warner25

The missions are flown through that airspace multiple times per day, and it's all for national security purposes. You can't put a hold on all commercial air traffic every time, and you need to train the pilots to navigate and communicate through that particular airspace.

Whether the system (i.e. separating rotary-wing and fixed-wing traffic there) can be more safely designed is a question for the FAA. The military aircraft are simply abiding by FAA rules for that airspace. Many more civilian helicopters are doing the same thing.

As defrost said, having goggles would be normal (probably even required by local unit policy) for any night flight. Whether they are helpful or harmful will vary with conditions so, yeah, when transiting through a dense urban area with lots of ambient light you might actually flip them up (i.e. out of the way, above your line of sight) to see better.

Also as defrost said, nobody can know right now if they were actually in-use at the time of the incident. We have to wait for cockpit voice recordings.

Anyway, it's not really significant, though. I think Secretary Hegseth mentioned it because a portion of the public will equate "flying with night vision" to "flying in daylight" (even though it's not even close), so the DoD was taking all appropriate measures to be safe. Or he was just told that the crew was doing a "goggle reset" flight (because crew members need to log at least one hour of flight time with goggles every 60 days to stay current), and he jumped to a conclusion.

Yes, the public needs to understand this. That unit's [1] task is to provide transportation to senior government officials and security forces around the capital, including to and from that airport. If they didn't train to operate there, then their first time doing so would be with someone like the Secretary of Defense onboard or during some other mission that's critical to national security.

And the aviators assigned to that unit are typically more senior people who've already done a tour or two with more conventional units. Source: I'm a career Army officer and former Black Hawk pilot.

[1] https://jtfncr.mdw.army.mil/TAAB/

It's a bad idea. That unit's [1] task is to provide transportation to senior government officials and security forces around the capital, including to and from that airport. If they didn't train to operate there, then their first time doing so would be with someone like the Secretary of Defense onboard or during some other mission that's critical to national security.

"Training" here also doesn't imply some 21 year-old flight school student learning to fly. The aviators assigned to that unit are typically more senior people who've already done a tour or two with more conventional units.

I've lost count of how many times I've heard your sentiment already today, and I'm distraught by the general public's apparent lack of understanding about how things work.

[1] https://jtfncr.mdw.army.mil/TAAB/

I disagree with the premise that the US will be totally different tomorrow.

One characteristic of the US that differs from most other countries is the degree to which the states retain a lot of power to govern themselves, and states will continue doing what they do mostly independently of things at the Federal level.

The way that most Americans talk about the president also overstates the actual power of the office. I half-joked earlier today that most Americans seem to imagine this country as an autocracy in which they get to vote for a new ruler every four years. But it's not. Congress still has more power than the average person-on-the-street seems to realize. Part of what makes Trump taking office tomorrow a bigger deal is that he's also getting both houses of congress for the next two years, which isn't always the case, but we're seeing flashes of congressional Republicans being unwilling give up their powers to him.

Anyway, I also agree with the other answers about nuclear command and control and the dysfunction in congress, especially in terms of congress exercising its power to declare war.

Another forum that I frequent is bogleheads.org (about investing and personal finance), and one of the rules is that discussing politics and proposed legislation is off-limits. But obviously when a new law (e.g. on taxes) is actually passed then discussion of how we're personally affected becomes appropriate and necessary.

That might be a good model for generally striking an appropriate balance: be informed about new major legislation (or executive orders, court decisions, etc.) when they happen, but skip all the day-to-day drama about who said what on the House or Senate floor, or in an interview, or on X in between such things. I've seen it suggested many times that the Wikipedia current events portal is all that one should look at, and it would probably accomplish this.

I'm debating trying to do this. I've seen it recommended by other people who I think are smart. Honestly, I tuned out most of the 2010s after being a political news junkie in the 2000s, and it was probably good for me. I couldn't sleep or concentrate on work for a couple days after this election.

And in 2 years and 4 years I will go to the voting booth. But I'm powerless until then

What's really depressing is that I'm already happy with my representation in congress, and they'll probably win again comfortably in 2026 and 2028, but they're powerless too.

