"All five people killed in the accident worked for consulting firm CTEH, which provides response services, including “environmental data collection, and management, GIS, safety, incident management, industrial hygiene, toxicology and human health consulting for the public and private sectors.”"
Damn, conspiracy theorist will have a field day now.
People conspire, and always have from the earliest civilizations.
Just because absolutely idiotic theories have conveniently been highlighted like Q or Flat Earth we shouldn't equate it to the last sad remnants of what would have been standard research journalism just 20 years ago.
People are turning to cartoonish conspiracies because "Journalism" has either died or been bought. It's a dystopian media landscape we live in and the power brokers benefit from both the vacuum and the circus that has come in its place.
I find it weird that - especially americans - still don't think in terms of groups, but see the individual as the driver of history - a historiographical school that has been outdated for 70 years now.
As an American, I find this statement radically perplexing.
Through the scourge of identity politics, we do nothing but categorize people into groups in basically every avenue of society. You can't go to college without your group affecting you. You can't find a good job without your group mattering.
Individualists who essentially want to take the Martin Luther King Jr speech literally (I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.) can be castigated as the most vile people by some for not wanting to treat anybody differently from anybody else.
Just ask anyone, of any group, and they'll tell you how being in their group made both of these harder while less qualified people of the other groups had it easier than they did.
You're right, I'm not sure what I was thinking. I thought OP was hinting that being white was preventing them from going to college or getting a good job because of positive discrimination, but now I'm not sure how to interpret their comment any more and my reply is very dumb.
You are presenting a strawman. I did not say that you are prevented from going to college or getting a good job, but your group can affect your life outcome and does matter in these decisions. Look at the Asian-American discrimination case against Harvard entrance as one of many examples.
It was not my intention to present a strawman: I assumed that by "affect" you really did mean "prevent". I.e. being Asian-American prevents some people from gaining entrance to Harvard, in this case.
Identity politics is exactly the kind of circus that is opposite analysis of the power dynamics in society.
Realpolitics or material analysis - "follow the money" is the only way to understand the networks of power but that's not allowed because a tiny class of people want to stay in the shadows for good reason.
Culture wars are very convenient, and yes very annoying.
Any form of class war, or even a basic examination of the conduct of the 1%, has been masterfully replaced by culture war in America. There's a reason that mega-corporations are going full-tilt in pretending to support THE CURRENT THING (TM). For the price of a few pieces of ribbon and a few tearful benedictions, they've managed to placate the useful idiot crowd and distract them from what really matters.
It’s a bit perplexing that you’d even ask this. Wouldn’t it be incredibly surprising if people in early civilisations never conspired with one another?
Investigative journalism is alive and well, though funding sources for it have been changing now that there are less traditional newspapers who can afford to invest heavily in it.
https://www.propublica.org/ is one great example of the non-profit model applied successfully to investigative reporting.
There's a sub-field in sociology that asks, HOW does something get called a conspiracy theory[1]. As a processual question, it's much more interesting than the deterministic "is this a conspiracy theory or not".
Part of it is an interesting difference: sometimes, we call secret coordination simply, "organization" or "planning" - when we think it's legitimate to do, expect that it happens, and intend to make it seem harmless (which it often is not; the vast majority of organizational action can be characterized as that, and there is someone harmed by this coordination more often than not. Teachers "organizing" grades happens behind students' backs in closed conferences; the results are life-changing. In principle, people think this is legitimate (where the sociological question is "wait, why?" - not inviting an argument on the pros and cons, but asking the historical question, how did it come about that we developed this process as "normal", with the mere recognition that it need not be this way - without making a judgment on whether this is better or worse, just pointing out a contingency.)
Goffman calls the actions of a family behind the back of a family member "collusion" and outlines how circles of collusion expand, like when people start including more and more people, including doctors, without the member's knowledge, to confront them with a "fait accompli" [2]. Again, not arguing for or against at this point, just noting: from the point of view of the member on the other side, this is a secretly organized betrayal. Much of society largely approves, shown by the involvement of accredited authority figures (including, later on, courts, if it comes to that). This, again, is neither obvious nor natural; it's just what developed (and can be criticized).
