It features passenger comforts such as bigger windows, larger overhead bins and better ventilation.
Really? Those are the "passenger comforts" so significant they get a mention?
How about they just make the seats (ALL the seats) wide enough for normal Americans to sit comfortably without feeling they are intruding on the personal space of others?
I'd happily fly in slow, noisy, propeller-driven planes fired by coal if they'd just give us enough room to be comfortable on a long flight.
A good guard dog is a good thing, for sure, and the only answer for inside the house.
Personally, if I lived in an isolated area, I'd also raise guinea fowl to serve as an exterior alarm. They provide eggs, they're good to eat, and it's impossible to cross their yard without the whole bunch of them letting loose with some of the loudest, most annoying vocalizations in the animal kingdom. Seriously - nobody, I mean nobody, not even some 15th-generation super-ninja can approach your house without setting off a holy hell of a ruckus if you keep guineas around the house.
On points 2 and 3, I agree. Traditionally, there's also a point 4 on that list - have a cell phone to call for help in case the land line is cut. Nowadays, people don't usually bother to include that last bit since nearly all of us have cells with us all the time, anyway.
"That guy" lived in the middle of Arizona. Law enforcement help, under the best of circumstances, could not arrive in under an hour. Under those circumstances, a little self-reliance is a good thing.
And if you've never heard of biker gangs deciding to descend, en masse, on isolated ranch houses in the western U.S., you might want to read up on the subject. It's not common but it has happened.
Not really. One in front and one in back take care of the only two doors to the house.
Windows were designed with security in mind. I never knew what his garage door precautions were like.
Remember, though, this guy wasn't building a fortress to withstand a prolonged siege. He just wanted the obvious entry points, the doors, sufficiently well-designed so that home invaders would be forced to give him a few seconds warning.
It's not like he had bullet-proof windows, for example. In fact, there's one famous story about him showing off the excellent trigger pull on his Smith and Wesson M29.44 Magnum revolver to a visitor. He opened the cylinder, dropped the cartridges into his hand, closed the cylinder and took aim out his front window at the gas meter and dry-fired the gun, commenting on how great the trigger was. Then he let the visitor try it and the visitor was duly impressed. Then he dry-fired it one last time, just out of a sense of satisfaction at how fine a trigger pull it exhibited. Remember, he was sitting in his den, aiming at a gas meter, through a picture window.
The gun fired. When the commotion and surprise died down, he checked his pocket. When he had unloaded the revolver, only 5 cartridges had dropped out. One, for whatever reason, had stuck in the cylinder.
Jeff Cooper, The Man Who Invented Modern Pistolcraft, simply did not have negligent discharges. He was shaken by the incident, to say the least.
Later, a group of his friends hatched a plot, met the gas company guy who came out to replace the meter, and bought the faceplate from the repairman. They mounted it to a plaque and waited until another (legit) awards ceremony was happening whereupon they took the opportunity to present him with an award honoring the notion that he was, in fact, human and capable of making mistakes. Luckily, they guy had a good sense of humor about it.
Sorry to get sidetracked but the guy was an amazing and fascinating character.
Uh, no. Not when the homeowner has a steel plate, wood-veneered front door that can withstand a.50 Browning AP round and is also equipped with an APC-style firing port.
Jeff Cooper (famous to some, infamous to others, "Huh?" to most) had an interesting take on home invasions. He believed that the only thing you really needed during a home invasion was time. Literally just a few seconds warning gives you time to react properly and save lives. He used to teach something along the lines of "Your home is going to be invaded through the front door by a murderous gang. Your family, including your toddler grandchildren, is spread about the house. You have two choices. First option - you have the finest, custom-built.45 ever conceived by the mind of man built by the finest 'smith in the world with cost as no object on your belt. Second option - you have a functional but generally piece of crap.32 somewhere in your pocket and ten seconds warning. Which do you choose?"
The obvious answer is to take the warning time. To that end, he had a very simple entry to his home. It was a long (about 30 feet), narrow courtyard with a heavy, cast-iron gate at the end. Visitors had to ring the bell. He would look through the peephole and if things seemed OK, step outside the door. If he didn't know you, it would be up to you to explain why you were there. If he wanted to let you in, the gate was unlocked by a lever back at the front door.
