Hope there’s no Boeing stock in your portfolio; President Crazypants the Inscrutable has weighed in on the recent airline disaster(s) via Twitter. Nope, no “thoughts and prayers” for the victims since the recent crash occurred in a country populated mostly by non-white people — what we have here is freelance pontificating from a puffy bag of congealed fried chicken grease who probably hasn’t tied his own shoes in decades:
[Ellipses his; there is no missing text.]Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are….
….needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!
Imagine if President Obama — no, don’t. It’s pointless.
None of the people who enabled this lunatic will grow a conscience and oppose him publicly, no matter what crazy-ass shit he says or does, and that goes double for the plutocrats who received a trillion and a half in tax tuggies. This won’t change anything. Neither will this:
Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace: “The whole climate crisis is not only Fake News, it’s Fake Science. There is no climate crisis, there’s weather and climate all around the world, and in fact carbon dioxide is the main building block of all life.” @foxandfriends Wow!
Nor will this:
“Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party. We saw a lot of anti Israel policies start under the Obama Administration, and it got worsts & worse. There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.” Elizabeth Pipko, Jexodus.
Nope, we voters will either kick this embarrassing and destructive bug-eyed orange loon out of office next year, or we won’t. So, carry on, friends. Open thread!
Bill
This from the fool who was recently talking about how great the F-35 is.
Martin
Trump:
Passenger Planes were better when they were carved from a sturdy apple and powered by COAL. Also, Boeing, why do your Planes just fall out of the SKY! #MAGA.
Jeffro
Honestly I’m surprised the a-holes at Fox haven’t succumbed to the temptation to get him to say or do something way, way off the rails. (Ok, even MORE way way off the rails) I mean, the above stuff is proof that he’ll parrot any. fucking. thing. they say.
Why not run a segment on “Worms: the Democratic cover-up about Nature’s Most Tasty and healthful Food”, or “Do Combovers Confer Super Powers, like Flying and Invulnerability?” Then just sit back and wait…
hitchhiker
SAT scandal! Oh my gosh, people.
The entire industry is a scandal. Those tests can be gamed, or there wouldn’t be a test-prep industry. Those tests measure nothing meaningful. They don’t predict success in college. They don’t predict success in life. High scores correlate to only one thing, and that is the measure of wealth in the family of the kid taking the test.
All of that has been studied and documented for decades, and yet we still go on, because, hey, lobbyists.
I spent one season working for The Princeton Review and hated myself for it. $20/hr to coach a room full of entitled snots on how to make better guesses at the math problems they were not willing to actually understand.
Of course people cheated on it. It’s begging to be cheated on, because it’s all fake.
Baud
It seems like Jewish people have been leaving the Democratic Party for quite some time now.
@Martin:
I’m surprised and a bit grateful that Air Force One still hasn’t been modified to roll coal.
SRW1
In addition to the countries that have grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8, Germany has today closed its airspace for the type.
germy
Here’s how a real president responds to an air disaster:
gene108
I really want to say something snarky, but I’m all worn out by Trump’s hot takes. I just can’t get agitated by it anymore.
I’ll just focus on the prize: Defeating him and as many Republicans as possible in 2020.
Another Scott
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1105457052346974208
This is my shocked, shocked face.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
BruceFromOhio
BAD PRESIDENT, STAY OFF THE FURNITURE! *swat*
Boeing will fix the programming issues with the stall-prevention software in the 737-MAX, and all will be well. It’s actually a decent buy (good dividends, solid book of orders for it’s aircraft), unless the union-busting fucknut of a CEO rubs your investing fur the wrong way.
debbie
Didn’t Boeing take a hit on the market yesterday?
Just One More Canuck
@Martin: Pterodactyls or GTFO
SiubhanDuinne
@SRW1:
As has the UK.
Adam L Silverman
Kristine
@Just One More Canuck: Dragons.
glory b
@Just One More Canuck: Okay, that is a strong contender to win the intertubes for today.
BruceFromOhio
@hitchhiker: Both TeensFromOhio scored high SAT’s and CAT’s through sweat equity and knowledge acquisition, and gained significant tuition benefit as a result. If it’s a scam, it was a lucrative one for both, as each nailed the college life with decent grades and work prospects. No regrets here from the old man who never did any of those things.
Raven
@debbie: My bride is flying the ATL-DC part of her London trip on one of those babies!
Martin
@germy: Additionally, Obama would make a statement of confidence in Boeing as a good company, because, you know, they employ a lot of Americans, are a good export business, and are good for the economy, and he’d tell the NTSB to move heaven and earth to document the cause behind these crashes so passengers can have confidence in the aircraft.
