Woman, 90s kid, born & raised in EU Into slash, socio-political issues, and arts&crafts. Fandom/OTP: HP, Star Trek (Kirk/Spock), Starsky/Hutch, Stargate (McShep), Hawaii 5-0 (McDanno), Sterek, Destiel, Sherlock (Johnlock) ...
I have been looking for this post for YEARS after I lost the piece of paper Iād copied down that mug brownie onto when we moved. THANK YOU FOR REBLOGGING, MY NIGHT JUST GOT 100% MORE CHOCOLATEY
I think for a lot of people āI am completely helpless and powerlessā and āI am completely powerful and in controlā are both basically comforting fantasies because most of us live our lives in an in between place where we have enough agency to be responsible for our actions but not enough agency to have true control over our lives and the tension between power and powerlessness in the day to day is psychologically wearing and exhausting
While watching a DVD from the library my TV popped up a message saying to press a button if I wanted to watch this from additional providers.
It's never done that before so I looked it up and turns out Roku TVs have added all sorts of creepy things in the privacy section since I last checked.
One of which being they take screenshots from what you're watching and send them to third parties to identify it.
Fucking hell! Remember when every fucking device in your life wasn't a spy implanted in your home and working against your interests to try and sell your data? Remember how nice that was??
Remember when the TV was just a tool that would play the things you plugged into it?
Been staring at the first gif, Casā āI love youā, for about five minutes now. Canāt put my finger on why itās hitting me. Thereās something so bleak in it. Resigned. And the tiniest hint of something shaped like.. shame? I donāt know. Hurts though.
Among aviation professionals, just the word "Tenerife" is enough to conjure its image. But the lesson taken from this horrific day is rarely what it should be.
Since the introduction of wide-bodies, the often unpoken anticipation loomed- what would happen when two of these jumbo jets collided? Certainly, what was in the minds of those concerned was the 1956 collision over the Grand Canyon or the 1960 collision over New York. They were not envisioning a foggy day in the Canary Islands, on a rarely trafficked single runway airfield named Los Rodeos.
The day started with a bomb threat.
The eponymous airport on the island of Gran Canaria was the main hub for travel in and out of the colonized African archipelago. That made it a logical target for the Fuerzas Armadas Guanches, the armed division of the MPAIAC, fighting for an end to Spanish colonial rule. That day, a man placed a bomb in a duffel bag inside the airport terminal. The group called in to alert the authorities, but the building wasn't quite evacuated in time, leading to one airport worker being injured in the explosion. Knowing that multiple bombs may have been placed, local authorities shut the airport down to do a thorough search. As the terrorists intended, traffic in and out of the island ceased, and the planes en route to Gran Canaria were diverted to the nearby island of Tenerife.
Los Rodeos Airport was well enough equipped for landings and takeoffs by the occasional large jet, but its capacity could not possibly keep up with the demand that day. Aircraft filled the small apron and spilled out into the taxiways as exhausted tourists disembarked and roamed the small terminal building. Just minutes away from their destination, the pilots had no idea how long it would take for the airport in Gran Canaria to reopen, and their duty times were slowly ticking away.
Limits on how long a pilot is allowed to work are pretty self explanatory. If you wouldn't drive to the convenience store at 3am on 2 hours of sleep from the previous night, you probably wouldn't want your pilot doing that either. However, the Netherlands had recently enacted a pretty questionable law which could charge pilots with a felony if they exceeded these limits, which was weighing hard on the mind of the very senior pilot behind the controls of a KLM 747.
Captain Jacob van Zanten was, by all accounts, an excellent pilot. He headed the airline's training program and spent more of his time mentoring other pilots in the simulator than flying passengers these days. This duty was almost a formality, as pilots must have a minimum number of real flight hours to maintain their licenses. The flight to Gran Canaria and back would fill this requirement for him, but with this extra delay and the frankly bullshit law that his home country had put in place, it could also land him in jail. He made a strategic decision to disembark the passengers and begin refuelling for the trip back while at Los Rodeos, to cut down on turnover times later.
