Good news for gassy food lovers is the cabin pressure changes make everyone fart, there's no one else in the cockpit to hear or smell you, and even if there was it'd be loud and they'd be wearing an oxygen mask. Little victories.

[1] (NSFW lyrics!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd9_RffdmBA

(2) Again, sure, but Iran can clearly sustain it longer. They've read their Clausewitz and properly understand this as a contest of political will, which they have much deeper reserves of than capital or munitions. Anyone with any power in the Iranian regime knows they have no offramp.

Absolutely agree that Trump cares strongly for his legacy, maybe more than anything except for his self-image, but the most important part of that legacy is being recognized as both popular and a winner--I would argue that these are far more important to him personally than US power and influence on the world stage (shutting down USAID, for example, was a massive blow to US soft power, and the NATO infighting that he initiated is still probably a net negative for US hard power, even if it has had a positive impact on European defense spending and self-sufficiency). He also clearly wants to see that legacy established in his lifetime (hence the obsession with having things named after him). It's hard to imagine this being a particularly effective way to increase long-term US power and influence relative to China, particularly in a way that will generate positive sentiment within the US--especially among the majority voters who favored his populist-isolationist political platform.

(2) I think we all (the author included) agree with you that it's easier to break things than to build them--both hardware and relationships--so it's obvious that maintaining trade through these kinds of choke points requires some degree of cooperation on all fronts. Iran does have a geographic advantage over other players, though (partial exceptions to Oman and the UAE), as well as a clear acute interest in constricting traffic through the strait. Sure, it may be bleeding them, but it seems to be one of the few ways they can meaningfully attack their enemies. It'll be interesting to see if anyone has the will to force the strait open against Iran's efforts.

Generally agree on Ukraine/Taiwan and the bigger geopolitical picture though.

A smaller point: all military exercises are heavily scripted--it's more or less impossible for them to be otherwise, as you just can't simulate the details of war that matter without actually killing people, breaking things, and giving up your secret game plans. Usually the goal of this sort of thing is to make sure that everything (people, equipment, doctrine) works together more or less as intended, and people have the experience leading and operating in larger units than they do on a routine basis. The PR people then spin it into an unqualified and historic success, validation of our technology and tactics against the forces of evil, blah blah blah. It is still very difficult to draw the right lessons from these sorts of things--even more so when the civilian leadership of the military has 99 things to consider besides a certain kind of pure military effectiveness (and although I have strong feelings here, we're still doing quite well on the tactical and operational levels in spite of everything).

Fun fact: the Millennium Challenge is still taught as a case study in basic officer training, at least in the Marine Corps (well, probably--it definitely was a little over a decade ago).

This sort of place is safe enough to bring your kid into without significant precautions (I got to do this as a kid—it was really cool). The biggest risk by far is drowning.

Relevant XKCD: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

At the very least it’s an interesting experiment—still unclear if or how well this sort of thing will succeed.

My cold take is that the only significant, short-term effect will be slightly lowered training standards for low-to-moderate-performance aircraft. It's unclear that this will have any practical effects, since personal airplanes will remain prohibitively expensive to own and operate for the vast majority of us.

I share your frustration with the technological stagnation of general aviation, but this is completely damning. Cirrus added all of the features you mention, at great expense and in a fully certified aircraft, and took decades to show any kind of clear safety advantage over clapped-out Cessnas (as I understand it, the vast majority of improvement came from intensive training in when to deploy the parachute, which was wildly less intuitive than anyone originally realized and likely remains so for pilots without specialized training). Digital instruments, weather displays, and automation have significant benefits for many use cases, but it's unclear that they're inherently safer than legacy systems for amateur aviators.

Literally no one disagrees with you on this, and most (if not all) hospital administrators will say they already do it the way you suggest. I'm pointing out that the actual implementations I'm aware of are often ineffective because they use administrative rather than engineering controls, and this is a critical distinction people need to be more aware of when interacting with dangerous systems. Managers, at least in my experience, tend to wildly overestimate compliance rates with administrative controls, even ignoring any possibility of deliberate noncompliance.

>Understand and adopt new and emerging technologies...

>Embrace proactive approaches to address sustainability, resiliency, and risk...

>Support and encourage airports to look at their systems holistically...

I can't disagree with any of those things, but at the same time nothing in this report helps clarify where we should allocate our ever-more-finite resources.