Yesterday, I wrote on a viral claim involving ivermectin, spread by blue checkmarks across the left, that asserted an Oklahoma hospital was so overwhelmed with overdoses from the animal variant that they were turning away gun-shot victims. That turned out to be so false that the hospital changed its internet homepage with a correction of the disinformation, noting that they did not have a single patient admitted currently that had overdosed on ivermectin.

But as I said when I opened this article, we are apparently going to keep doing this. Another ivermectin hoax has now been exposed, this time over a widely spread claim that Mississippi’s poison control was deluged with ivermectin overdoses representing 70% of total calls.

https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/15400.pdf //

Amy
@AmyA1A
The AP reported that 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center were from people who had ingested ivermectin to try to treat COVID-19.

The correction acknowledges that it was actually only 2%.

https://sfgate.com/news/amp/Health-Dept-Stop-taking-livestock-medicine-to-16405982.php?__twitter_impression=true
9:53 PM · Sep 5, 2021

Here’s the full correction per the Associated Press which was pushed out to SF Gate.

In an article published Aug. 23, 2021, about people taking livestock medicine to try to treat coronavirus, The Associated Press erroneously reported based on information provided by the Mississippi Department of Health that 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center were from people who had ingested ivermectin to try to treat COVID-19. State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said Wednesday the number of calls to poison control about ivermectin was about 2%. He said of the calls that were about ivermectin, 70% were by people who had ingested the veterinary version of the medicine.

So instead of it being 70% of calls being about ivermectin, the actual number was…2%. And of that 2%, 70% of those calls were about the animal variant. In other words, instead of talking about possibly hundreds or thousands of animal variant ivermectin overdose calls, the number is actually infinitesimal, representing only 1.4% of calls.

Set 1000Mbps full-duplex, enter:

  ifconfig <interface-name> <IP_address> media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex

For example, set interface em0 with IP 10.10.1.2 to 100Mbps full duplex, enter:

   ifconfig em0 10.10.1.2 media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex

If the interface is currently forced to 100 full duplex, in order to change to half duplex you must type the following command:

  ifconfig em0 10.10.1.2 media 100baseTX -mediaopt full-duplex

The -mediaopt option disable the specified media options (full-duplex) on the interface i.e. go back to half duplex.

By rewriting America’s history and 'recontextualizing' her founding documents, Biden’s National Archives is seeking to undermine our country's founders. //

Words matter, and few words have mattered more in the history of the United States than those contained within the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and other founding-era documents stewarded by the National Archives.

Protecting and celebrating the most important works in U.S. history isn’t only important because the Constitution and Bill of Rights, as well as other documents in the National Archives, are still legally binding, but also because they tell a story of who we are as a nation and what it means to be American. Today leftists, including many officials in the Biden administration, are actively working to rewrite that story, and to undermine every part of America’s exceptional past. //

Since the National Archives contains more than 100 million records, there are bound to be some that are offensive. But rather than identify prominent documents that are indeed offensive as such, the Archives chose to issue a “Harmful Language” warning across the board, knowing full well the documents read most often on its website and in its halls are founding-era materials like the Constitution.

You might be tempted to chalk up the Archives’ warning label to pure laziness. Being woke and accurate is hard when you’re in charge of maintaining millions of records, I’m sure. But it’s worth noting that the warning label emerged from the National Archives’ radical Task Force on Racism, which has developed dozens of other plans meant to give the impression that America’s history is full of racism, hatred, and violence, rather than highlight the nation’s incredible achievements.

In a 105-page report issued by the task force in April 2021, the National Archives suggested it, like the United States, is full of “structural racism,” including “a Rotunda in our flagship building that lauds wealthy White men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC [black, indigenous, people of color], women, and other communities.” Since the report’s release in April, Archivist of the United States David Ferriero has “accepted the recommendations in full.” //

Additionally, the Archives will transform its famous Rotunda to “create a more inclusive and historically accurate tribute to the nation’s founding.” Its “Reimagine the Rotunda” plan includes “contemporary views on the men who framed the founding documents and their participation in and positions on slavery,” new sculptures, and a “recontextualizing” of the murals now in the Rotunda.