In short, if you wanted to home-invade that guy, you'd have to break down a heavy gate (providing warning) and traverse a hallway without cover (aka, a completely merciless killing zone) before you could even reach his front door.
I thought his solution was elegant and cheap. It required only a couple of adobe walls leading out from the door to his house, an iron arbor "ceiling" for the outdoor room (from which decorative plants hung), and a sturdy gate with a very simply unlocking mechanism that was, essentialy, just a doorknob that extended back 30 feet to the front door.
If I had a place in the country, I'd consider this a very reasonable way to build an entry. I like entry courtyards, anyway.
But the law you cite would (arguably, depending on circumstances) make such a design illegal.
Ever since we settled down and started farming, most people were born, lived, and died within a day's walk of the same spot. Even before that, I suspect, most people lived their lives surrounded by more or less the same people, even if the location changed.
Exactly. Most people don't care about anonymity and thus it has always been rare. It was less rare over the last few hundred years but it's always been uncommon.
Uncommon. Not impossible. Big difference.
Illustrations? Here's something random - a quote from Tom Horn:
There were many different branches making up the Apache tribe. There were the Tonto Apaches, San Carlos Apaches, White Mountain Apaches, Cibicus, Agua Caliente (or Warm Springs), and last and worst of all were the Chiricahuas. All of these Indians spoke the same language, but were divided according to their dispositions. Thus a bad Tonto would leave the Tontos and go to the Cibicus or the Chiricahuas, and a timid Chiricahua would move to the Tontos, so at the time of which I am writing, you could find a good Indian or a bad Indian by knowing to what tribe he belonged. They all wore their hair different, and for one accustomed to them they could be told apart as far as you could see them.
That's just one example of the fact that it's always been possible, even in small societies where everybody knew everybody, to re-invent yourself and leave your old persona behind.
Changing your surroundings, your people, and achieving anonmymity has always been possible. It's just never seemed particularly worth the trouble except for a few folks who *really* don't fit in.
Thus the stage is set for today where not enough people understand or value anonymity enough to fight for it despite the fact that it's on the verge of ceasing to exist, a sea-change in the human condition brought about, uniquely in this age, by technology.
I love tech because I know how powerful it is. At the same time, it's something easily perverted to nefarious purposes that will be damn near impossible to resist once they take hold. I find your throw-up-your-hands-and-surrender attitude (to paraphrase, "Anonymity is a historical blip. When it's gone, no big deal") sets my teeth particularly on edge this morning. I think you're wrong but I apologize if I've been a bit rude in the way I expressed that conclusion.
At least I didn't quote LBJ to make my point; I'm not going to be that much of an ass.
Your take on anonymity in that old post remains just plain silly.
...anonymity was unique to the 20th century. In the 19th century, due to transportation constraints, everyone knew who you were and what you did.
No. Just...no.
Even in the late 19th century and certainly for all of history preceding that time, anyone who wanted anonymity could simply walk away. I've often thought that if I had been born in 1830 or so on the east coast of the U.S., before I reached my 20s I would have started walking west. I might have died in the first week. I might have achieved great things. I'll never know.
I do know, however, that anonymity was easily achieved in those days. Walk 10 miles, make up a new name for yourself, forget your past, and keep walking. Lather, rinse, repeat as often as your own personal demons or desires drove you to do so. Anonymity just came with the territory.
What we are facing in the near future is historically unique - a true, inescapable loss of anonymity made possible by a panopticon that never forgets, that is even learning to recognize our faces. That, imo, is a truly scary prospect.
The 2007 storm is the one I was talking about. There were tens of thousands of trees downed or just bent double. It was amazing to see. I personally know two old guys, former tree maintenance company owners, who came out of retirement just to rake in cash for the next year doing cleanup all over the metro area.
