How long before the shutdown actually costs more than the wall?
US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
571–580 of 612 posts
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
So too would women, blacks, Asians, and the poor having the right to vote be anathema to them. Why again do we really care about parsing exactly what the Founders would say about the modern world?
Same reason you’d want to understand the intent behind the design of a software system before you modify it. Afterwards, though, you still go ahead and modify it to meet new requirements. Anyway, extending the franchise doesn’t really have anything to do with the prominence of the federal government, whereas the increasing power of corporations does.
The argument is that the modern software system has become so complex, worrying about what the intent of the original design is almost pointless. Say a single-user app that was originally written in assembly for PDP and has now evolved (or wrapped) into a multi-cluster, multi-zoned gRPC service - how important is the original intent when it was never designed for the current use case?
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
So too would women, blacks, Asians, and the poor having the right to vote be anathema to them. Why again do we really care about parsing exactly what the Founders would say about the modern world?
Same reason you’d want to understand the intent behind the design of a software system before you modify it. Afterwards, though, you still go ahead and modify it to meet new requirements. Anyway, extending the franchise doesn’t really have anything to do with the prominence of the federal government, whereas the increasing power of corporations does.
Sure, but why do we hold the Founders in a particularly high regard? Instead of, say, countless 20th and 21st century politicians, scholars, and technocrats who have a lot more influence on the government as it exists today, most of whom who don't have views nearly as revolting as the Founders.
Who's likely to be able to bring a software system from 16.7.1 to 16.7.2? The team who built 16.7.1, or the team who wrote the pre-alpha version twenty years ago?
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of Mitt Romney's comments in 2012 about borrowing money from your parents: > “We’ve always encouraged young people, take — take a shot, go for it. Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money, if you have to, from your parents. Start a business.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/romn...
After being in the US for so many years now, earlier i used to feel such comments were blatant lies that obviously people with their own agendas do. However now i feel that some people really live in such a bubble that they do not have a basic understanding of the society they are living in and what 'average', 'above average','middle class' etc. means
We all live in bubbles, it's the nature of our existence because we have limited capacity for understanding experiences outside of our own.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#575Bearing in mind that ~40% of american's could not come up with $400 to cover emergencies, this is going to become more prevalent in the next few days / weeks as people will simply not be able to afford gas to get to their unpaid work. I read an article today discussing how TSA workers in HI are living in their cars in the airport parking lot as they cannot afford to commute. The FBI just cancelled its internship prog…
I've seen too many people say, "Oh, government workers should all know this stuff happens all the time, and if they don't have months or years of savings in the bank then it's just their fault". It's really sad that instead of being compassionate, too many are focusing on what "should" be instead of what is the reality for many people. Like you point out, the reality is that most people don't have savings. They shoul…
besides a lack fo compassion, there is also a systemic effect at play: large numbers of people are being put under (financial) stress at the same time. empathy goes down under stressful situations, so it's eaiser for peers to lack empathy for competitive reasons (claiming a leg up from others' misfortunes). this is the whole "poor whites are the most racist against poor blacks" phenomenon (an induced systemic effect rather than some innate feature of poor white people).
this is not to excuse the lack of empathy--as humans, we should strive to feel for and help our neightbors--but not everyone immediately realizes what's going on, which hampers the ability to recognize the multifaceted situation and appropriately guide themselves through it (having empathy for those who seem to lack it can be wholly beneficial too).
politicians--people who wield power--should be held to a higher standard however. criticism must shape power lest our freedoms be eroded.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
So too would women, blacks, Asians, and the poor having the right to vote be anathema to them. Why again do we really care about parsing exactly what the Founders would say about the modern world?
The United States went from a inhospitable backwoods outpost isolated from the entire developed world to the most powerful nation in the world in somewhere around 200 years. These numbers sound larger because we don't live very long but relative to the span of civilizations we are an unimaginable success. Many countries today have e.g. restaurants that predate our country by hundreds of years. This is important for t…
In 1910, for 266 years the Qing dynasty had ruled the most populous and, for a substantial period of time, the richest and most sophisticated country in history. Defenders of the dynasty pointed out its illustrious past and how, in the face of trying modern times, China needed to turn back to the traditions that had made it so successful for so long.
How'd that work out?
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, okay. Thanks for explaining. Do you know some of the reasonings around the support for the shut down?
Politics is innately emotional, and not a thing of reason. Fundamentally, when people choose a leader, they will then follow that person. Its an innate characteristic of humans. Its not a Republican or Democrat thing, its simply a human thing.
Thank you again for explaining. I'll have to look into that. (I'm a little strange so I don't often follow leadership without also querying their reasoning constantly.)
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#578Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen too many people say, "Oh, government workers should all know this stuff happens all the time, and if they don't have months or years of savings in the bank then it's just their fault". It's really sad that instead of being compassionate, too many are focusing on what "should" be instead of what is the reality for many people. Like you point out, the reality is that most people don't have savings. They shoul…
When I was a kid, my dad was deciding between two engineering jobs; one for the US Department of Commerce and another in the private sector for a big aerospace contractor. The private sector one paid more, I remember, but my mother brought up to my dad something interesting: You're less likely to get laid off, and you'll always have more job security, with the stable paycheck provided by a government job. It's weird…
Yep, my dad spent his entire career as first a contractor for the FAA, and later an FAA employee. Modest pay compared to private sector, but the stability balanced that out. Worked in the same place around 30 years, in a low cost of living area.
When I finally got around to getting my CS degree, I took my first job offer, in a private industry. But the first chance I got, I took a contractor job for the FAA, to chase that same stability.
Now, my dad's working for no pay, and I'm watching contractors around me getting laid off or having their hours reduced to 12 or 16 per week to stretch the leftover contract funds through the end of February. I got only a small cut myself, to 36, but the ax could come down any day. So much for stability. I'm not looking to jump ship and find a private sector dev job, but my 5 years of experience is with technologies and tools that the private industry has largely left behind, or in niches that also require domain specific skills I don't have. I feel like I'm almost having to start from scratch if I want to get my income out from under the capricious nature of modern politics. My dad on the other hand has pretty much resigned himself to accepting things as they are, since he doesn't think there's much of a market for 55yo project managers who only know about air traffic systems.
All that said, I expect a lot of contract workers in particular are going to start avoiding government contracts in the future, and considering they already don't seem to be getting much of the best and brightest, I wonder how they are going to manage to maintain any momentum in developing new technologies for air traffic safety.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#580There's no way the federal shutdown lasts too much longer. The heat is on and too many people feel the hurt now, especially in a place like New York. If I were a betting man, I'd say 3-4 days max.
I think you are probably right, but I think it will end because the admin will declare a border emergency to try and get funding. The senate will then pass a clean bill and the emergency bill will get stuck in the courts. Right now this is only going on because of the admin wanting to save face.
I was wrong, the Admin just caved.