While we’re still remembering D-Day and the sacrifices that brought down the Nazi regime, let’s not forget that tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the publication of 1984. “Whoever controls the past, controls the future.”
Uber’s Path of Destruction Travis Kalanick wasn’t replaced as CEO because of sexual harrassment. He was replaced because he wasn’t getting to IPO fast enough, and the board is worried everybody will realize they have no business model, and the whole thing will collapse before they can unload their shares on the clueless.
Every day brings fresh outrages. But, yesterday saw the spectacle of Trump using childish insults against Special Counsel Mueller and Speaker Pelosi against a backdrop of the graves of fallen US military personnel, and keeping nonagenerian veterans waiting while he vented his spleen. How long can the GOP continue to tolerate this disgusting man as their leader?
Every day brings fresh outrages. But, yesterday saw the spectacle of Trump using childish insults against Special Counsel Mueller and Speaker Pelosi against a backdrop of the graves of fallen US military personnel, and keeping nonagenerian veterans waiting while he vented his spleen. How long can the GOP continue to tolerate this disgusting man as their leader?
They will put up with it as long as they are running the table and getting the stuff they wanted done – done. It’s alot: 2 new conservative Supreme Court justices, confirmation of many low value ideologues to federal courts across the country, unilateral abrogation of treaties negotiated by black president, roll back of clean air and clean water regulations, and a tax cut where about 84% of the benefits go to top 1%, and there’s more.
As long as they’re getting their agenda passed, they’ll put up with a grifter like Trump.
How long can the GOP continue to tolerate this disgusting man as their leader?
For as long as he remains cruelly racist. Did you see the other day where the Trump administration said they were cutting funding so the detained migrant kids would no longer be allowed to play soccer? That’s the good stuff for the base.
@Kathy: Meh, the last class I had that was reading 1984 wrote essays on the transformational power of love as evidenced by the relationship between Winston and Julia.
I was just a visiting teacher that day and I just asked “you guys really don’t get this do you?”
At the Fairfax campaign stop, Warren tells some thousand people who have shown up to hear her, a crowd visibly dominated by women, that her lifelong dream was to be a teacher—a dream she lived up to as a special education teacher and a law professor before becoming a United States senator and, now, a candidate for president. This is something some of the Warren think pieces tend to miss: Warren is an extraordinary educator. We misread her as a detached wonk when she’s actually a brilliant translator of complex ideas. Watching her on the stump, you come to realize that it’s not so much the fact that she knows a lot of technical and complicated things that truly excites her fans, it’s that she can explain them to you.
@Teve: “… it’s not so much the fact that she knows a lot of technical and complicated things that truly excites her fans, it’s that she can explain them to you.” Exactly. A lot of prognosticators (guessers) think Warren will fade while Harris moves up. I’m not so sure. Reactions I’ve seen at her campaign stops make me think she can and will continue to excite voters.
I tend to rate some novels and stories by how I react to them. One category, loosely, is “so what?” Literally, I think “so what?” when I’m finished. Another is “meh.” Both types, again loosely, can be seen long before the story ends.
But there’s the occasional novel, more rarely a short story or novella, that’s really interesting, even if it meanders over plot types and events, and really riveting, but in the end makes me go “meh.”
The latest such is Cliff Simak’s “Highway of Eternity.”
I didn’t mind that the story starts with refugees fleeing, then morphs into a quest-adventure-exploration story, then into a weird alien tech story, then into a quasi-philosophical funk type story, or even when the mighty enemies that made the refugees flee are pushed into the background. But the reveal/reversal at the end made me go “meh.”
But I wound up glad I read it. Why? Well, minor spoilers follow. there’s a glimpse of the far future of humanity, and it’s a bunch of people rather indifferent to their surroundings, talking nonstop about all and sundry, while devoted humanoid robots take care of them.
Earlier, a different thread got sidetracked with a discussion about carburetors, and it started me musing about the changes in my 58 year lifetime and how some things have gotten significantly better, some things have gotten worse and some things haven’t changed nearly as much as people think. Here’s one in each category.
Clearly gotten better: Cars. Mileage, pollution but especially reliability. I’m having trouble even remembering the last time I brought a car in for a non-scheduled maintenance issue. When I was first driving keeping a car in running condition meant monthly, if not weekly, adjustments and maintenance and frequent replacements of major parts like transmissions, clutches, fuel pumps, radiators, mufflers and tires (basic tires had lifetimes of 10 or 12K miles). It was normal to change your oil every 2500 miles and add a quart or two in between. And don’t even get me going on the American cars of the 70’s and 80’s when Harvard MBA’s convinced Detroit that reliability was a liability. Those cars were uniformly rusting PoS, with poor design, constant breakdowns, and knobs and trim falling off in your hands. Just garbage.