Lucky you. I'm in (roughly) the middle of a very large metro area (Houston) but happen to live in a neighborhood at the end of a mile-long road with no other way in or out. We are at the terminus of our part of the electrical grid and there are only a couple of hundred homes. In short, we're low priority for power restoration due to our small population and in a location where falling trees along that mile-long entry road can take out our power in a heartbeat.
The power goes out in my neighborhood regularly. "Maintenance" took it out for 6 hours 2 days ago. It was out for over a week the last time we had a big ice storm. It was out for over two weeks during the last hurricane. It goes out for some time, maybe a few minutes or maybe several hours, during every big thunderstorm. And as for tree removal, after the last hurricane the county cleared our main road in after a week but people who had to hire private contractors to remove trees that had fallen through their houses often had a 2 or 3 week wait to get an appointment.
You better believe that whenever there's a hint of serious weather, we either get a generator (there's almost always an evacuating neighbor who wants us to watch their house and feed their cat and is happy to lend us a generator in exchange) and a ton of supplies or we get the heck out.
My poor grandmother in only semi-rural Alabama was once without power for over 6 weeks after a hurricane.
People should take weather more seriously. I swear, if I had the money I'd get a NG-powered fuel cell, feed a bank of batteries, and run my house off that, completely ditching the electrical grid. Where I live, it's just too unreliable.
I seem to recall that she was killed and that a lieutenant junior grade in her command was the one who had to take the ship back...
It didn't occur to me that anyone would get this mixed up the way you have. You're right, she wasn't in command of the suicide mission. I never said she was. I said she was the one who made the decision to go back.
Slight difference there.
Actually, international treaties do trump the Constitution.
then you link to a wikipedia article where the first sentence reads:
Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the United States Senate.
Care to explain your thought process a bit further?
...was Rachel Garrett (played by Tricia O'Neil), captain of the NCC-1701-C. Her decision to sacrifice her ship and crew averted all-out war with the Klingons, saved the Federation and saved billions of lives. That's a tough act to follow.
Same here. I've always been able to ride anything with no fear. I actually find serious g-forces relaxing. Ferris wheels, though, are a completely different matter. The ONLY ride that has ever made me throw up was a ferris wheel.
You could characterize the use of cash exactly the same way. I like paying cash. It would be nice if I could pay cash over the intertubes. If Bitcoin does (the equivalent of) that, lots of people are going to like it for lots of reasons, some nice and some not so nice.
Rather than re-typing or cutting and pasting, I'll just link to a few posts from years ago. One of these days, I should compile these, edit them into something truly slick, then just cut-n-paste every time one of these discussions comes up. Oh, well.
Thanks. Based on my research, Argentina is at the top of my list and it's interesting that you'd mention that country. I have a visit planned for 2014.
Feeding the troll, but, hey, what can I do? Like any good troll, he's building on a kernel of truth that should be addressed.
I've done this research in the past and found nothing that suits me. The GP seemed to have some particular places in mind and, if so, then the GP seemed to need a bit of encouragement to reveal them.
As for standing up and fighting - there are ways and there are ways. One of the best ways to fight injustice is to leave its sphere of influence until it burns itself out. That's proactive, hard work, and pretty much the opposite of lazy. If my country is an experiment that's failing (and I believe it is), then building a better life in a better place (assuming I can find such a thing; I haven't succeeded yet) is pretty much the most efficient way to fight injustice that exists. Effective resistance against evil is illegal, anyway, so I'm willing to trade away immediate local effectiveness for long-term achievement. If such logic disgusts you, feel free to continue bitching on internet forums. I prefer to actually do something.
There are plenty of places that are quite safe despite having very little or no police presence.
Where?
Seriously. I'm retired and deeply troubled by the notion that I no longer respect but merely fear the police in my country. I might be willing to relocate. Give me a short list and I'll do some research.
Making your own firearms is a well-established hobby in the U.S. Lots of people do it. There are forums devoted to it. Federal law specifically provides for it. It's nothing new. Nor is composite as a material for AR lowers; youtube has plenty of videos of people shooting "Plum Crazy"-based AR rifles. And 3D printing has been around a while.
