Althouse: At the Confabulation Café...

September 19, 2021

At the Confabulation Café...

... have a seat and talk all night.

22 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/19/21, 7:24 PM
Narr said...: Well, since you asked . . . I like what you've done to the place. Comments tend to be shorter and seldom go over a hundred, which is a real boon. Even with reduced traffic I tend to not read as much (books) as when you were on a break.

Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn were close and bright last night after the sky cleared, and may repeat it tonight.; 9/19/21, 7:41 PM
Chuck said...: After Trump surprised everyone — including Paul Ryan — with the election win in 2016, Paul Ryan spent weeks reading up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-ryan-studied-narcissistic-personality-disorder-after-trump-won-book-2021-9?amp&__twitter_impression=true

“Paul Ryan, Paul Ryan; he came for lunch, you’re buyin’.”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_Sue-QL4Y; 9/19/21, 8:25 PM
Big Mike said...: Twice a Boeing 737 MAX overrode pilot control inputs and deliberately flew itself into he ground, and now we know who at Boeing will be held responsible …

The test pilot.

Not the engineers who failed to design in any redundancy in the sensors, and absolutely not the corporate officers who put profits ahead of the safety of their product.

Just the test pilot.; 9/19/21, 8:25 PM
daskol said...: Mind you don’t confabulate at the confab, as that kind of thing taken too far is like piss in the water cooler.; 9/19/21, 8:48 PM
Moondawggie said...: Do they play Biden speeches/commentary there? (Kinda like the Rush podcasts in Rushrooms?); 9/19/21, 9:01 PM
madAsHell said...: I was made aware today of a glass shortage. Dead serious.

Several weeks ago, someone backed a stolen pick-up truck through the front window at the local RiteAid, and removed the ATM that was just inside the glass.

The broken glass panes caused during the ATM theft have not been replaced because.......the supply chain can't service the need.

When did we switch to central planning??; 9/19/21, 9:08 PM
Drago said...: The times have become extremely difficult for our pro-marxist LLR Chuck. So difficult in fact, that he has to turn the clock back 5 years to when Paul Ryan began his deep coordination with democraticals to sabotage conservative policy implementation, convince record numbers of republican incumbents to abandon their seats to democraticals, was a key player in advancing the russia collusion lie and hoax and directly assisted and protected the CIA/FBI/dem liars by sidelining any republican who dared fight against the democraticals.

Ryan was most recently seen at the Reagan Library where he literally made the "Conservative Case For Surrendering To Democraticals On All Social Policy Issues".

Literally.

And Ryan has been handsomely bought off by the liberal Murdoch sons, amongst other lefty billionaires, for his betrayal of the 93% of the republican/conservative base.

There remains no one of any note on any side that places the slightest value on the opinions and beliefs of democratical JV team member Paul Ryan...but the lefties are happy to keep paying him to bash actual conservatives.

Naturally.

The pro-dem grifter "Conservative Inc." charlatans will always be with us.; 9/19/21, 9:57 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: Big Mike, it wasn't just the test pilot, it's the Chief Test Pilot, who's in charge of all airworthiness testing. The Chief Test Pilot is right below the program manager. He should have yelled "STOP!, the plane is not safe." It was his job to do that. Instead, he prioritized schedule over safety. The program manager should also be held to account.

The MCAS function was rushed through to make schedule and never socialized to all interested parties. It dramatically changed function from its original design. These new functions were never adequately analyzed nor lab tested before they made into flight. All of this to meet schedule. The flight controls lead and stability and control lead should also be held to account. I don't know who the stability and control lead was, but I probably know him.

I worked the P-8A (737-800 derivative) development program, including flight testing. Our Chief Pilot knew the new flight control systems and was always concerned about safety. The Navy was heavily involved in the development program and we had to show safety before we flew.; 9/19/21, 10:00 PM
walter said...: Glass is being allocated to various regions based on equity calculations.; 9/19/21, 10:04 PM
walter said...: Is Paul Ryan now reading up on dementia?; 9/19/21, 10:16 PM
walter said...: I know they are now being rationed according to population "equity", but anyone have insights regarding mAbs conferring lasting immunity akin to covid recovery?
FDA has (quietly) authorized for pre-infection exposure (for risk delineated patients) as of a few days ago:
FDA link
Of course, the cognitive dissonance of treating everyone as same risk for vax while miserly meting out the only authorized early treatment per risk stratification is striking.; 9/19/21, 10:23 PM
Big Mike said...: @Mike of Snoqualmie, thank you for your special insight. But as regards culpability, who created a corporate culture where schedule became so critical that it even could override any other consideration, let alone the consideration of the safety of the product? Especially since software was such a critical component? We are better in the 21st century about creating accurate software development schedules than we were in the 1960’s, when I started writing code for a living, but software development schedules that “drift to the right” are more common than projects that finish on time.

