None. If it’s an excuse they’re not friends. You have reasons to cancel or you don’t. “Hey, I need to take a mental health night. I’d make it if I was in the right headspace. Sorry.”

I know from experience most of my “friends” in my teens and twenties wouldn’t accept that. Today, I either get “alright, we’ll catch up” and then we catch up or I get an offer “I just wanted to hang with you. Would it help if I just brought over a couple of beers?” Life gets real and real friends get that.

Not like this. First the child labor. Now people’s lives too. Darn it big chocolate. Why you gotta ruin a good thing with your evils.

Gravity applies a practically constant force on you at earths surface. If you don’t go deeeep underground or really high above earth, 9.8 meters per second is a pretty good number.

So, on earth’s surface, one kg of mass is approximately 2.2 lbs of weight and 9.8 newtons.

Go somewhere where gravity is half as much as ours and the same kg weighs 1.1 lbs and 4.9 newtons.

Force is only worthwhile as a PROXY for mass when measuring on equal gravity. So, for most experiments on a single planet with a strong gravity, it’s fine to use force for calculations.

Someone here says they’re 400 lbs and you may be able to picture their fitness level. Someone on the sun’s gravity weighs 400 lbs and they’re the size of a baby. A 100 kg person weighs differently on the sun too, 30 times more, but they would still be 100kg. And dead, but this is a thought experiment.

When you’ve got multiple gravitational fields to think about, knowing the mass of an object makes your life way easier. Even in the US, physicists use metric for this very reason.

How did I do for simplicity?

Politics and the exploitation of tribalism.

Dems say it’s the trump deregulation. GOPers say Biden signed off on the unions being forced to take the agreement. Both are true, both are a partial picture of a longer trend. Both parties knows their base will accept the talking points without looking into it or thinking deeply.

Tribalism is how the GOP campaigned on “look at the money coming to our district from the infrastructure bill” that not a single GOP legislator voted for. It’s how the GOP raised taxes on everyone but lowered them for the rich, but still have working class support. Because these tax increases only start hitting in 2023 (just in time for the 2024 presidential campaign), next year you’ll have republicans blaming Biden for the middle class tax hike.

Democrats like myself are not immune to this tribalism either, but it is different. While Trump could do no wrong with a certain crowd (until he tried to suggest people get vaccinated), I find most of democrats call BS on Biden all the time. But, almost no democrat can answer “name one thing Trump did that was good.” One good thing is he signed the First Step Act in 2018, which enacted some long overdue criminal justice reforms into law - wasn’t controversial, wasn’t shiny, doesn’t get the full job done, but he gets to take credit for it.

Anyhow. The point is, even if it’s a bipartisan problem all the discourse ignores the facts. People trust those “in” their tribe and mistrust the outsiders. Heck, we have a congressperson who remains uncensured for calling to dissolve the union a little over a week ago - that’s unheard of since the 1800s. The tribalism is too strong to even talk about that coherently across party lines.

Don’t forget most congresspeople are little shits who value power first, ideals second.

I think this argument can be settled via quantification of the effects of both things and what they prevented. I’ll zoom into Norfolk Southern specifically.

#Effect of 2018 deregulation. Part of the context is that this deregulation was done to “save American jobs” as part of a deregulatory package that saved businesses $160 billion during his presidency. The jury is still out on layoffs, but thanks to the rail workers’ unions we do know numbers in that industry already. It’s somewhat clear though, this saved money but not jobs. It didn’t even lower prices for buyers. Richer rich, poorer poor. In my opinion this is both causal and revealing to a solution. -industry broadly adopted in 2019 Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). This in turn caused the effects below

• While having record profits, NS laid off 3,500 rail workers in 2019 and failed to upgrade its systems (20,000 rail workers laid off nationwide).
• They went to 60 seconds per cart inspections on much longer train length (now up to 3 miles), making inspections more of a sham
• brake systems were not required to be upgraded and worked sequentially on much longer trains
• tracks were not evaluated for their ability to handle such train lengths
• when Biden attempted to re-apply some regulations during his first year, rail had to keep operating but claimed they couldn’t hire qualified people (and are not broadly required, by government, to take on paid apprentices that they train on the job - some unions do require this, but it doesn’t help you hire 20,000 people)

#Effect of union busting Part of the context is how fed up the nation has been with covid supply chain issues. This is not an effect. From computer parts to toilet paper, it’s been 2 years of nonstop disruption to the transportation of goods. Whether or not congresspeople are industry shills, I know this fact brought chills down the spines of politicians, especially right before the Christmas holidays, when online shopping has grown exponentially. This, in my opinion, is both causal and revealing to a solution.

