LOOK WHAT I FOUND AT THE STORE

@cheesytexaroni

YEAH

Star of the morning, collapsed in the weeds.

It should be a human right to come and go from your place of residence no matter who actually owns it. Under all circumstances. I hope Columbia is buried in scorn and ruined by scandal. I hope every student can eventually sue.

I also wish every one of these ugly pigs would die but that's less realistic.

Boeing’s deliberately defective fleet of flying sky-wreckage

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner" is manufactured far from the company's Seattle facility, in a non-union shop in Charleston, South Carolina. At that shop, there is a cage full of defective parts that have been pulled from production because they are not airworthy.

Hundreds of parts from that Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA) were secretly pulled from that cage and installed on aircraft that are currently plying the world's skies. Among them, sections 47/48 of a 787 – the last four rows of the plane, along with its galley and rear toilets. As Moe Tkacik writes in her excellent piece on Boeing's lethally corrupt culture of financialization and whistleblower intimidation, this is a big ass chunk of an airplane, and there's no way it could go missing from the MRSA cage without a lot of people knowing about it:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-30-whistleblower-laws-protect-lawbreakers/

More: MRSA parts are prominently emblazoned with red marks denoting them as defective and unsafe. For a plane to escape Boeing's production line and find its way to a civilian airport near you with these defective parts installed, many people will have to see and ignore this literal red flag.

The MRSA cage was a special concern of John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who is alleged to have killed himself in March. Tkacik's earlier profile of Swampy paints a picture of a fearless, stubborn engineer who refused to go along to get along, refused to allow himself to become inured to Boeing's growing culture of profits over safety:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Boeing is America's last aviation company and its single largest exporter. After the company was allowed to merge with its rival McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, the combined company came under MDD's notoriously financially oriented management culture. MDD CEO Harry Stonecipher became Boeing's CEO in the early 2000s. Stonecipher was a protege of Jack Welch, the man who destroyed General Electric with cuts to quality and workforce and aggressive union-busting, a classic Mafia-style "bust-out" that devoured the company's seed corn and left it a barren wasteland:

https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis

Post-merger, Boeing became increasingly infected with MDD's culture. The company chased cheap, less-skilled labor to other countries and to America's great onshore-offshore sacrifice zone, the "right-to-work" American south, where bosses can fire uppity workers who balked at criminal orders, without the hassle of a union grievance.

Stonecipher was succeeded by Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, ex-3M CEO, another Jack Welch protege (Welch spawned a botnet of sociopath looters who seized control of the country's largest, most successful firms, and drove them into the ground). McNerney had a cute name for the company's senior engineers: "phenomenally talented assholes." He created a program to help his managers force these skilled workers – everyone a Boeing who knew how to build a plane – out of the company.

McNerney's big idea was to get rid of "phenomenally talented assholes" and outsource the Dreamliner's design to Boeing's suppliers, who were utterly dependent on the company and could easily be pushed around (McNerney didn't care that most of these companies lacked engineering departments). This resulted in a $80b cost overrun, and a last-minute scramble to save the 787 by shipping a "cleanup crew" from Seattle to South Carolina, in the hopes that those "phenomenally talented assholes" could save McNerney's ass.

Swampy was part of the cleanup crew. He was terrified by what he saw there. Boeing had convinced the FAA to let them company perform its own inspections, replacing independent government inspectors with Boeing employees. The company would mark its own homework, and it swore that it wouldn't cheat.

Boeing cheated. Swampy dutifully reported the legion of safety violations he witnessed and was banished to babysit the MRSA, an assignment his managers viewed as a punishment that would isolate Swampy from the criminality he refused to stop reporting. Instead, Swampy audited the MRSA, and discovered that at least 420 defective aviation components had gone missing from the cage, presumably to be installed in planes that were behind schedule. Swampy then audited the keys to the MRSA and learned that hundreds of keys were "floating around" the Charleston facility. Virtually anyone could liberate a defective part and install it into an airplane without any paper trail.

methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus

Insight today while washing the lettuce and thinking of my friend who doesn't want to vote.

