Flights Grounded Across US After FAA Failure (nytimes.com) 147
A Federal Aviation Administration system failure caused some flights across the United States to be grounded, the agency said early Wednesday. From a report: The full extent of the delays was not immediately known, but the delays were spread across several airlines. More than 700 flights within, into and out of the United States had been delayed on Wednesday, and more than 90 were canceled, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking company. On social media, would-be passengers across the United States said their flights had been delayed, some reporting that their pilots or airline representatives had blamed the F.A.A. technical problem. "The F.A.A. is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System," the agency said. "We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now. Operations across the National Airspace System are affected." Several airports, including in Philadelphia, Tampa, Fla., and Austin, Texas, advised passengers to check with their airlines for the latest information.
History of this? (Score:1, Troll)
Over 700 flights grounded due to a Federal system. Has this ever happened before? Was such a critical system not built with proper redundancy? Why?
Sadly, when mass events happen in the US, we now tend to look for the actual reason for outage, not the one being reported by the media.
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"Sadly, when mass events happen in the US, we now tend to look for the actual reason for outage, not the one being reported by the media."
Only by dystopian people like yourself.
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He's got a point. If the issue was found to be a specific company's software (like IBM or Microsoft), is it in CNN/Fox/MSNBC's best interest to report that? It might impact their ad revenue from those software providers in the future.
If they keep the details of the outage more generic, their content becomes more advertiser-friendly and they don't have to worry about confusing their viewers.
I doubt that your typical CNN/Fox/MSNBC viewer is an IT expert anyway. If you ARE an IT person who wants to know what R
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Too Big To Fail protections, enjoy it taxpayer
Whoever the contractors where who wrote the software to begin with, they need to be held accountable. However, they will not. American Big Data like IBM and Honeywell purchased the congress critters long ago and will be laughing all the way to the bank as they fix the mess they have left.
Methinks this would be a perfect time for a university to come in with freshly honed labor and fix things at a fraction of the cost.
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Read the package of the coffee you have in the kitchen. You should drink it, not smoke it.
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Well, the actual reason for this is most often also the one that gets reported. But that's usually not enough for the sensation hounds or the conspiracy loons, so why bother with boring reality when we can up much more exciting and inciting reasons?
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The thing is, reality is boring. Politics twice so. People make decisions because they get paid by some corporations, that's not interesting. But if we say that they make this decision because they are part of some sinister cabal, hellbent on bringing the world to an end, or at least this country, that's some news!
Re:History of this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm amazed at how not resilient we are as a society. A luxury item fails (in this case flights), and in all our richness, we don't have the ability to "suck it up" and wait for a day. Getting back up from this in a few hours is the actual miracle.
Yes, there is less than 1% of affected who would actually be threatened by this. But that is what actually critical fallbacks are for (such as diesel generators in hospitals for electricity failures)
> actual reason for outage
The front fell off... That's not very typical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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FAA's problems developed over time, slow degradation of quality and
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we don't have the ability to "suck it up" and wait for a day
Uh, isn't that exactly what the passengers of the cancelled flights did? Society didn't crumble. People grumbled about the inconvenience, waited until the problem was fixed, and then went on about their business when the airline rebooked them.
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My comment was more of a knee-jerk reaction to the first post
> Over 700 flights grounded due to a Federal system. Has this ever happened before? Was such a critical system not built with proper redundancy? Why?
to basically say "shit happens" .
So yes, "suck it up" is what more or less what happened, but the general reaction is one of "this should never have happened" instead of "it's awesome that this doesn't happen too often, let's see what we got wrong" . And I will concede that within the FAA, the sec
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the general reaction is one of "this should never have happened" instead of "it's awesome that this doesn't happen too often, let's see what we got wrong" . And I will concede that within the FAA, the second approach is probably what will happen.
Both of those things could be true. We'll have to wait to see what the actual problem was, assuming we ever find out, before we can decide how much of column A, and how much of B.
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Embrace MAGA or watch society crumble.
Are you sure you have this right? Places like Greece do badly because there isn't a robust culture of paying taxes, and it seems like the very first step of the new Congress is to take a step in their direction by defunding IRS enforcement. Third world places do badly at the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another, and we've just had the worst example in the history of the country. It seems like society can crumble plenty _due_ to MAGA.
Re:History of this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Identify all the problems correctly and when you agree they are problems, propose a stupid solution like submit to a lecherous lowlife as your supreme leader.
