This Is Fine

12:24 AM

And speaking of Beto running and calves cramping

A British woman had to go to the hospital after an intense impending orgasm triggered a stroke. http://huffp.st/EvsLV9W

Tweeted by HuffPost on March 14, 2019 at 12:16 AM

user15026

@GodEmperorDune whaaaaaaaat

> The researchers said it’s not unheard of for orgasms to cause stroke.

user15026

Sex is dangerous!

i mean as a way to go out, it's not bad

@GodEmperorDune ie. ahego state (eyes rolled back, drooling as a result of sex/climax)

12:34 AM

@GodEmperorDune It is, apparently, far more common than you'd think. Not even just orgasms, just sex in general.

@Frank i thought extremely rare so yeah

Samuel L. Jackson unleashes on President Trump and Mitch McConnell http://hill.cm/jR4VzJZ

Tweeted by thehill on March 13, 2019 at 11:28 PM

so many f-bombs in those quotes. can't say that he doesn't give a fuck (he gave like 9 in that article already)

12:57 AM

@Frank IIRC, a bunch of deaths in retirement homes are due to heart attacks resulting from sex.

@Yuuki And isn't that a kicker for the survivor?

1:26 AM

@Frank I'm so good at sex I killed someone

@SaintWacko Once the screaming stopped, anyways.

1:55 AM

@SaintWacko not sure if that is a good thing or bad thing ;)

2:08 AM

“Save the industry $25B” 🤬 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/opinion/boeing-737-grounded.html

Tweeted by vgr on March 14, 2019 at 2:06 AM

…Oh, uh, that seems…unwise?

@TimStone This...is actually something I can speak to.

I work in the aviation industry, albeit more in the repair side.

Self certification does save the regulatory industry money, sure. They don't have to spend time double checking each process and ensuring it meets spec.

The company has an internal employee to handle that, and there does seem to be implicit bias in that decision, yes.

But here's the fun kicker: Self-certification is the company taking on liability that this entity meets the specs as laid out in the regulations.

Hmm... sounds like some legal bullcrap for some rich dude to save alot of money

The way my boss described it to me was, "If a helicopter crashes, they're going to start at the smoking hole, and work their way backwards, looking for the company that signed off on something they shouldn't have. If they reach us, we want them to keep right on going past us."

@TheMattbat999 You don't know what you're talking about. At all.

@Frank my bad.

I will leave ya alone

Self certification saves everybody time and money. The government don't need someone overseeing everything at all times, and they're not a bottleneck to production.

We still go through audits every few years, and that gets stressful; they have the ability to shut us down completely.

2:18 AM

@Ash baaaah I wish we didn't have that rule about reserving stars primarily for news items. CURSES!

Because that's just a beautiful out of context star. so beautiful.

just pin it so your name gets associated

and any clearers would investigate history first probably

2:39 AM

I did considering pinning it. It's sort of different than a star!

user15026

snortgiggles it is dangerous though

Yeah babies can come from that, and you know what Hitler used to be? A baby.

@Wipqozn So did you, turtle. You were once a baby, hard as that is to believe.

@Frank I'm pretty sure me having once been a baby just further proves my point of the dangers of sex.

Wait it's @Ash's point

BUT THEIR POINT STANDS

user15026

It does!

2:59 AM

#Facebookdown and #Instagramdown trend as outages are reported around the world http://hill.cm/fxmGnJr

Tweeted by thehill on March 14, 2019 at 1:52 AM

*clears throat and drinks some water*

FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM IS DEAD! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!

3:45 AM

BREAKING: Francesco Cali, the 53 year-old reputed boss of the Gambino crime family, is gunned down outside his Staten Island home. The highest-ranking organized crime figure to be murdered in New York City in recent memory.

Tweeted by njburkett7 on March 14, 2019 at 3:11 AM

4:01 AM

Marco Rubio tweeting about power outages in Venezuela is a bit fuct considering Puerto Rico.