Yes, and what's even worse to me is Trump's explicit motivation for supporting TikTok now. Like there are some interesting philosophical, moral, and maybe legal arguments against the TikTok ban but what he's seized on is simply that TikTok was a useful tool (as far as he's been told) for gaining votes. Keeping it around just benefits him politically and personally, so that's it.

Yes, I don't have a reference immediately available, but I've read that the DoD has studied this and found that LDS kids join the military at a disproportionately high rate and turn out to be better than average troops. Anecdotally, I've found this to be true too. The Utah Army National Guard also has the 300th Military Intelligence Brigade of linguists which is pretty unique.

But for Gen Z folks, that stuff is ancient history, isn't it? Even the oldest members (using 1997 as a starting point, but some definitions use 2000) were too young to protest or serve in Iraq[1]. By the time the youngest Gen Z folks were starting school in the mid-2010s, the US stock market and unemployment rate had reached pre-recession levels too.

[1] I mean when people cared about Iraq, 2003 to circa 2008. We still have troops there, but I don't think most of America is even aware of that.

I'm pretty sure that only a small minority of Americans, let alone those in the 18-29 age group, can name their senators and representative and anyone on the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, most Americans instead seem to imagine this country as an autocracy in which they get to vote for a new ruler every four years.

I've been fascinated by the shift towards Trump by 18-29 voters in this past election, and I think this is a good explanation that I haven't heard before. Yeah, and Bush 43 was so long ago that his popular image has turned from kind of a villainous "worst president ever" to a favorably remembered elder statesman according to some polls.

Note that it was a shift for Trump, still not a majority voting for him. Exit polls that I've seen still indicated an 11-point lead for Harris[1], but that's much more narrow than the 24-point lead that Biden had in 2020[2]. Anyway, I've been fascinated by this because it kind of broke my mental model imagining that the Republican party would eventually be marginalized as its voters died of old age. I definitely thought Trump was going to lose this age group in 2024 by the widest margin ever.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/exit-polls

Regarding Trump, yes. Also,

Kill all the algos and let me find stuff via regex

I love this. As someone who increasingly feels old and dissatisfied with what computing is turning into, I'm going to start using this along with things like "you'll have to pry local accounts, passwords, and plain text email from my cold, dead hands."

I bet it still does

I'm not sure why anyone would expect otherwise. This also extends to a lot of computer science and engineering departments. Not just through funding research and recruiting graduates, but a formal pipeline for students to get their education paid for in exchange for years of service in a Federal position requiring a security clearance and working on cybersecurity (kind of like ROTC or attending a service academy). It's not at all secret, and should probably be more well-known as an option for current or future college students. Here are the participating universities: https://sfs.opm.gov/Academia/Institutions

I'm also a career Army officer (product of ROTC myself) that has been sent to graduate school, as have many of my peers, with an obligation to bring that education back for additional years of service in positions that require it. At any given time, we have hundreds (thousands?) of active duty officers on college campuses all over the country.

I have a single anecdote, not much insight, but I'm interested in advancing discussion around your question.

My wife, in her mid-30s, has friends who will share or send her links to TikTok videos. She says that she can't view them because she doesn't have an account, but she doesn't want to create an account because she "knows she has an addictive personality" [1] and has read about the power of TikTok. Anyway, I imagine that this is how it starts for a lot of people: not wanting to miss out on stuff sent by a friend, creating an account to check it out, and then rapidly getting sucked into the addictive user experience. And it keeps spreading the same way from there.

[1] She does, and I'm thankful that she recognizes this. She's already a heavy consumer of Facebook Reels, by the way.

Very good!

For the next 2-4 years, sure, but this seems like a longer-term trend towards something that's going to happen eventually.

The article leaves me totally unsatisfied, with even more questions than answers.

I still have no idea how so many people like me [1] can feel increasingly disconnected from the party that has been totally remade in Trump's image, while these guys have gone in the other direction.

[1] A registered Republican since the Bush era. I've vocally opposed the man since he first entered the picture in the spring of 2015, and I seem to be in good company; see Bush, Cheney, McCain, Romney, all of his former cabinet members and even his own former VP. My dad has voted Republican since the Nixon era, but said he couldn't do it anymore either.

