This is just like the debate over YAML. In both cases, the language is simple enough, and people use it sanely enough in practice that I just don't care about the warts. Contrast this with something like C++, where the warts are less avoidable and therefore more worthy of notice. Markdown as I use it is functional and simple and no one has suggested an alternative I like better, so I keep using it.
Also, as I use it, Markdown is effectively plain text. I very rarely look at "rendered" markdown. I guess in practice I actually use "plain text" that just happens to look a lot like markdown by this article's definitions.
I don't know YAML well enough, I never liked it. But if you want to write an halfway common marks compliant parser, then markdown is just nuts. It is just way too complicated for the simplicity it conveys. Look at lists, they can be freely nested, and contain all(?) other block elements. That is extreme overkill. If you need that much flexibility, then any wannabe "simple" markup is just the wrong choice.
YAML is actually very complex, to the point that basically nobody implements the full YAML 1.2 spec from 2009 (https://matrix.yaml.info/), while 1.1 contains footguns like `country: fr` and `country: no` parsing issues.
Though I agree simple usage is good enough in practice, there are a lot of edge cases that can cause subtle bugs.
Exactly this. At this point I read markdown as if it were rendered, with the exception of tables which are a mess visually in plain text.
But everything else, headings and bold and italics and lists, I’m honestly not sure I can tell the difference. It’s like watching movies with subtitles when you’re sufficiently experienced: your brain just fills in the gaps and you don’t even notice
Sorry for being too American to understand, but why would you need to talk to any medical professional to put a bandaid on your kid? Is this about NHS being paying for the bandaid? About medical expertise to apply a bandaid?
Not all disinfectants are child safe, and the wound was serious enough to require steri-strips (an alternative to sutures) -- it was not a matter of a bandaid.
You would have been best served by a Minor Injury Unit but not every town has one, so A&e is not excessive. The great majority of people going there do not need the full capabilities of it (resuscitation etc).
I do hope the doomers who think that the entire US government has been completely gutted will take note of this. The government workforce is in a bad spot for sure, SLS is far from a perfect program, but this still demonstrates that we are doing some real work still.
Take note of a project that’s about 15 years behind schedule and many multiples over budget finally progressed because we lowered safety standards to just launch?
I’m not sure how that’s proof the government isn’t gutted. Let me know what our schedule is for the next one and how that timeline has changed. Ignoring the projects that have been outright canceled…
You’re currently the guy saying “ya, all you haters that said I’d lose my house if I stopped paying my mortgage, who’s laughing now?” - one month into not paying your mortgage.
We’ll still be dealing with the after effects of doge 20 years from now.
Aren’t they still well above anything in the history of human space flight?
We keep treating these systems in popular discourse as airliners. They’re not. They’re experimental craft. With mass production maybe SpaceX can bring launch closer to general aviation. But the notion that any loss of life is intolerable is (a) unsustainably expensive and (b) not a view shared by the lives actually at risk.
The main critique of the handling of heat shields also happened at NASA in 2022-2024 and the project continued on. Artemis is largely a product of congress.
Remember when DOGE tried to cut out the inefficiencies and failed miserably? The "inefficiencies" and "bloated budgets" are there for a reason.
If Elon ran this project "without bloat", there is probably a 70% chance that the vehicle would have exploded, much in the way of his Starship and early Falcon vehicles.
But that explosion would have cost one tenth the cost a single SLS launch and the next one would go a little further. And eventually you would be flying the most reliable rocket in history more frequently than any other rocket for one tenth the cost of the competition.
This works for getting things to LEO. This doesn't scale well as the distance increases. You can't keep launching shit to the moon, crashing it over and over, until you get it right.
I knew The Discourse on this would be toxic and awful and so much of this thread has proved it.
My position is I would rather pay for 50 years of Artemis missions that never leave the ground than spend one more fucking dollar attempting to slow the descent of the American empire, or that of its colonies.
This was inspiring and amazing to watch. Actual history being made. Competence displayed proudly. No culture war bullshit. No insipid speeches by dullards about REAL AMERICA. Just us doing something because we can, and with plans to do even more.
