A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
The TSA is something that shouldn't exist in its current form. They very often fail their audit checks and normalize invading your privacy to an extreme degree like body scanners and pat downs. If water bottles are considered potentially explosive then why dump them on a bin next to a line of people where they can go off? This is low grade security theater that inconveniences passengers at best.
It's security theater through and through.
Apart from the obvious failings of these checks, think about what kind of damage a single backpack of explosives can do to a packed airport during holiday season. You can literally put a ton of explosives on one of those trolleys, roll it into the waiting area and kill 200 people easily. No security whatsoever involved.
Reality is, most security measures are designed to keep the illusion of control. Nothing more. Penetration testers show again and again that you can easily circumvent practically all barriers or measures.
The goal is not to stop the people in the queue being attacked, its to stop someone boarding a plane with the means to hijack it
They fail gloriously at at that too.
Whenever they get tested the red teams manage to smuggle in everything needed to hijiack a plane plus a kitchen sink.
The few times that terrorists tried to board planes, they made it through security and were caught by other passengers.
Yeah, and you don't need the TSA for that. Just do as they already do: lock the cockpit.
They had to do something about the plague of people hijacking planes with bottles of water.
IIRC water happens to appear similarly to a lot of explosives on the metric they use for what the composition of items in the scanner is.
Improvements are being made though so soon we may be allowed to take water through unrestricted:
Why Airport Security Suddenly Got Better (13:01) https://youtu.be/nyG8XAmtYeQ?si=RTjA8GRuZaMIJs9d
It's basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn't, and only inconveniences the poors.
The main reason that rule still exists is to sell overpriced water. Otherwise they could just ask you to drink some of it to prove it's water.
It's because all the shops inside want you to buy their shit.
According to the story I heard as to the origin of the "no liquids over X amount" rule, years ago there was a terrorist that tried to smuggle hydrogen peroxide and acetone - which can be used to rather easily synthesize triacetone triperoxide (TATP, a highly sensitive explosive) - onto a plane in plastic toiletry bottles. They got caught and foiled somehow, and then the TSA started restricting liquids on planes. This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, if I recall correctly.
And I happen to know, from a reliable source, of someone who accidentally made TATP in a rotary evaporator in an academic lab. So it seems plausible.
Not that the rule is actually effective prevention against similar attacks, nor that the TSA even knows what the reason is behind what they do at this point, haha. I just thought it was an interesting story.
hydrogen peroxide and acetone
So there are worse cleaning chemicals to mix than bleach and vinegar
Requires an acid catalyst for the reaction to actually proceed, but yeah, could definitely ruin your day - although a lungful of chlorine gas is nothing to sneeze at either.
The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state...no representative wants to cut those jobs.
I fucking hate that this is a thing. "We can't stop doing this useless and/or detrimental thing, look at all the work it makes for other people to do!!!" Absolutely bonkers that it's just a standard political argument.
“The government made 25% of my district unemployed, why didn’t I get reelected?”
Ask it from that side and you have your answer.
I wasn't asking a question. I understand why politicians do it, I just think it's a sign of a terrible system.
I mean if a state removed the TSA and spent the money on something else, surely they could use the money to create as many jobs as they removed but in an actual useful field.
Could we pay them to dig a ditch and fill it back in again? It'd be just as useful.
They treat people like cattle because they are protecting the airplanes and the airline's liability, not the people onboard or in line to board.
If people think it's unsafe people won't pay up to fly.
It just hasn't had the right public messaging behind it. I can think of a few historically recent things that are security theater but have been successfully accepted by the public because of slogans, social engineering and authoritative messaging. TSA just needs their own marketing blitz.
I recently realized that I have been boarding planes for years with multiple boxes of razor blades in my carry-on.
...Not a single checkpoint picked them up.
To be fair a explosion in a on the side of a line not gonna kill anyone, now a explosion in the airplane windows, maybe?, i get their argument, not that's a good argument
The longer they discuss the less it is allowed.
Do you think they get mad if I bring plasma
As long as it's being held in magnetic confinement!
They tend not to care so much about "how safely the hazardous material is stored"
Just ask anyone who's tried to smuggle on 5lbs of mercury...
Nah, that's because five pounds would be about 6 fluid ounces of mercury and you're only allowed 3 ounces of a fluid.
Hey now, no need to bring math into this like a civilized person! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
If they don't then you can call them xenophobes for not respecting Sangheili tradition to carry an Energy Sword at all times
I've actually done this successfully. TSA agent knocked on it, and said no problem.
If i somehow would be stopped, I'd love to argue what is liquid or not, and what could be liquid if it's just hot enough.
Getting denied at security because you’re trying to bring steel beams
You start that argument and they will take you straight to Guantanamo Bay.
Is there a reasoning for this? The whole liquid thing has to do something with explosives?
It’s because of a particular incident. Similar to what happened with the shoe bomber and why you have to take off your shoes. Things like this are why we can’t have nice things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot
Btw, why not water?
So how about a bottle of dry ice?
A friend has been challenged when trying to bring a nordic cheese (from Norway to France). The TSA equivalent said that it could be liquid if hot enough. Yeah... glasses too.
They didn't want France getting wind of their cheese and declaring war on Norway for having the audacity to have non-french cheese
Lemme Google the freezing temp of whatever explodey juice they think we all have.