14 ms·

The Canary

218 points by ebcode 2y ago

jdboyd 2y ago
The title doesn't do this justice. This is about how in 2016, there were no roof fall deaths in US coal mines for the first time ever and the career and life of a federal employee who played a large part in that accomplishment.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Too bad the workers are still covered in black dust inside and out
K0balt 2y ago
Interesting article. Had to read it, trying to figure out why coal miners were in danger of falling off of roofs lol.
dangsux 2y ago
[dead]
Terr_ 2y ago
> Basically no one came forward on their own: Civil servants appeared to lack the ability to be recognized. [...] Even their nominations feel modest. Never I did this, but we did this. Never look at me, but look at this work! Now I wonder if I should've looked at a career in government. Something to keep in mind the next time I find that I've somehow become the surviving "maintenance" developer on a project. Lots of material here, but the two main points I see about stopping mine collapses boil down to: 1. Make mining companies actually install a safe amount of roof-bolts, rather using the new technique in a half-assed way that saves them some money while staying just as deadly as the old way. 2. Stop mining companies from substituting their own unsafe models to justify mining-away columns that are are important for keeping everything up. _____ > In 2016 — the first year in recorded history that zero underground coal miners were killed by falling roofs — Chris landed in a public spat. He’d seen an article by an economic historian about the history of roof bolts in the journal of Technology and Culture. > The historian wanted to argue that roof bolts had taken 20 years to reduce fatality rates because it had taken 20 years for the coal mining industry to learn to use them. All by itself, the market had solved this worker safety problem! The government’s role, in his telling, was as a kind of gentle helpmate of industry. “It was kind of amazing,” said Chris. “What actually happened was the regulators were finally empowered to regulate. Regulators needed to be able to enforce. He elevated the role of technology. He minimized the role of regulators.”
- lubujackson 2y ago
  The biggest overarching point (that I found most interesting) was the shift in problem space from an "engineering problem" to a "statistics problem" since there were far too many unknowns to solve effectively with engineering principles alone.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
It's an interesting story, but I did wonder how much the transition to mountain top removal of coal and away from deep mines contributed. As the text makes clear the industry was mostly motivated by the cost of roof falls, not the deaths and injuries they caused. Random AI quote from Google Search: > Surface mining is more cost-effective than underground mining, and accounts for over 60% of coal production in the US.
- pm215 2y ago
  The industry was motivated by costs, but the government regulation was motivated by deaths and injuries. And the graph in the article certainly rather suggests that when the government regulated that's when the number of deaths fell...
  - boxed 2y ago
    There was a pretty sharp drop before too.
    - snowflakeandrey 2y ago
      I wonder if that's because as regulation is considered and debated, industry incentives start to align as they attempt to show they're "regulating themselves just fine".
      - boxed 2y ago
        Could be. Could also be partly due to the general decline of the coal industry.
- jessriedel 2y ago
  The deaths themselves are costly to the org, both because of insurance and because it's terrible for morale.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  Do you mean contributed in a negative way, because subsurface mining had to compete on cost with strip mines? From the article it appears to me that the mines still stayed somewhat viable despite the added safety, and were mainly lacking a mechanism (=> the regulator) to have everyone prioritize worker safety sufficiently at first...
Stratoscope 2y ago
This is quite an amazing and touching story. A must-read. I think the original title is better than the submitted one: The Canary
myrmidon 2y ago
Excellent article. It is only mentioned in passing, but being 60 years ahead of schedule and 30 billion dollars under projected costs is such a boss move. Having stories like these better represented in media would help a lot in preventing general apathy and disillusion toward politics/government-- it might even help channel slight patriotism in a very positive way (toward improving infrastructure/society). In western nations, we have reduced nationalism (and national pride in general) by a LOT for the last generations (especially on the left side of the political spectrum), and I do believe that there is a significant hidden price to pay for this (as society and country).