Indeed. The GSA with 10k employees is going to fall apart without the 40k unused winzip licences DOGE so cruelly took away from them in their senseless spree of madness.
Don't confuse bureaucracy with "gutted." The federal government is bigger than at most any point in US history. Arguably that fact is -why- it's 15 years behind schedule.
That's per 100k (which just says it's mostly flat per 100k), net spending of the federal government is more than ever, and actual workforce is bigger than ever. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP is stubbornly high despite us being in "peace time," and not recession spending.
If you all don't think bureaucracy is the main driver of government delays...well you clearly have never worked with or in and around government. I try to live in reality.
No, it's a plain headcount. Your first link is a chart of non-inflation adjusted spending. Your second link is all government, not just federal employees so it's not really germane to the discussion, and your third link includes things like Social Security, and frankly...good. Without the government stabilizing spending the economy would be even more of a dumpster fire of random investor panics.
I'm close to a number of people in the public sector. They're brilliant, they do great work and they aren't paid what they're worth. I've also worked for a long time in a mega-corp. It was frequently just as bureaucratic and wasteful, if not more so, than the government.
Even assuming what you're saying is correct and government spending doesn't matter (odd thing to say when you're arguing that the government has been "gutted,") your own chart is only flat over time because of USPS workers being less due to automation/retirement and there being less military recruitment (both account for about ~1.5M employees lost,) and doesn't include offloading to contractors. Underlying agencies and government is bigger than ever before. The government (federal AND state levels) itself is much larger, with more regulations, than it was even 20 years ago.
Every company has bureaucracy, but it's nothing compared to government work. Also, government has no competition, bureaucracy in big companies will eventually be punished (even if it takes a long time.) In government it is often rewarded, both internally and externally (via regulatory capture, etc.)
In any case, saying the federal government has been "gutted" is a flat lie. I don't see how people can argue otherwise. I want more money going to NASA, and more money going to civil projects like HSR, but would that magically remove 15 years of bureaucratic mess? No. More money to these projects can only happen on a large political scale if/when the bureaucratic red tape is cut to lower the costs. Adding an additional layer of bureaucrats and middle managers and pot of gold everyone can dip their hands in before it reaches the final project doesn't fix the issue.
> They're brilliant, they do great work and they aren't paid what they're worth
The headcount of such wonderful people you are describing has been reduced but then replaced by 3x+ times the rates Gov is paying for the contractors that were hired (I am one of them). so this headcount being low is a nothing more than political smokescreen that will probably be used in campaigns leading up to November election (not probably, certainly cause there is nothing else to run if you are member of the ruling party)
I am willing to concede that it would be more financially responsible for the United States to greatly increase the size of the permanent federal workforce, and to stop making its size a political football.
I have a really hard time telling if this is despite the current administration’s best efforts, because the current administration’s policies, or just an artifact of government inertia.
Top level: Super excited to witness this in my lifetime.
Edit: Also, my 40 years of life leads me towards the latter category.
For sure this is 90% inertia, although like Bridenstein in the first administration, who turned out to actually be a pretty good administrator in the grand scheme of things, I'm cautiously optimistic that Isaacman is working in good faith to make NASA the best it can be. (Which isn't to say that I agree with him 100% mind you.)
NASA has been well treated by both parties in general, with their budget rising faster than inflation most years. This administration also appointed Isaacman to be the NASA administrator which I think is a 10/10 choice for that job.
I’d argue that NASA should not have ever got into studying climate science, it should be a responsibility of NOAA. NASA should be focusing on NEP, atmospheric satellites, better aircraft, making life interplanetary and astronomy.
It’s not that simple. Trump admin requested a massive cut to NASA’s budget, which after much delay Congress finally rejected. Isaacman’s path to NASA administrator was also, erm, circuitous. Having a competent and knowledgeable NASA head was not really Trump admin’s priority.
Have you talked to any actual NASA employees (not just contractors) that work in science?
