I’m not a pilot but have always looked to the open skies with dreams and admiration. I think we need to unpack a few assumptions.

something that’s very forbidden in the aviation world because of lightning

Weather (WX) has always been an integral part of aviation, as early as the lighter-than-air (ie hot-air balloon) days. The strength of human kind is no match to what nature can throw at us, and so instead we adapt to what nature gives us. On one hand, nature provides niceties like prevailing wind and thermals, to allow us to build runways pointing into the wind and for gliders to gain altitude. On the other hand, nature can decide that an Icelandic volcano shoots hundreds of thousands of tons of particulate matter into the air, grounding all commercial flights in European airspace.

Resilience becomes the objective, to safely operate revenue aircraft in the face of fickle natural phenomena. And this is achieved in a multi-layer approach, with resilience baked in at every step. The aircraft itself, the crew, the airports, ATC, and the regulators, they all are trained and briefed on known hazards, which is part of why commercial aviation is one of the safest modes of travel, sans maybe the elevator.

Unlike volcanic activity or windshears/microbursts, thunderstorms and lightning give plenty of warning through day-ahead WX forecasts, as well as onboard radar. These are not fool-proof – for example, radar can be shadowed by nearby precipitation, hiding enormous thunder clouds beyond. But despite how terrifying it may sound to fly through a storm, it isn’t impossible and certainly not unmanageable. But it does take preparation, and requires sufficient margins so that if anything starts to look awry, there’s an escape path.

Often times, the escape path is just to climb away.

Lightning struck the plane … which could’ve been catastrophic

There are many things which are potentially catastrophic for aircraft: loss of engines, loss of pressurization, a lithium ion battery fire in the cargo compartment, a medical emergency while overflying the mid-Atlantic.

But while a gut-reaction would be to outright avoid risk, human endeavors can make no progress like that. So instead, worst-case planning means developing procedures for when not if something bad happens.

Aircraft are designed to take lightning strikes, and although the Boeing 787 uses a lot of composite material, it too has provisions for lightning.

the report for this incident

Seeing as the incident here occurred on 17 March 2025, I wouldn’t expect the Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB; the air safety regulator, equivalent to USA NTSB) to have published a final report. There might be a preliminary report, but this is not that.

This appears to be a collection of ADS-B data, a mention of damage to a control surface, and a Twitter post about airline compensation due to diverting from Haneda (HND) to Narita (NRT).

Were it not for the control surface damage, this incident might have fallen below the threshold for reporting, since no source suggests there were injuries and I don’t see – having not watched the video – an emergency being declared by the pilots. Diversions are not wholly uncommon, for a number of operational or WX reasons.

I’m pretty sure if a US or European pilot did this, they’d get their license revoked

I think this is wrong, based solely on the robust safety culture in both the USA and in European airspace. Safety culture means that procesures are developed to manage risk, these procedures are regularly practiced, are updated with the latest available recommendations, and non-wilful deviations from procedure (aka mistakes) will be addressed by additional training, not by punishment.

As Mentour Pilot eloquently reminds viewers of his YouTube channel, if punishment were metted out for every mistake, then it’s a disincentive to report mistakes, which makes safety worse for everyone, because nothing gets fixed.

No doubt, there are pilots which have operated grossly outside the bounds of acceptability, like flying an empty jet into coffin corner, or allowing a child to fly the plane. Such accidents are reported precisely because they blew through every layer of the Swiss cheese model of accident causation, and tragically took lives.

So with all that out of the way, I think we can still try to answer the titular question.

A scheduled passenger airliner tries to get passengers from airport A to airport B. A lot of prep is done in the background to make this happen, organizing the ground crew, flight crew, and backend operations at the airliner HQ. Most of the time, the flight is uneventful and arrives as expected. A few times, there might a go-around, but pilots are trained to not shy away from doing a go-around, and have the reserve fuel to do so.

With any sort of damage on approach, be it from a bird strike or lightning strike, the pilots will have to: 1) secure the plane, usually by initiating a go-around to buy valuable time and get away from the ground, and 2) assess the condition of the airplane and make a plan. In this case, the airplane diverted to a nearby airport, which was probably the backup destination airport.

As mentioned before, WX is fickle, and a storm can easily creep over the airport when the plane is within radio contact. And even if the storm was already over the arrival path, if the indications are still suitable for landing – eg low crosswind, no tailwind, no predicted windshears, no prior pilot reports of landing troubles – then the pilots will have discretion to continue their approach.

