Yeah, checks out. I’m just a UK guy, but when the Tories were all having a media circus about “Oh inflation is done now, we’ve stopped inflation, the cost of living crisis is done!”, I mean… no amount of lying to my face is going to stop me going to the shops and wanting to scream when I see the price of Everything has jumped up by 20% again.

I can’t imagine that’s any different at all in China. You just can’t really hide something as objective as the cost of a bar of chocolate.

Gonna say it, this REALLY feels like a case of the news cherry-picking what parts of a protest they show. Between the unreasonable viewpoint that’s directly adjacent to a very sensible and popular viewpoint and the fact we KNOW the media have a very vested interest in trying to push pro-genocide narratives (such as anti-Israel protests being pro-terrorist)…

Yeah, even someone as gullible as me? I’m not buying this.

Yeah, seems reasonable. The front lines have proven to be extremely difficult to move once they get set in place, and Russia is provably completely fine with a couple hundred thousand of their Expendables dying every year.

Ending this war quickly definitely requires knocking out other aspects of the russian war machine, anyone should be able to see that. I’m not enough of a military man to tell you WHICH aspects have to be knocked out, but I’d believe those elements are inside Russia in a heartbeat.

Let’s just not go and talk about hitting any major population centers though. Collateral damage is not justice, even if the russian brass have absolutely gleefully been hitting population centres as much as possible. Justice for that is seeing them hanged, not hitting some people that had no real say in all this.

I wonder if a birth rate that stays low for a while might be what it takes to avoid future wars? Just in general, across all nations? Funny that the very things that have damaged society’s faith in the future might end up mitigating conflicts in the future.

When manpower can no longer be replenished, then wasting it trying to pull off landgrabs can only be sustained for so long. Not just physically, but politically.

OH FUCK I MISSED THAT IT WAS ONE OF THOSE SHITTY MULTI-YEAR CONTRACTS

Editing the original, those contracts are pure shit and a hot new favourite trick for employers to try and twist the narrative in their favour. That isn’t a 25% raise, that’s a 6.25% raise as well as an agreement that your future raises can’t be better.

NINETY SIX PERCENT???

Bro how the hell did Boeing piss these guys off so much??? The closest my workplace ever got to a strike was when we literally didn’t get a raise one year during Covid, and that was 62% to strike. We were all pissed at the company over that one for obvious reasons, but this…

To me this result off the back of a 25% raise says one thing: This isn’t about pay. This was never about pay. EDIT: Nevermind! This is not a fucking 25% raise! This is a 6.25% raise every year for the next four years! This is NOT a 25% raise because of how it works in relation to inflation, and should NOT be treated as a 25% raise by anyone writing about it! It is presented as a 25% raise by Boeing solely to misinform and misdirect people! This is Boeing trying to wheedle their way out of paying their workers at rates above inflation ON TOP OF ALL THEIR EXISTING PROBLEMS!

Combining that with what we know about the company’s culture of shutting down anyone with safety or wellbeing concerns in the name of faster cheaper production of aircraft…

Oh, wow. I can’t imagine having knife skills that precise. I’ve looked into this; what you actually need to do to prepare the fish isn’t actually difficult- there are only two organs that need to be removed without puncturing them.

But you still need a steady hand and incredible precision to remove those parts 100% consistently, frankly slicing the fish into ‘paper thin’ sheets would be 10x more difficult- just, if you fuck up a paper thin cut then it’s still fine and edible. Managing to pull off that sort of presentation technique is a really good indicator that this girl is the real deal- if she can make those paper thin slices, she can remove the poisons in her sleep.

I would love to try real sushi one day, but alas. I live in the UK. Best I can do is homemade with stuff from the supermarket.

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

Armchair general opinion here, but basically: It pretty much doesn’t matter how much armour you pile onto something- it adds weight, fuel costs, and reduces speed, and all the armour in the world will still only last a limited amount of time against powerful explosives specifically designed to destroy armour. The most basic thing about armoured vehicles is doing something in the time that that armour buys you. And to do stuff, you need speed, firepower, and a good optics system.

The Bradley has those three things in spades. Even if it’s not the most heavily armoured vehicle ever seen, it’s really fucking cost effective, WAY easier to maintain with Ukraine’s more limited resources than the US army, and versatile as hell. It uses the time that it has before the armour inevitably fails exceedingly well.

Oh, big wins! Given how notoriously shit russian logistics have been (and how hard logistics are in general), every bit of pressure on the supply chain is a huge deal.

Finally. A shred of national pride.

