StableOutshoot
No bio...
User ID: 2253
StableOutshoot
2d ago
On the other hand, flying the real thing is easier in some ways because the feeling of your butt on the seat and the pressure from the air on your controls and the horizon out of the corner of your eye gives you feedback about what the airplane is doing that you don't get from a sim.
StableOutshoot
2d ago
It takes temendous skill and knowledge to even get a plane off the ground
The hardest part is starting the engines, which can be a bit more complicated than starting your car but it's a fairly simple route procedure. I have met instructors who will let a first time student perform the takeoff on their first flight, and I even met one guy who would let first time students land it too.
As another reply stated the actual hard part of flying is everything you need to learn and develop about yourself to fly for years or decades without an incident, particularly including how to obey the rules and procedures of the airspace system, but also things like being a weatherman, being a mechanic, being able to calmly and rationally attack a problem that will kill you if you don't solve it, etc.
StableOutshoot
2d ago
It costs something like $100k to get a commercial pilot's license. Once you have that you generally become a flight instructor, which lets you log hours on the dime of one of those flight students while they spend their own $100k to get their own commercial pilot's license. After 1250 hours of that, plus a few other side quests, you qualify for an airline transport pilot certificate and can finally work for an airline.
On a side note I've always found it funny that virtually every civilian flight student is taught not by a highly experienced pilot with a genuine interest in developing the next generation of pilots, but rather by someone barely out of flight school themselves who is only doing it to tick the box they need to go after the job they really want.
Only in the military do people become instructors at the tail instead of the start of their careers, and that's why I have a lot more faith and trust in pilots who joined the airlines from the military than from the civilian path.
StableOutshoot
2d ago
A tragic and pointless loss of life.
In a proper world, he would still be alive, and every person who participated in elevating him into a position he was clearly unqualified for would be experiencing the things that made him want to commit suicide.
StableOutshoot
13d ago
The counterpoint is that this principle only works in a culture which values the rule of law, which is increasingly not the case. If it becomes difficult to find 12 random people who will be willing to make a decision based solely on the law and the relevant facts of the case, then the justice system itself becomes unviable.
StableOutshoot
13d ago
As an embedded systems/electrical engineer, it's kind of astounding to me that a hardware wallet would rely on a software PRNG to generate cryptographic secrets in the first place.
- Many embedded microcontrollers have hardware TRNGs built in.
- If you don't trust that, most embedded microcontrollers have ADCs in them, which you can hook up to something noisy like a reverse-biased PN junction to generate entropy (or even just leave the thing connected to nothing and use the noise in the least significant bits)
- If you don't trust that, there are many open source hardware TRNG designs available that you can strap into your device. I'm a big fan of this one.
There's really no valid reason I can think of to use a PRNG to generate cryptographic secrets.
StableOutshoot
14d ago
Okay that's a good way I can think about it thank you
StableOutshoot
15d ago
Now that my ban has expired, I would like to figure out what you are and are not looking for from top-level posts about current events involving culture war issues.
I don't really see much of a fundamental difference between this post that OP was banned for, the one that I was banned for, and for example this post that I made two weeks ago.
I don't think that your intention is to prohibit posts about current events, and I don't think that your intention is to prohibit people from expressing their opinions in posts about current events. But it feels like the line is a bit fuzzy here between posts with these qualities that are bannable or not.
I understood the warning I received 4 months ago as wanting posts about current events to have better sourcing and a bit less sensationalist language, which I've endeavored to do, but obviously I either didn't do this well enough or I took away the wrong lesson.
Some more clarity would be appreciated here.
StableOutshoot
15d ago
Lol, I got a ban and a Quality Contribution nomination in the same week. The Motte is a truly wonderful place. Sincerely.
StableOutshoot
22d ago
My memory is indeed faulty
If you've got 10 people seated around a table, and a Nazi violent dirtbag leftist sits down, and nobody gets up, you've got 11 Nazis violent dirtbag leftists. The simple truth is that activists can forcefully occupy territory in downtown Madison, a jurisdiction controlled entirely by the left from the city council all the way up to the governor, because they have enough political power within the left coalition to make it politically infeasible to send in riot cops or the national guard.
StableOutshoot
22d ago
I think fumbling melees with multiple officers and multiple implements (gun, knife, taser) have a high chance of tragic results.
This seems so blindingly obvious to me that my only explanation for people not understanding it is because they are too ideologically committed to hating cops to acknowledge when the use of force is reasonable.
StableOutshoot
22d ago
The problem with comparing policing between rich western countries is that the USA is the only rich western country with a substantial population of violent and antisocial people. The raw rate of crime in the USA is multiple times that of the other countries you want to compare us to, and police doctrine must necessarily accommodate this. If you dropped a European police officer into the south side of Chicago they would get eaten alive, because for all the alleged superiority of European policing, they have the outcomes that they have because European police just have to police Europeans. American police have to police Americans.
StableOutshoot
22d ago
It's hard to mobilize people who believe in the rule of law into doing extralegal things.
StableOutshoot
22d ago
I don't remember anybody doing a civil unrest over Philando Castile.
