Aaron Ammerman

National Security and Northern VA. Foreign Policy and SF&F amateur. Blue & Gray and Green & Gold. WMATA woes.

[Adam McCalvy @AdamMcCalvy]

Today’s play ball kid: Rollie Fingers.

[Denzell @Denzell_Of_NSH]

Spain is experiencing Chattanooga, TN.

Argentina is in Auburn, Alabama.

Germans are eating Waffle House.

Brits are still complaining.

This World Cup has been amazing and it hasn’t even started yet.

[Hugh Laurie @hughlaurie]

Thanks for your critique, Janet. We actually tried a couple of episodes where House (Hugh Laurie) (please put the brackets in the right place) gets it right first time, but they were only 6 minutes long. NBC weren’t happy. Then we tried some where House never gets it right and the patient dies. The audience wasn’t happy.

One could apply your trenchant analysis to other art forms: JS Bach wrote 30 Goldberg variations on the same chord structure; Frida Kahlo painted 50 portraits of herself; Henry Moore, what??

The point is, or was, variations on a theme; if all you see is hospital, medical blah blah, then it wasn’t meant for you.

Nonetheless, I look forward to your first novel!

[George Stanley @geostanley]

Hall of Famer Bob Gibson was MVP in ‘68. Teammate Tim McCarver noted: "Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher in baseball. He always pitches when the other team doesn't score any runs.”

[Aaron Ammerman @AmmerTime]

@CheeseForEvery1 As far as Canadian innovations go, this isn’t even the worst development of the past year or two.

[Aaron Ammerman @AmmerTime]

@KolymaTales @johnennis As a long-time alive person, some of us are old enough to remember when a majority of Californian voters decided they would rather be ruled by “political operatives” than by elected officials.

[Brandon Avedikian @bavedikian]

Bought a $1,742.80 camera online from BestBuy.

The FedEx delivery driver stole it. FedEx admitted it.

But BestBuy won’t give a refund. They said we need to “work with local law enforcement.”

Thought everyone should know if you buy from @BestBuy and a @FedEx driver steals what you paid for, your money is gone. Neither company will make it right.

I’ve spent over $30K at BestBuy and will never spend another penny there.

[Will Truman @trumwill]

In Texas if you took "defensive driving" to get a ticket missed, it was increasingly "taught" by comedians to make it bearable.

When you think about it, television punditry is less important than defensive driving instruction, so it kind of tracks.

[John Loeber 🎢 @johnloeber]

Salami Slicing

In a transactional context, sometimes your counterparty may try to essentially scam you for a small margin -- so thin that they hope you do not notice, or let it slide because it basically doesn't matter. By doing this over and over again, your counterparty hopes to accumulate some meaningful aggregate advantage.

This is an amateur technique, because Salami Slicers usually do not realize that:
1. People notice. They may not say anything. But oh man do they notice.
2. Being recognized as a Salami Slicer is extremely negative and will kill you in social and business contexts, because you are showing that you will compromise your ethics for trivial amounts of money (or whatever else is at stake). Nobody will trust you for anything significant if they know you're the type of degenerate to steal pennies while others aren't looking.

In fact, frequently, people will permit others to Salami Slice them as a kind of test -- will you do the wrong thing, thinking you can get away with it, for a small amount? A valuable signal. Thank you.

Skilled Salami Slicers will maintain some level of plausible deniability -- "I'm sorry, I forgot to keep this minor obligation", "oh I wasn't sure whether you were paying this or I was", "I thought I didn't have to do this thing because of that other thing", etc. But there are patterns to this, and you can sniff it out quickly. (For example, Uber's ETAs are always optimistic -- the cars are always late or on time, but never early. Huh.)

Some people will go 0-to-100 when they notice they're being Salami Sliced, because they understand what it says about their counterparty's view of themselves: it's extremely dehumanizing. If you try to strategically and deliberately deceive me for minuscule gains, then clearly your view of me is so low that you would cause me unlimited suffering if it was to your benefit. In a Schmittian sense, it's a hardcore Friend-Enemy distinction. Amateur Salami Slicers are occasionally surprised when they are spotted and receive the full Fuck You I'll Kill You, scorched-earth zero-mercy response: their counterparty understands the full symbolic reality of Salami Slicing.

I hate being Salami Sliced.

[Allie ✞ @allie__voss]

TSA agents will act like you’re the dumbest person alive for doing what the last TSA agent asked you to do

[Dominic Cotroneo @Dom_Cotroneo]

How about that moment from Miz?!

He yells at Murph to let him stay in the game with men on the corners and the top of the order for a fourth time.

He responds with back-to-back strikeouts to complete seven without an earned run.

Misiorowski just pulled a Mussina!

[Just Mindy 🐊 @just_mindy]

His grandfather is a famous architect. His dad is an attorney and his mother is a business owner. He went to boarding school. His parents begged him not to go into the military, but he did because he said he had always wanted to kill people. He never had to work a steady job because he always had a family to rely on.

Most working class men do not receive $200,000 from their families for homes. If most of the people that you know do, you are not familiar with working class people. You are familiar with upper middle class and wealthy people.

He gets $60,000 in tax-free income from the military and then his wife gets paid from from the oyster business and the campaign because he can’t be paid or it would mess with his disability.

Most men are not sexting with other women, which is adultery, when they’ve only been married for three years. Particularly Sexting with dozens of women. Most normal couples don’t need three therapists within the first three years of their “happy” marriage.

Also, his oyster business is brand new and his only customer is his mother. This is not the experience of most people. Most men and women who serve in combat come home and go to college and then get jobs.

He’s 41 years old and flailing around and never done anything substantial. That’s not normal.

Also, it would be more honest for you to admit you just want the Democrats to control the Senate so you’re willing to vote for whatever trash they can drag across the line because there’s nothing about this man that makes him a good candidate.

[Aaron Ammerman @AmmerTime]

@lymanstoneky The Chronicles of Amber is ripe for rediscovery some day.

[Ryder Kessler @ryderkessler]

I am once again reposting E.B. White

[James Kirchick @jkirchick]

People used to say Donald Trump was a poor person’s idea of a rich person.

Graham Platner is a rich person’s idea of a poor person.

[Corey Clayton @CoreyClayton]

Gotta love when a @Newsweek hack rushes to get a “Caitlin Clark trade to Sparks rumor” piece out for engagement farming, and forgets to delete their AI chat prompts from the piece.

#NowYouKnow @IndianaFever #WNBA

[Nate Silver @NateSilver538]

I thought the whole idea was that he was supposed to transcend the banality of politics as an outsider and instead he's making moves so cynical it would make Jill Biden embarrassed.

[Aaron Ammerman @AmmerTime]

The Japanese mind can comprehend

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.

I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.

Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.

In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.

This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.

The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.

So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.

The owner asked if everything was okay.

"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."

He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"

I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.

I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.

So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.

And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.

Reborn.

A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.

[Cryptid Politics @CryptidPolitics]

The Dallas Mavericks drafting Luka Doncic AND Jalen Brunson in the same draft AND not having either one of them now is generational incompetence.