October 25, 20232 yr 8 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said: Musk is not alone in thinking that the overabundance in MBA degrees is ridiculous. The real question is, who created the positions that mean that so many such graduates can find jobs? What is definitely true is that those guys (and girls) are overpaid in general. What I have found after twenty years of experience is that almost any decently sized company or organization will have far too many middle-management roles. Most companies could weed out over half of those out and it wouldn't make any real difference to their productivity and it would save them a bundle in wages. I definitely agree. I don't know who pushed for this trend. It's one of these social pathologies that keep on spreading in organisations. Nobody really started it, but it appeared and kept on spreading. Maybe abundance is what tends to create for these things.
October 25, 20232 yr 1 hour ago, Enrico_sw said: I definitely agree. I don't know who pushed for this trend. It's one of these social pathologies that keep on spreading in organisations. Nobody really started it, but it appeared and kept on spreading. In my experience, companies that eventually find out it does not work react in one or two ways. Some get rid of some management level staff, usually by reorganizing so they can make an entire level of authority obsolete. Others double down with what I would call the "one more lane fallacy". Like a city trying to fix their traffic jams by repeatedly adding lanes to their highways, these companies think they can solve their inefficiency problems by adding another layer of management. I know of one place which already had three layers between the IT manager and the lowest L1 helpdesk grunts. And after an HR audit they actually added a fourth level in the form of team leaders. Then what the fuck were the guys and girls doing those helpdesk grunts were reporting to before that?
October 26, 20232 yr This is Elon's official Biographer, apparently Elon also fit in playing Elden Ring with the Twitter deal!
October 31, 20231 yr The Russian military claims that they recruited 382,000 new contract troops (from conscripts, reservists, convicts, Ukrainians, etc) in 2023 so far and everyday they have an inflow of 1,600 new personnel. This means that they will approach 500,000 new personnel by the end of the year. The contracts signed are multi-year. They also report 128 new training facilities opening in Russian college campuses.. I researched their order of battle and it's now a gigantic mass of developing infantry units- mostly regiment, battalion, and company in size. They also have two new combined arms armies and are making river-crossing divisions. The most common new unit is the motor-rifle regiment, a combined arms formation with 3 infantry battalions, 1 battalion of tanks, 1 battalion of self-propelled artillery and various supporting organizations. These are not as well equipped as motor-rifle brigades. and divisions but much larger and appropriate than the extremely infantry weak battalion tactical group they used in the initial invasion. These are also attached to enhance Russian divisions and brigades. Both Russian & Ukrainians sources agree that they maintain about 430,000 men in Ukraine. The Russian army now is dramatically different than the extremely heavy armed but undermanned army that invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022. Before it was an artillery & tank army. The ratio has shifted to an army with a lot of infantry. Ukrainian sources are now claiming that the Russians have 2,300 main battle tanks, 5600 APC/IFV and 4200 heavy artillery pieces in Ukraine. So the Russian army ground force is now approaching 1.2 million men. The Russian ground forces is now larger than the US ground forces. Russia's military budget is over 100 billion dollars in 2023, which is 40 billion more than 2022. Despite these huge infantry forces they have done very little attacking this year outside of contracting Wagner for Bakhmut. So the budget has been allocated more towards force development. It appears that they intend to fight the war for many years and follow the Svechin strategy. The war will be fought in a much more defensive manner than Ukrainian propaganda claims and eventually the West will get much more bored and forgetful of the war than it is right now.
November 1, 20231 yr This semi-dubious site has been taken off of X last week. I don't know if Elon took it down or the handlers did it volunteerily. It claims to "objectively" count Russian and Ukrainian vehicle losses from the first day of the war but it's clearly highly connected to NATO/Ukrainian information warfare/propaganda organizations. They feed it a huge number of photos from day 1, initially many of which were from different wars or fakes. In the interview Elon says that he believes that Twitter was the accidental propaganda arm of the US government which is why he bought it and he thinks it's 'priceless'.