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  > toward improving infrastructure/society Having moved someplace where the general attitude seems to me* to be "we don't have a wrong side of the tracks, we're not barbarians after all" I'll vouch that being surrounded by this variety of patriotism is indeed pleasant. * the indigenous view things differently: my wife (who has wild stories about her youth like being in the same city during the mass shooting) and I were going to an art opening run by the olympic organisation in our capital city, and directly in front of the venue she asked "can we park here? it's such a sketchy neighbourhood"; I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her while yelling "WTF? sketchy? I've been broken down in NWA-era Compton, and this here reads to me as like, maybe, lower middle class?" Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREf9SXfHBI&t=13s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREf9SXfHBI&t=13s
  - defrost 2y ago
    Seems pretty wholesome and folksy: https://youtu.be/K6D5xpCgETk?t=16 https://youtu.be/K6D5xpCgETk?t=16
  - immibis 2y ago
    I get the opposite impression in Berlin. Nothing that's as dangerous as people seem to think happens actually happens. I happened to be hanging around sn area where some anarchist activists set on fire on New Year's Eve a few years ago... in the middle of the closed off road far away from other flammable objects, which the fire department only got to once it was already dying down. Yet the reporting and public perception of that event was as if the whole block burned down and you cannot ever go in that area or you will be arsonized. Police presence was ramped up at all following NYEs and fireworks were banned in that particular area, enforced with a police cordon, as if that was supposed to achieve anything. (There were illegal fireworks there anyway)
throwpoaster 2y ago
“And what I took away from that was that I should be able to make my own decisions about right and wrong, and whatever anyone else thinks doesn’t matter.” A disturbing statement from a civil servant. Glad it all worked out in the end.
- GavinMcG 2y ago
  Very disturbing to have civil servants who were once children with underdeveloped sensibilities.
motohagiography 2y ago
these public service awards should be bigger than the oscars. I take a lot of shots at govt because I've seen it from the inside and seen some of the low things the people in it do, but sometimes the other ones solve incredible coordination problems like the ones described. the way for it to succeed is for projects and people involved to have shorter exits, as professionalizing public service accumulates a lot of dead wood that becomes indifferent to any given mission and success becomes the exception. the current military is a bad example of a bureaucracy, but the idea of a short duration national service would create talent pipelines and mission focus, along with national cohesion.
- nxobject 2y ago
  I imagine this is why in certain fields with a regulatory structure people pop in and out of industry - money, sadly, is that recognition, although it is recognition in the end.
  - motohagiography 2y ago
    one of the best teams I've worked on was in public service with other consultants who were extremely mission focused. what made it successful was the team related the way special operations relate to regular forces. I'd bet if you went down the list of Sammy nominees, or looked at most accomplishments in public service, they were done by people who succeeded outside the mainline org reporting. if you look at the way the military uses special forces to achieve objectives, there is probably an analogous model in public service. to some extent it's done in consulting, but there is so much partisan bloat and low-level fiefdom in it that there isn't a coherent operating model. the 18F program that became the US Digital Service was a task force that had huge impact. there are certain whitehouse initiatives around cybersecurity that worked in a similar way. maybe the opportunity is to create a special operations doctrine for public services, where it codifies how there's a specific way to use that kind of initiative and talent, and when not to.
Lme 2y ago
[flagged]
Lme 2y ago
[flagged]
nxobject 2y ago
I had brief stints in state and county government doing policy work, and I remember a piece of advice for how you want to do work like Marks': you want to be high enough in goverment that you can make an impact, work with interesting problems in the real world – but not high enough that you get affected by regular changes in elected leadership, with eventually reverberate down the hierarchy. But in public service the compensation for doing good work is really just the ability to do more of that work, without being bothered too much about having to accumulate a fat CV (either in academia or industry). I'm glad he found his niche, and managed to survive so many administrative rehousings.
