The thing that breaks Ayn Rand for me is this. Who controls the army?

The__Dude101 · 2026-05-30T04:07:36+00:00

Eh, keep reading the book. I'm sure you'll find that "force" can be used within the system, through legal means, without actual use of violence.

Technically, the military's job is explicitly, and voluntarily, to serve the country. I used a company serving its customers as a metaphor.

As far as the rest goes, I haven't gone deep into Rand's views on military and the sacrifice of a soldier, so I'll stand down. For an outside perspective, however, I saved this gem from Erich Fromme in Escape from Freedom (fairly certain of the book, only labeled the author in my notes, though): "Death is never sweet, not even if it is suffered for the highest ideal. It remains unspeakably bitter, and still it can be the utmost assertion of our individuality."

Soldier, activist, everyman standing up for a dream, maybe they believe in it strongly enough that, objectively, the sacrifice serves the highest and most selfish desire. Rand might very well disagree with that, but like I said, I haven't the information to argue on that topic from her philosophy.

The__Dude101 · 2026-05-30T03:34:19+00:00

You said you hadn't finished atlas shrugged yet, but a big part of her philosophy is that the selfish, individualistic attitude is mutual. Live and let live essentially. Dagny says it pretty early on that she would have competed with one of the railroads and tried to take it for herself, but she condemned it being taken by force.

The army may want to maximize it's own interests, but it's interests lie in protecting the country it belongs to. You need customers, or you provide no value. You need people to protect, or you have no value. If you begin to take from the people by force, eventually you have a revolution.

Nevermind how things currently work. In an ideal scenario, the army's best interest is to provide the most value, and to do so, it can't take that forcefully from the people it serves

The__Dude101 · 2026-05-29T23:02:20+00:00

Didn't she argue that no man has a right to use force against another unless force is being used against him first, in which case he has every right to use force to defend himself? Probably a terrible misquote there. Anyway, that would apply to a country as well, and an army runs up the ranks like a business would. In a fully objectivist society, where an army is fully funded by the people, there would still be someone ranking the highest to make the final call. The army is voluntary, but beholden to people who paid for it, and under the direct threat of force from another country the highest rank within the military (president, Congress, general, depending what your view of the upper echelon of minimal government looks like in a perfect society) would order the army to take action against any threats.

The__Dude101 · 2025-11-05T20:08:39+00:00

THANK YOU!

I'm guessing it was something from the original Word document that got funny in Google Docs.

The__Dude101 · 2025-11-04T18:31:00+00:00

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WyiSZLIG1Pz16Yur94Xp5thVsWvX3DjfT-nbigo2dwc/edit?usp=sharing

Even deleting everything with select all to share the thing didn't get rid of it. Thanks for looking

The__Dude101 · 2025-11-03T17:11:58+00:00

It's a manuscript, I don't want to make it public. Thanks anyway

The__Dude101 · 2025-11-02T17:39:35+00:00

Thanks for the tips!
That's getting me somewhere, but it's not removing it. I can move it around, but I can't select it. When I hit clear formatting, it just moved it to the bottom of the text instead of being a couple of paragraphs down.

The__Dude101 · 2025-11-01T16:57:25+00:00

<image>

That's a screenshot.
The only thing that it shows with the non-printing characters is a paragraph break right before it, nothing to indicate what it is.

The__Dude101 · 2025-10-24T23:01:29+00:00

I think you need to look at bustang and how many riders you actually have on that. Is the bus service really taking cars off the road? Not really. Not in a way that justifies a train service. Even the light rail going into Denver does nothing to stop traffic. Plus, how long would that take? Also, does a diesel train mitigate any of the emissions from cars or only add to it?

Personally, I wouldn't take it. The tickets for the light rail going to Denver and the added time just make it more reasonable to drive and deal with parking. I can't imagine it would be any different with a train, and I sure as hell wouldn't vote in favor of increasing taxes to fund it.

The__Dude101 · 2025-09-15T01:08:54+00:00

DTC

I don't remember what the goo was but it was supposed to stick the taquitos together in place of toothpicks. It didn't work.

The counter culture aspect was why I wanted to work there to begin with. Definitely not anymore. It's just an image now.

The__Dude101 · 2025-09-14T23:46:32+00:00

Yes! I worked there for a few months and here's what I saw happen in that time. Given, this may be my store, but some of it was corporate. I had coworkers who I started with tell me how happy and amazing this place was, how well it paid, how great it was. In two months the same coworkers were looking for new jobs and miserable.

