Wired magazine has the article Boeing Plans to Fix the 737 MAX Jet With a Software Update.

When the MCAS detects the plane climbing too steeply without enough speed—a recipe for a stall—it moves the yoke forward, using the horizontal stabilizer on the tail to bring the nose of the plane down.

I have read that airplanes have an audible stall alarm that actually says “Stall, Stall” or something like that. Over 300 people might be alive today, if the plane also gave the warning “Stall, Stall” that most planes have when the automatic system decided to override the pilot’s ascend instructions when the pilot pulled the stick back. The pilot might have thought “OMG, I am about to stall” under actual stall circumstances, or the pilot might have thought to shut off the automatic system if it was obvious that the stall warning was false. In the actual situation, the pilot did not even know that there was an automatic system making its own decision about where the stick should be.

When I was writing software and doing customer support for that very software, I had a principle I tried to follow when my software had detected an error and was going to take some action. Instead of having an error message that said something like the following:

Error: Your snagafratz is wrong.

I would try to put in as much information as the software knew about the error. It would go something like this.

Error: You entered “sniggledypoo” which is not an expected value for snagafratz. snagafratz can only be “foo” or “bar”.

If you actually entered “sniggledypoo”, but the correct values were either “foo” or “bar”, you would have a pretty good lead to solving your problem, perhaps without even referring to the user manual. If you didn’t enter “sniggledypoo”, you might start looking for reasons why the software did not receive what you thought you told it. If all else fails, you could call tech support, and read me the message. I might know exactly what has gone wrong, or I might know where in the software to look for a bug.

As tech support, I found it helpful when a customer could call me and read me the full error message. Even better was when I did not get calls because the customer could solve the problem on her own or his own.

I learned how to write better error messages because every call to tech support was an indication of something in the software that could be improved. The fewer calls that came in, and the fewer bugs that had to be fixed, the more time I could spend developing new features.

YouTube has the video Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | SXSW 2019

This is a deeper conversation than you are likely to hear anywhere. The snippets you might have seen don’t begin to do this justice. That is why I have decided to give you a link to the video of the entire session.

As New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continues to galvanize the left (and frustrate the right), what’s driving her unique appeal has become an increasingly compelling question. Is it her identity or her substantive politics? Or both?

Ocasio-Cortez’s embrace of democratic socialism has been emphasized by the right, which seeks to paint her as out of touch with mainstream American values. But arguably, it’s her progressive ideals that provide the basis for a human-centered politics that connect with a majority of Americans.

YouTube has the video Why We Need a Federal Jobs Guarantee.

13 million people looking for living wage work is not a “full employment” economy.

Why should the federal government adopt a jobs guarantee? Just ask the 13 million Americans looking for living wage work.

That’s what Pavlina Tcherneva, economics professor at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, says in outlining the economic case for a jobs guarantee. Every day the U.S. forgoes half a billion dollars of output because of unemployment. But it doesn’t have to be this way. A jobs guarantee would not only employee millions and increase output, but would also strengthen communities and the safety net, giving people the opportunity to organize their human power for the collective good. And, it would do away with “the scarlet letter of the unemployed”—the career gap in one’s resume.

People don’t seem to notice that Bernie has started talking about a jobs guarantee as one of the programs he will institute. When people suddenly wake-up to what he is saying, here is an excellent explanation from one of the major proponents of the idea.

A jobs guarantee has always been a part of Modern Money Theory. Until recently, I did not understand why the founders of MMT consider the jobs guarantee to be an unseperable part of the policy side of MMT.

What Pavlina Tcherneva explains is that the traditional economic stimuli are not extremely focused toward eliminating unemployment. The traditional methods do tend to put people to work, but it is too indirect. The traditional methods still leave a substantial number of people unemployed. Having the federal government run a deficit and buy goods from the private sector to create employment will be more effective if the money is spent on the jobs guarantee. As Pavlina says, she envisions the jobs guarantee to be federally funded, but locally administered. This means that the money will go to where the unemployment is, rather than putting the money somewhere into the economy, and hoping that the money and the unemployed come together.

New Economic Perspectives has the article Krugman Gives DeGrauwe 2011 Credit for What MMT Has Argued for 15+ Years.

Unlike years prior, since 2008 it’s rather clear to many (if not to neoclassicals) the importance of alternative ideas, frameworks, and methodologies—including MMT and the dozens of other approaches—that could contribute to building a new, more relevant field of economics. But the mainstream of a field that didn’t see the crisis coming has doubled down, essentially rewriting history by declaring that nobody could have seen the crisis coming, and that virtually nobody did. (Of course, it’s true that neoclassicals couldn’t have seen the crisis coming given that their models do not include a financial system—so in that sense they aren’t lying, just obviously casting their net too narrowly, by design.)