Buns Glazing

@Memor-X a lot of businesses depend on them

user15026

4:29 AM

@Memor-X I am so tired of people mocking people like this

user15026

It's exhausting and stupid

user15026

Like yes, hahahaha people are addicted to things we made addictive on purpose?

user15026

And also, they've become wide reaching social tools, as @BunsGlazing pointed out

Jolenealaska

5:46 AM

@TimStone Watch this space for the Trump response. I bet we're going to see some interesting stuff come of that.

Buns Glazing

12:50 PM

ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/…

1:36 PM

I assume this was mentioned last night, but for the day crowd:

I am running to serve you as the next president. The challenges we face are the greatest in living memory. No one person can meet them on their own. Only this country can do that, and only if we build a movement that includes all of us. Say you're in: http://BetoORourke.com https://t.co/lainXyvG2n

Tweeted by BetoORourke on March 14, 2019 at 11:29 AM

I realize this is common political language, but I no longer think that trying to "build a movement that includes all of us" is actually a laudable (or practical) goal.

In this day and age, I think its pandering and politically naive.

I suppose that depends on how you read "all of us"

emphasis on "all" or "us"

@Unionhawk Right. Drawing the circle wide enough that it encompasses the alt-right, for example, means you're not taking any position at all, or that your compromising on important values with those who have shown themselves unwilling to compromise thiers

Clearly Beto doesn't mean that, but its in the same vein of a kind of political language that I think is increasingly disingenuous

and that I chafe at more and more

well it's not necessarily a both sides thing, most of the time it's about bringing working people together

is what he's trying to go for, probably

Here's another recent example, under the perfect headline:

Howard Schultz's Latest Bipartisan Pipe Dream Shows He's a Political Idiot

> Schultz will promise not to nominate a Supreme Court justice unless he or she can be confirmed by two-thirds of the Senate, and he will vow not to sign any legislation that does not have bipartisan support.

1:51 PM

Ultimately I think Beto is less cynical and less of a complete moron than Howard

who is literally only running in case sanders or warren get the nomination

so it's really an n<infinity for all n<>infinity situation

Clearly Schultz's "promise" here is several magnitudes of idiocy worse than Beto (and other candidates like Bernie, frankly) talking about unity; but they're still in the same vein

I, disagree. Bipartisanship and Building A Broad Base Of Support are two different things

in that Bipartisanship has no base of support at all

if a democratic candidate wants to win in 2020, they need to engage 2016 nonvoters.

the people who have felt excluded from the process, who feel that politics doesn't impact them because it's just 536 shitheads in washington screwing them over

when we talk about movements in the context of electoralism, that is what we mean

@Unionhawk Sure; I'm just not sure what message exactly will engage them; and I'm not necessarily convinced that conventional wisdom (about "running to the center", etc) is actually good advice

I'm going to be real with you, I have no idea how you saw "nonvoters" and arrived at "aha, 'all of us' clearly means 'both sides' here still"

us = workers
all = of the world unite

thank you for ocming to my ted talk

2:07 PM

@Memor-X Yay!

Now we get to live in the apocalypse!

@BradC Beto is a Texas politician. Even the most leftist of us have some degree of right-wing inclinations.

It's unfortunately the nature of the state's political climate.

meanwhile

Update: THEY DID IT!

Tweeted by Sweetest_Taboo_ on March 14, 2019 at 4:25 AM in reply to Sweetest_Taboo_

Oh, that reminds me.

2:22 PM

@Unionhawk wait what is going on?

I forgot to mention in response to that post about Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson was expelled from Morehouse College (though he later returned and graduated with a degree) for taking part in a protest that held the board of trustees hostage, demanding reform.

Sorry, suspended not expelled.

@TheMattbat999 students at Fieldston in the Bronx locked school administration out and occupied the school in protest of a racist video from a group of other students that surfaced, and the subsequent inadequate response from administration

their demands are/were here:

studentsofcolormatter.org

@Unionhawk ah ok. I am assuming that before the protests the administration had no plans to look into the situation?

not really, but after a 3 day occupation all of their short and long term demands have been agreed to

Ok.

Sounds nice, some demands are a little over the top, but then again if the school was gonna let a group of racists slide by, I understand the extremes.