• Safety standards were not increased for train systems, PSR was not limited nor banned, the ability to stop the presses on a negative inspection finding remains limited, because scheduling tolerances are so tight and profits > safety
• reasonable standards of health and safety were not set for personnel nor train inspections. A healthy person can’t consistently do a demanding job (inspect an entire train cart’s systems in 60 seconds) - now throw in a fever or congestion and it’s absolutely ridiculous
• disillusioned union workers. Biden’s a union guy he says. Even the union guy betrays the union.

#Effects of other government decisions or inaction We look to blame one side. One party. Blame is on

• Vinyl Chloride should’ve been a properly classified hazmat decades ago. The fact it wasn’t in a car that more appropriately designed to handle flammable, toxic materials is the result of decades of EPA inaction and lobbying from two industries (not just rail!). We regulate after the bad thing happens even if academics have been sounding the alarm for decades. This is the case with vinyl chloride - every government since and including Reagan is complicit. Why aren’t the media asking or exposing “which other materials are being overlooked by the EPA?”
• civil war era tech on trains are not a new thing. Lengthening trains past civil era capabilities and carrying materials that were dreamt of yet without requiring these systems be upgraded is the new thing. We’ve been transporting materials that were not conceived of in that era - from fossil fuels at scale to modern manufacturing chemicals, but somehow for, what, the entire post WWII era, nobody did anything about it. Relying on that era’s tech is foolhardy. This shows either or both the dangers of lobbying and the limits of governmental knowledge.
• we allow self-policing of for profit companies. This was a disaster for Boeing and their customers not long ago, and for the financial industry broadly in 2007/8. Still, industry pushes for it and government keeps allowing it. Industry has a conflict of interest - even the Romans asked “qui custodiet ipsos custodes” (who watches the watchmen), so you can’t pretend it’s a new concept that this model will always fail.

#Possible solutions

• regulate for safety and dismantle self inspection mechanisms.
• Regulatory changes through executive action that can’t be reversed due to hiring constraints must require the hiring of paid apprentices. Industry can’t get a free pass on “oops, I went strong on the layoffs”
• “this deregulation will create jobs” and leads to layoffs should get someone in trouble. Financial penalty, fraud charges, something. How is lying to the public broadly not a crime
• unions need a voice in Congress as powerful as lobbies. They represent the interest of all Americans who are not rich. The people who live in towns like East Palestine and thousands of communities like it, the working class. The money of lobbies means this isn’t so today, but unions have the know-how.
• it’s about darned time we regulate life and safety jobs broadly. Everyone deemed essential workers during the pandemic (yes, including all grocery staff, EMTs, and many more) deserve paid time off, health benefits, and pay that goes with how they keep the rest of us a life, come rain or come shine

Stop the “it’s Biden’s fault” and “it’s Trump’s fault” - I think I showed it’s both their fault, and Reagan’s, even Jimmy Carter and Nixon’s fault. My life and yours are not a sport for partisan politics and rabid fanaticism. We’re never going to fix this shit if we think all our problems started in the past 5 years.

• we need an educated, engaged population that votes the shills out. Corporations should be able to make A profit, but people need to be able to make a living and breathe clean air in their homes too.
• Unions have the know how of what’s actually good and safe at the ground level. Lobbies only know what’s good for the rich. Lobbies are the death of the working class, for profit.

Almost 9. 8 more is not the same as 8 times (any humor aside, this is part of why communication is a critical skill in an analyst’s skill set - showing the right data and meaning to present the right conclusions doesn’t mean anything if the reader cannot interpret it properly)

Damn. Mexican men live almost as many times as cats I guess.

Pretty sure I’ll only die once myself… but who knows, if I do die almost 9 times, that might be interesting… and traumatizing

Joking aside, I know OP just missed two bits in their title, “at a rate” and “higher”

En español, dijiste los hombres mueren casi ocho veces más que las mujeres en vez de decir que la tasa de defunción es casi ocho veces más alta y me dio risa