Lord Ratner

I love how everyone on the left is now pretending like it wasn't a very big deal when these quick changes were made a year or two ago, but now it must be consuming their entire schedule to undo them. "What happened? They changed the acronym? "Yup" "Change it back." "Ok." You are absolutely intelligent enough to know that waiting for "all the big problems" to be solved before attacking the low-hanging fruit means nothing gets done. That's been the strategy in DC for decades, and now that someone isn't following "the rules," it's a full on panic.

So after watching that video, I'm only reinforced in my view that the airlines have become way too high-speed-abort-phobic. I actually had this problem in a 737 Max a couple weeks ago. At the 80 knot check my airspeed indicator read 65. I was shocked when the captain decided that we were going to continue, but our procedures, unlike a go around, stipulate that a the captain that has sole abort authority. We got lucky, the problem was gone while straight and level and the airspeed split never exceeded 20 knots. This Captain was in no way competent enough to handle a raw navaid approach with either the stick shaker or the overspeed clacker going off. Anyways, I started asking every captain I fly with what they intend to do in the event of unreliable airspeed at 80 knots, and shockingly about a third of them say that we will continue to take off. I'm sorry, but if you are more afraid of a aborting at 80 to 90 knots, stop flying airplanes. I think the real problem is that our airline has hammered a fear of high-speed aborts in every Sim for years now, without inserting the nuance. How long is the runway? What exactly is the malfunction? We have a caveat for aborting above 80 knots: "fear the aircraft will not fly." But in 7 years I've never heard a single discussion about what triggers that fear. Personally, having to fly an aircraft with no flight director or autopilot using pitch and power settings that we practice once every few years and *never* look at during normal approaches, is much scarier to me than stopping the plane on a runway when we have an automated braking system for aborts and we know there is enough runway before V1. This particular malfunction is just another example of an instance where I would rather perform a high-speed aboard below V1 then go airborne not knowing if I'm going to be able to see the instruments or speak to the other pilot in 30 seconds. Another Captain I flew with, Junior to me, had the best threshold I've heard yet for whether or not he will abort above 80 knots. "Am I going to declare an emergency for the malfunction? Then I'm aborting" Be safe out there

The idea is logical. Has been for years. The technology is what's ascendant. The writing has been on the wall since the DARPA Grand Challenge over 20 years ago. The United States should be running head first into autonomous war machines with the explicit goal of putting human pilots out of the job. In the meantime, until that technology is matured, we should be training the world's most competent and lethal military pilots. It seems like on one side we have pilot-leaders who will throw a wrench in anything that threatens their identity as a pilot, and on the other hand we have technologist-visionaries who are willing to diminish the capabilities of human pilots in an attempt to justify their robot weapons before they are up to snuff. Both are pretty gross, and both will get people killed unnecessarily.

There should not be circling at night at this point (for airlines). An rnav rnp approach can be built to any runway from any spot with all sorts of crazy turns. Both DC and LGA have them. But then you wouldn't be able to treat it like a visual maneuver and let helicopters fly right under the final approach course. This was about packing as much traffic into a shitty airport that should have been closed or fixed decades ago. That's it. Everybody already knows all of the things that shouldn't have happened because they knew about them while they were happening. Yes, ultimately the helicopter crew is at fault in this specific case. But a whole lot of people higher ranking and with way more experience than them tolerated the absolute dumpster fire of DCA because it was easier than taking a stand. Just more "good dudes" who aren't willing to tell their bosses no. Maybe this changes with Trump. He's certainly putting people in power who didn't spend the first 40 years of their adult lives being Yes men and yes women. But at this point we probably need to immolate 75-90% of the managerial class in both corporate America and the government. Somehow while we were all fat dumb and happy the sociopaths took everything over. On the corporate side that's going to happen with a revival of labor unions. On the government side it'll be with elections obviously. But I'm not sure individual events like this are going to be enough to turn the tide. Probably going to take something bigger to really flip the table.

Nostalgia. It was one of the best trolls ever, people here were losing their minds. Those were good times.

Didn't get enough of a response to your other account?

The problem has never been adhering to the grooming standards. The problem was the standards themselves. Beards can have standards. Mustaches too, without looking like a butthole brush. There are more ways to look professional than a high and tight. Set the rules to a reasonable level, then enforce.

If mode C altitude was incorrect then ads-b would have been incorrect as well in all likelihood. Just because an RA is inhibited below 1,000 ft doesn't mean that you can't look at the screen and see where the aircraft is. Everything that has mode C shows up on the screen. The helicopter showed up on the screen in the regional cockpit. But because the helicopter did not have a tcas system (or even just TAS), they had no display to look at, or they would have seen how close they were to the regional jet. Would it have stopped this crash? Who knows. What would have stopped this crash is if we didn't keep making exceptions to rules just because a certain airspace is "important." You would never see them flying helicopters this close to aircraft on final in places like Atlanta or Dallas or San Francisco. But because the congressmen want a short drive from the airport to their office, we just pretended for years like it would all be okay.

