Emergency crews at Toronto Pearson Airport are responding to the crash of Delta CRJ-900 arriving from Minneapolis/St.Paul. According to the latest from the airport, all passengers and crew are accounted for. That link is to the CBC which I’m sure will have updates. (The latest is 8 passengers are being treated by paramedics.)
I’m a bit of an aviation geek, but not a nervous flyer. But, for the first time in my life, I’m debating whether to take a plane to a family event in a couple of months. Elon Musk has willy-nilly fired hundreds of FAA employees at a time when there have been shortages of air traffic controllers for years. On the night that the CRJ-700 had a mid-air collision with a Blackhawk helicopter near DCA, there were supposed to be separate controllers for helicopters and for fixed-wing planes. They were short-staffed and only one controller was working both positions. The NTSB is going to report the cause(s) of the crash in a year or two, but it’s not alarmist or silly to say that Republicans are making us less safe by not addressing the crisis of ATC short-staffing, where 90% of US airport towers are understaffed.
So, yes, Republicans are trying to kill you and your family. Pictures like the one above will become more commonplace because an unelected billionaire decided that he wanted a bigger tax break.
My view is that the real problem isn’t exploiting the tragedies that will undoubtedly occur on Trump’s watch, it’s making sure that whatever caused the tragedy is fixed. Firing FAA employees will cause more tragedies. The fix is to boot Musk, re-hire everyone fired, and hire more ATC. We can call for that today without hurting anyone but Republicans.
Editfrom the CBC: “Ornge Air Ambulance, Ontario’s air ambulance service, says a child was taken to Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children with critical injuries, while a man in his 60s and a woman in her 40s were also taken to Toronto hospitals with critical injuries.”
Hope the world-class team at Sick Kids can save the child’s life. At least Canada funds its healthcare, unlike what Trump and Musk would like to see. Sick Kids is a University of Toronto Hospital. The research grant cuts that Musk has put into place will rob our great University hospitals of the funding they need. This means worse care for badly injured kids.
Today’s North Carolina Protest – AM in NC Was There
Lobo
Musk and Republicans want us dead(Death Cult):
*Plane safety: 5 Crashes so far
*Vaccines: Measles & Bird Flu
*Cancer: Reducing & Eliminating research funding
*FDA
*USAID
Please add to list.
(Why do they want to kill us? Just asking questions.)
opiejeanne
That plane is on its back.
We’re flying out in May, going to Europe for probably our last trip abroad, and I’ll admit that I’m nervous because of this.
matt
I’m impressed at how fast they’ve disrupted everyday life and business with their stupidity.
Suzanne
I’ll be flying in and out of MSP next week. I’m a nervous flier at best…. and really, really freaked out.
Tom Levenson
Just put this post up on Bluesky with the tagline “Musk and the GOP: Objectively in favor of plane crashes.”
Ramalama
Canada is up in arms against Trump’s America. Quebec embracing being Canadian for the first time in a long time and now US crashing into Toronto? Everyone here careful not to mix up non-MAGAts with MAGA but this? Not going to help.
Really hope no one’s died in the plane or surrounding the plane. But Jesus H.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
ALL the trays are in the upright position.
Damn, that’s phenomenal everybody survived.
Do not like this new new.
ETA is that an Embraer or Bombardier? Looks like a smaller plane.
Chris Johnson
What the crap even happened?
The most innocuous possible explanation is that weather has become that much more violent to the point where this can be a thing. Those people were lucky if they hit weather events capable of doing that to a plane on approach. Were they prevented from knowing about the microburst or whatever, or did it just get ’em anyway regardless of how well the pilots were warned?
@mistermix.bsky.social
If you take one thing home from that photo, other than “Trump/Musk crash plane”, do not take your carry on luggage with you when you evacuate a fucking airplane. Jesus. That guy on the right has a backpack on. No, don’t do that!
trollhattan
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Also, think of the emergency slide as a canopy.
prostratedragon
@trollhattan: Bombardier. Seats 95 — is that small these days? I know it’s not jumbo.
artem1s
another affect of the Muskrats and President Elon controlling all our public records. lots of info article about when the plan was built, etc that just isn’t going to be accessible for very much longer. forget being able to look up what kind of death machine you’re going to be riding in when you book your flights.
