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Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

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Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#321

Post by woeirua »

hvb2 wrote: post #230
chopin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is none of your business. I live in Germany, where everything is regulated by well meaning people. Going so far to regulate what you ought to say or to watch. It is hellish. I don't recognize the country any more in which I was born and raised.

> But this is none of your business. I live in Germany, where everything is regulated by well meaning people. Assuming you haven't lived in the US I think you're severely underestimating some of the stupidity going on. So let's say your house has a thatched roof in California where it's bone dry and hot. At that point, the person lighting the fireworks will still say it's none of your business. Even if it's illegal a…

Thatched roofs don't exist in CA.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#322

Post by woeirua »

sdoering wrote: post #210
chopin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is none of your business. I live in Germany, where everything is regulated by well meaning people. Going so far to regulate what you ought to say or to watch. It is hellish. I don't recognize the country any more in which I was born and raised.

> Going so far to regulate what you ought to say or to watch. Native born German. Calling BS on that crap. I recommend reading up on "freedom from" vs. "freedom to". Explains quite a lot of differences between the European tradition of ensuring people are "free from" an potentially oppressive state vs. the US tradition of "freedom to". In each "freedom of speech" index I know, Germany fares better than the US, or Bri…

I can't take these indexes seriously when Germany is about to outright ban an entire political party. The US takes the first amendment very seriously.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#323

Post by ButlerianJihad »

AstroNutt wrote: post #197
jandrewrogers wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40-50 years ago, fireworks were largely unregulated across the US and were a major part of the 4th of July cultural experience. Dangerous, slightly reckless, and incredibly fun. I have fond memories of this as a child. It is a big part of American culture, like turkey on Thanksgiving. Every country has rules that exist but which are culturally unenforceable. Today, fireworks are outlawed in much of the US because saf…

Back around 1982, fireworks were a big no in my neighborhood. My friend across the street had some bottle rockets and he decided to shoot one off in the middle of the street. We didn't have a bottle to put it in to light it, so we wedged it between two bricks. He lit it and a split second before it went off, it tilted to point directly down the street. It fired off blazing down the middle of the road. At the same tim…

In the mid-90s I had a brief but enjoyable hobby of model rocketry. I guess the #1 obstacle in this pastime is finding a safe launch site.

I had assembled a gorgeous SR-71 Blackbird rocket. I took it to a vast lawn space at Warren College, UCSD, on a quiet weekend, and set it on its maiden voyage. The very lopsided SR-71 immediately went horizontal and landed softly within a swimming pool fence where I had no access.

Some time later, I chose the neighborhood public school yard on a weekend. Nevertheless, the preparations drew a curious crowd of unaccompanied minor children who were younger than me. I told them to be careful and stay clear, and set off the rocket. By the time its parachute deployed, a security guard was driving his car around the field to meet us all at the landing site and give us all a stern warning.

So I abandoned that hobby forever and found less explosive things to tinker with. This week I grabbed two boxes of glow-sticks at the hardware store, and had myself a very glowy 4th.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#324

Post by greenavocado »

zamalek wrote: post #71
greenavocado wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just think it's time that we left it to the professionals. Pulling up the ladder behind you, eh? So nice of you to think of the children.

Yes, because what I was doing was objectively dangerous. Dueling used to be a commonly accepted practice, yes even killing - pity that ladder was pulled up! What about the children's chemistry sets that included uranium, mercury, and cyanide?

Yeah I played with those sets with my dad.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#325

Post by nearlyepic »

axus wrote: post #268
nearlyepic wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this reflects an aspect of American culture that you can’t just erase. Yeah, and that’s the problem. A whole country full of people belligerent enough to say “fuck you” to anyone who tells them “hey you probably shouldn’t blow your hand off”. What a wonderful place.

Comes in handy when the government agents are rounding up your neighbors. Except when they direct that energy at the neighbors instead of the government agents.

No it doesn’t. The reactionary people are the ones cheering on the people doing the rounding, as long as it’s against people they don’t like.

That’s the problem with the mindset - if it was genuinely anarchistic it would be better. Instead, it’s just privileged and focused on creating an out group.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#326

Post by antonyt »

trillic wrote: post #305
MomsAVoxell wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s all fun and games until you burn down a few thousand houses.

The biggest forest fire I know of in Southern California this year was caused by a boater using his government mandated safety flares. If there was not a law regulating the use of these incendiary devices, Santa Rosa may not have burned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Rosa_Island_Fire

Your own link contradicts the assertion you’re making about the origin of the fire.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#327

Post by _heimdall »

rbanffy wrote: post #317
_heimdall wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our government has absolute power without a constitution binding it and our population is disarmed?

We have seen the “checks and balances” were held together by decorum alone. We are now seeing what happens if decorum is absent and government officials regularly lie and mislead the public and other government officials without facing any consequences.

I absolutely agree that things in the US seem to be going in a bad direction, but we haven't yet lost our constitution or system of checks and balances.

There's a big difference between the Constitution, law, and doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine, for example, was little more than policy and had nothing to do with law or constitutional rights.

Our checks and balances are still there, the problem we have today is the lack of willingness for those with the power to actually use them. Congress can stop Trump on many of the things he's doing, for example, they just don't want to and have instead continued a decades long pattern of Congress ceding power to executive. The judicial branch has at least stepped in at times, they really don't have to as the Supreme Court can choose to simply not hear a case.

The issue of lying politicians is as old as governments. If we want to focus on Trump as the issue here, and he's a big one, you only have to go back to the pandemic to find politicians on the other side of the aisle blatantly lying to the public without consequence.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#328

Post by nearlyepic »

warumdarum wrote: post #195
nearlyepic wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this reflects an aspect of American culture that you can’t just erase. Yeah, and that’s the problem. A whole country full of people belligerent enough to say “fuck you” to anyone who tells them “hey you probably shouldn’t blow your hand off”. What a wonderful place.

It is, yes it is. You should leave immediately if you dislike what you found.

Aren’t people on this website supposed to be like, smart? If I wanted someone to tell me “if you don’t like it leave it” as if it’s an actual position worth arguing I could just go to the bar.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#329

Post by FatherOfCurses »

fumeux_fume wrote: post #178
msisk6 wrote: post #63

I recently moved to the St. Louis area for a software job at Boeing. I'm actually in a nice quiet neighborhood in St. Charles right under the flight path for planes landing at Lambert Field. The fireworks last night were insane. All around me folks were setting off commercial grade fireworks bursting hundreds of feet in the air. The house was shaking, my dogs were freaking out, one of them had a seizure. The air was…

My opinion about how people use fireworks changed when I adopted a dog from a shelter and discovered how deeply traumatizing booms are to her. From chatting with other dog owners this seems to be common. If my neighbors could see the extent fireworks affect the same friendly, silly pup their children love greeting everyday, they would probably think twice about how they use them. We can manage the night of the 4th by…

Yeah first 4th of July as a dog owner. He did relatively OK inside but we had a hell of a time taking him out for a walk. Every time we thought everyone was done blowing their loads someone else refueled and things started over again.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#330

Post by _heimdall »

master-lincoln wrote: post #259
_heimdall wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the line for regulations you're okay with holding on to? If so you better start regulating how many beds each hospital has as well, if bed demand is the bar you must control bed supply.

of course in Germany hospital bed supplies are regulated by the local states via LKHG law

We were talking about the US here though. Its very different when the government already effectively controls healthcare as a whole, of course they would control or have a large say in hospital bed numbers, for example.

For better or worse the US healthcare system is largely private. If the government isn't running the hospitals or directly paying for all care they shouldn't be stipulating quotas for access to various kinds of care.

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