> Pretty cool of you to share your experiences bladegash. I always thought they wouldn't let people with mental health conditions into those environments. Shows what I know.
Some mental health conditions, like mine, don’t really show up until later in life and it is at least part of the reason I no longer work in that field :).
However, things are well managed now and I have a good career in the private sector!
Yep, my thoughts as well. And I say this as someone who not only has a chronic mental health disorder that sometimes manifests as paranoia, but someone who used to work in the IC for 10 years (it has been a while since then).
Is it possible? Sure. But it is very unlikely that much resources and effort would be devoted to someone that made a few critical comments.
Small correction, but there are actually four states (CA being one of them) where you can avoid law school by what is called “reading the law”. It entails more or less doing an apprenticeship with a practicing attorney or judge and meeting certain requirements.
To clarify, it doesn’t create a commit and is only usable within actions. I have always used the GH action VSCode extension for it, but I believe from the API, you would call the below endpoint using a classic/non-fine grained PAT that has the “repo” grant.
Unrelated, but another interesting one is any non-admin contributors being able to add (and I believe update) secrets in a private repo for use in GH actions. It can’t be done via the UI, but can be done via the API or VSCode extension.
When I looked into it a while back, apparently it is intended behavior, which just seems odd.
I don’t think correlation = causation in your anecdote. Care to provide some examples of people who were “cured” of Crohns through diet alone?
I have had Crohns for nearly four years with it in remission for the last two years. Diet and other lifestyle changes did slightly improve symptoms, but the only things that have yielded profound change were Inflectra and prednisone.
I think for those who have Crohns bad enough where they’re facing surgeries or being on a biologic for quite some time, diet alone isn’t going to fix the damage inflammation has already done.
You hit the nail on the head, but think aside from information being more accessible to analyze/share when it isn’t classified/there isn’t a need to protect sensitive sources and methods, is the benefit vis-a-vis translations.
Finding native speakers of languages like Chinese, Russian, Farsi, etc. who are also eligible/want to have a clearance is a challenge (it’s expensive and self-limiting, since US citizenship is a requirement).
Training people already cleared in those languages takes a ton of time, expensive, and yields linguists with mixed-usefulness (think understanding formal Spanish taught in highschool versus Spanish actually spoken amongst peers/friends). There’s slang, intonations, etc. that non-native speakers have to spend time learning/may misunderstand.
In other words, OSINT has a much larger talent pool that yield arguably/presumably better translations.
Funny enough, BBSs were the way many of the players on WoW servers pre-cross realm would communicate/flame each other outside the actual game.
When I started online gaming with an old multiplayer tank game called Tanarus, we used Usenet. With EverQuest we used EZBoard, then with WoW it was many times the server’s board on the official WoW forums.
While I’m sure there’s a bit of nostalgia shading the memories, I made a lot of friends and great memories!
Disney Animation Studios (not Pixar) has made three movies in the last ten years that are among the highest grossing movies of all time (Frozen, Zootopia, and Frozen II).
In terms of quality, anecdotally two of my personal favorite Disney movies ever were done by them within that timespan as well (Moana and Encanto).
My impression has been that the gap between Disney Animation Studios and Pixar has drastically narrowed.
I am not sure that I agree life is quite as black and white to where that maxim can always hold true.
I think we can agree that intent/means used to achieve an outcome certainly do matter (more deonotological/Kantian philosophical worldview), but I do believe that consequences/outcomes of action and/or inaction certainly matter as well.
All sorts of mental gymnastics we could go through as to my reasoning, but I try to be cautious in accepting strict maxims as absolute truths.
Certainly a fair point on mindset and I’m sure it will vary depending on where you work. I generally agree with you, but wonder if the viewpoints we each described are not mutually exclusive.
The viewpoint you are describing sounds along the lines of “good vs. bad”, “us vs. them”, “black vs. white”. I guess the viewpoint I mentioned is more describing how one consciously or unconsciously reconciles/reaches congruence between their actions and value system.
In other words, one part answers the “why” we do what we do and the other answers the “how do we feel ok with what we did”.
At least from my background, there were no illusions that many things we did would be considered of questionable morality or destructive in just about any other circumstances.
That then brings about the philosophical question I think your perspective ultimately answers, which is “this is wrong, but…sometimes doing wrong things can also be right or less wrong than the alternatives”.
Just to add, I especially agree regarding downsides. Aside from being abstract, the relationship between cause and effect may be murky or seemingly non-existent.
Having had worked in DC much of my career, more specifically within the IC, I think more likely they believe in a general utilitarian philosophy that “the ends justify the means”.
It is a common Western world view to begin with, but my personal observation is it is especially common in the grayer professions of the world.
Took me personally reaching a point in life and asking the big question “do they really?” or in my case, “doesn’t it matter how you get to those ends, too?” before my own worldview/choice of profession began to shift.
Otherwise known as lying. IMO, lying crosses the line to “gaslighting” when the intent is to make the person feel as though their perception is wrong or they’re going crazy.
Think people have gotten a bit silly with their overuse of the term. Most people lie out of self-preservation or as a defense mechanism, not to intentionally harm the other person (although it may still have that effect),
Are you planning to be equivalent in notoriety/influence as Martin Luther King Jr? If not, the motivation/incentives for domestic law enforcement to target you aren’t really there. It would be a waste of their time and finite resources.
The PRC has a bit different motivations/incentives and theirs are not aligned with a perceived U.S. national security interest.
Whether you and I agree with the US national security apparatus's mission, in my opinion, it is at least more oriented towards safeguarding/promoting the US’ self-interest.
That’s not to say I agree with all of its actions, just trying to explain what I mean when I say there is difference in motivations and incentives.
Why can’t they? Sure, they can’t just call up the FBI or other US law enforcement agencies and refer the matter.
However, they can absolutely use the threat of disclosure of sensitive information to blackmail or otherwise coerce someone. The threat (real or perceived) many times is worse than the reality.
I’d say they each have the capability to cause harm, but the incentives/motivations/safeguards that might drive (or inhibit) them to do so are drastically different.
Of course, and you are right on many/most accounts.
However, it is worth mentioning that it is definitely a dangerous game to play, even if the government doesn’t do anything.
Government contracting world is pretty cut throat and all it takes is a competitor, a partner, or an employee catching wind of the foul play and you make your company pretty vulnerable to a few things:
1) extortion for work share (e.g., a partner company threatening to out you to the contracting officer if they don’t give more work share % or some other form of monetary compensation)
2) A competitor contesting the contract award due to the awarded company not meeting the set aside requirements. This can be very costly and lead to the government being forced to look into things more thoroughly. It’s also public record and could seriously damage a company’s reputation in perpetuity.
3) A company employee filing a qui tam suit under the False Claims Act. This can lead to at best, a costly settlement, and at worse, repaying the government even after the work has already been performed.
There is a bit more to the requirement than the company being owned by a woman, namely the requirements for women to be in control of the day to day operations of the business.
It is a similar requirement for veteran owned small businesses and I imagine “gaming” this would be tantamount to fraud.
About as far as I’ve seen be acceptable for “gaming” things is to use a joint venture that is 51% owned/controlled by whatever interest group (e.g., veteran, women, disadvantaged, all of the above, etc.).
Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s not a common occurrence from my experience (15+ years active duty, as government employee, and working for a contractor on the actual contract/BD side).
Some mental health conditions, like mine, don’t really show up until later in life and it is at least part of the reason I no longer work in that field :).
However, things are well managed now and I have a good career in the private sector!