Now it's about Army whistle-blowers: Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division say members of their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves.
Why, oh why, do soldiers hate America so? We have the right to torture anyone we want in a war!
FYI, the CIA cannot arrest people in the US and, in theory, can't operate in the US at all.
Of course, now I must mention Echelon, where we spy on you, and you spy on us, and then we share.;)
As for arresting people and secreting them away without a trial, we only do that to people who might possibly be terrorists, or someone has asserted are terrorists, or who we confuse with someone who's a terrorist.
And, sometimes, in other countries, we do it to people who get turned by other people, who we then pay 5000 dollars as a bounty. Hopefully, we'll start this in the US soon, so I can turn in my next-door neighbor who refuses to mow his lawn more than once a month, and make some quick cash.
Remember, facial structures of Arabs and Jews are very similar...it's just a matter of skin color and documents and still they don't bother.
The point isn't who they look like. The point is that the Israelis don't search known Israelis. Being the government, they presumably know who is actually a citizen of Israel and who isn't.
They aren't skipping 'Jews', they aren't searcing 'Muslims' or 'Arabs', they looking at a list of Israeli citizens who have left the country, and comparing that picture to the person and their ID. You match that, you get less security. That's all, that's it.
And I'm not even sure how much less security you get. They still have all sorts of bomb sniffers and stuff that everyone is subject to.
Can we both agree we can safely substitue "US" with "Israel" and have this be equally true?
Well, no, that's my point. Israelis don't attack Israel. Americans do attack America. Even native-born Americans.
It would appear you're vastly overrating the ability and willingness of muslim terrorist groups to recruit non-muslims.
Ah, here's the problem. I agree that no Muslim group is going to attack the US with non-Muslims. I also agree (and some people won't) that Muslim groups are what we mainly need to worry about right now, so we really don't need to worry about non-Muslims.
Now. Where's the list of Muslims?
See, we can figure out people's ethnicity. We can usually figure out their nationality, (What country they owe loyalty to.), although we can be tricked there.
We can trivially figure out someone's religion, unless they are hiding it. (Hopefully the terrorists haven't figure this out yet.)
Who says? This discussion is about who should always be searched. Nowhere in this thread has anyone ever discussed excluding people from searches.
Erm, I'm afraid it is you who just set up a strawman. You see, that line didn't say that others said people shouldn't searched, and this was wrong. It said, indeed, there are some groups we don't need to searched. Namely, people who could do much more harm via other means. Whether they are trustworthy or not, we don't need to worry about them hijacking airplanes.
However, a fundamental premise of profiling is that we search some people more, which pretty much automatically means we search some people less. Specifically, 'non-suspicious' people.
Actually, the 'box cutters' is a myth spread by airlines to distract from the fact that the terrorists probably had normal knifes. They like to pretend it was a failure in the rules, which they have fixed, rather than the terrorists just managed to carry something on the plane they shouldn't have.
However, box cutters and knifes are roughly the same size, so that's not important here.
So you're asserting that (non-suspicious) people have carried single box cutters onto the plane without being detected?
I'm afraid that rather disproves your point. I was waiting for you to name a way to name a medium-sized weapon. I was going to replace it with a pack of razor blades, but you gave me one better.
You see, you're right, a few box cutters are all anyone could get past security. If a plan depended on sneaking multiple box cutters past security, they would be foiled by checking 90% of the terrorists. Even if they knew a certain guy wouldn't be searched, he couldn't carry more than two or three.
However, box cutters can hold a dozen razor blades. (And often do!) Which can be distributed and held by other means. Sliding them inside a plastic pen with the edge sticking out would be a trivial solution. Instant knife.
If you're talking about those 'break off' ones instead of the ones that hold real razor blades, they hold even more edges, although those tiny bits are more unwieldy, so it's a tradeoff.