As for being able to see the crisis of 2008 coming, I saw the crisis coming years before 2008. I didn’t even get my insight from MMT. The earliest mention of MMT that I find on my blog via a quick search is May 26, 2012.

New Economic Perspectives has the article Three Natural Experiments Documenting Krugman’s Bias Against MMT.

The bad news is that in this case even after he read Roche’s rant he knew so little about the MMT scholarly literature that he represented to his readers that it exemplified MMT. The even worse news is that even after he read, and hated, Roche’s rant, Krugman knew so little about the MMT literature that he decided to provide his readers with a link to the rant – and only the rant – as supposedly representative of the MMT scholarly canon. To sum it up, Krugman’s attempt to assure his readers that he had “listened to the gentiles” (his phrase, not mine) before attacking them proved he had failed to do so. Krugman was so eager to reject and demean MMT scholars that his subconscious transformed Roche’s rant into the mother of all strawman arguments to aid his assault on MMT scholars.

I used to be such a fan of Paul Krugman until he went so obviously off the rails. He does write for The Dreaded New York Times. That should have warned me about what was eventually going to come out of his writings.

Workers World has the article Venezuela mobilizes against imperialist attacks on its electrical grid.

Another possibility is a dirty war, fought through rebel groups created and armed by the U.S. to apply enough pressure to collapse the Bolivarian social programs. The opposition already has a base of “guarimberos,” or violent street fighters, that could serve as a starting point.

In either case, the main battlefield is the economy. Imperialism’s plans to destabilize the country are based on “making the economy scream.” To defeat the new and desperate opposition attacks, it will be necessary to break the remaining power the oligarchy holds over the Venezuelan economy, while strengthening popular organization in the country.

OK, be skeptical of this article, but also be skeptical of what you hear from the imperialists.

Workers World has the article U.S. anti-war movement leaders report from embattled Venezuela.

Curcio discussed the U.S. role in creating the “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela. These include shortages of basic necessities: toilet paper, corn, milk, coffee and vital medicines. To counter these shortages, the Bolivarian government established a distribution network to serve 6 million families by importing food, medicine and hygiene products.

The current U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil, the blocking of its banking services and the edicts that prevent the government from using its gold reserves all restrict the ability of the Venezuelan government to satisfy basic needs.

On top of this, the U.S. has handed $11 billion worth of assets of Venezuela’s national oil company, CITGO, directly to Juan Guaidó, a virtually unknown right-wing politician until U.S. Vice President Mike Pence suggested on Jan. 23 that Guaidó nominate himself to be “interim president.”

I have been wondering when we would hear a report of the trip that Ajamu Baraka and many others made to Venezuela.

I received an email response from Bernie Sanders’ campaign help desk.

… you can submit your policy question via the following form and we will do our best to get you an answer as soon as we can: https://bsanders.us/questionform. (We may not get back to you immediately because of the volume of questions we have received, but we will try to respond to everyone.)

I used the form immediately to send the following question:

Why doesn’t Bernie demand an immediate end to sanctions on Venezuela? Our sanctions are inhumane. We have no business choosing what form of government the Venezuelans can have. Our 20 year economic war on Venezuelan will prevent us from seeing if democratic socialism could have worked in Venezuela if we hadn’t interfered. The oligarchs’ war on the poor of Venezuela is exactly the war our oligarchs are waging against the 99% in this country. The tactics that the oligarchs are using against Maduro are a lesson in what USA oligarchs will use against Bernie Sanders when he wins. If Bernie does not counter those tactics in Venezuela, he will already have lost a big part of the battle he will face as President of the USA. His refusal to call for an end of sanctions is a tacit admission that there is something in those tactics that is acceptable to use. His refusal to recognize the fair and open election that Maduro won is an invitation for people to contest our 2020 elections.

You can reinforce my question by asking a similar question. Of course, I encourage you to send any question that you want answered.

The Real News Network has the article Venezuela Update: Massive Blackout, US Unconventional Warfare?.

While Venezuela struggled with the most massive blackout in its history, president Maduro said there is evidence that a US cyber-attack caused the blackout. Meanwhile, Trump administration officials continue the offensive against Venezuela and the NYT uncovers false reporting

I have already posted what I think might be Venezuela’s response to our sabotage. Facebook & Instagram experience massive outage across US & Europe. Less likely that the USA would bomb Venezuela over Facebook, than if Venezuela took down our power system.