For what it’s worth, I watched today’s Artemis II launch with them. While proud of the mission, they’re likely in your “Doomer” category after a year being devastated and demoralized by having their science budgets slashed, grants/projects cancelled, having been forced to fire good contractors of 10+ years and then watching some of the most knowledgeable/skilled folks take early retirement. Don’t let the awe or Artemis fool you — NASA, especially when it comes to science, has been gutted and functionally degraded. For what it’s worth, they’re not focused on earth/climate science.
Yep, I work with them every day, since I am myself a NASA contractor. I'm curious what you think the major distinction is between a contractor and a civil servant in the first place. I work directly as part of a division (used to be "on site" before 2020, but now I'm remote so that doesn't quite fit) doing 80% the same job as any of my civil servant colleagues. I really don't think the range of opinions is all that different on either side of the fence.
I'll repeat that there are a lot of problems, but it's not nearly as bad as some people on the internet make it out to be.
Fair question—I probably overly delineated the two as I currently only know people on the civil servant side at NASA. Decades ago (!) I worked in the DC, hung out some folks, and often the ones who had strong opinions related to policy were the ones at risk of losing/keeping/winning a contract, not the government employees. That was probably in the back of my head when I made the distinction. I don’t really have a strong opinion either way now, but I felt it was only fair to answer you as best I could. Either way, I’ll try to be cognizant of that potential bias in future.
With that said, and while I haven’t had much exposure to what folks on the internet are saying, all I know is I’ve never seen this group of friends this worried or impacted. Most of them are also the type to just keep their heads down, focus on the mission, and wait for the winds shift.
While the current administration has multiple areas of improvement and isnt really taking feedback in an adult manner, the federal workforce has some of the most competent people working for it inside certain parts of the organization. im thinking especially of NASA and NASA JPL.
This is true, but a lot of the top positions are being replaced with unqualified loyalists. It's only a matter of time, if this continues, that the competent workforce gets eroded
JPL has been strangled by both parties. They had huge staff cuts in 2024, and then more in 2025. They've gone from ~6,500 to ~4,500. Trump closed their research library[1].
Of course this is a drop in the bucket, the entire science research apparatus of the United States is being burned to the ground[2]. This administration is doing to the future of scientific research what the Mongols did to Baghdad.
NASA also has some of the most incompetent people working for it, and a lot of them are responsible for overseeing SLS and Orion. JPL hasn’t been doing to well lately either (Mars Return?).
> Orion that’s dodgy as fuck not the booster. I.e the new thing
I mean, newly shaped and partly reformulated.
Avcoat was “originally created…for the Apollo program” [1]. (“A reformulated version was used for the initial Orion heat shield and later for a redesigned Orion heat shield.”) The new things are Orion’s size and weight and the size of the tiles. All of which has precedented flight in Artemis I.
At the end of the day, I’m going to trust the astronauts. This issue was openly discussed, despite NASA’s original—and fair to criticize—instinct to cover it up. While any manned reëntry is a nail biter, I don’t think this one is especially so.
Aren't astronauts by definition bat shit crazy? We have people lining up for one-way missions to Mars. Not to say this is a bad thing, but their ROI calculations are not normal.
By poetic definition, e.g. “Here’s to the Crazy Ones,” yes. Clinically and technically, no. They’re paragons of human explorers, and exploration is a fundamentally human trait.
> We have people lining up for one-way missions to Mars
Part of me finds it inappropriate to do the two things at once. Advancement in scientific knowledge being somewhat at odds with blowing up one of the oldest civilizations in the World.
I certainly hope the mission goes as planned but it does feel like SLS is the wrong approach in the time of reusable rockets, even if this specific mission profile would probably have demanded the booster be expendable. Using the Shuttle main engines - designed and made to be 'refurbishable' rather than 'reusable' but still dumped into the ocean after each mission - and the SRBs (solid boosters) still gives the impression of the booster design being dictated (at least in part) to accommodate the needs of former Shuttle contractors. If either Starship+Superheavy or some other fully reusable heavy left vehicle comes on-line it will be hard for NASA to justify spending billions of $ on, well, a flying pork barrel. Sure, it has been proven time and time again that canned pigs can in fact fly but that does not make them the go-to transport.