The NTSB is deployed for any crash from a US airline, from a US air maker, and I think for any flight originating in the US. So they will be investigating the Ethiopia crash.
Betty Cracker
To clarify, possibly Boeing made a shitty plane that should be grounded, and maybe the company deserves to suffer a catastrophic stock market plunge. I don’t know. The point is, neither does that idiot in the White House, and inane musings about planes in the olden days is distinctly unhelpful at the present moment.
Raven
@Betty Cracker: It’s not the plane.
Martin
@BruceFromOhio: Yeah, I’d agree that Boeing is a good stock to hold, except for the wildcard they don’t control which is Trump. They could do everything right here and get destroyed because our president is insane.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: I give you Elizebeth Pipko creator of Jexit (founded 18 NOV 2018…):
BobS
I don’t suppose we’d be so lucky that Air Force One is a Boeing 737.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t know how we counter that level of propaganda.
ETA: what did you do? The other picture was better.
debbie
@Raven:
For the next few weeks at least, I think Boeing planes will be the safest planes to be on.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: We’ll clearly need more support…//
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Huh, how are you getting the photo to change?
Baud
@Raven:
And that’s why you didn’t get the role of Tattoo on Fantasy Island.
debbie
@Baud:
I don’t know. That toilet in the background speaks volumes.
PaulWartenberg
@hitchhiker:
Twitter is exploding right now, because some of the people getting caught are celebs, and all of them are wealthy, and the common rage point is “JESUS THEY COULD HAVE JUST SIMPLY BRIBED THEIR WAY IN WITH AN HONORARIUM OR SOMETHING” and I can’t even.
Our entire higher education system is eating itself with insane expenses, growing student debt, fewer opportunities, and ongoing criminal activity involving every prestigious school from Harvard all the way down to Western Michigan’s College of Law (the worst law college in the nation btw). It’s not just a sports thing, it’s an institutional problem. The rot goes all the way in.
schrodingers_catt
Doesn’t he want to send a manned (peopled?) mission to Mars?
karen marie
@Betty Cracker: Perhaps the orange shitwhistle would like to set an example by having all the modern computerized parts of AF1 removed and only manual controls installed and then go for a test run to show everyone how well that works. That’s one way to get rid of him.
rikyrah
That was my thought…do what Jared Kushner’s father did.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: All the ones that might have the problem that might have brought down the Lion’s Air flight have been grounded. It is a specific variant that had a programmed solution to an inherent aeronautic design flaw that actually overcorrects to create a new problem. Specifically the plane has a tendency for its nose to point up. Boeing designed a technical solution to autocorrect this. However, Boeing also appears to not have done much to educate the airlines and/or the pilots of these specific planes that they were now programmed to autocorrect one flight problem by pointing the nose of the plane towards the ground without any notification to the pilots, which causes different problems.
Nicole
Slate had a pretty good piece on the problem with Boeing’s 737. Looks like the culprit may be, shocker of shockers, them trying to do something on the cheap, rather than put in the money to do something from scratch.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: I went in, deleted the first one and replaced it with an even dumber one. Duck lips, lingerie, bathroom pic was the way to go.
rikyrah
OT, but, even though I don’t want Biden to run, I do resent the comparisons between him and Bernie.
Someone wrote this about why the comparisons between them are wrong:
Gravenstone
I saw the first sentence used to tease the tweets over at TPM I think. I immediately jumped back into the boat and went no further. Proud ignorance proudly on display for all to mock.
MattF
And there’s the unspoken view that brown people shouldn’t be piloting aircraft.
Anyhow, Slate has an interesting article on the crash.
ETA: Nicole beat me to it.
Baud
@rikyrah: Agree. There are pretty different issues with both of them, although both are not of an ideal age IMHO.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
You’ll seize on any excuse to show a young woman in her underwear, won’t you?
//.
Skepticat
Is he referring to himself?
@Baud
Ah, but our dear former Maine governor Paul LeRage says the Democratic Party’s money comes mostly from Jewish people.
Nicole
@MattF: Eh, great minds think alike. And so do ours.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
God, I hate duck lips!
rikyrah
@MattF:
thanks for the article
Gravenstone
@Just One More Canuck: Cue Turu the Terrible…
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
I listened to an interview yesterday with an American Airlines pilot who said the training on the new features was less than six minutes. Hopefully, Boeing will do a better job in the future.
hitchhiker
@BruceFromOhio:
They would have done all of that without taking the tests, though, right? This isn’t to piss on anybody’s achievements in college or in life, just to say that an SAT score has nothing to do with that.
