Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
⚡ Rob Rosenberger and 3,514 others Profile picture
⚡ Rob Rosenberger and 3,514 others
@rsnbrgr
#Retired The world's first full-time salaried critic of the computer security industrial complex. Charter member of the 609th Information Warfare Squadron.
Jun 19 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
1/6
 Happy #Juneteenth from a retired USAF historian!

Let's look at how Air Force bases in the south handled "Colored Enlisted Personnel" at the height of #WWII in 1944.

You'll learn a white officer can GO INSANE and it's no big deal, but if your skin pigmentation is… 😬


Image
Image
Image
Image 2/6
 "Demotion or Separation of Unsatisfactory [White] Officers" begins on p.164. It was an issue, of course, but our young Air Force didn't see it as a terrible concern. It just … "was" an issue, if you know what I mean.
Image
Image
Apr 14 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
He asks a vital question. The (sad?) answer is "no."

Our ✌️problem✌️ with the First Amendment arises when it protects speech *WE* find offensive.

Both Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech and Charles Lindberg's polar opposite "Des Moines" speech are revered & reviled to this day. Yet, it's not only about the "free speech" @marc_saltzman and I find revolting.

It's also about the people who *defend* First Amendment rights.

"1A" lawyer Marc Randazza un-ironically takes bullets on Twitter to defend what HE thinks is vile speech:
Jan 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1/4
 #TheBoys #FanTheory: we learn #Homelander has built up a truly insane cache of money

Homelander takes a day off from Vought to enjoy some "me" time. He flies over the Gulf of Mexico in search of narco subs. He finds one inbound to the U.S... 2/4
 It reaches shore and narco team "A" unloads the cargo. Homelander watches patiently while carrying a strong cable. Team "B" loads the sub with money and it sets sail.

Homelander pounces on the sub! He kills the two-man crew and uses the cable to bind the water-tight boxes...
Nov 11, 2023 • 25 tweets • 10 min read
Okay! It's #HappyVeteransDay and I'm about to bust a cap on a new bottle to make a Yukon Jack "Snakebite" mixed drink so I can toast all my military brethren.

So, let's talk about that time in 2003 in Iraq when the U.S. Air Force nearly went to war with the Dutch Marine Corps!
A bottle of Yukon Jack,a Tervis tumbler with ice, and a bottle of lime juice come together to make a "Snakebite" mixed drink. There is also a small rubber ducky toy wearing a sailor's outfit, because the person drinking it is a retired computer programmer. In the old days you could approach a programmer with a coding problem "only if you can explain it to this rubber duck." 2/🧵
I'll tag @KimZetter, @Doctrine_Man, and @doctrinatrix_C2 because I did promise to tell this story one day.

So, it's 2003. Iraq. The "war" is over and we're basically the mop-up crew. I'm the 3H0x1 assigned to document all air ops in Iraq. POW Jessica Lynch has been...
Jun 14, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
1/🧵
It's been a while since I talked about the BarnOwl case study vs. Hootsuite.

So, let's talk.

BarnOwl repeatedly proved its point in many different ways, showing how Hootsuite makes #unnecessary work for PR folks who do it to justify their paychecks.

Hootsuite's #ironic… 2/🧵
…UI/UX disparity is unique in that its customer base would have fewer PR chairs in the office if they improved efficiency.

How efficient, you might ask?

I run (ran?) a half-dozen Twitter 'bots as a hobby and my personal & professional accounts sen[d|t] daily tweets…
Nov 19, 2022 • 26 tweets • 8 min read
Welp, Twitter is dying and I just poured my first Yukon Jack snakebite to celebrate!

So, let me tell you about the time I (a Master Sergeant) argued with the aircraft commander (a major) to divert his C-130 to avoid a missile attack in Iraq! It's 2003 and BUFFALO 28 is flying 40 soldiers to Kuwait for a funeral ceremony. It's part of a two-ship with BUFFALO 30 carrying seven caskets. ⚰️

Wing commander Col (BGen select) Gibson has stopped BUFFALO 28 on the runway so I can board as Historian.
nytimes.com/2003/11/02/int…
Sep 3, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
I have no dog in this fight but Space Force protects my right to tweet and I shall exercise my right!

To whit, my 🧵 on why "Chief Master Sergeant" makes no sense in Space Force.

Let's recognize the fact the modifiers "Senior" and "Chief" before "Master" came about... ...as a relic of USAF's #hasty effort to implement two new enlisted "supergrades" when Congress approved them in May 1958.

No joke: USAF had MSgts who reported to MSgts who reported to MSgts!