Clearly gotten worse: American healthcare administration. Oh, not healthcare in and of itself, which has gotten marginally better on a very slow trend. (Nothing in my lifetime compares with the impact of antibiotics, vaccines, anesthesia or X-rays.) But the administration has become a nightmare of competing insurance, endless forms, constant battles over coverage where one slip-up can drive a whole family literally into bankruptcy.
About the same: American Transportation. I flew on a jet when I was 2 years old and they are about the same from a passenger point of view. Major cities have subway and commuter rail in about the same proportion as before. (Okay, Washington DC didn’t get their Metro until the mid 70’s). The Interstate highway system was close to complete when I was born. Speeds, convenience and traffic jams seem to be roughly the same.
I flew on a jet when I was 2 years old and they are about the same from a passenger point of view.
I find this puzzling.
If we restrict ourselves to economy, aka coach, there have been plenty of changes for the worse, vs one for the better.
Better: fares are lower
Worse:
For most travel, in narrow body aircraft, the amount of seats per row and seat width haven’t really varied. But there’s less legroom as airlines have bunched seats closer together to accommodate more seats. Airlines have also switched to slimline seats, which means seats with less padding, in order to limit the amount of lost legroom. All seats also recline less than they used to.
Then there are fees. these days even “full service” airlines charge fees for just about everything other than a seat and breathable air. There are baggage fees for checked bags (and for carry on bags at Spirit), fees for picking a seat in about 3/4ths of the plane (excluding first and business classes, for now), change fees (these always existed, but are now higher), and surcharges for fuel and other things. One feel nickel-and-dimed to death.
Add the lack of complimentary meals on most flights on most airlines.
First and business class, on international flights at least, has gotten a lot better, extravagantly so. I read trip reviews of such premium seats. Consider on a 777 with ten abreast seating in coach (3-4-3), the business class cabin has four seats per row (1-2-1), and most reviewers consider configurations with 6 seats (2-2-2) as too confining and non-competitive.
Want proof that the stock market can be a scam? 27 Wall Street analysts rate Uber. 21 have a buy rating, and six are neutral. Not a single one has a sell rating. For a company that loses $3.5 B per year, has a negative cash flow, has no workable business plan, and a 76 billion dollar market cap.
@Kathy: that’s an inevitability when you have a product that’s a pure commodity and no company can succeed at product differentiation. When the purchasing decision is made entirely on price, every other attribute suffers.
President Trump on #DDay75thAnniversary: “We read about it all our lives — Normandy — and there are those who say it was the most important ever. Not just at that time, but ever. And to be a part of it, and to have number 75, 75 years, was very, very special.”
There’s that. Airlines don’t charge fares based on cost, but on demand (that’s why last-minute tickets incinerate your wallet*). But costs do matter. If people want lower prices, and airlines like Southwest, Spirit, Frontier, etc. offer them, then the full service airlines have to offer lower prices as well, and to do that they have to lower their costs at least as far as coach goes, and/or charge fees to make up the difference.
@Kathy: While everything you said is true, I was really talking about fundamental changes. The switch from propeller to jet was pretty huge. Jets flew almost twice as fast and could go significantly farther. The switch from ships to planes was even more dramatic. In contrast, there is almost no difference in speed between that 1962 flight from Chicago to Reland and one today.
Th biggest passenger difference I can think of is the use of small jets on short flights versus unpressurized prop planes. The ability to get above weather is a huge benefit.
Everyone write this date down because I’m about to defend Trump. It seems that people are making fun of him because he said that the “moon is part of mars”. And while it is true that he actually said that, he did so as part of a tweet about NASA’s plan for a return to the moon vs. his desire to have a more ambitious Mars mission. In that context it is clear that he is talking about some Mars scenarios that involve putting a base on the moon and launching from there.
Or seems to be. There has been a small change. Jets today fly a bit slower than in the past. Not much slower, but slower. It improves fuel efficiency, or so it’s claimed.
Perhaps the Concorde wouldn’t have failed if supersonic overland flights had been allowed. Now, no way Air France or British Airways would have been allowed to sell tickets from NYC to LA, but they could have done so by wet-leasing the plane to a domestic US carrier. give the 1% a taste of transcontinental travel at Mach 2.2, and they might just become addicted. NY to LA, BTW, is just a bit shorter than NY to London.
Currently it takes about 6 hours. Concorde would have cut that down to perhaps under 3. But let’s say 3 hours. That’s the time difference between coasts. So if you left NYC at 1 pm, you’d arrive to LA at 1 pm (all times local).