Since when do aerospace engineers not automatically look for single points of failure? Most of what I know about the problems with the MCAS come from an episode of Smithsonian channel’s “Air Disasters,” but I have supplemented that with other reading. Everything else in the aircraft that depends on sensors has backup sensors and ways for the cockpit crew to determine that a sensor is faulty. But not MCAS. It relied on a single sensor for input although multiple sensors were available for checking that that sensor had not failed. Why?

The “Air Disasters” show listed Boeing’s assumptions about how an aircraft’s captain would recognize that MCAS was acting up. From the cockpit voice recorders it was clear that these assumptions were wildly off the mark. Who at the FAA was supposed to look at the assumptions? Why didn’t they read those assumptions, look the Boeing reps in the eyes, and ask “Are you shitting me?”; 9/19/21, 11:29 PM
Chris Lopes said...: "After Trump surprised everyone — including Paul Ryan — with the election win in 2016, Paul Ryan spent weeks reading up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder."

If you wanted to list all of Trump's faults, you'd be a very busy bee and you'd miss the faults and foibles of the administration actually running things at the moment. Which is probably the idea.; 9/19/21, 11:33 PM
Gospace said...: I've met the close exposure definition The CDC defines close contact as someone who has been within six feet of an infected person (laboratory-confirmed or a clinically compatible illness) for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period. multiple times- and haven't yet contracted the dreaded covid. There are many things you can do- that don't involve masking and living like a hermit- to reduce your chances of contracting the dreaded covid. Which have all been mentioned here before by me and others.

I'm facing the deadline for getting the vaccine I'm not going to get or losing my job. I signed up for and got accepted for- a GOVERNMENT AUTHORIZED study for something similar to what Walter mentioned. A year long study- to see if receiving a monoclonal antibody reduced chances of getting the dreaded covid at all. I'll receive either the antibody or a saline injection- but I'll be part of a government authorized study that requires participants remain unvaccinated! I figure by then there will have been a realization the vaccine is ultimately useless and for many- dangerous. And the legal problems of firing someone involved in a government approved study- even if working for the government- well, let's just say I like my chances.

By now there are two types of unvaccinated. Well, maybe more than two, but two basic types. The actually ignorant, who could believe that covid isn't dangerous at all, or who think their chances of getting it are miniscule, or think it's a government conspiracy... Or, those that have weighed the options, and decided the risk/reward ratio for themselves favors not getting the vaccine. And those people could be ones like me, who are doing many of the things and taking the recommended supplements that government studies themselves have shown to be helpful, and those that figure I'm young and healthy, not obese and diabetic, the chances of my dying from it are miniscule. I'm not young, though I'm mostly healthy. Which is why the supplements and other things.; 9/20/21, 12:49 AM
Mr. Forward said...: Not complaining about the art but does it keep the beer cold?; 9/20/21, 3:07 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: The French sense a weak America.; 9/20/21, 4:32 AM
gilbar said...: Some one needs to tell Biden that; when you've lost Nicki Minaj you've lost Middle America; 9/20/21, 5:58 AM
tim in vermont said...: I ran into this indirectly via a tweet from Scott Adams

Imagine this: a man reaches out to grab the enormous silicone breast of his sex robot, and she chastises him. “Stop. You didn’t ask me permission,” she tells him. “You can’t touch me without consent.” While this may sound like a scene from a feminist sci-fi utopia, it could soon be our reality.

https://qz.com/1215360/in-defense-of-sex-robots/

Next they will design the sex robots so that they will only 'do' good looking guys.

My sex robot will not have "enormous silicone breasts" so maybe I will be safe. I will be quite content with the model from Blade Runner 2049, even if it's only a hologram.; 9/20/21, 8:03 AM
jaydub said...: "... Paul Ryan spent weeks reading up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder."

So, after having observed Obama for eight years he needed to read up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder? I'm throwing the bullshit flag on that one.; 9/20/21, 1:25 PM
Joe Smith said...: 'After Trump surprised everyone — including Paul Ryan — with the election win in 2016, Paul Ryan spent weeks reading up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder.'

He should have read 'How not to look like Eddie Munster' and 'How not to be a dumbass' instead.; 9/20/21, 4:47 PM
TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...: "The actually ignorant...who think their chances of getting it are miniscule..."

Approximately 8% of the country has had a positive covid test. There are many, many people who have been repeatedly exposed to covid at an intimate level and have not contracted it.

There seems to be an assumption that because this covid is "novel" everyone is susceptible to it. From the earliest days of the pandemic - the days of people having prolonged exposure to infected fellow passengers on the Diamond Princess - this has been seen to not be a correct assumption.

It is not "ignorant" to assume you have small chances of getting covid. Maybe "miniscule" might be ignorant, but at this point it's quite clear not everyone is susceptible to the Wu Flu. It's time "science" takes that into account.; 9/20/21, 5:06 PM