In haste, they decreed "a MSgt reports to a SMSgt who reports to a CMSgt." But now...
Aug 17, 2022 • 25 tweets • 5 min read
November 5, 2024:
Americans vote for their next president

November 6, 2024:
Trump declares he won

November 7, 2024:
Media outlets call the election for Trump

November 8, 2024:
Trump brags "I should be sworn in right now as president" due to the "corrupt" 2020 election November 10, 2024:
Trump supporters begin driving to Washington, D.C. to participate in a "million vehicle march" against the Biden administration

November 11, 2024:
Washington, D.C. lockdowns begin as reports hit the airwaves of "tens of thousands of cars and trucks" en route
Aug 17, 2022 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
In 1985 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, 400+ uniformed personnel from the 7102d Computer Services Squadron (many units were huuuuuge back then!) sat in the base auditorium as a one-star general briefed us on the "AD+DC=SI" merger between computers & communications. The general… …explained how the merger would bring serious manpower cuts across our career fields, saying "every one of you sitting at a desk is one less guy on the flight line."

I turned to my supervisor sitting next to me and I made the "eject lever" motion. He shrugged. But…
Jul 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I weep over this headline 😓 but let's acknowledge three key facts:

1️⃣ UK nabbed HK in the First Opium War 😵‍💫 and ruled it like a typical white imperialist

2️⃣ Japan nabbed HK on Pearl Harbor Day and treated dogs w/ higher standing

3️⃣ UK loosened the collar in… …the 1970s when the rebound effect from the U.S. Civil Rights Movement seeped into imperialist nations' territories.¹

First-world college students don't learn about HK's societal…
_____
¹ study 40yr-old U.S. military theses to "appreciate" 😳 the recent history of imperialism
May 13, 2022 • 11 tweets • 8 min read
Learn grep by using it to solve Wordle! Here's one from a few days ago. I have a favorite starting word and I see it has two letters in the wrong position. My wordle-grep cheat sheet (see snapshot) tells me how to build a command line. I build it and… ImageImageImage …ew, 120 words is way too many. My gf looks over my shoulder saying "what if there's an S at the end?" so I insert a grep command to give me those. Picking through the responses we agree on "farms" and I go for it. As you can see… ImageImage
Apr 18, 2022 • 8 tweets • 11 min read
80 years ago today, the #DoolittleRaiders took revenge for the #PearlHarbor attack.

One aircrew landed in Russia to avoid falling into Japanese hands and spent 13 months interned.

This is the original carbon copy of their [now de]classified interrogation on 3 June 1943:
1/8 80 years ago today, the #DoolittleRaiders took revenge for the #PearlHarbor attack.

One aircrew landed in Russia to avoid falling into Japanese hands and spent 13 months interned.

This is the original carbon copy of their [now de]classified interrogation on 3 June 1943:
2/8
Dec 9, 2021 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
@Doctrine_Man I'm going to seriously oversimplify when I say "China's nat'l psychology has the unique advantage of communications technology to leap over what other first-world nations needed in terms of time."

So let's delve in.

US & China both emerged from an agricultural society to... @Doctrine_Man become an industrialized society. We led the world thanks to acreage & raw minerals, and of course two world wsrs that consumed faster than we could produce.

By the 1970s we shifted to a service-based economy, similar to England's in the early 1800s, less than a hundred years...
Nov 12, 2020 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
@imaguid @SwiftOnSecurity So here's my story about the "Killdozer" movie

It came out 5 years before I learned to drive but it would pop back into Chicago's "grindhouse" movie theaters every so often

It did so in 1979 when @RickTrnka & I were in junior year

We're sitting at lunch when @imaguid @SwiftOnSecurity @RickTrnka both of us realize we've got substitute teachers for the last two classes that Friday

Rick & I had a rule: we'd only ditch on a Friday for a *really* bad movie, because our detentions had to be "worth it"

"Wow, four subs between us! It's a sign from heaven! We gotta ditch!"
Nov 3, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
1/12
It's election day and heaven knows we all need a good laugh, right?

Here's a story about President Clinton, Air Force One...

...and two nervous USAF air traffic controllers! 2/12
Let me begin this story by stating I'm a retired Air Force Enlisted Historian (AFSC 3H091) and I was assigned to the Air Force base in question and I interviewed one of the two air traffic controllers involved in this story.

Okay ... let's get into it!
Jun 4, 2020 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Following on Andy's comment (below)...

1/11
In the spring of 1995 I had some Illinois Veterans Grant left and I decided to take a certain philosophy course. My military supervisor adjusted my lunch schedule.

On day 1 the prof asks everyone to introduce themselves... 2/11 I'm pondering my one-minute intro when a young man unloads on the class:

"My name is {name} and I'm {age} and I'm taking this class because my degree requires it and I don't even know why I'm here 'cuz all this 'deep thought' is just a waste of my time blah blah blah"...
Mar 10, 2020 • 22 tweets • 14 min read
@johnmccumber @film_girl My wife cried & screamed to cut our losses when the market crashed in 1987. I wrote to our mutual fund: "give me some good news."

They wrote back: "We recently sold 90,000 $JNJ at $3/$2 per share and we just bought it all back!"

We saw a LOT of capital gains for it in 1991... @johnmccumber @film_girl I don't recall the strike prices back then (and the stock has split a few times) but the crash made all blue chip stocks so cheap that the mutual fund saved milllllllions buying back $JNJ

So I *went* for it in the 2008 crash after Denise's death. Let's just say "I was free..."