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General Discussion

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A place to talk about whatever you want

  • Collection of Pinned Threads

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  • My recent health/fitness hiccup

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    jon-nycJ
    I have a cheap digital scale from Etekcity which connects to an app which connects to Apple health app. So as long as I have the scale sync app open when I weigh myself it flows through to Apple health automatically and immediately. The graph I posted came from Apple Health.
  • And I’m going fully cashless

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    Andrea BA
    I don't remember the last time I paid cash for anything. A beautician, perhaps?
  • Hegseth to Anthropic: Nice company you got there…

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    jon-nycJ
    https://x.com/wsj/status/2037311810131423407?s=46
  • The Iran war memes thead

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    jon-nycJ
    [image: 1774570974277-img_1239.jpeg]
  • Petraeus on the future of warfare

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    RenaudaR
    I have no reason to doubt that. He’s just as flawed in his own manner as you and I and everyone else.
  • Mildly interesting

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    MikM
    Lots of ways to be a hero. Paris fell on a Tuesday. By Wednesday, German officers were already walking the factory floor at Citroën. Their orders were simple: France's greatest automobile manufacturer would now build trucks for the Wehrmacht. Supply vehicles. Military transports. The mechanical backbone of Nazi occupation. Pierre-Jules Boulanger, the 55-year-old chairman who had spent his career building cars for French families, now faced a choice that would define everything. Refuse — and the Germans would shoot him, install someone cooperative, and build the trucks anyway. Comply fully — and he would be personally responsible for vehicles carrying soldiers to kill Allied forces, supplies sustaining the occupation, machinery enabling conquest. He refused both options. Instead, he gathered his engineers late one evening and said something they would never forget: "Production must appear respectable to the eye. But never to the heart." The vehicle the Germans wanted was the Citroën T45 — a powerful, heavy-duty truck perfectly suited for military logistics. Reliable engine. Solid construction. Exactly what the Wehrmacht needed to keep its war machine rolling across Europe. Boulanger's engineers studied every component, looking for a vulnerability so small it would be invisible at inspection, yet catastrophic enough to matter in the field. They found it in the most ordinary place imaginable. The dipstick. That thin metal rod you pull from an engine to check the oil level — the one with a simple notch marking "full." Every German mechanic, following standard maintenance protocol, would pull it out, check the level, add oil if needed, and move on. Boulanger's engineers made one quiet adjustment. They moved the "full" notch. Not dramatically — that would be caught immediately. Just enough. A small filing. A modest repositioning. When a German mechanic checked the oil and the dipstick read full, the engine would actually be running low. Not catastrophically empty. Not enough to trigger an immediate warning. Just enough to create chronic, invisible stress on the engine's most critical components. Under normal use, nothing obvious would happen. But under sustained military operation — long supply runs, heavy loads, demanding terrain — the engine would begin destroying itself from the inside. Heat. Friction. Accelerating wear on parts designed to float in a film of oil that was never quite there. And then, eventually, on some road far from any factory inspector, the engine would seize. Every truck that left the Citroën facility passed German quality inspection perfectly. Test drives were smooth. Oil levels appeared correct. Vehicles were approved, signed off, shipped to Wehrmacht units across occupied Europe. The German mechanics who serviced them were doing everything right. They checked the oil. They topped it off when the dipstick said to. They followed every protocol. The dipstick told them everything was fine. The dipstick was lying. Weeks later, reports began filtering back through Wehrmacht supply chains. Citroën trucks were developing unusual engine problems. Vehicles were seizing during operations. Supply convoys were breaking down at inexplicable rates. Commanders blamed driver error, poor roads, excessive loads. No one suspected the dipstick, because every truck from that factory had the same dipstick. There was no correctly calibrated reference to compare it against. The sabotage was, in the most elegant sense, self-concealing. Meanwhile, Boulanger ran a parallel campaign of productive-looking paralysis. Workers were instructed to maintain schedules — but never exceed them. No urgency. No efficiency gains. If a German officer demanded faster output, Boulanger would nod thoughtfully and cite material shortages, equipment maintenance, worker fatigue. Always polite. Always documented. Always just plausible enough. The frustration in German command was visible. Why was Citroën slower than other factories? Why were their trucks underperforming in the field? They suspected resistance. They could never prove it. In 1944, French Resistance fighters raided Gestapo headquarters in Paris and discovered something chilling — a detailed blacklist of French civilians to be arrested and executed upon Allied invasion. Pierre-Jules Boulanger's name was on it. The Nazis had never found the tampered dipstick. They had never proved deliberate sabotage. But they knew something was wrong at Citroën, and they knew who was responsible. They were right. They were just too late. When Allied forces liberated France that same year, Boulanger didn't seek recognition or medals. He went back to his drafting table. His first post-war project became one of the most beloved vehicles in automotive history — the Citroën 2CV. A simple, honest car for ordinary French families. Cheap to run, impossible to break, designed to carry four people and fifty kilograms of potatoes across rural France on almost no fuel at all. Nearly seven million were built over four decades. The same engineers who had quietly dismantled a military machine with a filed notch on a piece of metal were now building the car that helped rebuild a nation. Boulanger died in 1950, before he could see his full legacy take shape. But the story of what he did — or more precisely, what he chose not to fully do — traveled through generations of Citroën workers, whispered on factory floors long after the occupation ended. He didn't have weapons. He didn't lead raids. He didn't blow anything up. He just decided, very quietly, that the line marked "full" didn't have to mean full. And somewhere on a forgotten road in occupied Europe, a Wehrmacht truck's engine seized mid-convoy, stranding its soldiers and disrupting its mission. The German mechanic jumped out, frustrated, and did what he'd been trained to do. He checked the dipstick. It said the oil was fine. He never understood what had happened. That was exactly the point.
  • The Iran War (was Nuclear Program) thread