The tests didn’t predict their success. The tests are there for only one reason, and that’s to make money for the people who produce them, charge to administer them, and sell products designed to show how to game them.
In the late 80s, the Princeton Review folks explained to us coaches that they were getting $500 per student to raise the kid’s score by 100 points. They’d done their homework, so they had data that showed most kids would get 50 points just by taking the thing twice, which worked out for them. The first thing kids did was take an entire SAT, under regular conditions. That got them a baseline number. Then we did our irritating classes for a few weeks, and then the kids took a second test.
All we had to do was show them enough tricks to squeeze another 50 points out. Boom, $500 for a score that measured nothing.
Feathers
@PaulWartenberg: Yes! However, this also needs to be a sign of how bad our inequality problem has gotten. Even the very wealthy do not trust that their children will have a good life without a fancy college degree. It’s not just about ego.
Meritocracy leads to corruption, because in a meritocracy the only way to ensure a good life for a less than perfect child is with money. So you have to earn the money and you have to spend it in ways that circumvent the meritocratic gatekeeping. I do recognize that the notion that our current system is meritocratic is bullshit, but the truth is that many things intended to reward children with merit and without capital (SATs, college loans, etc.) have, over time, become so distorted that they increase rather than decrease opportunity.
I also would like to protest that so far, I have only seen the mothers of these children named, with photos splashed across websites. Men are just as involved, but the mothers are the ones who will pay the reputation price. Even if the men get fired, it’s the women who will be demonized.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: Yes, that was obviously the reason I picked that picture.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m sure Trump thinks he’s an expert on planes because one of his failed businesses was an airline.
schrodingers_cat
@Feathers: Men are just as involved if not more. In my anecdata, its the Tiger Dad pushing his son to take tennis lessons, learn a musical instrument, sing, all while maintaining perfect As in school.
Nicole
@rikyrah: Good points made; thanks for posting it. What gets me the most is that Bernie is not a Democrat. He’s a cuckoo chick, jamming his way into the party nest, trying to suck up all the resources for the actual members of the party faithful. That bird landing on his podium in 2016 wasn’t there to give him approval. IT WAS THERE TO WARN US. THE BIRDS KNOW. THEY KNOW.
Ladyraxterinok
@Martin: My cousin was an aeronautical engineer and years ago worked for Eastern Airlines (I think). He became the lead crash investigator. After just a few crashes he quit. He could no longer take the carnage they would find.
mrmoshpotato
So apparently Boeing is a total loser. Alright. Therefore, AF1 and AF2 are total losers. Therefore, they should be dropped – on Dump and Dense.
Several problems solved. Nobel prize please! *makes Stephen Colbert grabbing hand gesture*
SRW1
@Adam L Silverman:
One gets the feeling the ultraorthodox might go wild. One way or another. Probably more one way.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Fraking ignorant luddit – jets were always dangerous to fly and demanded highly trained flight crews because they work at speeds faster than humans can react. The modern glass cockpit and the computers make them safer and simpler to fly. The only way to go back to the seat of your paints flying the Dotard wants is replace everything with DC3s from the 1930s.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: You sure it’s not because of his very good brain – and being a narcissistic, manchild asshole?
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
C’mon, Adam. Digging up sexual photos of someone you don’t like politically is super tasteless. We don’t like it when conservatives do it.
FelonyGovt
This from a guy who doesn’t know how to use email or a computer and can’t open an umbrella.
FelonyGovt
@Frankensteinbeck: Ordinarily I would agree, but I think Adam is trying to show us that this person who Trump is citing as an “expert” is really more like one of the Kardashians.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman: That Patrick Moore thing, so the conservatives are now creating fake liberals to maintain their narrative.
Anonymous At Work
While I don’t condone the behavior, the Air Force One pilots taking all the parachutes and bailing to leave Trump to fly the plane wouldn’t be the worst thing ever.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: As I speculated elsewhere, I suspect there’s something wrong with the PID settings in the control software – not an inherent design flaw, but the way the system is tuned. (PID = proportional/integral/derivative – you look at the system response to a step change in input and adjust the tuning parameters to as smoothly and quickly have the system reach its desired final state without overshoot. It’s very easy to have a PID system tuned too close to the edge of stability such that a tiny change in input leads to large oscillations in the system.)
I’m sure Boeing knows all of this, but it seems that way to me (as a layman).
The bigger issue, it seems to me, is that everyone saying “they should have disabled it” probably don’t recognize the difficulty in doing so even if you know that’s what you should do. Imagine pushing buttons on a control panel while riding on a roller coaster. :-(
Aviation Week:
In other words, if the control system is getting incorrect data, it over-reacts.