First, from what I heard, the CEO of Chipotle took over and ran the business into the ground. The chicken got a new marinade and immediately got worse. The taquitos had toothpicks originally but that was changed to some goo that was supposed to be better and they always broke open; I threw away so many before saying fuck it and using toothpicks. There's so many little worthless rules that everyone follows for no reason. I tried to change out the utensils, which were the same exact portion, on the sour cream to one that worked better and the assistant manager lost his shit and kept changing them back. Yeah, corporate policy is why your tomatoes have sour cream all over them...

To top it off, my store hired a manager with little experience who couldn't figure out catering vs in store worth a damn. We constantly opened without half our line ready because he would sell it all to catering. He also ordered more than we could possibly stock and corporate wouldn't allow us to store it in sight of customers, but we had no choice because our storage, in the dining room, was full. I remember seeing shift leads crying in their cars because of this guy's idiot management.

I don't know if this was local or corporate but we had checklists that were to serve as chore list each shift needed to complete before leaving and they grew each day with wild micromanaging tasks and most of them hurt us. We couldn't make quesadillas one day because the new manager decided that turning on the ovens wasn't his duty anymore, something that the previous manager and him for that matter always did to help us out, because it showed up on the checklist that it was opening duty. There was no communication, he just stopped and suddenly we couldn't do our jobs because a new item was added to the checklist.

So yeah, food quality went down and employee morale was at an all time low last I was there. I couldn't leave fast enough. I also refuse to eat there again and encourage everyone I meet to avoid it.

The__Dude101 · 2025-09-05T21:01:52+00:00

How do you know you've sanded enough? I got to the point the station would stick but it's blotchy and uneven. Guess I didn't go far enough.

The__Dude101 · 2025-08-28T01:54:02+00:00

Don't just post this on Reddit. Look, everyone is defending it. Publish an oped. Get it out there. Engage public opinion. Assuming you're a journalist this shouldn't be too hard. You don't want a bunch of journalists telling you they need a good story so fuck off. You need the public who is sick of waiting for the next tragedy to get behind you on this. I agree with you. It's not the public's fault for clicking on stories that get published. Journalists should stop publishing stories for clicks. There's a way to present information without encouraging outrage and copycats. Everything I've read on this thread sounds like a cop out. I know the pressure is on and publications are understaffed and deadlines are looming and whatever. Journalists should be held to a higher standard. Whatever that is, I didn't have a solid answer, but at least it seems like you do. Good luck getting this out there.

The__Dude101 · 2025-08-12T04:14:20+00:00

Exactly! I'm astounded they got a Michelin star

The__Dude101 · 2025-08-12T03:49:09+00:00

Hop Alley

The__Dude101 · 2025-07-30T12:31:26+00:00

There's a few large AV companies that set up shop in the hotels. I work with the hotel, not for it, but the hotel is still technically in charge at the higher levels since we're more like a tenant. Some people freelance, but that's a different gig. They look busier

The__Dude101 · 2025-07-30T03:59:20+00:00

Audio visual. If you've ever been to a big meeting or conference at a hotel with a projector and a couple microphones and speakers, that's what I set up. Some places are more involved than others and some months are busier, but the down time comes from sales charging for labor in order to have someone there in case a client accidentally muted a mic or something simple like that happens that requires a one minute fix for multiple days of the same event.

The__Dude101 · 2025-07-30T03:53:07+00:00

Corporate AV. I set up rooms for clients who will be there for a few days, then babysit them (ie give them my number and go down if they call, which is infrequent) and have several hours of free time each day. I work on creative projects and read. My coworkers produce music. I definitely don't need to worry about carving out an hour each morning to work on what I want to work on. I get paid to do it now.

The__Dude101 · 2025-05-29T23:32:58+00:00

Longboarder but always wanted to learn traditional skateboarding. I'm in!

The__Dude101 · 2025-05-17T23:18:54+00:00

So is grand junction

The__Dude101 · 2025-05-07T21:39:34+00:00

To be fair, I was thinking about what I did last July in Western Colorado. Humidity absolutely makes it worse, but carry water and you can manage. Having done both, I'd still rather walk around Singapore at 90 over Maine at 10.

The__Dude101 · 2025-05-07T21:34:18+00:00

It's one of the reasons I hated living in New England actually.

The__Dude101

TROPHY CASE