Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, December 14, 2024
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43 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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This is why details and nuance matter.
Remember the MCAS on the 737 MAX that killed hundreds of people in two crashes? This video at 19:40 explains the system would act with a small down trim input, then reset when the pilots changed it. Fine. But after resetting, it would act again, until the pilots changed it again. And then again, and so on without end.
Back in the 90s I would pay some PC games* very late into the night. One time it happened on the DST time change date. So Windows98 would interrupt to advise the clock had to be set back one hour. Ok. Then one hour later, it would want to set the clock back one hour again, having reached 2 am again in the designated date. I allowed it, then reset the clock ahead 58 minutes, and again on reaching 2 am it would want to set it back one hour.
By then it was way too late to stay up. The next year I wondered if it would do the same stupid thing. It didn’t (and I can’t believe I stayed up that late just for that). It must have been fixed in one update.
So, the same type of bug that caused a minor annoyance to Windows users in the 90s, was beyond Boeing’s capacity to fix?
It boggles the mind.
I find it hopeful that some economists are considering price controls as a means of fighting inflation.
This struck me (emphasis added):
It’s part of what I mean when I say all too often economists explain how the economy is supposed to work, not how it actually works.
Trump camp floats the idea of ending the FDIC
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-fdic-bank-money-regulation-b2663727.html
This would have to pass through Congress, but there is no indication the Republican members will stand up to Trump on anything.
So, how would this impact a nation under the burden of a series of financially counterintuitive policies instituted by the incoming administration, in a global economic environment struggling with inflation, trade wars, and broken alliances?
@Rob1:
Chalk another up to him remembering the most recent hairbrained scheme that someone suggested to him the evening before at Mar a Lago. Like his announcement that he’s an. expert in logistics and specifically automation of logistics.
Most of this BS was ignored/excused by the voters, now that he’s soon to be prez, people are beginning to listen and think through the consequences. Alas it’s too late and for at least two years on many of these issues he’ll have free rein.
@Kathy:
The whole conceit of our having a “free market economy” has always seemed to be a bit of a sham. The existential imperative of corporations is to boost profits which reflexively encourages monopolization of their space through aggregation or agreement.
Which is why at some point in our history, this country found it wise to establish regulatory oversight.
But once again, that existential imperative of corporations in singular pursuit of self interest “kicks in” and ultimately drives them to marshal resources, individually or collectively to create legal and political assaults on regulatory mechanisms.
The incoming administration gives indication of being that “reaction” to regulation. More’s a pity, this nation has always done better with a balanced mix of capital opportunism and big-picture oversight, maximizing the benefits of our public-private partnership.
@Rob1:
Chalk another up to him remembering the most recent hairbrained scheme that someone suggested to him the evening before at Mar a Lago. Like his announcement that he’s an. expert in logistics and specifically automation of logistics.
Most of this BS was ignored/excused by the voters, now that he’s soon to be prez, people are beginning to listen and think through the consequences. Alas it’s too late and for at least two years on many of these issues he’ll have free rein.
@Rob1:
Chalk another up to him remembering the most recent hairbrained scheme that someone suggested to him the evening before at Mar a Lago. Like his announcement that he’s an. expert in logistics and specifically automation of logistics.
Most of this BS was ignored/excused by the voters, now that he’s soon to be prez, people are beginning to listen and think through the consequences. Alas it’s too late and for at least two years on many of these issues he’ll have free rein.
@Sleeping Dog:..now that he’s soon to be prez, people are beginning to listen and think through the consequences.
I guess you know of at least one. Let us know who it is.
@Sleeping Dog:..people are beginning to listen and think through the consequences.
So there are two. Help us out and name them.
@Sleeping Dog:..people are beginning to listen and think through the consequences.
So you’ve discovered a trifecta of doubters! We can only hope for more!
Time to report the comments section to the Dept of Redundancy Department.
@Sleeping Dog:..Dept of Redundancy Department.
Maybe it can do something about history repeating itself before January 21, 2025…
To me, this is Texas claiming sovereignty over another state’s citizens. I think it also shows that the US Federal system is obsolete. But that is another whole discussion.
Ken Paxton sues New York doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to Texas woman
@Sleeping Dog:
There’s a bank in Mexico that used to be called Banco de Comercio. this was rebranded as Bancomer, which led to references to Banco Bancomer.
It gets better (or worse). After nationalization and then privatization, it was acquired by a Spanish bank called Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, and rebranded again as BBVA Bancomer. Which now gets called Banco BBVA Bancomer.
So it’s essentially called Banco Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria Banco de Comercio.
@Scott: The whole concept of state citizenship strikes me as shaky. The 14th Amendment says who’s a citizen of the United States and adds they’re citizens of the state in which they reside. Which gets weird when many people maintain two or more residences. The noteworthy case being Dick Cheney who was suddenly a resident of Wyoming when he nominated himself to be VP for Texas resident W. Florida is big on mail in voting. Now it’s a horrible libturd plot. Then it encouraged voting by GOP leaning snowbirds, and they weren’t overly scrupulous about maybe voting in two states. Seems to me it’s far more common to refer to people as residents of a state than as citizens. If I buy weed in CO and take it home FL can charge me for possession, but not for buying.
