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Now do doctors.

If you don't already know how thoroughly any standards for graduation from medical school have been discarded, it will scare the shit out of you, thereby saving you a potentially deadly visit to a proctologist.

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Feb 7, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

That Fed Ex pilot is squared away. He knew ground control was chewed up. He saw the danger before it was such and avoided it. I would not be surprised if he were ex-military. Regardless he saved dozens of souls that day!! That being said, why do we have to do things cheaper... because we have exported all our wealth to china. A strange segue I know, but it is what’s been on my mind lately. My resolution for this year, more like a desire that I am putting more effort into, is to avoid chinese goods and if at all possible to buy American goods. (With some exceptions for luxury goods. Italian leather, French wine, German tools, etc..) Long story short the USA undoubtedly is mostly a chinese market. Don’t get me wrong. I have found some hidden gems like All American Clothing, Marc Nelson Denim, Roam Luggage, James Avery Jewelry and SAS Shoes, but most every retail outlet I have been to is loaded with chinese goods. It’s absurd, astonishing and disheartening. America is drunk on cheaply made STUFF. Just take a look at your shoe collection! If we had not been exporting our wealth and prosperity to china for the last thirty years we would have a better more robust economy to better pay the aeronautical workers. Therefore attracting better skilled personnel and greatly reducing turnover. We can help ourselves. Start paying attention to where goods are made and make a decision based purely on self-preservation. It’s really that easy. Thanks for the article Chris! Disclaimer: I have nothing against and love the Chinese people. That being said, I am gravely concerned with the people of the country I know and Love. God Bless the USA!!!

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Feb 6, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

This is a great example of your observation about our collapsing society, at all levels. There are many reasons but there just seems to be a large number of people in important positions, ones that can determine life and death, that don't know what they're doing.

Danny Huckabee

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The Woke: “as long as all of these “do-stuff” places have majority POC/disabled/gay/trans LGBTQ2iABLMFU2 employees, that’s all I care about. Now let’s discuss something more important: the evils of whiteness”

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Feb 6, 2023·edited Feb 6, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

So many flight disasters and near-disasters are like this - simply not doing. Air France 447 is another terrifying one - two experienced FOs are utterly flummoxed by an intermittent instrument-reading outage. They animatedly tell each other that they don't understand what's going on while they quite literally act at cross-purposes - one pulling his stick forward, the other back - before the pilot emerges from his rest period to try to salvage the situation, to no avail. A farcical series of errors - but one borne of the fact that the two FOs entered a period of turbulence with no plan, and in fact no communcation beyond talking about other flights they'd been on. The fact that they were, like, FOs, meant they didn't need to actually worry about coordinating how to handle the plane.

The video you linked illustrates what happens when you deviate from the basics - watch the gauges and call out 'go-around' if needed. Watch the center line and call out 'center line' if needed. Ironically, this deviation probably saved the day, because someone *else* wasn't doing their job.

Aviation, moreso than any other sphere of human endeavor, has checklists and failsafes of monumental robustness. In the case of Air France 447, the crew just didn't think them that important, and by the time they realized the gravity of the situation they were too panicked to carry them out. In these recent near-misses, I can't even give the people involved the credit of knowing what they should have been doing. And here's the kicker - the more people who aren't doing their jobs, the more capable people will *have* to deviate, because they can no longer trust that the rest of the system is working.

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America is a tired and sloppy place right now, with jabbed ATC and pilots, exhaustion from social tension, and a rapid decline in merit and standards. With poor leadership in the administration filtering down like Soma to the rest of us, it feels like we are having the life drained from us.

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Yikes. I love flying. I love being close to major airports and seeing those massive beauties close up in flight. Makes me love the magic of humanity.

Of course same/similar dysfunction in healthcare. As a nurse I’m amazed every shift how often basic shit doesn’t work and how bad communication between docs/nurses is. Phones, computers, IV pumps are regularly on the fritz. I’m in a level one trauma center an hour outside Manhattan. Good news is that the shit show is forcing me to deepen my spiritual practice and connect more with the natural beauty on this still (for now) gorgeous planet. What else can we do?

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Feb 7, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

After the horrific Tenerife collision, US airlines suspended service to Tenerife and the Canary Islands until just recently. I think it was just reestablished. The Canaries are hard to get to, but are very beautiful and worth a visit, btw.