I hope Boeing is able to fix this problem soon.
And I hope the FAA revises its procedures for approving new aircraft variants. It clearly wasn’t sufficient here.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@Ladyraxterinok: Did he ever tell you stories about the ghosts of Flight 401? My uncle was a Delta mechanic and told my mom about those rumors before the story was a book or movie. I don’t believe in ghosts, but the stories sure creeped me out when I was a kid!
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: link was the way to go. nsfw, young kids, allow us free will, etc.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
From your clip:
Neither is a boomer. Sanders was born in 1941. Biden was born in 1942. Just another example of “boomer = old and I don’t like them.”
Anonymous At Work
@Frankensteinbeck: Private hacked photos is not okay, in all situations. Old photos from “long ago” [debatable but we’re talking years plus] are bad taste. Public profile pics from 4 months ago, however, are fair game if you are trying to establish yourself as an “intellectual”…
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
They left out that Biden has always been willing to release his tax returns.
Frankensteinbeck
@Anonymous At Work:
No, they’re not. It’s slutshaming and irrelevant. She could be a porn star, and it would be tasteless with overtones of misogyny to consider that a refutation of her expertise.
Adam L Silverman
@Frankensteinbeck: Other than her wedding photos, which are also sexualized, those are the only photos she posts.
Keith P.
A fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached!
opiejeanne
@germy: This is much appreciated. We have a nephew-in-law who is working for the UN in Africa, based in Entebbe. It took us several minutes to work out whether he was likely to be on that plane, but it was only a somewhat informed guess. He was not on the plane but we feel so badly for the people who were, and their families.
germy
Speaking of NSFW images….
Do NOT do a twitter search of Roger Stone.
Moon over Miami.
Aleta
@Another Scott: Seems like pilots should get more simulator training on the MCAS on planes that use it.
eta On what thread is your comment?
Adam L Silverman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: If we didn’t have African Americans or Jews or Muslims or Native Americans, they would be invented so that white conservative Christians would have someone to be prejudiced against.
MomSense
@Baud:
Hahaha!
germy
@opiejeanne: Yes, the appropriate response was not to go on a rant about “complicated” jets. If I wanted to hear that I’d go listen to the nitwits in my local barber shop or diner.
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
Then don’t use her photos at all. They have no relevance to this at all. I repeat: We would be offended if a conservative responded this way. I’m sure there’s plenty else to attack her with other than posing semi-nude for photos.
Adam L Silverman
@Frankensteinbeck: She’s a 23 year old whose profession, as an aspiring model, is posing in bathing suits and underwear. Those are her professional pictures.
Amir Khalid
@Keith P.:
I am intrigued. Tell me more.
germy
@Keith P.:
And “A waffle is a pancake with a syrup trap.” (Mitch Hedberg)
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
And they have exactly what to do with her political views?
Mnemosyne
@hitchhiker:
I have a mild case of dyscalculia and a serious math phobia because of it. So, yeah, I needed those tips and tricks so I wouldn’t completely bomb my GREs. I was very happy that I managed to claw my way into the 50th percentile.
Though I used a CD-ROM test prep course and didn’t do a classroom session with Judgy McJudgerson here.?
Plus, of course, those tests are not actually set up to give you enough time to work through and solve the problems, which is why students need to be able to quickly identify the most likely answer and solve backwards. When G was taking the GRE, he actually did WORSE on the math section the more times he took it because he kept trying to solve the problems in the time allotted rather than identifying the most likely solutions.
Barbara
@Frankensteinbeck: Not knowing who this person is or why we should care about her, but if this is what she posts about herself publicly then why do we have to show greater sensitivity than she herself expects under the circumstances? If I wonder who this person is and google her and this is all I find why is it one me not to use the photo?
Kelly
I always had a knack for multiple choice tests. Killed the SAT, highest score in my high school in spite of barely maintaining a B average. Struggled in university until I figured out I could only focus on one hard thing at a time. Fortunately found niches in my mainframe IT career where being really good at a very narrow thing was lucrative.
The cost inflation of university education is appalling. I graduated debt free in 1980. Worked at good summer jobs which are mostly gone. The state picked up the biggest share of university budgets. Pell grants. My most prosperous year at Oregon I lived very comfortably on a $5000 income.
Luthe
@Adam L Silverman: They would just be prejudiced against other conservative Christians of the “wrong” denomination. See also, the Thirty Years War.
germy
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Because straw men burn so easily.
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
This is not exactly new.