The idea a state’s law follows its citizens when they travel seems more than a little over the top. I quit paying OH income taxes when I moved out. But I wouldn’t feel entirely comfortable SCOTUS won’t find an exception, only for abortion.
Yesterday in the childhood diseases thread I told a story about how my first grade teacher reprimanded me harshly because my mother kept me out of school an extra day to recover from chicken pox. That started me on a journey down memory lane.
You have to understand that I was was a very well-behaved kid, mostly because I never did anything but read, once I could. I was sitting quietly in the classroom; the boys on either side of me were acting up a bit. Suddenly the teacher yelled at all three of us to get up, stand in the corner, and “hang our heads in shame.” Her words. “Hang your heads in shame.”
Of course, I hadn’t done a thing to merit this.
I do wonder why she hated me so much. Possibly she may have realized I was smarter than she thought any 6-year-old girl had a right to be.
@Scott:
I disagree. The real “real question” is what a SCOTUS that has already scuttled the notion of “settled law” will recognize. By all means, take on the fight though. It’s the first step in clawing the nation back to where it was 2 years ago. It’s test one of whether liberals have the same fight in them that evangelicals do.
OK, WTF is going on with these drones? Theories?
@Michael Reynolds:
Alejandro Mayorkas says it’s “a case of mistaken identity,” per CNN.
@Michael Reynolds: A media driven narrative on par with the old satanic panic of the 80/90s. Remember when Dungeons and Dragons was going to destroy all children!!!
I wonder if the rich ruling class is worried that some people like Luigi might take a hint from the war in Ukraine and start FPVing some CEOs. Considering a relative handful of extremely rich people/groups own all the media in the USA…
Meanwhile people are posting pictures of fucking planes and Venus while calling them mysterious drones. A “drone” the size of a car is either a fed or an actual fcking airplane….
Fact of the matter is that hobbyist have been flying “drones” around since the 50s. The cost of a modern “drone” is so cheap any idiot can buy one for funsies.
@Michael Reynolds:
All I can say for certain, is that the country with the world’s biggest air force can’t seem to spare a single AWACS type for a day or two.
Probably hobbyists. Some of the mysterious lights were identified through flight tracking software as commercial flights. So the UFOs* must be flying low, or the airline pilots would have seen them.
And probably someone will try to shoot them down soon.
*What? they are flying objects that haven’t been identified. UFOs.
@Kathy: I’m not near any major airport and I still see GA planes flying fairly low occasionally. The worst are the low flying chinooks though as those things live up to the joke of helicopters don’t fly they beat the air into submission. You can hear the low frequencies well before the helo can be visually confirmed. When I lived in south Texas near a NAS during the Obama term the occasional predator drone would take off or land to patrol the border. I’m pretty sure it was a predator model. Very unique engine noise on those.
My concern about drones is basically limited to restricted areas such as airports, bases, etc.
@Michael Reynolds:
a bunch of teens/college students that decided to have a little fun. it created a panic, so they are having more fun.
In college a group of us launched a number of ‘hot air balloons from the beach. These balloons were constructed of a votiv candle, a tortured coat hanger and very light dry cleaning bag, sheet plastic. IIRC about 30 got airborne for few minutes. A number of panicky calls were made to the local police, who couldn’t stifle their grins as they tried to impress on us the seriousness of our behavior.
@Sleeping Dog: Yeah I feel like there’s a self replicating feedback loop going on now with that. People see a way to get noticed or get a response so they do it themselves or more often.
@Michael Reynolds: Almost certainly military training. A few years back there were unmarked black helicopters flying all over the same area, even doing practice takeoff and landings in the wee hours of the morning. The local military bases very conspicuously refused to comment on whether they were training exercises for special forces, and it gradually died down in the press.
There are drone racing and freestyle leagues across the country. Youtube has a whole bunch of videos of drone operators flying their drones as fast as possible through complex obstacle courses some of which involve abandoned buildings/areas.
The drone thing is something that I see as a signature event for our times – we live in a time of conspiracy theories fueled by social media, where rumors and misinformation flow like champagne at a wedding.
We elected a president who leans into those conspiracy theories, who has a close relationship with the publisher of The National Enquirer.
I remember when I grew up that a couple of times I saw something in the sky that I couldn’t identify easily. I watched it and then shrugged it off and never talked about it.
Now, you can take a picture with your phone and post it to TikTok and get thousands of likes and reshares.
Le sigh.
@Michael Reynolds: I’m not getting excited about the drones until I see some evidence it isn’t another Summer of the Shark. Somebody did a story about drones over NJ and people started actually looking up occasionally and reporting more drones. And unlike sharks, more drone flyers may have decided to join the fun.