So, saying this happens is not a conspiracy theory. Then come the sociological studies about how this -actually- happens. How students get punished through grade adjustments for being a general pain to teachers. How families use the medical system to get rid of unwanted actions that shame them in public (Aunt Hilda is claiming weird things to neighbors. A medical label will calm the situation; or, Uncle Joe doesn't want to sell the house, but we, the children, think he should. A court decision will make this simpler.) All of these things happen, all day every day. NOW they call into question the legitimacy of these institutions. NOW they get called conspiracy theories; a tool to protect the institution from this questioning.
[1] Anton, Andreas, Michael Schetsche, and Michael K. Walter. "Einleitung: Wirklichkeitskonstruktion zwischen Orthodoxie und Heterodoxie–zur Wissenssoziologie von Verschwörungstheorien." Konspiration: Soziologie des Verschwörungsdenkens (2014): 9-25.
[2] Goffman, Erving. "The insanity of place." Psychiatry 32, no. 4 (1969): 357-388.
Rich and powerful people conspire to do horrible things to regular people. Stop pretending it’s normal to just believe everything the government and corporate owned media tells you.
Conspiracy theorists don't need evidence. The mere suggestion that someone could benefit from killing environmental workers is plenty to keep them going.
But why invite it? There’s a bunch or drivel posted in response but absent elsewhere in the comments. It’s not just feeding trolls, it’s leaving cookies and milk out for them.
It's only "inviting" them to the extent that any mention of conspiracy theories is an invitation. Maybe a mistake, but not because of anything to do with evidence for/against any particular claim.
Don't know what the downvotes are for. I work in Ohio politics. Some other problems: we're one of, if not the most gerrymandered states in the country - particularly our state legislature. Karl Rove's favorite testbed. The DNC gives us peanuts then wonders why everyone here loses races.
This is newsworthy not because a small twin went down but because the business using it was working on the Ohio tragedy.
There are more than 4 fatal general aviation accidents per week.
Over the past 2 decades, here have been roughly 2 fatalities from 1.25 fatal accidents for every 100,000 flight hours in general aviation, with 260 accidents per year. There are roughly 0.05 fatalities from 0.005 fatal accidents for every 100,000 flight hours on airlines, with an average of 1 accident per year:
Comparatively, there have been an average of 1.2 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles, or (generously assuming 60 mph) 0.07 fatalities per 100,000 hours.
Taking a general aviation flight is 30x riskier than driving a car for an hour. Taking an airline flight is a little safer than driving for an hour.
I'd not run these numbers before, I knew it was higher but not that high. It'll make me think twice when our partner business offers to fly me out to work on one of their machines that's several hours away. I'm specifically thinking of the 20 hours of driving I did last week from Michigan to Tennessee; I think there's a ratio of drunk drivers on rural roads at night versus daytime highway miles that's not captured, but it's not what I thought it was!
Where did these numbers come from? I’m really surprised that driving (0.07 fatalities per 100k miles) is not significantly more dangerous than commercial flying (0.05 fatalities per 100k miles).
I always thought driving was much more dangerous than commercial flying, but apparently only slightly.
It should be noted that 60mph is generous to the car, not to general aviation.
A more fair comparison might be to compare mile for mile. A twin is probably pushing 200mph, leading to 10 fatalities per 100M miles (as dangerous as riding a bicycle, for what little that’s worth). Not great, but you also need to consider that a lot of fatal GA accidents are from private pilots (<2 fatalities per accident on average), not part 135 commercial operators as you’d probably be dealing with.
Yes, sorry I can't edit anymore to make that clearer.
One of the founders of our partner business has a private plane he uses to fly himself and his salespeople/customers/engineers around the midwest, he's a Part 91 private pilot. I've flown with him before and he's a smart, careful guy, but he's a pilot second and machine salesman first, who happens to use his private plane to enhance his B2B network over distances and to small town destinations that are hard to reach with either driving or with commercial aviation.
Because it's a comparison for business, working hour-by-hour makes some sense, because it's a decision between a 6-hour drive in the morning, working a long day, and driving home the next morning, or flying there in 2 hours, working, and coming back in the same day. You make different decisions when it's a 1-day or half-day trip, versus the 3-day trip I made last week for 6 hours on site. More and more of that gets pushed to videoconferencing....
> This is newsworthy not because a small twin went down but because the business using it was working on the Ohio tragedy.