I feel the same way as the parent comment. They're number two for now, but seem screwed in a world that's moving towards outlawing gasoline-powered cars. Their bets on hydrogen fuel cells haven't yielded anything, and now they're a decade behind on developing EV experience and expertise.

I've owned three Toyotas because they've always seemed to be the lowest total-cost-of-ownership option, being especially good in the compact and midsize segments. American manufacturers are trying as hard as possible to abandon those segments. So what will we be left with? I don't want a giant, luxury sports car that costs $50k+.

Agreed. I still have a 2008, and it has gotten me through a couple nor'easters. Even with the original Goodyear Integrity tires. One of them was on the rolling hills of I-90 and I-84 through western Massachusetts and Connecticut. On every uphill portion I'd pass people who had gotten stuck, until I finally reached a place to stop for the night and wait out the storm. The front wheel drive seems to make it better than a lot of other cars out there. Put some CrossClimate2 tires on it, and it would be even better.

As someone who enjoys corresponding with old friends and distant family via email (as opposed to, like, text messages or social media comments), I feel like this trend has ruined my ability to do so. It seems like people - who've given up and let their inboxes become flooded - just don't even look in their inboxes for legitimate, personal correspondence anymore.

This is what filter rules are for. See my other comment.

Agreed on all points.

A step further, which I haven't personally tried but I've been thinking about, is to set up a filter rule that just automatically deletes anything with "unsubscribe" or "manage your preferences" in it. If you're already at a zero inbox and getting very few emails per day, this just isn't necessary, but I'd recommend it for someone who has a dumpster fire of an inbox that's getting hundreds of marketing or automatic notification emails per day.

Don't use filter rules to sort mail; after unsubscribing from everything you possibly can, use filter rules to even more aggressively auto-delete or block stuff that you really don't need to see.

You should end up getting so few emails that it's easy to read them all in one inbox or folder and subsequently reply, take a note, and manually delete them to get back to zero.

Yeah, starting around age four, all of my kids became prolific artists, going through dozens of sheets of paper per day. With our oldest kid, we tried hanging them up on the wall, but it quickly ended up covering every inch of a long hallway. Now, to keep our house from overflowing, I just photograph[1] all the drawings every night and recycle them (see my other comment about personally using the back sides of some for my own notes).

[1] After four kids, I've fallen behind on sorting through the photos, but we have albums for the artwork that each of them has made. It's pretty cool to see it all in one place, and how their work has become more sophisticated over time.

My kids just freely grab sheets of printer paper when they want to draw stuff. To save paper, I later use the other sides of their drawings for any handwritten notes or conceptual sketches that I make. I guess people will be really amused if I ever become a historical figure and they see these.

I'm seeing 219 R to 215 D, by the way, and the one remaining vacant seat will probably go R again. Unless I'm interpreting something incorrectly(?), it doesn't look like a one-seat majority. Still more narrow than it was in 2017, as you said, but not quite that narrow.

Who is "they" in this sentence? You mean the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress who (nearly) all have their seats at this point only because they appealed to Trump's mob of followers? He could be impeached for all manner of things, but (as the parent comment said) I don't know what it would take for these Republicans to do it.

When he first took office in 2017, I figured that it would happen within six months. Given that he was impeached twice, I was almost right, but it didn't happen until Democrats won the House. Even most of the "old establishment" Republicans ended up backing him. Now there are none of those remaining.

Good point - I didn't realize that the new majorities are more narrow than they were in 2017 - but my observation is that he has more control now over these more narrow majorities. In 2017, there were still a lot of "Never Trump" or at least "old establishment" Republicans, and the party had its own brand and ideology that was distinct from Trump. That no longer seems to be the case. And the degree to which he can deploy an angry mob against any Republican that stands up to him, threatening primary challenges or worse, seems totally unprecedented to me.

I say this as a registered Republican since the Bush era who has never voted for Trump. I don't feel like anyone in the party represents me anymore.

I think the idea is that Trump wields enormous (unprecedented?) control over the members of his party, and thus effectively controls both houses of Congress for at least the next two years. I assume he'll quickly get whatever legislation he wants sent to his desk for signature. I'm wondering how long it takes before the Senate invokes the "nuclear option" on what still requires a filibuster-proof majority to pass.