This is what I was looking for. My last duty assignment in the USAF was working physical security at a NATO facility in Va. Part of the agreement with NATO was that no one was allowed to carry weapons. When we had off base functions with the higher ups, we had to hire local PD since they were armed. I got to talking with one and he said they make a shit ton of money on this type of stuff.

It’s going to be 2 and 3.

First 3. Then 2 because yokels will complain that “them walmarts is stealin my money!”

I do have a funny story about someone determined to get his .01 cent.

USAF. We were leaving after a month long TDY (not a deployment, but you do go to a different place, stands for Temporary Duty Assignment) to England. The crew and us maintenance guys all stayed at the same hotel off base. We spent this month meeting with them in the morning in front of the fire place, and usually finding out the mission got canceled for the day. We were all ready to go home.

The head maintenance guy was a penny pincher. He had like 8 kids, so he kind of had to. This is a guy that went around base picking fruit off the trees. He left Saudi with a large bag of free MREs. We all joked that that was the only way he could eat at home because no one else wanted to eat them.

Anyway, we’re leaving finally. We’re all on the bus. Air crew and maintenance. Maintenance usually has to show up about 45 mins prior so we can inspect and get everything ready. So this was going to be a quick turn and out. We stopped by the base gas station to pick up snacks for the flight home. Everyone but the head maintenance guy is back on the bus. 5 mins. 10 mins. 15 mins. The pilot finally had enough. “WTF is taking him so long?”

He goes in and comes back out almost right away with the guy in tow. Why was he in there so long? He was arguing with the cashier over his change…1 penny. The pilot went in, found out what the hold up was, and told him, “I’ll give you the damned penny. lets go!” while dragging his ass out.

I think it’s more that most people don’t want to see views that don’t align with their own or challenge their current ones. There are those of us who are naturally curious. Who want to know how things work, why things are, what the latest real information is. That does require that research and digging. It can get exhausting if you don’t enjoy that. If it isn’t for you, then you just don’t want things to clash with what you “know” now. Others will also not want to admit they were wrong. They’ll push back and look for places that agree with them.

We’ll see what happens with the new yes men in place. However, there was a DoD wide email that went out when he first started snatching people (though some didn’t get it for some reason). It stated:

Think long and hard before assisting other agencies outside the DoD. If your actions are deemed to be against your oath, you could be investigated and actions taken against you. Remember, you serve the constitution of the United States. Not the president.

Wa state has just passed a law stating that other state’s national guard, cannot enter our borders to take any actions. I would bet that that would include military personnel stationed in state.

Idastan just brought back firing squads. They’ve already used it once iirc.

That said, I feel like jail is a worse punishment. I don’t think cops fair well in jail. I want them to be looking over their shoulder for the rest of their lives while in prison. To never get out. To look out the barred window at the world passing them by in their cement tomb.

You’ll need easy access to Canada. What better way than to have a close Canadian Province? - Wa state

The entire town got filled with that sulfur smell a few times a day. When we first moved there, we were baffled about the smell. The locals all said; “smells like money.” Even the other kids in school. I never got accustomed to it. It’s a smell that will forever be stuck with me.

Thankfully for that area, the plant closed last year. It wasn’t profitable anymore. Unfortunately, it and logging are really the only game in that town. They took 2 direct hits from hurricanes in fairly quick succession as well. Keaton beach, Fl is only about a 45 min drive from Perry. Some potato chip company was talking about moving there, but it remains to be seen. If I were them, I wouldn’t with the 2 direct hits. Too much risk.

Let me tell you a little story about The Fenhalloway River. About a year before I moved to that area as a kid in the early 80’s, some reporter came to report on it. Some locals assaulted her buy burning her with cigars and cigarettes, then pouring the river water into her burns.

I remember wandering some places with my step brother. One spot was along that river. The spot was out there, but still on a decently used dirt (sand) road. We got to the end and to an area we heard was a swimming hole. This was before we heard the river was badly polluted. It was littered with empty bullet casings, KKK signs and nazi symbols. We noped the fuck out of there quick.

While I lived there, at one point, the EPA provided everyone who wanted it with cases of bottled water. We lived close enough to see the sign over highway 19. A 30 second walk and I could just read it. Our well water stunk of the paper mill and you couldn’t see the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. The EPA water program lasted about a year. Then…nothing. The river wasn’t any cleaner. It was still black coffee. Still smelled of satan’s farts. I just now get the irony of living there and watching Captain Planet.

The mill shut down last year. It will probably take some time before the pollution from it will fade. Decades.

