What I'm Reading (June 5)

The problems with air flights, with Newark, the poster child, speak to the years of neglect of our infrastructure. Countless administrations have tried to update systems, but other interests have prevailed, including the needs of the 1%.

“The FAA’s capital budget has gone down both in real terms and as a share of agency spending over the past 20 years, as the cost of operating a creaky ATC system has consumed ever more resources. Moreover, according to congressional testimony from Paul Rinaldi, the former head of the air-traffic-controllers union, fully 92 percent of the FAA capital budget is devoted to maintaining legacy systems rather than funding new technology.

However, the Trump/Duffy proposal is flawed in a host of ways, the most egregious of which is that it preserves the current ATC-governance structure.”

From The Atlantic a free-market solution, The Real Problem With the FAA

The divisiveness over the COVID pandemic continues, with much made over our failings to the currently alive writers and readers, the survivors. 

“The only thing about COVID nobody talks about anymore is the 1.2 million deaths.

That’s 1.2 million American deaths. Globally it’s officially 7 million, unofficially 20 - 30 million. But 1.2 million American deaths is still a lot. It’s more than Vietnam plus 9/11 plus every mass shooting combined - in fact, more than ten times all those things combined. It was the single highest-fatality event in American history, beating the previous record-holder - the US Civil War - by over 50%. All these lives seem to have fallen into oblivion too quietly to be heard over the noise of Lab Leak Debate #35960381.”

Are we missing a critical part of the picture? From Astral Codex Ten, The Other COVID Reckoning 

One of my first introductions to chemistry came from Mr. Wizard, who taught me a way to make crystals on top of a charcoal briquette.

“The principle is simple: You pour a liquid onto a small paper tree, and, as if by magic, cloud-shaped crystals bloom on each branch the next day. After a little digging, I discovered that the substance causing this phenomenon was potassium phosphate. I ordered some powdered form and then began creating my own saturated solutions. Instead of using it on paper trees, I chose to place the solution on blotting paper in Petri dishes to recreate these crystalline “cumulus” clouds on a flat surface, more suitable for photography. … Each time, the resulting crystalline forms were different. That’s what captivated me: this mixture of randomness and precision, where chemistry almost becomes a visual language.”

Here is the video and the interview, The Visual Language of Crystals, courtesy of Nautil.us

Are you familiar with that cut-out found in sidewalks at the end of the block? That cut-out called a curb cut, was designed for individuals in wheelchairs to get around more easily, but it has also helped many of us navigate the streets with rollators and other mobility aids. When a design for disability leads to a benefit for all of us, it is called the “curb-cut effect.” From NPR comes a short video on perhaps the mother of the first curb-cut effect, the Oxo carrot peeler. The origin story of the curb cut goes back to a gentleman named Ed Roberts, who was afflicted with polio. You can read and hear the tale on 99% Invisible, a great OG podcast.