Solar Panels Will Create 50 Times More Waste & Cost 4 Times More Than Predicted, New Harvard Business Review Study Finds //

Three years ago I published a long article at Forbes arguing that solar panels weren’t clean but in fact produced 300 times more toxic waste than high-level nuclear waste. But in contrast to nuclear waste, which is safely stored and never hurts anyone, solar panel waste risks exposing poor trash-pickers in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason was because it was so much cheaper to make new solar panels from raw materials than to recycle them, and would remain that way, given labor and energy costs. //

A major new study of the economics of solar, published in Harvard Business Review (HBR), finds that the waste produced by solar panels will make electricity from solar panels four times more expensive than the world’s leading energy analysts thought. “The economics of solar,” write Atalay Atasu and Luk N. Van Wassenhove of INSEAD, one of Europe’s leading business schools, and Serasu Duran of the University of Calgary, will “darken quickly as the industry sinks under the weight of its own trash." //

The solar industry, and even supposedly neutral energy agencies, grossly underestimated how much waste solar panels would produce. The HBR authors, all of whom are business school professors, looked at the economics from the point of view of the customer, and past trends, and calculated that customers would replace panels far sooner than every 30 years, as the industry assumes.

“If early replacements occur as predicted by our statistical model,” they write, solar panels “can produce 50 times more waste in just four years than [International Renewable Energy Agency] IRENA anticipates.” //

The HBR authors found that the price of panels, the amount solar panel owners are paid by the local electric company, and sunlight-to-electricity efficiency determined how quickly people replaced their panels.

“Alarming as they are,” they write, “these stats may not do full justice to the crisis, as our analysis is restricted to residential installations. With commercial and industrial panels added to the picture, the scale of replacements could be much, much larger.”

Beyond the shocking nature of the finding itself is what it says about the integrity and credibility of IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency. It is an intergovernmental organization like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, funded by taxpayers from the developed nations of Europe, North America, and Asia, and expected to provide objective information. Instead, it employed unrealistic assumptions to produce results more supportive of solar panels.

IRENA acted like an industry association rather than as a public interest one. IRENA, noted the HBR reporters, “describes a billion-dollar opportunity for recapture of valuable materials rather than a dire threat.” IRENA almost certainly knew better. For decades, consumers in Germany, California, Japan and other major member nations of IRENA, have been replacing solar panels just 10 or 15 years old. But IRENA hadn’t even modeled solar panel replacements in those time frames. //

It’s now clear that China made solar appear cheap with coal, subsidies, and forced labor. And in the U.S., we pay one-quarter of solar’s costs through taxes and often much more in subsidies at the state and local level.

And none of this even addresses the biggest threat facing solar power today, which are revelations that perhaps both key raw materials and the panels themselves are being made by forced labor in Xinjiang province in China.

The subsidies that China gave solar panel makers had a purpose beyond bankrupting solar companies in the U.S. and Europe. The subsidies also enticed solar panel makers to participate in the repression of the Uyghur Muslim population, including using tactics that the US and German governments have called “genocide.”

Nations are coming to grips with their overdependence on renewables //

Over the last decade, energy experts repeatedly assured policymakers around the world that increasing the use of renewables, while shutting down nuclear plants, would make energy supplies more secure, while lowering prices. To make their case, experts pointed to radical declines in the price of solar panels, wind turbines, natural gas, and lithium batteries. //

But the heavy reliance on renewables in Europe and the United States has made electricity supply more vulnerable to a single commodity’s volatility. Today’s electricity grids mean that high gas prices cause energy price spikes and a return to the dirtiest forms of electricity production, including diesel and coal.

The return to coal was most dramatic in Germany. Electricity from wind was 20% lower in Germany in the first half of 2021 than the first half of 2020, resulting in a 24% higher use of fossil fuels and 28% greater emissions from electricity. Coal was the number one source of energy for electricity in Germany in the first half of 2021, comprising 27% of total electricity.

In her opening statement (which I will provide in full at the end of the post), Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) had zero you-know-whats to give when offering her brutal assessment of the Bureau’s (as well as the coaches’ and Team USA officials’) behavior in the case, saying: “Every single person in authority who turned a blind eye to these young athletes’ allegations is complicit in Nassar’s crime, and each one of them should be considered a predator.”