For a healthy safety culture, the airliner’s own procedures have to place the pilots as the ultimate decision-makers once a flight is underway, and so while it’s unfortunate that damage occurred unexpectedly, nothing from the minimal available information suggests this amounts to a systemic or procedural error, nor wilful malfeasance.

The fact that the airliner returned to service days later means this might simply be slightly more than mundane happenings. Though it would be prudent to keep an eye out for a future report from the safety regulator which would may have recommendations for updating training or to the manufacturer to address a systemic fault. But sometimes final reports have nothing to recommend (rare, but it happens).

Wireless water, coming right up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_QfX0SYCE8

In all seriousness, not all particulate sticks to water vapor consistently, sometimes if said particulate is non-polar – the lipid envelope of one SARS-CoV2 comes to mind. It would be more effective to clean the air using a furnace filter taped to a box fan, and it’s only up from there: electrostatic filters or actual air cleaners with a filter.

That said, some console humidifiers push air through essentially a large sponge, and that can already be effective at trapping larger particulate, although not effective for tiny virus-sized particles.

If water vapor was the only thing airborne, then this would be mostly plausible. But the reality in any typical environment is for small particles of dust, soot, microplastics, VOCs, etc to be in the air, in addition to the usual suspects of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc. Some of those will increase the conductance of water, when condensed upon a cool surface. Think of water vapor as a lint filter that floats around the room until it lands on something.

But even in a hermetically sealed environment with only the typical atmospheric mix of oxygen and nitrogen and other trace elemental gases, and then water vapor, there’s still a problem. Air has a conductivity – measured in Siemens, the inverted unit of Ohms which is resistance – of 3-8 x 10^-15, meaning it will not conduct much at all. But compared to condensation upon a PCB in this sealed environment, DI water has a conductance of 5.5 x 10^-6. That is 1,000,000,000x times more conductive, although it’s still a tiny amount.

The reality is that all circuits and electronics leak small currents here and there, even through the air or through their PCB substrates. But the sum total of these leakage and creepage currents will be negligible in all but high-voltage circuits. Though that’s only under the rated environmental conditions.

When air is fully saturated at 100% humidity, some of those currents become noticeable. And for high-voltage switchgear, it can become an issue very quickly. But outright water on most circuits would be disastrous due to arcing or shorting or both, even for low voltage things.

Supposing that any change did materialize, it is a bedrock principle of legal procedure to not change substantially just because the outcomes have noticeable changed. That is to say, if there was anything like a sudden drop in conviction rates, it would be improper for the judges, appellate justices, and defense and prosecuting attorneys to do anything different than what they would have done prior. That’s kinda the point of having a procedure: to follow it and see what happens, accepting the result of turning the cogwheels.

The path to making such changes would have to be done legislatively, since – at least in the USA/California – that’s how changes to the law and civil/criminal procedure are made. Sure, entities like the Judicial Council of California would be making recommendations, but it’s on the Legislature to evaluate the problem and implement any necessary changes.

Law without procedure would just be decrees, wayward and unprincipled.

TIL

The remarkable thing is that modern chip-and-pin cards do support that sort of “offline” transaction, although fortunately without the carbon copy paper. Specifically, a non-networked credit card terminal can present a transaction to the chip, the chip will cryptographically sign this transaction in a unique way, and the terminal will store it for later submittal to the credit card company, when an online connection is possible.

For a typical “online” transaction when there are no connectivity issues, the third step would send the transaction immediately to the credit card company, so they can have the option of declining the charge. The cryptography is otherwise the same, and it’s why offline transactions are possible.

Some vendors, I think, like SNCF (the national rail operator) in France use offline transactions for their ticket vending machines at rural stations, where there’s no guarantee of being within mobile phone service. The card issuer also usually programs some safeguards to prevent abuse, such as X number of offline and then an online transaction is mandatory, or a limit on the value of purchases (eg $50 max for offline). After all, there cannot be a check against one’s credit limit when offline.

In the USA, it is exceedingly rare for credit cards to be issued as chip-and-pin (but it can be found), and while offline transactions can be performed with chip-and-signature cards, it’s rarely enabled since most/all terminals in the USA have been online since the introduction of electronic credit card processing.

