Not quite, someone posted that he could end it and he responded that if the WFP provided a plan showing the specifics of how world hunger could be ended for that amount he would fund it. WFP then provided a plan for how that amount could be used to help reduce world hunger for a short time and Elon said “the claim was end world hunger, not reduce it temporarily” which meant they didn’t meet challenge.

They’re not smooth brained at all. They know exactly what they are saying, but them gaining full control always takes priority over all other factors. Just because a foreign adversary did it to us, which they don’t like, doesn’t mean that they don’t still want to do it to us.

Yeah, the article doesn’t specify 300 civilian deaths, it’s all encompassing. Casualties also includes injuries, not just deaths.

Where does it say 300 “unintended” casualties a day? The only reference I can find in the article is an average of 300 a day total.

The Su-57 is vaporware. They aren’t actually that stealth and Russia can’t even make enough for a single squadron for themselves.

Think of it this way, any negative right can become a positive right if someone gives it to you. A positive right can’t exist without it.

The 2nd Amendment states that you have the right to keep and bear arms. This means that you can own and utilize a gun for self defense, which is a negative right. It can be made a positive right if the government provides everyone with a a gun for this purpose, but the right to self defense is different from the right to be given the means to accomplish it. Meanwhile the right to vote is something that can’t exist without the government providing it. For $20 I can make a gun with supplies from Home Depot. With $1,000,000 I can’t vote without an existing government system.

Abortion is a function of the right of bodily autonomy and freedom of religion. It’s not the right to have the government “un-pregnant” you on demand, but the right to decide what biological functions you wish to perform. The primary argument against it is based in religious morality, which violates the 1st Amendment’s separation of church and state. The government cannot establish an official religion and impose a specific religious doctrine on you. Since it is something that require you to seek it out and implement it is a negative right.

The real reason abortion is such a delicate political issue is that its true morality is based in religion. If you believe that the soul (a religious concept) begins at or before conception, it is murder which makes it inherently evil. If you believe that the soul becomes a person at viability or birth, it is simply a regulatory restriction like a highway having a speed limit of 60 vs 65 mph. The inability of either side to acknowledge that personal religious beliefs determine whether or not it is literal murder makes a lot of the back and forth shouting an exercise in futility. At the end of the day “Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise.” Saying you can’t do something because someone else’s religion forbids it is a direct violation of that, but ignoring that to some people it is literally murder makes it harder to have honest debates on it. At least having a basic awareness of why the other side is so rabidly opposed to it is very useful in breaking through the emotional arguments that dominate the discussion over the fundamental factors of what is and is not an actual right.

Revisions to aircraft designs are nothing new and the amount of detail in the flight manual is often times limited to “sufficient to safely fly the plane.” The procedure for uncommanded stabilizer motion was sufficient to recover the plane in both situations, neither crew executed it properly or in time. Using fly by wire to make handling characteristics standardized is completely normal and being fed from a single sensor isn’t uncommon for a system that itself has backups. Boeing never lied to the FAA, they told them the minimum required and the FAA said it was fine; for a crew from a first world airline it was.

A single sensor failure did not cause a fatal nose dive. A sensor failure led to a situation where pilots from airlines not well regarded for quality failed to correct it for between 5-10 minutes despite having suitable checklists guidance to do so. Any complex machine can be dangerous if not operated the way it was designed to be and some nations do not take aviation safety as seriously as others, planes are designed and built expecting a certain standard and failing to meet that standard can lead to dangerous situations.

OK, I flubbed that one I will admit. I mixed up which of the multiple Boeing locations all within a stones throw various things were at. Other than mixing that up I have not made up a single thing. Not sure what you want me to post to prove anything. I legitimately am a pilot, I am safety trained and coded as a flight safety officer, I have been to mishap investigator training and I have personally done investigations on Boeing aircraft to include the black box story. What “proof” would you suggest for any of this? I can show my redacted pilots license, my mishap investigator course certificate or anything else like that. Specific investigations are privileged so I can’t share anything like that. I don’t think I still have my access pass from when I was at the MDC since I have since moved from WA to OK and didn’t keep it. All of that doesn’t change the fact that my actual description of the issue with MCAS and how the mishaps occurred is 100% accurate and you have absolutely nothing tangible to counter it with, hence your anecdotal “BoInG EMpLoYeeS WoN’T FlY oN THeM” response.

I get it, CNN man told you to hate Boeing and you’re independent and smart enough to do whatever the internet media tells you. But for actual pilots that actually fly things like this, the issue was way overblown by the media.