To say that the FBI has lost its way would involve taking a trip to someplace far on the other side of understatement. The Bureau now functions more like a highly politicized domestic attack dog than a security agency. The FBI had already been involved with concocting and “investigating” the bogus Trump/Russia collusion leftist fantasy for a year when it finally got around to documenting the very real allegations of sexual assault against Nassar. //

We never seem to stop finding out reasons why James Comey — who was head of the FBI when all of this was happening — should be in jail. As of this writing, he is still a much-revered darling of the same people who tell us to “believe all women” in cases of sexual abuse. //

Nassar was raping Maroney when she was 15 years old. Just when you think that the story can’t possibly get any worse, Maroney reveals that the FBI falsified her report.

That the FBI couldn’t be bothered to investigate a serial predator who was attacking the most vulnerable among us is reason enough to start casting a wide net for people within the Bureau who need to be locked up.

Here’s the thing with denials. It’s typically useful when giving one to actually deny the activity you are being accused of. Instead of Milley doing that in this statement, we see a flurry of qualifiers and weasel language //

What don’t we see? Any reassurance that he did follow the proper chain of command by notifying the president of his actions. Milley also does not claim that he didn’t tell the Chinese what Woodward says he told the Chinese. In other words, this denial isn’t a denial at all. Rather, it’s confirmation that he did do what he was accused of.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with ridiculous arguments over whether Milley was justified or not in doing what he did. I maintain that there can be no justification for quite literally pledging to commit treason, no matter how much you hate or distrust the president. If Milley was concerned about an unlawful order, he was within his rights to refuse it, resign, and go public. That he didn’t do that only undercuts his claims of justification. //

It’s clear that Milley was a delusional man run amok. He had convinced himself he was standing against a coming revolution when all he was really doing was violating the constitutional order to feed his own ego. Further, it’s fairly obvious that his talks with Nancy Pelosi were to ingratiate himself so he could keep his job in the next administration. There’s a reason Milley is pushing critical race theory in the military. He’s a political actor concerned with staying in power, not with actually helping keep the military in a condition where it can perform its legal role.

The Jan. 8 call, especially, to such a high level person in China is going rogue by Milley. Milley doesn’t have the right to conduct foreign policy. It just means that we have to add Mark Esper to the people who may have acted improperly and need to answer up here. It isn’t the responsibility of the Secretary of Defense to conduct foreign policy.

But there’s also another problem here. Esper wasn’t even Secretary of Defense on Jan. 8 — he was fired in November 2020 and replaced by Christopher Miller. So whose authority was Milley operating under? It wasn’t from Trump or Esper.

It also means that if this story is true, they lose their crazy story/excuse about this being about the election and Jan. 6. Then it had nothing at all to do with that but with trying to operate around Trump, without any of that alleged “justification.”

Now, we can’t leave out that Woodward may just be adding a lot of spin into this to help sell his book.

But it’s clear that Mark Milley, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and now Mark Esper need to be questioned by Congress as to what was going on here, because if these reports are true, it surely does look like people were trying to subvert the president of the United States.

The documents do show that Facebook is trying to do away with whitelisting. They indicated the company sought to eliminate complete immunity for “high severity” violations of its rules in the first half of 2021. However, it appears that by March, the company was experiencing challenges in that regard.

The documents also indicated that there are no plans to just treat high-profile users the same as the rest of the unwashed masses. One of the memos noted that the company does not “have systems built out to do that extra diligence for all integrity actions that can occur for a VIP.” Facebook seems to be trying not to take steps that could anger influential individuals using its platform. //

There are two motivators here: Politics and profit.

In general, Facebook tends to favor content created for a left-leaning audience. Its fact-checkers are decidedly partisan and tend to focus primarily on squashing right-leaning posts. It suspended Trump for two years under the guise of trying to eliminate incitements to violence. But the reality is that the company engages in this censorious activity because they have an agenda to serve.

Additionally, Facebook doesn’t want to risk angering the rich and famous individuals using its platform because they could decide to use a different social media company. They don’t want to lose those clicks and advertising dollars. In essence, this wouldn’t be as big an issue if they were honest about it. But, that’s not the world we live in now, is it?

After years of learning lessons the hard way, I can say confidently that with the help of three simple principles, my husband and I have learned how to keep the peace and build our wealth as a team.