At the moment the UK implements an interesting combination of fuckitudes, in that it's one of the most capitalist-oriented countries in Europe (resulting in high levels of poverty, crappy healthfare system, high crime level) and at the same time the country with the highest Big-Brother capability ( highest CCTV-coverage in the world, constant blatant disregard of human rights by police and government, practical one-party system ).
You're so close. Someone needs to come over there and start up a 'competing' political party that aims for exactly the same thing. Or you can fork your existing one. Although the fact you apparently have successful third parties is a bit more worrisome. Change your laws so they have no power.
Wait, how's your educational system? You might have to crap it up a bit. Come on, I know you've got plenty of poor areas, and you used to have kids out on the street all the time, not even in school. (All who were, apparently, Cockney, for some reason.) Make schools so unappealing they end up out there again.
Oh, and you guys don't execute people, do you? Or torture them? Well, that's okay, we've only really started torturing people ourself, but you're going to need to execute some people soon. You used to do it, why'd you stop?
And I'm getting a little concerned about your lack of religious intolerance. You guys have a government religion, in fact your government created a religion, but you guys seem to treat it as a joke. You're going to have to get more hate going towards another religion. Looking at your history, I suggest Catholism, but feel free to pick another if you have a better idea. Remember you can pick another one later on...we've hated Jews, Catholics, Chinese (We accidently thought that was a religion in 1878 for a bit.), and Muslims.
FYI, next up for us is Hindu, a bunch of idol-worshiping heathens who keep taking our jobs, scheduled for 2010, although this Muslim thing is probably going to run into overtime. Did you guys already do Hindu, because when you ran India? If so, could you forward us some of that stuff so we can prep? And do you have any dirt on Gandhi?
Everything else gets a big checkmark. Just fix those few things and you're good to go.
I'll give you a B+, and I hope to see more effort in the future. (I forget what that grade is in Metric, sorry.)
Erm, Britain does have various written 'bills of rights'. It's not 'Contitutional', the government operates because that's the way the government has always operated, but there are rules about what the government can do. I.e., the Magna Carta.
In fact, part of the US's issue with English rule is that they weren't getting the same protection under the law they would have gotten in England. (Although the 2nd amendment rose out of the fact England has always restricted private gun ownership, because the English are quite willing to use them when the government pisses them off.)
And it's a republic as far as I can tell. The people elect Parliment, Parliment runs the country. It's parlimentary, which puts the executive branch and legislative branch in one, but that seems to work okay.
Not that I really follow their government or their politics, but claiming they aren't a 'Republic' is silly. They evolved into a republic instead of creating one from scratch, but they are one.
As for the monarchy, the way I understand it is that the government promises to do anything the monarch orders as long as the monarch doesn't order the government to do anything.;)
How exactly do you propose that those two mystery terrorists would manage to carry in enough weapons for 15 people. Even the routine screen everyone gets would catch that.
So, you're asserting there is a class of weapons that it is easy to sneak one onto an airplane, hence the need for searchs, but not easy to sneak fifteen on?
Not that you need 15, 15 was the size of the cell I postulated. You can apparently take an airplane over with four people, although I suspect I'd take more now.
Anyway, could you please explain how that works? What are these weapons? A machete down the pants leg? A disassembled gun hidden as cell phone? A glass eye that contains a tiny taser?
Perhaps in some 'movie plot terrorism' but in the real world, if you can hide a razor blade in a way the x-ray machine will not see it, you can hide 15. They are not that big.
And if you're blowing up the plane instead of hijacking it, of course, just one person is all you need anyway. With your non-random searches you just blew the chance of randomly searching the guy.
I'd like a single example of a realistic weapon that it's possible to sneak one past security, but gets harder the more you sneak.
Except, of course, that the reason they're Palestinian is that being Palestinian isn't suspicious at all, as a large section of the population that crosses the border is that. Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to search all non-Israelis. All of them. (Not that other people crossing it at all that common, but when it happens, they are searched.)
