In the wake of Friday's air traffic control meltdown, I've been thinking about ATC modernization. I'm convinced we can rip and replace the whole system for less money than we spend maintaining the current broken one—while meaningfully improving safety. Taxpayers could get a dividend, not a new bill. But it would require doing politically uncomfortable things, like building the whole system on Starlink, eliminating almost all air traffic control jobs, and changing the day-to-day experience of pilots. The current system is so insane - literally we have pilots talking to controllers on two-way radios. If two people press the "talk" button at the same time, they can't hear each other. And it only gets worse from there. So here's an early-draft sketch of something better. * Every airplane has dual-redundant Starlink antennae. * Establish that the reliability of dual-link Satcomm beats the current system (I think it will, handily). * Starlink implements better-than-GPS global positioning * Every aircraft uploads position and trajectory data in realtime * This simple system replaces every tens of thousands of radio and radar sites, each of which is fragile and expensive to maintain. We don't need old copper lines. Or new fiber ones. * It also replaces all of the ground-based navigation and approach systems. ILS, RNAV, VORs and even airport ground surveillance — literally all of the legacy navigation claptrap can be ditched * To fly in the national airspace, every airplane must have Starlink (or equivalent, if/when someone makes an equivalent) * Perhaps, airborne weather data and radar returns are also uploaded in realtime. With critical mass, we can have a 3D synthetic view of realtime weather without needing today's weather ground stations. Improved weather predictive models can be built and deployed. This will be great for cost and for safety. * Cloud ATC and pilots communicate over satcom-based text and/or structured digital communication. This functionality should be built into cockpits, but that won't happen quickly with Boeing/Airbus slowness so pilots can use iPhones/iPads/EFBs and effectively just text with ATC instead of talking on radios like they do today. * Similarly any ground vehicle on an airport (fire trucks, fuel trucks etc) must have a satcom connection with realtime position reporting, with the ability to make requests digitally and respond to commands. This allows the system to manage runway incursions and ground collisions that are a real problem today. * Non-emergency ATC is completely automated, no need for humans for routine traffic control. * Right now, we have maybe a few thousand airplanes in the air across the country at any given time. But the skies are huge and can support far more traffic with far more efficient automated routing. * The hard part is unexpected situations, emergency management. There is 24/7 human staffing for this, which would require maybe ~1% of the ATC staff we have today. * This will save *so much money* we can give controllers five years of severance and pay for them to go back to school to learn another trade. * SpaceX should be willing to develop and operate the whole system for free, because it will result in selling more Starlink service. Start with en-route traffic and run the new system for a little while in parallel with the old and monitor for where human interventions are required. I think the new system will quickly prove it's better than the old, then can be turned off. This is far from fully worked out, but I'm convinced a much, much better system is possible. It would need hardcore leadership and significant bipartisan political will. Maybe that's laughably impossible, but I don't want to be so pessimistic.

In Thomas Tuchel’s England team, at almost every position besides striker, those with physical qualities trump technicians. But it doesn’t have to be that way at full-back. @LiamTharmeCoach explains the benefits of creators like Trent Alexander-Arnold and Lewis Hall, and how they might help England bravely take the game to Spain on Sunday. 🔗

In January 2020, CNBC broke a story that Tesla cars "may suddenly accelerate on their own." It was built on a petition to NHTSA asking for a recall of every Model S, X and 3 made since 2013. The man who filed it was, by CNBC's own reporting, shorting Tesla stock at the time. Tesla called the petition "completely false" and said that in every case where it had the car's data, the car did what the driver told it to do. CNBC's follow-up answered that Tesla "provided few details." So NHTSA spent a year on it, reviewing 246 complaints and crash data from 118 of them. In January 2021 the answer came back. In 97% of those crashes the accelerator was pressed to 85% or more, and in 90% there was no braking at all. About half happened in the driver's first six months with the car. NHTSA found "no evidence of any fault in the accelerator pedal assemblies, motor control systems, or brake systems," and denied the petition. A Tesla logs what both pedals are doing, and that record existed before the first headline was written. "On their own" went out anyway, sourced to paperwork from someone betting the stock would fall, and the correction took a federal agency twelve months.