Ramalama
@Chris Johnson: The weather in southern Ontario and Quebec is terrible. So maybe it’s *just* bad weather. in-laws in Toronto are working from home today due to winds and cold. It snowed a ton there, a little worse in Quebec. Maybe this one’s not on the cretinous USA admin.
JoyceH
Planning a trip to the UK this fall, and geez. I keep deferring an Egypt tour due to general unrest in the area, but I thought flying could be relied on.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@prostratedragon: It’s the biggest stretch of what started as a 50-seat regional jet. It’s one of my least favorite planes to fly because the cabin height is like 5’10” (I’m 6’2) and it’s really long so boarding / leaving is a faff. But the safety record is excellent. I think the crash in DC was the first fatal crash in the CRJ family, could be wrong about that, but overall a very safe plane.
Also, weather in Toronto is -7 C, blowing snow, wind 54 km/hr gusts to 67. (30-40 MPH winds, 20 Degrees F.) So pretty ugly there.
tobie
What is the relationship between the FAA and Canadian authorities? I’m a nervous wreck right now as I’m set to fly this week for work. Having some sense of how the FAA works with its Canadian counterparts would give me a better read of this accident in Toronto.
In general, though, fuck Elon and his stupid ideology, “Move fast, break everything.” It’s a lousy business model, but at least no one died from Twitter’s implosion. It’s a different ballgame with the entire federal govt of the US.
Alce _e_ardillo
You may not be a nervous flier, but I am, and I am definitely having second thoughts about flying to Florida to visit my mother for her birthday. Would AMTRAK be worth investigating?
trollhattan
@prostratedragon:
I suppose, guessing primarily used for commuter hops between smaller markets. Latest 737s can be configured for 138-204, A320neo 165-195, perhaps the closest rivals from the bigs.
A Good Woman
I just read that SpaceX engineers are going to modernize our ATC. That will fix everything.
Right?
Right?
@mistermix.bsky.social
cmorenc
Wednesday morning 2/19, wife & I will be on a flight from Raleigh => Denver, and then Denver => Grand Junction. Our flight out of RDU @8am will be racing incoming winter weather in Raleigh.
Nervous? Yep. Not about the pilots or airline (United), but about the extent to which Trump and his evil band of Muskians will have made the respective air traffic control towers understaffed, stressed, and distracted at two very busy airports, and then to get us safely down in a mountain airport in Grand Junction.
Jeffro
HELL YES LET’S POLITICIZE IT!!!
(same thing with the next mass shooting, etc etc)
What’s the alternative? Just sitting here quietly and taking it?
Belafon
@A Good Woman: If I really wanted to let them geek out, they’d better turn the ATC into the controllers in Matrix: Reloaded, with a 3D VR display.
frosty
@Alce _e_ardillo: If you’re anywhere near Northern Virginia check out the AutoTrain. Your car goes with you so no need for a rental.
Belafon
@@mistermix.bsky.social: “Dear passengers, we will be making our landing in Melbourne shortly.”
rk
Today I found out that a guy I know who has pancreatic cancer voted for Trump. He has survived due to research funded by the US government. I wish him all the worst in the world.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris Johnson: Since *this* crash actually happened in Canada, I’m confident that there will be a thorough investigation and that we’ll eventually know what happened, and Mentour Pilot will probably do a video summarizing it.
Anything that happens in the US, I’m not so sure I can help you.
Ohio Mom
During the DC crash, there was ONE controller working both positions? I hope the poor guy is getting counseling and can retire on disability.
About the guy with the knapsack, that will be me. On trips, all the family medicine goes into the knapsack and I don’t let it out of my sight. But we are sticking to wherever the car can get us for the foreseeable future.
tobie
@cmorenc: I hear you. I’m flying west from the East Coast with a connection in Las Vegas on Wednesday. The strain on everyone in commercial aviation must be unbearable right now. I’m not looking forward to any of this and the number of infectious diseases circulating with a now diminished CDC doesn’t help any.
Phylllis
@Alce _e_ardillo: Get a roomette. They’re kind of pricey, but the privacy combined with your own (albeit tiny) bathroom is worth it.
