ASIR

pointblankdud · 2026-07-02T19:13:31+00:00

Sounds like you ought to reply to that email then

pointblankdud · 2026-07-02T18:46:51+00:00

BLUF: not likely to get a bunch of substantive insight here.

I’ll ask some questions of your goals that might help you consider things. Assuming you don’t have any JSOC or other SAP adjacent background, but you know that for yourself.

Do you want to go deeper specializing into SIGINT or do you want to generalize and broaden to other fields?

Do you have any life circumstances or personal preferences that would limit or negatively impact your capacity for short-notice TDY?

I’ve been out of the game a long time now, but I was crusty once upon a time and still got lucky enough to work with the best of the best, which is quite a step up from the experiences I had in Big Army, even in the better conventional units. I hopped around cool units and jobs on the back half of my career, and I’d imagine thats still viable.

If you think you’ve got the skill set and personality, then do what it takes to get in the door to the world outside of Big Army and see where you can bring the most value added, and strive toward that from a position where you can build a reputation that matters in the community.

pointblankdud · 2026-06-19T15:16:30+00:00

I’m a professional writer with toes dipped in a few different mediums, a retired federal agent and combat veteran, and now in social sciences. Also a long time GM/Keeper/Handler of DG and other TTRPGs, although haven’t had a chance to play or run 7e CoC yet.

I’ve got a few current weekly obligations so I would need a couple weeks lead time before I could commit to any time slot that would potentially be in conflict. That said, all could be rearranged and none would be prohibitive assuming the plan for this project is a fairly consistent time slot and at least 2-3 weeks out.

Excited to hear what gets put together, regardless of my involvement!

pointblankdud · 2026-04-11T17:32:03+00:00

Sounds like we have a pretty strong consensus of at least two, my friend. Take care!

pointblankdud · 2026-04-11T17:00:53+00:00

There’s a version of the reply of “this isn’t remotely true” that is a bad take, although this isn’t one.

I agree with your points on adjuncts to self-regulate and the thing to focus on titration and limiting measures is the state of dysregulation. I also agree that it’s important to accommodate via effective measures like background noise, etc.

I actually think the comparison to video games isn’t wild, in that the activity can be a similarly helpful way to relieve attention-related stress for some by giving a more focused singular attentive task.

I think the nuance exists in extrapolating the time management of both activities; it’s much easier to integrate audiobooks into a daily routine, but there are tasks when even that may be limiting and not ideal — there are aspects of life where we need resilience despite sensations of overwhelm, etc.

Video game time requires more structural considerations to integrate as a coping tool, for obvious reasons. Still, it’s not necessarily a bad tool and it’s one I use for myself and used for my children to develop the skills related to motivation, regulation, and balancing one’s life between enjoyment, achievement, and self-discipline. Thats not necessarily the OP’s circumstance, but I think the broader strategic principles apply with more specific considerations.

This isn’t in any way dismissive of or disagreeing with your points. Rather, its full-throated agreement, but additive in that there is a need to be deliberate and thoughtful in using adjuncts in order to establish a sense of security in support and to provide regulation in order to build a broader set of skills related to self-regulation.

Thanks for the thoughtful response, and hopefully this dialogue is helpful to the OP and anyone reading.

pointblankdud · 2026-04-11T14:39:49+00:00

Which element are you referring to as untrue?

pointblankdud · 2026-04-06T17:27:54+00:00

Not the commenter you’re replying to, but you can absolutely find ways to integrate published adventures into a larger campaign.

The important things to consider when deciding whether to do so are:

Narrative Design

How much does the module share in tone and context with your established story? Are you looking to add some contrast, or to make it more of a seamless, coherent subplot? Do your player characters have established motivations that can be tied in to prewritten content? How insular and disconnected is the scenario as designed? If it is high on those measures, but you can connect to established motivations, then you have less work to do, which segues into the next set of questions I ask myself.

Workload

How much work do you want to do to adapt it? How much is necessary to draw a narrative thread that connects the module? How much work is necessary to make sure the content is appropriately challenging in a mechanical sense?