I never said they built it in Charleston or Everett, I just said that the majority of drama amongst Boeing employees that I came across was about the Everett vs Charleston split and not the Max. Renton is actually the location that I worked directly with and spent time at since that is where the MDC is. But yes, your 3 seconds of googling loaded terms and reading shock value “journalism” makes you the expert here. It’s not like I’ve literally put a black box in the back of my Ford Focus to drive it to the post office and mail it to Boeing for an investigation or anything.

That is an ambiguous and purely anecdotal statement. Obviously a news outlet looking to paint the Max as a death trap will be able to find a guy or two to say that for the camera. Meanwhile when I lived in the Seattle area and had neighbors that worked for Boeing they all had virtually the exact same opinion as me on this, which isn’t surprising since talking to actual Boeing employees and engineers is how I developed this opinion. The main bickering and strife for employees is about the Everett plant vs Charleston plant drama. While I am sure there are people that worked for Boeing that are still scared of the Max, I actually lived near the factory and interacted with employees in both social and professional settings and never came across any. But hey, if one person is literally a trained aviation mishap investigator and another one read something on the internet purely designed to cause outrage the latter is definitely the one to focus on when talking about aviation safety.

OK, I finally got some time with my laptop to actually type this out. Also, I can’t get line breaks to work so I’m splitting paragraphs with hard lines for readability.

The bottom line is that most info on the 737 Max is from news sources that make money off of controversy or parties with an agenda.

Re-engining existing designs is not new and this isn’t unique to the 737-Max. The 737-100 was an old school low bypass engine that was much smaller in diameter than modern high bypass engines. When they wanted to go with more modern engines with the 737-300 they ran into the issue of the wing being too low for the wider engines and they moved it in front of the wing and up to get required ground clearance, this is also what gave the 737 the signature lopsided engine look since they put all the accessories on the sides to maximize ground clearance. For the 737-Max they were fitting even larger engines than before so they use the tried and true “move it forward and lift it technique” that had worked for decades. This did affect center of gravity and thrust (and also lift, Mean Aerodynamic Chord or MAC is equally if not more important here) and as a result introduced some pitch tendencies to power changes.

Handling characteristics are nothing to to planes, airliners, Boeing or the 737; they’re a fact of life. Wanting similar planes to handle similarly isn’t “gaming the system” or cheating, it is a desirable outcome. With fly by wire systems, handling characteristics are tunable, the same as any modern car with stability control. Teaching the system to overcome the difference in center of thrust vs MAC isn’t scandalous or evil, it’s just basic aircraft design in modern times. Also, when the FAA asks how it handles, telling them “we added software fixes to the flight controls that make it mirror previous generations, independent test pilots all agree it is comparable” is a valid answer.

Now I will break and say this is where I do disagree with some of the choices Boeing made. I am not a Boeing fanboy and despite flying a Boeing (albeit one that became a “Boeing” when they bought McDonnell Douglas). I think their shift from having engineers in charge at the executive level to bean counters from GE/3M they made decisions that have degraded the quality of their product. This doesn’t mean they aren’t safe and functional aircraft, it’s like when I bitch about Subaru putting the oil filter inside the “ring of fire” circle of hot exhaust manifold or placing the fuel filter inside the fuel tank. My main issue with the 737-Max and MCAS is the way the fly by wire corrected for the handling by using pitch trim, but I’ll explain that next.

As I said Boeing didn’t lie or hide anything, they simply did the minimum required and the FAA didn’t ask for any more when given a simple answer. The plane passed all tests and, per all the test pilots, flew the way they said it would. The issue is what happened if anything went wrong with the way that they made it fly the way they said it would. For any large aircraft, pitch trim is a big deal. Leaving the elevator deflected at cruise creates tremendous drag so instead the entire rear stabilizer moves. This is far more aerodynamic but creates a danger because the moving surface is so large that if it does go outside of the normal range, the plane becomes unflyable. Because of this, every single pilot of large planes is taught to be aware of unintended stabilizer motion. Now going back to what I was saying before, the way MCAS worked is that it was basic computer code saying “if power makes nose go up, move tail until nose goes down.” It works and all, but inducing continuous stabilizer motion just seems sloppy to me as both a pilot and a computer science degree holder. I am not an aerospace engineer though, so I’m guessing there is more to it such as elevator not having enough authority to counter it the way the stabilizer does and odds are there is a reason they picked this, I just don’t personally like it because as a pilot “stabilizer motion” scares me more than “stall, stall, stall” when the jet yells at me.