If those Israeli settlers agree with or would celebrate the rape and murder of Palestinian (or any) women and children in their homes, then yes, they should be disqualified.

Yes, and to really hammer the point home, any admission or evidence of support for an Islamic extreme ideology would bar entry to this new territory, just as it should to the United States. Which, in any honest sense of the conversation, means the Palestinians will not be returning to Gaza.

That was me being unclear. My bad. What I'm saying is that any plan to return the Palestinians in any meaningful number to Gaza invalidates any plan to rebuild it.

They should not have this option. It invalidates every other thing that you said. Human migration, willing and unwilling, is just a fact of History.

I'll say the thing no one wants to admit. There is no future for Gaza with 1.7 million Palestinians in it. Or likely even a couple hundred thousand. They need to be moved. They need to be somewhere where they are not surrounded by people they believe God himself wants them to slaughter. They should be entirely or mostly surrounded by people who they do not believe God himself wants them to slaughter. It will be another generation before Israel is stupid enough to allow the Palestinians in Gaza to work within their borders. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, that reality makes it untenable for the Palestinians to remain in Gaza. The Palestinians in Gaza should be provided land somewhere else, either in the West Bank with the rest of the Palestinians or somewhere else in the Arab world. They should be moved there respectfully but forcefully if necessary, and all humanitarian aid money that will be spent (and it will be in the tens of billions) should go towards building up this new area, big enough to actually support 1.7 million people, and not surrounded by people they hate. It is possible that Trump realizes this obvious truth, and has figured out that no one is going to stop him. I hope so.

Beat me to it!

Does it matter? They are a dependant state of the US. They want to act like otherwise, then a few weeks of 25% tariffs will remind them. Germany tried hitching their wagon to Russia, how'd that work out? The populations of the world need a come-to-Jesus moment. This appears to be it. Also, what help do we need from Canada?

Yeah dude, welcome to negotiations. Like I said early, your predictive track record ain't great, so let's re-engage when we have some results (or lack of) to discuss. It's been 2 weeks.

Correct. Unrelated mechanisms.

That's a small part of what I think his tactics are. You left out the many and varied ways that America has to exert pressure. Tariffs for example. Bombing the everlasting shit out of enemy infrastructure. I absolutely believe we would have put tariffs on Mexico and Canada if they didn't play along. Still might. That's not the end of the world for anybody, and Trump will look strong (to everyone except for the people who refuse to acknowledge him as anything other than the devil). You have to enter a negotiation knowing what winning looks like and what losing looks like. You also have to be willing to walk away. The trick is to come up with more than one definition of victory, especially since you don't enter the negotiation knowing exactly what the other side wants or needs. When you have multiple end states that you can consider victory, you can adapt based on your growing knowledge of what the other side of the table is after, what they're willing to lose, and what they can't afford to lose. It's dynamic, and the biggest problem people make when negotiating is acting as though the strategy is set before walking into the room. You've lost before you've begun that way. I don't know you, so obviously I don't know your disposition or negotiating ability. But this isn't a particularly clever or complicated one. Start by kicking the door in. "We're going to take over Gaza and do everything the Israelis have dreamed of for the last 60 years. BUT, just in case you thought I was giving Netanyahu and early Hanukkah gift, it's going to be American land, not Israeli Land." Now you've got every leader in the Middle East paying attention. First off, every single person with an IQ higher than a shoe size knows that removing the Palestinians from Gaza and dumping them somewhere else solves the Gaza problem forever. There's no easy way back in there, and the rest of the world will only pretend to care until the next trip to the grocery store or Trump's next press conference. The dirty little secret has always been that no one gives two flying fucks about Palestine, other than as a tool of leverage against the US and Israel. Now that half of the Middle East is trying to align with Israel against Iran, the Palestinians have far less support than they used to. As long as the Israelis or the Americans don't slaughter the Gazans, no one is going to go to war against us to defend their rights to live in Gaza. This is where you stay flexible. I suspect what he's trying to do is get Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia to sweep in and take over the management of Palestine. No one cares when Arab dictators kill Arab protesters; as long as it's not the Israelis policing things, and they won't have to if Saudi Arabia steps in, then a lot of the problems are once again solved. I mean he even said that Jordan and Egypt were on board. I don't believe that they are, I doubt they were even warned ahead of time, but now they have to pretend like they were in on some sort of planning for this or it's going to make them look like the president of the United States is just walking all over them. That's another key component of negotiating, when you say sensational shit, it's best to say something that the other side doesn't want to deny. Look at how Netanyahu responded. Now let's say, like you suggested, that they just call his bluff. Here come the tariffs. And we cut off aid to the Middle East, at least the countries that aren't playing along, and every single one of them requires us in some way. More so now than ever. All of a sudden, just like Canada and Mexico, we've got common ground and a quickly resolved misunderstanding. Or maybe they call that bluff too, okay, throw another pressure point or two out there. The more of them that are rejected, the more justification you build for doing exactly what Trump said, relocate the Palestinians in Gaza (I suggest moving them all to the West Bank and creating a unified Palestine that the world can then ignore forever), and turn Gaza over to Israel. That's what should happen anyways. But the point is, there are a shitload of outcomes that Trump can consider a victory, because the status quo is so unfathomably catastrophic. It's almost difficult to imagine how the situation would be worse, other than of course by having hundreds or thousands of American troops dying in Gaza. But you've got your head in the sand if you think that's going to happen. It's a hell of a stick to wave around though.