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    jon-nycJ
    Someone on Twitter pointed out Trump started out the year talking about affordability, then with the Iraq war, made one of the few policy decisions Trump could that would simultaneously raise gas prices and mortgage rates. [image: 1774558924846-img_1237.png]
  • How did I not know this?

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    89th8
    Hey I've been yelling about it (in the Artemis thread) for a while now! Plus, what could go wrong launching on April Fool's Day? Also, I haven't checked but a while ago the various launch windows...there were only like 3 of the 60 windows that had a daytime launch and I think April 1 was one of them. People love the night time launch if you live in the area but if you don't (like all of us) a day time launch (IMO) is way cooler to watch on video.
  • Jury holds Meta and YouTube liable for ‘social media addiction’

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    Doctor PhibesD
    I've watched a lot of bad karate in my time. I miss many things about having young kids, but that's not one of them.
  • Good or bad news for those who like booze

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    Doctor PhibesD
    @Mik said: Silence Revenge Of The Lambs [image: 1774547968082-5c827ca7-991f-4461-939f-61299efdeaad-image.jpeg]
  • Gym culture question - ‘working in’

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    kluursK
    I hated when people used to leave things on a bench which they weren’t using except as a giant stand for their phone and water bottle
  • Gas price check

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    RenaudaR
    @AndyD Will your light crude oil run generators, or oil heating systems? Or does it have to be mixed with heavy crude first. No it has to be refined first - although the light crude produced in some Western Siberian fields could run a diesel engine once the parafins are removed. Light crudes produced in North America are used primarily for aviation fuel, motor oils and petrochemical production.
  • Horseshoe conspiracy theory

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    jon-nycJ
    True, that.
  • Trump’s approval rating

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    HoraceH
    The war is just deeply unpopular on the right's pundit class, with anybody who isn't devoted to Israel. That isn't a totally clear distinction, but it's an obvious 90/10 one by observation. It's just true that Ben Shapiro types consider Israel to be America, and their opinions flow from that. Personally I consider Israel to be an American proxy, an outpost of America in the Middle East. I intend that to be as condescending towards the idea that Israel is an "independent state" as it sounds. We own them. But if they ever diverged from America in our interests, I'd have no hesitation with siding with America. I'm not so sure about the Shapiros of the world. The dual loyalties problem is obvious.
  • On my drive home tonight...

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    Doctor PhibesD
    @Mik said: The only sure way to rid oneself of a temptation.... do it! You think I should offer some of the female Brazilian fans a lift? I really don't want to be that guy....
  • FBI agents: "Trump was right"

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    kluursK
    Well, maybe that helps clear the way to the $10 billion dollar settlement for DJT.
  • Taxes are a pain this year…

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    LuFins DadL
    $1200 for the business part, $600 for the family part.
  • The 2028 GOP primary thread

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    89th8
    Pretty much!
  • TSA nightmares

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    jon-nycJ
    I thought about that but I’m sore that’s a multi hour wait too from all the people who figured out they can feign a broken foot and ‘skip’ the line. I’ve gone through the wheelchair method before when I was really sick. It was pretty slow overall in normal circumstances even through you skip the security line. You go to a waiting area, wait in line for a clerk who enters your info into a system, then sit and wait for your guide. Can’t imagine how busy that system is during these times.