Contactless chip cards might have changed the calculus though, since there is no PIN at all for these transactions. So perhaps issuers might allow a few offline transactions when contactless.

For buses in particular, bear in mind that liquid fuels typically require pumping, which usually uses electricity. So gasoline or diesel pumps might not be available, even if the underground storage tank has fuel. Here in California, a lot of public buses are fueled with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) which in theory could have already been compressed at the depot, but this would only last so long, since it takes energy to run the compressor, assuming the natural gas pipeline is unaffected.

Obviously, battery-electric buses and trolleybuses need electricity. So at this point, perhaps the only bus that would be totally immune is an omnibus, that 19th century people-mover that was drawn by horses. But consider the “emissions” from a horse though…

In all seriousness, the contingency plans for a transit agency will vary depending on where you are in the world. For American transit agencies, most don’t even offer service on Sunday or holidays (very strange in the land of hyper religiousness; no bus to church??) and any labor strikes usually result in every service being closed, sometimes including essential ADA operations. So likely a prolonged outage would affect the buses quickly.

At the very minimum, this type of mail would incur the $0.46 non-machinable surcharge because it’s smaller than one of the minimum USPS dimensions for postcards, namely that one side has to be at least 5 inches (127 mm exact). You may also have issues with it being too floppy for basic handling by the postal carrier, especially if it was previously left in a warm mailbox.

But perhaps a more practical issue may arise first: will stamps even adhere to the wrapping of a Kraft Cheese single? If you cannot affix postage, that’s the most immediate impediment.

no rubber for seals

Modern synthetic rubber would indeed be unavailable, but I vaguely recall reading something to the effect that early steam engines used leather seals or something like that.

But yeah, there’s a lot of missing prerequisites for machinery. Even simple rotary power – like from a windmill or waterwheel – would suffer from being incapable of long distance transmission. Such a limit means the interior lands of a country away from a river or coast would remain unusable for development beyond basic agriculture. No railroads, no A/C, no Phoenix Arizona.

should

when it comes to legality

This needs clarification. Are you asking about the legal status of Character AI’s chatbot, and how its output would be treated w.r.t. to intellectual property rights? Or about the ethical or moral questions raised by machine-generated content, and whether society or law should adapt to answer those questions?

The former is an objective inquiry, which can be answered based on the current laws for a given jurisdiction. The latter is an open-ended, subjective question for which there is no settled consensus, let alone a firm answer one way or another.

I decline to answer the latter, but I think there’s only one answer for the objective law question. IANAL, but existing fanfiction does not imbue its author with rights over characters from another author, at least in the USA. But fanfiction authors do retain copyright over their own contributions.

So if an author writes about the 1920s Mickey Mouse character (now in public domain) but set in a gay space communist utopia, the plot of that novel would be the author’s intellectual property. But not the character itself, which remains public domain. However, character development that happens would be the author’s property, insofar as such traits didn’t exist before.

What aspects of this situation do you envision would require different treatment just because it’s the output from a chatbot? Barring specific language in a Terms of Use agreement that transfers ownership to the parent company of Character AI chatbot, machines – and crested macaques – are not eligible to own intellectual property. The author would be the human being which set into motion the conditions for the machine to produce a particular output.

In conventional writing, an author does not relinquish ownership to Xerox Corporation just because the final manuscript was printed using a Xerox-made printer. But just because an author uses a machine to help produce a work, that will not excuse plagiarism or intellectual property violations, which will accrue against the human being commiting that act.

I express no opinion on whether intellectual property is still a net positive for society, or not. But I will very clearly lay out the difference between objective conclusions from the law as-written, versus any subjective opinions on how the law ought to be reformed, if at all. After all, what is not understood cannot be effectively changed.

There’s at least [email protected]

I should clarify that my original comment – foot traffic keeps paths in decent shape – was in answer to the OP’s titular question, about why vegetation doesn’t grow atop the intended walking/hiking trail. But you’re right that traffic will cause other impacts, even if plantlife isn’t getting in the way.

I’m in 100% agreement that for trail upkeep, people have to be mindful how they step. The advisories here in California focus on not eroding the edges of the trail, such as by walking around muddy areas, which would only make the restoration work harder and damage more of the adjacent environment. We have a lot of “stay on trail” signs. We advise people to either be prepared to go right through the mud – only worsens an existing hole – or don’t walk that trail at all.