Matt McIrvin
@prostratedragon: It’s a smallish regional jet, slightly larger than the one that crashed at National. The seating is usually 2+2 across in economy, 2+1 for a fancier class. So a pretty narrow plane.
prostratedragon
@@mistermix.bsky.social: I’m 5’4″ on my all days and don’t think I’d like a ceiling that low. With winds like that I bet a sudden updraft at the right time could flip a plane trying to land.
sixthdoctor
My wife, mother-in-law, and I are flying to Florida at the end of March, and my brother lurks and occasionally posts on BJ as I do, and I’m giving him full permission to politicize the SH*T out of any disaster involving us should the worst happens, and if I live with a seat tray lodged in my head I will find any available reporter and allow them to rest their tape recorder on my head tray as I rant.
prostratedragon
@trollhattan: So a bit on the smaller side.
Matt McIrvin
@prostratedragon: Yeah, I think of the Boeing 737 or the Airbus A320 as kind of the canonical average-sized airliner you’d probably ride for a medium-haul flight, and this is smaller than that. These little jets run routes that would probably have been done with turboprop planes when I was a kid, and also some where they might have used a bigger airliner but had to run it part empty.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: Name the country that did most of the world’s plane crash investigations?
Urza
Not to shift blame, but Toronto isn’t in this country. How is our issues causing a crash there? I mean it could be cause there’s alot I don’t know and i’m not going to bother learning about each of these incidents there will be so many.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: That was before. We may have just fired all the people who do them.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Urza: That’s a US plane, from a US airline, under the safety supervision of the FAA. So it’s on Musk and Trump, unless there was some error by the controllers at Toronto Pearson.
Matt McIrvin
@Urza: Hard to say at this point what might have contributed to the crash. It was coming from Minneapolis-St. Paul on an American airline, but if it was a problem encountered on landing, the situation in the US might not have contributed at all–we’ll have to wait for an investigation.
Elizabelle
No fire, thank dog.
The worst in recent months is still that tragic crash in South Korea. Weird that the flight recorders stopped before the final four minutes; what was up with that? The biggest takeaway seems to be “no concrete features near the runways.”
Waiting to see what James Fallows has to say about this accident in Toronto.
Elizabelle
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Does this look like weather related to you?
And: kudos for having this BJ post up before either the Sulzberger Times or BezosPost.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rk:
Another variation of IGMFY.
Yeah, no positive thoughts in his direction.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: Last I heard, speculation on the Jeju Air crash was focusing on the possibility that after the bird strike, the pilots accidentally shut down the wrong engine, leaving them without the usual sources of hydraulic and electric power (unless they started up the plane’s APU, which takes time). That may have cut power to the flight recorders as well. Apparently that particular model did not have battery backup power for the flight recorders.
Ruckus
@Alce _e_ardillo:
Would AMTRAK be worth investigating?
Amtrak is not bad, just a tad slower than a jet. That tad is doing a lot of work….
A few have touched on a lot of the problems. First there are more flights and airlines – along with more people flying. Second that creates a likely need for more controllers and more control over flight paths and schedules. Not a lot less. Third given one and two, it likely won’t get better anytime soon.
Now I hate to say this but to me one answer is better control of the entire system. And that takes money. With the party of bank accounts in charge I don’t see how this is going to get better anytime soon.
We live in a country that the population has a lot of at least influence in how it works and what can be done to make it better. Do I have to say not firing a bunch of government workers that do all that flight safety work might just be a start. But of course that requires more taxation – you know, the part of modern life that pays for all the stuff/controls/humans that it takes to make modern life actually work. I don’t see much of the conservative side of politics having any idea whatsoever about ANYTHING that doesn’t fill their pockets and bank accounts faster and higher.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@cmorenc:
I assume you’ve been to Grand Junction before. If not…
It’s not really a “mountain airport” like Aspen or Gunnison, neither of which is *any* fun to fly in/out of.
Depending on the flight, you might even be on something larger than the kind of plane ‘featured’ in this post, ala 737-esque size.
FWIW, Denver weather on Wed looks good, colder than a well diggers butt but good.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Elizabelle:
Yes, and the world-class Toronto Pearson Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting crew were spraying down the plane as passengers evacuated to make sure a fire didn’t break out. I bet their response time was a couple of minutes. But those ARFF rigs and their trained crew are extremely expensive, so DOGE will probably cut all grants that let smaller airports have full-time firefighters.
