⚡ Rob Rosenberger and 3,514 others Profile picture
#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… 😬


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"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.
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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
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#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
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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…
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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:
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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
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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..."