2:37 PM

these students were prepared, they were organized, they were militant, and they fucking won holy shit

Organization is key to victory

In any situation

(More) bad climate news:

Even if the world were to cut emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, winter temperatures in the Arctic would rise 3-5°C by 2050 & 5-9°C by 2080 devastating the region & unleashing sea level rises worldwide. #UNEA4 #ClimateAction https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/3-5degc-temperature-rise-now-locked-arctic

Tweeted by UNEnvironment on March 14, 2019 at 10:51 AM

Number like that "3 to 5 degrees" is kind of hard to grasp, at least to me. If you're in the same boat, I'd highly recommend this podcast for some perspective on what numbers like this mean:

This is the most important #WITHPod we’ve done, I think. Certainly the most intense https://art19.com/shows/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes/episodes/50188bd0-6810-48d2-bd82-98936fdd7316

Tweeted by chrislhayes on March 5, 2019 at 1:50 PM

Key quote: "The last time the earth was 4 degrees warmer, there were palm trees in the arctic."

(that's by memory, so might not be exact)

Also, they discuss the fact that the earth is now warmer than it has been any time since humans have existed.

2:54 PM

It would be nice for people to figure out how to filter out large portions of greenhouse gases put there by humans, so not only slow damage to environment, but maybe even lower the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

Meaning, yeah, the earth has been warmer than it is now, but that was so long ago it was before humans evolved

@BradC They're talking about ARCTIC winter temperatures here. Projected increase for the entire world are substantially less. Still doesn't make it any less bad

@TheMattbat999 Listen to the podcast I linked above; carbon reclaiming technology does exist (in testing only), and it does hold some promise, but the scale of what we'd need is something like 2-3x the size of the entire global petroleum industry

(plus somewhere to put the waste, whatever that is)

@BradC that is good. At least someone is trying.

@Nzall True, "artic winter temperatures" =/= "global average temperatures", but yes, still very bad

2:59 PM

Where to dispose of the waste is a huge problem, and it will be a while before we have a waste industry focused in ridding of greenhouse gases

There's also the issue of a substantial amount of surface mass being locked up around the poles with all that ice and permafrost.

Which when redistributed could impact things like planetary rotation and local gravity

So... we would need to do it slowly?

Imagine what a mess it would be if Earth's rotation speed changes even slightly. Immediately all geosynchronous orbits would have to change

It would be a complete meltdown. Possibly literally.

Or ya know everyone would fall on their hindquarters for a sec, probably kill alot of people

fredley

Hmmm

This is a real photo, not a shop

3:04 PM

Do I want to know who that is?

Looms fake

*looks

SCO spokesman Peter Carr says: “Andrew Weissmann will be concluding his detail to the Special Counsel's Office in the near future."

Tweeted by adamgoldmanNYT on March 14, 2019 at 3:04 PM

Breaking: House passes resolution calling for special counsel Robert Mueller's report to be released to the public once it is completed. Vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan, with 420 members voting in favor, zero voting against.

Tweeted by jimsciutto on March 14, 2019 at 3:00 PM

House has 435 members, right?

Guess some abstained

#MeToon | March 13, 2019 Act 3 | Full Frontal on TBS

Beto O’Rourke has a good reason to run for president. It’s just not one he can say out loud. @jonathanchait writes https://nym.ag/2TOOrj7

Tweeted by NYMag on March 14, 2019 at 1:12 PM

the purported reason that he can't say out loud:

> The rationale is the tricky thing. O’Rourke’s actual reason for running is perfectly clear: He is a highly charismatic and inspirational campaigner.

Private Pansy

3:14 PM

►

...What?

Private Pansy

@Yuuki Is that Jacob Rees Mogg?

@fredley I thought everyone knew he’s a Madam Tussauds figure who came to life

@TheMattbat999 We do already. Trees are not a new technology.

wait, that was a dumb remark

I'm not sure trees are enough here, also, planting so many trees might have an impact on the oxygen levels in the air

New Scotland cartoonist @CH_Cartoon #Brexit #UK #EU

Tweeted by BigJMcC on March 14, 2019 at 11:31 AM

3:22 PM

@PrivatePansy Most of the carbon dioxide absorption is done in the oceans by phytoplankton, IIRC.