This decision was certainly not appreciated by the pilots of a Pan Am 747 parked on the taxiway behind him. When the airport at Gran Canaria reopened and jets began streaming out, Captain Victor Grubbs on the Pan Am flight found himself trapped by the refuelling KLM. He and his First Officer actually climbed out of the plane to evaluate the distance on foot just in case they could barely maneuver around the other aircraft, but to no avail- they were meters short of the clearance needed on the small taxiways at Tenerife.
That day, the overworked ground controller was struggling to manage all of the unexpected traffic and sequence them for takeoff. Since the taxiways were already filled with parked aircraft, he had to instruct some to back-taxi down the whole length of the runway and turn around in order to take off. To make things worse, fog was rolling over the airport- at times there was okay visibility, but most of the time he couldn't see the planes he was directing. Without radar, he had to track them all using rudimentary flight strips and a mental map.
Once all the passengers had been wrangled back to the KLM, the controller instructed them to taxi to the end of the runway and into the takeoff position. In the meantime, he intended to have the waiting Pan Am taxi most of the way down the runway and exit onto taxiway three to wait for their chance.
As they taxied slowly down the runway engulfed in fog, the mood in the cockpit of the Pan Am was sour. They been waiting far longer than they needed, and now they were moving down an occupied runway while barely able to see the exits as they passed. When they spotted the exit to taxiway 3, they were puzzled- by their judgement, the steep acute angle they'd have to turn to enter it wasn't possible. Perhaps the controller had meant the third taxiway from their position, which would be taxiway four? Of course, he had not meant this- he had no radar to tell where the Pan Am flight was. He simply was not familiar enough with the 747 to know it could not accomodate such a tight turn.
While the Pan Am crawled down the runway, the KLM had made its turn and the pilots were rushing through the takeoff checklist. In fact, Captain van Zanten increased the throttles and was reminded they had yet to recieve clearance. Of course. He instructed the First Officer to ask for it now.
At this point in the story, the exact wordings start to become very, very important. Pay attention.
KLM F/O: "The KLM four eight zero five is now ready for take-off and we are waiting for our ATC clearance."
TOWER: "KLM eight seven zero five you are cleared to the Papa beacon, climb to and maintain flight level nine zero, right turn after takeoff, proceed with heading four zero until intercepting the three two five radial from Las Palmas VOR."
...did you catch that? The mental models have started diverging. "ATC clearance" is the route the plane is cleared to follow after getting airborne, but it is not takeoff clearance. However, these clearances are often provided at the same time. Because the controller used the word "takeoff" in his route instructions, the pilots on board the KLM flight mistakenly believed he was providing takeoff clearance. This may seem like a difficult mistake to make, but after a long work day with an unplanned stopover and with the threat of jail time or a logistical nightmare if you delay, it's a mistake you might make too.
After reading back the clearance, the KLM First Officer says a line that nobody can quite decipher- either "We are at takeoff" or "We are, uh, taking off." Whatever he said, this raised the attention of both the controller and the Pan Am crew, who each sought to clear up the confusion.
TOWER: "Okay.... Stand by for takeoff, I will call you."
PAN AM F/O: "And we're still taxiing down the runway, the clipper one seven three six."
However, a tragic coincidence sealed their fate. Since the controller hesitated slightly after saying "okay," the Pan Am First Officer transmitted his message before the controller was finished. On traditional radio systems, if you are transmitting, you can't hear any other transmissions, so neither party realized they had been speaking at the same time. In the cockpit of the KLM, already starting the roll, the crew heard this:
TOWER: "Okay."
[Unintelligible static]
PAN AM F/O: "Clipper one seven three six."
There was one last chance to realize their mistake, although by this point it may not have saved them.
TOWER: "Ah, Papa Alpha one seven three six, report the runway clear."
PAN AM F/O: "Okay, we'll report when clear."
