- “Take On Me” but it keeps getting faster.
- Feminist Groups Are Right to Rally Against the Brock Turner-Inspired Crime Bill
- The TSA is a waste of money that doesn’t save lives and might actually cost them – Vox
When more people choose to drive, the result is more automobile deaths – in exchange for which, we’re not actually any safer while flying. - The Truth About the Biggest U.S. Sex Trafficking Story of the Year – Reason.com
Very long read, and the accompanying photos – cheesy pin-ups of Asian women – were a bad choice. But it really does appear that a “sex trafficking” bust was actually the police and the press ginning up a sex slavery story out of consensual sex work, and making things worse for sex workers in the process. - Thoughts On Victim-Blaming Rape Survivors | Thing of Things and the followup post: Why Everyone Is Irrational About Victim-Blaming and Rape.
- Elizabeth Warren Asks Newly Chatty FBI Director to Explain Why DOJ Didn’t Prosecute Banksters
- How The University Of New Hampshire Chose To Waste An Alum’s $4m Gift
Answer: A million-dollar football scoreboard. - BBC – Future – The benefits of having a babyface
- Why Color-Blindness Is a Counterproductive Ideology – The Atlantic
- Italy grapples with suicide of woman taunted over online sex video | World news | The Guardian
- This crossword puzzle, with several clues with more than one right answer, is really neat.
- [re]Assignment review: gender-switching hitman thriller is staggering misfire | Film | The Guardian
This transphobic b-film with a bewilderingly good cast might be the year’s worst film. - Did You Know We Are Having the Largest Prison Strike in History? Probably Not, Because Most of the Media Have Ignored It | Alternet
- Chelsea Manning Told She Will Receive Gender Transition Surgery, Her Lawyer Says – BuzzFeed News
- How Donald Trump Exploited Charity for Personal Gain
It’s bewildering that Trump illegally using charity money to donate to a politician who then gave Trump’s business a favorable ruling, is much less of a scandal than Clinton’s emails. - Artist-in-residence stuck on bankrupt container ship that no port will accept / Boing Boing
- BBC – Earth – A Soviet scientist created the only tame foxes in the world
Amazing how few generations it took to turn foxes into, essentially, dogs. - Some Republicans Acknowledge Leveraging Voter ID Laws for Political Gain – The New York Times
Including Republicans, in leaked documents, plotting to gin up claims of voter fraud just in case an election turns out to be false. - Men Caught Catcalling Their Mothers in Disguise – YouTube
Thanks Grace! - Shakesville: Media Agree: Clinton’s Policies Are Stellar—So No Need to Cover Them
And, again, thanks Grace! - People Are Sharing This Photo Of A Young Woman in Chile Standing Up To Police – BuzzFeed News
And here’s a bit more info about the protests. - “Supergirl” stuntwoman and “Ninja Warrior” star Jessie Graff on the Emmy Awards red carpet is my new favorite thing:
If you have an older car where the outer covering for your headlights are yellowed and cloudy, you can use toothpaste to polish them up, which will enable you to see better at night.
A million $ for a fucking football scoreboard? Really? I’m trying to figure THAT out. UNH isn’t exactly a college football power. Can they can sell ads on that thing at a rate to make the money back in some reasonable time? Because that’s the only way that makes sense.
“… the 27 members of the University System of New Hampshire’s Board of Trustees … did not have a say in how the money was directed because the use of donations made to a specific institution are determined by officials at that school. ”
I would suggest to the General Court of the State of New Hampshire that this needs to change.
Toothpaste will also get permanent marker off furniture. (As I learned by frantically Googling after very clumsily trying to do a craft project on the kitchen table while visiting my parents.)
Joss Whedon is talkin’ to YOU!
I only recognized a few of them the first time out, but I recognized more once I read some of their names. (How did I not recognize Neil Patrick Harris?) Some of them I still have no idea – does anyone know who the lady who says “like you’ve seen us somewhere” is?
Yeah, and while we’re at it, does anyone know who the “racist, abusive coward who could permanently damage the fabric of our society” might be?
For what it’s worth, Slate lists Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Julianne Moore, Nathan Fillion, Don Cheadle, Neil Patrick Harris, Yvette Nicole Brown, Leslie Odom Jr. as among the participants.
Here’s the most complete list of actors I could find: http://tvline.com/2016/09/21/joss-whedon-anti-donald-trump-psa-nathan-fillion-neil-patrick-harris-video/ but it doesn’t include the woman you asked about, Amp. She looks vaguely familiar, but I think it’s because her cheekbones look like Hayley Atwell’s…
Seeing Martin Sheen in that video just makes me wish there was a Jed Bartlet running.
I’m currently on my first trip to the US, and based on my experience getting onto a connecting domestic flight, I concur with #3. I’m not looking forward to the trip home where I’ll have to go through that twice.
This is a work trip, and #1 does a good job of representing how the work side of things has been going.
Also, if anyone knows how to find a decent coffee in this country, feel free to share the secret.
Nearly every time I flew from the New Orleans airport (which was five or six times a year for the four years I lived there), my carry-on got picked for “additional screening,” where they’d take a piece of fabric in tweezers and wipe it over all the zipper pulls and handles on my bag, then run the fabric through a machine. Someone told me that it was testing for explosives residue, and someone else said it was drugs. Whatever it was, it never tested positive, and I’ve never had that happen at any other airport, and I also never saw anyone else have to do that in New Orleans. I still don’t really know what that was about.