I was talking to an ex-aircraft controller just yesterday who still works for the FAA in other capacities. And he’s a pilot. He told me a couple of interesting things apropos your topic. So, the FAA makes ATCs retire at 56. So they lose a lot of highly experienced people at a ridiculously young age. There are no skills tests or simulations that they can perform to retain their positions. He also told me that they have incredible technology which would be beneficial in terms of safety and efficiency which the agency simply won’t implement because of institutional inertia. That’s the trifecta with our government, one part stupid, one part inertia/laziness, and one part malevolent corruption. Season to taste. Most people find it indigestible regardless.

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Not a great article to read six days out from a flight 😬

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Feb 7, 2023·edited Feb 7, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

The Lac Megantic rail disaster occurred in my neck of the woods in 2013. I happened to be acquainted with a conductor that was friend of the engineer they pinned everything on. Basically a perfect storm of government regulation and corporate greed caused the accident. The conductor explained to me that the CEO of the Maine & Montreal Railroad became convinced that single operator trains would revolutionize rail freight. Canada's transportation authority became really strict with the hours of service rules at the same time.

According to my friend the conductor, you needed to be at your hotel before the hours of service ended - or you would get a large fine. The run to Lac-Megantic was so long that an engineer only had 20 minutes to secure the train and get to his hotel. If he needed 25 minutes he would get a $200.00 fine. The engineers used a bunch of shortcuts to secure the train in about 8 minutes. Basically leaving a locomotive running to keep the air pressure up, and setting a couple of hand brakes. The combination of single engineers on trains and stupid safety rules caused the Lac Megantic disaster.

The TSB report is below. Note the weasel words around the Single-Person Crews section.

https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/rail/2013/r13d0054/r13d0054-r-es.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster

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This is what happens to society when the highest value is placed on making money instead of valuing human life. I am not particularly religious but over 2,000 years ago the people who wrote that “The love of money is the root of all evil.” , sure knew what they were talking about. Doing things cheaper and faster is only about making money for shareholders, screwing the rest of society as a result.

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I now fly in the planes of others, but I was an instrument rated pilot and, 25 years ago, flew a good bit for over a decade. At the time, I learned and kept learning, visited ARTCC Centers on a Sunday morning when not super busy (which one could do then) to learn about the "other side" of the radio, listened to complaints in the break room, visited major metro airport towers (again, at agreeable times), and learned about the technology we used at the time (NDB beacons were still in use, radar altimeters less reliable -- and no "autoland"). Langewiesche's Stick and Rudder was still basic then. Like the FedEx pilot at Austin, it wasn't just about "following orders," although we paid plenty of attention to what we were told, it was also about acting responsibly in an entire set of circumstances we were part of. Flying was fun. Flying was also serious, in a kind of Western buddhist "attention" way

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Someone should write a book about what happens when productive, capable, free people leave an industrialized economy in droves. A good title would be Atlas Shrugged.

Seriously, as Ayn Rand laid out do well, philosophy drives the course of human history & events. When our culture abandoned reason a few generations back, collapse was baked in the cake.

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Thank you for linking to me! Great article.

The incompetence is shocking. But here's something else that disturbs me personally. I am not woke, not vaccinated, not a recreational drug user. I had one Covid a long time ago. I own a small business where I have to dispatch trucks, equipment and personnel carefully, with lots of things to consider.

While I still manage, I noticed that I personally am becoming less competent at doing so. It is still acceptable, but the trend is not going in the right direction. Not sure if this is a purely individual, idiosyncratic problem or a part of a larger trend.

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Feb 7, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

The decay in competence was becoming apparent in public schools decades ago, as is evident from the long slide of this country into academic mediocrity.

The laser-like focus on objectives other than competence is affecting everything. Destroying a civilization’s competence is an important element of destroying the civilization itself.

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People are finally waking up to the fact that viruses are tricky little devils, mutate routinely and become resistant to many anti-viral therapeutics. Frankly, conventional medicine should be educating the public about how to strengthen their own immune systems, which if healthy routinely kill viruses, bacteria, malignant cell and the like 24/7.

The curious might want to read my new book due out on Amazon in the next few days titled: GET WELL—EVEN IN TODAY'S CONFUSION, UNCERTAINTY, AND FEAR. Because I write in two genres, my Substack articles are in the spiritual space and not related but this is my second book on holistic healing. My platform is having an amazing personal recovery history, being considered by some an expert on the holistic healing process and sharing with readers (in this book) my proprietary list of what strengthens and what weakens the immune system (physically, mentally/emotionally, and spiritually. That list will help the public make smarter decisions about prevention and their own healing.

Sorry for the shameless plug but your article jumped out at me, Chris, because it was totally in my wheelhouse.

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