I’m on SSDI and VA disability. I can’t work. I’m terrified every time they even breath in the direction of either place. I’d be super fucked. Even losing SSDI would destroy us. That’s about 3/4 of our mortgage payment. So many other vets are in the same boat.

I have to wonder. P2025 has hit the ground running. Wouldn’t they have a contingency in place for just such an occasion? I’d bet they already have someone up their sleeves for the eventuality of him passing on his own. There is definitely someone up their sleeves for if we have another election. I do think there would be a vacuum. I think it would be short lived. We all suspect the gop is falling in line due to blackmail material. Their relief of the blackmailer being dead would be short lived when they realize he didn’t actually hold the cards. They’d all fall in line behind whoever the back room tells them to.

It’s like he’s writing a performance report and desperately trying to pad the bullet points because he doesn’t have enough to fill the required “what have you accomplished” area.

I would honestly not be surprised to see the suicide rate increase. Especially among the marginalized veterans. We’ve already seen a couple. I remember the one who jumped off of the VA building wherever they were at. It’s been mentioned a few times on the reddit vet board, and I’m noticing an increase in vets posting that they’re at their limit and contemplating ending it all.

My BIL is a vet as well. He was having a mental break last week. I was able to talk him into going to the ER. He’s getting better, but we’re all worried about events going down. We’re trying to prep as best we can. We feel as though something really bad is coming up. I told him to take a step back from the news and social media. I had to for a bit as well.

it’s about a 50/50 at my local base. The vets, on the other hand, tend to lean towards tRUmp. I have never gotten it either. Our regional congressman, or ex now, never did jack shit for us. We were a tool to get her elected every time. She didn’t really do anything to help. When she left, what did they do? Idiots voted in another useless GOP.

When PACT was first shot down, I had to actually explain why that was a bad thing and that we needed it. They bought every last fake talking point. I had actually read the measure. Anyone that did had seen why it was a good thing.

We have a problem of propagation of fake news on bases. A lot of them show faux on the TVs in waiting areas. On top of that, it tends to be conservatives that join. Officers do tend to be less red. I really don’t know what would happen if the military actually fulfilled its oath to protect against the domestic threat part of our oath.

It is disgusting hearing fellow vets with the “I got mine” attitude, or other attitudes that are directly against the nature of service. That isn’t what we were serving for.

These guys. Greg the garlic farmer is their 4th wall breaking guy.

I’m anxious to see it as well. I would love to see something like this implemented into games, and focused solely on whatever game it’s in. I imagine something like Skyrim but with a LLM on every character, or at least the main ones. I downloaded the mod that adds it to Skyrim now, but I haven’t had the chance to play with it. It does require prompts for the NPC to let you know you’re talking to it. I’d love to see a natural thing. Even NPCs carrying out their own natural conversations with each other and not with the PC.

I’ve also been watching the Vivaladirt people. We need a 4th wall breaking npc in every game when we get a llm like above.

I ran a campaign by myself with 2 of my characters. I had DS act as DM. It seemed to handle it all perfectly fine. I tested it later and gave it scenarios. I asked it to roll the dice and show all its work. Dice rolls, any bonuses, any advantage/disadvantage. It got all of it right.

I then tested a few scenarios to check and see if it would follow the rules as they are supposed to be from 5e. It got all of that correct as well. It did give me options as if the rules were corrected (I asked it to roll damage as a barbarian casting fireball, it said barbs couldn’t, but gave me reasons that would allow exceptions).

What it ended up flubbing on later was forgetting the proper initiative order. I had to remind it a couple times that it messed it up. This only happened way later in the campaign. So I think I was approaching the limits of its memory window.

I tried the distilled locally. It didn’t even realize I was asking it to DM. It just repeating the outline of the campaign.

I’ve spent all week working with DeepSeek to write DnD campaigns based on artifacts from the game Dark Age of Camelot. This week was just on one artifact.

AI/LLMs are great for bouncing ideas off of and using it to tweak things. I gave it a prompt on what I was looking for (the guardian of dusk steps out and says: “the dawn brings the warmth of the sun, and awakens the world. So does your trial begin.” He is a druid and the party is a party of 5 level 1 players. Give me a stat block and XP amount for this situation.

I had it help me fine tune puzzle and traps. Fine tune the story behind everything and fine tune the artifact at the end (it levels up 5 levels as the player does specific things to gain leveling points for just the item).

I also ran a short campaign with it as the DM. It did a great job at acting out the different NPCs that it created and adjusting to both the tone and situation of the campaign. It adjusted pretty good to what I did as well.