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Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

theguardian.com

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Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#561

Post by wkat4242 »

roywiggins wrote: post #277
lxgr wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nobody followed the news or social media, there wouldn’t have been runs on toilet paper to begin with, as there never was a shortage to begin with and it was all just mass hysteria.

It was never clear to me, but at least part of it was supposedly due to everyone pooping at home using consumer TP instead of at the office, using commercially packaged TP (two-ply, giant rolls for big dispensers). And that sudden shift started to empty shelves. If people had stocked up over a period of time, the empty-shelves situation that produced the fear probably wouldn't have happened. Of course in practice the…

I never really understood the importance of it anyway. People were locked in their home so they could just use the shower head if it came to it. Of course a real bidet would be better and cleaner but I don't think they exist in northern America or Northern Europe.

It's also common in Asia (at least South East) they can survive without toilet paper :) The Japanese even have entire water jet massage toilets, they do it like a king.

Or if you don't want to use water, you could use serviettes, tissues. Even newspaper.

That's why I didn't understand the fuss about it. Sure it's annoying if you run out but not the end of the world especially when you're at home where there's always a shower to hand. I don't understand that people were so obsessed with toilet paper.

What would be much more important is food, water (in my city the tap water is terrible so I don't drink it), medication etc.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#562

Post by wkat4242 »

platevoltage wrote: post #458
lxgr wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nobody followed the news or social media, there wouldn’t have been runs on toilet paper to begin with, as there never was a shortage to begin with and it was all just mass hysteria.

I'll never understand why bidets are so niche in the USA especially after there are TP shortages every couple of years. Not to mention how gross cleaning yourself with dry tissue is.

Oh yes I was just writing the same. Water is much cleaner yeah. About half the houses here have a bidet.

I think many people in countries like the US or northern Europe wouldn't even know what it's for when they see one :)

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#563

Post by wkat4242 »

drcongo wrote: post #409
garciasn wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Because I personally believe those who are not regularly informed are exacerbating the problem in why the electorate makes the decisions it does.

I totally get that, and agree to a degree. For me personally though, the news industry has become entertainment - TV news is hyperbolic, 24 hour breaking news for every story, newspapers (at least here in the UK) are little more than a propaganda outlet for the views of the billionaire owner where every story is designed to make people angry and point the blame at someone, usually immigrants. For years I listened to…

That "BREAKING NEWS" fuss is kinda a US specific thing though.

In Holland we just watch the news at 6 or 8pm (at least for those who still do that) which is very factual. Or we read nu.nl or nos.nl which don't really have screaming clickbaity headlines unless some shit really hit a fan. Which is really rare. I prefer nos.nl because nu.nl has too much celebrity news for me.

But we don't have any of that weird "Watch this NOW or get left behind!!" FOMO bait I see when I tune up CNN.

It probably helps that NOS is publicly funded so they have no incentive to maximise "engagement". Their job is just to report the news in a clean way.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#564

Post by wkat4242 »

StefanBatory wrote: post #296
drcongo wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I went news cold turkey about 6 years ago and I'm very happy with that decision.

Because not everyone is privileged enough to be able to ignore news.

I wonder what you mean by that. What is so bad that happens if you don't watch the news for a day or a few days? A colleague might mention something you didn't know yet? I'm sure they'd be happy to fill you in.

Most of the news we see has no actual effect on our lives anyway. Like this crash. It's terrible but other than feeling bad for them (which doesn't help them) it doesn't affect my life in any way. If I find out about it at a later time that's fine. Probably when admiral cloudberg makes one of her masterpieces about it. I read the news anyway as a matter of interest and "nothing better to do" but to me it's mostly a time sink. I only read about 1% of the articles in the main feed.

I often go on retreats with friends and I hardly use my phone and the TV never goes on for even a second :) It's really nice to unplug. I can recommend having an unplug day once in a while for starters.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#565

Post by [deleted] »

lxgr wrote: post #542
roywiggins wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A million Americans did die of it, the lost QALYs was... a lot. A lot of people died who had more than a decade, actuarially. That's a big deal. But it doesn't matter for what I'm saying: paying too much attention to the news about a weird new virus from China would have clued a person in that something big might be coming, on whatever dimension you care to measure it.

But would that have been actionable information for the average person? What would you have done differently on the first day, given perfect information? The Covid pandemic lasted much longer than would have been reasonable to prepare for via hoarding of supplies etc. In my view, that was the entire problem: Much of the world overreacted in the short term (hard lockdowns including fining people going for a walk by th…

[deleted]

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#566

Post by sbmthakur »

amit9gupta wrote: post #514
nindalf wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economist for me. I don't know of any other sources that can reach the same level.

I had been a Economist subscriber for almost 20 years. But then gradually I realized that their reporting on some issues are extremely biased and they conveniently skip reporting some facts to match their intended narrative and lead the reader to distorted conclusions. So I would assume they would be doing the same with other topics as well. I did not renew my subscription.

Did you pick up something else?

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#567

Post by wkat4242 »

Litost wrote: post #324
treetalker wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can access a digital Guardian Weekly through my public library's online magazines (Hoopla or Libby or some such).

Thanks, that's good to know. And I've just seen that you CAN get The Guardian Weekly digital subscription here, free if you've got a print subscription? Though obviously I'm wondering why the Guardian don't advertise this? https://theguardianweekly.pressreader.com/

Yeah that's weird. The Guardian has a global catchment area. It's no longer a Manchester or UK paper. A lot of foreign readers wouldn't subscribe to a print sub because it's not worth the hassle.

I'd also feel bad getting some dead trees filled with chemicals and flown across the pond then someone driving it out to me, all that environmental impact when I could just download it.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#568

Post by wkat4242 »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #428
yohannparis wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I subscribe to the Le Monde weekly, 10 printed pages newspaper delivered home. Enough to know what's what and done.

Considering the amount of cash and/or subsidies that Le Monde has received in the last 30 years from the French government, you may as well read the Pravda. Nobody bites the hand that feeds them.

Not necessarily. In Holland our NOS is publicly funded which is just defined by law. A minister can't just change that.

If anything they get complaints of being left leaning sometimes. While our government is (well, was, it just collapsed) a hard-line radical right wing one similar to Trump.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#569

Post by wkat4242 »

newdee wrote: post #425
randomNumber7 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people trust their own thinking to judge what they see. We know it called mayday and then lost communication. It also stopped transmitting GPS data. Looking at this it likely lost all electric power. The electric power comes from generators driven by the turbines. If you lose both turbines you lose electricity. You also lose the hydraulic system so you can not get in the gear or change flaps. Occam's razor check…

Don’t these Dreamliners also have back batteries?

Yes, lithium ones, those were the ones that kept catching fire then the 787 was just out.

I guess they're just for the time until the RAT kicks in. Or to augment it.

Ps there's also the APU, a small turbine in the tail for generating electricity.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#570

Post by wkat4242 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #475
newdee wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t these Dreamliners also have back batteries?

Even on light GA aircraft the radio will run for an hour on the starter battery. This narrative doesn't sound realistic.

Yes and many pilots being walkie talkies in GA as backup. Not sure if airline pilots do this though. And its kinda hard to root around for it and fiddle with it while trying to keep an unpowered jetliner in the air. They're more for emergencies where the radio is the only problem.

By the way, the age old rule is "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate" in that order of priority. So it could be they just had their hands full with the Aviate part.

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