But not the one everyone is thinking about. This had nothing to do with the train derailment, these guys were on their way to help get the metal factory up and running again.
In 2021 my brother-in-law was part of a large team of engineers that went from the US to Belgium and Luxembourg to help get factories working again after the devastating floods. This is a normal part of the job for good engineers; nobody hears anything about it unless the plane crashes.
"Emergency services were alerted to the crash at 12:02 p.m., the Little Rock Police Department said in a Facebook post.. There was a line of storms moving through the area around the same time, according to CNN Weather. There were no warnings alerted for the storms, but the National Weather Service issued a special statement calling for gusts up to 50 mph. The highest gust at the airport was 46 mph, recorded at 12:02 p.m."
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadDamn, conspiracy theorist will have a field day now.
They have a field day any day. There are so many events to pick from that they are never short of material and when they are they make it up.
Just because absolutely idiotic theories have conveniently been highlighted like Q or Flat Earth we shouldn't equate it to the last sad remnants of what would have been standard research journalism just 20 years ago.
People are turning to cartoonish conspiracies because "Journalism" has either died or been bought. It's a dystopian media landscape we live in and the power brokers benefit from both the vacuum and the circus that has come in its place.
Can you provide something to support your statement?
A newer very interesting book on the subject going back even further: [The Power of Ritual in Prehistory Secret Societies and Origins of Social Complexity](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/power-of-ritual-in-preh...)
I find it weird that - especially americans - still don't think in terms of groups, but see the individual as the driver of history - a historiographical school that has been outdated for 70 years now.
As an American, I find this statement radically perplexing.
Through the scourge of identity politics, we do nothing but categorize people into groups in basically every avenue of society. You can't go to college without your group affecting you. You can't find a good job without your group mattering.
Individualists who essentially want to take the Martin Luther King Jr speech literally (I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.) can be castigated as the most vile people by some for not wanting to treat anybody differently from anybody else.
Do you have any evidence to back this up? Which "group-membership" prevents you from going to college or getting a good job?
Edit: I think I misunderstood, obviously different ethnical groups have different experiences in their careers and lives in general.
Realpolitics or material analysis - "follow the money" is the only way to understand the networks of power but that's not allowed because a tiny class of people want to stay in the shadows for good reason.
Culture wars are very convenient, and yes very annoying.
Soviet-esque silence on important issues doesn't win confidence.
https://www.propublica.org/ is one great example of the non-profit model applied successfully to investigative reporting.
Part of it is an interesting difference: sometimes, we call secret coordination simply, "organization" or "planning" - when we think it's legitimate to do, expect that it happens, and intend to make it seem harmless (which it often is not; the vast majority of organizational action can be characterized as that, and there is someone harmed by this coordination more often than not. Teachers "organizing" grades happens behind students' backs in closed conferences; the results are life-changing. In principle, people think this is legitimate (where the sociological question is "wait, why?" - not inviting an argument on the pros and cons, but asking the historical question, how did it come about that we developed this process as "normal", with the mere recognition that it need not be this way - without making a judgment on whether this is better or worse, just pointing out a contingency.)
Goffman calls the actions of a family behind the back of a family member "collusion" and outlines how circles of collusion expand, like when people start including more and more people, including doctors, without the member's knowledge, to confront them with a "fait accompli" [2]. Again, not arguing for or against at this point, just noting: from the point of view of the member on the other side, this is a secretly organized betrayal. Much of society largely approves, shown by the involvement of accredited authority figures (including, later on, courts, if it comes to that). This, again, is neither obvious nor natural; it's just what developed (and can be criticized).
So, saying this happens is not a conspiracy theory. Then come the sociological studies about how this -actually- happens. How students get punished through grade adjustments for being a general pain to teachers. How families use the medical system to get rid of unwanted actions that shame them in public (Aunt Hilda is claiming weird things to neighbors. A medical label will calm the situation; or, Uncle Joe doesn't want to sell the house, but we, the children, think he should. A court decision will make this simpler.) All of these things happen, all day every day. NOW they call into question the legitimacy of these institutions. NOW they get called conspiracy theories; a tool to protect the institution from this questioning.