Branniff (remember them?) once wet-leased a BA Concorde. They flew it on a very odd route within the US, but not at supersonic speeds.
The latest such is Cliff Simak’s “Highway of Eternity.”
I’m afraid I had that reaction to pretty much every Simak novel I ever read. There would be interesting situations, and interesting discussions, but in the end I couldn’t figure out why I had bothered reading it.
1984 is useful as a metaphor for what people mentally do to themselves right now in the name of partisanship, but in terms of a literal depiction of a future dystopia, Brave New World’s World State is far more likely than 1984’s IngSoc.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.
Or seems to be. There has been a small change. Jets today fly a bit slower than in the past. Not much slower, but slower. It improves fuel efficiency, or so it’s claimed.
Aerodynamic drag is proportional to the square of velocity. Going twice as fast uses four times as much fuel.
Most people, when buying a plane ticket, put the departure and arrival points and date into a search engine and then pick whatever the lowest fare that comes up, ignoring any other factor.
People may say they want better in flight accommodations, but their actual purchasing patterns suggest that most of them care exclusively about cost.
Most people, when buying a plane ticket, put the departure and arrival points and date into a search engine and then pick whatever the lowest fare that comes up, ignoring any other factor.
I know. that’s also why so many are unprepared to pay baggage fees.
I developed the habit of looking, and looking, and looking some more when booking a trip. In addition to searching for days, I do look at what fees may apply. it’s not easy or obvious, but with most airlines you can find out before booking.
@Kathy:
I’m not just talking about fees. I mean people who will spend thousands of dollars on a vacation and then take some crazy four leg plane journey to get there because it’s $50 cheaper.
@Stormy Dragon: I will go to great lengths to avoid a connection. I would rather leave at 5:00am and all that means as far as how early I have to get up rather than take a connecting flight.
Funny story. Back in 2006, being a newbie to online travel sites, I kept looking and looking for a flight to Orlando. Aeromexico had a nonstop, but it was like $150 more than a connecting one on United through Houston.
I kept looking for several more days (it was a novelty back then, so I played on the Expedia site a lot), and eventually there appeared a nonstop flight with Delta for just $10 more than the one on United. I booked it.
The funny thing is that it was the Aeromexico flight, but sold by Delta. I checked the Aeromexico flight sold by Aeromexico, and it was still way too expensive. Weird.
In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence.
But hundreds of pages of government documents — which special counsel Robert Mueller possessed since 2018 — describe Kilimnik as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters.
Why Mueller’s team omitted that part of the Kilimnik narrative from its report and related court filings is not known. But the revelation of it comes as the accuracy of Mueller’s Russia conclusions face increased scrutiny.
[…]
Kilimnik was not just any run-of-the-mill source, either.
He interacted with the chief political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, sometimes meeting several times a week to provide information on the Ukraine government. He relayed messages back to Ukraine’s leaders and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words, the memos show.
The FBI knew all of this, well before the Mueller investigation concluded.
Alan Purcell, the chief political officer at the Kiev embassy from 2014 to 2017, told FBI agents that State officials, including senior embassy officials Alexander Kasanof and Eric Schultz, deemed Kilimnik to be such a valuable asset that they kept his name out of cables for fear he would be compromised by leaks to WikiLeaks.
[…]
Three sources with direct knowledge of the inner workings of Mueller’s office confirmed to me that the special prosecutor’s team had all of the FBI interviews with State officials, as well as Kilimnik’s intelligence reports to the U.S. Embassy, well before they portrayed him as a Russian sympathizer tied to Moscow intelligence or charged Kilimnik with participating with Manafort in a scheme to obstruct the Russia investigation.
Kasanof’s and Purcell’s interviews are corroborated by scores of State Department emails I reviewed that contain regular intelligence from Kilimnik on happenings inside the Yanukovych administration, the Crimea conflict and Ukrainian and Russian politics. For example, the memos show Kilimnik provided real-time intelligence on everything from whose star in the administration was rising or falling to efforts at stuffing ballot boxes in Ukrainian elections.
Those emails raise further doubt about the Mueller report’s portrayal of Kilimnik as a Russian agent. They show Kilimnik was allowed to visit the United States twice in 2016 to meet with State officials, a clear sign he wasn’t flagged in visa databases as a foreign intelligence threat.
The emails also show how misleading, by omission, the Mueller report’s public portrayal of Kilimnik turns out to be.
For instance, the report makes a big deal about Kilimnik’s meeting with Manafort in August 2016 at the Trump Tower in New York.