They are an otherwise intelligent, responsible, generous person, who appears to be socially conscious. They have worked hard and long for their position in their profession. They express concern for the planet. They get twitchy if you use too many paper towels.

But they don’t want to vote for Biden for reasons, and quote "doesn't like the whole system where the parties take turns swinging things back and forth" unquote.

I have been dumbstruck at their attitude for about two months now. I've been thrashing back and forth trying to reconcile this person I love with their attitude:

The insight came to me as I used an extra set of paper towels to dry my lettuce:

These people are not motivated by outcomes. They are motivated by how their choices make them FEEL.

Not how the outcomes of their choices will make them feel. But how the action associated with their choices makes them feel.

In terms of outcomes for the environment, saving paper towels doesn't do shit compared to pushing for restrictions on oil companies. But using half a paper towel is an instant dopamine hit: "Ahhh, I am caring for Mother Earth. I care. I am a good person. Ahh yes that's the stuff."

This model fits for voting too. We know that The Only Votes That Count Are Those Cast. We know that Dems Go Where The Votes Are Not Where The Votes Aren't. We know that voting in every election, every time, in numbers, is a very low-effort way to contribute to moving the Overton window farther left.

But in the moment, for people who are motivated by how their action associated with their choice makes them feel... the absolute best move for their dopamine supply is to abstain: "I am NOT supporting an old fart; I am NOT supporting genocide; I am Challenging The System; I am a good person. Ahh yes, that's the stuff."

At the time, when I challenged my friend on their position, they held up their hands and said "look, I'm not saying I have any answers, I'm just saying I don’t like how the system works."

They didn't like how participating in the system made them FEEL in the moment.

For those of us who think this is madness, hey, we aren't off the hook entirely. We are basing our choices and actions off of outcomes, true. But there's probably a feeling/dopamine component in there too. "I am holding my nose and voting Blue; I am doing my part to actually affect the future even if I hate some things abt my choice; I am a good person."

So maybe the difference isn't in the motivation (my feelings and self-image) but in what motivates us (my action vs the outcome of my action).

I don't have an answer to the question at this time and this post is already long enough. But I'll think on it. And I invite you to do so as well:

For these people (who seem to be a sizable part of the population), how to outweigh the choice where their action preserves their self-image, doesn't cost them dopamine for having to take a "bad" action, and maybe even gives them a happy boost for "not being part of a flawed system?"

For these people, how to help them connect more to the outcome?

Off the cuff, I can't think of any means other than cognitive-behavioral therapy. :/

EDIT: Apparently there's a term for this and it's called Emotivism -- ethics isn't abt effects but abt feelings.

I fucking knew it, I SAID it: they're making ADHD people the next culture war targets. They will 'just ask questions' until we lose every scrap of ground we've gained in the last decade and more. We may not quite inspire the same level of hatred as a sexual minority, but we can very easily be made to inspire disdain and that also works.

They will strip us of our accomodations and our medications and try to stifle any sense of shared identity, and if that kills some of us, oh well. So long as it fuels another outrage cycle, fine.

So many of the tropes they've been using on trans people work extremely well on ADHD people too! "There are too many of these people suddenly! It must be a fad! It spreads through friend groups! And online! People are going private for diagnoses and that's bad! They are using pOwERfUl medical interventions and we think it's freaky!"

I saw the first ripples of this in terf circles about two years ago. And of course it's spread.

6% of British ADHD people lost their jobs in the last year thanks to the meds shortage. SIX PER CENT! And that just made these ghouls go "ooh, tasty, what else can we do?"

Recently an 'expert' was on the BBC saying people see ADHD diagnosis as a "golden ticket." Laurence Fox has been ranting that the condition doesn't exist and threatening "'you won't poison my child's body [with ADHD meds] against my consent"

People need to be aware this is going to get worse. Maybe, if we're lucky, it won't get really bad. But it's going to get worse than it is now.

Fuck. This came along sooner than I thought.

Un-fucking-herd.

Motherfuckers.