That was my first thought when I saw the video. I don't see how a lighting effect could do that, since light isn't affected by airspeed. That looks like a trail of flames. That was really the only two things I took away from the video: it looks like it's on fire, and holy shit that thing is going into the ground fast. Sad

Ma' Deuce has entered the chat

There is an infinitesimal chance that we know what was actually agreed to, or will any time soon. People are ignoring everything Donald Trump has said over the years about how he negotiates. This is one of the reasons why he does so well in the Middle East, because he understands the concept of "saving face." Anyone who's done Air Force pme should be familiar with the difference between high context and low context interactions. America is a traditionally low context society existing in a world of high context allies and enemies. I tried using this negotiating tactic in our Union during the final weeks of signing the 2023 collective bargaining agreement. Our board of directors was, to put it lightly, flailing. I convinced them to put forward a list of demands that would immediately end negotiations and be pushed to the membership. I think it had eight or 10 things on it. The idea, when I pitched it to them, was that they should anticipate getting three to five things on the list and calling it a day. They could brag to the pilots that they secured more that gains, and the company could go back to their board of directors and show how even though the union had a list of 10 demands, the company resisted over half of them. Of course, pilots being the absolute dog shit negotiators that they are, half the board decided that they could only declare victory if they got everything on the list, and the other half panicked and decided that if they didn't abandon the list entirely they were going to somehow get no contract at all. So the plan only ended up barely working thanks to United Airlines. But the concept is the same. Give everyone at the table something to go back and brag to their people about.

Sure they were. Doing a lot of heavy lifting with "to some extent." Half of the problems between the United States and every country on the planet is that nobody is doing what they said they would do. NATO it's exhibit A. If the only thing Donald Trump accomplishes while in office is to make every country we deal with actually start living up to their word, he will be the single most successful president of all time. But I suspect that is an unreachable bar. Either way, as more of his "crazy" posturing yields results, we're going to see a whole lot of shifting from "What Donald Trump is doing is dangerous to the stability of our country and the world community" to "Actually everything that Donald Trump is doing was really happening under the Democrats, he's just taking credit." That's why the American people reelected the insane orange clown after getting rid of him in 2020... Because the Democrats were already mostly doing it anyways. Uh huh.

I don't agree with this logic, but it depends on the use case. When you start getting into these foldable super-compact guns, the idea in most cases is that you are either carrying it in a backpack, making it the "truck gun," or storing is somewhere with limited space. That's the exact scenario where you want to be able to fire the gun folded, as you are either struggling to get it out of the backpack or in the confines of a vehicle compartment. You might only have time to get your hands on the gun and point it in the right-ish direction. Obviously you would always prefer to have the stock extended, properly shouldered, and be staring down the sights. But that's not really how most self-defense shootings happen. Does that make it necessary? Obviously not. But if you're going to put a folding stock on a gun, then the ability to shoot it while folded is a pretty huge distinction in capability. A very realistic scenario is waking up to the intruder entering your room. The Sig Rattler fires great while folded. 300BO doesn't kick hard (especially subs) and it's already pretty heavy.

Hey bud, you've been wrong on pretty much everything. So maybe take a backseat and see if it pans out. We've been sitting around for decades watching The Establishment fail to get anything done but insist that theirs was the only way of doing things. Now someone comes in and "revolutionizes" politics by doing nothing more dan saying what everybody knows but won't admit, and actually acting like the most powerful country in the history of the planet, and everybody is stumbling over their keyboards to tell us how this couldn't possibly work. So far it's working. Let the man cook.