8 ways life would get weird on a flat Earth

[The Liturgist]

Last plane i flew in had an outside toilet!

Early unpressurized aircraft did not always have retention tanks. A bit like some older trains in Europe where “flushing” the toilet just opens a flap through which you can see the track… Such trains were still in service on regional routes in 2000-2003 when I traveled extensively, including an overnight couchette from Berlin to Malmo via a train ferry, and a narrow gauge railway in Saxony, in addition to several regional lines ar the time operated with old coaches from the 1950s, such as the “Silberlinge” coaches in Germany (the first class compartments of the unrefurbished Silberlinge coaches were amazingly comfortable, with the same thickly padded cloth seats that IC and EC trains had at the time, where you could stretch out either lengthwise or across the row of three seats on each side of the compartment if there were two or fewer people, which in first class was usually the case. First class was the only option for non-student travelers pr groups including those above 26 with Eurailpass (which does not include the overpriced British rail system), although you still needed reservations for Intercity, Eurocity, TGV, ICE and sleeping cars.

At any rate you could tell if a car had open toilets by the emphatic signs on the lavatory doors telling passengers not to use them while the train was in the station! And on the train ferry, the lavatories would be locked, but one could get off the train and join other passengers (from cars, busses and trucks, and pedestrians) in the lounge, which had food service, restrooms and other amenities.

 

[Lost4words]

I bet that was a bit drafty

It was! But not as bad as being put in the hold! Woof!

 

[Lost4words]

I remember once we crashed on take off! The pilot was Chinese. His name was: Sum Ting Wong...

 

[HantsUK]

I remember once we crashed on take off! The pilot was Chinese. His name was: Sum Ting Wong...

During Covid even pilots worked from home.

 

[Jipsah]

I remember once we crashed on take off! The pilot was Chinese. His name was: Sum Ting Wong...

I've heard that so many times that I've considered throttling the next person who tells it. Trust me, it ain't all that funny hearing it for the 100th time, especially when you're Asian.

 

[Lost4words]

I've heard that so many times that I've considered throttling the next person who tells it. Trust me, it ain't all that funny hearing it for the 100th time, especially when you're Asian.

Woof!

 

[The Liturgist]

I've heard that so many times that I've considered throttling the next person who tells it. Trust me, it ain't all that funny hearing it for the 100th time, especially when you're Asian.

Indeed.

Also, given my many friends and family who have worked or continue to work in aerospace, including my grandfather, who was an avionics engineer, his nephew and my second cousin (the son of his brother who was a Methodist missionary who was tortured by the fascist Salazar regime during the Angola Crisis) who is a corporate pilot flying business jets, and my great aunt Barbara who was an executive with United, I have to object to this as well:

During Covid even pilots worked from home.

All airline pilots I know care about safety and are extremely troubled by proposals to reduce the number of pilots to one, or to automate civil aircraft, since unlike, for example, airport peoplemovers and automated metros, which operate on fixed guideways or railways with sensor systems and in a controlled environment, usually with platform screen doors, airline pilots deal with highly unpredictable environmental conditions due to weather, particularly in situations like crosswind landings. The elimination of the flight engineer and navigator represents the maximum safe level of automation (although I personally wish long haul aircraft, especially ETOPS* aircraft that have to carry extra pilots due to mandatory career rest periods retained a diagnostic station or terminals accessible from the jumpseat, because often, off duty pilots assist in the event of an emergency, but the assistance they can provide is limited to how well they can read the captain and first officer displays, or will consist of accessing parts of the breaker panel or the overhead panel that might be difficult to reach).

* I also lament ETOPS in terms of the reduction of engines; what would have been the best of all worlds would be to have kept the trijets and quads, but manufacture them and require them to be maintained to ETOPS standards; if the industry does transition to hydrogen, which can be produced by electrolyzing water and therefore in principle ought to be inexpensive, I would hope the fuel savings might be enough to let us return to having more smaller engines, like on the Airbus A340/A380, Lockheed L1011, 747-8, and the Avro RJ.

 

[FredVB]

Gravity is really strange to deny. Evidence of everything going around, revolving and orbiting, is easily observed, and weight is not explained, nor buoyancy, without gravity, they are then just inexplicably mysterious. Why would any lie and conspire about what explains things so fully? If they do not have faulty understanding of scripture passages what would be any basis for concluding gravity and a round earth are a deliberate conspiracy to suppress truth?

 

[FredVB]

There is decrease in human intelligence that is showing, that has observation now with comparison to earlier generations. Use of online communication is with great opportunity for any to research things themselves and learn more that way but instead there are enough people with the access who follow any source found appealing and accept any misinformation that comes that way.

 

[Michie]

There is decrease in human intelligence that is showing, that has observation now with comparison to earlier generations. Use of online communication is with great opportunity for any to research things themselves and learn more that way but instead there are enough people with the access who follow any source found appealing and accept any misinformation that comes that way.

It’s a lack of critical thinking and simply looking for confirmation bias. Attention spans are severely lacking as far as research and sincerely seeking the truth of a topic of interest to weight things out for one’s self.

 

[FredVB]

It’s a lack of critical thinking and simply looking for confirmation bias. Attention spans are severely lacking as far as research and sincerely seeking the truth of a topic of interest to weight things out for one’s self.

It is that, but a declining intelligence of the human population is noted, though slight in change over many generations, it still is part of the explanation, that there is lack of critical thinking and openness just to what works for the confirmation bias among enough of those using online access, such that we all find some online who are communicating for a flat earth reality, and no gravitation with things just falling anyway in one direction and denser or more massive things more affected to fall anyway, and dismissing anything contrary as part of some conspiracy to hide the truth. There are that many who are like that. I feel pretty sure that when I was younger decades ago while it was before internet with online access was made possible there were not so many among human population that were lacking in those ways so much, then.