Anyway, I won’t speculate on the cause of the crash, other than to say that it’s hard to see how Toronto Pearson controllers or facility had anything to do with it, since it wasn’t a collision with another plane. Could be some kind of failed go-around sparked by a runway incursion, I guess, but seems unlikely. I’m guessing something to do with the plane and/or crew.
Matt McIrvin
@Alce _e_ardillo: Amtrak outside of a few relatively heavily traveled areas (particularly the Northeast Corridor) can be s-l-o-o-o-w. It’s actually useful within the Northeast Corridor, but even there, it’s not up to what it should be.
Also, Musk’s band of trolls is probably going to try to hobble Amtrak too. Though since it’s a semi-public corporation with some independence from the government, I think they can’t just fire everybody, they can just stop the subsidies and infrastructure money from getting transferred.
Princess
@Urza: I don’t think this is going to be an air traffic control issue. If we can pin it on Trump, it will be that some of his firings have led to poor or minimal inspections, or that he’s done some bad deregulation. I’m actually at an airport in Canada today, even as we speak, and it’s a bit gusty but nothing I’d think a pilot/ plane couldn’t handle.
Elizabelle
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Yes. 3 cheers to the fire and rescue and the first responders.
Doug R
@Urza:
True, BUT apparently YYZ was in the process of shutting down due to weather.
So it could have been a pilot trying to land in marginal conditions when they really should have gone back/diverted.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: That Jeju crash was such a tragedy.
Elizabelle
@Doug R: Interesting. And maybe Delta really pushes on on-time arrivals.
Stay tuned.
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: My concern is less that something the Trump Administration did caused these recent crashes, as that the haphazard firings and cuts and atmosphere of paranoia and ideological control are going to prevent any lessons from being learned, the way we usually do from an aviation incident.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: It sounds like such a classic example of the “swiss cheese” model of a disaster: a bunch of things that are abnormal somehow have to line up, like holes in stacked slices of Swiss cheese. A bird strike, then a series of possible pilot errors, then the stricken plane encounters an absurdly dangerous quirk of the airport design.
cmorenc
@Matt McIrvin: yes this particular crash happened @Toronto airport, but it’s nonetheless a vivid reminder so soon after the DC crash of what could soon happen much more frequently as Trump and his Muskins strip the various safety agencies of personnel. Gloves need to come off and we need to hit ‘em bellow the waist with brass knuckles using everything we got. When did faults in accuracy restrain MAGA, Fox & Trump?
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: Yes. It was bizarre. But the whole thing seemed to happen so fast.
WTFGhost
What scares me is the story of the 787s won’t be investigated closely by the MAL-administration. Story I heard was, “supply chain distribution was *no* problem. Parts would arrive with *such* precision machining that *pop* right into place!”
Engineers story, which sounds horrifyingly plausible to *me*, is, they had supply chain issues, and they no longer just *pop* right into place. And someone approved completely unsafe forms of attachment instead. That’s only my understanding of what an engineer said, Boeing Legal.
Now, the joins are *almost* perfect, but, eventually, metal fatigue means the *newer* planes might crash – again, relating the news as I heard it – even though the *older* planes (that, remember *pop*ed right together) are long past the point that we’d have to worry.
Not saying it’s true, but it’s horrifyingly plausible, and Harris would probably let Walz make a soccer net of the… ahem. Harris would probably set Walz loose on any Boeing officer that was found to have lied (if any did), concealed evidence (if any did), etc..
Trump… Trump I don’t trust.
I mean, if there was a LeftWing Limbaugh, that would already be a leftwing conspiracy theory – Trump is *engineering* these crashes, to get Boeing off the hook. “Oh, where’s you’re sense of humor, it’s such a *ridiculous* accusation *no one* takes it seriously!”
SpaceUnit
I don’t even want to ride an elevator these days. We’re in the golden age of distracted stupidity in which no one can concentrate on anything for more than two minutes without stopping to look at their phone and check all their social media accounts. We make jokes about dogs getting distracted by squirrels but people are just as bad. Except people want to take a selfie with the squirrel and post in on fucking Instagram. At least the dogs aren’t eating detergent pods.
Actually we should let dogs maintain our passenger jets and put the squirrels in charge of air traffic control. Rig it so they get a peanut every time they safely land a plane.
bbleh
@opiejeanne: That plane is on its back.