In 31 years as a quality inspector, Tachibana, who sits behind me at work, has never given anything a perfect score. Not a part. Not a factory. Not, according to his wife, their wedding. In Japan, he is the man who says no. He has rejected bolts for being one-tenth of a millimeter shy. He has rejected a supplier over the font on their packaging. In September, he spent two weeks in Texas. A customer's plants. Houston to San Antonio and back. Every day on the highway with an engineer named Wendell Ray Tubbs, who goes by Bo. Tachibana has no off switch. So, on day one, he made a form. A4 paper. Twenty criteria. One hundred points. Clipboard. He inspected every American restroom on Interstate 10. For the record, Japan has some of the cleanest public restrooms on Earth. Our toilets have heated seats, a bidet, and more settings than my car. Some of them play music. He was not grading on a curve. He showed me the forms. I am sharing some with permission. He insisted I include the scores. GAS STATION, NAME WITHHELD Score: 31. "Door would not lock. Instead, a sign: KNOCK. I did not want to knock. Someone knocked on me." HIGHWAY REST AREA Score: 44. "A man was shaving in the sink at 6 a.m. He said, 'Mornin', partner.' Courtesy: 10 out of 10. Everything else: I am not able to write it." BARBECUE RESTAURANT Score: 66. "No lock. But a large man I did not know stood outside and held the door shut for me without being asked. 'I got you, buddy.' Lock: 0. Security: 100. I was protected like a president." CHURCH FELLOWSHIP HALL (invited to a potluck) Score: 71. "Sign: JIGGLE HANDLE. The handle has been jiggled since 1987. Everyone in the congregation knows the jiggle. A woman named Miss Inez, 84, came in to show me the jiggle. She did not knock. The jiggle is passed down like a family recipe." FAST FOOD Score: 12. "I will not discuss this. Bo says this one is 'a rite of passage.'" By day five, Bo was texting the scores to his wife. His wife was texting them to her Bible study. By Wednesday, twenty-two women in Baytown, Texas, were waiting for the restroom report every evening. Then Tachibana noticed the billboards. A cartoon beaver in a red cap. Smiling. Counting down the miles. Making jokes about how much longer you'd have to hold it. Bo saw him looking. His whole face changed. He got very quiet, the way a man gets quiet before church. "Brother," he said. "You are about to see something." Buc-ee's. If you are not from Texas: calling it a gas station is like calling the Grand Canyon a ditch. More than a hundred pumps. A store the size of an airport. A wall of jerky. A man dead center of the store chopping brisket and shouting "BRISKET! FRESH BRISKET!" like he's announcing a birth. Tachibana walked past all of it. He had a job to do. He went into the restroom with his clipboard. Bo waited outside. Ten minutes. Twenty. At thirty, a small crowd of men had gathered around Bo. At forty, one of them went in to check. He came back out. "He's on his knees," he reported, "looking at the grout." At forty-four minutes, Tachibana came out. Pale. He held up the form. 100. The first 100 of his career. The men around Bo did not know what was happening. They clapped anyway. For a restroom. One of them shook Tachibana's hand and said, "Congratulations," and then asked Bo, quietly, "On what?" Then Tachibana asked to meet the person responsible. In Japan, quality is not a company. Quality is somebody. The manager went and got her. Her name is Gloria. She's 61. Nine years on those restrooms. Nights and weekends. Ballcap. Rubber gloves. Readers hanging from a beaded cord. She thought she was in trouble. She raised three grandkids on that job. Two of them are in college now. "My grandbabies are getting educated on these floors," she told Bo. She said it like a woman pointing at a cathedral she built. Bo asked her how she kept it like this. Every hour. For nine years. "My mama cleaned motel rooms in Beaumont for forty years," Gloria said. "She told me one thing. Clean every room like somebody's mama is about to walk in." Tachibana read it on his translation app. He went very still. What Bo didn't know yet, what none of us at the office knew, was this. His father cleaned the restrooms at a train station in Tokyo. Thirty years. Every night. Nobody ever thanked him. As a teenager, Tachibana was ashamed of it. He never once told his friends what his father did. He became an inspector, he said, so somebody would finally look closely at the work nobody looks at. His father died before he could tell him that. Tachibana didn't say any of that. He just bowed. Deep. The way we bow to a teacher. Then he held out his form the way a Japanese company presents an award. Arms straight. Paper facing her. Gloria looked at Bo. "What's he doing?" "Ma'am," Bo said, "I think he's giving you an award." Tachibana typed into his phone and turned the screen to her. "My father did your work. Nobody ever gave him this. Please take it for him." Gloria read it. Then she let her readers drop on their cord, put both arms around a Japanese quality inspector in the middle of Buc-ee's, and held on. His clipboard stayed out to one side, perfectly level, for the entire hug. An inspector does not drop the clipboard. Twenty-two women in a Bible study in Baytown got that report at 6 p.m. Bo says the group text has not recovered. Tachibana is back in Tokyo now, rejecting things. Last month, he inspected our office restroom. The building is from 1971. It scored a 58. Then he did something new. In 31 years, his form had never had this line. He added it just beneath the score. "Person responsible: Mrs. Kurosu. 100." She has cleaned our floor for twenty-nine years. Before last month, I'm ashamed to say, none of us knew her name. He says Texas taught him to score them separately.

