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20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

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Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#471

Post by jjeaff »

boldlybold wrote: post #442
hunterb123 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new thing is "think of grandma". Say delta variant enough and you can get anyone to give up anything. Post covid is like post 9/11. This is the new normal. Vaccine passports and all.

Funny how HN is so willing to agree with the absurdity of security theater at airports, yet so resistant to calling out the pandemic theater we're living every day.

I live in a pretty liberal area, so I assume we are taking stronger measures than your average area, and I have to say that nothing surrounding any covid precautions even approaches what it takes to get on a flight. Wear a mask indoors? Get the jab that most people wanted anyway? I'm just not seeing this Orwellian oppression that some people seem to be suffering under right now.

NYC is the most strict, but they are also the most densely populated. Beyond that, I just don't feel like I've given up any rights.

Can't say the same about a shoeless, invasive patdown where a stranger runs their hand down your butt crack after having waited in line for an hour and gone through a nude scanner.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#472

Post by Dudeman112 »

platz wrote: post #332
maybelsyrup wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> non-state actors States can, have, and do engage in terrorism.

Not if the definition of terrorism I use is one of the 11 definitions that preclude that possibility.

Yes, some definitions are crappy.

Do we have a word for "imperialist government uses violence against people to achieve political goals"?

Because "it's not terrorism because it's a state" is always gonna stink of trying to dodge the topic on a technicality.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#473

Post by thrownaway810 »

bedhead wrote: post #347
titzer wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Endless studies and real-world data showing no efficacy and half the world doesn't care. A new one every week, nobody cares, they're stuck in their religion. Last week: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8395971/ Conclusions: There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wear…

The study you have linked does not support the conclusion you’ve drawn from it. I would recommend reading the “Discussion” sections, where the authors discuss other studies in other areas of the world that contradict theirs, and the impact of various social and density factors on their specific study.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#474

Post by shkkmo »

bedhead wrote: post #347
titzer wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Endless studies and real-world data showing no efficacy and half the world doesn't care. A new one every week, nobody cares, they're stuck in their religion. Last week: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8395971/ Conclusions: There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wear…

That study seems to have an obvious and unacknowledged flaw: they did not control for the growing prevalence of the delta variant this summer even though the time frame of the study exactly coincides with the spread of delta within the united states.

These sorts of analyses are extremely hard to control all confounds for.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#475

Post by BoxOfRain »

dmarcos wrote: post #120
bedhead wrote: post #40

Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.

It’s not cynical when looking at the incentives. Once a rule is in place for “safety” reasons the political cost to remove is really high (what if something bad happens?). Politicians won’t touch it. That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically (on a date or when a hard condition is met)

>That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically

I'd go even further than this, I'd argue that all laws that ordinary people are likely to come into contact with in the course of their everyday life should have an expiry date, forcing a debate every x decades as to whether or not they're still fit for purpose. The date could be variable based on the nature of the legislation, but this mechanism would be fantastic for forcibly clearing out a lot of society's "technical debt".

This mechanism in my opinion would have stopped the lingering damage from moronic wars on abstract concepts. There would have to be some exceptions of course, things like fundamental liberties and human rights for example can't ever be negotiable in a civilised society. There's also an awful lot of very sector-specific legislation which probably doesn't need to be directly re-written every couple of decades too, although society at large won't be coming into contact with it much either so it's not really in the scope of the goal which is to stop yesterday's issues leaving nasty remants for today's societies.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#476

Post by hunterb123 »

mrtksn wrote: post #465
boldlybold wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how HN is so willing to agree with the absurdity of security theater at airports, yet so resistant to calling out the pandemic theater we're living every day.

The existence of the pandemic is a very observable and testable. The ways to combat the pandemic are also well known and tested. How a person can deny the existence of something that can test it personally?

Yeah lockdowns were super well tested and worked wonders /s

No, they cratered the middle class while making the rich richer.

Now they know not to lock down to destroy the economy but instead push to destroy personal freedoms.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#477

Post by aeternum »

boldlybold wrote: post #442
hunterb123 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new thing is "think of grandma". Say delta variant enough and you can get anyone to give up anything. Post covid is like post 9/11. This is the new normal. Vaccine passports and all.

Funny how HN is so willing to agree with the absurdity of security theater at airports, yet so resistant to calling out the pandemic theater we're living every day.

It's not the same. Covid is clearly causing a significant increase in mortality. Even if you don't believe the covid-reporting numbers, you can simply look at excess deaths.

It's very difficult to falsify death stats on a mass-scale especially in a country like the US.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#478

Post by lexapro »

thereddaikon wrote: post #415
lexapro wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be an end to itself and it often is: retaliation

No that's still an agenda. Nobody becomes a terrorist just because. There is always a motivation and goal. You say retaliation makes it an end to itself but I give as a counter Timothy McVeigh. He was seeking revenge and sending a message. Terrorism is a tactic used to achieve a specific goal.

But then no human behavior is and end to itself. All behavior can be described as a "tactic used to achieve a specific goal".

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#479

Post by jjeaff »

hunterb123 wrote: post #420
duxup wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking of other people and getting a vaccine and going on with your life without much of any impact seems like a very low bar.

[flagged]

What are the reasons not to get a vaccine? I haven't seen any real data that indicated that.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#480

Post by adoxyz »

duxup wrote: post #222

So much security that not sense. I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security. It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out. If someon…

I guess another reason for the security theater is to keep the powerful safe. If a bunch of random fans get hurt going to a concert or sporting event, it's nbd, but if someone "important" gets hurt it's a much bigger deal. Maybe a pessimistic view.
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