The first time I flew after 9/11, I wanted to be sure I was clear on the rules, so I called up the airline (or maybe the airport).
“The rules say nothing sharp is allowed, right?”
“Right, absolutely nothing sharp”
“Does that include pencils?”
“Of course pencils are OK.”
“But pencils are sharp.”
“Oh, nothing at all sharp is allowed.”
And back and forth this way a few times.
And I don’t have a “tactical pen”, but I do have a “utility pen” that’s part of my daily carry. You can unscrew it to get small screwdrivers, Xacto-like knives, etc (nothing quick to deploy). I figure I probably could get it past a security checkpoint without anyone knowing what it is, but I don’t want to risk it.
Most likely I would have, if in withdrawal. Addict brains don’t work normally. Now I stuck with genuine pharmaceutical products (easier to get back in the 80’s when I was addicted) but acute withdrawal overcomes reason quite easily and my thinking was no different than other active addicts despite being overeducated.
A friend stopped by once asking me to identify a white powder in a baggie. She had a job doing housecleaning and found the baggie partially under a guy’s couch. So she took it home with her!!!
It looked like coke, but an ounce of cocaine was more than I was used to seeing. I’d seen grams. An ounce is 28 grams. I wet a finger, tasted it. It was coke! I told her how much money it was worth, and that the guy was going to go nuts.
She went to his house later that evening and told him she had lost her contact lens case and asked if she could take a quick look around. She walked around his place, surreptitiously returned the baggie, and told him she found her contact case.
This is a couple days old, but I can’t find any reference to it:
I put it here because (1) There had to be a lawyer in that firm rock-headed dumb enough to say “hey, let’s blame the little girl for negligence!!”, and (2) that presumably all the other lawyers in the firm just nodded their heads and agreed “that’s exactly the right move.”
As a result of another thread here, I am reading Vincent Bugliosi’s book on OJ, “Outrage”. The author stated that there are virtually no competent lawyers in the country. It seemed to be obvious self-aggrandizement. Now I think he may have been right. Someone actually tried this “defense”!
Some pervert flight attendant was hiding a phone in an aircraft lavatory and recording underage girls.
The American Airlines lawyers argued that the 9 year old girl should have seen the light from the phone and known she was being recorded, thus absolving the airline in the matter. This was, to put it mildly, not a very well regarded defense.
ETA: he was caught because a 14 year old actually did see the light from the phone and was initially gaslit about what it was there for.
American Airlines has new attorneys after previous lawyers said a 9-year-old should have realized she was being recorded in the bathroom by a flight attendant.
Police arrested Thompson after a 14-year-old girl noticed a phone with its camera flashlight turned on in the bathroom on a flight from North Carolina to New York in September 2023, police say. He is facing federal charges of attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of images of child sexual abuse.
Attorneys representing American Airlines in that lawsuit claimed in court records this week that the 9-year-old “knew or should have known” that the bathroom “contained a visible and illuminated recording device,” absolving the airline of negligence.
“She should have noticed” should never have been used as a defense against the suit, or as a way of blaming the girl. But it baffles me how she didn’t notice. There was nothing whatsoever subtle about the placement.
In my legal jurisdiction, “toxic douchebag totally aware of the situation” == “gross negligence”. As in “I don’t give a fuck what the speed limit is” and killing an innocent bystander would be convicted as “grossly negligent manslaughter” or somesuch.
I’m in the habit of carrying a BiC pen like these on flights. Without that cap on the back end they can be placed in a hand such that the point extends out between the ring and middle fingers. A little something like a folded napkin can be used to pad the palm where the back end of the pen would be.
Hey, who remembers the BiC pen commercials back in the '60s where a BiC pen was shot out of a hunting rifle, going through a 1 inch board?
Back in 1996 a Bowhead whale killed 4 of my friends, by tipping over the sea kayak they were in, in Arctic waters. We know about it only because their native guide was wearing a survival suit and lived to tell the tale. Orcas are reputedly very smart; maybe they’re getting away with murder.