Frankensteinbeck
@Barbara:
Because retorting to a political disagreement by attacking a woman’s sexuality, including her being an underwear model, is slutshaming and tasteless as Hell.
Brachiator
OT: BREXIT vote scheduled for today, in around 2 hours, 1900 UK time. Some pundits thinks that May will lose, and that this might spur a general election. More chaos!
Meanwhile, Trump is an idiot, but may have halfway stumbled onto a half a point:
James Fallows (who is also a pilot, I’m told) and others suggest that part of the problem here was that the pilots were not able to take over control of the plane. This did not, however, require an Einstein, just proper skill and understanding of what was happening.
Apart from the horde of Internet speculators, I will be interested to see what conclusions the people actually tasked with investigating the crash come up with.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: I took the photo as an indication that she is not a serious person.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: “Other than her wedding photos, which are also sexualized, those are the only photos she posts.”
That picture’s from her instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethpipko/?hl=en
Not exactly true.
HinTN
Which is what Speaker Pelosi said. Great minds and all that, Ms Cracker.
Frankensteinbeck
@WaterGirl:
Yeah, and ‘poses in underwear for photos’ = ‘not a serious person’ is a bad attitude to have. It is classic slutshaming, presenting a woman’s sexuality as anti-intellectual.
Aleta
@Barbara: That’s all you found when you googled her?
(I’m arguing for honesty about why one chose a photo.)
Adam L Silverman
@Frankensteinbeck: The President is promoting her as both a leader in general and a thought leader in specific of Jewish Americans in regards to their political affiliations. She is, in reality, a 23 year old aspiring model whose professional portfolio is almost exclusively cheesecake photos, but she was booked onto Fox News because she married someone working for the Trump 2020 reelection campaign. What she’s promoting, something called Jexit, which doesn’t actually exists, is actually an astroturfed influence operation and campaign that was created no later than November 2018 based on records for registering the Internet domain, despite her claims on Fox this morning that she started it in January 2019. Posting one of the photos she’s posted as part of her professional promotion of herself on her Instagram account was part of demonstrating who is being referenced by the President as the leader of a movement that doesn’t exist, appears to have been created by the same influence operations folks working on the President’s reelection, and is being fronted by a 23 year old underwear and bathing suit model.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid:
I’m confused. Tell me more while I make some waffles.
JPL
@Barbara: She’s a model promoting a phony movement called jexodus
rikyrah
YEP….
Adam L Silverman
@Luthe: Correct. In tonight’s passion play, the role of the Jews will be played by the Catholics…
And I wish I could put sarc tags on that.
PPCLI
So is water, but that doesn’t mean the Katrina flooding wasn’t a bad thing. Of all the moronic standard talking points by the climate change deniers, this one might be the dumbest.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: She’s an expert if you consider who else he has cited.
Adam L Silverman
@Aleta: I’m done.
Also, if you’re going to call me a liar, have the courage to actually be explicit about it.
rikyrah
TRUTH
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman:
German-American were being lynched in the streets a hundred years ago. I’ve also heard theories that Prohibition was basically German-American bashing because it targeted beer.As a German-American I’ve always been a big fan of AA rights because I know I am on the enemies list somewhere.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: That made me laugh.
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
Then say she’s a random model with no credentials being put forward by Fox and the president as if she’s an expert. Don’t post a photo of her half-naked as if that’s why’s she’s invalid.
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman:
I thought it was Jexodus, not Jexit.
SenyorDave
I saw this comment and think it is an appropriate take on Ms. Pipko:
lol….an international model, or is she auditioning for Melania’s “position” once they get out of office in 2020?
Barbara
@Aleta: @Frankensteinbeck:
I didn’t google her because I don’t know who she is and I didn’t post the picture. Seriously, do you think showing a woman in a bra and underwear is “slut shaming?” I guess it depends on the circumstances. If she were, let’s say, a lawyer or a professor and had a professional biography that includes a photo, then digging around for a cheesy photo of her half clothed would be inappropriate. But she isn’t those things. She’s an underwear and bathing suit model (and I do trust that Adam is telling the truth here) and the picture reflects her professional experience. In that respect, it is relevant to the point that her claim to political expertise is, basically, false.
Kay
@Kelly:
It’s horrible. I graduated with 1500 dollars in debt. It was small enough that I literally don’t recall paying it :)
The idea that recent grads are starting at the same place I was? No, they’re not. They’re starting WAY back.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
In the good old days, there were ignorant red necks, poor white trash, and generally the scum of the earth. Nowadays, they are the “white working class” stalked and slobbered over by lazy pundits.
