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In terms of measurable outcome, what does "catastrophic" mean? At some point, language about everything has transformed into having zero dynamic range. Everything is either a disaster or nothing.

And considering high rises by the sea side, scooters on sidewalks, and bike lanes are all "catastrophic". It would be useful to get a scale here that is continuous non-binary-value.

For instance, if it's as bad as the article's claim that the FAA's failed to hold a bilingual hearing, I'm not really that concerned. Lack of bilingual hearings don't rise to the level of disaster, by my reckoning.



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That sounds pretty catastrophic to me.

The impact can be catastrophic.

That's literally the definition of an catastrophic event

This seems like an exaggeration. What are the resulting catastrophe?

You mean truly catastrophic if it was codebook?

I don't agree with this article. Level 7 on the INES scale indicates "health and environmental effects." The scariest part of this event was the potential extent of the disaster. But reality got in the way again, and thankfully the worst case scenario hasn't come to be.

I got an e-mail from someone right after the tsunami. He summed up the whole situation in one word: "Terrible."


> catastrophic system failure

Those three words encompasses an awful lot of death and poverty.


Catastrophic, and also much more frequent!

Sounds like a disaster.

Yeah, a “catastrophe” for innocent people everywhere.

>It's a catastrophe, no doubt, but even catastrophes have levels. I'm betting the financial damage will be very, very, very bad and not very, very, very, very bad.

Where do you get "minor accident" from "very, very, very bad"? He is just saying that the liberal media is, as it usually does (ratings anyone?) exaggerating the situation. It doesn't help either that mass media types covering this kind of problem are usually the sorts that have orgasms from hugging trees.


...but it is a catastrophe, nonetheless.

Disaster, could you elaborate?

Disaster.

Disaster.

Like this is just a tier below 9/11 level of disaster... I'm sure we'll see an appropriate response.

It was a disaster by every other metric.

"disaster" and "actively harmful" are hyperbole. This is a helpful document for people who want to understand what development from first principles. If that doesn't describe the people you work with that's fine, but yours is the first comment people will currently see about this article so it matters.

What total disaster are you talking about?
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