Not entirely a doomer, but I would wait to grandstand until after the crew is returned safely, considering the allegations regarding the capsule heat shield.
> The mission's objectives are to conduct tests in low Earth orbit with one or both commercially developed lunar landers—SpaceX's Starship HLS and Blue Origin's Blue Moon—and the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) space suit.
"That this Artemis launch is happening in the lead-up to America’s 250th birthday has heightened the sense that it’s a nostalgia act for the Baby Boomer gerontocracy. All the more so because Donald Trump, the oldest person ever to be elected to the White House, is presiding over the whole affair. His administration has sought to sabotage NASA’s scientific missions, but the president seems delighted to have the agency gin up a national spectacle on his behalf, just as he was happy to have a military parade on his birthday."
I agree the government needs to spend far less money on all of these things. Deficit spending to pay for tax cuts is bad and tax hikes to redistribute wealth is also bad.
Different people have different standards. I've done many sleeper trips and several coach trips across the country over the years. Coach was fine when I was a teenager, now that I'm approaching 40, I'll pass.
Round-trip coach on Amtrak from Indianapolis to Las Vegas* in my early 20s is definitely a fun thing I'll never do again.
One of the friends I was with threw in the towel and bought a plane ticket home, though to be fair she was traveling with her 18-month-old daughter at the time and it's honestly a testament to youthful indiscretions that she even went along with the plan in the first place!
Personally, I find driving to be a much better way to see the US than trains, especially if you avoid interstate highways.
Living in Indiana with much of my family on the east and west coasts, I actually prefer driving
Like Amtrak, driving is rarely cheaper than flying, especially when traveling alone on a multi-day trip if you're not willing to sleep at rest areas and don't have friends to stay with at convenient points along the way.
For reference, from Indy, on the interstate, NYC is an easy one-day trip (~12 hours), and LA is a long but viable two-day trip with a stop in Denver (~15 hours/day), but SF and the Pacific Northwest are pushing it even in two days. Taking non-interstate routes can take much longer, especially when traveling through the mountains or major metro areas.
* Actually from Chicago to Needles, CA, with a bus between Indy and Chicago and a van between Needles and Vegas, because Amtrak didn't even offer service to Indy or Vegas at the time.
What $900 laptop with a similar form factor and build quality to a Macbook Air am I supposed to buy instead? I did quite a bit of research on this a couple of months ago, with a strong preference for a Linux compatible device (I've never been a MacOS user, and I'm done with Windows after 10 dies all the way). After weeks of research, I came to the conclusion that my best bet was to buy a Macbook Air and hope that Asahi support for M4 chips comes sooner rather than later.
> I don't know why you think food service workers aren't constantly putting on new gloves, but doctors and nurses are. Like, if you're cutting up chicken for an hour you're not, but if you're moving from chicken to veggies you absolutely are.
I think that because I was a food service worker and it's impossible to change gloves during a rush. Nitrile gloves and sweaty hands simply do not mix. There are also many more forms of cross contamination than just raw meat to cooked food.
I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.
You can dry your hands on a towel in seconds. I don't know what you mean by "perfectly dry"...? Like, nobody needs to blow-dry their hands before putting gloves on or anything.
I do a medical procedure several times a week that requires gloves.
If you don't flap your hands around for 30+ seconds, any remaining moisture from handwashing (or sweat) makes them stick to your skin and you wind up fighting them (and about half the time, ripping a hole). A towel is not enough.
I variously use nitrile, vinyl, and poly gloves when cooking messy things at home in bulk, like chicken, bacon, etc. I regularly pull them off to do something and then throw a new pair back on. They can be kinda sweaty and it's... fine. Zero problem whatsoever sliding on a new pair.
I'm not doubting your personal experience. I'm just saying it's in no way a universal rule. I'm sure experiences will be different depending on glove material, glove size, and just the different shapes of different people's hands.
But for me and for plenty of people I've worked with earlier in my life, swapping gloves was way faster and easier than washing hands again. Plus, washing your hands like 40 times in a shift is going to dry them out. It's not great.
> But for me and for plenty of people I've worked with earlier in my life, swapping gloves was way faster and easier than washing hands again. Plus, washing your hands like 40 times in a shift is going to dry them out. It's not great.