In reaction to my politics, Democrats have come out against: 1. Free speech - They wanted to arrest me over the Vote for Trump sign 2. Rap music - They hate it 3. Clean water - They think neon green water with dead cows allegedly thrown into it is perfectly fine 4. Tattoos - They think me having tattoo’d friends is a reason not to vote for me 5. $1,000 Christmas bonuses - They are mad that I suggested giving them

In Japan, when a woman has her first baby, she goes home to her mother. For a month, sometimes two. Her mother cooks, takes the baby at night, and makes sure she sleeps. We call it satogaeri. My wife's cousin Ayane had her first baby in Tokyo last fall. Her mother couldn't come. She had broken her hip that summer and was stuck in a hospital bed in Hokkaido. So she wrote everything down. Thirty days of rules, in Japanese, in a school notebook. Ayane's husband, Reid, translated it into English and mailed it to the only other mother he knew. His. Marlys. Sixty-three. South Dakota. She had never been farther from home than Rapid City. She flew to Tokyo with the notebook in her purse. Every night, she wrote back in pen, under each rule. Ayane let me read it. "Do not let her lift anything heavier than the baby." Got it. I carried her laundry, her groceries, and once, her. Up the stairs. She weighs about two bags of feed. I've carried worse. "Make okayu. Soft rice porridge. Every morning." Made it. Also made biscuits and gravy, just in case. She ate both. I'm calling it a tie. "No cold drinks. Warm water only." She asked for ice water. I said the book says no. The book and I are a team now. "A neighbor will bring a gift. Bow. Do not keep her long." Mrs. Natsume brought a gift. I hugged her. She has not recovered. The next morning she was back with another gift. I think I'm doing this wrong. "Let her sleep. Take the baby at night." Done. Every night, him and me and the Weather Channel app. He likes the radar. Takes after his grandpa. "Do not let her cry alone." She cried at 2 a.m. because she missed her mom. So I cried too. Now nobody's alone. Day 30 was the last page. Her mother had written it before Marlys ever landed. "When the month ends, the mother always cries when her daughter goes home. That is normal. I am sorry it will not be me." Under it, in pen, Marlys wrote: "Book was right. Your girl is safe. I didn't do anything you wouldn't have done. I just did it louder." In April, Ayane's mother walked again. Before she even went home, she took the train to Tokyo and asked for the notebook. Reid translated every note. It took all afternoon. She laughed at the gravy. She cried at 2 a.m. Then she wrote one more page and asked Reid to mail it to South Dakota. "Day 31. When this baby has a baby, we go together." Marlys mailed back a postcard. Three words. "Deal. I'll drive."

