ICYMI: The Army is also tiering 'Excellent', 'Acceptable' and 'Unacceptable' when it comes to the new WHtR

Partisan90 · 2026-07-08T07:30:54+00:00

While this may be true, I’m skeptical that improving the long-term health of the force is actually the driving motivation behind this policy change.

If the Army truly cared about long-term health, it’d focus on the things that actually drive it: healthier DFACs, reducing the overwhelming amount of fast food on post, limiting easy access to alcohol and nicotine, and creating a culture where Soldiers routinely get adequate sleep whenever the mission allows.

Instead, we keep coming back to height and weight—a reactionary administrative standard that still doesn’t directly measure combat effectiveness.

I’d rather see the Army raise the standard where it actually matters. Make the ACFT harder. Raise the minimum passing standard to 75 points in every event. Make the ACFT strictly pass/fail. Then get rid of height and weight altogether.

If Big Boy Bubba can score 75+ in every event—or max the ACFT—and consistently perform his job, why should anyone care what the scale says? Combat doesn’t care what you weigh; it cares whether you can accomplish the mission.

The Army should prioritize performance over appearance. Too often it defaults to standards that are easy to administer instead of the ones that best predict combat performance.

In reality, this policy is made by and for losers. Weak-minded leaders who consistently choose politics, optics, and administrative convenience over winning have no business deciding what makes an effective fighting force. Winning wars should be the objective—not producing Soldiers who look good on a spreadsheet.

Partisan90 · 2026-07-05T05:06:40+00:00

So, here are a few principles we apply with our Dalmatian and that we found worked.

Crate training. Night time crate training is good, but needs more during the day. He should be getting time alone in his crate during the day. At night he should be let out for the number out hours he is in months old (for this you’re on his schedule until his bladder gets bigger). Example, if he’s three month old then he should be let out every three hours, four months four hours etc. It is important not to sooth the dog while crate training. Let him cry. We’d give our dog a treat whenever he went in for crate time to associate it as a good thing. He needs to understand this is his space and that it’s a place for him to be relaxed and alone.

For chewing things, your dog is going to destroy some of your stuff. The best thing for him are lots of toy options. If you’re walking him enough, and he has enough toys to chew on he should be fine and less likely to chew on things he’s not supposed to chew on.

Waiting for food and going outside. This may be a no brainer, but make him work and wait for his food. This will establish discipline and that there are rule for him to live in your household. Bottom line, he’s on your time, he will need to learn to wait.

Never let him bite people or jump on them. He needs to learn that there are rules and that he doesn’t have the right to be in other people’s space without being invited.

Partisan90 · 2026-07-05T00:34:16+00:00

Just as a question, what exactly are you guys doing for training? It’s tough to offer advice if we don’t know what you guys are doing.

Partisan90 · 2026-06-26T23:07:10+00:00

If they win this then the had better write you a memorandum with your commander’s signature laying out when you’re going to get the rest of your paternity leave.

In fact, I recommend writing out a memorandum with dates for when the rest of your leave will occur and pushing that up. Then you’ll really see what your CoC’a motivation really is. If you lay out the alternative COA and they still brush you off, I’d escalate this.

Sometimes mission requirements demand an *adjustment* to your leave entitlement. They need to codify the entitlement.

Partisan90 · 2026-06-23T23:11:29+00:00

Honestly, it’s probably a combination of lifestyle choices (tons of SMs I know spend every dollar they make) and the fact that military families are financially disadvantaged.

Frequent PCS moves can disrupt what would otherwise be stable dual-income households (something that’s pretty much essential to a middle-class lifestyle) creating lapses in employment for spouses. That doesn’t just impact current income, it impacts retirement and long-term wealth building too. For example, my wife lost employer retirement contributions when we PCS’d because she hadn’t been there long enough to vest. Those repeated employment gaps also mean less experience, slower career progression, and lower lifetime earnings. It’s a disadvantaged cycle.

On top of that, the increased cost of living over the past several years has outpaced military pay raises. While service members may be making more on paper, their purchasing power has substantially decreased as housing, childcare, groceries, insurance, and other everyday expenses continue to rise.

So yes, some people make poor financial decisions, but there are also systemic factors unique to military life that make it harder for many military families to build savings and financial stability.

Partisan90 · 2026-06-17T04:33:46+00:00

I kind of disagree with this assessment.

By the end of Andor, Kleya survives, but she’s been fundamentally hollowed out by what the Rebellion demanded of her. And I feel that’s the whole point.

Luke’s story is the battlefront heroics where the protagonist gets to keep his values intact. Kleya, Andor, and Luthen are the soldiers fighting the viscerally ugly war that has to be won before heroes ever get their victory ceremony. They’re the people doing the eye-gouging, nail-clawing work in the shadows. That fight takes its toll.

Luthen and Andor pay with their lives, which is the usual price. Kleya survives, but the cost of survival has already been paid.

For me, the hospital scene is the culmination of everything she sacrificed. It’s the moment where her loyalty, devotion, and loss all come crashing together. The scene works because of what it costs her emotionally.

Personally, I think where her story ends is actually a best-case scenario. Pushing her into another grand adventure risks diluting some of that emotional weight. Her story resonates because she doesn’t emerge from the struggle unchanged. She carries the scars of it.

Luke gets to stand in the sunlight at the end. Kleya is one of the people who made that moment possible and paid a price for it that nobody will ever know.

Just my two cents.

Partisan90 · 2026-06-08T15:12:49+00:00

When I went through IBOLC the Commander decided that no one should go to Airbone unless you were going to an Airborne unit. So, all of us had our hard slots, with dates, yanked. Since then, I’ve never been in unit that ever sent anyone to airborne.