You and your former coworkers must have magic lubricating sweat or something. I have literally never encountered someone with this opinion before in my life. And I was a combat medic before I was a line cook, so I think I know a thing or two about gloves. Even in the medical field, there were times when medics skipped the gloves because they were treating their buddies under fire and the time to get gloves on wasn't worth it to them (for anyone unfamiliar, gloves in field medicine are mostly about protecting the provider, not the patient).
I think this might come down to sizing. Larger glove for hand size makes them easy to put on but hard to use for fine motor actions, whereas a well fitting glove makes any wetness on the hand a time sink. The stretchiness is the mechanism by which they both fit well and are hard to put on, but if you are willing to give up fit they don't need to stretch and you can just throw them on.
In this specific incident, there was a system in place called Runway Entrance Lights [0] that does serve as an automated sanity check on controllers commands. The surveillance video that is circulating shows that the system was working and indicated that the runway was not safe to enter. It's not clear yet why the truck entered the runway anyway.
I wonder if they thought that since they were responding to an emergency, and they were given clearance to cross by ATC, that that would override normal procedures. Kind of like how emergency vehicles cross a red light all the time when responding to an emergency.
It would be interesting to know whether that rule was onerous enough in practice that they had little choice but to break it in order to do their jobs effectively. They were responding to an emergency, seconds count, and they believed they had clearance from the controller.
> The surveillance video that is circulating shows that the system was working and indicated that the runway was not safe to enter.
A citation, please? The only video that I know of is [1].
[2] is my best mock up of the only video I have. I'm am not an expert, but my best read of that is that the RWSL is maybe? green to the taxiway¹ traffic, so, to me, the actual status of the RWSL at the time of the incident is "unknown"; that seems like something I should wait for the NTSB report, or at least someone with expert knowledge on. But your claims doesn't jive with the evidence I have, so that's what makes me ask for a citation.
¹but I think there are a number of problems with my own interpretation: I could be wrong about which lights are which; I am using the near-side lights, not the lights on the side the truck is entering from, and assuming them to be symmetrical (though what little I can see of the far side does seem to align with the near side); some of the lights I think are RWSLs & not RGLs look downright yellow, but that could be a property of the low quality of the video; there's the rather large problem of the plane on the runway that must then be explained.
Sorry for the late reply, and sorry for linking to reddit, but it was the first place I could find the right video. I saw this video linked at least a dozen times in the hours following the incident. I believe the clip you linked to is from the same video, but with the beginning cut off.
At approximately 1.5 seconds in my link, you can see one set of lights perpendicular to the runway turn off. I admit the the lighting/colors are not as crisp as I would like, but the lights that turn off are positionally consistent with the Runway Entrance Lights and the time at which they turn off (approximately 2 seconds before the plane enters the intersection) is also consistent with the operation of the Runway Entrance Lights system.
Furthermore, if the system was not operational it should have been NOTAMed as such, and I can find no such NOTAM so my default position is that the system was operational.
You sometimes have end around taxiways that are at one end of the runway and can be used when active. But that could be a massive diversion.
I know that Heathrow have multiple fire stations and rendezvous points for emergency services so that fire service can attend even when one runaway is closed to crossing. This could be needed to allow continued operations following a crash. It allows them to accept emergency landings more easily whilst maintaining emergency service to another active runway.
The fire station was located on the opposite side of runway 4 from the United plane. To avoid crossing the runway would mean having to travel a few extra miles around the thresholds (I assume).
I guess they could have found a route that wouldn't conflict with landing aircraft, but I doubt that's a practical option most of the time.
The REILs are part of ARFF training. Pilot training on it is also clear. The system is automated. It plots the direction and speed of anything approaching the runway and predicts a conflict. If the REILs are red it is HIGHLY likely there is a conflict that is missed by human error and you should not proceed without confirming. Don't just confirm cleared to cross, explicitly tell the controller "XYZ tower we have red runway entrance lights. Please confirm runway XX is clear".