I used to work at a place where the local director was the absolute power king over every employee, every division, every task in the geographic area. He had to report up the line to someone from a different city, but if it happened in or around Houston he was responsible for it. Call him a "choke point" if you like but there was no "stovepiping" in the organization. Such would be impossible since he knew everything that was going on.
He also knew every name of all 2000 of his employees, their spouses names, and most of their kids names. The guy was amazing to work for and almost no one ever left.
Anyone who did leave (most via retirement) got an hour of his time. It was an unstructured time. He asked few if any questions. Anything you said was heard by the only person in the place who could unilaterally fix any problem. He was there to thank you for your years of service and hear anything you had to say.
Understand, please, that this was a guy who fixed problems. I once saw him suspend an entire working group for a day and send them home because of the way they had treated a retail customer. He then called all the first and mid-level managers in that department and ordered them to drive in from their outlying offices, stand at the counter, and serve the walk-in customers for the rest of the week while he personally conducted customer service training for the suspended employees. Sweetest guy you'd ever want to meet but, boyohboy, he could kick ass when he was forced.
Given all that, not much changed after he heard an exit interview because few people had witnessed enough continuing bad behavior to warrant a change. Still, the few bad managers we had would try, years in advance, to transfer out employees who were nearing retirement. If you were a jerk boss and you let someone retire out of your group, The Director would hear about you. And you would, quite likely, find yourself demoted to working alongside the people you used to boss around. If he was told about a real equipment safety problem, you'd see him talking to the maintenance guys and their boss, personally, to find out how to fix it. If he was told that the paper workflow in a certain place was screwy, you'd see him drop in to shadow some low-level employee for a day.
Hell, he shadowed two field employees per year for an entire day of public interaction out of general principle. Truly a great guy.
That was a quarter-century ago. I realize times are different now and people are much more mobile. No executive could spend an hour with everyone who leaves; there aren't enough hours in the day. Thus, exit interviews, even if they happen, are conducted by an HR drone.
Exit interviews to an HR department are a waste of time. Exit interviews with the big boss can be something completely different.
I understand what they are and that they exist but I thought that "burner" was just TV-cop jargon. Still, as long as the article mentions them, which are best? What's the best way to get one? Assume a maximally-paranoid consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
Really? Those are the "passenger comforts" so significant they get a mention?
How about they just make the seats (ALL the seats) wide enough for normal Americans to sit comfortably without feeling they are intruding on the personal space of others?
I'd happily fly in slow, noisy, propeller-driven planes fired by coal if they'd just give us enough room to be comfortable on a long flight.
A good guard dog is a good thing, for sure, and the only answer for inside the house.
Personally, if I lived in an isolated area, I'd also raise guinea fowl to serve as an exterior alarm. They provide eggs, they're good to eat, and it's impossible to cross their yard without the whole bunch of them letting loose with some of the loudest, most annoying vocalizations in the animal kingdom. Seriously - nobody, I mean nobody, not even some 15th-generation super-ninja can approach your house without setting off a holy hell of a ruckus if you keep guineas around the house.
On points 2 and 3, I agree. Traditionally, there's also a point 4 on that list - have a cell phone to call for help in case the land line is cut. Nowadays, people don't usually bother to include that last bit since nearly all of us have cells with us all the time, anyway.
"That guy" lived in the middle of Arizona. Law enforcement help, under the best of circumstances, could not arrive in under an hour. Under those circumstances, a little self-reliance is a good thing.
And if you've never heard of biker gangs deciding to descend, en masse, on isolated ranch houses in the western U.S., you might want to read up on the subject. It's not common but it has happened.
Not really. One in front and one in back take care of the only two doors to the house.
Windows were designed with security in mind. I never knew what his garage door precautions were like.
Remember, though, this guy wasn't building a fortress to withstand a prolonged siege. He just wanted the obvious entry points, the doors, sufficiently well-designed so that home invaders would be forced to give him a few seconds warning.