I’ll admit to some surprise that everyone apparently survived that. Even at landing speeds, flipping upside down? Nononono. I hope the three mentioned pull through okay.
And I will refrain from saying the people who, if Harris had won, would be baying for blood and screeching about DEI but now will piously proclaim that we shouldn’t be politicizing a tragedy yadda yadda yadda, would be acting in bad faith
I will observe, though, that just recently there was an item of news that the NTSB will no longer post findings on its website but apparently / allegedly will have to do so via “X”. I’m sure THAT, if true, is nothing to worry about.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: I guarantee they’ll be screeching about DEI anyway.
I just saw someone bring up DEI as the reason it takes Disney so long to build new rides at their theme parks, and someone actually told them to shut up and go away, which is a response I don’t think I would have seen in that context until recently.
seefleur
My oldest daughter flew out on Saturday to Nairobi. Several delays (the biggest one caused on the flight from Boston to Doha before they even taxied out of – some idiot decided to deplane on their own. The usual kerfuffle in getting them off the plane, and then everyone had to be re-screened, leading to many passengers missing their connecting flights. I worried until I heard that she’d made it to Nairobi with no further issues. Now I’m going to worry about her return flight in 10 days. We just got back from a trip to the Midwest, flights right after the DC plane crash and after the Philly crash, and I swore after getting home that any traveling that I do after this will be by car or train. If the public has no trust in the safety of flying because of the tRump maladministration, there’s going to be even more economic hurt for this country.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
This sounds to me to at least be part of the issue.
Many times something goes not quite right. In anything humans do. If it’s 2 or 3 things that all go wrong at once or go wrong because of one of the things that goes wrong at the worst possible time cascades into more things going wrong. A lot of problems get worse, no matter what is happening/going wrong and they can pile up rapidly and sometime through no fault of anyone. It’s unlikely but it’s possible that nothing/no one could fix this. Modern life is complex and often requires very close to perfection to work well. We will know eventually who, what, when and how it went wrong. Because that’s how flight is made better. Orville and Wilber started something that has gotten bigger, faster, common, far more complex, and has what many do not seem to understand – danger. Now commercial flying requires a lot of effort from a lot of people and a lot of equipment to do the correct thing on a minute by minute – second by second – ongoing basis. Most of us, especially people that fly a lot get accepting of the concept while lacking the ability to fix anything when and if it goes wrong. I used to fly almost every week for 8 months a year. With a lot of other humans, trusting a lot of other humans to do their work and do it well, along with trusting the entire concept of flying to work well. Everything doesn’t have to go perfect but it does have to be reasonably close. And some days that is a gigantic ask. This may have been one of them.
JoeyJoeJoe
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Flying out of Denver on Saturday, I noticed that all flights to Aspen were cancelled that day. Must be hard to fly in or out there
JoyceCB
It’s a perfectly normal cold windy miserable winter day here in Toronto. A lot of early speculation (watching CNN and CBC) discussed having to land with a strong wind around 45 degrees off the front right ie landing into the west with a strong gusty NW wind blowing. The plane would be slightly off-centre on approach, “crabbing” into the wind. At the last moment it would have to straighten out, and it may have had its windward wing dipped down a little bit too, for stability. Or so say the experts I’ve seen so far. All it needed was a harder gust at the critical moment, et voila. Our emergency crews are THE BEST.
JaySinWA
Because for one thing Musk, Thiel and others in the pack are Longtermists.
Longtermism, effective altruism, and eugenics go hand in hand.
Killing a few [million] people is not a problem for their goals.
Matt McIrvin
@seefleur: There seems to be growing interest in getting decent passenger train service, regardless. The Biden-era infrastructure bill had a lot of money in it for passenger rail improvements to a bunch of corridors, and it was great, but of course Musk’s Mousketeers are going to be shitting all over it in various illegal ways so none of that may happen beyond what’s already happened.
(I’m not even sure if my city is going to be able to rebuild the Main Street bridge like we were planning. If they don’t and the 100-year-old crumbling existing bridge falls in, that’s on Trump.)
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I saw there is some new passenger train service from Boston south. It might go all the way to Bedford, I’m not sure.
cmorenc
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
This will be my 5th round trip into Grand Junction within 12 months, and probably 20th in last 5 years. I am there often enough to have a season ski pass @ Powderhorn.