The 3 rules we follow to keep the peace

1. Honesty
   Yes, honesty is the foundation of good relationships in general, but when it comes to money, it becomes more nuanced than choosing not to message an ex behind your partner's back. When two people are trying to share money, the struggle usually stems from good, but opposing, best intentions. //

2. Mutual respect
   Once, in the heat of a nasty battle over whether we should buy a mattress secondhand, I called my husband "Scrooge McDuck." While it was a spiteful and silly dig, it also summarizes how I felt about his frugal tendencies. He, on the other hand, felt I had the financial acumen of a 7-year-old in a candy shop with $100 to burn. //

This is why the most important change we made in our approach to sharing finances was recognizing that our spender/saver dynamic didn't need to be a battle of opposites, but could instead be a balance of strengths.

Being a saver means my husband is always wary of potential financial hardships. //

But being a spender means I am open to taking financial risks that on his own, my husband would have been too scared to take. By pushing him to sell our house at the top of the market, I made us $120,000 //

3. Humility
   But mutual respect requires more than recognizing what the other person has to offer. It also means recognizing that one financial style isn't necessarily superior to another.

As Buffett once said, "I really have only two jobs. One is to attract and keep outstanding managers to run our various operations." //

We look for three things when we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for initiative or energy, and we look for integrity. //

Take a hint as to which of the three Buffett prioritizes first. In his own words, "If they don't have [integrity], the first two will kill you, because if you're going to get someone without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb."

Without integrity, intelligence, drive, energy will only get you so far. Hiring without it is also a big business risk. //

Psychologist and best-selling author Henry Cloud wrote the book on why integrity matters and sheds good light on the topic. In Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, he says, "Who a person is will ultimately determine if their brains, talents, competencies, energy, effort, deal-making abilities, and opportunities will succeed." //

1. Be accessible
   A person of integrity keeps the lines of communication open with everyone in the organization. He or she gives access for others to express concerns or raise questions that can be addressed in a timely fashion. He or she knows that open and honest communication is not only the ethical thing to do; it's what builds trust and increases value so work gets done efficiently, and without barriers, bureaucracy, or politics.

2. Be your word
   Do you practice what you preach? Follow through on your promises or commitments? Leaders walking the talk deliver on "doing the right thing" and set a good example. //

3. Be true to yourself
   How would you feel if, every day, you said what you meant, stayed true to yourself, and behaved in accordance with this? Imagine the self-respect you'd feel. Being true to yourself is far less stressful than being someone you are not.

POOR PEOPLE'S MOVEMENTS: WHY THEY SUCCEED, HOW THEY FAIL

Author: Frances Fox Piven | Richard Cloward

Illinois passed one of the most aggressive clean energy bills in the country on Monday, in a rousing success for environmental advocates that, unusually, also bails out some of the state’s biggest sources of clean power: nuclear energy. //

Importantly—and unusually for a bill cheered by green groups—the bill also contains a huge bailout for the state’s nuclear industry. It earmarks nearly $700 million in subsidies to prevent the closure of the Byron and Dresden Generating Stations, two of six nuclear plants in the state. Doing so will extend their lifelines by another 5 years. Exelon, the plants’ owners and one of the biggest utilities in the country, had set a deadline of Sept. 13—the day the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act was passed—as the day they’d need to start closing Byron without some help from the state. Doing so would have taken one of the biggest nuclear plants in the country offline. A report from nuclear advocates estimates that Illinois’s six nuclear plants currently provide 90% of the state’s clean power. Some analyses have shown that the plants’ closure would spur coal and gas plants to run more frequently to keep the grid operational, in addition to affecting the thousands of workers at the plants. //

The Illinois bill, on the other hand, clearly ties the nuclear bailouts to new provisions for clean jobs and environmental justice. Green groups like Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club have both supported the closure of nuclear plants in the past, and the Sierra Club has spoken out against subsidies for nuclear in Illinois. But both groups have cheered the passage of this new bill.

The success in Illinois doesn’t mean nuclear is suddenly on the table for green groups, however. “Illinois needs to transition away from dirty fossil fuels as quickly as possible to fight the climate crisis,” JC Kibbey, a clean energy advocate for NRDC in Illinois, said in an email. “Longer-term, we will transition away from nuclear because wind and solar provide a cheaper, safer and more reliable source of energy.

The end of 3G is coming for every carrier, but the way AT&T is handling their 3G shutdown is rubbing some people the wrong way.

AT&T has chosen to go with a specific allowlist of devices that can continue to connect to their network following the 3G shutdown. This effectively means that any device being used on AT&T’s network must be pre-approved. Unfortunately, even devices that are fully compatible with AT&T’s LTE network are being shut out because they aren’t on that list.