It's not like he had bullet-proof windows, for example. In fact, there's one famous story about him showing off the excellent trigger pull on his Smith and Wesson M29 .44 Magnum revolver to a visitor. He opened the cylinder, dropped the cartridges into his hand, closed the cylinder and took aim out his front window at the gas meter and dry-fired the gun, commenting on how great the trigger was. Then he let the visitor try it and the visitor was duly impressed. Then he dry-fired it one last time, just out of a sense of satisfaction at how fine a trigger pull it exhibited. Remember, he was sitting in his den, aiming at a gas meter, through a picture window.
The gun fired. When the commotion and surprise died down, he checked his pocket. When he had unloaded the revolver, only 5 cartridges had dropped out. One, for whatever reason, had stuck in the cylinder.
Jeff Cooper, The Man Who Invented Modern Pistolcraft, simply did not have negligent discharges. He was shaken by the incident, to say the least.
Later, a group of his friends hatched a plot, met the gas company guy who came out to replace the meter, and bought the faceplate from the repairman. They mounted it to a plaque and waited until another (legit) awards ceremony was happening whereupon they took the opportunity to present him with an award honoring the notion that he was, in fact, human and capable of making mistakes. Luckily, they guy had a good sense of humor about it.
Sorry to get sidetracked but the guy was an amazing and fascinating character.
Uh, no. Not when the homeowner has a steel plate, wood-veneered front door that can withstand a .50 Browning AP round and is also equipped with an APC-style firing port.
Now, that's one stupid law.
Jeff Cooper (famous to some, infamous to others, "Huh?" to most) had an interesting take on home invasions. He believed that the only thing you really needed during a home invasion was time. Literally just a few seconds warning gives you time to react properly and save lives. He used to teach something along the lines of "Your home is going to be invaded through the front door by a murderous gang. Your family, including your toddler grandchildren, is spread about the house. You have two choices. First option - you have the finest, custom-built .45 ever conceived by the mind of man built by the finest 'smith in the world with cost as no object on your belt. Second option - you have a functional but generally piece of crap .32 somewhere in your pocket and ten seconds warning. Which do you choose?"
The obvious answer is to take the warning time. To that end, he had a very simple entry to his home. It was a long (about 30 feet), narrow courtyard with a heavy, cast-iron gate at the end. Visitors had to ring the bell. He would look through the peephole and if things seemed OK, step outside the door. If he didn't know you, it would be up to you to explain why you were there. If he wanted to let you in, the gate was unlocked by a lever back at the front door.
In short, if you wanted to home-invade that guy, you'd have to break down a heavy gate (providing warning) and traverse a hallway without cover (aka, a completely merciless killing zone) before you could even reach his front door.
I thought his solution was elegant and cheap. It required only a couple of adobe walls leading out from the door to his house, an iron arbor "ceiling" for the outdoor room (from which decorative plants hung), and a sturdy gate with a very simply unlocking mechanism that was, essentialy, just a doorknob that extended back 30 feet to the front door.
If I had a place in the country, I'd consider this a very reasonable way to build an entry. I like entry courtyards, anyway.
But the law you cite would (arguably, depending on circumstances) make such a design illegal.
Stupid, stupid law.
It appears you're trying to make my point for me.
Exactly. Most people don't care about anonymity and thus it has always been rare. It was less rare over the last few hundred years but it's always been uncommon.
Uncommon. Not impossible. Big difference.
Illustrations? Here's something random - a quote from Tom Horn:
That's just one example of the fact that it's always been possible, even in small societies where everybody knew everybody, to re-invent yourself and leave your old persona behind.
Changing your surroundings, your people, and achieving anonmymity has always been possible. It's just never seemed particularly worth the trouble except for a few folks who *really* don't fit in.
Thus the stage is set for today where not enough people understand or value anonymity enough to fight for it despite the fact that it's on the verge of ceasing to exist, a sea-change in the human condition brought about, uniquely in this age, by technology.
I love tech because I know how powerful it is. At the same time, it's something easily perverted to nefarious purposes that will be damn near impossible to resist once they take hold. I find your throw-up-your-hands-and-surrender attitude (to paraphrase, "Anonymity is a historical blip. When it's gone, no big deal") sets my teeth particularly on edge this morning. I think you're wrong but I apologize if I've been a bit rude in the way I expressed that conclusion.