I would agree with most problems identified by MAGA. I reject their solution.
We have a better solution, functioning government, legislators do not undermine governance for political power, legislature agrees to leave administration to the executive, judiciary that is neutral, not partisan hacks engaging in time traveling mind reading to justify their hackery. ...
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Jump strait to name calling - so convincing.
Reality is the Trump administration did more effective governing and was better at tactical response than any recent Democratic led administration. Operation Warp Speed - got you your covid vax. Immigration while not solved by any means was running more smoothly. Heck even the government shut down was managed by the Trump team with less impact on Main Street than Obama could manage...
As far governing without partisanship what has Biden and his people done other t
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Jump strait to name calling - so convincing.
Why not? Trump name called everyone and convinced you.
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Trump got red tape out of the way, secured funds for research, and manufacturing and purchase of product.
What's funny-sad about this is that Trump actually did not secure any funds for manufacturing at all. He did not put ANY money down, he only made a promise to purchase. As such, Dolly Parton literally did more to promote the vaccine's production than did Trump. The only thing Trump did was waive certain testing requirements. But cuckservatives cried long and hard about how the citizenry was the test cohort for the vaccine, which was literally the only thing Trump did to make the vaccine development faster.
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Alter the headline slightly. Biden hires 87,000 law enforcement officers. Republicans vote to defund law enforcement and lay off 87,000 workers. Would IRS agents not fall under the category of law enforcement? Imagine the collective back patting if republicans announced they were hiring 87,000 cops. Are they not part if the back the blue movement?
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Sadly, the defunding of the IRS has left them without the money to go after those it's worth it to hold accountable, so they are now known by the masses as a gang of criminals themselves... and it's frankly hard to argue with that viewpoint, since we would actually be better off (more money would be recovered) if they went after just one or two of the big guys per year instead of shedloads of normal people who can't possibly be running off with as much money, even collectively. And it would take a lot less
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So far, the media isn't reporting a reason of any kind, they are saying they don't yet know what caused the outage.
YOU are jumping to conclusions How do you know the critical system wasn't built with proper redundancy? That statement has yet to be substantiated. The fact that it makes news, that it's the first time this has ever happened in the history of US aviation, says to me that it is practically rock solid. How much of YOUR software has continued to function without incident, for decades?
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Multiple software system failures by the private airlines every year causing hundreds of not thousands of delays.
"Efficiency working as intended!"
By their own admission can't think of another failure coming from the FAA besides this one.
"Welcome to your government dystopia"
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The dumbest developer I ever worked with had a side gig writing software for airlines. Apparently the bar isn't set very high. I don't know who he contracted to, but whenever these outages happen, I'm sure he's responsible.
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Over 700 flights grounded due to a Federal system. Has this ever happened before? Was such a critical system not built with proper redundancy? Why?
Sadly, when mass events happen in the US, we now tend to look for the actual reason for outage, not the one being reported by the media.
On what basis are the trolls and sock puppets with mod points trying to censor your comment? Not the strongest FP, but it's relevant and even asks a reasonable question. What button did you push? Or do you have a reputation? (The handle sounds vaguely familiar, but...)
Related current reading is The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr. (Same guy who did The Shallows about our growing Internet-driven mental afflictions.) The titular cage is a reference to fly-by-wire jets where the pilots are surrounded by glass
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There was redundancy. The backup system started up as it was supposed to. The only problem was that the backup system had corrupted data, so was unusable. More than likely no one had tested the backup system for years.
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Cyberattack (Score:2, Insightful)
When "no one can explain the problem" itâ(TM)s probably a cyberattack
Re:Cyberattack (Score:5, Insightful)
Time will tell.
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Don't assume malice when incompetence is an adequate explanation. --Hanlon's Razor Time will tell.
Yea, given much of the FAA's (and government in general) computers are old systems what is surprising is how well they still work overall.
I'm thinking a different kind of malice (Score:2)
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This reminds me of a programmer I once worked with, who, when a problem was found in the software he wrote, he always suggested it was likely a "Microsoft bug." Upon further inspection, it always turned out to be just a mundane bug that he himself had introduced.
If it was a cyberattack, that claim can only be made if there is actual evidence of a cyberattack.
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Except we're talking about the FAA here, so the problem is probably caused by a system running on an old IBM mainframe coded in COBOL, and "no one can explain the problem" is likely code for "anyone who still knows how it works is retired or dead".
