This new article in Minot Daily News has quotes from Air Force veterans David Schindele and Robert Salas commenting on the Gillibrand amendment in the NDAA.

Here’s the full article in case there’s a paywall.

>Military veterans urge truth told about unidentified aerial phenomena incidents

>Fifty-five years ago in September 1966, Air Force members from Minot Air Force Base experienced an incident in the Minot missile field in which a flying object took “off alert” all 10 of the nuclear-tipped missiles, causing them to be unlaunchable. About a dozen military members topside at the missile launch control facility observed the mysterious flying object with bright flashing lights hovering near the perimeter fence on that September night.

>Air Force officials reportedly instructed the military members at the launch control facility and those who knew about this incident never to speak about it and as far as they should be concerned, it never happened.

>Retired Air Force Capt. David Schindele, a former Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launch crew commander, was involved with the September 1966 incident in the Minot missile field. Schindele, of Mukilteo, Wash., wrote a book, “It Never Happened, Volume 1,” published a few years ago on his research and documentation about the Minot incident and others. Proceeds of his book are donated to the national Air Force Association. He is working on volume two of his book and expects it will take a few more years before he is finished because of extensive research required. (Incidentally, his parents are from North Dakota – McGregor and Tolna.)

>A similar incident in which missiles were disabled in the missile field in the Malmstrom AFB, Montana, area occurred a year later in 1967. Others have also taken place in the country.

>Amendment sets up formal UAP office

>On Wednesday, Dec. 15, the U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) including the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Amendment. The House passed NDAA earlier.

>Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., sponsored the UAP amendment working along with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Congressman Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz. The amendment will establish a formal office to carry out a coordinated effort on collection and analysis related to unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), also

I finally got in to take the SIFT test, though I'd share my experience with it since reading other peoples experiences helped me a lot while studying for it. I only used the SIFT study guide published by Test Prep Books (The one with the Maroon Cover and a blackhawk on it)

Simple Drawings: Straight forward, fairly easy. Click on the different image, I managed to finish 97/100. Be careful with misclicks, there were a few I got a bit too jumpy on and clicked the wrong image. Similar enough to the book.

Hidden Figures: I went into the test knowing this was the hardest section, and it is. Absolutely nothing like the book. On the actual test you keep the same shapes for the entirety of it. There is a glaring issue with my copy of the book, that says that the shapes will always be in the same size and orientation as in the example. This is FALSE. I’m considering alerting the publisher because if you go in thinking that, you’ll have a hard time. At first it was nearly impossible and I thought the test was tricking me, and I had to guess on the first few. After the first few I started to recognize the shapes, squinting helps, but I still had to guess on a couple more. I ended up only answering about 15 of them. My working theory is that they purposefully include images without the shapes, just to screw with you. ;)

Spatial Apperception: Just like the book, only difference is on the test they also include larger bank angles (Shallow bank vs a steep bank).

Army Aviation Skills Test: Similar to the book, study the FAA Helicopter guide. Watch the Helicopter Lessons in 10 minutes or less. Know the helicopter designators (U for Utility in UH-60), etc. I had a question about the trainer helicopter used (UH-72), where training is held (Rucker). I got a question on helicopter rules in Class G Airspace regarding weather minimums (Clear of Clouds). Aerodynamics, human factors (Hypoxia and night flying techniques, IMSAFE Checklist).

Reading Comprehension: The most difficult part in this section is trying to keep your eyes from bleeding as you read the driest paragraphs ever. They were very similar to the book.

Math: Oh boy this is where things went a bit south for me (At least it felt like it). It’s harder than the ASVAB and the test in the book. I had a difficult time finding practice tests since it seemed they were all WAY too basic (They were) I got hit hard with simplifying fractions with exponents (Polynomials?). I got at least 3-4

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

There's so much I can't tell you which makes it hard for me to begin.

I can't tell you the place, other than it's a desert in the US far from any city.

I can't tell you my job, other than I'm a soldier -- have been since Marty Calhoun stole my lunch money in the third grade. He went home with a black eye, I went home for a week. I joined up at 18. Blew through basic and threw on fatigues for three tours in deserts far from the one I'm stationed at now.

I've seen a lot of things. IEDs take legs and arms and souls. A little girl catch a stray bullet, go down with her head trailing ribbons of brain like gruesome streamers.

I've never seen anything like the Fleshpit.

My superiors are probably reading this. I'm sure they'll have it scrubbed from the internet long before it's breached the stratosphere. Not that it matters to me -- I'll be dead by the time it's over. I'm going to kill myself. It's not the answer -- suicide never is -- but I want to be in control of my death. You'll understand why soon enough.

It's growing. Even as I write this now, it's inching its way toward the taxpayers we're supposed to protect. But we can't protect them from this.

Not the Fleshpit.

We don't know what it is, where it came from -- we don't know how to destroy it. Not yet, anyway.

We only know that it grows, that it eats. It's a massive sinkhole in the desert crust, a fleshy, gaping mouth expanding every day, minute, second. It's miles wide now. Wasn't that big when I first got here -- it was no bigger than a swimming pool, its fleshy walls caving down into a deep, sunken cavity that bubbled, shifted, moved like melted cheese in a simmering pot.