At least I didn't quote LBJ to make my point; I'm not going to be that much of an ass.
Your take on anonymity in that old post remains just plain silly.
No. Just...no.
Even in the late 19th century and certainly for all of history preceding that time, anyone who wanted anonymity could simply walk away. I've often thought that if I had been born in 1830 or so on the east coast of the U.S., before I reached my 20s I would have started walking west. I might have died in the first week. I might have achieved great things. I'll never know.
I do know, however, that anonymity was easily achieved in those days. Walk 10 miles, make up a new name for yourself, forget your past, and keep walking. Lather, rinse, repeat as often as your own personal demons or desires drove you to do so. Anonymity just came with the territory.
What we are facing in the near future is historically unique - a true, inescapable loss of anonymity made possible by a panopticon that never forgets, that is even learning to recognize our faces. That, imo, is a truly scary prospect.
We've had several ice storms over the years, though only a couple were really bad. See: http://www.wxresearch.com/almanac/houice.htm
The 2007 storm is the one I was talking about. There were tens of thousands of trees downed or just bent double. It was amazing to see. I personally know two old guys, former tree maintenance company owners, who came out of retirement just to rake in cash for the next year doing cleanup all over the metro area.
Lucky you. I'm in (roughly) the middle of a very large metro area (Houston) but happen to live in a neighborhood at the end of a mile-long road with no other way in or out. We are at the terminus of our part of the electrical grid and there are only a couple of hundred homes. In short, we're low priority for power restoration due to our small population and in a location where falling trees along that mile-long entry road can take out our power in a heartbeat.
The power goes out in my neighborhood regularly. "Maintenance" took it out for 6 hours 2 days ago. It was out for over a week the last time we had a big ice storm. It was out for over two weeks during the last hurricane. It goes out for some time, maybe a few minutes or maybe several hours, during every big thunderstorm. And as for tree removal, after the last hurricane the county cleared our main road in after a week but people who had to hire private contractors to remove trees that had fallen through their houses often had a 2 or 3 week wait to get an appointment.
You better believe that whenever there's a hint of serious weather, we either get a generator (there's almost always an evacuating neighbor who wants us to watch their house and feed their cat and is happy to lend us a generator in exchange) and a ton of supplies or we get the heck out.
My poor grandmother in only semi-rural Alabama was once without power for over 6 weeks after a hurricane.
People should take weather more seriously. I swear, if I had the money I'd get a NG-powered fuel cell, feed a bank of batteries, and run my house off that, completely ditching the electrical grid. Where I live, it's just too unreliable.
It didn't occur to me that anyone would get this mixed up the way you have. You're right, she wasn't in command of the suicide mission. I never said she was. I said she was the one who made the decision to go back. Slight difference there.
First you say
then you link to a wikipedia article where the first sentence reads:
Care to explain your thought process a bit further?
...was Rachel Garrett (played by Tricia O'Neil), captain of the NCC-1701-C. Her decision to sacrifice her ship and crew averted all-out war with the Klingons, saved the Federation and saved billions of lives. That's a tough act to follow.
Clear thinking should be rewarded.
Same here. I've always been able to ride anything with no fear. I actually find serious g-forces relaxing. Ferris wheels, though, are a completely different matter. The ONLY ride that has ever made me throw up was a ferris wheel.
Not just interesting. Wonderful.
You could characterize the use of cash exactly the same way. I like paying cash. It would be nice if I could pay cash over the intertubes. If Bitcoin does (the equivalent of) that, lots of people are going to like it for lots of reasons, some nice and some not so nice.
Just like cash.
Rather than re-typing or cutting and pasting, I'll just link to a few posts from years ago. One of these days, I should compile these, edit them into something truly slick, then just cut-n-paste every time one of these discussions comes up. Oh, well.