Customers across the web are complaining about their fully functional devices being shut out or having difficulties due to the whitelist. AT&T is automatically suspending people’s lines if the device on that line isn’t on the allowlist. //

Verizon and T-Mobile are also sunsetting their 3G networks. They, however, are not using such a strict allowlist system. Both carriers simply require devices to be compatible with their respective Voice over LTE technology, which most devices do. AT&T seems to be the only carrier that is actively rejecting compatible devices. //

https://www.xda-developers.com/will-my-phone-work-on-att-after-3g-shutdown/

His latest, which attests to his status as one of the most intellectually game writers of our time, is a totalized counterfiction of post-1492 world history.

“Civilizations” opens as a heroic Norse legend about the exploits of Freydis Eriksdottir. In Binet’s telling, she leaves behind her father, Erik the Red, to lead a 10th-century crew of loyal Greenlanders to Lambayeque, in northern Peru, where they settle peaceably with the locals. Moving ahead 500 years, Binet works up entries from Christopher Columbus’s God-besotted and misery-filled diary after he and his men cross the Atlantic and begin exploring the Caribbean, only to be fatally outmaneuvered by Taíno royals and warriors. //

Then come the life and exploits of the early-16th-century Incan emperor Atahualpa. According to the established historical account, he was executed in Cajamarca, present-day Peru, by the Spanish not long after defeating his own brother, Huáscar, in a continent-spanning civil war. In Binet’s version, young Atahualpa faces only his brother in this conflict and manages to escape Huáscar’s forces by boat. His companions: a pet puma, a small group of fellow Quitonians and the multilingual Cuban princess Higuénamota, his most beloved and politically astute wife. Inspired by distant memories of the otherwise forgotten Columbus, they sail east, eventually arriving in a strange new place: “All of them — men, women, horses, llamas — had survived the great sea. They had reached the land of the rising Sun,” otherwise known as Portugal.

In the first half of 2021, coal shot up as the biggest contributor to Germany's electric grid, while wind power dropped to its lowest level since 2018. Officials say the weather is partly to blame.
Despite efforts to boost renewable energy sources, coal unseated wind power as the biggest energy contributor to the German network in the first six months of 2021, according to official statistics released on Monday.

The data comes as Germany looks to speed up its exit from coal-powered plants after years of mounting pressure from climate experts and activists over the country's dependence on coal and its detrimental impact in fueling the climate crisis.

You can’t have a superhero without a nemesis, and the beloved A-10 Thunderbolt II attack plane, which has saved the bacon of countless ground troops over its 45-year career, is no exception. The thing is, the A-10’s nemesis is the Air Force itself, and a new report reveals how hard the service has been working behind the scenes to starve the aircraft of replacement parts over the past 14 years. //

The goal of this starvation campaign is to convince Congress that the A-10 is old, difficult to maintain, and not worth the upkeep, according to report released on Monday from the Project On Government Oversight, a non-profit watchdog group. This sabotage effort goes against the wishes of Congress, which aims to keep the extremely effective A-10 in business.

“Congress has included several provisions in federal law to prevent A-10 retirements,” the report said. “Yet sources have told the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) that, despite these provisions, Air Force leaders have pursued a de facto retirement of the fleet through a starvation campaign.” //

These shortages and the wing shortage have the same root cause: the Air Force not renewing contracts with suppliers. Making things worse, the report said the Air Force has also tried to shut down A-10 maintenance facilities at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, which is one of three Air Force maintenance depots that perform the most intensive repair and rehabilitation work on military aircraft.

Though Congress stepped in to save the facilities, the combination of grounded aircraft; parts shortages; and the threat of depot closure has scared many experienced maintainers to find new jobs, the report read. Though the Air Force needs to send 57 A-10s through the Hill facility every year, right now it can handle only 31 a year, the report said. //

The A-10 instability is also costing the Air Force the institutional knowledge of close air support specialists who have done nothing but support ground troops for the past 20 years, the report argued. Many A-10 pilots say they would leave the service if the ‘Hog was retired, the report said, and the art of close air support doesn’t just teach itself. In fact, in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, ground troops suffered a great deal while pilots re-learned the art lost to post-war military downsizing. //

Why does the Air Force seem to hate the A-10 so much? Many experts say it is part of the branch’s efforts to replace the jet with the multirole F-35 Lightning II and the F-15EX Eagle II, which the service argues can also perform close air support. But many members of Congress, including former military aviators, say the F-35 can’t hold a candle to the A-10 in the close air support business. The Air Force also argues that the slow-moving A-10, while great against Taliban insurgents wielding low-tech AK-47s and RPGs, would not survive against higher-tech anti-aircraft fire.

