Wren Reilly
THIS IS NOT A POST PRAISING NAZIS
THIS
POST
IS
NOT
PRAISE
FOR
NAZIS
"Fun" fact:
Anyone blaming DEI for the erosion of Boeing's safety record is less informed on diversity in STEM than the German engineers who were whisked away to the US after WWII. The bar is in hell! If Werner Von fucking Braun is more likely to judge someone based on their engineering skills, that regressive right-wing asshole who can't meet the standards set by war criminals should not be anywhere near a plane.
Wren Reilly
"One day, her daughter decided to “play astronaut” and pushed a simulator button that made the system crash. Hamilton realized immediately that the mistake was one that an astronaut could make, so she recommended adjusting the software to address it, but she was told: “Astronauts are trained never to make a mistake.”
During Apollo 8’s moon-orbiting flight, astronaut Jim Lovell made the exact same error that her young daughter had..."
Wren Reilly
https://www.nasa.gov/general/katherine-johnson-a-lifetime-of-stem/
The engineers who got people safely to the Moon had to get where they were through mountains of bullshit, and excelled.
DEI is essential. DEI means *not* accepting mediocrity.
Wren Reilly
http://nalfl.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Karl-Sendler-Biography.pdf
"In spite of working for all of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, and being promoted to a senior engineer, Morgan was still not permitted in the firing room at liftoff — until Apollo 11, when “Karl Sendler went to bat for me.”
Without her realizing, Sendler had had to go all the way to the top to ask permission from Debus. When Sendler called Morgan into his office to share the good news, he was “practically gleeful”
Wren Reilly
Boeing executives think they know better than their own engineers and NASA how to make planes.
They are not smart people.
Elon Musk thinks he's better than NASA.
He is not a smart man.
Wren Reilly
The problem with Boeing is that a bunch of bean counting assholes from McDonnell Douglas were allowed to take over a company run by engineers.
McDonnell Douglas planes were on my "oh hell no, rebook my flight" list for years. Now there's a Boeing plane on that list.
People who paid attention to the lessons learned from Challenger and other aerospace engineering disasters were pushed out by the same MBA-toting football bats who enshittify everything they touch.
Diversity in STEM is good.
Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊
This is where one of Hamilton's statements stuck with me -- the assertion that such systems are software, hardware, and peopleware. And these three are distinct! You can't treat people like hardware, we operate in a stochastic and, frequently, incomprehensible way.
Hamilton wasn't saying that the error would happen, just that it had a chance of occurring, and therefore steps should be taken to minimize the likelihood. Precautionary measures, because while training is important, so is the setup of a system, and it should always be configured - physically or in software - to reduce the likelihood of a disaster as much as possible.
And definitely: people who are more at risk of Bad Things happening have fewer blind spots when it comes to those same Bad Things happening to someone else. We able-bodied people need, as a whole, to learn to start listening.
Wren Reilly
@theogrin People get tired, sick, injured, etc. Multiple systems to avert disaster assume that someone with the very best training is still human. This is one of the things disabled people don't forget, which is why accessibility in workplaces = more safety.
Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊
Anyone who extols the idea that 'proper training' prevents people from making mistakes, ever, should be immediately fired, preferably in a ballistic manner.
Human beings have this natural tendency to screw up! Sometimes we do so cataclysmically! And one of the benefits of diversity and inclusion is that when one person screws up, we don't just mill about in a homogeneous herd, someone has the ability to recognize the fault and the skills to fix it.
Meanwhile, Boeing execs who can't see past 'Money == Good' are making unilateral decisions and getting people killed through their blinkered incompetence.
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