So the people running the systems that underlie our lives are incompetent, and don't know how to keep them running properly. I'm supposed to be reassured by that?

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[–] 7 points 5 hours ago (5 children)

Do you remember when all the train derailments happened?

They happened before. Then a big one making news happened. Then ALL of them made the news for a while. Now they continue to happen but no longer make news.

Events happen.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 hours ago* (2 children)

    The same thing happened with aviation. The Max crashes happened and suddenly every minor aviation incident became national news. There are many such examples. Stories that would only have been covered in specialist publications break containment after a big story.

    Big news companies cover what they think will get them clicks. Something being talked about more in the press doesn't mean its more common, just that mainstream media thinks its profitable to cover at the moment.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 hours ago

    100%, although to be fair, profits are part of it, and just sheer interest is the other - interest in the news drives eyeballs to watch the ads that make the money. So not to disagree, but we also do it to ourselves. :)

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 hour ago

    Thank you, a reminder to check our perceptual biases is always relevant. I don't think that it applies in this case, though. Shark attacks, train derailments, minor aviation incidents, et cetera, do indeed happen with regularity. But an email service outage that affects 450 million people, and a ground-stop order that affects every commercial flight in the United States, well, those are highly unusual events. Further, the very fact that they not proximately related seems to indicate (along with dozens of other indicators) that the foundations of our society are getting shaky, for whatever reason.

    Thus, the reason I'd feel better if the two events were related, and the reason was an attack by malicious actors. Then, it would have a cause that was a one-off, rather than be part of a pattern.

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