The system is smart enough that if you get red bars to cross for an airplane departing once it passes your position the red clears because it knows the airplane is already past you. It is not dumb - it was deliberately designed to minimize false positives so everyone would trust it otherwise they might ignore it when it really counts. (AFAIK it very accurate in fact so the firetrucks weren't crossing because they distrusted the red lights).
This is just like all aviation incidents and indeed most incidents of any kind: the holes in the swiss cheese lined up.
The emergency aircraft couldn't find a free gate, creating a massive distraction for ATC, airport, et al. This is probably the primary domino that started the sequence. Had a gate been free this incident would not have happened. One big hole lined up.
Normally the aircraft would visually see the truck or the truck would visually see the airplane. But it was dark and rainy. Another hole lined up.
Everyone involved was rushing because noise abatement requires the airport to close at a certain hour. Thus everyone wanted to take-off or land before that shutdown. Another hole.
Normally the controller wouldn't issue the clearance to cross or their supervisor monitoring behind them would notice the error and override. But the controller and/or supervisor were distracted by the emergency. Another hole lined up.
The controller realized the error and issued a stop command but the fire truck proceeded anyway; they may or may not have heard the transmission. Another hole lined up.
Then someone else decided to jump on frequency during this busy time (we don't know who just yet) which may have prevented the controller's stop and/or go-around commands from being heard (another hole lined up).
The ARFF crew did not obey the REILs, accepting the clearance. Perhaps they thought the red lights were due to aircraft on short final and they still had time to cross? Perhaps it was some other misunderstanding of how that system works. Another hole lines up.
And the Air Canada jet was not paying attention to the chaos on frequency. There's a reason runway crossings are typically done on tower frequency: so aircraft can hear what is going on. But it was late at night and their brains probably didn't process what was happening. Or they were too close to touching down to have the bandwidth. Another hole lined up.
> The emergency aircraft couldn't find a free gate, creating a massive distraction for ATC, airport, et al.
Yes. And I want to add one more thing to this: the airplane with the "odour" issue was kinda ambivalent about the danger. They deemed it dangerous enough to declare an emergency, and request a gate then later ask for airstairs but not dangerous enough to pop the slides and just evacuate right there and then. I'm not saying this is wrong. Obviously they were evaluating the situation as new information was coming in. But it increased the workload of the ATC. They were trying to find a gate, and etc. If it was a clearer "mayday mayday mayday, aft cabin fire, we are evacuating" that might have been paradoxically less "work" for the ATC. Or at least more of a "practiced" scenario.
> Perhaps it was some other misunderstanding of how that system works.
Yeah. That's a big one. Total speculation but maybe they thought the airplane with the "odour" issue was keeping it red?
While it's not as sophisticated, there is a technology called Runway Entrance Lights [0] that does somewhat the same thing in the specific context of this incident. LGA is one of 20 airports around the country where this system is installed, and you can clearly see that the system was functioning if you know where to look in the surveillance video that is circulating online. For whatever reason, the truck did not respect the indicator that they should not enter the runway. So in this specific incident, short of rail-like physical limitations on movement, I think it's unlikely that any amount of additional technology would have helped.
A runway light does not physically prevent a vehicle from entering a restricted area in the same way that an interlock would. Not saying it’s practical but an interlock would have indeed prevented an accident of this type.
Yes, I get that. But an airport is not a rail network. The question is how you would actually implement physical interlocks on an airport in a way that works and is safe while controlling movement of everything from a pickup truck to an A380? It's an incredibly hard problem to solve. And keeping in mind too that the Runway Status/Entrance Lights first started development over 30 years ago and are still only deployed at 20 airports, despite being a vastly simpler system than one controlling physical barriers.
I'm curious how much of a buffer there is between the time the sensors detect the airplane and it being safe to enter the runway.
Is it definitely safe to cross the runway in a vehicle moving a normal speed up to the moment before the lights turn red? Is it safe for a little bit afterward? Or is it unsafe even a little before the lights turn red?
Also, as I use it, Markdown is effectively plain text. I very rarely look at "rendered" markdown. I guess in practice I actually use "plain text" that just happens to look a lot like markdown by this article's definitions.
reply