TheOmniZaddy 🌹🔰🏗️

This lawsuit existed before Musk decided to venture into US federal politics. The (de)merits of the FAA’s actions here have nothing to do with Elon Musk.

Yes, it’s bad to have fewer ATCs. I think this was a contributing factor.

As far as I know frequency of plane crashed haven’t actually increased. Just frequency bias (happy to be proven wrong).

I don’t like what Musk/DOGE are doing with ATCs and fed employees either. Not sure how that’s relevant.

I agree — I think by “seen” I was trying to refer to how *program designers* (legislators, administrators, etc.) viewed them, and how they went about trying to implement them. Not just “public opinion” or whatever.

Fundamentally many of these things come down to embracing positive-sum vs zero-sum (or even negative-sum) politics. I will always choose the former.

Diversity programs should have never been seen or portrayed as zero-sum, as zero-sum thinking will doom all of us.

It’s not about forcing rebalancing and *redistributing the pie*. It’s about unlocking new opportunities in new markets and demographics to *add to the pie*.

In fact another critique of labor issues is that of occupational licensing and/or labor unions exhibiting guild-like behavior — requiring licensing through apprenticeship programs but then gating said apprenticeship programs via personal relations and gender + race/ethnicity.

There’s a parallel one can draw to housing policy — sensible people at this point know that with such drastic housing shortages, *any* additional supply bottleneck is bad, as is focusing on “% subsidized” rather than “total number of homes”.

The same principles apply to labor/hiring pipelines.

Not to mention, the attempt at covering it up…know the phrase “the cover-up is worse than the crime?” this is one of them. What was a hiring cartel masquerading as a broad-based DEI initiative is now being used as a leading example of anti-diversity programs. Was it worth it? I think not.

The ATC shortage existed before the implementation of the 2014 BQ, and has continued to exist after said BQ was abolished in 2018. But four years is a long time for both people’s careers and hiring pipelines to be delayed, and adding another bottleneck as part of a hiring cartel was wrong.

In fact one of the first pieces I ever read about this wasn’t even from Trace, it was from Gary Leff who runs a pretty anodyne blog about aviation and travel called View From The Wing. He expressly also discussed how this wasn’t One True Cause of planes falling out of the sky.

In fact it should be packaged into criticism of the austerity aspect of it— among a shortage of ATC jobs (despite the need for more ATCs with rapidly growing airline travel), the federal government focused on the % share (diversity) rather than the total number (more ATCs) of employed minorities.

People trying to defend the FAA here are being patently ridiculous. Reasonable people aren’t saying this was one singular reason that we’ve had ATC shortages — not even some of the people who pushed to bring this scandal to light are saying that.

Just that it happened, and it was bad.

But why should have such a standard ever been established in the first place?

he's saying this because I keep replying to him with hard evidence of increased failure rates, but he's so set on a predetermined narrative that he doesn't want to interrupt himself to acknowledge that he's defending the indefensible

If you're "hardly one to defend DEI," then you certainly wouldn't pick an indefensible hiring scandal as your hill to stand on.

The FAA explicitly and knowingly lowered their standards in a safety-critical profession, using absurd means. That's bad.

www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-s...

Pretty much every single contractor I talk to is thrilled about road speeds improving so they can get more gigs and do more pick-ups/drop-offs in one day instead of paying themselves/their workers hourly wages to sit in traffic generating zero value.

RETVRN (but not actually)

Can’t believe this nation used to use Chinese logographs (less than 5% of the population)
bsky.app/profile/theo...

Seeing the Latin script-based Vietnamese alphabet everywhere in Hanoi is wild because it’s the closest thing for me as a Chinese speaker to the alternate reality where Latinxua Sinwenz succeeded

A Congestion Pricing Victory Lap for Paul Krugman - Streetsblog New York City It's too bad Paul Krugman has retired at the Times because he deserves to celebrate the start of congestion tolls on Jan. 5, says our columnist.

OK, I'll take it nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/12/16/a...

she let me me hit because I got a

I think quality merino is still amazing (especially for skiing and such). But HEATTECH is useful as a cheaper option for city-dwellers who need a simple thermal layer 😇

What’s impressive about them isn’t just their warmth but rather how thin *and* comparatively inexpensive they are. Cotton underlayers are thicker, merino underlayers are expensive.

For warmer weather underlayers, AIRism is also pretty great. There’s a slightly thicker “odor-resistant” one that I wear under my gym shorts

I see someone has discovered the HEATTECH line

Until February 1

Mission success 🫡

>just landed in LAX
>don’t want to stay with my sister in the Valley because it’s far from everything
>friend has a spare room in Silverlake because his roommate just moved out
>found a free Like New mattress in Westlake on Facebook Marketplace
>I’m about to do the funniest thing

Love the Salt Lake City airport because I get to practice and play on the grand piano every time when I’m waiting for my flight 😇

How brain-poisoned am I if my first reading of this disposable coffee cup lid was “Euclid”