Your example is just lame. The only people that the terrorists could recruit to not get searched are Israelis, and there probably actually aren't any Israelis who are willing to do it.
Ignoring a certain subset of people does work when those people are extremely unlikely to attack you and you can verify who they are.
However, every single nationality, every single religion, every single ethnicity, has at some point had a grudge with the US. Every single one of those with more than, say, fifty million people has had some nutjob go crazy and attack us, with varying levels of success. Even, yes, Americans.
And, what's worse, every single one of those can post as members of any other group, with the possible except that it's difficult to pose as an American to the American authorities.
There probably are some groups we shouldn't search on airplanes. Like Congresspeople. Or airplane pilots deadheading. (Yes, we search them for some reason.) However, these aren't 'unsuspicious people', they are merely people who could obviously do a lot more damage in other ways, like 'hijacking' their own plane or assassinating the president.
Of course, that concept also assumes that no one could impersonate those groups of people. In the case of Congresspeople, that's probably a safe assumption, but maybe not airplane pilots. (Of course, we then proceed to let the deadheading airplane pilots into the cockpit, where they could simply knock the pilots unconcious with a shoe and lock the door.)
Actually, I don't subscribe to any theory of rights. I think people have the ability to do anything they want at any time, running the spectrum from picking their nose to murdering people and eating their flesh to taking people who pick their nose and throwing them in jail.
Some people call the things they think it is immoral to harm others for 'rights', and I go along with the nomenclature, and in fact try to stop people from harming other people for those things. In fact, I'd like to expand the list.
But, in the strictest sense, I think 'rights' is a weird concept. Everyone is completely free to do anything they want to do at any time, including hurting other people for things those people have decided to do. Pretending anything else is just dishonest.
However, the fact that parts of the government stopps other parts of itself from harming me is not, in my book, 'protection'. That's just crazy talk. Throwing knifes at me and making sure they're deflected at the last second isn't making me safer.
If the government had stopped others from harming me, sure, but rights enumerated in the Constitution rarely apply to anything third parties due to me.
OTOH, the government protects me against certain specific types of harm and torts in general, which is people harming me in general, so if the guy down the street doesn't like my blog and arrests me, throwing me in his basement, I can have him arrested for kidnapping and sue him. So I guess you could argue that is a protection against him violating my right to be free from unreasonable seizures.
You need one to carry the weapons. He doesn't even have to do any fighting.
Feel free to spend all your time searching the 18 other terrorists and the ten other people who look somewhat like them, though, thus completely removing the chance you'll detect the old geezer who's going to go out with a bang.
That is the dumbest law I've ever heard of. I suspect that's why 'King Arthur' got off, instead of his argument that it's 'reasonable' to reform the Round Table.
What that law stops: Car pooling
What that law allows: Fifty-thousand people going to the same place seperately.
And it's not just obvious profiles. Let's assume we have this magical computer that can perfectly calculate the risk of someone being a terrorist, in completely objective terms, based on comparing them with everyone else.
Let's say we ban people with the odds over 95% from the plane, and search everyone who's at 70% or higher.
Let's say there is a terrorist cell of 15 people. Let's say this computer sets the odd of them at, in order:
(In reality, this should probably be a bell curve. But whatever.)
So, the terrorists get on a plane to see what's going on. They discover that the long-shoot terrorist, the guy who's never visited any Islamic country or done anything suspicious, is not searched, and neither is the guy who joined because the Americans killed his sister by accident last year and no one connected him to her. Everyone else is searched, and some of the top guys aren't even allowed to fly.
Well, hell, they'll just call the whole thing off, won't they? I mean, they only have two people who could carry weapons in without being searched, and it's not like they could hide everyone's weapons on themselves and distribute them later.
No, wait. Yes they could.
And this is assume some magical computer. In the real world, we have no idea of the odds of someone being a terrorist.
What do you mean, we can cast our nets further? You mean after they kill people?