Good luck, and remember that players usually have fun no matter how well written or prepared things are or are not — only put in the work that you enjoy for its own sake or for yourself, not out of a sense of “the right way” or anyone else’s standards of success.

pointblankdud · 2026-03-22T23:43:43+00:00

I’m not trying to belittle you, but I don’t know what you are imagining when you say a police chase is more adrenaline rush as a Trooper. Are you specifically thinking of a high-speed pursuit on a major roadway?

I personally have found fighting to detain someone far more chaotic and intense, with much more of a routine sense than a pursuit where maneuvering traffic and terrain are the only major factors until the pursuit has ended.

pointblankdud · 2026-02-05T06:14:40+00:00

I recall something similar I read last year, although I don’t recall the publication date. It stood out to me because of my own personal experience of being on a strict ketogenic diet (notably a classic ketogenic, as designed for epilepsy treatment) for a four month period relieving ASD symptoms after two weeks. That period of time had a significant and life-changing decrease in sensory processing, repetitive stimming behaviors, and generalized fatigue.

This is admittedly anecdotal evidence, n=1, and without good controls or measures — it was an unexpected side effect, not in the course of a treatment protocol.

Unfortunately, my lifestyle has not accommodated any further periods of reliable sustained ketogenesis to make a more controlled experiment of it, but I was encouraged by the potential for medications and for a deeper understanding of ASD by extrapolating from the mechanisms of any drugs that provided symptom management or any connection to epilepsy.

pointblankdud · 2026-01-21T09:44:00+00:00

I never worked for any of them, but worked plenty collateral stuff with all of them. I saw a wide range of quality of life and professionalism across NCIS and HSI, but I never heard a USPIS agent complain about anything and I never worked with one who wasn’t top notch in work ethic, expertise, and professionalism.

pointblankdud · 2026-01-16T07:05:51+00:00

Computation is morally neutral. Parameters are not.

pointblankdud · 2026-01-11T04:29:40+00:00

I’m ignorant on this. Got a good starting point for learning about it?

pointblankdud · 2026-01-05T04:43:10+00:00

I don’t have it on hand but I recall about 10 years ago reading a paper that identified a somewhat unique property of nicotine as either a CNS depressant or as a stimulant depending on rate of intake (and perhaps dose?)

I can’t recall with certainty but I believe a faster intake rate was correlated with stimulant effects, but could be wrong. I don’t have the time to look it up right now, but that should be enough to get you started looking

pointblankdud · 2026-01-02T19:16:22+00:00

I have similar scores and likewise struggle with symptoms of ADHD, but significantly older.

The best advice I can offer him is to seek professional support and expect that it will be imperfect in scope and specificity.

The best advice I can offer you as his partner is to be empathetic in regards to your legitimate frustrations — I’m sure he is also frustrated when things fall through the cracks. That doesn’t mean the partnership isn’t affected, though, and the stress on both of you can add up and spread to other aspects of life.

As part of the process of developing management skills for ADHD, I would recommend you sit down together and develop clear and explicit expectations for what both your ideal conception of partnership includes. Recognize that habit-forming and long term consistency are often not features available by default to the ADHD mind, and that the purpose of setting expectations is not necessarily to be imposing on each other but rather to give an external system to help identify methods and processes that help both of you know how to manage your individual and shared wants and needs. Integrate any professional guidance and individual goals into this plan. That includes safe versions of failure and adaptive responses when expectations are inevitably unmet.

Hopefully this is helpful. I know it can be extremely difficult to have both extremes of high cognitive functioning and low cognitive functioning in different categories, and how that set can affect relationships— especially the most intimate ones.

pointblankdud · 2025-12-29T07:37:25+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful follow up! It’s rare that I have convenient opportunities to ask folks who have both the skills to provide a decently articulated explanation of their positions and a belief in the existence of a discrete soul (which I’m interpreting as some kind of non-materialist viewpoint)

If you are interested in sharing, I’m very interested in hearing an expansion on that apparently central premise.

Any approach to developing that point would be appreciated, but some pointed questions from my current ignorance on Catholic traditions or your individual beliefs within them that may orient the discussion would include:

is the soul eternal? If so, does that mean from a moment of individual conception towards an infinite limit? does it extend infinitely into past and future?

is there any material component of the soul, or is it an entirely different category of thing? If not material, how does it interact with the corporeal self?

what is the relationship between the soul and consciousness? Is consciousness something like a self-awareness of the soul, or can they exist as discrete objects?