Desipis: Any chance you’ll be in Portland? If so, we should do lunch.
Ruchama: I’ve had that test performed on my luggage a couple of times. And I have no idea what it’s about.
TSA (or TSA equivalent) told me (in 1998 at LAX) that it was testing for explosives.
Does anybody else have their checked luggage rummaged by the TSA EVERY SINGLE FLIGHT they ever take? And there’s (almost) always a note saying that they’ve done so tucked in there somewhere.
I’ve never had that happen! Maybe you should take that “CONTAINS BOMB BWA HA HA” bumper sticker off your suitcase.
Ampersand: Alas, I’m stuck in Denver the whole time I’m here.
I’ve gotten the baggage swab multiple times back in Australia. It’s explicitly stated each time that’s its an explosives test. I’ve got to take back a box of wires, cables and electronics in my suitcase, which I imagine will look quite like a bomb on an x-ray machine, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I get one of those notes. Perhaps I should leave the TSA a hello note of my own…
They’ve done that test on my hands as well.
Ruchama:
I haven’t worked security at an airport in awhile, but I used to see that routinely. It was testing for explosive residue. At the small airport where I got to know the TSA folks, they had no X-ray machine anyway, and did a manual search of every bag. They would do that test.
I once saw them do it with a guy who said, confidently and comfortably, “Yeah, I’ll test positive.” I drifted over and asked, “How do you know?” He said, “I work in demolitions. I handle dynamite every day. I get additional screening every time.” And he did this time, too; a pat-down by TSA, and a manual search of his carry-on, even after it went through the X-ray machine.
My understanding is that they randomly select a certain percentage of passengers for additional screening. I don’t know the rationale or how the selection is done.
A few years ago I flew across the country with my sidearm in my checked baggage, in accordance with the law. It was unloaded in a locked case with the ammunition separate, ready to be checked and tagged by the airline baggage checker, as required. I was flying with a young teen who had never flown before, and in the bustle of shepherding them and getting our bags checked and getting to screening on time, I forgot to declare the gun when I checked the bag. As we sat down at the gate to wait to board, I suddenly realized it, and we ran back to the TSA station on the secure side of the screening area. I presented my ID and explained, and with no particular hurry they told me to notify the airline, which I did. [i]They[/i] told me that the bag had already been loaded onto the plane, so no worries.
It was an interesting experience. I can only guess that either they didn’t X-ray the baggage, or they saw a properly packaged gun on the X-ray and didn’t bother to inquire whether it had a tag. I would hope that they did not X-ray the bag and fail to see a gun and a box of bullets. But who knows?
Grace
I wonder what got me listed for special scrutiny. Maybe my toothpaste is the Toothpaste Of Terror. It’s probably the anti-war protests I attended in the early aughts. It’s as good a way to spend theater security dollars as any I can think of. It’s kind of like getting a one on one at an interactive theater production only without that uncomfortable bit of having to engage with an actor.
Jake Squid, I used to have my luggage rummaged every single time I flew. But that was back when I was flying with my parents, including my Jewish dad, with black hair and a black mustache, looking plausibly Middle Eastern–I’m sure that had nothing to do with it, of course.
There were extra security things that really seemed to be at random, too. I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but: One time we were asked to take our bags over for an extra X-ray screening. There was a little line, less than ten people, waiting on a big machine. The person at the front put their bag in…it went in on the conveyor belt…and came flying out the other end.
The guys in front of us got this look on their faces–eyes wide as saucers. At which point I realized they were all carrying musical instruments! (Luckily, it turned out “output speed” was a variable that was under the control of the security staff.)
Actually, now that I think about it, security used to be really different airport to airport. That seems less true now. On the other hand, I fly a lot more, so maybe it all blurs together.
Read that as “testing for frogs”. Thought, surely there must be an easier way?
I’m hoping that on today’s flight that the 7 Layer Cake that I’ve frozen passes scrutiny.
They often scan for biological materials when you fly out of Hawaii (Dept of Agriculture trying to prevent spread of pests). A guy in front of my dad had a live snake tucked along a corner inside his bag–it wasn’t clear if that was intentional!
I am mostly mildly amused at security theater when it is just me being affected. But the last time I flew with my family, they selected my 9 year old for special screening. This mostly means they barked commands that my child found incomprehensible, and then got annoyed when they were ignored/were not followed quickly enough while I observed my minor “from an appropriate distance for safety” and tried to explain what needed to be done to my bewildered and frightened child.
We were outside the US, so we were unable to refuse to allow her to be scanned in the the useless porno scanning machines. We were told do it, or miss our connection, since the wait time for a non-porno scan extra screen was over an hour (yes, we had just come off of a connecting flight where we were screened prior to boarding). We told them that this was a 9 year old, and they were like “too bad, so sad, random screening”. I get that random is random (in principle–I highly doubt it is random in practice!), but getting compliance from a nervous kid is much easier if you don’t bark at them. Flying sucks in every way, not just with the TSA.
I saw a story about a family with a toddler where the TSA insisted that the toddler walk through the metal detector herself. (This was before they had the “put your hands above your head” scanners.) This kid had just started walking within the past few months, and wasn’t really old enough to follow many directions, but they insisted that she was an individual person, and each individual person had to go through individually. The parents finally had to go on each side of the metal detector and tell her, “Walk to Mommy!”