You think it's honestly better to pay less attention to a certain set of people, in a way that's blatantly obvious to terrorists? Maybe in the theory that terrorists won't notice they're being searched.
This is a good thing in your book? That we pay less attention to certain kinds of people in a way terrorists can notice?
Gee, I wonder what that would lead to almost immediately.
Are people really this dense? Do they think terrorists are really so dumb they can't make test runs repeatedly, and find out who is not in the 'suspicius' category and who is?
Or is the idea that no blonde-hair blue-eye person could ever be recruited by terrorists?
See, terrorist recruiting doesn't work anything like you apparently think it does. They don't stroll up to people on the street and ask them. They know what 'white' people are sympathic to their cause, and if they need them, they can certainly recruit a few. Or, hell, they can just use make up. Sure, caucasion is hard, but what about Japanese or Kenyan?
And one is all they need to pull off any operation, because that one can carry all their supplies. Even if everyone else gets busted, they'll just get released because they didn't have anything, and try again.
Ha! That's the system I use, too. I set it to heavy duty warm. Full load of random stuff. Any grouping done is solely so I do less work when I take them out. (Today, stuff I have to fold. Tomorrow, stuff I don't.)
If I'm worried new something is going to bleed, I save up some towels and then throw them in together. After a few times, it stops bleeding. (Few things do actually bleed, but I have some interesting looking towels.) Or I toss it, I can't be arsed to remember about it.
Then I throw them into the dryer. If they aren't dry, I dry them again. Ifit shrinks, then it shrinks. It's not going to keep shrinking, and better it shrink now than later. And no anti-static, that's for silly people. Who cares?
The only things I actually pay the slightest bit of attention to the settings of are coats. Of course, those get washed like four times a year. And suits, but I only wear those three or four times a year.
Damn wimpy-ass clothes wanting me to baby them. I'm glad they get destroyed, saves me the trouble of throwing them out.
I will not buy into that one. If viewing my actions causes you distress, tough. I see a hell of a lot of things every day that causes me distress, and they're all perfectly legal.
Most people 'who don't pay income tax' end up paying their taxes before the gun is pointed at them. However, if you pay your taxes, you are not actually 'people who don't pay income tax'. Duh. You're just 'people who pay their taxes late with a bunch of penalties'.
Sometimes they can take your money from other people, but your income taxes are being paid there also, so those people don't really count.
If you actually don't pay your income tax (Or have someone pay it for you), you will eventually end up in jail, and ending up in jail always involved a gun being poining at you at some time. Or, at least, people putting their hands on their holstered guns and glowering at you.
On top of that, if the people who they try to take your money from refuse to help out, those people also go to jail.
Slashdot Mirror
Why, oh why, do soldiers hate America so? We have the right to torture anyone we want in a war!
Of course, now I must mention Echelon, where we spy on you, and you spy on us, and then we share. ;)
As for arresting people and secreting them away without a trial, we only do that to people who might possibly be terrorists, or someone has asserted are terrorists, or who we confuse with someone who's a terrorist.
And, sometimes, in other countries, we do it to people who get turned by other people, who we then pay 5000 dollars as a bounty. Hopefully, we'll start this in the US soon, so I can turn in my next-door neighbor who refuses to mow his lawn more than once a month, and make some quick cash.
And we hardly ever torture people that much.
The point isn't who they look like. The point is that the Israelis don't search known Israelis. Being the government, they presumably know who is actually a citizen of Israel and who isn't.
They aren't skipping 'Jews', they aren't searcing 'Muslims' or 'Arabs', they looking at a list of Israeli citizens who have left the country, and comparing that picture to the person and their ID. You match that, you get less security. That's all, that's it.
And I'm not even sure how much less security you get. They still have all sorts of bomb sniffers and stuff that everyone is subject to.
Can we both agree we can safely substitue "US" with "Israel" and have this be equally true?
Well, no, that's my point. Israelis don't attack Israel. Americans do attack America. Even native-born Americans.