By that time, Manafort had served as Trump’s campaign chairman for several months but was about to resign because of a growing controversy about the millions of dollars Manafort accepted as a foreign lobbyist for Yanukovych’s party.
Specifically, the Mueller report flagged Kilimnik’s delivery of a peace plan to the Trump campaign for settling the two-year-old Crimea conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel’s Office was a ‘backdoor’ way for Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine,” the Mueller report stated.
But State emails showed Kilimnik first delivered a version of his peace plan in May 2016 to the Obama administration during a visit to Washington. Kasanof, his former handler at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, had been promoted to a top policy position at State, and the two met for dinner on May 5, 2016.
[…]
So Kilimnik’s delivery of the peace plan to the Trump campaign in August 2016 was flagged by Mueller as potentially nefarious, but its earlier delivery to the Obama administration wasn’t mentioned. That’s what many in the intelligence world might call “deception by omission.”
…………………………….
Mueller hasn’t changed his dishonest ways since Boston.
John F. Solomon is an American media executive and political commentator. He is currently executive vice president of digital video and an opinion contributor for The Hill.[1] He was formerly employed as an executive and editor-in-chief at The Washington Times.[2] He is known for biased reporting in favor of conservatives, and of repeatedly manufacturing faux scandals.
This is at least the second time he has based a comment on the “reporting” of John Solomon on this site, as he sure does love the guy. G man…keep screwing that chicken, no judgement from me as to what you like to do with your free time.
The question I have for you is do you know that even the people who frequently check out his stories are aware that he is clearly biased, I ask because I am not sure you are aware of this fact. So no…not asking a rhetorical question.
@Inhumans99: Take it easy on G, this is the second post this month that didn’t mention Michael Reynolds either in passing or as a focus of the comment. That’s growth (and maybe he’s evicted his “tenant.”)
If this holds up to scrutiny, I think it likely shows that polices are less likely to make bigoted and violent posts on Facebook than the average American (weighted by gender to match the police being mostly male).
I applaud the police departments of America for being less worse than the population as a whole!
Independence Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday June 6, 1787
IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE
Mr. READ. Too much attachment is betrayed to the State Governts. We must look beyond their continuance. A national Govt. must soon of necessity swallow all of them up. They will soon be reduced to the mere office of electing the National Senate. He was agst. patching up the old federal System: he hoped the idea wd. be dismissed. It would be like putting new cloth on an old garment. The confederation was founded on temporary principles. It cannot last: it cannot be amended. If we do not establish a good Govt. on new principles, we must either go to ruin, or have the work to do over again. The people at large are wrongly suspected of being averse to a Genl. Govt. The aversion lies among interested men who possess their confidence.
Mr. PINKNEY according to notice moved to reconsider the clause respecting the negative on State laws, which was agreed to and tomorrow for fixed the purpose.
The Clause providing for ye. appointment of the 2d. branch of the national Legislature, having lain blank since the last vote on the mode of electing it, to wit, by the 1st. branch, Mr. DICKENSON now moved “that the members of the 2d. branch ought to be chosen by the individual Legislatures.”
Mr. SHARMAN seconded the motion; observing that the particular States would thus become interested in supporting the national Governmt. and that a due harmony between the two Governments would be maintained. He admitted that the two ought to have separate and distinct jurisdictions, but that they ought to have a mutual interest in supporting each other.
Mr. PINKNEY. If the small States should be allowed one Senator only, the number will be too great, there will be 80 at least.
Mr. DICKENSON had two reasons for his motion. 1. because the sense of the States would be better collected through their Governments; than immediately from the people at large; 2. because he wished the Senate to consist of the most distinguished characters, distinguished for their rank in life and their weight of property, and bearing as strong a likeness to the British House of Lords as possible; and he thought such characters more likely to be selected by the State Legislatures, than in any other mode. The greatness of the number was no objection with him. He hoped there would be 80 and twice 80. of them. If their number should be small, the popular branch could not be balanced by them. The legislature of a numerous people ought to be a numerous body.
Mr. WILLIAMSON, preferred a small number of Senators, but wished that each State should have at least one. He suggested 25 as a convenient number. The different modes of representation in the different branches, will serve as a mutual check.
Mr. BUTLER was anxious to know the ratio of representation before he gave any opinion.
Mr. WILSON. If we are to establish a national Government, that Government ought to flow from the people at large. If one branch of it should be chosen by the Legislatures, and the other by the people, the two branches will rest on different foundations, and dissensions will naturally arise between them. He wished the Senate to be elected by the people as well as the other branch, and the people might be divided into proper districts for the purpose & moved to postpone the motion of Mr. Dickenson, in order to take up one of that import.
