A swarm of drones could be hacked to fail and is subject to software errors, whereas a pilot in an F-35 is sure to get the job done.

@2 Unless someone hacks the highly-interconnected software in the F-35.

Who the fuck moves to Phoenix? Places like that shouldn't exist. Water resources are already being pushed to their limits in the SW US and no one seems to be preparing any sort of desalination tech when the inevitable finally happens.

@5, not if there isn't a direct casual link between race and financial status, no, but then we don't live in that world, do we?

But the Starship Enterprise had a manual override switch, so @2 probably thinks the F35 does, too!

5 Given that credit score has been shown to have little or no impact on claims in practice and also have known bias issues, it's hard to defend use of credit scores at all in insurance underwriting. Unless the goal was to charge disproportionate rates to black and brown people. But we know that insurance companies would never be that cynical would they?

@9: Interesting. But I would like a link to some legitimate and verifiable military source describing the fact that an F-35 pilot could not in any way shape or form override automatic functions whatsoever.

is @5 a USSC 'justice'?

the odds are pretty good...

It always cracks me up when The Stranger trashes the eastside, and then they think it's news when a black bear is spotted in Issaquah ... in the spring! Call the Ranger! Stop the press!

Rich, your longest paragraph in slog today was about a few people noticing that Gourmet magazine isnt publishing beef recipes and then a few people tweeting obvious comments about eating more beef in response. According to you it took a year for anyone to notice and Fox News hasn't even bothered to comment, however Rich thinks this somehow owns all conservatives for being virtue signaling anti-virtue signalers. The culture war is sooo fucking stupid and The Stranger is as big a sucker as Fox is when it comes to these waste of ink stories. Twitting is not news, especially since Trump is gone.

Drones are an immoral way to conduct "war". I use quotes because it's really remote-controlled murder. There is no valor when your life is not at risk.

@19, let me preface this by saying: I am a pacifist. But drone warfare is no more or less "remote-controlled murder" than firing a rifle, shooting an arrow, or tossing a hand grenade. Shall we draw up a treaty requiring all wars to be fought with swords and shields?

@21: When multiple thanks are true at the same time, it doesn't preclude a more comprehensive and accurate view that applies to everyone, regardless of race.

*multiple things

Maybe next we can look into the practice of using credit scores as a barrier that is used to deny people employment opportunities. That seems like an even more nefarious way to keep people in economic shackles.

@17 - Actually, one's credit score does say something about one's judgment, reliability, and willingness to make good on obligations. It is also affected by socioeconomic status, but there are plenty of poor people with pretty good credit scores. Income is a very weak predictor of credit score. See https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/are-income-and-credit-scores-highly-correlated-20180813.htm

A credit score is not a guarantee of anything, but wouldn't you prefer to hire someone who has the judgment to live within his means & prioritizes paying obligations he's taken on than someone who does not? I'd argue that those are more relevant in terms of what kind of employee one would be than what kind of driver. If the insurance companies can't show that credit scores are actually related to risk, they should not be using them.

@28: Yet the whole "credit score industrial complex" is saturated with disgustingness.

For example, I have an AmEx Gold card and a Blue card. I haven't used the Blue card in years and it had a zero balance. They sent me an email saying:

"We're reaching out to let you know that, because you haven't used your Card account in a while, it's scheduled to close soon. As with any change in account status, the closing of your account could impact your credit score. If you'd like to keep your account open, simply make a purchase, or the account will be closed 35 days from the date of this email. If you've recently made a purchase, we thank you for your loyalty and encourage you to continue to enjoy using your Card and its benefits."

I called them and closed the Blue card and told them their tactic was immoral and not true. Whether it actually is or not, I don't care. Nobody should fall for that crap.

@28 Erm, no. My credit score dropped because I paid off my mortgage and had no credit cards or other debt. The ratings agencies could clearly see that I was a bad credit risk because I had paid off everything I owed. SMH

@27 I have a fun story for you. Credit score is used in employment decisions and has been for some time. I had a job in college for a major bank and they pulled credit score because they wanted to know if you had a history of money/debt issues as a measure of risk when working with financial accounts. I also had a job where I needed a government security clearance and guess what the FBI looked at? Yeah, my credit report.

For many years nearly all of the meat in my diet comes from fish, fowl, and venison that I procure and process or preserve myself. I very rarely consume beef, but when I do, it just seems off-flavored or else characterless.

@31 - I was not suggesting employers should use a credit score, just pointing out that it might tell you more in that context than in the driving context. Much better that they only use information that is less secretive (however, I know that some employers do use credit scores. The examples @36 cites make a little bit of sense to me at least in the security clearance kind of realm).

I am well aware that the scoring algorithms are opaque and not entirely sensible from the consumer's point of view. I don't think that a 20 or even 50 point difference means much, partly for that reason. The difference between 500 and 750 is probably for a reason, though.

And actually I was a little surprised to see the research from the Fed that i cited - I would have assumed that scores would be highly related to income (and therefore the racial link that is being discussed would be much more pertinent in terms of insurance discrimination).

We do have a huge problem with the way scores are kept, the lack of accuracy in many cases, and in what does NOT get reported. For example, there is no real way for a small landlord (and I don't even know if the big ones generally report) to report a tenant's history of paying on time, so that renters do not get the benefit of paying a substantial chunk of money when they should. That's always seemed grossly unfair to me when a homeowner gets a big boost for paying a mortgage on time.

@36 And those are positions and situations where the laws permitting pre-employment credit checks were meant to apply. Now they are used almost universally across the board for all positions, including most basic entry level jobs. It has a massive potential for misuse.

@30/32:

That's because credit scores really measure only one metric: your ability to pay off credit card debt in a timely fashion. If you pay a card all the way down to a zero balance then you're no longer paying off debt on that particular account and it actually negatively impacts your score.

I maintain four different credit accounts, a mix of stand-alone and through my bank, but none of them have more than a few hundred dollars balance; I could literally pay them all off at a moment's notice, but doing so would probably end up dropping my score by a considerable amount. Instead, I've put a couple of small recurring monthly charges on each and only use them for large purchases in an emergency, and I always pay more than the monthly minimum and always on-time. All this so I can continue to have a history of paying down debt on multiple accounts, even though cumulatively it's a negligible amount. So far all this has kept my score well into the 800's for the past seven or eight years.

People in here arguing about the f-35 and how modern fighters are too advanced for the feeble minds and input from a fighter pilot seem to be ignoring the fact that the f-35 software package is and has been a total shitshow. Turns out software can't do it all.

Additionally, there is a much higher rate of PTSD amongst remote pilots. Something about the ability to kill from thousands of miles away and then you have to sit there and watch people burn because your hi-res 200x zoom camera on the aircraft is always fixated on the target and on one of your screens.

howard zinn dropped Bombs
on peeps and it shook him up
so Bad he wrote "A People's History
of the United States." NOT written from
the 'Winner's' perspective it was and is Revolutionary.