Improbable events occur in real life. We all know they do. One of our sons met his wife in Georgetown pub where they’d both taken refuge from a violent downpour. There was no other possible point of contact, no mutual acquaintances, no job interrelation, and neither frequented such establishments or Georgetown. It just happened to be the closest refuge. They’ve been married more than twenty years.

Everyday life is filled with improbabilities – or seeming improbabilities, and such improbabilities often aren’t life-threatening or world-saving. By the same token, at times the seeming improbabilities are only improbable to those who aren’t aware of the situation.

The fact that Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landed a powerless Airbus A320 in the Hudson River in 2009 with no fatalities and only a few minor injuries seems improbable at first sight. But the real improbability wasn’t that Sullenberger made the landing. He was a former fighter pilot who had been an airline pilot since leaving the United States Air Force in 1980, who had logged 19,663 total flight hours, including 4,765 in an A320. He was also a glider pilot and expert on aviation safety.

The improbability was that he was in command when the aircraft suffered a massive bird-strike that took out both engines simultaneously. In fiction, that kind of improbability, where only the protagonist has the skills to pull off the seeming impossibility, is often hard for readers and editors to swallow.

One way to deal with it is to point out that many senior pilots have those skills, and that’s one of the reasons why they’re in command. That turns the situation into a “best of the best,” rather than “the only one who could.” It’s also based on the fact that there’s a system for developing such pilots and their skills.

As many of my readers can likely point out, I tend to feature protagonists who take a long time developing skills, if sometimes improbable ones. And once in a while, such as with Natural Ordermage, I show just how much trouble someone can get into by ignoring schooling and systems.

It’s not that you can’t present the improbable, but that you have to learn how to present the improbable so that it doesn’t seem impossible.

Corporations have been in the news for the wrong reasons for some time, but more often recently, it seems, between Boeing, Tesla, United Healthcare, PG&E, and more than a few others.

In almost all cases, the “troubles” they face/faced resulted from the excessive pursuit of profit, “excessive” being defined as profits gained at the expenses and/or deaths foisted off on others.

In the case of United Healthcare, profits were boosted by denying coverage/claims at roughly twice the rate of any other health insurer – and other health insurance executives were outraged at the assassination of Brian Thompson, with apparently no real understanding of public perception of the health insurance industry.

Boeing tried to shortcut development procedures and effectively lied to the FAA about the changes in the flight control systems for the 737 Max.

And for too many corporations, pursuit of profit with no regard for life appears to be an endemic way of life, as exemplified by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).

In the past, I’ve mentioned the sins of PG&E, which are considerable. From what I can discover and extract from various accounts, by 2018, PG&E was legally responsible for over $30 billion in damages caused by fires created by various equipment failures, which pushed PG&E into filing for bankruptcy. But more PG&E-caused fires followed, including the Kinkaid Fire and the Camp Fire, which was the largest fire in California history, burning 18,000 structures and 153,336 acres, killing at least 85 people, displacing 50,000, and resulting in over $16 billion in damages, bringing the total damages owed by PG&E to nearly $50 billion. PG&E also faced over 500 counts of criminal involuntary manslaughter.

Needless to say, PG&E filed for bankruptcy, and the CEO resigned in 2019. But in March 2020, PG&E asked a federal court to approve $454 million in executive bonuses just days after asking another federal judge, who was overseeing PG&E’s criminal probation related to the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion) not to force the utility to hire more tree trimmers. And in January 2020, PG&E transferred $100 million from its safety budget to partly fund the executive bonuses.

PG&E only paid $13.5 billion out of roughly $50 billion in damages and raised some of those funds by increasing the permanent monthly rate base of each of its 5.6 million customers by $5, and as part of the settlement, all charges of involuntary manslaughter were dropped.

A last footnote: In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy offered PG&E a $15 billion loan, to “expand hydropower generation and battery storage, upgrade transmission capacity through reconductoring and grid enhancing technologies, and enable virtual power plants throughout PG&E’s service area.”

In the past 10 years, typical CEO pay at S&P 500 companies increased by more than $4 million, to an average of $17.7 million in 2023. Meanwhile, the average U.S. worker saw a wage increase of 3% a year, $18,240 over the past decade, earning on average just $65,470 in 2023.

And what I’ve pointed out here is just the tip of the iceberg.

Trump has made no secret of the fact that he’s vindictive, and recent events continue to illustrate that, but they also suggest that he’s also biased and sexist.

In firing the Chief of Naval Operations (Admiral Lisa Franchetti), the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant (Admiral Linda Fagan) U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, Trump removed the most senior women in the U.S. Military. He also removed General C.Q. Brown, Jr. (who is black) as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Trump then fired General Tim Haugh, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, as well as Haugh’s civilian deputy, Wendy Noble.

The way matters are going, it appears likely that all will be replaced by white males.

Trump has also renewed his attacks on Chris Krebs, former Director of the government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), because Krebs had the temerity to say that the 2020 election was fair and free and not stolen. Trump’s latest attack on Krebs consists of removing his security clearance – as well as the clearances of all the employees at SentinelOne, where Krebs is now the CIO — and then issuing an executive order launching an investigation of Krebs.

This follows Trump’s removal of Secret Service protection for Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, former high officials in his first term, for being insufficiently supportive of him, i.e., failing to applaud his every move.

Yet Trumpists follow their Fuhrer like sheep, seemingly unaware that sheep always get shorn or slaughtered.