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I thought it was called... (Score:2)
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Probably deemed sexist or something, and got renamed. That will also turn out to be the root cause of this failure.
Though why flights get canceled because pilots can't get the latest NOTAMs is a little... weird. This didn't use to be a problem back before computerisation. But it does mean the system is now mission critical and perhaps wasn't marked as such. Then again, looks like the FAA let themselves be captured by Boeing (see 737MAX et al) so what else is now broken and unsafe within that agency?
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My understanding (note I'm not a pilot, and don't play one on TV, etc., etc.):
You're preparing for takeoff heading to an airport 1000km away. As far as you know the weather is fine. Except that just before you take off, a sudden thunderstorm develops at your destination, out of nowhere, and a lightning strike knocks out the ILS (instrument landing system). There are rapidly shifting crosswinds, and visibility is crap.
Taken together, these problems mean it won't be safe to land there. You'll have to dive
Re: I thought it was called... (Score:2)
Re: I thought it was called... (Score:5, Informative)
FAA calls it notice to air missions:
https://www.faa.gov/about/init... [faa.gov]
"Changed the acronym NOTAM from Notice to Airmen to the more applicable term Notice to Air Missions, which is inclusive of all aviators and missions"
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There is a certain pathetic sort of person who gets job satisfaction from doing stupid shit like this.
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There is a certain pathetic sort of person who gets job satisfaction from doing stupid shit like this.
No, just the certain pathetic sort of person who gets upset about it.
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Well, given there is a current push to attract more women to aviation (they only make up around 18% of the pilot population), getting rid of loaded terms is one way.
And the problem is, NOTAM is a word used internationally. so you're not going to change the acronym used - everyone knows what it is when you request the NOTAMs for the route (and yes, that plural does not make sense if you expand it out).
Howeve
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Those people are called "bureaucrats".
Well, given there is a current push to attract more women to aviation (they only make up around 18% of the pilot population), getting rid of loaded terms is one way.
No, it's not, for the kind of woman that goes "oh noez it means Notices To Aliens from Mars, that's not me so I'ma powder my nose instead of read these NOTAMs", isn't the kind of woman that is safe in the cockpit. Same goes for men, or actual aliens from mars, for that matter.
Really, this sexism is at least as bad as any and all lingering sexism it wants to combat. Worse really, for it is ideologically motivated, and not grounded in reality. Where, for example, is the
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"Well, given there is a current push to attract more women to aviation"
Only among pathetic woke people.
Men and women are different and like doing different things.
Stop trying to homogenize the world.
And if you want to do some actual good, start a push to prevent male suicides or prevent men dying violently.
Stuff that matters.
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"Hell, I used to think NATO stood for North American Treaty Organization,"
And you thought wrong. NATO has never stood for "North American Treaty Organization".
" and somewhere it turned into North Atlantic Treaty Organization"
It didn't "turn into" North Atlantic Treaty Organization", that's what has always been, from when it was first formed in 1949.
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The US used to value competency (Score:2)
There is a certain pathetic sort of person who gets job satisfaction from doing stupid shit like this.
Yeah, the kind of person that doesn't forget to reboot the mission critical Windows 98 system ever 50 days.
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A husband was told, in a sultry voice, "tonight I want you to whisper, in my ear, something dirty."
"OK," he complied, "the dishes in the sink need washing."
The other husband wasn't expecting that at all.
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"Notice to Airmen", or NOTAM. Not Notice to Air Missions. I am a private pilot BTW.
Apparently you missed the NOTAM a few years ago when the FAA decided to rename it. Because "Airman" was sexist. I kid you not.
US is so fun! (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:2)
Possible Ransomware Attack (Score:4, Interesting)
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Unlikely, as this stuff is all mainframe based.
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I saw several people get a fine for jaywalking and thus every fine that I hear about now without a clear explanation is jaywalking? Is that your logic here?
These are called "independent" events. The fact some people are getting hit by ransomware doesn't mean every problem everywhere is ransomware. In fact the age and ancient infrastructure of the FAA likely makes them somewhat immune to modern ransomware style attacks. Incidentally the age of infrastructure also goes a long way into explaining the fact they
BSOD (Score:2)
I can just picture an old, dark computer room with people running around yelling. In the middle of a room, a Windows 95 computer is repeating a BSOD and hard reboot. Oops! Maybe they should have upgraded to Windows 98 already!