@Frankensteinbeck:
Sexy photos ain’t the same as sexual photos. Oddly enough, you do a google image search, the top photos show her in bathing suits and athletic gear. I don’t hold it against her. She’s kinda hot. Doesn’t have any impact on how I might judge any of her opinions or ideas. As always, your mileage may vary.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t think they’d need to invent new enemies; they had plenty of existing enemies. My feeling is that there’s a kind of limit on how much energy people can devote to prejudice, but that within that limit there’s no distinction too small to justify bigotry. If the groups you mentioned hadn’t existed, the older prejudice against Irish, Italians, Poles, etc. would have hung around. If they had kept the Irish, Italians, Poles, etc. out, they would have kept their prejudice against Germans. If they had kept the Germans out, they would have kept class and regional prejudice from within Britain, or made more of sectional differences within the USA.
Aleta
You scrolled down 2 1/2 years worth of photos before choosing that one (from 2016) from all her professional photos? Or, understandably, you didn’t look at her instagram account before posting that one. There are many professional photos before you get to that one.
germy
Details, details…
Frankensteinbeck
@Barbara:
It does depend on circumstances. These circumstances were posting a photo of her half naked instead of addressing why she’s an invalid expert.
@Brachiator:
My entire point is that it was presented as if it should change your opinion of her expertise. That is Not Cool.
The Lodger
@Adam L Silverman: So… the “professional” pix include a toilet used as a side table. Says it all, doesn’t it?
germy
@Brachiator:
I’m old enough to remember when you could be called “Un American” if you opposed the war in Iraq. Now Don Jr. gets into feuds with Dick Cheney about that “useless war” and his dad hugs the flag at CPAC in front of a cheering crowd.
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’ve never heard that it was German bashing specifically, but there was definitely a major anti-Catholic component to it.
Feathers
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: @Adam L Silverman: I wish I had saved it, but there was a great meme going around a few years back with a horribly bigoted rant a congressman had given on the floor of the house. The punchline: it was from the early 20th century and he was ranting about the Finns.
I wish there was more anti-racism training which acknowledges that we do have an inborn mistrust of strangers. Start from there, but point out that it does not tell us the truth about whether someone else is a danger or not, and does not serve us well in our modern world where travel is so much easier and many people (most likely including you) move far away from where their ancestors lived. The current versions end up leaving people who experience them more racist than they were before.
BobS
@Adam L Silverman: Could something like this be a regular feature, like the garden pictures?
rikyrah
9
gwangung
@rikyrah: well there are a LOT of Asian folks making the same points; we’re not a monolithic block on this. There’s a sharp divide in the Asian community, with a hell of a lot of self interest (well, actually, selfishness) coming into play here.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: In that case are you calling me a coward … which actually I don’t assume from what you said. I think, no blame, perhaps you picked the photo w/o looking at her Instagram. What you gave as your reasons: all her photos are sexualized and that photo demonstrates how she represents her professional career, make me think you didn’t look at her Insta before saying that.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Didn’t affect my judgement at all. Again, your mileage may vary. Also, this is an informal blog, not a debating society. But I take your point, and maybe instead of posting pictures, we should just continue to bash conservatives by calling them assholes and sociopaths.
Steve in the ATL
@Raven: my condolences on your prospective loss
Mainmata
Patrick Moore is not a co-founder of Greenpeace. Yes, he worked as part of Greenpeace Canada for some years but he has represented logging and mining companies like Monsanto in his PR firm for much longer than he worked for Greenpeace. Trump relies on garbage spewed by Fox for his information so naturally he ends up looking like the idiot that he is.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Adam L Silverman: which is precisely why they were invented.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
But … she really is an invalid expert. Adam is not lying when he says that. She is a model with zero actual training or expertise who is getting national news coverage as a spokesperson.
This is one situation where photos of her in her underwear or bathing suit are actually relevant, because that’s what her actual job was until someone hired her to be the spokesmodel for their AstroTurf organization. She’s a model. She does model stuff. She’s a spokesbot, not an expert.
Robert Bowsher
@hitchhiker: The problem is that a kid can’t get into any college without an ACT or SAT score. And I’m not going to want my kid to be one of the pioneers of a new “No Standardized Tests” movement.
I think at this point you’d have to get laws passed banning using standardized tests as admissions criteria. You’re right about there being too much money in it, and schools lean on the tests now as a first cut at accept/reject.
Mnemosyne
@Aleta:
This is her most recent Instagram photo. Maybe I’m an old fuddy-duddy, but the bare shoulders don’t exactly say “serious political commentator” to me. ?♀️
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuC7l4ZA7yV/?hl=en
And there are multiple bikini and underwear shots of her on the very first page.