November 4, 20231 yr Chief of Ukrainian General Staff Zaluzhny admitted to Western press last week that Ukrainian ground force is incapable of making breakthroughs. Then he started begging for more aid and weapons for the future victory.. Last summer they were boasting about retaking Crimea and doing a 'Blitzkrieg' with the 1500 donated Western super AFVs with superhuman NATO training.
November 4, 20231 yr Quote Kareem Carr Explains Why 2+2=5 https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/biostatistics/2020/09/kareem-carr-explains-why-225/ 1984 is literally in Harvard... This is extremely worrying. This guy's article says that the result of an operation depends on the axioms and definition... Sure Jan, everything depends on the definitions, but trying to reinvent everything in a pointless attempt to develop a useless system is... useless. All these circonvolutions lead to relativism and it degrades the value of real knowledge. Anyway
November 12, 20231 yr Oh, so now birds are racist... It's getting more and more ridiculous https://americanornithology.org/about/english-bird-names-project/
November 14, 20231 yr Author Recent photo of Israeli soldiers. Correct me if I'm wrong a) Israel's army is the only modern army that doesn't operate using a camouflage pattern uniform? b) The uniform used if not identical is pretty much alike the uniform used in the 1967 and 1973 conflicts? c) The cargo pocket of the pants is placed high in the hip, unlike in any other military pants ..... and it's functional not just decorative?
November 17, 20231 yr Emperor Xi met many top US CEOs including Elon. Before Xi came San Francisco had to remove the masses of homeless and drug addicts off the streets.
November 17, 20231 yr Chinese leader Xi gets standing ovation at banquet with US executives (yahoo.com) Some of the CEOs that attended the banquet with Xi: Amway Corp. - Milind Pant Apple Inc. – Tim Cook BlackRock Inc. – Larry Fink Blackstone Inc. – Stephen Schwarzman Boeing Co. - Stanley Deal Bridgewater Associates - Ray Dalio Broadcom Inc. – Hock Tan Citadel Securities LLC. - Peng Zhao FedEx Corp. - Rajesh Subramaniam Freepoint Commodities LLC - Sheldon Pang Fulgent Genetics Inc. - Ming Hsieh Gilead Sciences Inc. - Daniel O’Day Honeywell Intl Inc. - Darius Adamczyk Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co L.P. - Joseph Bae Las Vegas Sands Corp. - Robert Goldstein MasterCard Inc. – Merit Janow Nike Inc. - Mark Parker Pfizer Inc. – Albert Bourla Qualcomm Inc. – Cristiano Amon Visa Inc. – Ryan McInerney Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC - Ernie Thrasher
November 17, 20231 yr CEO of Rostec recently commented that they delivered 7 times more tanks than 2021 in 2023. This is somewhere between 2,500-2,100 new tanks for the Russian army. Ukraine claims that Russian army has received 1,000 new tanks in the first 10 months of 2023. But the Russian force in Ukraine is around 35% of their ground force. Russian army has raised 2 new combined arms armies in 2023 (total 14) with plans for 2 more (total 16). It is possible that the huge number of new motor-rifle regiments will eventually be integrated into the divisions. Current army ground force strength 1 million men excluding Russian paratroop & naval infantry forces. The new combined arms army ORBAT 2023 (50,000 men): three motorized rifle or tank divisions and a number of brigades (artillery, missile, air defense and control) plus as well as separate regiments (chemical and engineer). 4 new divisions in 2023 (total 20) with plans to raise 8 more.