While the Pan Am pilots complained about the KLM's sudden rush after they'd held up the line so long, the flight engineer on the KLM posed a question in Dutch- is he not clear then, that Pan American? Captain van Zanten reassured him in a way the transcript deacribes as "emphatic."
When the Pan Am pilots caught sight of the lights through the fog, they tried to taxi off the runway into the grass to no avail. Meanwhile, spotting the Pan Am, Captain van Zanten made the fateful (yet possibly correct) decision to attempt to take off early. The tail struck the runway and the engine smashed into the Pan Am's upper deck, leading the damaged KLM to stall and slam back into the runway, where the fuel exploded. While much of the Pan Am was damaged and engulfed by flames, 61 survivors managed to escape. The decision to attempt a takeoff may have killed the KLM crew, but if they hadn't, there may have been no survivors.
This is where our story leaves the realm of objective fact and becomes one of conjecture. After all, 583 people were now dead. Whose fault was it?
The punitive mindset pervades our modern world. We are animals, after all, and our advancement has only given us more complex ways to justify our love of cruelty. Hell, our instinctive need to punish taboo or anti-social behaviours probably kept us alive in the days when taking the proverbial last slice of pizza meant risking the lives of your whole band of hunter gatherers. We demand punishment be doled out, regardless of intention.
Captain van Zanten, the arrogant pilot who took off without clearance, is dead. He likely died instantly, never realizing what his mistake was. Or maybe in the last moments he realized his engineer had been right, and he knew exactly what he had done to cause his own horrid, painful death. Is that justice?
In the aftermath, Spain's official investigation placed the blame squarely on the KLM crew. They took off without clearance. While the Dutch investigatirs agreed, they argued that the lack of radar and the controller's confusing transmissions were what led to the error. History has proven that they were correct. Controllers are now never allowed to use the word 'takeoff' in transmissions unless it is for a takeoff clearance. Confirmation bias, the way we seek information that confirms our mental model while unconsciously discarding evidence against it, is now far better understood.
Still, load up any video on Tenerife and it is a flip of a coin whether the presenter understands this. Whether Captain van Zanten was a reckless and controlling man who broke the rules on purpose or a frazzled pilot trying to get home during an incredibly stressful shift is in the eye of the beholder, because it is ultimately not a question about him at all. It's a question about how you make sense of blame.
Personally, I'm a safety enthusiast (and a hedonist, in the classical sense). I believe in whatever maximizes safety. So here's my argument to you.
Blaming the individual who makes a mistake, absent any evidence it was intentional, is not a safe mindset. A punitive approach to mistakes causes people to feel ashamed of them and fear retribution. A mistake that is not admitted early can snowball. Think about it... if Captain van Zanten had been taught the value of questioning his decisions, listening to his subordinates, and admitting to his mistakes, would he have been a little less likely to take off the breaks that day?
What makes safety so intriguing to me is its utopian aims. That every accident can be learned from, every death can be prevented, and every mistake shared openly without shame can be a tragedy avoided. It's not always the perfect lens to view the world through- I can agree that punitive justice feels pretty good when negligence leads to horrible suffering. But sometimes being human is about setting aside our emotions and doing not what feels right, but what works.
The world doesn't look back kindly on Captain van Zanten. Maybe you can find it in you to change that.
The Twilight Zone: Our episode "A Slot Machine Chases You Around Physically" was meant as a cautionary tale about the predatory nature of the gambling industry
The Gambling Industry: We've invented the slot machine that chases you around physically from The Twilight Zone episode "A Slot Machine Chases You Around Physically"
Yāall know that Iām into ancient Roman history and I do a lot of research on it but even though I should be used to it by now sometimes I read an anecdote about how an individual slave was treated and Iām hit with the realization that like a third of the population was living like that and I just need to put my head in my hands for a second
Emperor Hadrian randomly stabbed a slave in the eye in a fit of rage and he was supposedly unusually sympathetic to slaves.
Thereās other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didnāt even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.