[1] Anton, Andreas, Michael Schetsche, and Michael K. Walter. "Einleitung: Wirklichkeitskonstruktion zwischen Orthodoxie und Heterodoxie–zur Wissenssoziologie von Verschwörungstheorien." Konspiration: Soziologie des Verschwörungsdenkens (2014): 9-25. [2] Goffman, Erving. "The insanity of place." Psychiatry 32, no. 4 (1969): 357-388.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/22/death-of-clinton-aide-tied-to-...
Rich and powerful people conspire to do horrible things to regular people. Stop pretending it’s normal to just believe everything the government and corporate owned media tells you.
Can you let us know which tabloids you trust? I would like to optimize my advertising spend.
Is there any evidence of foul play here? Why would this be more notable to conspiracy theorists than any other plane crash?
Source: Ohioan & former door-to-door campaign canvasser (canvassee?)
*p.s., be careful going door to door knocking in Ohio - you will often be greeted with firearms in hand, in even the most suburbia of neighborhoods.
Never mind having a gun on hand.
From the article:
“The employees had been on their way to help deal with the fatal metal plant explosion that took place earlier this week in Bedford, Ohio.”
There are more than 4 fatal general aviation accidents per week.
Over the past 2 decades, here have been roughly 2 fatalities from 1.25 fatal accidents for every 100,000 flight hours in general aviation, with 260 accidents per year. There are roughly 0.05 fatalities from 0.005 fatal accidents for every 100,000 flight hours on airlines, with an average of 1 accident per year:
https://www.bts.gov/content/us-general-aviationa-safety-data
https://www.bts.gov/content/us-air-carrier-safety-data
Comparatively, there have been an average of 1.2 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles, or (generously assuming 60 mph) 0.07 fatalities per 100,000 hours.
Taking a general aviation flight is 30x riskier than driving a car for an hour. Taking an airline flight is a little safer than driving for an hour.
I'd not run these numbers before, I knew it was higher but not that high. It'll make me think twice when our partner business offers to fly me out to work on one of their machines that's several hours away. I'm specifically thinking of the 20 hours of driving I did last week from Michigan to Tennessee; I think there's a ratio of drunk drivers on rural roads at night versus daytime highway miles that's not captured, but it's not what I thought it was!
I always thought driving was much more dangerous than commercial flying, but apparently only slightly.
https://www.bts.gov/content/motor-vehicle-safety-data
And the numbers were for fatalities per 100k hours, not miles, because the flight data is recorded in hours.
A more fair comparison might be to compare mile for mile. A twin is probably pushing 200mph, leading to 10 fatalities per 100M miles (as dangerous as riding a bicycle, for what little that’s worth). Not great, but you also need to consider that a lot of fatal GA accidents are from private pilots (<2 fatalities per accident on average), not part 135 commercial operators as you’d probably be dealing with.
One of the founders of our partner business has a private plane he uses to fly himself and his salespeople/customers/engineers around the midwest, he's a Part 91 private pilot. I've flown with him before and he's a smart, careful guy, but he's a pilot second and machine salesman first, who happens to use his private plane to enhance his B2B network over distances and to small town destinations that are hard to reach with either driving or with commercial aviation.
Because it's a comparison for business, working hour-by-hour makes some sense, because it's a decision between a 6-hour drive in the morning, working a long day, and driving home the next morning, or flying there in 2 hours, working, and coming back in the same day. You make different decisions when it's a 1-day or half-day trip, versus the 3-day trip I made last week for 6 hours on site. More and more of that gets pushed to videoconferencing....
But not the one everyone is thinking about. This had nothing to do with the train derailment, these guys were on their way to help get the metal factory up and running again.
In 2021 my brother-in-law was part of a large team of engineers that went from the US to Belgium and Luxembourg to help get factories working again after the devastating floods. This is a normal part of the job for good engineers; nobody hears anything about it unless the plane crashes.
"Emergency services were alerted to the crash at 12:02 p.m., the Little Rock Police Department said in a Facebook post.. There was a line of storms moving through the area around the same time, according to CNN Weather. There were no warnings alerted for the storms, but the National Weather Service issued a special statement calling for gusts up to 50 mph. The highest gust at the airport was 46 mph, recorded at 12:02 p.m."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/23/us/arkansas-plane-crash-five-...
It looks like the crash was because of the storms and that if the pilot had been more patient there wouldn't have been this loss of life.