@Yuuki Yeah, and they also produce most of the oxygen

Which is why rising ocean temps is bad because it's killing off the phytoplankton.

@PrivatePansy Modern problems require modern solutions :P (completely joking)

Problem is, they are heavily impacted by rising ocean temperature

@BradC chonathan jait imo

Private Pansy

3:25 PM

@Yuuki Yes, but the only suggestion I’ve seen for increasing that is via geoengineering which seems dangerous. It might not be more dangerous than planting trees to the amount that actually offset the amount of CO2 humans put out though

@PrivatePansy lol i meant people helping the trees

By planting more of them =p

@BradC So... what they're saying is that Beto's reason for a presidential run is that he thinks he can?

Speaking of trees

Son defends parents caught in college admissions scandal while smoking blunt https://nyp.st/2TSV18x

Tweeted by nypost on March 14, 2019 at 2:31 AM

This is why one of my favorite subreddits is /r/MarijuanaEnthusiasts.

3:32 PM

@Kevin yeah and cut less of them

Actually cutting them down for, say, buildings is great, just re-plant them and don't burn them

Yeah..

Yeah, trees store carbon dioxide. If you build something out of that wood, the CO2 stays stored.

I guess my thing is that people generally take a mile when given an inch

Trees are mostly made out of air

3:34 PM

Everything is made of air

;)

No everything is made out of star stuff

@TheMattbat999 There is not a single "a" or "i" in "everything" so I don't see how it's made out of "air".

@Yuuki ... there is an I in thIng?

Ssssssh

Wait until after he can't edit anymore

@Yuuki lol

3:37 PM

@Nzall BUT NOT IN "TEAM"

Nor in 'potato' but I don't see the relevance

There is an i in team, they just hid it in the M

> "There is no "I" in "team"."
> "So... are you telling me to quit?"

Ok so it is in the A

3:38 PM

> "Or are you telling me you're quitting?"

They are telling you to quit

Look, we're all getting distracted from the main point here

Which is that @Yuuki made a mistake

There is an "I" in team. It's the A-hole

@SaintWacko I think this is proof for intelligent design.

Are you calling humans intelligent Yuuki?

3:40 PM

@Yuuki I mean, the Latin alphabet was designed by humans, so it's by definition intelligent design

God knew someone would come up with the "no i in team" so he made sure the letter A looked like that

@Kevin very important

Two Stanford students have filed a class-action lawsuit against the colleges involved in admissions bribery scandal, alleging their degrees will now be worth less. https://trib.al/qDeSDxK

Tweeted by sfchronicle on March 14, 2019 at 3:35 PM

Not surprised at all about this

@GodEmperorDune I mean... they kinda have a point...

But I don't think the school can be considered responsible for that

Also, I think it'd be very hard to prove damages

Most of the schools already fired everyone involved

@SaintWacko they couls because they knew they shouldn't have been taking bribes

3:44 PM

Or placed on leave while they investigate

Trump says Beto had a lot of hand movement, wonders if he is crazy

Tweeted by jeffmason1 on March 14, 2019 at 2:59 PM

(that's the Reuter's White House correspondent, not someone random captioning it)

...

@SaintWacko yeah it will be very hard to quantify how much less the degrees are worth

> Trump: "Dammit, he has bigger hands than me too."

Just, does trump not think? I mean I know the answer! BUT STILL THIS SURPRISED ME

3:46 PM

.@realDonaldTrump says British PM May did not listen to his advice on Brexit

Tweeted by jeffmason1 on March 14, 2019 at 3:14 PM

LOLOLOLOL

@BradC sometimes the President would do us all a favor and jush

@BradC I mean I don’t want to revisit the video of trump making fun of the disabled reporter

*hush

@BradC what was his advice again?

@GodEmperorDune All of the different possible advices

3:47 PM

@GodEmperorDune No idea. Potential headline: "woman ignores advice from lunatic"

At once

> Trump: "About this Brexit thing, you should have scrambled eggs, burnt bacon, and steak with ketchup."

@GodEmperorDune he probably told her "if ya say stupid stuff, you will get alot of publicity"

Trump to Breitbart on how the left plays tough: "I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point and then it would be very bad, very bad."