@Jay L Gischer:
Back in the 60s Arthur C. Clarke talked about UFOs. His favorite was two black dots he saw stationary over London. Thinking on it, he decided to walk upwind. He found a guy in a park sitting on a bench to weigh down the bench mounted winch from which he had many hundred feet of cable out to a big box kite. Clarke said if you looked up you’d see UFOs. Unidentified, not unidentifiable. I made it a point to look up occasionally and saw a handful I couldn’t immediately explain. I’m not sure about the one I think was a white light in a local air temperature layer like you sometimes see on straight blacktop highways. Otherwise they were eventually clearly explainable. Weather balloons in the right light are quite striking.
First off, expect a significant percentage of the reports to be airplanes. Happens every time people start looking up in an excited state and expect to see something weird. This is why UFO reporting tends to come in waves. A form of mass hysteria, a well documented phenomena.
We are also experiencing a bit of Iran hysteria at the moment…and people like Jeff Van Drew tend to conflate the things they do not understand.
@Kathy: Doesn’t work that way. Any use of military assets in the United States falls under Civil Authorities–meaning DHS and other Departments must request support from DOD. That request is then prioritized with actual military priorities. Military assets are for Military Operations. In this case, Drones being operated mostly lawfully are not going to reach a high priority to receive an asset. Although, with the national profile of this I’m sure they’ve put all kinds od military sensors in the air. The problem is, military sensors are turned to sense airborne threats of traditional size. They would absolutely detect a car-sized drone–which is how we know that claim is bullshit.
This is the Chinese Balloon scenario all over again and evidence how a media ecosystem that exists to pump people full of fear and conspiracy ends up making the people of this Country look like fools.
The Drones are not doing anything threatening beyond the few cases over sensitive Military bases–which were probably targets of opportunity since the News is at near hysteria. They are operating within FAA guidelines. Not knowing who is operating them–does not equate to a threat.
The FAA is an Airspace Management Agency–not an Air Defense Agency. If the law was being violated, NORAD would throw alot of resourcing at this. But since it’s simply a mystery, there are better uses for Military aircraft and sensors.
@gVOR10:
Funny, but when I was a kid my dad did that same thing, kinda. On a breezy day, he bought about a mile of kite-line and a big box kite. Took it out to a part of the waterfront that had a fish and chips place next to it. We launched the kite and kept feeding it line. It kept climbing. Finally, all the line was out. The line took an angle from the walkway of about 45 degrees, but there was a very large sag in the line and the kite was nearly directly overhead and barely visible. Not close at all to the apparent line direction.
He tied this line, apparently a line that went up into the sky to nothing, on the railing and we went and got some fish and chips which we ate, giggling at the small gathering of passer-bys staring at the line squinting into the distance trying to figure out what was keeping that line up. There were about a dozen so engaged when we left.
@Kathy:
But Alex Jones has to pay a greater judgement than Boeing.
@Matt:
Open season on society’s shitbags is not going to turn out as well as the left hopes.
Dodgy things are also happening at UK airports.
Photos of Birmingham DHL fire suggest device could have downed plane
‘Tis perhaps fortunate I have little input on UK security policy decisions, because I might incline to the view that the high seas might be a perilous place for Russian tankers.
“Orcas and serpents and krakens, oh my!”
@Michael Reynolds:
“Game of Drones”?
(Sorry)
(Not really sorry)
@Jim Brown 32:
Those are good points. Thank you.
@JohnSF:
Game of Drones is already taken.
@Kathy:
I stealz it!
Overall review of data indicates: some few drones, perhaps.
Then an outbreak of fringe hysteria on social media.
On reflection, I rather regret associating the European cargo airline fires, which are very bloody real, with this nonsense.
Russia (and China, sort of) are currently hitting Europe quite hard in “implausibly deniable” covert warfare operations.
“Implausibly deniable” being quite deliberate: its patently obvious what is happening, and is MEANT to be, as a taunt.
And the response of legalistic states and analysts is, and is expected to be, “oh dear, oh dear, what can we do, we cannot respond, we must just wring our hands”
Except the Russians may not have calculated what may happen if they push such ultimately non-legalistic, and executive privilege led, states as the UK and France too far.
But Alex Jones has to pay a greater judgement than Boeing.
The most recent reports that I can find state that:
If this is the lawsuit that @Paul L.: is noting in his post at 17:48 then there is no judgement and there is no way for anyone to know anything about Boeing’s liability in this matter.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is demanding federal assistance because the drones have shut down runways in some NY state airports.
If you want to compare Alex Jones and Boeing, recall that Jones acted like a complete fool in court. I expect Boeing’s lawyers will do nothing of the sort.
@Mister Bluster:
@Jay L Gischer:
The fundamental differences are twofold:
1) Jones is an individual and Boeing is a corporation. If the vitriolic fool had incorporated himself into an LLC with shareholders and partners, and had other talent on his channel, he might have skated without personal responsibility.
Not a lawyer, so I’m not sure. but not a single Boeing executive paid a penny or spent as much as a picosecond detained for their neglect that killed hundreds of people.
2) Boeing will pay the whole judgment, while Jones will not. Bankruptcy laws being what they are, he won’t even lose everything as he deserves.
The world’s not fair. One may invoke the Marcus Cole Principle, and think this is a good thing. Quote: “You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.”