True, not technically a mountain airport to same degree as Aspen or Telluride, but nevertheless the 10.5k foot Grand Mesa passes off just wing left or wing right just about the point the flight is ascending/descending through 10k ft – and the initial ascent/descent has to thread its way past the Book Cliffs to the N and the massif of the Colorado National Monument to the S. True, when wind direction allows, often flights to/from DEN or DFW will make a 180 on the W side of the airport in the direction of Utah and the open W end of the Grand Valley, which allows the plane more altitude passing over the mountainous terrain just to the E of GJ.
Lobo
@JaySinWA:
Thanks. I didn’t realize my snarky comment would actually result in a real world answer. I am still not sure how to feel about that.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: Yes, the new MBTA commuter rail line is going to Fall River! They haven’t had rail service in a very long time.
There’s a commuter rail station within walking distance of my house and I’d use it for my work commute, but the frequency isn’t great and the lack of a North-South Station link complicates things. So I actually ride a bus in to South Station from Salem, NH, which I drive to, and it’s absurd that this is a better option for me but it is.
bbleh
@@mistermix.bsky.social: have seen speculation from one (Republican) pilot is that it was basically loss of control due to really bad wind conditions & so pilots’ “fault,” BUT arguably that under such conditions airport should have closed temporarily so maybe also tower’s. All speculation tho.
Meanwhile, FOUR crashes with fatalities in US since after Jan. 20, first since 2009, and we’re making major cuts to FAA staff (among many many others). I’m disinclined to be nice: hell yeah politicize it.
WTFGhost
@Lobo: I’m sure you know the real answer: it’s not that they *want* us to die. They just *don’t care*.
The greatest of evil is caused by indifference. Not hate, because not enough people will hate. But not caring? “meh, who cares, beat down, people die.”
It should *hurt* not to care. But strangely, it seems to eliminate so many of the pains of we poor bastards who do. “Oh, sure, eventually, we’ll throw some crumbs at SNAP – just enough to peel off the right number of Ds. But we’ll make them BEG!!!”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@cmorenc:
I’ll wave at you on Wed as you’re passing over Denver!
Martin
Fair warning – expect all of the federal funds for these rail projects to get pulled. That’s what happened to CA HSR during Trump 1. The state had to sue to get it back and that didn’t get resolved until Biden was elected.
bbleh
@JaySinWA: @Lobo: ok, but I have a question. Doesn’t “longtermism,” which sounds like a particularly noxious variant of “libertarianism,” seem like a “philosophy” invented primarily as a rationalization?
I mean, it sounds like the rantings of a delusional cultist or a sociopath. On the basis of “unproven statistical methods” and for the sake of a “thriving future of a limitless human species,” we can dispense with vaccines and fighting disease and hunger? And so, of course, devote all our energy and capital to whatever grandiose schemes these guys dream up? Perhaps it would be more efficient if we also just burned a lot of surplus humans as fuel, since that way we would also reduce the resources otherwise wasted on other aspects of (sub-) human survival.
Honestly …
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: That is what I’m expecting. What I’m wondering is whether all the road money will get pulled too (maybe we don’t get our bridge until the governor grovels before Trump and helps ICE snap up some immigrants).
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I hope the mass transit funding in the Infrastructure bill has gone out. There was a lot, something like $10 billion for NYC’s MTA alone. Ive been following the Amtrak side and I think a lot of that money is still unspent.
lamh47
Ugh…all these damn plane shit. I need to get home to NOLA and eIther I can fly 5 hrs, or else fuq’n drive 33 damn hours at least, NOT counting stops for the nights OR trying to avoid sundown towns.
Which basically means I’ll be flying…period!
TBone
Judge Chutkan cannot let the Attorneys General case against DOGE proceed without A PAPER TRAIL. And since there will NEVER be one, unless Anonymous hacks into their digital footprints or something, we are left without any recourse, apparently.