Tweeted by ddale8 on March 14, 2019 at 2:10 PM

Nah, no authoritarian tendencies at all!!

What?

3:49 PM

@MSNBC I'll be blunt... I find it impressive that they were able to weed out all the no votes.

Tweeted by BenMakesTV on March 14, 2019 at 2:45 PM in reply to MSNBC

@GodEmperorDune nice

Someone made an impressive marihuana joke about that 420 vote

At this point he just does it for attention

Buns Glazing

4:21 PM

ottawacitizen.com/news/canada/…

This is crazy!

user15026

4:38 PM

This is one of those cases where I get why it went how it did for them, but it sucks that it did.

UPDATE: multiple @SlackHQ channels previously used by Identity Evropa and its new front group ‘American Identity Movement’ are now deleted. Today Slack released a statement saying they are taking new steps to ban hate groups. https://unicornriot.ninja/2019/identity-evropas-neo-nazi-organizing-plans-revealed-in-new-leaks/

Tweeted by UR_Ninja on March 14, 2019 at 4:12 PM

bye

@Unionhawk Poor AOL. First, AIM is the bad guy in Iron Man 3 and now they're a right-wing hate group.

@Yuuki AOL doesn't deserve your pity, what with all that wasteful marketing material (free time CDs).

5:44 PM

In an effort to protect her left flank, @KathleenRice just endorsed a law-hating furry for President. @BetoORourke wants to: • Tear down all border walls • Legalize drugs • Abolish ICE Not a good message to send to #NY04 voters! https://www.nrcc.org/2019/03/14/kathleen-rice-backs-law-hating-furry-president/

Tweeted by NRCC on March 14, 2019 at 3:38 PM

til about Beto

He doesn't even have a fursuit though c'mon now

fredley

@TimStone furry?

Lol I thought that was a mispell of fury

lol America, your politics is so fucked

@fredley I did too, at first, lol

Then I was like "Wait" and looked closer at the grainy-ass picture

fredley

Fire and Furry

@TimStone this is actually an extremely cool message

we should do all three of those things

beto prob won't though but idk I'm willing to be proven wrong

NRCC for Beto campaign manager

5:49 PM

laws are overrated

With Sen. Portman voting yes on the resolution to overturn President Trump's emergency declaration, that brings us to 10 Republicans.

Tweeted by kaitlancollins on March 14, 2019 at 5:50 PM

Shocking display of the bare minimum by your boy Rob

@TimStone So that makes 57 including Democrats, right? They only need 9 more Senators who want to protect the constitution to be able to override a veto, right?

@Nzall Just to be safe, they should get 3 more senators on top of that.

Yeah, true

420 in the House, 69 in the Senate would be very close to making up for the last 3 years /s

6:33 PM

lmao Tillis just flipped to no after saying he couldn't be okay with a president using power that way

Imagine bothering to take a stand but then being persuaded by this, the least convincing of White Houses

Thom Tillis made quite a splash with this op-ed. But now after discussions with the WH, he is going to oppose the disapproval resolution and side with Trump. Tillis is up in 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/25/i-support-trumps-vision-border-security-i-would-vote-against-emergency/

Tweeted by mkraju on March 14, 2019 at 6:23 PM

Like he wrote an op-ed and everything!

@TimStone lol

This is just an amazing series of self-owns

#Philly's City Council introduced legislation that could amend & potentially eliminate the controversial sweetened beverage tax. First they'd hire a consultant to research the tax’s economic impact as well as offer alternative taxes, reports @JuliaTerruso https://www.philly.com/news/city-council-sweetened-beverage-tax-repeal-reduce-maria-quinones-sanchez-20190314.html

Tweeted by TauhidChappell on March 14, 2019 at 6:34 PM

@TimStone Which is impressive because for a total of 2 days, the Harrison White House was a literal ghost town.

lmao speaking of self-owns

Yesterday I gave a speech on failed political leadership in this country. A point I tried to make is that leaders must take responsibility and own their mistakes. Today I said I spent more time with the military than any candidate running for president. That was wrong. https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1106249822959370240

Tweeted by HowardSchultz on March 14, 2019 at 6:32 PM

6:52 PM

European Commission "take note of tonight’s votes. A request for an extension of Article 50 requires the unanimous agreement of all 27 Member States," says @EU_Commission spokeswoman.