It would appear you're vastly overrating the ability and willingness of muslim terrorist groups to recruit non-muslims.
Ah, here's the problem. I agree that no Muslim group is going to attack the US with non-Muslims. I also agree (and some people won't) that Muslim groups are what we mainly need to worry about right now, so we really don't need to worry about non-Muslims.
Now. Where's the list of Muslims?
See, we can figure out people's ethnicity. We can usually figure out their nationality, (What country they owe loyalty to.), although we can be tricked there.
We can trivially figure out someone's religion, unless they are hiding it. (Hopefully the terrorists haven't figure this out yet.)
Who says? This discussion is about who should always be searched. Nowhere in this thread has anyone ever discussed excluding people from searches.
Erm, I'm afraid it is you who just set up a strawman. You see, that line didn't say that others said people shouldn't searched, and this was wrong. It said, indeed, there are some groups we don't need to searched. Namely, people who could do much more harm via other means. Whether they are trustworthy or not, we don't need to worry about them hijacking airplanes.
However, a fundamental premise of profiling is that we search some people more, which pretty much automatically means we search some people less. Specifically, 'non-suspicious' people.
However, box cutters and knifes are roughly the same size, so that's not important here.
So you're asserting that (non-suspicious) people have carried single box cutters onto the plane without being detected?
I'm afraid that rather disproves your point. I was waiting for you to name a way to name a medium-sized weapon. I was going to replace it with a pack of razor blades, but you gave me one better.
You see, you're right, a few box cutters are all anyone could get past security. If a plan depended on sneaking multiple box cutters past security, they would be foiled by checking 90% of the terrorists. Even if they knew a certain guy wouldn't be searched, he couldn't carry more than two or three.
However, box cutters can hold a dozen razor blades. (And often do!) Which can be distributed and held by other means. Sliding them inside a plastic pen with the edge sticking out would be a trivial solution. Instant knife.
If you're talking about those 'break off' ones instead of the ones that hold real razor blades, they hold even more edges, although those tiny bits are more unwieldy, so it's a tradeoff.
You're so close. Someone needs to come over there and start up a 'competing' political party that aims for exactly the same thing. Or you can fork your existing one. Although the fact you apparently have successful third parties is a bit more worrisome. Change your laws so they have no power.
Wait, how's your educational system? You might have to crap it up a bit. Come on, I know you've got plenty of poor areas, and you used to have kids out on the street all the time, not even in school. (All who were, apparently, Cockney, for some reason.) Make schools so unappealing they end up out there again.
Oh, and you guys don't execute people, do you? Or torture them? Well, that's okay, we've only really started torturing people ourself, but you're going to need to execute some people soon. You used to do it, why'd you stop?
And I'm getting a little concerned about your lack of religious intolerance. You guys have a government religion, in fact your government created a religion, but you guys seem to treat it as a joke. You're going to have to get more hate going towards another religion. Looking at your history, I suggest Catholism, but feel free to pick another if you have a better idea. Remember you can pick another one later on...we've hated Jews, Catholics, Chinese (We accidently thought that was a religion in 1878 for a bit.), and Muslims.
FYI, next up for us is Hindu, a bunch of idol-worshiping heathens who keep taking our jobs, scheduled for 2010, although this Muslim thing is probably going to run into overtime. Did you guys already do Hindu, because when you ran India? If so, could you forward us some of that stuff so we can prep? And do you have any dirt on Gandhi?
Everything else gets a big checkmark. Just fix those few things and you're good to go.
I'll give you a B+, and I hope to see more effort in the future. (I forget what that grade is in Metric, sorry.)
In fact, part of the US's issue with English rule is that they weren't getting the same protection under the law they would have gotten in England. (Although the 2nd amendment rose out of the fact England has always restricted private gun ownership, because the English are quite willing to use them when the government pisses them off.)