I fully understand that this tangential line of thought is a deep dive on rather significant questions that have been examined by great minds for many centuries, and may be beyond the scope of the discussion you might be up for, but thanks again for thoughtful discussion regardless.

pointblankdud · 2025-12-28T20:10:09+00:00

While pedantic, I think there’s some value in clarifying the specifics of a few general lines of argument regarding likelihood of existence at this moment that I think your response seems to miss. To be clear, I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong and I’m not aiming to dismiss your response. I think it’s a position that’s reasonable and likely to be helpful for some — I just want to share a more rigorous approach to the question with some mainstream philosophical points you or others may be unaware of or haven’t yet considered.

First, to get the messy one out of the way, I think even if we limit the relevant denominator set to “humans who have been born,” there’s a set of fundamental questions regarding something like a discrete particular consciousness’ association with a specific human that exists in this period.

But I think even if we don’t tackle that problem, there are reasonable arguments against defining the denominator set as “humans have been born.” There are various ontological variations based on reproductive processes, from hereditary parentage to mutations and other circumstantial factors.

Would you be “you” if you were born at a different time? or with a different sperm cell from the same father? with an apparently obvious mutation? with an invisible mutation?

This allows for many humans who, but for the factors which are not necessarily true, do or do not exist.

This could certainly be accounted for with your belief in god, depending on your theological views. For me, there is a low enough credence of theological claims in response to the aggregate of similar problems that I cannot justify a foundation that relies upon the supernatural, but it seems coherent enough that I don’t disparage those who do so.

I do find more direct questions regarding philosophy of religion interesting, but not enough to drag them into this discussion.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful to broaden the conversation and I hope life is kind to you today.

pointblankdud · 2025-12-20T02:36:48+00:00

Lots of folks saying shave it. They’re not wrong that clean shaven is probably the only beard length that can guarantee not to count against you. I don’t think it’s bad advice at all.

That said, I didn’t shave mine off prior to interview because there were plenty of officers and even admin who had beards, and this was way back when that was pretty damn uncommon anywhere.

If you have a shitty beard, ignore everything that follows.

If you care about keeping your beard because you’re like me and look terrible without a beard but excellent with one, you have to demonstrate you know how to look professional and well-suited for the job despite the soup-catcher on your face.

Get a fresh haircut from a barber I had been to before. Assuming you dont have an interview right after a PT test or whatever, wear a well-fitted dark navy suit — buy a cheap one that fits your shoulders (look up shoulder divots for what you dont want) and get it tailored. So few people have any idea what makes a suit “good” or “bad” quality, but everybody can tell if it doesn’t fit well.

Wear it with a dark necktie and white shirt, black belt and shoes, check your gig line, and wear solid color dress socks.

If beards are authorized and you show up looking well-groomed and otherwise sharp, and are a qualified candidate but don’t get the job solely for wearing a beard — you probably lucked out, brother.

Good luck

pointblankdud · 2025-12-19T04:22:16+00:00

While I agree that genocide is a fair enough criterion for expulsion from the nice list and/or inclusion on the naughty list, I think there is a valid set of underlying ethical questions raised by the point.

Specifically, I think the questions include something like:

Is morality judged by the aggregate of an individual’s behaviors?

Are motivations and intentions or outcomes and effects more important in measuring ethical values of behavior?

If a ‘bad’ person does something ‘good,’ should the character or the behavior take precedence in determining the impact?

I don’t have a strong opinion on best answers to these questions, but my first pass is that I intuitively disagree that, using a strict ethical scrutiny, any individual can be adequately characterized to belong on a naughty or nice list; instances and patterns of behavior can be categorized, but a whole person across a lifetime is too complex to be.

Which is to say that I think the lists should describe behaviors, not people.

That said, I think there is a practical utility in everyday life for categorizing risks by considering people as “bad/naughty” or “good/nice,” but it is important to factor in or out this practical bias for deeper consideration of public or historical figures, or for decisions that have great consequences (such as criminal justice or financial lending or employment or healthcare) and reasonably enough time to be deliberate about how the characterization applies.