zavec 2y ago
Among all the other great things, I found the bit about how cathedrals were built by trial and error really interesting. It had never occurred to me that operating on that timescale you could make changes from one bay to the next based on how the first one was reacting.
thushan 2y ago
This piece is beautiful. I hope it gives you the tingles, and color on the people doing the hard work. Michael Lewis knows how to spot colorful characters and frame a thesis of a bigger idea around them. But there's lots of people like this in government, finding ways to nudges to be a "more perfect" version of our country — often exhaustingly facing headwinds to do so. I'm an acquired YC founder (S11 → Launchpad Toys → Google → Led early LLM efforts there), now serving in federal government at the U.S. Digital Service. It's the White House's technology arm where we bring people from technology and industry for 2 year "tours of duty" and help to modernize our systems and make our digital experiences better (Fixing Healthcare.gov, and recently shipping IRS Direct File are some of success stories). Your country could use you. We need experienced technologists across eng/product/design/business – people like YC founders and HN readers here. Consider taking a look: USDS.gov
- tjridesbikes 2y ago
  I've taken an honest look at USDS, but I decided I couldn't afford to work for them, even though I would love to. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US, and salaries + total comp form USDS are far lower than what I'm earning now, even at a (well-funded, non-ai) non-profit. I'd have to start at salary grade 15, the highest one, to even begin approaching what I earn now. I'm not even living a life of tech-bro luxury. I've got a mortgage, bills to pay, retirement to save for, groceries, transportation, etc that take a significant plurality of my take-home pay. Sure, my standard of living is a bit higher than average (I have a penchant for expensive bicycles...), but that doesn't add up to the pay cut I'd have to take to work at any salary grade besides the literal highest one. I would adore working for the government on technology. I work at a non-profit for its social impact, and I can't see myself working in ads, ai, finance, or other place that doesn't contribute to the social good. I wouldn't expect to be paid at FAANG/MAMAA/whatever levels, but something competitive with what I see private companies offering would get me to sign up in (almost) an instant. Maybe I'm missing something?
  - shawndrost 2y ago
    Government jobs have a fixed pay grade that isn't changing. It doesn't afford an upper-middle-class life in an expensive city. You may find yourself wanting both, but you can't have them. If you already get that, you're not missing anything! If you have a deeper question about why the US government chooses this outcome, here is the answer: It is ideologically closer to Mondrian than to other US corporations. This ideology makes it hard to hire for certain higher-wage skills; they have to find workers who will accept a pay cut. (Mondrian's maximum wage ratio -- the wage of the CEO divided by the lowest-paid worker -- is six. Private sector CEOs might get 10x more than Mondrian's CEO; Mondrian's CEO makes ideologically-motivated sacrifices. Something similar is happening for high-skill devs at Mondrian and the USG.) To some degree this ideology is thrust upon the largest entities whose workforces tend to unionize and lobby for similar outcomes; to some degree it is an emergent outcome of principled and political choices by legislators and executives. Go USG! Such an inspiring organization. I can understand why people are cynical -- it's too much to understand; anything big has lots of ugliness; much of the Rep party has been ideologically opposed to Mondrian; etc -- but I just think it's so beautiful.
macrael 2y ago
Very cool story. The technical bit at the heart of it, that Mark applied stats to determine the safe amount of column supports for ceilings rather than relying on various engineering calculations based on physics that all disagreed, is great. And it's wild that he had the data to collect those stats because of regulators requiring reporting on it, but that that data had sat around un-used for decades waiting for someone to actually turn it into safety.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Lewis slipped in the fact that this was similar to the situation in baseball. On which he's also written a book.
mud_dauber 2y ago
I lost an uncle to black lung in a WV underground mine. One grandfather lost an eye (explosion), the other broke his back. I’m happy for Chris’s dedication - but this industry needs to die.
seanc 2y ago
Michael Lewis' book "The Fifth Risk" has other stories of exceptional public servants, and a very insightful commentary on public service in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