And it's a republic as far as I can tell. The people elect Parliment, Parliment runs the country. It's parlimentary, which puts the executive branch and legislative branch in one, but that seems to work okay.
Not that I really follow their government or their politics, but claiming they aren't a 'Republic' is silly. They evolved into a republic instead of creating one from scratch, but they are one.
As for the monarchy, the way I understand it is that the government promises to do anything the monarch orders as long as the monarch doesn't order the government to do anything. ;)
What he didn't mention was which article he was reading. ;)
If we don't feel secure enough to burn people alive, the terrorists have won.
The police let this guy go?!?!
So, you're asserting there is a class of weapons that it is easy to sneak one onto an airplane, hence the need for searchs, but not easy to sneak fifteen on?
Not that you need 15, 15 was the size of the cell I postulated. You can apparently take an airplane over with four people, although I suspect I'd take more now.
Anyway, could you please explain how that works? What are these weapons? A machete down the pants leg? A disassembled gun hidden as cell phone? A glass eye that contains a tiny taser?
Perhaps in some 'movie plot terrorism' but in the real world, if you can hide a razor blade in a way the x-ray machine will not see it, you can hide 15. They are not that big.
And if you're blowing up the plane instead of hijacking it, of course, just one person is all you need anyway. With your non-random searches you just blew the chance of randomly searching the guy.
I'd like a single example of a realistic weapon that it's possible to sneak one past security, but gets harder the more you sneak.
Your example is just lame. The only people that the terrorists could recruit to not get searched are Israelis, and there probably actually aren't any Israelis who are willing to do it.
Ignoring a certain subset of people does work when those people are extremely unlikely to attack you and you can verify who they are.
However, every single nationality, every single religion, every single ethnicity, has at some point had a grudge with the US. Every single one of those with more than, say, fifty million people has had some nutjob go crazy and attack us, with varying levels of success. Even, yes, Americans.
And, what's worse, every single one of those can post as members of any other group, with the possible except that it's difficult to pose as an American to the American authorities.
There probably are some groups we shouldn't search on airplanes. Like Congresspeople. Or airplane pilots deadheading. (Yes, we search them for some reason.) However, these aren't 'unsuspicious people', they are merely people who could obviously do a lot more damage in other ways, like 'hijacking' their own plane or assassinating the president.
Of course, that concept also assumes that no one could impersonate those groups of people. In the case of Congresspeople, that's probably a safe assumption, but maybe not airplane pilots. (Of course, we then proceed to let the deadheading airplane pilots into the cockpit, where they could simply knock the pilots unconcious with a shoe and lock the door.)
Some people call the things they think it is immoral to harm others for 'rights', and I go along with the nomenclature, and in fact try to stop people from harming other people for those things. In fact, I'd like to expand the list.
But, in the strictest sense, I think 'rights' is a weird concept. Everyone is completely free to do anything they want to do at any time, including hurting other people for things those people have decided to do. Pretending anything else is just dishonest.
However, the fact that parts of the government stopps other parts of itself from harming me is not, in my book, 'protection'. That's just crazy talk. Throwing knifes at me and making sure they're deflected at the last second isn't making me safer.
If the government had stopped others from harming me, sure, but rights enumerated in the Constitution rarely apply to anything third parties due to me.
OTOH, the government protects me against certain specific types of harm and torts in general, which is people harming me in general, so if the guy down the street doesn't like my blog and arrests me, throwing me in his basement, I can have him arrested for kidnapping and sue him. So I guess you could argue that is a protection against him violating my right to be free from unreasonable seizures.
You need one to carry the weapons. He doesn't even have to do any fighting.
Feel free to spend all your time searching the 18 other terrorists and the ten other people who look somewhat like them, though, thus completely removing the chance you'll detect the old geezer who's going to go out with a bang.
What that law stops: Car pooling
What that law allows: Fifty-thousand people going to the same place seperately.
Hey, look at that.