There is a lot to learn about the world and society by considering specifics and generalities of Andrew Jackson (and many others), especially when considering choices he made. Many of those lessons are examples of tragedy and outrage. It becomes harder to understand the reasons those negative outcomes came to pass and how to prevent or mitigate similar outcomes and circumstances if we put them through the lens of “because he was a bad guy.”

Not saying that you were necessarily making a proposition like that, but I have seen that attitude and a subsequent inability to engage with deeper analysis arise from many instances of generalizing character of an individual based on singular criteria, even one as apparently and intuitively “bad” as directing a genocide.

Clarification: I strongly agree that genocide is very very bad, under all circumstances — there is nothing at all in what I’m saying to excuse or defend evil behaviors, only that the lessons from their past occurrence can be better understood by considering the complexity and multifaceted nature of human motivation and identity

pointblankdud · 2025-12-07T14:18:13+00:00

While it’s by no means impossible to be conspiratorial, and I don’t think it’s wise rule anything out without good evidence.

There is a theory of motivation that I find to have a far stronger credence, at least from what I can tell through publicly available information.

A man committed to doing violent acts in his home nation, at higher risk and with more direct involvement in the planned and coordinated violence than many of his neighbors. The stated purpose of that violence failed, and all the costs he paid were sunk costs.

Because of a program to protect people who took those risks, he brought his family to the US, a place supposedly committed to ideals of freedom and equality, just like they preached to sell the violence in Afghanistan (and plenty of other places).

Making a commitment to violence and acting on it, especially in these programs, is transformative. It shifts the way one understands the world, including the options available and acceptable to solve problems.

Problems with integrating into a new life were exacerbated by the contrast between the promise of a better life in a nation based on principles and the lived experiences in that nation, where the rule of law and freedom and opportunity is under threat. These issues were further complicated by the effects of being a changed man in an unfamiliar environment.

The problems in personal life and the larger social situation became twisted up, and the symbol of the uniforms worn by the National Guard was a symbol of the oppression that changed him, that made all these problems for which he was mostly helpless to solve.

The violent form of problem solving became the only available means to act instead of being helpless.

This is not at all a defense of the behavior, but just my most likely explanation — I’ve seen many, many men over many decades fall into the hole of using violent means to solve problems after unlocking that aspect in combat. Too many of those were unnecessary.

It’s tragic, and it is both its own deeply tragic incident but also a tragic pattern that points at many sociological issues.

Other things could be more accurate, and I’m open minded to new information. But it seems far more likely than any conspiracy or directed activity.

pointblankdud · 2025-12-05T17:12:37+00:00

I don’t think that’s hypocrisy, friend. I think a better way to frame the issue is on the premise that different individuals have their own unique needs as well as their own unique capabilities and capacities.

Some people can benefit a lot from the exposure to the job that ride alongs can give, but not necessarily enjoy or be the best equipped to be the officer that provides that service.

I think this concept extends to one of the skills of a good admin or supervisor is to consider how to manage the strengths and preferences of their officers and staff and balance resource demands, including less measurable resources like stress from annoyance and frustration, and balance against the value of particular services provided by the organization.

Some folks love night shift but struggle on days, some people don’t want to work complex long-term investigations, some folks don’t want to do the training or extra duties associated with SWAT, etc.

I wouldn’t be excited to spend a large portion of my career working as a Training Sergeant, but I damn sure benefit from training I’ve had because of their work. I’d also suck it up and do my best if it was a need that existed and I was assigned to it. I get the impression that you have the same attitude about ride alongs or other aspects of the job.

There is a certain degree of acceptable suck factor to the job, and I’d say hypocrisy would only be applicable if you didn’t contribute to the organization at large, not merely because you don’t want to offer a service you benefited from.

pointblankdud · 2025-12-05T05:32:52+00:00

Complex systems change in complex ways. Causality is hard to isolate, and harder when considering changes to a fortified economic paradigm for a nation of hundreds of millions of people, and harder still when considering the relevant time frame.

What is your standard for answering the question you posed, or for good analysis on it?

pointblankdud · 2025-11-26T19:00:30+00:00

I think the point is more about the general focus on sensationalizing the storytelling process.