218 points by ebcode 2y ago

The title doesn't do this justice. This is about how in 2016, there were no roof fall deaths in US coal mines for the first time ever and the career and life of a federal employee who played a large part in that accomplishment.

kjkjadksj 2y ago

Too bad the workers are still covered in black dust inside and out

K0balt 2y ago

Interesting article. Had to read it, trying to figure out why coal miners were in danger of falling off of roofs lol.

dangsux 2y ago

[dead]

Terr_ 2y ago

> Basically no one came forward on their own: Civil servants appeared to lack the ability to be recognized. [...] Even their nominations feel modest. Never I did this, but we did this. Never look at me, but look at this work! Now I wonder if I should've looked at a career in government. Something to keep in mind the next time I find that I've somehow become the surviving "maintenance" developer on a project. Lots of material here, but the two main points I see about stopping mine collapses boil down to: 1. Make mining companies actually install a safe amount of roof-bolts, rather using the new technique in a half-assed way that saves them some money while staying just as deadly as the old way. 2. Stop mining companies from substituting their own unsafe models to justify mining-away columns that are are important for keeping everything up. _____ > In 2016 — the first year in recorded history that zero underground coal miners were killed by falling roofs — Chris landed in a public spat. He’d seen an article by an economic historian about the history of roof bolts in the journal of Technology and Culture. > The historian wanted to argue that roof bolts had taken 20 years to reduce fatality rates because it had taken 20 years for the coal mining industry to learn to use them. All by itself, the market had solved this worker safety problem! The government’s role, in his telling, was as a kind of gentle helpmate of industry. “It was kind of amazing,” said Chris. “What actually happened was the regulators were finally empowered to regulate. Regulators needed to be able to enforce. He elevated the role of technology. He minimized the role of regulators.”

lubujackson 2y ago
The biggest overarching point (that I found most interesting) was the shift in problem space from an "engineering problem" to a "statistics problem" since there were far too many unknowns to solve effectively with engineering principles alone.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

It's an interesting story, but I did wonder how much the transition to mountain top removal of coal and away from deep mines contributed. As the text makes clear the industry was mostly motivated by the cost of roof falls, not the deaths and injuries they caused. Random AI quote from Google Search: > Surface mining is more cost-effective than underground mining, and accounts for over 60% of coal production in the US.

pm215 2y ago
The industry was motivated by costs, but the government regulation was motivated by deaths and injuries. And the graph in the article certainly rather suggests that when the government regulated that's when the number of deaths fell...
- boxed 2y ago
  There was a pretty sharp drop before too.
  - snowflakeandrey 2y ago
    I wonder if that's because as regulation is considered and debated, industry incentives start to align as they attempt to show they're "regulating themselves just fine".
    - boxed 2y ago
      Could be. Could also be partly due to the general decline of the coal industry.
jessriedel 2y ago
The deaths themselves are costly to the org, both because of insurance and because it's terrible for morale.
myrmidon 2y ago
Do you mean contributed in a negative way, because subsurface mining had to compete on cost with strip mines? From the article it appears to me that the mines still stayed somewhat viable despite the added safety, and were mainly lacking a mechanism (=> the regulator) to have everyone prioritize worker safety sufficiently at first...

Stratoscope 2y ago

This is quite an amazing and touching story. A must-read. I think the original title is better than the submitted one: The Canary

myrmidon 2y ago

Excellent article. It is only mentioned in passing, but being 60 years ahead of schedule and 30 billion dollars under projected costs is such a boss move. Having stories like these better represented in media would help a lot in preventing general apathy and disillusion toward politics/government-- it might even help channel slight patriotism in a very positive way (toward improving infrastructure/society). In western nations, we have reduced nationalism (and national pride in general) by a LOT for the last generations (especially on the left side of the political spectrum), and I do believe that there is a significant hidden price to pay for this (as society and country).

