"Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it"

It's been a couple of decades I think, maybe more, since an engineering screwup affected a passenger airliner like this. You could argue that the 787 LiIon battery thermal runaway thing was a red flag. That also resulted in an FAA grounding, but that was fairly easily remedied and nobody died.

From the report:

At 05:38:44, shortly after liftoff, the left and right recorded AOA values deviated. Left AOA decreased to 11.1° then increased to 35.7° while value of right AOA indicated 14.94°. Then after, the left AOA value reached 74.5° in ¾ seconds while the right AOA reached a maximum value of 15.3°. At this time, the left stick shaker activated and remained active until near the end of the recording. Also, the airspeed, altitude and flight director pitch bar values from the left side noted deviating from the corresponding right side values. The left side values were lower than the right side values until near the end of the recording.

...

At 05:39:06, the Captain advised the First-Officer to contact radar and First Officer reported SHALA 2A departure crossing 8400 ft and climbing FL 320.

...

At 05:39:42, Level Change mode was engaged. The selected altitude was 32000 ft. Shortly after the mode change, the selected airspeed was set to 238 kt.

At 05:39:45, Captain requested flaps up and First-Officer acknowledged. One second later, flap handle moved from 5 to 0 degrees and flaps retraction began.

Bear in mind stick shaker and divergent instrument readings all this time.

Why not just return and land, leave the flaps configuration alone (which would have inhibited MCAS), especially since this is exactly how the Lion Air flight started.

I know this is easy to critique from the comfort of my chair, and the pilots are not here to defend themselves, but some things in this narrative just don't make sense.

The other is that they make a convincing case that the problem is resolved. I don't know if that's possible given today's default hate for big corporations, we'll see. They've done it before with the 737 and the rudder problem it had in the 1990s or so. That problem led to a few fatal crashes, but I'm not sure it ever got the attention that this story is getting. The news cycle was different then.

I would absolutely fly on one once the problem is corrected.

If I'm a 737 MAX pilot, after the Lion Air crash I'm learning absolutely everything I can about MCAS. And from information Boeing provided I would learn that it operates with autopilot off, flaps up, at high indicated AoA.

You mention unreliable airspeed, that was actually their first problem. Flaps were extended at that point, as according to the narrative they were not retracted until after the AoA disagree, stick shaker, and airspeed disagree. In fact it almost reads like they were intending to continue the flight, engage autopilot, and climb to 32,000 ft with the stick shaker going the whole time. That seems very odd to me.

Wonder why didn't they trim up more when they turned the electric trim back on. On the surface it appears that was their last chance to salvage the situation.

The scenario they paint with chasing down form after form simply does not happen for most people. For most people it's one page.

But the idea that your taxes can be pre-computed by the IRS is fantasy beyond that, unless the tax code is significantly changed.

Sure they know your W2 income and some other standard stuff. How do they know your self-employment or business income? How much you gave to charity? How do they know what unreimbursed expenses you had? How do they know how many kids you have? How do they know your marital status?

I guess most of that could be addressed by just eliminating all deductions and allowances but even at that there are a lot of things they simply cannot possibly know until you, the taxpayer, tell them.

What is the scoreboard?