In March, my washing machine died. That's how I found out what a Japanese coin laundry is like at night. It's the quietest room in Japan. Fluorescent lights. Plastic chairs. Eight strangers watching eight dryers go around. Nobody speaks. Nobody looks up. You fold your clothes facing the wall, like you're doing something slightly shameful, and you leave. Except on Thursdays. On Thursdays, there's Lucius. Lucius Pettigrew. 66. From Macon, Georgia. Retired U.S. Army. Twenty-two years, three of them as a drill sergeant at Fort Benning. Married a woman from Tokyo named Michiko in 1991. Lives four blocks away. He has a perfectly good washing machine. But on Thursday nights, Michiko's three sisters come over for karaoke. So on Thursday nights, Lucius does laundry. "Strategic withdrawal," he told me. The first Thursday I was there, he walked in with one basket and a thermos and announced, to the entire silent room, "Evening, everybody." Eight people looked at the floor. He didn't mind. He talked to the dryers instead. "Come on, number six. You got this. Dig deep." Number six finished early. "Outstanding." Number four quit halfway through with his towels still wet. Lucius gave it a long look. "I'm not mad, four. I'm disappointed." There was a college kid in a hoodie. A night-shift nurse who fell asleep in a plastic chair every single week. A tired young mom, toddler on one hip. A salaryman who never took off his tie. And there was Mr. Akutsu. 78. Every Thursday, the same corner. His wife, Hisako, passed two winters ago. In fifty-one years of marriage, he had never once done laundry. You could tell. Every one of his white shirts had gone pale pink. His one wool sweater had shrunk to the size of a child's. My mother knows his sister. She told me why he comes. Not for the laundry. His apartment is too quiet. He still puts out two teacups in the morning, then puts one back. He folded everything like he was angry at it. Then he sat with his hands on his knees and stared at nothing. On the fourth Thursday, Lucius pulled a chair over beside him. "Sir," he said. "Permission to show you something." Mr. Akutsu doesn't speak English. But "sir" seems to work in any language when it comes from a man that size. Lucius picked up a pink shirt and folded it the Army way. Sharp. Square. Every edge like a blade. Then he held up the flat little brick of a shirt like a magician. Mr. Akutsu stared at it. Then he picked up another shirt and folded it. Exactly the same. Lucius studied it. Turned it over. Checked the corners. "Son," he said, to a man of seventy-eight, "I trained a thousand recruits. You might be the best I ever had." Mr. Akutsu caught none of it. He bowed anyway. Then he refolded the shirt, slightly better. After that, every Thursday was basic training. "Whites. Colors. Never the twain shall meet. That's how we lost the shirts, sir. Red sock. Every war in history started with a red sock." Hospital corners on a towel. Socks rolled the Army way. At nine sharp, Lucius would bark, "INSPECTION," and a Japanese widower of seventy-eight would spring up from his plastic chair and stand at attention beside his stack. Lucius explained it to me once, outside, over his thermos. "I was eighteen. Skinny. Mad at everybody. Nobody in Macon ever expected one thing out of me. First week of basic, my drill sergeant ripped my bunk apart and made me do it over. Eleven times." He laughed. "Took me twenty years to figure out what he was telling me." "What was he telling you?" "That I was worth the trouble." Mr. Akutsu, being Japanese, took it further than any recruit Lucius ever had. By June he was folding fitted sheets. No human being has ever successfully folded a fitted sheet. Lucius watched him do it and had to go stand outside for a minute. The room started to change. The nurse woke up one night to find her scrubs folded in a perfect stack next to her. She looked at Mr. Akutsu. He looked at the wall. She bowed to the wall. The toddler started napping on Mr. Akutsu's towels. Lucius promoted him to Private. The toddler saluted back with a sock. The salaryman loosened his tie. Then, one Thursday, he took it off and asked Lucius about Georgia. They talked for an hour. He forgot his laundry in dryer number four. Lucius said four had it coming. By summer, the quietest room in Japan had a coffee thermos, nine chairs in a circle, and one rule on an index card, taped above the folding table. The English was in Lucius's block capitals. The Japanese underneath was in Mr. Akutsu's careful brush hand. NOBODY FOLDS ALONE. Then, in September, Mr. Akutsu came in carrying something different. A cardigan. Lavender. Hand-knit. Hisako's. He had never washed it. Two years. It still smelled like her. He just kept it on her chair. He held it out to Lucius. No English. He didn't need any. The question was all over his face. Is it time? Lucius didn't answer right away. He took the cardigan in both of his huge hands. "Wool," he said quietly. "You don't put wool in a machine. This one, you do by hand." They washed it in the little sink in the back. Together. Slowly. Cool water. One drop of soap. A drill sergeant from Georgia and a widower from Tokyo, bent over a sink, not saying a word. Nobody else in the laundromat said a word either. The nurse was wide awake. The college kid had taken out his earbuds. The toddler, for once in his life, was perfectly still. They laid it flat on a clean towel to dry. Then Mr. Akutsu folded it. Not the Army way. Her way. Sleeves in, then thirds. Soft. Small. The way she had folded it a thousand times. Lucius had never seen that fold before. He watched the whole thing standing at attention. When it was done, a retired drill sergeant who had not saluted anyone in eighteen years raised his hand to his brow and held it there. "Best fold I ever saw," he said. Michiko's sisters heard about the laundromat in October. Now they come on Thursdays too. Thursdays have karaoke again. Lucius is reconsidering his strategy. My new washing machine came in April. On Thursdays, it takes the night off.