082349872349872 2y ago
> toward improving infrastructure/society Having moved someplace where the general attitude seems to me* to be "we don't have a wrong side of the tracks, we're not barbarians after all" I'll vouch that being surrounded by this variety of patriotism is indeed pleasant. * the indigenous view things differently: my wife (who has wild stories about her youth like being in the same city during the mass shooting) and I were going to an art opening run by the olympic organisation in our capital city, and directly in front of the venue she asked "can we park here? it's such a sketchy neighbourhood"; I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her while yelling "WTF? sketchy? I've been broken down in NWA-era Compton, and this here reads to me as like, maybe, lower middle class?" Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREf9SXfHBI&t=13s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREf9SXfHBI&t=13s
- defrost 2y ago
  Seems pretty wholesome and folksy: https://youtu.be/K6D5xpCgETk?t=16 https://youtu.be/K6D5xpCgETk?t=16
- immibis 2y ago
  I get the opposite impression in Berlin. Nothing that's as dangerous as people seem to think happens actually happens. I happened to be hanging around sn area where some anarchist activists set on fire on New Year's Eve a few years ago... in the middle of the closed off road far away from other flammable objects, which the fire department only got to once it was already dying down. Yet the reporting and public perception of that event was as if the whole block burned down and you cannot ever go in that area or you will be arsonized. Police presence was ramped up at all following NYEs and fireworks were banned in that particular area, enforced with a police cordon, as if that was supposed to achieve anything. (There were illegal fireworks there anyway)

throwpoaster 2y ago

“And what I took away from that was that I should be able to make my own decisions about right and wrong, and whatever anyone else thinks doesn’t matter.” A disturbing statement from a civil servant. Glad it all worked out in the end.

GavinMcG 2y ago
Very disturbing to have civil servants who were once children with underdeveloped sensibilities.

motohagiography 2y ago

these public service awards should be bigger than the oscars. I take a lot of shots at govt because I've seen it from the inside and seen some of the low things the people in it do, but sometimes the other ones solve incredible coordination problems like the ones described. the way for it to succeed is for projects and people involved to have shorter exits, as professionalizing public service accumulates a lot of dead wood that becomes indifferent to any given mission and success becomes the exception. the current military is a bad example of a bureaucracy, but the idea of a short duration national service would create talent pipelines and mission focus, along with national cohesion.

nxobject 2y ago
I imagine this is why in certain fields with a regulatory structure people pop in and out of industry - money, sadly, is that recognition, although it is recognition in the end.
- motohagiography 2y ago
  one of the best teams I've worked on was in public service with other consultants who were extremely mission focused. what made it successful was the team related the way special operations relate to regular forces. I'd bet if you went down the list of Sammy nominees, or looked at most accomplishments in public service, they were done by people who succeeded outside the mainline org reporting. if you look at the way the military uses special forces to achieve objectives, there is probably an analogous model in public service. to some extent it's done in consulting, but there is so much partisan bloat and low-level fiefdom in it that there isn't a coherent operating model. the 18F program that became the US Digital Service was a task force that had huge impact. there are certain whitehouse initiatives around cybersecurity that worked in a similar way. maybe the opportunity is to create a special operations doctrine for public services, where it codifies how there's a specific way to use that kind of initiative and talent, and when not to.

Lme 2y ago

[flagged]

Lme 2y ago

[flagged]

nxobject 2y ago

I had brief stints in state and county government doing policy work, and I remember a piece of advice for how you want to do work like Marks': you want to be high enough in goverment that you can make an impact, work with interesting problems in the real world – but not high enough that you get affected by regular changes in elected leadership, with eventually reverberate down the hierarchy. But in public service the compensation for doing good work is really just the ability to do more of that work, without being bothered too much about having to accumulate a fat CV (either in academia or industry). I'm glad he found his niche, and managed to survive so many administrative rehousings.