Up In Smoke!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-cites-lack-evidence-states-225303219.html
Also, Elno has apparently now stated that there is GOLD MISSING! from Fort Knox. I wish I was kidding.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: In 1990s science fiction there was this concept that came up of the Technological Singularity, initially promoted by Vernor Vinge and a few other people (though it originated in 1960s speculations by I. J. Good), that it might be possible for technological advancement to be taken over by superintelligent machines that would start upgrading themselves to the point that it would just run away, resulting in an explosion of seeming magic that would herald “the end of the human era”. Maybe we’d end up as pets of the machine gods. Maybe they’d do awesome things for us. Maybe we’d upgrade ourselves to immortal software beings, etc.
In a science-fiction context, it was a plot device, basically an excuse for putting all this incomprehensible technology-indistinguishable-from-magic in the setting of the relatively near future. But some writers and futurists started treating it as if it was actually a logically inevitable thing (it got disparaged as “The Rapture of the Nerds”) and I recall Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds being an early proponent of the idea that we didn’t need to limit fossil-fuel use or do anything else environmentally responsible, we needed to put all our resources into making this Singularity happen so the Ultra-Intelligent Machines would just solve our problems for us.
Anyway, all this longtermism stuff is just a slightly different variant of the same fantasy. The thing that strikes me is that there are all these unspoken assumptions that just get swept under the rug. Extremely wishful thinking (though some of the Singularity stories of course treated it as a fearful thing instead–it was a matter of attitude).
Another Scott
@TBone:
A short Laffy thread has this comment.
Politics, and the legal system, are slow. Frustratingly slow in times like these. But it’s the system we have…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
David Collier-Brown
@Alce _e_ardillo: Yes: Joyce and I took AMTRAK to Florida, and could take our car with us.
TBone
@Another Scott: I had already presumed that Judge Chutkan wants justice to prevail with every fiber of her being. Without the footprints or any type of hard evidence, there will be no justice. She can’t even grant standing to the prosecutors to continue to bring the case without evidence of harm!
CATCH 22
I’m aggravated, but NOT with you! Thank you for attempting to deescalate!
David Collier-Brown
@Doug R: It was a pretty normal (ie, bad) winter day: I think the last time YYZ closed was when Mel called out the army.
seefleur
@Matt McIrvin: We’ve been hoping that the Downeaster would make it all the way up to Bangor, but it seems like that’s not likely to happen in my lifetime. Sigh… from here to Brunswick is inconvenient even when the weather is good… Maine really has to do more to improve public transportation.
Kayla Rudbek
@seefleur: Maine has to do more to improve airline service, as I have noticed that flights out of Bangor frequently get canceled.
sab
This flight landed in Canada during snow and wind. I regret to say it probably has nothing whatever to do the Trump and FAA unless a bad mechanicsl part even though it was a US plane. Lots of snow and wind in big urban airport?
We will see, because Canadians will still investigate and not just make stuff up.
David Collier-Brown
@Elizabelle: John Fallows, as promised.
https://fallows.substack.com/p/from-defund-the-police-to-defund?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=l2c0u&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Nettoyeur
@Matt McIrvin: It is not immediately obvious that US air traffic control issues were responsible for the Toronto crash. Did the plane come in too fast under Toronto control? Was the runway in poor condition? Was there an equipment failure?
Nettoyeur
@Ruckus: Some years ago a physicist friend of mine got involved in a project with the FAA relating to air traffic control. I tagged along for a couple of meetings but decided to move to other activities, while my friend continued and then spent some years consulting for them. What I learned from the interaction is that the FAA culture is very operationally minded—think senior enlisted military personnel—with lots of experience and massive quantities of legacy hardware and established procedures that they are loath to replace. They just want to get on with the job the way they know it. Very typical of highly skilled technicians. It took months to get them. to provide data streams that allowed research types to study the function of systems, and even then, the data was riddled with timing errors that the researchers had to allow for. I suggested that maybe some of us spend a week or two actually just observing air traffic control in action—that was greeted with outright hostility. In the end, my colleague came up with some new ideas on how to improve throughput with different ground control algorithims–a classic operations research approach— but getting FAA to innovate with this stuff was borderline impossible because of the culture. While I don’t think the Musk approach—hyper aggressive McKinsey style with 21 year old computer whizzes who screw with the system and its people in order to see what breaks—is the way to handle millions of human lives in transit, some level of shock is necessary to make the system modernize. I would note VP Al Gore headed up a govt efficiency drive that reduced federal employment by 900K over 5-6 years without a lot of front page news, so it is possible, but not in a mad rush.