Anyway:
On the history of child porn in the U.S. and the fact that it wasn't always illegal (and that society didn't crumble back when it was legal): http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1178395&cid=27362943
On the fact that some of us recognized these problems a long, long time ago and have been willing to fight for just as long: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1178395&cid=27370055
On the mission creep and misuse of child porn laws: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1178395&cid=27370283
On the legality of child porn in most countries: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1178395&cid=27376399
Easy: https://www.snapfon.com/index.php
Thanks. Based on my research, Argentina is at the top of my list and it's interesting that you'd mention that country. I have a visit planned for 2014.
Feeding the troll, but, hey, what can I do? Like any good troll, he's building on a kernel of truth that should be addressed.
I've done this research in the past and found nothing that suits me. The GP seemed to have some particular places in mind and, if so, then the GP seemed to need a bit of encouragement to reveal them.
As for standing up and fighting - there are ways and there are ways. One of the best ways to fight injustice is to leave its sphere of influence until it burns itself out. That's proactive, hard work, and pretty much the opposite of lazy. If my country is an experiment that's failing (and I believe it is), then building a better life in a better place (assuming I can find such a thing; I haven't succeeded yet) is pretty much the most efficient way to fight injustice that exists. Effective resistance against evil is illegal, anyway, so I'm willing to trade away immediate local effectiveness for long-term achievement. If such logic disgusts you, feel free to continue bitching on internet forums. I prefer to actually do something.
Where?
Seriously. I'm retired and deeply troubled by the notion that I no longer respect but merely fear the police in my country. I might be willing to relocate. Give me a short list and I'll do some research.
Making your own firearms is a well-established hobby in the U.S. Lots of people do it. There are forums devoted to it. Federal law specifically provides for it. It's nothing new. Nor is composite as a material for AR lowers; youtube has plenty of videos of people shooting "Plum Crazy"-based AR rifles. And 3D printing has been around a while.
What's newsworthy here? I don't get it.
Hollywood seems to love re-boots, so why doesn't someone adapt Grendel?
Every movie would be a re-boot. If it was on TV, every season could be a re-boot.
I used to work at a place where the local director was the absolute power king over every employee, every division, every task in the geographic area. He had to report up the line to someone from a different city, but if it happened in or around Houston he was responsible for it. Call him a "choke point" if you like but there was no "stovepiping" in the organization. Such would be impossible since he knew everything that was going on.
He also knew every name of all 2000 of his employees, their spouses names, and most of their kids names. The guy was amazing to work for and almost no one ever left.
Anyone who did leave (most via retirement) got an hour of his time. It was an unstructured time. He asked few if any questions. Anything you said was heard by the only person in the place who could unilaterally fix any problem. He was there to thank you for your years of service and hear anything you had to say.
Understand, please, that this was a guy who fixed problems. I once saw him suspend an entire working group for a day and send them home because of the way they had treated a retail customer. He then called all the first and mid-level managers in that department and ordered them to drive in from their outlying offices, stand at the counter, and serve the walk-in customers for the rest of the week while he personally conducted customer service training for the suspended employees. Sweetest guy you'd ever want to meet but, boyohboy, he could kick ass when he was forced.
Given all that, not much changed after he heard an exit interview because few people had witnessed enough continuing bad behavior to warrant a change. Still, the few bad managers we had would try, years in advance, to transfer out employees who were nearing retirement. If you were a jerk boss and you let someone retire out of your group, The Director would hear about you. And you would, quite likely, find yourself demoted to working alongside the people you used to boss around. If he was told about a real equipment safety problem, you'd see him talking to the maintenance guys and their boss, personally, to find out how to fix it. If he was told that the paper workflow in a certain place was screwy, you'd see him drop in to shadow some low-level employee for a day.
Hell, he shadowed two field employees per year for an entire day of public interaction out of general principle. Truly a great guy.
That was a quarter-century ago. I realize times are different now and people are much more mobile. No executive could spend an hour with everyone who leaves; there aren't enough hours in the day. Thus, exit interviews, even if they happen, are conducted by an HR drone.
Exit interviews to an HR department are a waste of time. Exit interviews with the big boss can be something completely different.
I understand what they are and that they exist but I thought that "burner" was just TV-cop jargon. Still, as long as the article mentions them, which are best? What's the best way to get one? Assume a maximally-paranoid consumer.