Hey Philomena 🐦

@Father_LoCoco Photobomb... 🪶

Me getting ready for work. Also me getting home from work but in reverse.

I recall a study a while back that observed that birds, specifically parrots, are the only animals observed to dance spontaneously (versus human training.) they even have a repertoire of known dance moves.

@aakashgupta Air traffic control - 24/7 high pressure high intensity multitasking - is exactly the kind of work that AI should be doing. In fact, AI is ideal for it. The human brain actually sucks at that kind of thing.

The air traffic controller cleared the fire truck onto the runway. Seconds later, the same controller screamed “stop, stop, stop.” The plane was doing 93 to 105 mph. Both pilots are dead. Everyone will frame this as controller error. One controller was simultaneously managing a United flight that aborted takeoff after an anti-ice warning, dispatching a fire truck across an active runway, and sequencing an inbound Air Canada landing at highway speed. At 11:40 PM. On a mandatory overtime shift at a facility that has been understaffed for years. A system that assigns one person that workload will produce exactly this outcome. The only variable is when. The FAA is short approximately 3,000 controllers. The headcount dropped 13% from 2010 to 2024 while flight volume rose 10%. Over 40% of the FAA’s 290 terminal facilities are understaffed. The New York TRACON, which manages the most congested airspace in America across LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark, has been chronically below target. Newark was operating at 59% of its staffing goal. LaGuardia handles 900 flights a day. The hiring pipeline is broken at every stage. Only 2% of applicants complete the full process. Training takes up to 6 years. The FAA Academy in Oklahoma City is a bottleneck, with roughly 35% of trainees washing out. Congress blocked legislation to build a second academy. In one recent hiring cycle, the FAA brought on 1,512 candidates and lost 1,300 in the same window. Net gain: around 160 controllers for an entire country. Three things need to happen and everyone who can make them happen has known for years. Congress needs to fund and authorize a second FAA training academy. One facility in Oklahoma City cannot produce enough controllers for 900 million annual passengers. Members of Congress from Oklahoma have actively blocked this. That needs to end yesterday. The FAA needs to cut certification time. Six years from application to fully certified controller is absurd. The agency’s own data shows tower simulators reduce certification time by 27%. They’ve installed them at 95 facilities. That should be every facility, and the simulated hours should count toward more of the certification requirement. The FAA needs to stop plugging staffing gaps with mandatory overtime. Controllers at understaffed facilities are working six-day weeks rotating between morning, mid, and night shifts. The NTSB has flagged fatigue repeatedly. The controller last night was managing overlapping emergencies during a nighttime operation. Overtime is not a staffing plan. It’s a countdown to the next runway collision. The controller said “I messed up” to a Frontier pilot who watched the whole thing. The pilot responded “No man, you did the best you could.” One of them is right. The answer determines whether this happens again.

I love how parrot relationships have no middle ground. It’s either “I hate you don’t ever touch me” or “you are my soul mate and are not allowed show anything else affection”

The bird's Portuguese is better than mine.

@MemoryMedieval Go Norman or go home.

Medieval haircuts are coming back

@Joeinblack And just like that you started a war in alt-universe Central Europe.

Eduard Habsburgs alter ego blocked me 😳

During the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers, there’s a quick shot of a one-eyed Rohirrim soldier turning toward the camera. The extra arrived on set wearing an eye patch. Peter Jackson asked to see what was underneath and then asked if he’d consider appearing in the film without it. He was hesitant at first, but later said the moment helped him feel far more comfortable with his condition.

@trad_west_ I keep thinking how nice it would be to get an animal blessing for my parrot, but I suspect there would be quite a bit of screaming, biting, and deliberately aimed projectile pooping.

Wholesome. "Always be good and eat all your kibble, may Almighty God bless you"

🚨 Japan to send help to open Strait of Hormuz

@FatherChrisVor1 x.com/i/status/20129…

Something’s been sitting on my heart. Over time, I blocked close to 800 people. Not because I go looking for fights, but because when I’ve spoken up about things that cross a moral line, the response can get ugly fast. And I understand it. People feel strongly. But somewhere along the way, I realized I had built a wall. So over the last few nights, I’ve been thinking about that. And today, I removed every block. Not one remains. This isn’t me pretending people haven’t said awful things. They have. It’s not me agreeing with everything. I don’t. But I don’t want to live behind that wall anymore. Moving forward, if things get abusive, I’ll mute, or simply not engage. But I’m choosing not to shut people out entirely. We’ll see how it goes. But for now, the door is open.

@BishopBarron It's infuriating and frustrating that a recent convert, possessed of no qualifications beyond being noisy and looking good in a bathing suit, would even be considered for such a position. That she would be prideful enough to accept it is proof she's unsuited.

Over the past several weeks, Carrie Prejean Boller has complained that she was removed from the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty because of her Catholic beliefs, and she has called out myself and other Catholic members of the commission for not defending her. This is absurd. Mrs. Prejean Boller was not dismissed for her religious convictions but rather for her behavior at a gathering of the Commission last month: browbeating witnesses, aggressively asserting her point of view, hijacking the meeting for her own political purposes. The Catholic position on matters of “Zionism,” to which I fully subscribe, is as follows: all forms of antisemitism are to be unequivocally condemned; the state of Israel has a right to exist; but the modern nation of Israel does not represent the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies and hence does not stand beyond criticism. If Mrs. Prejean Boller were dismissed for holding these beliefs, it is difficult to understand why I am still a member of the Commission. To paint herself as a victim of anti-Catholic prejudice or to claim that her religious liberty has been denied is simply preposterous.

@ThrillaRilla369 I pretended to eat it and shoved it into a gap in the radiator. Years later when we did renovations, mom was furious to find the wall full of desiccated liver, but she never made me eat it again.

Be honest because I’m proving a point When you were a child if you didn’t want to eat what your mother made for dinner What happened?

@DarkExarch x.com/i/trending/203…

I can tell that Twitter has screwed with the algorithm again, because I am suddenly getting drowned with scammy rightoid posts and ads from accounts I blocked ages ago. My formerly curated timeline is filled with randos farting into megaphones and nothing is stopping them.

The look on prime minister Takaichi's face. Donnie from Queens, never stop being you. 🩷

@DarkExarch I'm partly here for the rando farting. The problem with Facebook is I know all the people who will respond and the farts all smell the same. Unlike friends and family, randos can be offended with pretty much no ramifications. Also, warship nerds.

@nationalpost Signage stocked by a pack of 17-year-olds earning minimum wage who have probably been fasting all day. Welcome to Nothing Burger.

Two Loblaw stores fined $10K for mislabelling imported products as Canadian nationalpost.com/news/canada/tw…

@NiohBerg When Hideki Tojo was hanged in 1948, his ashes were scattered at sea to prevent his grave becoming a pilgrimage site for extremists. We need to find that freezer and bomb it to dust.

Reminder: Khamenei Sr has been in a freezer for over two weeks. The regime is too scared to arrange a public funeral for him. Mojtaba is still MIA.

@Catholic_bro This is not a bad thing. When a Protestant troll trots out the cannibalism argument it means he believes in the True Presence but is "kicking against the goad." He's already halfway there and just needs prayers.

Odd

@NiohBerg When I go to work, it's getting harder to listen to spoiled people whine because the price of groceries might go up because of disruptions in the Straits. Meanwhile in Tehran, people are so desperate for freedom they're risking death by slow torture begging us to bomb them.

From inside Iran: "Don't worry about the damages, freedom takes precedence over prosperity" Do not let the Iran Expert class gaslight you about how Iranians inside the country feel.