Jetblue Flight Averts Mid-Air Collision with Us Air Force Jet
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A JetBlue flight narrowly avoided a mid-air collision with a US Air Force jet, sparking a discussion that veered off course - into a debate about the semantics of "country," "nation," and "state." Commenters weighed in on the status of Curacao, with some arguing it's a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, while others pointed out the nuances and complexities of these terms. As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that the interchangeable use of these words is a contentious issue, with some attributing it to increasing imprecision in language. The tangent discussion revealed the complexity of national identity, with examples like Canada and Belgium highlighting the differences between a nation-state and a state with multiple nationalities.
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Dec 15, 2025 at 5:48 PM EST
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It's the first time I hear someone calls Curaçao a "nation". It's just the normal Dutch island, not even some special status territory. Yes, it's in Carribean, but why do they omit "Dutch" and call it a "Carribean nation"?
That said, I don't think it's accurate to paint Curaçao as just another normal Dutch island the same as any other. It's really a constituent country that's part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it's just not a sovereign state or nation.
It is a 19th century term that rarely applies these days, but still sees some residual usage.
I’m not defending the morality of this classification scheme, just trying by to be accurate. It dates to the 19th century and is not with the times today, which is why I generally prefer to avoid the term myself.
Most people would consider the Netherlands a "country", but now we have a country within that country. Israel is a state, Japan is a state, but there are 50 states in the United States. "[People's] Republic of XYZ" generally refers to a sovereign state, but Russia has republics inside. You can't just call something what the locals call it and expect that your readers will get the picture. Even worse, people are often deeply divided as to what a given territory should be called.
So I will generally forgive journalists for picking a neutral-sounding, ambiguous word in cases like this. What matters here is that the Dutch control this airspace, regardless of Curaçao's status within their kingdom.
What "right" are you talking about, is there an agency where we file a claim it it issues us "rights"?
All people from all nations, tribes and states came from somewhere, sometimes even replacing the local population. Sometimes peacefully, like Anglo-Saxons pushed out local Britons in England, sometimes violently, like Normans invaded and conquered England.
Or like the rich and diverse American Indian history -- tribes came and went, sometimes replaced, pushed out, conquered or assimilated with previous peoples who lived there. Please define "right".
Nope, it's 4870 miles. I wouldn't call that zero.
The Battle of Chester has entered the chat.
No one ever "peacefully" pushes anyone else out of their homes.
It doesn't mean some kings declared that land their own (some declared everything), but they couldn't enforce it. So usually it boiled down to main argument whether something is "yours" -- collecting taxes (aka tribute). As long as someone's can enforce collecting tribute, then they deserve to have the title of "owning" it.
Btw, One of the ways historians determine whether migration was mostly peaceful is by looking at archeological gender structure -- if there's a lot of female immigrants (e.g. Slavic expansion), then they are more likely to be moving by whole families. But if there are few females -- more likely it was invasion (e.g. Huns). Not absolute signal of course, as nothing is in history.
They're still in the kingdom which means they're not completely on their own but nation is a good word.
2) Why aren't the military craft listening to the local flight channel? Aren't you supposed to monitor local traffic? Especially when flying without a transponder? It's not like you can't listen to multiple channels at the same time!
Also, ATC said they were making irregular turns.
"Police Action" came the terse reply. "We don't talk about that one."
Course by then I'd already signed on the dotted, so...
learning something new every day…
Maybe we could write on a legal pad and hold it up in the rear window as we pass them on the highway.
Not always about the right issues, but at least they have the spirit
Are they? Where does that come from?
It's unfair given the reality and importance of the French resistance, but, that's where it comes from.
Also are they in favor to replacing this dictator with another pro-Trump one?
Current US president have a weak spot for every dictator and authoritarian leader in the world: El Salvador, Russia, Hungary, etc.
Might be not the best candidate to deal with dictators...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi
That did not quite go according to plan either. Definitely not a dictatorship but not exactly clean and the end result is not so far off from where they started. Venezuela could easily end up worse than it is today.
Usually people who end up in power are ones best at shooting others invluding shooting civil politicians.