Mr. MORRIS 2ded. him.
Mr. READ proposed “that the Senate should be appointed by the Executive Magistrate out of a proper number of persons to be nominated by the individual legislatures.” He said he thought it his duty, to speak his mind frankly. Gentlemen he hoped would not be alarmed at the idea. Nothing short of this approach towards a proper model of Government would answer the purpose, and he thought it best to come directly to the point at once. -His proposition was not seconded nor supported.
Mr. DICKENSON. The preservation of the States in a certain degree of agency is indispensable. It will produce that collision between the different authorities which should be wished for in order to check each other. To attempt to abolish the States altogether, would degrade the Councils of our Country, would be impracticable, would be ruinous. He compared the proposed National System to the Solar System, in which the States were the planets, and ought to be left to move freely in their proper orbits. The Gentleman from Pa. [Mr. Wilson] wished he said to extinguish these planets. If the State Governments were excluded from all agency in the national one, and all power drawn from the people at large, the consequence would be that the national Govt. would move in the same direction as the State Govts. now do, and would run into all the same mischiefs. The reform would only unite the 13 small streams into one great current pursuing the same course without any opposition whatever. He adhered to the opinion that the Senate ought to be composed of a large number, and that their influence from family weight & other causes would be increased thereby. He did not admit that the Tribunes lost their weight in proportion as their no. was augmented and gave a historical sketch of this institution. If the reasoning of [Mr. Madison] was good it would prove that the number of the Senate ought to be reduced below ten, the highest no. of the Tribunitial corps.
Mr. WILSON. The subject it must be owned is surrounded with doubts and difficulties. But we must surmount them. The British Governmt. cannot be our model. We have no materials for a similar one. Our manners, our laws, the abolition of entails and of primogeniture, the whole genius of the people, are opposed to it. He did not see the danger of the States being devoured by the Nationl. Govt. On the contrary, he wished to keep them from devouring the national Govt. He was not however for extinguishing these planets as was supposed by Mr. D.-neither did he on the other hand, believe that they would warm or enlighten the Sun. Within their proper orbits they must still be suffered to act for subordinate purposes for which their existence is made essential by the great extent of our Country. He could not comprehend in what manner the landed interest wd. be rendered less predominant in the Senate, by an election through the medium of the Legislatures then by the people themselves. If the Legislatures, as was now complained, sacrificed the commercial to the landed interest, what reason was there to expect such a choice from them as would defeat their own views. He was for an election by the people in large districts which wd. be most likely to obtain men of intelligence & uprightness; subdividing the districts only for the accomodation of voters.
While we’re still remembering D-Day and the sacrifices that brought down the Nazi regime, let’s not forget that tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the publication of 1984. “Whoever controls the past, controls the future.”
@SC_Birdflyte:
Thanks for reminding me of the upcoming publication anniversary.
Uber’s Path of Destruction Travis Kalanick wasn’t replaced as CEO because of sexual harrassment. He was replaced because he wasn’t getting to IPO fast enough, and the board is worried everybody will realize they have no business model, and the whole thing will collapse before they can unload their shares on the clueless.
@SC_Birdflyte:
1984 should be required reading at every school in the planet, with a strong warning that it’s not meant to be used as a how-to manual.
Every day brings fresh outrages. But, yesterday saw the spectacle of Trump using childish insults against Special Counsel Mueller and Speaker Pelosi against a backdrop of the graves of fallen US military personnel, and keeping nonagenerian veterans waiting while he vented his spleen. How long can the GOP continue to tolerate this disgusting man as their leader?
@Montanareddog:
They will put up with it as long as they are running the table and getting the stuff they wanted done – done. It’s alot: 2 new conservative Supreme Court justices, confirmation of many low value ideologues to federal courts across the country, unilateral abrogation of treaties negotiated by black president, roll back of clean air and clean water regulations, and a tax cut where about 84% of the benefits go to top 1%, and there’s more.
As long as they’re getting their agenda passed, they’ll put up with a grifter like Trump.
@Montanareddog:
For as long as he remains cruelly racist. Did you see the other day where the Trump administration said they were cutting funding so the detained migrant kids would no longer be allowed to play soccer? That’s the good stuff for the base.
@Kathy: Meh, the last class I had that was reading 1984 wrote essays on the transformational power of love as evidenced by the relationship between Winston and Julia.
I was just a visiting teacher that day and I just asked “you guys really don’t get this do you?”
