Jeezus. How many whales did they kill?

I'm not an environmentalist, but it's too bad they can't do these tests with simulations.

They do most of it via simulations, but at the end of the day you've got to test it in the real world if you really want to have faith that it works as advertised. Plus, that's how you get the data that is needed to build the simulations and get them to an acceptable level of fidelity.

When they conduct these kinds of tests, they have observers that are specifically looking for things like whales and such and will delay the test to mitigate the impact. Which is not to say that impacts don't still happen and they compensate the people affected (they don't compensate the family of the dolphin that got blasted to pieces, at least not yet).

 

 

 

I know this is probably a stupid question, but why not call in aerial tankers for fire suppression?

 

I know this is probably a stupid question, but why not call in aerial tankers for fire suppression?

Not feasible for a host of reasons.

First, it was the wrong type of fire. Water drops are not very effective on structure or fuel fires (they tend to spread fuel fires). They are best on open-area vegetation fires.

Second, you don't do water drops where collateral damage is a concern. A very large tanker is dropping upwards of 200,000 lb of retardant/water. You don't want that coming down on firefighters or people caught in the area by the fire.

Third, compared to a wildland fire, this fire has a tiny footprint making it difficult for the tanker to make a sufficiently precise drop to do any good. This is made all the more difficult due to the dense, black smoke.

Fourth, there aren't that many firefighting aircraft in the country (something like three hundred of all sizes) and they are positioned where wildland fires are the big risk. The response time varies from something like fifteen minutes for the smallest ones that are on standby in high-fire danger areas to over six hours for the largest tankers. Then there's the flight time to the area, since there aren't any permanently stationed tankers within a few hundred miles.

Fifth, the incident command at this scene, namely an urban environment, probably has never planned for using an aerial asset, for the reasons above, and thus the necessary coordination would take a lot longer as people figured out who to talk to in order to get in touch with the people they need to talk to.

 

Driver-less buses.

Take me to the dentist, quick!

 

 

American Airlines Uses Secret Rule To Ban Passenger From Flight​

However American Airlines adopted a policy in 2014 to prohibit photography of employees, they published it at the time only in their on board American Way magazine. They don’t have signage anywhere telling passengers this, and it doesn’t appear in their Contract of Carriage or on their website. The magazine that used to have this policy was eliminated two years ago.

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/...-psa-urging-riders-to-not-poop-on-city-buses/

Los Angeles pulls PSA urging riders to not poop on city buses

 

American Airlines Uses Secret Rule To Ban Passenger From Flight​

This has a number of issues, not all of them clear cut.

In the U.S., you generally have a First Amendment right to film in public spaces -- with some restrictions, such as bathrooms or other places in which you are deemed to have an expectation of privacy. Businesses have pretty limited ability to override this for their customers (they have much greater latitude to impose restrictions on employees). Places like airports are hybrid public/private spaces, but customer-facing areas are generally treated as public spaces similar to stores and restaurants. Certainly, any restrictions that are going to be enforced are supposed to be communicated in a reasonable way, which generally means signs or frequent announcements. Publishing in a long-dead magazine is unlikely to pass muster.

But, even so, a lot depends on the specifics of the interaction. If the person doing the filming was being intrusive, abusive, confrontational, or interfering with the ability of the agent to do their job, then it can be considered harassment. Depending on how the video is used, it can also be deemed defamation.

After watching (most) of the video, I have a hard time having much sympathy for him. He's going out of his way to be confrontational and repeatedly announces his intention to make the video "go viral", which means that he is declaring that his purpose is to use it in a defamatory way. He also keeps harping on "it's not illegal" when that is really not germane. "Legal" and "allowed" are not synonymous. We don't know how the initial interaction with the bags went, but given his attitude in the video, it's not a stretch to imagine that he was combative from the start. But perhaps the video is just capturing him after he has gotten frustrated, but then again, the same can be said of the gate agent. We really don't know.

Given the frequency and occasional severity of incidents of unruly passengers on flights, is it too surprising that airlines have a short fuse when it comes to allowing passengers that are already causing a scene at the gate to board? Just image the outcry if they did and then that same person continued causing problems on the flight and forced it to divert. Fortunately, the rate of incidents has been moving downward pretty sharply, but it is due in part to airlines being more assertive in not letting potentially disruptive passengers on in the first place, combined with some pretty hefty penalties that are being assessed on offenders.

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/...-psa-urging-riders-to-not-poop-on-city-buses/

Los Angeles pulls PSA urging riders to not poop on city buses

This has the hallmarks of being a shining example of AI abuse. I can just imagine someone telling their AI engine to create a PSA telling people to report "crappy behavior" and the AI producing that and then it not even being reviewed before being posted on the website since everyone knows that AIs are SO good and we are SO much more productive by having them do our work for us.

 

 

https://iol.co.za/thepost/news/2026...kie-driver-repeatedly-reverses-into-golf-gti/

https://youtube.com/shorts/6JDpbbShtZQ?si=dOQhT3ZoHl5zv3Sn

 

I'm not sure I'd want to be on the same flight with 181 other SOBs!

 

I'm not sure I'd want to be on the same flight with 181 other SOBs!

Well, it would be 180 other SOBs since you would be one of them.

For those that are interested:

The term SOB (souls-on-board) is used because it is (supposedly) unambiguous as to who is included in the count. The phrase dates back to maritime use back in the 1700's. It was used in ships logs and manifests, particularly on passenger-carrying ships, because just indicating how many "people" were on board might be interpreted as only referring to number of passengers (a number that is needed for a lot of purposes). So the thinking was that every human had a soul (there's ongoing debate in some circles on that point) and therefore it didn't matter what role you have on the vessel, you would be included in "souls on board", including people that might not be there officially, such as unticketed infants or employees deadheading in jumpseats.

However, despite being standard (and, since the 1980's official FAA communications) phraseology, the news folks, who report on this stuff all the time, still frequently confuse "souls" and "passengers". Just a few weeks ago the news played a cockpit recording where the pilot reported N souls on board and the news anchor (I forget which one, but it was on of the big three national news networks) the commented that there would also be an additional five or six taking into account the pilots and flight attendants. Sheesh. Guess aircrew don't have souls.

 

The term SOB (souls-on-board)...

I've always heard it as "souls-on-board" or "souls". This is the first time I've heard a pilot refer to "SOBs" (unless someone was causing trouble in back!).

 

And here I thought you were dismissively talking about a bunch of "poor sorry SOBs" ... have some respect! ... I was gonna say .... thanks for clarifying

 

I've always heard it as "souls-on-board" or "souls". This is the first time I've heard a pilot refer to "SOBs" (unless someone was causing trouble in back!).

All three are used. Pilots (especially former military pilots) love speaking in acronyms. Also, radio discipline favors short transmissions. So, if the radio channel is clear, they will often opt for the shortest phrase, while if the channel is noisy, will use the full phrase to increase the likelihood that enough will get through to be interpreted correctly. It's essentially a self-adapting error-correcting code.

 

Stowaway Svetlana Dali successfully sneaks on plane to Europe again, sources say


​

Once onboard the plane, she spent some time apparently hiding in the bathroom to remain out of the crew’s sight, but was eventually discovered, other passengers told CNN. She was detained after arriving in Paris.