Looking at it made my stomach curl with nausea. But the smell...

I've known the scent of brain-matter blackened by gunpowder, of disembowled guts cooking on the desert pan after an IED chewed a humvee to scrap.

This was worse.

A damp, rotten reek that tunneled up your nose, down your lungs, and settled into your chest, nesting there like a dead-thing in the walls of a house. A smell that usurps all others, lingering -- even when you've left the Fleshpit behind. You'll never smell anything else again.

I've been here for five days -- got here two days after it was discovered. By then checkpoints were scattered around its circumference. Sandbags, tanks, coils of concertina wire four-men high.

Overnight that was all gone -- including the two dozen seasoned grunts stationed around the perimeter. The Fle

Do your worst!

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

They’re on standbi

Pilot on me!!

Nothing, he was gladiator.

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

BamBOO!

When I got home, they were still there.

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "

I won't be doing that today!

[Removed]

Where ever you left it 🤷‍♀️🤭

You know, Hexagons are the bestagons. Why? Because bees. Bees are the best and build only the bestagon, the hexagon. Now, I know what you're thinking. Bees build hexagons because they're hexapods with hexagon eyes. How could they do otherwise? Excellent point. But the humble bumble has an engineering problem to solve. She makes two things: honey and wax. The former to eat, and the latter to contain the former. To make but a little honey, she must visit a lot of flowers. And to make one unit of wax, she needs eight units of honey. Wax is costly for bees in flower terms, and honey is drippy in food terms, so to make a hive that contains the maximum honey while using the minimum wax is royally vital. Thus, a honeycomb conjecture. Which shape works best? To answer, we need to talk tiles. Tiling is covering a surface with a pattern of polygons. There's lots of options because there's lots of polygons. Even the regulars go on and on-agon. Now for bees picking patterns, the more complicated ones obviously use more lines than necessary. That's what complicated means. And thus a honeycomb of that tile would use more wax per honey. So sticking to the simple regulars, there are just three that tile tightly. Triangle, square, and hexagon. Pentagons are broken hexagons that leaves gaps. Same with Septagons. Octagons are alright, but they're no hexagon. Which leaves the tiling trio which tile differently. A square is a square of squares, which is a square and so on. Squares tile tidily by basically cheating, covering an infinite plane with an infinite number of parallel lines. Like, wow, that's what a plane is. Boring! Triangles pull the same trick, dividing themselves into infinite nothing. But not the hexagon! The only regular polygon to tile a plane without resorting to debasing self-division, unlike some squares I could mention. At least triangle is trying to be more geometrically interesting than square, teaming up a bit to... one, two, three, four, five, six. Wait, hexagon! The other shapes can't help it. They just want to be the bestagon. Even some of the irregulars, like rhombus, tile by hexagoning. Same with your triakis tiles, and deltoidal trihexagonals, and your, ah, kisrhombille, and floret pentagonals. Look, they're all just hexagons. Even Cairo tiles (poor pentagons) tile up as best they can do to form a lumpy hexagon. The rest just can't compete with the best. The hexagon, nobly indivisible, is the bestagon. Uhh, where were we? Oh right, honeycomb conjec

This morning, my 4 year old daughter.

Daughter: I'm hungry

Me: nerves building, smile widening

Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.

She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.

Thank you all for listening.

You take away their little brooms

There hasn't been a post all year!

It was about a weak back.

Inspired by this thread, I thought to write a brief note about Finnish military thinking during the late Cold War, about 1968-1991. This note attempts to provide some insight into what the military, specifically the Army, was thinking at the time; what the politicians thought is a different matter. All the information here is based on National Defence College's historical studies that are openly available, but mostly untranslated to English.

1. Strategy

In public, Finland was prepared to defend her neutrality equally against anyone who would violate her territory. Exercises pitted - and still pit - friendly "Blue" units against undetermined "Yellow" enemy, who usually attack from the north or west, never from the east. Training material used to train the vast majority of conscripts used images of imaginary or Western military kit to depict the "Yellow" enemy, a generic "Great Power", and as far as enemy order of battle was discussed in publicly available written material, the examples were, again, generic. (This practice continues: for instance, graphical depictions of how enemy attack helicopters would operate show AH-64 Apaches.) In general, foreign powers were hoped, but not really expected to leave Finland untouched in case of general European war.

However, as the capability of NATO to mount a ground attack against Finland was minuscule, the Finnish Defence Forces planning was focused on one threat: the Eastern one. This was a difficult proposition. The Soviet Union had overwhelming superiority in men and material, and the conclusion of the Second World War had moved the border considerably to the west. In addition, the Paris peace accords limited both the strength and the equipment of the defence forces, and the stipulations of the Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance treaty suggested that in time of crisis, Soviet forces might have to be admitted to "assist" the defence of Finland's territory. The task of maintaining at least some semblance of independence even in case of general European war, and securing Finland's survival as a people and as a nation, thus became the national foreign policy priority.

The priority for the Defence Forces was therefore the maintenance of an independent "poor man's deterrent" within the limits of funding, available manpower, and the Paris treaty limitations (which originally prohibited all guided missiles, for

Why

It’s pronounced “Noel.”