Elizabeth Warren and the women who love her
@Teve: “… it’s not so much the fact that she knows a lot of technical and complicated things that truly excites her fans, it’s that she can explain them to you.” Exactly. A lot of prognosticators (guessers) think Warren will fade while Harris moves up. I’m not so sure. Reactions I’ve seen at her campaign stops make me think she can and will continue to excite voters.
I tend to rate some novels and stories by how I react to them. One category, loosely, is “so what?” Literally, I think “so what?” when I’m finished. Another is “meh.” Both types, again loosely, can be seen long before the story ends.
But there’s the occasional novel, more rarely a short story or novella, that’s really interesting, even if it meanders over plot types and events, and really riveting, but in the end makes me go “meh.”
The latest such is Cliff Simak’s “Highway of Eternity.”
I didn’t mind that the story starts with refugees fleeing, then morphs into a quest-adventure-exploration story, then into a weird alien tech story, then into a quasi-philosophical funk type story, or even when the mighty enemies that made the refugees flee are pushed into the background. But the reveal/reversal at the end made me go “meh.”
But I wound up glad I read it. Why? Well, minor spoilers follow. there’s a glimpse of the far future of humanity, and it’s a bunch of people rather indifferent to their surroundings, talking nonstop about all and sundry, while devoted humanoid robots take care of them.
Earlier, a different thread got sidetracked with a discussion about carburetors, and it started me musing about the changes in my 58 year lifetime and how some things have gotten significantly better, some things have gotten worse and some things haven’t changed nearly as much as people think. Here’s one in each category.
Clearly gotten better: Cars. Mileage, pollution but especially reliability. I’m having trouble even remembering the last time I brought a car in for a non-scheduled maintenance issue. When I was first driving keeping a car in running condition meant monthly, if not weekly, adjustments and maintenance and frequent replacements of major parts like transmissions, clutches, fuel pumps, radiators, mufflers and tires (basic tires had lifetimes of 10 or 12K miles). It was normal to change your oil every 2500 miles and add a quart or two in between. And don’t even get me going on the American cars of the 70’s and 80’s when Harvard MBA’s convinced Detroit that reliability was a liability. Those cars were uniformly rusting PoS, with poor design, constant breakdowns, and knobs and trim falling off in your hands. Just garbage.
Clearly gotten worse: American healthcare administration. Oh, not healthcare in and of itself, which has gotten marginally better on a very slow trend. (Nothing in my lifetime compares with the impact of antibiotics, vaccines, anesthesia or X-rays.) But the administration has become a nightmare of competing insurance, endless forms, constant battles over coverage where one slip-up can drive a whole family literally into bankruptcy.
About the same: American Transportation. I flew on a jet when I was 2 years old and they are about the same from a passenger point of view. Major cities have subway and commuter rail in about the same proportion as before. (Okay, Washington DC didn’t get their Metro until the mid 70’s). The Interstate highway system was close to complete when I was born. Speeds, convenience and traffic jams seem to be roughly the same.
@MarkedMan:
I find this puzzling.
If we restrict ourselves to economy, aka coach, there have been plenty of changes for the worse, vs one for the better.
Better: fares are lower
Worse:
For most travel, in narrow body aircraft, the amount of seats per row and seat width haven’t really varied. But there’s less legroom as airlines have bunched seats closer together to accommodate more seats. Airlines have also switched to slimline seats, which means seats with less padding, in order to limit the amount of lost legroom. All seats also recline less than they used to.
Then there are fees. these days even “full service” airlines charge fees for just about everything other than a seat and breathable air. There are baggage fees for checked bags (and for carry on bags at Spirit), fees for picking a seat in about 3/4ths of the plane (excluding first and business classes, for now), change fees (these always existed, but are now higher), and surcharges for fuel and other things. One feel nickel-and-dimed to death.
Add the lack of complimentary meals on most flights on most airlines.
First and business class, on international flights at least, has gotten a lot better, extravagantly so. I read trip reviews of such premium seats. Consider on a 777 with ten abreast seating in coach (3-4-3), the business class cabin has four seats per row (1-2-1), and most reviewers consider configurations with 6 seats (2-2-2) as too confining and non-competitive.
Want proof that the stock market can be a scam? 27 Wall Street analysts rate Uber. 21 have a buy rating, and six are neutral. Not a single one has a sell rating. For a company that loses $3.5 B per year, has a negative cash flow, has no workable business plan, and a 76 billion dollar market cap.
@Kathy: that’s an inevitability when you have a product that’s a pure commodity and no company can succeed at product differentiation. When the purchasing decision is made entirely on price, every other attribute suffers.
