to my browser history. It looks like it scales with size but donkeys on average are 100-200 mL and horses are more in the 200-400mL. So, you know, up to a can of soda worth worth…

FWIW they semi opened it in 2013 and then fully opened design spec patents for the charger last year, and are working to get it set as a public standard for North America.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-opens-charging-connector-inlet-design-standards-nacs/

Stopping the use of a word that’s hit Kleenex level of saturation is a bigger deal than overturning 175 thousand bullshit convictions? That’s a hot take

This is only going through TV OSs, not stand alone hardware.

20 fancy ass houses in every single state in the USA. I’d never thought of it that way until now and that’s obscene.

At the last minute I decided to go to my 10 year high school reunion with a couple buddies I had stayed in touch with. Ended up running into a lady I’d obviously gone to high school with but never knew super well, some shared classes and band and stuff. Hit it off and here we are now, married for five years.

Hopefully doesn’t happen but we’ll see!

Just canceled my service. I wasn’t watching too much on there already and this was ridiculous. They were already one of the priciest options and now I can either lose the 4k I was paying for, or bump up to $20/month? No thank you.

Looks like Italy was 52 per million in 2019, and the United States was 129 per million in 2021 so that’s exciting for my country…

Thankfully countries voted to avoid that during the meeting of the Honda Accords.

If you live in the Bay Area nah, it’s basically a Corolla equivalent; if you live where some of my family does it apparently is still, even though they love Musk now.

The Switch has sold over 140 million units, the third highest selling console of all time, and unlike most every other one out there was turning a profit on every unit instead of being a loss leader. Why would Nintendo think about going software only with those kind of numbers in their pocket?

Okay I’m back in haha

Could be, could be. This is just anecdotal on my part where I’ve helped people get up to speed and they’ve told me they basically never used a computer growing up. Maybe they don’t count Chromebooks as part of that group, dunno.

Comes through as a gif for me on Voyager app fwiw

I kind of want to create an unexpected Sanderson group…

That’s so weird to me; whereabouts are you from? I’m in California and just looked through my cans and maybe 10% of them have pull tabs. Apparently we have the jank can tech here haha

Do you not buy canned goods? Most everything we get needs an opener: veggies, beans, tomato paste/sauce, basically nothing has a pull tab.

We had a 3 and even though Musk was already an asshole idiot, we ended up swapping it out for a Y instead of another EV because the network is leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. If they screw this up + keep opening it up to other manufacturers (which they should, that’s a good thing) I don’t see anyone our next cars being a Tesla.

I’m mostly over on ProtonMail but I don’t know if I’ll ever be comfortable fully deleting my Gmail :/

Big Can Opener is keeping the US down apparently! Really interesting to find these differences, have a great day and a nice time opening your more convenient cans!

Was the top comment edited? Because this reads super clearly to me.

I had a huge carabiner holding a free climbing rope fail on me at my local climbing gym. Dumped me at least 15’ and I broke my foot. Definitely a weird one off but it’s not always the rope that fails.

Nice yeah this was a great sub, subscribed and submitted one I’ve seen recently!

Whelp, this decided my evening plans for me!

Until you really get into board games too haha

Definitely didn’t expect to wander across a Music Man reference in the wild today, love it.

Definitely the latter