Volcanic ash is particularly bad because it is so abrasive, having been freshly formed without any opportunity for erosion to smooth it down like regular dust.
6,490 karma · joined May 19, 2017
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/british-newspaper...
The man at the heart of a high-stakes mix-up that rippled through global political journalism in the final days of the New York mayoral campaign was neither “falsely claiming” to be former Mayor Bill de Blasio — as the Times of London suggested — nor, as The New York Times wrote, a “de Blasio impersonator.”
He is, instead, a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio, who merely responded to an email from a journalist seeking his views on Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s policies.
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio said in an interview conducted Wednesday evening through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida.
“I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor. “So I just gave him my opinion.”
I mainly read it for the jokes, as I recall.
But an actual medical product for sale to consumers that makes claims like "restores dental enamel" would have to present scientific evidence to the FDA that this claim is accurate.
2. Arguably, these crashes were due to the FAA's failure to apply existing regulations, not a lack of adequate regulation in the first place! I don't have any problem with better funding for the FAA to do their job effectively.
Is this a press release from a university research group, as it appears to be (the site is down)? Then it's nearly meaningless.
This is nonsense. Commercial aviation is already ridiculously, insanely safe and has been for decades. Your proposed solution would not have done anything to prevent the one major accident in the past 15 years of commercial aviation in the US, which was caused by a military helicopter pilot violating an ATC restriction in complex airspace, not a maintenance issue.
What evidence do you have that "NYC-SFO for $70" is not sustainable? From March 2009 to December 2024 years in the US, the fatality rate in commercial aviation was 0.4 per passenger-light-year. That's nearly 15 years of operation with the foreign repair stations that you are accusing of putting profits before safety.
This is, like, the most ridiculous industry possible to demand more regulation of.
But, the FAA inspectors are not responsible for making sure planes are safe to fly. They are responsible for making sure the people whose job that actually is, are doing their jobs effectively. That’s a critical difference.
It’s UPS maintenance personnel who are responsible for making sure that UPS planes are safe to fly. Yes, it’s possible that there is some institutional failure at UPS, that could have been caught if FAA inspectors were working in the past 30 days, but this isn’t the most likely scenario, and the root cause and responsibility (in this hypothetical) would still lie with UPS and not the FAA and the shutdown.
Where does the water go? If they simply take in cold water and release hot water, that water is still available for other uses.
Or do data centers use evaporative cooling just like power plants?
The reason this topic continually comes up is that people in the US are stupid and bad at math, and the IRS is very heavy-handed and issues penalties for minor tax errors, so people are afraid to interact with the process without a trusted intermediary.
When people say they are “paying their taxes”, really what they’re doing is checking whether the automatic tax deduction out of each paycheck was properly calculated over the whole year, and whether any special circumstances make them eligible for a refund (or whether they’ve had other income they need to pay tax on).
If you're a neurotic obsessive who wants to pretend that all kinds of dastardly forces are trying to spy on you and your data, then yes, you want more security checks and more permission prompts.
For literally everyone else - these are only obstacles to their intended use of the device, and every one of them is objectively worse!
Safari prompts me _every single time I use Google_ about whether I want to share my location. I literally couldn't care less whether Google knows this, and I click yes every time, but Apple, in their infinite wisdom, DOES NOT GIVE ME THE OPTION to say "Always Allow". Thanks to some overbearing, self-important privacy dweeb, no doubt, and no leadership at Apple confident enough to override them.
Today the setup experience on a brand-new iPhone or Mac is abysmal. Entering the same username and password multiple times - then sometimes a different username and password - competing notifications, irrelevant feature nags, a popup from some random product manager about their pet thingy. Permission questions from some meddlesome privacy team about the feature you just said you wanted to turn on. Uncertainty about whether you’ll break something irreparably by “skipping” the expected setup path. A choice of several inscrutable interface modes because no one has the balls to commit to a single solution. Just terrible.
I guess this is what happens without a dictator to tell people they’re fired for shipping garbage, and when a company worries about meeting quarterly KPIs rather than doing something great.
Have never used a case. I’ve dropped them plenty of times. Only once did I do major damage, and that was to the all-glass rear panel of a 4S. I’ve never broken a screen or had to replace a phone due to damage.
The iPhone is very durable! You don’t need a case. They’re bulky and ugly!
The byline is “The Economist”, and the lack of links is the house style, like a printed newspaper.
A relic from the times when the name and reputation of the institution alone was enough to earn your trust.
Personally I still find them a high-quality source, especially because they are a weekly publication based in the UK and distanced (but not entirely removed) from the bullshit of the US media cycle.