silkroadtraveler

Be willing to bet they were greasing their profit margins to an insane degree. I used to work at one of the slimy defense contractors (second tier right below the primes). There is this law called TINA (Truth in Negotiations Act). Anything under $2.5M required ZERO cost justification. So managers / directors would bump price right up to the ceiling regardless. Even when the TINA threshold was crossed, they had a bottomless bag of reasons to juice their margins beyond anything reasonable. The thinnest justification would work because the gov knew there was basically no competition left thanks to mergers & acquisitions. If there wasn’t some conflated or exaggerated reason easily at hand, those directors in charge of approving the proposal would just say force majeure (covid) supply chain inflation OR knowingly avoid ever pressing a supplier to reduce their inflated margins. They knew they could present a component supplier’s price as a reason to cover their arbitrary and all the downstream suppliers’ arbitrary price increases. I never saw the gov (DCMA or DCAA- paper tigers) extract any meaningful price concessions. There were good people working there, but it was clear they were there only to prevent the grossest malfeasance in production, not any contractual price gouging. The whole supply chain was just a giant cesspool of greasy contractors from top to bottom. Number go up, more bombs forever. So glad I’m out of that parasitic, death merchant industry.

Be willing to bet they were greasing their profit margins to an insane degree. I used to work at one of the slimy defense contractors (second tier right below the primes). There is this law called TINA (Truth in Negotiations Act). Anything under $2.5M required ZERO cost justification. So managers / directors would bump price right up to the ceiling regardless. Even when the TINA threshold was crossed, they had a bottomless bag of reasons to juice their margins beyond anything reasonable. The thinnest justification would work because the gov knew there was basically no competition left thanks to mergers, acquisitions & consolidation (that politicians directly benefited from). If there wasn’t some conflated or exagerrsted reason easily at hand, those in charge of approving the proposal would just say COVID supply chain inflation OR knowingly avoid ever pressing a supplier to reduce their inflated margins knowing they could present it as a reason for price increases. I never saw the gov extract any meaningful price concessions. It was just one giant cesspool of greasy contractors from top to bottom. Number go up, more bombs forever. So glad I’m out of that parasitic, death merchant industry.

Great point about the relentless slaughter of Arabs. So easily forgotten how many innocents America slaughtered during this time period. America is morally rotten to the core, high on its own supply of hatred and cruelty.

Bitwarden’s last update made the iOS categorically worse and impacted the Pin unlock functionality on Linus desktop. Guess I’m migrating to Proton’s offering along with the rest of their suite. Hope they don’t go down the enshittification rabbit hole anytime soon.

Excellent suffering lol. I love the authenticity. So many of the YouTubers now are manufacturing unpleasantness, and it’s so easy to spot. Come on, there must be plenty of true travel disasters out there, but the algorithms don’t find them!

I’m interested in this too now haha

Sounds like you should write an article.

I really started to get into this article upon reading: “My first client was one of the biggest banks in the country: a hellish circus of inefficiency, coked-out managers, feudal power dynamics, and pre-GDPR surveillance marketing.”

Just a warning on MS email services. I stopped paying for OneDrive and the DAY my sub expired they stopped allowing me to receive or send emails on my linked Outlook and Hotmail email addresses. Not sure whether this same policy applies to stand alone legacy Hotmail accounts, but it’s the same company running the service.

In terms of which company I detest more: I think it’s still Microsoft hands down. At least Google doesn’t suspend send / receive if you stop paying. MS is a dumpster fire of tax evasion, monopoly, and predatory behavior.

Yes it happened. But for US Navy fanboys to be cheering this on and gloating is laughable. How about the Bonhomme Richard burning IN SAN DIEGO harbor? How about the loss of the USS Thresher? Blatant hypocrisy and attribution bias to say Chinese corruption and incompetence is at fault for the sinking of the sub, yet attribute no malice or incompetence to the US losses.

Oh and not to mention FAT LEONARD?!

Come on. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

(And I’m a US mil veteran who isn’t a fan of the CPC)

Anything in those categories from No Starch Press

Seriously!! Not my smartest move.