Woodrow/Asim
@Adam L Silverman: So, my Life Partner is a model. And the reason I have the nick “Asim” is because I used to be an active belly dancer — sometimes half-naked.
Trust me, I know about being evaluated for my looks, first and foremost.
And in that vein: your pic hit me wrong Adam. There’s a major discussion around these asshats that has nothing to do with how much they wear, or don’t, or what their “day job” is. We already have, in society, enough shit around How Women Look; I remember having early discussions on Palin, on my LifeJournal, that I had to freeze because so-called “liberals” couldn’t stop posting absolutely sexist comments.
What useful purpose did posting that pic serve, in the effort to identify risks to the body politic? Hell, you could have just said “she’s an Instagram Influencer” and that would have provided far more clarity to your point, than some random pic that you had to come back and explain, anyway.
And your defensiveness about it, makes me worried, honestly. I legitimately trust you to provide clarity and forthright information around, especially, National Security issues. I’m not saying you can only post on that, I am saying that when you dive into posting, without commentary, such images you’re playing by TMZ rules — and I, personally, trust you to be better than that, and promote your commentary to others based upon that trust that you’ve built up, over the years.
We need people like you, Adam. Please don’t fall down the rabbit hole.
Mnemosyne
@Robert Bowsher:
I don’t know if this is still the case, but if your kid has weak math skills but stellar reading comprehension, the ACT is the way to go. I was able to get a top score on three out of the four sections just with careful reading.
schrodingers_cat
@hitchhiker: @Mnemosyne: I disagree, the quickest way to get through the math sections of GRE or SAT is to know the math. I mean really know it. For approximately 30 to 40% of all questions, you don’t even have to lift your pencil if you know the subject matter well. There are may be 1 or 2 questions that are genuinely difficult.
Woodrow/Asim
@Mnemosyne:
I disagree 100% with what she advocates for.
And yet: no-one’s day job has anything to do with their right to advocate for a political/social position — or our right to criticize same. If she’s incorrect, or amoral, on her political facts, call that out — not the fact that she’s “sexy” or “just a model”.
The fact that she takes pics of herself in her underwear is NOT THE PROBLEM WITH HER POLITICS.
Stay on target!
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I suspect that you are good at math. For ordinary mortals, math is a more daunting maze.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
She’s somewhat demented looking to me, especially her eyes. Also from her expressed opinions, but those aren’t in your posted photo.
Another Scott
@Aleta: It was at another (small) forum I haunt. About the only thing different was I had a couple of links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-07/boeing-issues-bulletin-for-737-max-after-indonesia-jet-crash
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
bemused
@Feathers:
I remember my Finnish parents telling a few stories about people who trashed Finns, many who were also children of immigrants, just not Finnish. The Iron Range was also populated by Swedes, Norwegians, Italians, Slavanian, etc.
Was the congressman ranting about those socialist Finns? A lot of Finns were and established Co-ops. The Finns and other immigrant miners agitated for better working conditions in the iron mines, unions.
One Finn, John Svan, petitioned Duluth District Court in 1908 to be admitted as a US citizen. The government opposed this petition on the grounds that Svan was a Mongolian and not a white person. The judge ruled in his favor that Svan was without doubt a white person.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@Woodrow/Asim: This.
With all due respect to Adam, obviously.
VOR
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes, exactly. The FAA doesn’t require pilot re-training for a pilot moving from different models of the same plane. Switch from an 737 to a 777 and you have to re-train and re-certify, costing money. Switch from a 737-800 to 737-900 and no training required. That is a big cost savings for airlines and hence was a design goal for the 737 Max.
But the Max has a bigger engine than earlier 737 models which had to be mounted in a slightly different location on the wing. That changed the plane’s flight characteristics just a little bit. So Boeing introduced this autopilot software feature which would kick in with certain flight behaviors. The feature is fully documented in the manual. Pilots retain the ability to turn the autopilot off and manually override. But, and this is the crucial point, the pilots were not trained on this feature because the goal was no re-training for existing 737 pilots. And unfortunately, not every commercial pilot is Sully.
James Fallows at the Atlantic, a pilot himself, has written about this. I’m not a pilot so I may not be explaining it well.
scuffletuffle
@Frankensteinbeck: Probably didn’t require too much digging and, if she didn’t want it out there, digging would not have worked. She’s the one who made it available, not Adam. Fair use, as far as I can see.