Calling Pete Buttigieg (Score:1)
Stop grandstanding (https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2022/12/27/southwest-airlines-flight-cancellations-buttigieg-intv-tsr-vpx.cnn) and do your job, please and thank you.
Mayor Pete??? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, the irony!
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Agreed: Southwest Airlines is run just like the US Federal Government.
Excellent comparison.
Nothing much was lost (Score:5, Informative)
I worked on an Air Traffic Control system around 20 years ago.
They had the "active machine" and another one one in standby. If the active machine went down they would switch to the reserve and an empty flight-movement database - all the data is pretty much transient anyway. The flight information would come flooding in and after a couple of minutes it was business as usual.
We had an outage during my time there where records were not being deleted from one file, this was down to a new but defective software feature. That was not noticed in the 60 minute stress test (on the backup machine) because the file was large enough for 50 hours of data, and who cared about a file where only 2% of the records were in use. Switching to the spare machine worked perfectly and the programmer found the bug as soon as he heard what had happened. The bug still caused a lot of flights to be grounded because 5 (?) regional ATCs all had to agree to the switch and one of the 5 did not accept that there was even a problem for well over an hour, then someone described the exact symptoms and it was "oh, we're seeing that as well".
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Can you give any details the hardware used? Was it x86 based?
Re:Nothing much was lost (Score:4, Informative)
It was a mainframe, not x86.
They migrated to Sun-based servers after that, that was a real mess. There were around 5 servers, one for each ATC. They started with the same software but they all forked at that point - corrections for one regional ATC were not applied to the others because no-one knew if they needed them. Not my problem, I was out of there by then.
Squillions of dollars spent on social media BS... (Score:2)
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The FAA is part of the government, therefore it's socialism that failed.
I won't blame you if you want to blame Congress though. They are supposed to ride herd on the bureaucracy.
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The world’s banks run on “antiquated” code. That means the code is well vetted and understood. Let’s dump all that legacy shit and switch to python. Not like anything major happened between versions 2 and 3. You can buy a new million dollar mainframe and it will natively run binaries from 50 years ago.
AOL Disk Re-boot? (Score:2)
Did they try and reboot using a re-cycled AOL floppy disk?
I know it's worked before, but . . .
Re:"F.A.A." (Score:5, Informative)
What sort of idiot journalist moron writes acronyms like this?
The New York Times. The text was copied verbatim. Take your argument over there.
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Yes, but I think we have to keep rubbing the editor's nose in their own shit until they finally stops shitting everywhere.
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there is no editor and there is no shit everywhere, grow up man.
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suck shit and die.
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The poster complaining about using periods after each initial in an initialism made the mistake, even though it's common nowadays to leave out the periods, it's not wrong to leave them in.
And the complainer is also wrong to call it an acronym. It's not, it's an initialism.
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Isn’t there a world in which both are correct and it is just a choice of style?
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Isnâ(TM)t there a world in which both are correct and it is just a choice of style?
Only if you believe in the infinite universes theory. In this reality, life's a bitch.
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you are so boring
Re:"F.A.A." (Score:5, Informative)
First, it's not an acronym (unless maybe you use it like a word and pronounce it "fah"), it's an abbreviation, namely an initialism.
Secondly, the proper way of writing an initialism is to use periods after each initial, even if that's done less frequently in informal writing than it used to be.
Re:"F.A.A." (Score:4, Insightful)
First, it's not an acronym (unless maybe you use it like a word and pronounce it "fah"), it's an abbreviation, namely an initialism. Secondly, the proper way of writing an initialism is to use periods after each initial, even if that's done less frequently in informal writing than it used to be.
Where's the, "+1 Pedantic," mod point when you need it?
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I sit corrected.
TIL "TLA" is not an acronym.
"the proper way of writing an initialism is to use periods after each initial,"
The NYT (sic) writes PTSD as "PTSD".
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0... [nytimes.com]
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First, it's not an acronym (unless maybe you use it like a word and pronounce it "fah"), it's an abbreviation, namely an initialism.
Secondly, the proper way of writing an initialism is to use periods after each initial, even if that's done less frequently in informal writing than it used to be.
If we're going to be pedantic Wouldn't F.A.A. be "faay", not "fah" as when you say it out loud it would be "Eff Ay Ay" not "Eff Ah".
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First, it's not an acronym (unless maybe you use it like a word and pronounce it "fah"), it's an abbreviation, namely an initialism. Secondly, the proper way of writing an initialism is to use periods after each initial, even if that's done less frequently in informal writing than it used to be.