And it's not just obvious profiles. Let's assume we have this magical computer that can perfectly calculate the risk of someone being a terrorist, in completely objective terms, based on comparing them with everyone else.
Let's say we ban people with the odds over 95% from the plane, and search everyone who's at 70% or higher.
Let's say there is a terrorist cell of 15 people. Let's say this computer sets the odd of them at, in order:
42% 67% 74% 85% 91% 93% 94% 94% 85% 95% 95% 96% 96% 97% 98%
(In reality, this should probably be a bell curve. But whatever.)
So, the terrorists get on a plane to see what's going on. They discover that the long-shoot terrorist, the guy who's never visited any Islamic country or done anything suspicious, is not searched, and neither is the guy who joined because the Americans killed his sister by accident last year and no one connected him to her. Everyone else is searched, and some of the top guys aren't even allowed to fly.
Well, hell, they'll just call the whole thing off, won't they? I mean, they only have two people who could carry weapons in without being searched, and it's not like they could hide everyone's weapons on themselves and distribute them later.
No, wait. Yes they could.
And this is assume some magical computer. In the real world, we have no idea of the odds of someone being a terrorist.
Although that is forbidden in Islam.
You think it's honestly better to pay less attention to a certain set of people, in a way that's blatantly obvious to terrorists? Maybe in the theory that terrorists won't notice they're being searched.
This is a good thing in your book? That we pay less attention to certain kinds of people in a way terrorists can notice?
Gee, I wonder what that would lead to almost immediately.
Are people really this dense? Do they think terrorists are really so dumb they can't make test runs repeatedly, and find out who is not in the 'suspicius' category and who is?
Or is the idea that no blonde-hair blue-eye person could ever be recruited by terrorists?
See, terrorist recruiting doesn't work anything like you apparently think it does. They don't stroll up to people on the street and ask them. They know what 'white' people are sympathic to their cause, and if they need them, they can certainly recruit a few. Or, hell, they can just use make up. Sure, caucasion is hard, but what about Japanese or Kenyan?
And one is all they need to pull off any operation, because that one can carry all their supplies. Even if everyone else gets busted, they'll just get released because they didn't have anything, and try again.
If I'm worried new something is going to bleed, I save up some towels and then throw them in together. After a few times, it stops bleeding. (Few things do actually bleed, but I have some interesting looking towels.) Or I toss it, I can't be arsed to remember about it.
Then I throw them into the dryer. If they aren't dry, I dry them again. Ifit shrinks, then it shrinks. It's not going to keep shrinking, and better it shrink now than later. And no anti-static, that's for silly people. Who cares?
The only things I actually pay the slightest bit of attention to the settings of are coats. Of course, those get washed like four times a year. And suits, but I only wear those three or four times a year.
Damn wimpy-ass clothes wanting me to baby them. I'm glad they get destroyed, saves me the trouble of throwing them out.
The auto-repair industry and architects are about the only people you can count on to know what a 'firewall' is.
I started talking about the firewall in a car to someone one day and they thought I was talking about something related to a car's computer.
I, OTOH, laugh whenever anyone talks about a POS.
I think you missed my sarcasm.
I will not buy into that one. If viewing my actions causes you distress, tough. I see a hell of a lot of things every day that causes me distress, and they're all perfectly legal.
The sad thing is, they are the political party that makes the most sense on many issues.
Most people 'who don't pay income tax' end up paying their taxes before the gun is pointed at them. However, if you pay your taxes, you are not actually 'people who don't pay income tax'. Duh. You're just 'people who pay their taxes late with a bunch of penalties'.
Sometimes they can take your money from other people, but your income taxes are being paid there also, so those people don't really count.
If you actually don't pay your income tax (Or have someone pay it for you), you will eventually end up in jail, and ending up in jail always involved a gun being poining at you at some time. Or, at least, people putting their hands on their holstered guns and glowering at you.
On top of that, if the people who they try to take your money from refuse to help out, those people also go to jail.