I am increasingly of the opinion that the first warning sign of a society heading for collapse is when “home schooling” becomes normalised, instead of being prima facie evidence that the kids are being abused and should be immediately taken into care.
I still find it fairly wild that on US domestic arrivals they seemingly dump your baggage straight onto the sidewalk and you have to race to get to it before the nearest tramp does… There is much about US airport design that seems absurd in an international context.
Are the airport facilities (i.e. how much space is given over to security, how many scanners there will be, the queuing arrangements, that sort of thing) part of TSA’s remit, or is that someone else’s problem and they just work with what they’re given by the airport authorities (genuine question)? Because as an outsider, it doesn’t feel like “having basic airport security” is an absurd thing - it’s “doing it badly with completely inadequate capacity” that is. It doesn’t have to be that way (nowhere else in the world seems to have this problem), but it seems like in the US instead of doing the job properly they’ve instead decided to just come up with an endless number of schemes to allow people to pay to jump the queue instead of actually fixing the queue. I guess if that’s the TSA’s responsibility, I’d probably hate them too…
I mean, sure, if the only threat you can imagine is an exact replica of 9/11, sure, I guess they’re useless. But there have been far more people killed by bombs on airliners than 9/11, and someone needs to do the screening.
It can be true that the TSA are assholes, and also that US airport security was laughable before 9/11 and someone probably ought to be checking baggage for threats. Particularly while, as a nation, you seem to be doing everything in your power to make every country in the world except Russia hate you.
The weird thing about this thread is just how many people hate the TSA.
And I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t, but - it’s weird. I don’t hate the guys and girls who work at airport security anywhere else (and I fly a lot, around Europe and Asia.) They’re just people doing a job that I regret is necessary, on the whole keeping people safe. Even the ones in China with a battery and cigarette lighter fetish.
What is it about the US that means as soon as someone gets even the remotest sniff of ‘power’ that they have to turn into a monumental asshole? There has to be something about education, society, organisation structures, whatever that makes the US almost uniquely like the Stanford Prison Experiment on a continental scale.
But also markedly better in many. I’ve worked in Changsha on and off for the last decade, and I’d move there to live in a heartbeat. The modern US I wouldn’t touch with a hundred foot pole.
That’s subjective of course - but, while I don’t know what you’re taught in the US (it’s actually exciting to learn that you still have schools, I thought they’d all been converted into gun ranges) about China, that some people are clueing up to the reality being different is an objectively good thing - even if it’s not all sunshine and roses in Xi’s world either.
Don’t forget a UK gallon is about 25% bigger than a US gallon (160fl.oz vs 128fl.oz).
(Why yes, yes Imperial measurements are fucking ridiculous, thank you for noticing…)
That hasn’t been true since 2018. (And in my experience (about a decade working at Sky), not that you’ll believe me, there was practically zero influence when it was - not least because James Murdoch had very different views to his father.)
Honestly, if I thought most homeschooled kids were “learning … from very knowledgeable people” I might find it less disturbing, but the reality is most of them are learning from religious zealots, conspiracy theorists, or other fruitloops who think going to a proper school will make them catch the gay. It creates a self-perpetuating underclass, and the parents should be locked up for child abuse long before the diddling starts.