The Project On Government Oversight pushed back on this argument, saying it assumes Warthogs would fly deep into enemy territory, outside the help of friendly ground troops. But that’s not what A-10s do, the report said. Instead, ground and air units like the A-10 are meant to support each other, and ground troops would suppress enemy air defenses “as a matter of routine,” the report said, citing 2001 Marine Corps guidance on the suppression of enemy air defenses.

Instead of replacing the A-10 with the subpar F-35 as a close air support platform, the Air Force needs to focus on creating a replacement for the A-10, the report argued. It took only seven years to whip up the A-10, the report said, so why not crank out a new design before the A-10’s lifespan ends in the 2030s. To do so otherwise could come at great cost for ground troops, the report argued.

Alexander S. Vindman
@AVindman
If this is true GEN Milley must resign. He usurped civilian authority, broke Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military. It’s an extremely dangerous precedent. You can’t simply walk away from that. #dotherightthingintherightway

The Washington Post
@washingtonpost
Top general was so fearful Trump might spark war with China that he made secret calls to his counterpart in Beijing, new book says https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/14/peril-woodward-costa-trump-milley-china/
2:17 PM · Sep 14, 2021

Dr. Jeffrey Guterman
@JeffreyGuterman
·
Sep 14, 2021
Replying to @AVindman
I respectfully disagree. If true, this was an extraordinary situation that threatened the federal government.

Alexander S. Vindman
@AVindman
The CJCS always has the ability to resign rather than implement a awful or unlawful order. What is described here is wrong. Also, no one person is indispensable. There are a half dozen Chief ready to step into that role. There is no “deep state” but this narrative feeds into one.
2:43 PM · Sep 14, 2021

Jeff B. is BOX OFFICE POISON
@EsotericCD
The basis of the entire Republic is civilian control of the military. There is no "but we think he sucks" exception. Vindman is correct. If true, Milley either goes or we have now put into place a dangerous precedent that only Twitter bluechecks think won't boomerang.

Sean Davis
@seanmdav
He learned it by watching you. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KUXb7do9C-w

Alexander S. Vindman
@AVindman
If this is true GEN Milley must resign.

Shares of uranium mining companies surged Monday as retail traders from Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum focused their energies on the rallying radioactive metal.

Companies tied to uranium in Australia and the U.K. powered higher Monday, while shares of U.S.-listed companies also rose.

Boeing's Fatal Flaw' is an investigation of the flawed 737 Max jet and the crashes that killed 346 people. Photo: Paul Mailman for Frontline (PBS). //

“Boeing was a culture that, for the better part of a century, had really been focused on engineering and run by engineers,” Gelles continues. “I think as recently as the ’70s and ’80s, the CFO famously didn’t even have that much interaction with some of the institutional shareholders. Boeing was really regarded as an engineering-first company that was going to produce its best airplanes, and the shareholders would get a fair return. But it wasn’t a company that was being run for quarterly profits.

“That did start to change with the arrival of executives from McDonnell Douglas, who themselves had come from GE, where they had studied with Jack Welch.” McDonnell Douglas was a “fading domestic rival” that Boeing acquired in 1997. Within four years of the merger, Boeing had moved its headquarters to Chicago from Seattle, where its passenger jets were manufactured, divorcing Boeing’s leadership from its engineering culture, as the writer Jerry Useem has argued. //

In the case of the 737 Max tragedies, several factors interfered with that primary goal of safety, possibly including the structure and incentives of publicly traded companies. “If companies go about their business maximizing short-term gains and running their companies with the explicit interest of investors on Wall Street, it’s not hard to see how things like safety wind up coming second, or wind up getting less consideration than quarterly dividends,” says Gelles.

“That doesn’t always mean that a plane’s going to crash. But in the most extreme examples, it’s not impossible to draw a line from a culture where engineering ultimately took a back seat to finance, and arrive where we tragically have.”