Another Scott
@Mnemosyne: I don’t want to rub salt in any wounds, but…
I was shocked by seeing the photo here. A descriptive link (with a NSFW indicator) would have been enough to make the point that she’s a model. But Frank’s points are good ones.
Britney Spears teaches quantum physics.
;-)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
karen marie
@Adam L Silverman:
If that is an example of one of her professional photos, it’s no surprise she’s branching out to grift the rightwing welfare circuit.
Mike J
@Raven: Our sailing center is next to the Boeing plant where they make 52 of them a month. A brand new shrink wrapped 737 takes off twice a day. One of our race crew is a machinist there.
Uncle Cosmo
@Steeplejack: Yeah, both Silents – in BS’s case, if only.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: IIUC many of those who voted for the 18th Amendment understood the term “intoxicating liquors” meant beer & wine would not be affected. Unfortunately for them, when the bluenoses rammed the Volstead Act for enforcing Prohibition through Congress, it defined the term to include anything stronger than “near-beer” (3.2%). Had the Act kept to the general understanding & only banned the more concentrated “hard liquor” it probably wouldn’t have generated the general flouting of its provisions – & might still be law today.
drdavechemist
@Robert Bowsher: That’s not true. Many colleges are already “test optional” with little to no noticeable decline in student quality. I happen to believe the tests do measure “something” but they are certainly not the only measure that can or should be used when deciding who to admit.
Sadly, one of those measures, especially for private colleges, is likelihood of major future financial support, which can translate into lower tuition and/or a larger financial aid budget. The interaction between admissions and fundraising is a really important consideration for any tuition-driven institution. A level of state support for public institutions that kept pace with what it was a generation or two ago would be a huge benefit for the middle class families that really feel the squeeze from college expenses.
Uncle Cosmo
@Roger Moore: Carried to its (il)logical conclusion, a joke for yinz (follow the link).
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
A bathing suit is NSFW?
Another Scott
@Brachiator: It’s underwear (at least it seems to these eyes to be), and yes, it’s NSFW.
YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: Whoa! Yikes! This is my shocked face. Seriously.
WaterGirl
@Woodrow/Asim: This seems to be a situation where good people can disagree, even if they generally share the same values.
If the main way she presents herself is a swimsuit and underwear model, then that’s how she wants people to see her, so I’m with Adam on this one.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Are we sure that isn’t a bathing suit? Seemed a little too something for underwear, although I’m an old white guy who doesn’t shop for ladies underwear very often.
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
Ever think that maybe she’s promoting that about herself?
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: I think that’s a bathing suit.
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
Honestly, she’s the newest version of a Kardashian. She knows no shame. Stop feeling it on her behalf because she won’t thank you.
debbie
@Aleta:
Go back and read his post explaining why he picked that photo.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Okay. Lingerie. But I’m still not seeing a big deal. As I noted earlier, do a google image search for this person and the top images are similar, lingerie, bathing suits, etc. And the image in question was used in a UK Daily Mail article.
I just can’t work up any indignation or alarm over the photo, but as you note, your mileage may vary.
debbie
@Woodrow/Asim:
Then let’s discuss the lie that Jews are rushing to join the GOP.
debbie
@Another Scott:
Oh, please, compared to that Floriduh woman’s get-up from a couple of weeks ago?
Another Scott
@debbie: I don’t make the rules here. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
The Pale Scot
AF1&2 should be replaced with that old tried and tested DC-3 Berenger and Sheen rode in Major League 1.
Jay
I thought that Adam’s post very quickly made the point that “Jexit” or what ever it’s called is a fake like #walkaway is.
The Pale Scot
@Feathers:
Here’s video from the James O’Brian Radio Show showing “Gammons”, old racist Brits going on about leaving the slavery of the EU. “Bleeding Bloody Fat Belgium Bastards” and “The Most Foul and Very Foreign French” didn’t make the cut, but they should have
All these people would be long dead if it wasn’t for the immigrant health professionals invading their nation of shopkeepers.
Bill Arnold
FWIW, The Forward mocked Jexodus reasonably well with no pictures other than of DJT.
What is Jexodus, the Right-Wing Jewish Group Trump Tweeted About This Morning? (March 12, 2019, Josh Nathan-Kazis)
Ballabon sounds like a piece of work; weaponizing his Judaism and deliberately widening rifts in American Judaism, in service of a US political party openly flirting with Fascism. (I’m currently in a (reform) congregation being cut apart by this bullshit (maybe it will survive); my patience for these attacks exited the building sometime last year. Can understand Adam’s reaction here.)
sgrAstar
@Raven: what do you mean by “it’s not the plane”?