Obligatory reference to desire paths: [email protected]

Traffic – under foot or otherwise – is one way to keep a path in decent shape

My understanding is that the de minimis tariff treatment for import shipments is different than the duty-free personal exemptions that apply for “accompanied baggage” when re-entering the USA and has the imported items with them.

Assuming this CBP page is accurate, the $800 exemption is one of three possible exemptions that can still apply. The $1600 exemption only applies when returning with stuff from Guam, American Samoa, or USVI, and the $800 can only be claimed every 30 day. The last resort is the $200 exemption, which is always available, and ostensibly is there to allow Americans living near Canada or Mexico to not have to deal with border taxation just because they had to buy lunch or gasoline during day trips.

Yep, sometimes acetone will do that. But other times, another solvent like gasoline might do the trick. Or maybe a heat gun.

I see it as an engineering challenge, how to best remove intrusive logos from stuff. IMO, all this is part-and-parcel to the second part of: reduce, reuse, recycle. Also, sometimes certain logos can be clipped in very creative ways haha

It doesn’t work for backpacks that might have the company name embroidered on, but for cheaper print-on-demand items like hats and water bottles, acetone will cause the logo to dissolve or shift.

That says, I have personally removed embroidered logos from clothes before, when the product itself is excellent but aesthetically ruined by a logo. It’s very finnicky work with a seam ripper, and has gained me a lot of nice thrift store finds.

Is this question about drivers that turn off their indicators while still mid-turn? Or about drivers that turn or change lanes in very little time at all?

IMO, the correct time to use indicators is precisely when in preparation for a turning or lane-change manoeuvre, during such manoeuvre, and that’s it. Once the manoeuvre is done, the indicators should be extinguished to avoid ambiguity, unless a follow-up manoeuvre is planned.

I see no logical reason to enforce a prescribed minimum for indicator time, and it’s why I see minimum-three-blink on some modern cars as an anti-feature. After all, there’s no minimum (nor maximum) time to prepare and make a turning manoeuvre.

To use a USA example, the driving style of Los Angeles inter-city freeways is – for better or worse – going to necessitate fairly quick lane changes, because of the tighter spacing between cars. In hard figures, a lane change might be prepped and done in 3 seconds. Some might say that all these drivers are violating good driving behaviors for following each other so closely, but it’s sadly a practical necessity when no amount of “just one more lane” can solve the systemic issues with regional road transportation there; it’s why LA is doubling down on public transit building.

Compare this with changing lanes on a rural Interstate freeway to pass a semi-truck, where a lane change can be more sedate because there might not be any other traffic in sight except for the two vehicles involved. Smooth driving on a road-trip might have this manoeuvre prepped and completed over 10-15 seconds, as the car might also be slowly accelerating while also changing lanes. Sometimes on these two-lanes-in-each-direction roads, the driver might even continue using the left indicator, but it now unambiguously indicates that they intend to fully overtake the semi-truck, and will switch on the right indicator once fully ahead and they intend to return to the right-hand lane.

In both circumstances, the indicators should remain blinking while mid-manoeuvre. Anything short of that is “too quick” in my book.

But if your question is how far in advance should drivers begin indicating before the manoeuvre, that’s a joint matter of regional convention and of law. And the former usually is the strongest influence.

TL;DR: indicators indicate intent, but some people have quick intent.

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But outside it’s a very different story especially in places where the language isn’t English.

What is the demonym for something that can be found or belongs to “The Americas”, comprising both North and South America (and potentially Central if you go by the Three Americas way of splitting the continent)?

This is a fair question, and I suspect there simply is no generally accepted demonym in English. One could be introduced, but contrast that fairly simple exercise with the replacement of the broadly-recognized demonym for USA residents: “American”. Quickly, it becomes apparent that replacement is far harder than introducing a new demonym, even if the to-be-replaced demonym itself isn’t very logical within the English language.

English is the same language that calls people from Deutschland as “German”, and then American English specifically might also call them “Dutch”, as in, the Pennsylvania Dutch, whom immigrated from Germany. Consistency is not strong in the English language, even over only a few hundred years.

I’ve not known any USA residents that call the continent as “America”. Instead, the continent – which in this case basically just means USA + Canada – would be “North America”. And if they meant the whole post-1490s “New World”, it would be “The Americas” for both North and South America together.