Tweeted by W7VOA on March 14, 2019 at 6:52 PM in reply to W7VOA

looks at notepad "Parliament doesn't know what the hell it wants"

12 GOP votes (so far) to terminate the national emergency declaration: Wicker Rubio Portman Collins Murkowski Toomey Blunt Alexander Romney Paul Moran Lee

Tweeted by Phil_Mattingly on March 14, 2019 at 6:44 PM in reply to Phil_Mattingly

Imagine being stood up by Rubio. Incredible

Senator Very Principled #GoodRepublican Sasse voted no

> Wildlife rescue group says bald eagle found on DC Metro tracks will have to be euthanized

In a blow to Japan, 10-year-old skateboarding sensation Sky Brown says she will aim to compete for Britain in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. http://jtim.es/f4QD30o2ypv https://t.co/PS78ph64h1

Tweeted by japantimes on March 14, 2019 at 11:35 AM

VETO!

Tweeted by realDonaldTrump on March 14, 2019 at 7:16 PM

user15026

7:22 PM

@TimStone does he realize yelling on twitter doesn't make it happen

That's actually a good question based on the stuff he's claimed was happening before and no one followed through officially

I believe it does automatically happen if he doesn't sign it within 10 days or something like that

which has fun interactions at the end of the legislative session but

lol

7:44 PM

The college admissions scam tipster was a Yale dad who did it in exchange for leniency after being convicted in a pump and dump scheme https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-yale-dad-who-set-off-the-college-admissions-scandal-11552588402

Tweeted by mims on March 14, 2019 at 7:17 PM

lol

I suppose it's a function of the political climate that I've grown up in, but I don't see Beto as a bad presidential candidate. But then again, my state has Dan Patrick.

F--k Dan Patrick.

@TimStone I thought athletes had to be a certain age (partly dependent on the sport), and that that age was higher than 12.

8:00 PM

It's entirely dependent on the sport's governing body rules

It seems that skateboarding has no official minimum (or maximum) age limit, I guess since there doesn't appear to be any associated extra age-based danger if you're good enough to qualify?

Gymnastics has a minimum age of 16, IIRC, because people were getting ridiculous about it.

Or is it 14?

16 sounds right

I think swimming is 14?

the teeeeeeens are at it agaiiiiiiin https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/hottest-chat-app-teens-google-docs/584857/

Tweeted by rachsyme on March 14, 2019 at 7:02 PM

For the Olympics, you need to turn 16 in the year of the event

@Yuuki I think it's 14. Gymnasts are always some of the youngest athletes.

@MBraedley It used to be 14, but since 1997, it's 16

8:09 PM

Oh, nevermind. Google has corrected me.

Age requirements in gymnastics

The age requirements in gymnastics are established by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) and regulate the age at which athletes are allowed to participate in senior-level competitions. In the latter half of the 20th century, a series of controversies arose with regard to gymnast ages, some of them leading to sanctions by FIG, and paving the way for the age requirements to be raised from 14 to 15 in 1981, and then to 16 in 1997. == History of age requirements in artistic gymnastics == Prior to 1981, the minimum required age to compete in senior events sanctioned by the FIG...

@TimStone This actually is really clever

@TimStone between this and the antiracist organizing of high school students above, I am increasingly convinced that Gen Z will be a righteous cleansing wave that kills us all

I've made my peace with this

"you have fattened yourself for the day of the slaughter, counterrevolutionary. yeet" their comrade throws a javelin directly into my face, killing me instantly

@Unionhawk This only works if Congress is out of session or will be within 10 days. You can't pocket veto during an active session.

> If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a Law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a Law.

oh, right, it automatically signs in 10 days

9:06 PM

I've largely refrained from commenting on the 737 crash because I didn't feel like reading up on it before, but it was my gut feeling that grounding those planes everywhere seemed premature. James Fallows, as always, has very intelligent commentary on plane-related matters - he is an accomplished pilot himself. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about whether these groundings are actually appropriate.