And slaves didnāt rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.
People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.
Like how many people throughout history were beaten to death because some rich asshole was angry and there was no legal or social consequences for doing so? We donāt know.
When you study ancient history youāre reminded that slavery has never once been kind or justified. It just takes on different forms of evil in every time and place that it infects.
Chattel slavery is an incredibly cruel and dehumanizing system.
So is every other kind of slavery.
This doesnāt diminish the awfulness of what people were forced to endure under chattel slavery.
I just think itās useful to remember that cruelty is complicated and diverse and just because a cruel system is different doesnāt make it right by any means.
Roman slavery operated differently from slavery in the antebellum American south which operated differently from slavery in the Ottoman Empire which operated differently from modern prisoner chain gangs.
All of these are still slavery. Theyāre all cruel and unacceptable. Their diversity does not matter. Their willing participants have still committed the crime of taking away the self ownership and personhood of another human being.
My dad is a high school physics teacher, and every year he does an incredibly valuable and deeply uncomfortable exercise with his students to drive home why āthe Industrial Revolutionā was called that:
In the unit about physical work, he points out that work is, at its core, a measurement of labor, and that labor which isnāt done by a paid laborer had another name before the rise of automation: slavery. He has his students quantify the amount of physical work that you might expect out of a human slave, and then sets them to work calculating what that means for their own standard of living. If you wanted to live like you currently do in the ancient world, how many slaves would you need? Calculate your washing machine in slaves. Calculate your dishwasher in slaves. Calculate your refrigerator and your TV and your HVAC in slaves.
And then he asks them to think about those calculations every time they read about any form of wealth at any point in history prior to the Industrial Revolution, and to ask themselves how many slaves went into creating and supporting that wealth. Sometimes itās chattel slavery, and sometimes itās serfs, and sometimes itās forced marriages, or debt bondage, or penal laborā¦ but scratch the surface of wealth and civilization and leisure time throughout history, and you inevitably find slavery hiding underneath. Sometimes (often) you still find slavery hiding underneath, even in the modern day ā but until automation, itās a virtual guarantee about any culture with a high standard of living at all.
This physics teacher really needs to be exposed to basic facts regarding almost any given supply chain during and after the Industrial Revolution including the modern day.
Slavery "at point of use" is way down but it's a rare commodity without exposure to forced labor at some point.
The point of this exercise is not that slavery ceased with the Industrial Revolution, and that should have been obvious from the statement that āSometimes (often) you still find slavery hiding underneath, even in the modern day.ā The point is that prior to the Industrial Revolution, the existence of slavery hiding underneath any wealth was pretty much guaranteed just by virtue of the bare math. The trap that teenage boys who get Super Into Ancient Philosophy fall into is that the accounts that they are reading about the daily lives of important Romans (or Ancient Greeks, or Chinese philosophers, or others) often feel rather like their own livesā¦ if you donāt understand that the level of wealth baked into a middle class suburbanite standard of living was literally impossible to maintain in the ancient world without slavery, and that therefore if youāre not hearing about as many slaves as you calculated on paper just now, then someone is leaving out crucial information about how those people actually lived, perhaps deliberately.
Yes, itās true that these same suburbanite kids are also supported by systems of slavery in the modern day ā and thatās an important separate discussion which they also should be having! But the point of this exercise was merely that they have an automatic dishwasher, and no Roman philosopher that they will ever read about did. And that therefore, they should always have in the back of their mind the question of āhow much hidden silent human misery was necessary for this person Iām reading about to never have to do his own dishes by handā before they fall into the trap of āheās just like me frā
I think Iām literally never gonna be sick of this masterpiece. I think watching it on a loop for eight hours could fix me. Dancingās what clears my soul. Dancingās what makes me whole.
I just love that this very video is an accumulation of thousands of years worth of art made by people who have never met each other. The concept of this video was so completely unfathomable to every single artist who made the sculptures and yet theyāve all put something toward the creation of it.
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