Also the ring fits both Gollum and Bilbo, which limits how different in size they could be.

(LOTR says the ring can change size, but this wasn't discussed in the Hobbit, and presumably hadn't occurred to Tolkien yet when he wrote it).

Does Gollum even wear the ring in the original Hobbit? Or does he just carry his precious around?

It’s not specified - he never has the Ring in the Hobbit - Bible finds it before we meet him.

In LotR it’s revealed that he rarely wore it anymore by that time.

Bilbo doesn't see him wear it, but he's described as having put it on to steal goblin children for food. So he does wear it in the books.

Its on such an expedition that the ring "slips" from him, further suggesting the ring is actually not only his size, but a little large.

> Its on such an expedition that the ring "slips" from him, further suggesting the ring is actually not only his size, but a little large.

It's heavily implied in LOTR that the ring is able to change it's size to cause itself to slip from a person's finger, though that's somewhat out of scope and the illustrator may not have read that.

It's unthinkable that a single, unchanging ring size would fit both Sauron and Gollum.

Sauron is known to shapeshift but maybe the dirty secret all along is that he’s hobbit-sized.

Thumb/pinkie?

The $ argument in favor of this seems a little silly. The $ brought in a millionth of the US military budget.

Think the best argument presented in the piece is just that some non-trivial fraction of soldiers are going to gamble, and its better they do so in a manor controlled by the military then backroom poker games, online, etc.

This was also the operating logic from the time when military bases would have bars (and even some seedier things). You generally had an enlisted club and an officers' club on base, and yeah drunken behavior may result, but it resulted on base.

The foot traffic at these spots is nowhere near what they used to be though.

RIP one of my favorite trivia facts

FWIW, think 3-4 is kind of the low-point for this. After that, they're in school more, can independently play by themselves or with friends more and your time (very) gradually starts to become your own again. (they also become more interesting to hang out with after this age, can participate in more interesting activities, etc)

I mean, if the devices exist, I'm skeptical its that hard to just give them to whomever you want to use them and give them all DoD accounts or whatever. The people involved being in different agencies seems like a dodge.

Think the qualification is to get into the training program, presumably air traffic controllers who develop near nearsightedness later in life aren't summarily fired.

Still, seems like a crazy requirement.

Im kinda skeptical these folks were following some hyper-logical process from flawed axioms that led them to the rigorous solution: "I should go stab our land-lord with a samurai sword" or "I should start a shootout with the Feds".

The rationalist stuff just seems like some meaningless patter they stuck ontop of more garden variety cult stuff.

If you convince someone smart who errs towards logic of your axioms, they’ll convince themselves to do whatever you want.

Yea, was reading a biography of (JPL founder) Jack Parsons a few weeks ago, and was struck how similar the Zizian patter sounded to a lot of the Golden Dawn/proto-Scientology stuff.

Eh? There's a ton of Native American place-names on the East Coast? Including at least three States.