November 30, 20231 yr After the defeat of the Ukrainian counteroffensive both sides appear to have taken a siesta in the war in Ukraine. The Russians continue to passively shoot at the Ukrainian forces with airstrikes and artillery, and the use of thousands of kamikaze drones. Wagner PMC mercenaries have appeared at Adiivka. The Adiivka pocket keeps on compressing and the Ukrainians keep on pumping up absurd lies about their 'successes'. At this point the Ukrainian-NATO effort has told more lies about the war than the Nazi Reich in WW2. Nobody knows how many people are left in Ukraine. They have lost at least 20% of their population. Putin boasting of Ukraine only have 21-22 million people left is probably a lie but indicates a certain strategic intent. Zelensky recently claimed to Western press that the average Ukrainian soldier is a middle aged man of age 45-40 years old. This could be another lie to get more western aid. Zelensky & Co. have no interest in serious negotiation despite them being stuck in a strategic dead end. Western interest in the war is continuously declining and they do not ship sufficient munitions and equipment. Remarkably the Ukrainian Soviet Arsenal is still being used after 21 months or so of war albeit much declined. Western production is so poor that european nato only fulfilled 30% of the promised amount of heavy artillery ammo. If Pentagon claims of North Korea are real and not a lie, then North Korean grain deal gave Russia more heavy artillery ammunition in 2 weeks than the US-NATO did for Ukraine in the entire war. Yet the Russians have not used this 'boon' yet. The Russian army is continuously building up and getting larger and larger but at the same time display no interest in strategic offensive. They even commissioned new ships and submarines; and in general behave like the US in afganistan- it is like the war is just an extra-curricular activity. The Russian military told the public that the Special Military Operation will end in 2025 and that they are prepared to fight the war for 10 years. They want to reach the 1.5 million man army target by the spring of 2024. The ending of SMO could mean that they will declare war on Ukraine. Overall Russian strategy appears to be that of a waiting game. The Russian state claims that they resettled 5 million people from the occupied territories into the borders of the old Russian federation. Their actions indicate that they will wait until the West loses a critical mass of interest in Ukraine and continue to allow Ukraine to self-cannibalize with people fleeing the country. Meanwhile the Ukrainian economy is in ruins and the West has to keep on spending XXX billions to keep the country afloat. They seem to be waiting for Ukrainian political in-fighting and the day that the Ukrainian people & army get tired of the war.
December 10, 20231 yr The US Gov't should also admit that Israel's main function is an aircraft carrier to protect American energy interests after they get school administrators fired...and they can massacre whoever they want to in the process lol Ukraine support is steadily fading from the US Agenda in both physical and media/propaganda support. The Russians have over 30,000 Ukrainian troops in a pocket now and it's barely being covered. As soon as US-NATO production failures became apparent and reserve supplies ran out they started to cut Ukraine loose..
December 11, 20231 yr Ukrainian sources claim "30,000" troops with approx. 14 brigades/equivalents trapped in the pocket or contesting the outskirts. Russian sources claim approx. 40 Ukranian infantry battalions (full strength: 20,000 infantry- it is likely that real strength is far less than this due to losses ) involved in the battle. So both sides have similar claims on how many ukr units are in there. The extremely drawn-out conduct of this battle by the Russian command is similar to Bakhmut. However, instead of using PMC convict troops they are relying more on firepower superiority- artillery and airstrikes- and drone superiority to wear down the Ukrainian forces meter by meter. Marinka city has finally fallen to the Russians, with only a few streets left in Ukrainian hands. Pretty much the same units on both sides have been engaged in positional fighting in these ruins, with neither side making a serious effort to take the whole city in 2023. In the past couple of weeks the Russians have executed local counterattacks and erased most of the minor gains the Ukrainians accumulated over 4 months of attacking in Eastern Ukraine. All that's left in in the south there are still two small bulges in front of the 1st line of defense that haven't been fully retaken yet. The Ukrainians keep on launching harassment crossings over the dnepr with miniscule forces that have to be cleaned up over and over again. I believe that the extremely drawn out conduct by the Russians on all fronts and the lack of attacking is intentionally done to present an image of a "stalemate" in Ukraine meanwhile in reality the Russians have strategic initiative. They know that as long as the Western public believes that it is a stalemate, fewer investment in Ukrainian aid will happen over time. And they have been right with this approach.
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