@Teve:
There’s that. Airlines don’t charge fares based on cost, but on demand (that’s why last-minute tickets incinerate your wallet*). But costs do matter. If people want lower prices, and airlines like Southwest, Spirit, Frontier, etc. offer them, then the full service airlines have to offer lower prices as well, and to do that they have to lower their costs at least as far as coach goes, and/or charge fees to make up the difference.
@Kathy: While everything you said is true, I was really talking about fundamental changes. The switch from propeller to jet was pretty huge. Jets flew almost twice as fast and could go significantly farther. The switch from ships to planes was even more dramatic. In contrast, there is almost no difference in speed between that 1962 flight from Chicago to Reland and one today.
Th biggest passenger difference I can think of is the use of small jets on short flights versus unpressurized prop planes. The ability to get above weather is a huge benefit.
@Teve: Was he ad-libbing or are our tax dollars being spent writing that drek? Yow!
Everyone write this date down because I’m about to defend Trump. It seems that people are making fun of him because he said that the “moon is part of mars”. And while it is true that he actually said that, he did so as part of a tweet about NASA’s plan for a return to the moon vs. his desire to have a more ambitious Mars mission. In that context it is clear that he is talking about some Mars scenarios that involve putting a base on the moon and launching from there.
@MarkedMan:
Oh, ok. That is the case.
Or seems to be. There has been a small change. Jets today fly a bit slower than in the past. Not much slower, but slower. It improves fuel efficiency, or so it’s claimed.
Perhaps the Concorde wouldn’t have failed if supersonic overland flights had been allowed. Now, no way Air France or British Airways would have been allowed to sell tickets from NYC to LA, but they could have done so by wet-leasing the plane to a domestic US carrier. give the 1% a taste of transcontinental travel at Mach 2.2, and they might just become addicted. NY to LA, BTW, is just a bit shorter than NY to London.
Currently it takes about 6 hours. Concorde would have cut that down to perhaps under 3. But let’s say 3 hours. That’s the time difference between coasts. So if you left NYC at 1 pm, you’d arrive to LA at 1 pm (all times local).
Branniff (remember them?) once wet-leased a BA Concorde. They flew it on a very odd route within the US, but not at supersonic speeds.
@Kathy:
I’m afraid I had that reaction to pretty much every Simak novel I ever read. There would be interesting situations, and interesting discussions, but in the end I couldn’t figure out why I had bothered reading it.
@DrDaveT:
I haven’t read much by him. I recall really liking Waystation, but I was about 15 when I read it.
@Montanareddog:
Probably about 2 or 6 years, barring death or impeachment.
Tryouts for the next disgusting man will start in about 4 years. Maybe they will shake things up and go with a disgusting woman.
Hot Take:
1984 is useful as a metaphor for what people mentally do to themselves right now in the name of partisanship, but in terms of a literal depiction of a future dystopia, Brave New World’s World State is far more likely than 1984’s IngSoc.
— Neil Postman
Double Hot Take:
Brazil is to 1984 as Demolition Man is to Brave New World
@Kathy:
Aerodynamic drag is proportional to the square of velocity. Going twice as fast uses four times as much fuel.
@Kathy:
Most people, when buying a plane ticket, put the departure and arrival points and date into a search engine and then pick whatever the lowest fare that comes up, ignoring any other factor.
People may say they want better in flight accommodations, but their actual purchasing patterns suggest that most of them care exclusively about cost.
@Stormy Dragon:
I know. that’s also why so many are unprepared to pay baggage fees.
I developed the habit of looking, and looking, and looking some more when booking a trip. In addition to searching for days, I do look at what fees may apply. it’s not easy or obvious, but with most airlines you can find out before booking.
we already knew the Trump administration was terrible for farmers, now the tariffs are hitting manufacturing hard.
@Kathy:
I’m not just talking about fees. I mean people who will spend thousands of dollars on a vacation and then take some crazy four leg plane journey to get there because it’s $50 cheaper.
@Stormy Dragon: I will go to great lengths to avoid a connection. I would rather leave at 5:00am and all that means as far as how early I have to get up rather than take a connecting flight.
@Stormy Dragon:
Funny story. Back in 2006, being a newbie to online travel sites, I kept looking and looking for a flight to Orlando. Aeromexico had a nonstop, but it was like $150 more than a connecting one on United through Houston.
I kept looking for several more days (it was a novelty back then, so I played on the Expedia site a lot), and eventually there appeared a nonstop flight with Delta for just $10 more than the one on United. I booked it.
The funny thing is that it was the Aeromexico flight, but sold by Delta. I checked the Aeromexico flight sold by Aeromexico, and it was still way too expensive. Weird.
New York Times says Trump just cancelled the tariffs on Mexico. The Trump modus operandi: create a crisis, cancel the crisis, claim victory.