I have to say, this is both incredibly impressive and absolutely fascinating. After such a long stalemate, it’s wonderful to see Ukraine make such progress towards repelling their invaders.

Oh I like this topic! Fun fact, Ball Bearings are actually a SUPER important little thing and a major hallmark component of the industrial revolution. You need to be able to make really good ball bearings in order to make a rotating joint that’s just decent, and churning out perfect little spheres by the tens of thousands was one of the first tests of the modern world’s capacity to make things in industrial quantity.

Basically, a standard rotating joint (simplified) has an inner metal band, eight ball bearings equally spaced around the inner metal band, and an outer metal band that traps all the ball bearings between it and the inner metal band. This means that the two bands can be rotated with incredibly low friction and relatively low wear. This is used in basically every machine with moving parts, and trains absolutely fit that criteria.

But it’s definitely not operated with zero wear, especially in machines that are constantly operated and weigh a lot, like trains. Ball Bearings can and will wear down during operation and need to be replaced semi-frequently.

As for buying them from China… I would assume that’s totally possible, but China might not have enough stock, or they could be trying to leverage their position to sell the ball bearings at a high markup since Russia doesn’t have the ability to buy elsewhere.

Oh shit, they’ve actually captured the area and are holding it? That’s pretty significant! If they can keep this up, then maybe they can force Russia to concede? …Though any russian deal to end the war obviously won’t be honoured, which does make it a bit of a conundrum. Still, this is a good thing.

Cool, but at this point we all know that this means nothing but more dead innocents while they look for the next guy on the long list of guys responsible, so you’ll forgive my lack of enthusiasm.

What. How do you even spend that much on a dinner, even for 1000 people.

And like. It’s King Charles. I loved the Queen and thought she was iconic, and even I don’t really care about Charles. All of my friends in my circle actively despise him and what he represents. Literally why are you trying to curry favour with him that hard.

…Wait, that wasn’t a basic standard lesson? Isn’t an unsecured phone transmission basically a death sentence if if gets picked up since it tells people exactly where to fire artillery at?

Nice! I know there’s still much further to go before justice is done, but this is a step in the right direction, and I can appreciate it for that.

Well. That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?

She does have the distinct advantage of being under the retirement age. We’ll have to see what her policies are and how she performs in debates, though.

OK, checking out the article, actually it seems totally innocent on the maintenance side of things- there was a turbine blade fracture during flight. Turbines are generally very reliable but it’s a gargantuan pain in the ass to test those blades because they’re crystalline structures, so a fracture goes from nanoscopic to taking out the whole blade all at once. I wouldn’t expect maintainers to catch that.

The criminal part is actually way more interesting and concerning.

Civilian aircraft are built to be safe. I mean REALLY safe. Every system has a redundant (backup) system you can switch to if that system goes down and a way to isolate a damaged system. Planes can fly on only one working engine, or even safely glide down to the ground if they have no engines. We literally blow some engines up in their final stages of testing to make sure they can’t blow up hard enough to take the wing out. Regulations demand it.

So that’s why this is a criminal case. Because after that engine blade came loose and hit the wing, it ruptured a fuel line…

In an aircraft that was designed in compliance with regulations, while this would still be be cause to turn around and land the plane, it shouldn’t actually be a safety problem at all. Just isolate the damaged system and switch to the redundant one. And they didn’t have the ability to do that. Meaning that their aircraft design itself is likely out of compliance with regulations and doesn’t meet the minimum safety requirements to have civilians on it. Which is… honesty way weirder, because who the hell signed off on this thing if it had a design issue like this?

Yup, most engine manufacture is undertaken by specialists. As a good example, Rolls-Royce is an airplane engine company that sometimes makes cars as publicity stunts.

HOWEVER.

It’s not just about who makes engines. Aircraft are meant to last a good 30 years in service and you can’t just ask some schmuck to clean it for $7.50 an hour and call that maintenance. Maintenance is extremely skilled work that tends to be operating under horrible time crunches, especially if a part is suspect and needs to have a plane partially taken apart so it can be changed for a fresh one- a plane that might be due to fly again tomorrow. Maintenance that needs that sort of knowledge tends to have some involvement with the parent company who built the planes, or is even contract work for them.

Boeing is rather notorious for being willing to put the schedule before safety- we’ve seen that in a lot of other accidents. I would absolutely believe that a Boeing manager skimped on engine maintenance because someone in the chain of command said “Get that plane out of the maintenance hangar today or you’re fired, and damn the safety regulations.”

But, that’s just my industry knowledge. The actual circumstances could be way different, so let’s go read the article.