I got diagnosed at 36, got prescribed adderall, and went from continually dependent on men in order to to afford housing for myself, to able to hold a steady job for the first time in my life, and even to achieve promotions.

Late diagnoses are a sign of people realizing that they don't need to suffer. It's not a fad, it's a cultural shift toward rejection of pointless, unnecessary struggle.

We seriously need the boomers to get the fuck out of legislation.

late diagnoses are also literally The Only Option if you happened to be raised by a family whose approach to medical care was lacking, at best.

i was diagnosed with autism and in middlingly-intensive at-home therapy for about ten years of my life, and in that time, i pushed for an adhd diagnosis over and over again. i failed multiple years of school, was grounded for multiple years at a time (this was abuse yeah but it was directly related to my "lack of motivation"), spent like six months without brushing my teeth at one point--it was fucking BAD. my at-home therapist repeatedly pushed for an adhd diagnosis during sessions, and i was amenable, but my mom refused.

i never got diagnosed because my mom "didn't believe i had adhd" (based on nothing but general vibes) and refused to allow me to get tested to begin with. so now my only option is to try to go through the adult testing process.

there's a ton of people who've been suffering our whole lives and know damn well why, but can't do anything about it til adulthood. (and ofc our place in the culture war is being rhetorically painted over as malingerers, because we dare to know what would help us before a psychiatrist bestows their wisdom lol.)

One of the things that's absolutely infuriating here is that they're treating diagnosis as the patient pulling one over on the doctor, instead of the doctor having, you know, any sort of authority of expertise on the subject, and knowing what they're doing.

I want to point out, as someone who got my ADHD diagnosis as an adult within the last 5 years, we have testing now that can empirically prove adhd in ways that cannot be faked. One of the tests I took specifically measured muscle twitches too small to be consciously controlled. Another measured my reactions to stimuli to the microsecond. We are not looking at a situation where some imaginary bad actors are looking up a list of symptoms that will get them the Productivity Drugs and going to the doctor and claiming to have those and walking out with a prescription, these diagnoses are being made using testing that cannot be faked or duped.

It's also worth noting as someone who was assessed and does not meet the criteria for an ADHD diagnosis that the psychologists are supposed to observe a lot of the assessments testing reaction to auditory and visual stimulation and lack thereof. My psychologist sat back and noted I was stimming, but it wasn't to the degree of someone with ADHD. Hell, the computer was tracking my mouse movements.

It's INCREDIBLY hard to fake ADHD to get a diagnosis because the doctors are well aware of what the drugs do to people without ADHD.

Fun fact I learned recently: Lake Superior is roughly the size of England.

This gif of Aventurine makes me go crazy

thank you it took me like 2 hours to edit the caption off frame by frame

I love baseball

they let the pest control man throw out the first pitch 😭

oh my god

That was timed so well oh my god

i was honestly unaware this needed doing but you totally did it, zacharyschofield9

Clint you've got to be fucking kidding me

things i’ll not call you a whore for:

things i’ll call you a whore for:

why are lemons separate from food op?

everyone knows lemons arent food

lemon stealing whores are a huge issue separate from food stealing whores. there’s a whole documentary about whores stealing lemons from the trees of unsuspecting victims. you can see the first two minutes of it here.

Thats a rickroll. That totally is a fucking rickroll. No fukin way. Not falling for it.

dude, trust me, that isn’t a rick roll. its something worse

Me to the rest of tumblr after actually watching what was in the link:

…I really don’t know what I was expecting.

What the fuck did i just watch.

It- it’s not a Rick roll

Have we really reached a time when the Lemon Stealing Whores are no longer common knowledge.

you're going about your normal day when, suddenly, surprise! you've been pokémon mystery dungeon'd!

unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the pokémon assigning quiz has been canceled. instead, you must spin THE WHEEL, assigning you a random, unevolved, non-legendary and non-mythical pokémon. you must now go on some sort of world-saving adventure as this pokémon. good luck!

tell me in the tags what you rolled, and how you feel about it - for bonus points, you can spin the wheel again for (or just take your pick of) a pokémon to be your partner.

bonus rules: