Given an hour spent flying in a commercial US-flagged airliner or an hour spent in your living room, and you're (far) more likely to get hurt or die in your living room.
My guess would be that a lot of living room deaths are due to illness which would make the person unlikely to board a commercial flight, or other categories which certain individuals could reasonably exclude themselves from (drug overdose, suicide, amateur electrician work, etc.).
I doubt there's a good source of data, but I'd be very curious what the odds of dying in your living room per hour are if you exclude those categories and look at things like house fires, natural disasters, homicide, freak accidents (like planes falling on your house), etc.
Actual statistics: In 2023 there were 35.3 million commercial flights worldwide.[1] In that year, there were 66 accidents in commercial aviation worldwide, of which one fatal (9N-ANC).[2] This means that the chance of being in an accident was approx 1:535,000 (0.000187 %). The chance of getting into a fatal accident was 1:35,300,000 (0.000003 %). Per passenger the chance of fatality was approx 1:61,111,111 (0.00000164 %), with 72 fatalities among 4,400,000,000 total passengers.
In contrast, the United States saw 125,700 preventable deaths in the home in 2023.[3] The country had a population of 336,806,231 people back then.[4] This means a probability of approx 1:2,679 (0.037 %).
Per passenger mile is arguably not the best denominator. People choose planes because they are going long distances. Consider whether a better denominator would be per passenger trips. A 10,000 mi trip halfway across the world could have the same weight as a 2 mi trip to the grocery store.
Or per hour travelled.
By these metrics commercial flying isn't as safe as you think.
If I’m going somewhere in the continental US, my choices are to fly or drive. I’ll be traveling the same number of miles either way, so the relevant comparison is indeed per mile.
That doesn't explain anything. Specifically it doesn't explain why in our comparisons the destination is fixed. You could decide for this weekend trip we're going to budget a max of 3 hours on transportation. Should we take a three hour flight to a different state or should we drive for three hours to a closer destination?
rogerrogerr, I suspect that stat involves all deaths, not just to passengers.
The vast majority of deaths by train involve "trespassers", which is code for "dimwits who bypassed crossing gates and got smashed by the train that couldn't stop". Usually not even the train drivers are injured, much less the passengers.
But airplanes are very safe - perhaps mostly because it's hard for idiots to drive in front of them.
Yeah, but so are living rooms. And even when someone dies in the living room, it is most likely to be a hearth attack or other heath issue unrelated to the place.
All things being equal, I would assume that you are safer in an environment that's stationary and reasonably sturdy, rather than in an aluminum tube at 40,000 ft above ground? Ok, as they say, all things are rarely equal, of course people are more likely to die of old age or of various diseases at home rather than while traveling (simply because old and terminally ill people probably don't travel that much), but I would say that skews the statistics against the living room and should be discounted. And at home you can engage in various activities that you probably won't do while on an airplane (electrical repairs, cooking...), but if you get hurt while doing that, that's also not a fault of the living room per se...
That's just it though. You're safer strapped into a seat, doing nothing, than you are doing whatever it is you do at home.
Would you be safer in your living room doing nothing, strapped to a seat, never doing anything remotely hazardous (like walking around), vs the same in a tube in the sky? Yes, of course. But that's not what people actually DO in their living rooms!
The relevant bits here - deaths from all causes in the US are 22 micromorts per day. Lower in the article, airline travel is listed as 1 micromort per 1000 miles travelled.
Background risk of death from non-natural causes are listed as 1.6 per day; many of those non-natural causes do not exist in an airplane cabin (e.g. you probably aren't going to be murdered because no one has anything more effective than a plastic spork, you probably aren't going to kill yourself, you probably won't be hit by a car). So it seems reasonable to say that being inside an airliner cabin is safer than being outside of one.
Also, this is probably confounded by many super-old or super-sick people not choosing to fly - if you are in an airliner, you are probably healthier than the average person.
All causes deaths and living room deaths are not the same. Even if we count hearth attack in living room as living room death, we still must substract car crashed, bedroom deaths, hospitals deaths, garden deaths.
There’s a clear difference between deciding not to eat something for cultural reasons than deciding not to eat something because it’s an intelligent, thinking creature.
If you swapped out "slavery", "rape", or "murder" for a few choice words in this thread, you can see how ridiculous your statement is. The way we treat and even talk about animals is an incredible moral failure.
You’re making my point for me. Swapping out words to create new moral equivalencies is exactly what I find unproductive. Humans are animals, and we live with competing instincts: survival, empathy, culture, appetite. In the best of times, we have the luxury to weigh those things and make personal choices. But pretending there’s a clean, universal moral framework that everyone must follow, regardless of history, biology, or circumstance, feels more like ideology than ethics. I respect your choices, just don’t expect everyone else to inhabit your frame.
You would find it unproductive since it makes your position obviously untenable. We use metaphors because they help short circuit whatever mental trappings you've managed to construct for yourself.
You're really just saying that it's not immoral enough for you to justify actually bothering to do anything about it, such as inconveniencing others with your opinion. I can pretty much guarantee you it was impolite for people to share their opinions against slavery back in the day, too. All I can really hope is future people will look back on today as a dark period of ignorance about animals and sentience.
I’m not dodging discomfort, I’m pointing out that morality isn’t just about drawing lines, it’s about understanding the context in which people live and make choices. You frame this as a binary: either one agrees with your comparison or they’re morally bankrupt. But that’s precisely why this conversation goes nowhere. I’m not defending factory farming, I’m pushing back on moral frameworks that flatten human behavior into easily judged categories. If you want lasting change, you have to start by recognizing that not everyone sees the world through the same lens, and that’s not always a failure of conscience.
> There’s a clear difference between deciding not to eat something for cultural reasons than deciding not to eat something because it’s an intelligent, thinking creature.
I don't know how that turned into the conversation we have now. There is a clear difference between culturally choosing not to eat cute animals and being a conscientious objector. Whether you think it's harmful to take that stance publically or not is where we ended up.
I objected to the claim that the difference is clear. For many people, the lines between culture, ethics, and survival blur, especially across history or geography. What one person calls conscientious objection, another sees as cultural imperialism. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have values or push for change, but it does mean recognizing the complexity instead of assuming clarity where there is none. The conversation shifted because I challenged the framing, not the idea that reducing harm is valuable. I’m just wary of framing moral discourse as a purity test.
This would, if the system is working, be the blood that future regulations are written in. That these kinds of things happen so rarely came to us at a cost of past lives.
I'm a little surprised to hear that some folks hate being inside such buildings -- my apartment is in one, and I specifically selected it for its floor-to-ceiling windows in every room. My brain is apparently a little different from yours.
Although I can sympathize with the story, this particular aircraft had been in their hands just a couple months. Its first commercial flight was just a couple weeks back. Maintenance isn't the issue here, clearly.
Fixing known problems as you learn of them is maintenance is it not? That's just as important as changing out the lubricants and checking that the working parts are working.
When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras. A pressurization fault on the ground where the plane is not pressurized almost certainly doesn't hint at problems with a permanently installed door plug.
Although I see somebody else suggesting otherwise, I promise you that you can send/receive iMessages (and SMS messages) via your phone number if you have an iPhone. You do have to select your phone number as your "Default Alias" from the iMessage chat network configuration page, though.
I don't think it's that simple, and it's kinda up to Apple. If you have an iPhone, then yes. But if you have an Android phone, from what I can tell, there's nothing you can do to stop Apple from eventually disregarding the phone number attached to your account and sending everything from your email address. Part of the reason I use an iPhone at the moment is because my entire network uses iMessage and I run an iMessage -> Matrix bridge.
Your question was "How did the 13th amendment codify slavery?" They answered it, the first mention of slavery in the constitution legalized it for convicts in the 13th Amendment.
Why are you now changing your argument to "they deserve slavery?" Didn't you just say the Civil War ended slavery?
No I’m not changing my question, but I think this gets to the misunderstanding that there must be in rejecting the idea that the 13th amendment ended slavery.
We didn’t fight the civil war to end the concept of incarceration for duly convicted lawbreakers. It’s pretty easy to understand and accept that right?
And the people who fought the civil war believed that they were doing it to end slavery.
So perhaps your definition of slavery is inconsistent with theirs, and also out of step with the letter of the law.
https://theconversation.com/prison-records-from-1800s-georgi... Across the US but most flagrantly in the deep south, you see huge spikes in the black prison population starting after the civil war. Many were contracted out to mines, farms, etc. Conditions were poor, many died in that labor. There's little else it can be called once you move out of the abstract.
Incarceration isn't slavery, we could still have prison without treating people like property.
And again, the 13th Amendment is the first time slavery was mentioned and it explicitly allowed some form of it. Maybe the Civil War vets were fine with that, but the amendment still codified slavery.
I think there's a big difference between Chattel slavery, and the kind of slavery that the 13th amendment allows for. There's also "wage slavery", which even Abe Lincoln and the republican party agreed was comparable to chattel slavery unless the wage slavery eventually led to self-employment.
> the people who fought the civil war believed that they were doing it to end slavery
For many Northerners, it had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with states rights vs. federalism. And keeping the Union together. Revisionist history makes it 100% about slavery.
While it’s true to say that some northerners had other interests in fighting the civil war, there’s no clearer evidence of the cause and purpose of the civil war than the reasons cited by secessionist states for leaving the union. Yes it was about “states rights”, but specifically (as they themselves said) it was about the right of states to continue slavery.
You can say that people in the north weren’t angels, they certainly weren’t, and that there were other issues that motivated people to enter the war and fight for their side, there certainly were.
But the central issue of the civil war was slavery. If it was any other issue, the seceding states would have said it, and surely a compromise would have been reached (as in fact even today states have “rights” if not just the “right” to hold slaves).
They did. I get the feeling we’ve read different history books. So many reasons. What about the industrial north and the agricultural south? Played no part in the war, I’ve suspect you’d say. It was all slavery.
> What about the industrial north and the agricultural south?
Guess what kind of labor the economy of the "agricultural south" was dependent on at the time. The Civil War was primarily about slavery, especially the expansion of slavery westward. To argue the opposite is ahistorical nonsense so false it amounts to an outright lie.
Even the Confederacy was open about the fact that slavery was the reason for succession. Just read The Cornerstone Speech given by the vice president of the Confederacy weeks before the Civil War began:
> [The Confederacy's] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
> I get the feeling we’ve read different history books.
I get the feeling we've read different history.
Forget books or opinions provided by other people many years after the fact, forget my opinion, just look at what the seceding states themselves said to justify their secession.
The VERY FIRST sentence identifies the reason to secede being that the northern states are refusing to send back their fugitive slaves!
And if it's not clear enough for you, they repeat it in more detail just a little further down in the document:
---
"In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River."
Some states such as Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas pay them nothing at all and additionally, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Carolina allowed unpaid labor for at least some jobs.
There's no reason for scare quotes given the specific carveout for slavery which exists in the Constitution. If you have an issue with that verbiage, take it up with the 38th United States Congress and Abraham Lincoln.
> do murderers get to walk free?
You're arguing against an extreme position that nobody actually holds. Most reasonable people would probably point to criminal justice as implemented in many European countries as exemplifying a more humane model which produces better long term results.
The carveout for the enslavement of incarcerated people also created a perverse incentive which played out predictably in the wake of Reconstruction's failure. If you're interested in the long and painful history of this fact here's a useful resource:
Europeans and European countries have done all kinds of ridiculous things. Just because someone in Europe does something like you describe (if they even do, I doubt it), it doesn’t mean we should do it.
People in the South after the civil war grasped for any excuse to disenfranchise black people. Big surprise. That’s not an argument to treat prisoners any differently than we do today.
Are people incarcerated unfairly or are they convicted under unjust or unconstitutional laws? That’s a reason to agitate for change.
Are duly convicted criminals forced to do things they don’t want to do? Oh well, sounds like a good idea to me, I will invest in continuing that practice as long as the laws are fair!
The 13th amendment does not end incarceration it ends slavery and involuntary servitude. Thus it allows you to enslave criminals and force them to work for you without in any way taking away from the obvious ability to incarcerate them.
Not who you're responding to, but I will take a crack at your question. I think that incarceration and forced labor are barbaric and ineffective, and an enlightened society should not engage in those sorts of behaviors.
I believe in corporal punishment and fines. Petty crimes get fines, say some number larger than the average payout per crime divided by the chances of getting caught, so that on average criminals lose money. And for violent crimes, lashing, flogging, something quick, painful, that doesn't destroy families and take years from someone, and that doesn't maim or disable (so things like cutting off hands are out). And for repeat violent offenders and extreme cases like murder and torture and things, death, the reasoning being this is not punishment, it is corrective action, and if the corrective action doesn't work, the offender must be removed from society as they are a danger.
I can see exile making some sense in some cases but I haven't explored that really.
All this is predicated on the society being one where victimless crimes don't exist. Nothing should be illegal that involves no unwilling participants. Drugs, sodomy and things like that should not be crimes, social pressure and social sanction are enough to deter things a society doesn't want but that doesn't violate rights of others, and punishments for them should not be codified into law.
I know my opinion on this is not a commonly held view, and would be considered extreme by many, but I do think it is more humane and productive than incarceration.
That's exactly why the Jim Crow laws came around making almost anything illegal (if you were black). They rounded people up and put them right back on chain gangs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
I don't really want to get involved in this argument, but I think this is a situation where there's just a little bit of missing historical background that might help you two understand one another. What the upstream commenter is referring to is the fact that the land that was historically eastern Poland isn't part of Russia now -- it's part of Ukraine and Belarus. Sure, the USSR (of which Russia is the successor state) is what performed that land transfer, but the land was not transferred to what is now Russia.
> the land that was historically eastern Poland isn't part of Russia now -- it's part of Ukraine and Belarus
The Belarussian / Polish border today is almost exactly the border between Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. So "historically eastern Poland" is not right there. Some like to think of the whole Commonwelth as Poland, which really dominated there. But in this case whole Belarus and Ukraine are "eastern Poland".
That's what poles tried to restore when got chance to recreate their state after WWI, as I understand. The full commonwealth. But only got to the borders we know as the pre-1939 Poland.
BTW, Ukraine is mostly the part of the GDL annexed by the Kingdom of Poland during the Union of Lublin. The todays Belarus / Ukraine border goes by this line.
If you ever get to Seattle, you owe it to yourself to check this place out.
I went here a few years ago while on a trip from Portland expecting to spend an hour or two glancing at out old, dead vintage telecom equipment, but... most of the equipment they have there is not only working, but actually wired-up and usable. They have several working vintage telecom exchanges, even, and the volunteers there will not only explain how these antiques work, but in some cases let you use them.
If you have any interest at all in vintage electronics, this place will blow your mind.