This brings me to my final point and back to what I was originally saying. Even if MCAS was a subjectively sloppy execution of a system, it should not have ever led to a fatal mishap. If a car company has a system that under very rare, unknown and specific circumstances can deflate a tire over the course of 20 highway miles or so, is it their problem for not predicting this and informing the NTSB prior to selling it to the public despite meeting all requirements and passing all tests for certification? While yes, it’s an issue and yes, the cars can be made safer once it is known, if you have 15 miles to pull over after your TPMS light comes on would you expect someone that is unaware of this car feature/flaw to keep driving for another 10 minutes, with the TPMS light on, without ever pulling over and checking their tires? That is what happened in both 737-Max crashes. No, pilots were not given specific training on MCAS, but they were absolutely trained on what to do for stabilizer motion. The fact that they had uncommanded stabilizer motion and never ran the appropriate checklists is absurdly damning of them. A huge part of pilot training for type ratings is learning how to triage situations and pick the correct checklist to run; “stabilizer motion” is virtually always the first one. Seriously, if I have an engine on fire and stabilizer motion, I’m disabling the trim before I shut down the engine, it can burn clean off the pylon for all I care, the plane can fly just fine on the remaining engines. It’s also worth saying that during mishap investigation training “blaming the pilots” is the easiest answer that is discouraged in virtually all situations. It’s never “he flipped the wrong switch” but “his training made him mistake this switch for another” or something else. Human error is the easiest scapegoat in any mishap while human factors is what can actually be changed to prevent the next one. Mishap investigation is about prevention, not blame. This is why the second crash is unforgivable. The first crew were in a bad situation beyond their skills and paid the ultimate price for it. The second crew had every resource not just available, but shoved down their throats by the entire world for weeks and still didn’t bother to even brush up on the checklist for a runaway stabilizer. Sometimes, human error is beyond human factors and this is the epitome of it.

All that aside, once there was blood in the water the sharks were sure to circle and that is how the documentaries, exposés and hit pieces on Boeing progressed on the natural cycle. There is always more to the story, but sometimes the full answer is closer to the simple answer than the long answer.

I know the entire story. I’m also a pilot who has flown Boeing aircraft, a trained aviation mishap investigator and flight safety officer. It was a slightly sloppy job done by Boeing consistent with FAA guidelines and oversight. It could have been done better but it was absolutely sufficient for standard ops. The only issue was when substandardly/proficient pilots had an issue. The jets were flyable and recoverable.

There wasn’t even a huge issue to begin with. There was a clunky checklist and pilots didn’t get any specific training on it but I would be comfortable flying in an unmodified one with any major US or EU carrier. The planes that crashed were safely recoverable, the pilots just made ongoing mistakes for a very long time in both situations.

The US version is a system that calculates the risk of loaning money vs being paid back. In order to be approved for a loan the credit score is used to evaluate whether or not it is likely to be paid back within the terms of the loan. As a result those with bad credit have trouble getting favorable terms for cars, housing and basically anything that can’t be purchased outright. Does it negatively affect people for things outside of their control and perpetuate cycles of poverty? Absolutely, but it is based in actual fiscal risk to calculate sustainable loan practices.

China on the other hand took the US term of “credit” and abused the everloving shit out of it to punish people that the government dislikes. Did your cousin post a Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh meme? Well too bad that you were shopping for a house, because your “credit” is no longer high enough to not be homeless. You should have thought of that before you were related to someone who disagreed with the government!

Not being able to demonstrate to a bank that you are financially reliable enough to pay back a loan is unfortunate, but a rational reason for an unfavorable interest rate or denial of a loan. Making people ineligible for even renting an apartment that is within their financial means because the dictator in charge dislikes you is a completely different thing altogether.

Nope. So glad I quit when I did and haven’t looked back. The more I see what it’s become the more I’m happy with my choice.

Still can’t believe I’ve avoided it this long. Responded super strongly to the vaccine so I can’t imagine I would be asymptomatic. I was also traveling all over during the worst of it.

I guess I’m just so used to seeing STs and RSs over base models I go looking for them everywhere. The color, which could just have been an artificial shift during the drawing or sharing process, changed the hue to really match the RS color making me go instantly to the sportier line.

I mean, I have highly marketable skills. I also just own a ‘17 RS in that color so it just stood out.