StableOutshoot
23d ago
Yeah, but... every single time, though. Like I can't think of a single one of these left-wing martyrs who didn't make me go "wait a second, this is the guy you want to spend political capital on?"
StableOutshoot
23d ago
How so? For the anti-police folks, anything that might hint at the notion that the police officer didn't just shoot a random guy for no reason whatsoever is radioactive to their cause, they ignore it to the greatest extent practical.
Two culture war bombs in the upper midwest this week
In May 2025, a woman in Rochester Minnesota uttered the N-word at a child who tried to steal from her, and then again at an adult who confronted her about it while recording with his phone. Both the child and adult are Somali. The video, uploaded to Youtube, went massively viral.
The woman was charged with three counts of disorderly conduct. One of the charges was dropped, the other two just went to trial. After a four day trial and 10 hours of deliberation, the jury found a guilty verdict for one of the charges.
The defendant's lawyer is claiming misconduct by the court and intends to appeal.
Our nation's few remaining principled free speech advocates do not approve of this. This verdict will likely be appealed and may, at minimum, result in Minnesota's disorderly conduct statute being nullified with regard to offenses that are limited to speech and no other disruptive behavior.
In a somewhat ironic twist, apparently the guy who recorded the viral youtube video at the center of all this, was arrested for gang raping a child in 2022, and had those charges dropped "in the interests of justice" by the same prosecutor's office that this year thought it was in the interests of justice to throw the book at somebody for saying a naughty word. What a funny world we live in.
Bomb number two: Police in Madison, WI, responding to reports that someone was casing vehicles to break into, confronted a suspect, who fled, resisted arrest, and finally attacked one officer with a knife, causing that officer to respond with lethal force.
Activists are very clearly trying to turn this into a reprise of the George Floyd moment, including transporting the raised fist monument from Minneapolis' "George Floyd Square" to Madison. The area around the shooting has been barricaded by activists. Activists stormed a police press conference, seizing the podium to deliver a rant about Zionism.
State representative and gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong has thrown her lot fully in with the activists. Whether this helps or hurts her electoral chances will remain to be seen.
Madison's "Independent Police Monitor", who has also thrown her lot in with the activists, is confused about why the Madison Police Department are not involving her in their investigation of the incident.
Attorney Ben Crump, whose list of cases is a who's who of law-enforcement-related racial grievances, is representing the family of the deceased.
And the deceased? Over 40 arrests, multiple felony convictions, including a history of assaults on police officers. (No way to link directly to this, but go here and search for Corey Ruiz).
It never ceases to amaze me how the left is so consistently able to mobilize itself in the defense of the worst people in the world.
StableOutshoot
25d ago
I guess this calls for some sort of definition of "terrorism."
The definition I generally see used is unlawful non-state force intended to coerce a political outcome.
I suppose whether summer 2020 counts as an outbreak of terrorism could hinge on whether it can still be considered "non-state force" when it has the overt material support of one of our political parties.
StableOutshoot
26d ago
Left-wing terrorism in the United States killed about two dozen Americans and dealt over two billion dollars in property damage in 2020.
StableOutshoot
28d ago
It's possible that "imprison" here is meant in the sense of the crime of "false imprisonment," which is the crime of hindering someone's movement without cause, but which does not require a literal prison.
But even in that sense, someone's arrest by law enforcement would also constitute "imprisoning" them.
StableOutshoot
28d ago
18 USC 878 also references 18 USC 112, which prohibits imprisoning any foreign official.
StableOutshoot
28d ago
A city mayor with no authority to conduct foreign relations proposing the arrest of an internationally protected person in violation of both US federal law and a UN treaty that the US is party to does not seem to me to be a simple "discussion of public policy". It feels like a line has been crossed quite decisively.
Mamdani feels like he is trying to run NYC as a sovereign city-state and doesn't want to explicitly acknowledge the reality that he is legally required to defer to the authority of higher political entities. It really shows here, where his discussion of why he won't actually do the arrest mentions "the laws here in New York City." New York City doesn't have a law about this! This feels very much like a phrasing deliberately chosen to avoid acknowledging that New York City is under the political authority of the United States.
Promising things you know are impossible is pretty standard politician behavior, but empty political promises normally consist of things that you won't actually get in trouble for promising. Mamdani mentions discussing his options re: Netanyahu with the city's legal team, but surely any competent lawyer would be aware of 18 USC 878 and would advise him strongly to shut the fuck up about wanting to arrest a foreign head of state, which suggests that either Mamdani's lawyers are incompetent or he is ignoring them. And I cannot possibly imagine anyone at the UN being happy about any suggestion that the mayor of the city that hosts the UN thinks that section 11 of the UN Headquarters Agreement is optional.
Only officers get to fly planes in the military, and you need a college degree to be an officer, and college admissions are stacked against white men.
I would be very surprised that airlines would want to hire fewer military pilots. Civilian flight instructors are generally barely out of flight school themselves, and only doing it to tick boxes toward getting their ATP. The military selects flight instructors at the tail of their careers, with tons of real world flight experience, and a passion for passing their knowledge along. Military flight students are unquestionably getting better training than civilians.
More options
Context Copy link