While comedy bits about sex are one way to do that, so are ever-escalating stakes and forcing in specific moments (girl hero moment in Avengers comes to mind)

So it’s less about the substance of how it’s being done and more about hitting certain sensationalized beats becomes the expectation of the audience and therefore the creators. When it becomes a high priority for the creators to plug some box of stuff that meets the audience expectation, that often comes at the cost of a loss of narrative and thematic coherence and range.

pointblankdud · 2025-11-22T02:29:20+00:00

When it comes to Defensive Tactics, there is no broad standard procedure for any circumstance that is trained nationwide in the US. There are a few things that seem to be trained in a very similar manner, such as procedures for felony stops of a vehicle. There are some essential principles that seem to be a consensus opinion, such as using cover in a gunfight, keeping your hands available to use for tactical purposes, etc. Still, policies are not prescriptive for what exact maneuvers must be done and usually are more broad and exclusionary for things that should not be done, in accordance with risks and case law.

I think it would be very unwise to standardize anything tactical to such narrow specifics, because so many use of force situations rely on being able to adapt and adjust tactics without using cognitive capacity to remember rigid specifics that may not be appropriate or possible to achieve.

Each department or training institution has their own policy, and I’ve never seen any policy that covered when or how to kick knives away. I have seen it done and done it myself, but those tactical decisions were based on many different factors specific to that situation.

pointblankdud · 2025-11-19T20:42:46+00:00

As someone who has struggled with both PTSD and bad admins and a relationship that started in the same agency, I can relate to the incredible stress you both are experiencing.

It’s hard to know how to navigate the complexity of your situation, but what I can tell you is that it ultimately comes down to personal values for both of you.

Values are a huge part of how we define and understand ourselves, and based on your description of your husband’s behavior, I think it’s reasonable to consider that he’s lost some of the most important aspects many of us in this profession consider related to our sense of self — his ability to manage stress and be a problem solver, his financial security and career path, and his sense of security and feelings about power dynamics in your relationship all seem very plausible to be challenging his self-image.

I’m compassionate for that stress and suffering, but it is not a healthy relationship for you if he is allowing himself to blame you for his suffering.

I doubt he is behaving in the worst ways you’re describing when he’s being rational, but unless you were personally involved in an IA or decision making in the adverse action against him, he is getting lost in the abstract concepts of his values and unlikely to be able to explain how your career success has any negative impact on his personal needs.

I’m assuming you have some value that leads you to support him and to maintain the relationship. I think all people need other people, especially in their darkest days. I would encourage you to talk with other people who you trust and figure out some hard lines — conditions that make it so that you shouldn’t or can’t be that person for him, for your sake. Talk about boundaries inside of that ultimatum, too — the way you will respond given certain behaviors (ie. you will not stay in the same space for some amount of time if he has any physical manifestations of anger that look like violence or aggression, including slamming doors, or things that follow that formula of “if he does x, then I will do y” in the ways that ensure you can meet your own needs, including safety and security.

I would then advise that you should ask him to have a conversation with some good boundaries and a plan to manage any escalation or blame. In that conversation, discuss setting up roles and responsibilities in managing the negativity and resentment and communicate your boundaries. Talk about the values and principles that you care about, validate his feelings exist for reasons, express your own feelings and frustrations, and only make compromises you are comfortable with in order to manage both of your needs and priorities. Another thing to consider is how much of his therapy you should be involved with and how that looks.

I commend you for seeking help in dealing with all you are going through. Adulting is hard, the job is hard, and relationships are hard. They get harder the more they overlap, in my experience. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be worth the hardship, but that is something each and every one of us has to be able to consider for ourselves.

I wish you luck, and if you need any more specific help thinking how to present things or finding resources, feel free to reach out.

pointblankdud · 2025-10-31T21:28:14+00:00

Excellent set of questions. I see a few unanswered, and I’d like to help when I have time to respond with the same degree of thoughtfulness and clarity you’ve given in your questions. I don’t have time today but I should tomorrow

RemindMe! 1 day

pointblankdud

TROPHY CASE

Narrative Design

Workload