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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • 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.








  • 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)




  • Most EHS departments are like most HR departments. Perception management to benefit 1) the department and 2) the company. Any possible way EHS can use lax regulations (most places outside the EU) to avoid accountability, it will happen in nearly every circumstance.

    I worked in EHS for a time. The amount of scab, toxic and corrupt behavior I saw made me NOPE out of that career field real fast. EHS got more people fired and swept more incidents under the rug than anyone else. Masters of gaslighting and virtue signaling.

    Of course there will be exceptions, and I’m sure you’re one of them.