Let's be really pedantic. Per the Chicago Manual of Style:
"Use no periods with abbreviations that appear in full capitals, whether two letters or more and even if lowercase letters appear within the abbreviation: VP, CEO, MA, MD, PhD, UK, US, NY, IL (but see the next rule). "In publications using traditional state abbreviations, use periods to abbreviate United States and its states and territories: U.S., N.Y., Ill. Note, however, that Chicago recommends using the two-letter postal codes (and therefore US
Re: "F.A.A." (Score:2)
...according to the Chicago Manual of Style, which is in no way universally accepted.
In fact, Chicago style is absolutely NOT recommended for news papers. It's an academic style guideline. If you're not trying to get published in a research journal, you shouldn't be using Chicago style.
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A style manual is just a style manual. It is a guide used by people who follow that guide, nothing more.
I would quote the University of Portland Style guide for you that says omit periods if there are any capitals at all (in conflict with your style book), or the Associated Press Stylebook which says always include periods for two letter abbreviations unless it's a trademark or the EU (in conflict with your style book, also WTF why EU but U.N.)
Shit man I think I'll write my own stylebook and put periods eve
Re:"F.A.A." (Score:5, Informative)
The NYT has their own style guide. https://issuu.com/josebarbosa4... [issuu.com]
Page 168: F.A.A. for the Federal Aviation Administration
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I'd bet money that it starts "Supreme Headquarters."
Looked it up, and I was right: "Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-Enforcement Division"
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A cockup like this seems bad, but it's okay because the FAA also "Changed the acronym NOTAM from Notice to Airmen to the more applicable term Notice to Air Missions, which is inclusive of all aviators and missions".
So they may be shit and planes are grounded across the US, but they are totally inclusive of all the fluffy fucking genders the mentally disabled can ever come up with.
Re:Suprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the US Gov't changed the term from "alien" to "non-citizen" I kinda rolled my eyes a bit as well. I said something to my wife, who is an immigrant, and she was quite happy with the change. The term alien always made her feel less important.
As a straight, white male.. the deck has always been stacked in my favor in the US. While these "labels" may be changing, does it have any negative impact on you or me? No, it doesn't. If others can be made slightly more happy or feel included by simply changing a term.. good on it!
Too many people get all worked up about how other people want to live their life. Do whatever you want as long as it's not negatively impacting anyone else. Do hard drugs in your house? Go for it. Do hard drugs then get in your car and drive around - hope you end up in jail.
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The term "non-citizen" sounds worse, because it's explicitly spelling out what you're not instead of describing you as something that you are.
Also since citizenship is inherently regional, someone who is classified as an "alien" in one country is going to be a citizen somewhere else, and vice-versa. Noone is going to be "alien" everywhere.
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The term "non-citizen" sounds worse, because it's explicitly spelling out what you're not instead of describing you as something that you are.
Also since citizenship is inherently regional, someone who is classified as an "alien" in one country is going to be a citizen somewhere else, and vice-versa. Noone is going to be "alien" everywhere.
Worse than alien? You're not serious.
A. You don't call people who live here non-citizens, they're residents, permanent, temporary, unconditional or conditional, whatever.
B. Non-citizen is the bucket tourists are in. How does "alien" sound better? That's a rhetorical question.
To be fair it does have an impact on him (Score:2)
The actual solution is to build up South American countries into stable nation states so their people stop coming here and "taking our jerbs" while using Unions & collective
No harm was intended (Score:2)
Re:Suprised? (Score:5, Informative)
"Alien" means "we don't know you".
Wrong. It comes from "other" (Latin "alius") via "belonging to another" (Latin "alienus") via French alien ("strange, foreign"). It goes beyond "unknown" to either "someone else's property" or simply "not one of us". But these days the liberal ideal is to acknowledge other humans as also being humans. I know, it's a hard hill for some to climb.
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This sort of insightful comment is at -1.
Hateful woke cuntery is at +3.
Hateful wokism wins again.
Re: Suprised? (Score:2)
Today's right too worried about telling other people what they can't do.
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Nope, today's left AND RIGHT extremists are too worried about telling other people what they can and can't do.
But only the left are pathetic enough to want to change the meaning of things like NOTAM to avoid offending any snowflake, anywhere, ever.
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need to ebay to get the old ISA hardware
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Can't fire all the idiots -- no one would be left.