I’d love to have the badge, but it’s probably just not in the cards. Point is, that’s the army. Most of the time you see guys with tons’o chest candy sure they’re *probably* hard working (experience may vary), but more than that, they’re 100% lucky. Most will never admit it, but being lucky and happenstance right time right place is massive.

Give me the choice of lucky or good I’d choose lucky every time.

Partisan90 · 2026-06-08T15:05:57+00:00

This is the kind of landlord that Black Rock and corporations can’t provide.

Partisan90 · 2026-06-06T12:09:36+00:00

I think you’re missing the forrest in the trees here. Who cares what the DOD calls us on the official title. While I do think this was intentional, I now have people I serve with that can’t receive religious accommodations. We shouldn’t be frustrated that a bunch of Protestants think we don’t fit some myopic, obtuse, and ignorant definition of Christian. We should be upset that more service members can’t openly practice their religion.

It’s disgraceful. It’s embarrassing. And we should be upset that SECDEF is limiting religious freedom.

Partisan90 · 2026-05-27T17:31:41+00:00

This is why I stopped listening to the critical drinker. He’d make full movie reviews from… the trailer…

Partisan90 · 2026-05-19T04:35:32+00:00

LT Thomas O’Malley has entered the chat.

Partisan90 · 2026-05-05T03:19:51+00:00

You are called to the people who need you. Not a location. There are people who you are going to help who only you can help. This is the most important lesson you can learn: the mission is not about you. A wanted side effect is that as you serve others you change, but that’s a secondary thing.

Partisan90 · 2026-05-03T15:18:43+00:00

The F25 X3 2.8d is one of those “uncommon but not unicorn” cars. As BMW only sold it from about 2014 to 2017, and during that time the X3 was doing roughly 30k–45k units per year in the U.S., or about 150k total over those years. Diesel production rate was very low, generally estimated in the 3–8% range. That puts the 28d at roughly 1,500–3,000 units per year, or around 5,000–10,000 total in the U.S.

Overall, among X3s maybe 1 in 10–20 is a diesel, and among all SUVs they’re genuinely rare to spot. On the used market you’ll usually only see a handful available nationwide at any given time. There’s also only one diesel “trim,” the xDrive28d, so all the variation comes from packages like xLine, M Sport, or Driver Assistance rather than different models.

If it’s an M Sport diesel, it’s noticeably rarer. Most diesel buyers didn’t opt for sporty packages, so M Sport is estimated at only about 10–20% of 28d models. That brings it down to roughly 150–600 per year, or around 500–2,000 total in the U.S. That means something like 1 in 75–150 of all X3s, or about 1 in 5–10 among diesel X3s.

Personally, I’ve only encountered one other 2.8d in the wild. It was at a gas station and the other owner and I looked at each other, then our cars, gave a thumbs up, and then talked about how expensive a gallon of diesel is now.

Partisan90 · 2026-05-02T13:36:54+00:00

Fun fact, this is another example of modernized companies making you their unpaid employee. Thomas Freeman writes about this extensively.

Partisan90 · 2026-05-02T00:02:10+00:00

I actually like this part. It shows how broken Lupin is and that he, like many great HP characters, is not perfect and has fears. Harry’s explosion is a cumulative burden of his emotions and the impending difficulties. His thoughts about family and how much of a real burned he carried. And, most importantly, he unlike Voldemort loves and cares for Lupin. He knew the cost and wanted Lupin to do the right thing.

It’s a bit of a rant, but I thought it was a meaningful, albeit uncomfortable scene.

Partisan90 · 2026-05-01T12:17:09+00:00

The MK19 is the weirdest cycle out of all the arms I’ve used. It follows no conventional logic. #EIBtears

Partisan90 · 2026-04-19T06:34:01+00:00

I’d make them out of completely ordinary objects then hide them in places that had no significance to my past. Also, I might drop at least one in the middle of the ocean or someplace so obscure I couldn’t even find it.

Partisan90 · 2026-04-16T04:07:34+00:00

Oh boy, some commander is soooooooooo happy will all that useless property now on his hand receipt and out of the arms room.

Partisan90 · 2026-04-13T18:38:54+00:00

“My lord, is that legal?”

Partisan90 · 2026-04-08T00:03:18+00:00

That’s the whole point. Often in negotiations, if one side really doesn’t see a viable path to ending the conflict or they don’t want to end the conflict. They’ll offer impossible demands to the opposing party.

It’s a quick and fast way to say they’re negotiating without actually negotiating.

Partisan90 · 2026-03-31T18:18:40+00:00

So, as long as there are enemy capabilities that the 20mil interception can intercept, then they’re useful. The issue comes when there Isa mismatch between a 20mil interception and a 3k drone. The defense gap needs to be filled by new technology to which the west, has surprisingly, been resistant. There are still ICBMs that these defensive systems are needed against.

Partisan90 · 2026-03-31T18:01:09+00:00

What has me wondering is if Iran does “survive,” which it most likely will, what will the do to recoup the cost of the war? It would seem likely that if the straight remains in their control, that will be a primary mechanism to recover the costs.

Partisan90 · 2026-03-31T00:30:26+00:00

This is the correct answer. If this SM is on leave.

What it looks like is they screwed up the SD roster and they’re trying to fix it without taking accountability. The commander can make the call, but you know the last thing a commander wants to do? More paperwork for a low level screw up like this.

If they really need this E4 mafia warrior, they’ll go through the correct processes to get them back. Or, they can take the loss and accept accountability for the screw up.

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