401–410 of 969 posts
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Not wearing a seat belt was also not a problem pre-1984.
Tell me about it. I got to lay on top of the families suitcases in the back of the station wagon on road trips. It’s so much easier to sleep like that.
And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station also don't matter. Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships. It ain't about safety from ill-intentioned people...it's about protecting the POTUS from having to give the order to open fire on an hijacked civilian plane. That's th…
Thank god. If I can get a train to go from A to B, I usually take the train. You can arrive at the train station 5 minutes before departure and make it to the train. It's just an overall more comfy experience, mostly thanks to the seamless process of getting on it, not having to worry about the water bottle in your backpack and arriving almost directly in the city center with just a few minutes to get off the train a…
No, but I am astounded by how you are writing off the 300 people on a train and the 4000 on a ship.
You'd be effectively trapped aboard with hijackers who'd not hesitate to off everybody .
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Aside from the interview, the government already has all the background check data in their databases already. It’s not like you’re applying for a security clearance where agents go around your friends, family and neighbors digging up undocumented dirt.
Do you know for a fact that your background screening does not now or will not ever include calling out to a social media extremist detection service? I'm not so confident.
Relatedly, I want someone to write a dark comedy set like 20 years hence where a bunch of airline execs, worried about their shrinking industry and some shiny new rail, band together to pay off some terrorist to blow up a moving train so train stations gets TSA security theater.
Without the movie, I worry due to some stupid accident the rail TSA might actually happen!
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To quibble: terrorism is using dramatic violence to achieve political ends. It just so happens that the victimized society often wants to increase security. The US had at least 3 major responses to 9/11: 1) seek revenge (invade Afghanistan, kill Bin Laden), 2) armor up (Dept. of Homeland Security), and 3) unify under nationalism (flags everywhere). It's pretty easy to imagine a timeline where some or none of those ha…
In the case of 9/11 the most likely motive was retaliation. If you could ask the terrorists, they would tell you that America terrorized them first (I'm not saying that's accurate).
The stated goal of the attacks was to show Americans that their continuous war and support for secular dictators in the Muslim world would come with high cost, and to force the American government to retreat from the Middle East.
This of course backfired spectacularly. Revenge is certainly a primary motivation, too, but I really don't think there is much room on the interpretation for the initial motivation because Al Qaeda was always very open and clear about it.
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> The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common.
> Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common. The media overreports on how radical these people are. There's very few. However if COVID restrictions keep pushing forward I think that may change. Many people are at their breaking point right now. I'm fully vaccinated and I've already decided I'm never going to wear a mask again and av…
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You think masks are petty symbolism? I think that kind of trolling just raises the temperature here, which I'd like to avoid, so no, please, do not go on.
Do we think security theater is symbolism? It has had some positives over the years just as masks have a huge positive health impact during COVID but on both sides of the issue, people treat it as a signal as well, no?
The US is the only place I think I've had to remove shoes for flight security in years. But in Europe taking off a belt is often required while in the US it is not. In Budapest they stopped having us remove laptops from bags a bit ago. My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.
Flying out of Philly Airport, the TSA yelled at everyone to take off their belt and shoes, shaking their head in disbelief at people that didn't know the rules, wasting everyone's time.
A few months later, same airport, new rules, now the TSA yelled at people taking off their belts and shoes because that's not a rule, shaking their head at people wasting everyone's time.
When you work at any job you tend toward assuming all people are as knowledgeable about the 'obvious' things, it is a tough skill to remain empathetic. I fly maybe 3 times a year. A security agent will process a few thousand people a shift. We are each bringing a different patience threshold to the interaction.