Yeah, but of course the whole issue was that they let Boeing get away with not retraining to begin with so now we have to pretend that it's technically a purely mechanical problem :P

@TimStone Sure, and one of the pilots writing in to Fallows agrees:

> To me, from the standpoint of an airline pilot, there was no need to ground the fleet. Just ground each and every 737MAX pilot until he or she has been trained on the MCAS.

After two accidents, require a week in the simulator—for overkill to make sure it penetrates even the dimmest bulbs. But nobody flies again until they have it. In effect that grounds the fleet, but only so long as the training takes.

Separately, and showing how much this is political rather than procedural:

> I’ll add that while this has been going on, we also have an open investigation into the Atlas 767 crash at Houston. [This was a cargo flight crash, near Houston, last month that killed the three crew members aboard. But it was in a type of plane, a Boeing 767, also used by airlines.]

In that case, we know that some manner of elevator deflection led to a pitch down to 49˚. There are plenty of 767’s still flying passengers, so this, too, is a very critical investigation. Yet, as far as I can tell, the NY Times has not run a single story on this that has not been authored by either Reuters …

I'm definitely of the school of thought that because flying is so, so much safer than other forms of transport, it's okay to not overreact when something happens. It seems like the system (in the US at least) is working incredibly well.

And again, this touches on a point I raised in an earlier discussion about the recent crash:

2 days ago, by puzzlepiece87

@TimStone Without saying anything about the airlines as businesses, it's my understanding from James Fallows that an African or East Asian airline is going to have less pilot experience on average than places that have been flying for longer.

But yeah, you all are way more enthusiastic about planes than me so I'm sure you all have a pretty good feel for how necessary or unnecessary this is.

9:26 PM

Yeah, I think it's just extra tricky here because it could just be the retraining issue but because we don't know that the accidents wouldn't have happened with the retraining. Likewise given that Boeing decided (rightly) after the first crash it needed to make changes but hasn't yet (even if that turns out to be the FAA's fault) I can see why they'd at least want that to just happen first

On the flip side I personally was not all that worried that 737 MAXs would be falling out of the sky, tbh

@TimStone Well said. Also, if it was as easy as training, you'd think the gnarly accident from 5 months ago would have had that first in pilots' minds, as someone speculated in Fallows mail.

Different topic, it turns out you can actually find out good and interesting things in places in rural America if you go in with an approach less lazy than asking solely about national politics or "Nazis - they're just like us"

10:07 PM

New: A DC federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative activists Freedom Watch and Laura Loomer against Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple, finding they failed to state viable legal claims re: being kicked off various platforms https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv2030-44

Tweeted by ZoeTillman on March 14, 2019 at 10:07 PM

lol

@Ash obviously not because if he did he would have learned when he was yelling "LOCK UP CROOKED HILLARY!"

@TimStone clever

Mad Scientist

@puzzlepiece87 There's still the possibility that MCAS is not the sole cause, but some other aspects that aren't known play into this.

And I would certainly say if a feature is so unintuitive that two separate crews get confused enough to crash the plane, there has to be something wrong with it

user15026

@puzzlepiece87 This reminds me I have this on my to-read pile.

Mad Scientist

the part I find rather worrying is that MCAS can essentially turn the stabilizer far enough that a pilot can't overpower it anymore with the stick, if they let it run long enough.

11:27 PM

When Trump announced a rally for El Paso a month ago, local orgs immediately started planning counter protests. Those plans were soon hijacked by Robert O’Rourke who used Trump’s visit as an opportunity to take the spotlight and use it for his own agenda.

Tweeted by gringatears on March 14, 2019 at 5:55 AM

neat

love to,

gestures broadly

Speaking of people who should take a seat

Okay. So ..... that happened. I just got a call from Michael Avenatti. The caller ID showed a number that I Googled and traced to him. And it sounded like him. So, like 95% sure. It was . . . . wow. /1

Tweeted by Popehat on March 14, 2019 at 11:27 PM

@TimStone I want to die I didn't think this primary could get dumber

If I have to hear about this Irish American man's abuela again I'm going to stroke out