What plane crashes teach us about (mis)communication

🍎 Today is the 48th anniversary of the release of the first Apple computer. It was only a motherboard — customers had to bring their own keyboards and displays.
Today: Developing for Apple Vision Pro, childfree weddings, and cold emails. Written by Harris Sockel.

I’m flying next week, and even though the odds of a plane crash are extremely remote (about 1 in 816 million, making it vastly safer than driving), I can’t stop thinking about them. I’m equally fascinated and terrified: With all of our safety measures, how do these tragedies happen?

To answer that question, I turn to Admiral Cloudberg, aka Kyra Dempsey, whose impeccably researched deep dives into plane crashes contain wisdom about crisis communication, leadership, and aviation. A few examples:

• Here’s Dempsey’s 15,000-word analysis of 2020’s devastating Pakistan International Airlines flight 8303 disaster. Root cause, according to Dempsey’s research: PIA is a government-run airline rife with corruption. It chooses pilots based more on political patronage than competence.
• Regarding the mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 (which disappeared 10 years ago last month), Dempsey concludes the plane may have been hijacked by its pilot, writing “Sherlock Holmes was right: Once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

And here’s one that struck me most: the 1960 collision of two commercial jets above New York City, one of which crashed into a quiet residential street in Brooklyn, two doors down from where I lived during the pandemic. A series of minor miscommunications — along with an unintuitive UI — perpetuated the disaster. One pilot didn’t admit he was confused about his plane’s location until too late.

Plane crashes are tragic, but understanding their causes can help us process the tragedy and prevent similar disasters in the future. Many of these tragedies inspired aviation reforms we take for granted today. (The 1960 crash, for example, led to a law requiring that every aircraft contain distance measuring equipment.) “Like all the most significant laws of the sky,” Dempsey concludes, “they were brought about by humans, as a result of tragedy, in order to fulfill our altruistic hope that such horror may not be repeated.”

What else we’re reading

• There are still relatively few apps designed for Apple Vision Pro (just over 1,000, compared to the nearly 2 million iPhone apps), and the UI conventions are still in flux. How do you delete an object in 3D virtual space? Blow it up? It’s a question Bruno Oliveira and his team tackled while building a new app that lets you play with whimsical plants and animals. They opted for a fun solution: “drag a thing under the floor, then it will turn red and explode in a cloud of dust.”
• Kerala Taylor rails against the “childless wedding” trend: “This whole notion that adults can’t have a ‘good time’ if children are present — this is what makes me so sad. We live in a society that compartmentalizes fun.” Go party with your kids!
• I’m not totally sure how best to contextualize this mind-bending deep cut from the archive, but it is truly beyond. Life-changing. Perhaps this comment says everything you need to know: “Whatever drugs you were on when you wrote this, I want some.”

Your daily dose of practical wisdom: about cold emails

Send a “thank you” or an “I notice you” email to someone you don’t know and see what happens.

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