@Teve:
For now.
We still have to hear from Presidents Hannity and Ingraham.
What won’t change is El Peje sold his soul, if any, to El Cheeto. It seems fitting, though no less disgraceful for all that.
St Mueller strikes again.
In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence.
But hundreds of pages of government documents — which special counsel Robert Mueller possessed since 2018 — describe Kilimnik as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters.
Why Mueller’s team omitted that part of the Kilimnik narrative from its report and related court filings is not known. But the revelation of it comes as the accuracy of Mueller’s Russia conclusions face increased scrutiny.
[…]
Kilimnik was not just any run-of-the-mill source, either.
He interacted with the chief political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, sometimes meeting several times a week to provide information on the Ukraine government. He relayed messages back to Ukraine’s leaders and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words, the memos show.
The FBI knew all of this, well before the Mueller investigation concluded.
Alan Purcell, the chief political officer at the Kiev embassy from 2014 to 2017, told FBI agents that State officials, including senior embassy officials Alexander Kasanof and Eric Schultz, deemed Kilimnik to be such a valuable asset that they kept his name out of cables for fear he would be compromised by leaks to WikiLeaks.
[…]
Three sources with direct knowledge of the inner workings of Mueller’s office confirmed to me that the special prosecutor’s team had all of the FBI interviews with State officials, as well as Kilimnik’s intelligence reports to the U.S. Embassy, well before they portrayed him as a Russian sympathizer tied to Moscow intelligence or charged Kilimnik with participating with Manafort in a scheme to obstruct the Russia investigation.
Kasanof’s and Purcell’s interviews are corroborated by scores of State Department emails I reviewed that contain regular intelligence from Kilimnik on happenings inside the Yanukovych administration, the Crimea conflict and Ukrainian and Russian politics. For example, the memos show Kilimnik provided real-time intelligence on everything from whose star in the administration was rising or falling to efforts at stuffing ballot boxes in Ukrainian elections.
Those emails raise further doubt about the Mueller report’s portrayal of Kilimnik as a Russian agent. They show Kilimnik was allowed to visit the United States twice in 2016 to meet with State officials, a clear sign he wasn’t flagged in visa databases as a foreign intelligence threat.
The emails also show how misleading, by omission, the Mueller report’s public portrayal of Kilimnik turns out to be.
For instance, the report makes a big deal about Kilimnik’s meeting with Manafort in August 2016 at the Trump Tower in New York.
By that time, Manafort had served as Trump’s campaign chairman for several months but was about to resign because of a growing controversy about the millions of dollars Manafort accepted as a foreign lobbyist for Yanukovych’s party.
Specifically, the Mueller report flagged Kilimnik’s delivery of a peace plan to the Trump campaign for settling the two-year-old Crimea conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel’s Office was a ‘backdoor’ way for Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine,” the Mueller report stated.
But State emails showed Kilimnik first delivered a version of his peace plan in May 2016 to the Obama administration during a visit to Washington. Kasanof, his former handler at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, had been promoted to a top policy position at State, and the two met for dinner on May 5, 2016.
[…]
So Kilimnik’s delivery of the peace plan to the Trump campaign in August 2016 was flagged by Mueller as potentially nefarious, but its earlier delivery to the Obama administration wasn’t mentioned. That’s what many in the intelligence world might call “deception by omission.”
…………………………….
Mueller hasn’t changed his dishonest ways since Boston.
@Guarneri:
John Solomon (political commentator)
@Stormy Dragon:
This is at least the second time he has based a comment on the “reporting” of John Solomon on this site, as he sure does love the guy. G man…keep screwing that chicken, no judgement from me as to what you like to do with your free time.
The question I have for you is do you know that even the people who frequently check out his stories are aware that he is clearly biased, I ask because I am not sure you are aware of this fact. So no…not asking a rhetorical question.
@Inhumans99: Take it easy on G, this is the second post this month that didn’t mention Michael Reynolds either in passing or as a focus of the comment. That’s growth (and maybe he’s evicted his “tenant.”)
Well, Trump has a newly-revealed fan.
That would be…Whitey Bulger.
Talk about deplorables.
A post on DailyKos, citing Buzzfeed, says that a study shows 1 in 5 police have made bigoted and threatening posts on Facebook.
If this holds up to scrutiny, I think it likely shows that polices are less likely to make bigoted and violent posts on Facebook than the average American (weighted by gender to match the police being mostly male).
I applaud the police departments of America for being less worse than the population as a whole!
Daddy like the changes. (Biden and Sanders down, Warren and buttegieg up)