zavec 2y ago

Among all the other great things, I found the bit about how cathedrals were built by trial and error really interesting. It had never occurred to me that operating on that timescale you could make changes from one bay to the next based on how the first one was reacting.

thushan 2y ago

This piece is beautiful. I hope it gives you the tingles, and color on the people doing the hard work. Michael Lewis knows how to spot colorful characters and frame a thesis of a bigger idea around them. But there's lots of people like this in government, finding ways to nudges to be a "more perfect" version of our country — often exhaustingly facing headwinds to do so. I'm an acquired YC founder (S11 → Launchpad Toys → Google → Led early LLM efforts there), now serving in federal government at the U.S. Digital Service. It's the White House's technology arm where we bring people from technology and industry for 2 year "tours of duty" and help to modernize our systems and make our digital experiences better (Fixing Healthcare.gov, and recently shipping IRS Direct File are some of success stories). Your country could use you. We need experienced technologists across eng/product/design/business – people like YC founders and HN readers here. Consider taking a look: USDS.gov

tjridesbikes 2y ago
I've taken an honest look at USDS, but I decided I couldn't afford to work for them, even though I would love to. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US, and salaries + total comp form USDS are far lower than what I'm earning now, even at a (well-funded, non-ai) non-profit. I'd have to start at salary grade 15, the highest one, to even begin approaching what I earn now. I'm not even living a life of tech-bro luxury. I've got a mortgage, bills to pay, retirement to save for, groceries, transportation, etc that take a significant plurality of my take-home pay. Sure, my standard of living is a bit higher than average (I have a penchant for expensive bicycles...), but that doesn't add up to the pay cut I'd have to take to work at any salary grade besides the literal highest one. I would adore working for the government on technology. I work at a non-profit for its social impact, and I can't see myself working in ads, ai, finance, or other place that doesn't contribute to the social good. I wouldn't expect to be paid at FAANG/MAMAA/whatever levels, but something competitive with what I see private companies offering would get me to sign up in (almost) an instant. Maybe I'm missing something?
- shawndrost 2y ago
  Government jobs have a fixed pay grade that isn't changing. It doesn't afford an upper-middle-class life in an expensive city. You may find yourself wanting both, but you can't have them. If you already get that, you're not missing anything! If you have a deeper question about why the US government chooses this outcome, here is the answer: It is ideologically closer to Mondrian than to other US corporations. This ideology makes it hard to hire for certain higher-wage skills; they have to find workers who will accept a pay cut. (Mondrian's maximum wage ratio -- the wage of the CEO divided by the lowest-paid worker -- is six. Private sector CEOs might get 10x more than Mondrian's CEO; Mondrian's CEO makes ideologically-motivated sacrifices. Something similar is happening for high-skill devs at Mondrian and the USG.) To some degree this ideology is thrust upon the largest entities whose workforces tend to unionize and lobby for similar outcomes; to some degree it is an emergent outcome of principled and political choices by legislators and executives. Go USG! Such an inspiring organization. I can understand why people are cynical -- it's too much to understand; anything big has lots of ugliness; much of the Rep party has been ideologically opposed to Mondrian; etc -- but I just think it's so beautiful.

macrael 2y ago

Very cool story. The technical bit at the heart of it, that Mark applied stats to determine the safe amount of column supports for ceilings rather than relying on various engineering calculations based on physics that all disagreed, is great. And it's wild that he had the data to collect those stats because of regulators requiring reporting on it, but that that data had sat around un-used for decades waiting for someone to actually turn it into safety.

dredmorbius 2y ago
Lewis slipped in the fact that this was similar to the situation in baseball. On which he's also written a book.

mud_dauber 2y ago

I lost an uncle to black lung in a WV underground mine. One grandfather lost an eye (explosion), the other broke his back. I’m happy for Chris’s dedication - but this industry needs to die.

seanc 2y ago

Michael Lewis' book "The Fifth Risk" has other stories of exceptional public servants, and a very insightful commentary on public service in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk