Planning a missile strike by drawing a crude world map with an explosion (labeled "explosion") is like planning a killing spree by drawing a stick figure with an uzi in each hand mowing down other stick figures.
I am not planning any nuclear attacks
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Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#102Planning a missile strike by drawing a crude world map with an explosion (labeled "explosion") is like planning a killing spree by drawing a stick figure with an uzi in each hand mowing down other stick figures.
Funny/Scary. Imagine that instead of the nuclear war map, the landlords encountered the image you described. OP would be in detention/questioning right now.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that everyone in the chain ends up buying into this. The police make a record of it 'just in case.' You end up on a no-fly list 'just in case.' Everyone in the chain is covering their ass 'just in case' this person really is a terrorist. No one ends up willing to stick their neck out and say, "this person probably isn't a terrorist"... just in case.
The extreme example of "everyone in the chain" buying into an extreme form of this thinking came in the form of the "1% doctrine" articulated by then-Vice President Dick Cheney: "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response."
Much of the post-9/11 response to terrorism fits it.
"We captured a bunch of people. Some are harmless unfortunate bystanders. Some are dangerous people who are nevertheless not immune to handcuffs. Still, we'd better lock them up in harsh conditions without trial just in case."
"Iraq probably has no nuclear weapons and no means to deliver one, but we'd better invade the country just in case. We don't want to be wrong and end up with a mushroom cloud over Manhattan."
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#104Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.
Tip: just before you pull out your card to pay the fees, look into the kid's eyes and say something like "ummmm, this seems a lot, I don't really feel comfortable paying this much, can we reduce this at all?" The guy starts sweating as he sees his commission disappearing into the sunset, replaced by the prospect of a grovelling call to the property owner. They will often knock off about 50%. Sometimes you can just refuse to pay. Depends on the market.
NB for best results, start your contract at the worst time of the year for landlords, usually just after all the students have finished moving. Also, be at least a foot taller than your letting agent.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#105This reminds me so much of an awesome 30 Rock episode where Fred Armisen plays the middle eastern neighbor of Tina Fey's character. She ultimately gets him turned in for planning an attack, when he was just preparing for The Amazing Race with his friend. Its sad how sensationalist and afraid we have become.
I think "cautious" is a better word. What aspect of this story was sensationalist?
Avoiding the rough part of town at night is cautious. Turning in a neighbor for basically nothing is sensationalist.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not. At all. I mean, a rational person might make the assumption that this guy is not actually whiteboarding an ICBM launch from a rented apartment. But there's nothing about it indicating to a non-technical person that it's a game.
Honestly I hope that even non-technical people know that the blast radius of a nuclear bomb is somewhere around the size of a city, not several US states. But there goes my optimism again...
Mostly not. Somehow, the general public has been convinced that nuclear war means wiping out all life on the planet (when in reality it would be horrible, and kill an unimaginably large number of people, but wouldn't even wipe out humanity, let alone all life) and accordingly the effects of a nuclear explosion have been vastly exaggerated in the mind of the average Joe.
Part of the problem is probably linear extrapolation from Hiroshima to the Tsar Bomba, not realizing that blast radius scales up very much sub-linearly, practical bombs meant to be used in war are way smaller than Tsar Bomba, and Hiroshima was basically constructed out of paper.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#107Shall we play a game? How about Global Thermonuclear War.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#108This reminds me so much of an awesome 30 Rock episode where Fred Armisen plays the middle eastern neighbor of Tina Fey's character. She ultimately gets him turned in for planning an attack, when he was just preparing for The Amazing Race with his friend. Its sad how sensationalist and afraid we have become.
I think "cautious" is a better word. What aspect of this story was sensationalist?
I prefer "gibbering bongo full-goose paranoia".
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#109Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.
Tip: just before you pull out your card to pay the fees, look into the kid's eyes and say something like "ummmm, this seems a lot, I don't really feel comfortable paying this much, can we reduce this at all?" The guy starts sweating as he sees his commission disappearing into the sunset, replaced by the prospect of a grovelling call to the property owner. They will often knock off about 50%. Sometimes you can just re…
Sorry but I live in a place where supply of property, rental or otherwise, is so constrained when compared to demand that any local letting agent knows they can rent out any place within a week. You go along with whatever they say or you don't get the place. End of story.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#110This reminds me so much of an awesome 30 Rock episode where Fred Armisen plays the middle eastern neighbor of Tina Fey's character. She ultimately gets him turned in for planning an attack, when he was just preparing for The Amazing Race with his friend. Its sad how sensationalist and afraid we have become.
I think "cautious" is a better word. What aspect of this story was sensationalist?
The part where a game design document on a whiteboard resulted in referral to the police?
I think "cautious" is white-washing of the highest caliber.