When your options are being poor, starved to death or dissapeared during the last 25 years, you take any chance for a change
2. Turn back the clock two decades ago, I'm sure plenty of Iraqis wanted Saddam out, but half a million dead and a ten-year civil war and also fucking ISIS may have been a bit above what they were willing to pay.
Over 77 million people voted against Trump.
About 73 million were not old enough to vote.
With the exception of people who have religious beliefs prohibiting voting, it’s saying that you don’t feel strongly enough about the differences between the two candidates to pick one. There are some people who can plead various hardships, but most people don’t have that excuse: it really did come down to thinking their life would be fine either way.
I strongly support national electoral vote reform but it’s important to remember that every election really does matter.
Why did Venezuela become what it is today? Every citizen is responsible for what their country turned into.
Ofcourse I do not expect anyone in the Venezuelan diaspora do any kind of introspection or soul-searching.
Venezuela was a beautiful South American Switzerland and it is all the fault of the evil Cubans.
I'm not saying the rest of the world is in the clear though. I think many countries are headed in a similar direction. Hopefully this is the wakeup call we all need to step up and arrest this slide into authoritarianism that's happening everywhere.
Do you know why?
We don't even elect Presidents based on getting a majority (or even plurality) of all voters who actually vote, though the method actually used usually (but not always) also happens to elect the person who does that.
That Trump is even near the reigns of power is obviously an indictment of many facets of American culture and politics, but it doesn't really wash out to every individual American bearing responsibility the way you're suggesting here.
And its hard to see the nuance from the outside when all you hear are threats of economic turmoil, death, destruction and war. Every action of the american government regarding my country has been hostile so far, so forgive me for loosing my patience with the american public. All that talk about "land of the free, home of the brave", but as soon as their government threatens the "free world" americans fold over like lawnchairs. Its incredibly dissapointing.
We're all stuck with some shared ownership for what our country does even if we detest it.
Many of his ardent supporters are confused as to what we’re doing in Venezuela right now and feel it’s the opposite of what they voted for.
You certainly don’t expect this level of surprises from someone’s second term, but the unprecedented path of his political career has certainly made it much different.
In America one guy can start wars.
I mean, evidently not.
Thanks
The whole "oh yes, our military is active, but we aren't at war, and yes, the president tweeted about that" spiel is just untenable and ridiculous.
That is why this administration is leaning heavily into calling the drug traffickers "narco-terrorists" and calling fentanyl their "weapon of mass destruction". They're covering their ass legally so they can go to war without congressional approval.
This is what they're using, the legal theory is basically tren de aragua cartel and their drugs is an "invasion" of the USA and is "sufficiently connected" to the Venezuelan government to trigger the Act's wartime powers.
You answered your own question here.
Military planes doing military things always fly with their transponder off. It would be suicide not to.
A transponder is how civilian planes tell exactly where they are relative to each other. Missiles use IR, radar-bounce, and other methods for the last-mile delivery of explode-y bits, but when launched from afar (e.g. a surface-to-air missile launched from land towards something over the horizon) they need to be pre-loaded with the exact position of the target, as they need to get close to it before switching to a homing mechanism. If the target has a radio transponder, that makes this step trivially easy.
If Venezuela wanted to shoot one of these planes down, with the transponder off the missile is as likely to lock on to a commercial airliner. They're not going to take that risk.
GPS Lat & Long Barometric Altitude Ground speed & track angle Rate of climb/descent
All updated every second or so.
Is that increase in precision much larger than the plane itself? If it's not then it couldn't possibly matter in this application.
Further radar is not a static image. The radar is constantly sweeping the sky, taking multiple measurements, and in some cases using filtering to avoid noise and jitter.
> GPS Lat & Long Barometric Altitude Ground speed & track angle Rate of climb/descent
You get or synthesize every one of those with radar as well.
Military radar is a different beast, but even then you're still trying to figure out what the returns mean. ADS-B explicitly says hey there are two aircraft in a tiny space. Civilian radar is likely not precise enough to identify two aircraft that close.
Although ADS-B is self reported and "vulnerable" to bad/spoofed info.
My CFI and I once saw ADS-B data from one of the startups near Palo Alto airport in California reporting supersonic speeds... at ground level, no less.
I expect a resignation letter from their CEO or the president is going to personally sue them for bazillion dollars for making him look bad
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