They showed a new video on the news that showed what happened to his head. The rent-a-cops grabbed his upper body and threw him across the aisle, where his head hit hard against the armrest across the aisle, then he went down.
It makes little difference whether you beat a person with your fists, hit him with a weapon, or throw his head against a hard object. Or when a bully grabs your fist, pounds it against your head and yells “stop hitting yourself”.
The man was sitting in his chair, explaining that he did not feel he had to give his seat to someone else, when they suddenly grabbed him and smashed his head against the opposite armrest. He was trying to reason with them. He was calm and nonthreatening.
I can absolutely see myself making the same argument if they decided to “volunteer” me. I know that you should always be polite and obedient towards police officers, but if they did that to me, I would probably get into trouble. Just because it has been building up for decades. We all have airport stories. How about 14 hours sitting in a parking spot at the Athens airport, in the middle of summer. No a/c, and they would not even open the doors. All those stolen cameras. Being selected for intense screening every single time. All those nights sleeping on dirty airport floors. On top of all that, now we have to worry that they might decide to drag us off the plane if someone more important shows up at the last moment. As if it was not already stressful enough.
I do have a tip, though. In Vietnam and some other countries, they make and sell silk sleeping bags. They have a little pocket to put a coat in to serve as a pillow, and they can be wadded up smaller than a tennis ball. If you are someplace hot, it keeps you clean and free of bugs, but does not overheat you. If it is cold, it provides surprising warmth. I would never, ever travel without mine. You can buy something close at Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001DXC6BE/ref=twister_B001DXC6FA?th=1
Sky Maul
Welcome to BoingBoing.
I’m flying United this weekend. (Booked it before this happened)
Wish me luck.
I think I need to wear a helmet, just in case.
There’s a business opportunity there. Set up a kiosk selling helmets to United passengers.
Eh, I’m not mad at a corporation. That would be pointless. But if you want to change a culture, you have to address the problems you can apply leverage to. With abusive corporations, that means hitting them in their bottom line.
California will take a small ice age to actually send you the sticker and paperwork
Sounds strange to me (and since @jerwin brought in the Melbourne story) plates here come straight off the pile. You can register a car and pick up the plates on the spot (unless they are personalised). In fact I can walk into a vicroads office at any time and ask for a replacement. They just record the new number against my registration. We used to have annual stickers but its been replaced by direct access to the R&L database. Police cars have OCR gear. They get a printout of your history back to birth just by driving behind you.
I used to work above a registration and licensing office and I loaned screwdrivers to people on occasions when they needed to change their plates over.
Zimbardo’s experiment was novelized by Giordano as “Black Box” (a good read, btw) and resulted in one of the few good German movies. Das Experiment is an impressive experience and shows the setting in a believable way.
And there is some bloodless accountant at United, right now, trying to decide when it’s worth aborting the takeoff roll, if they discover a sufficiently high priority passenger who is not yet aboard…
carry-on friendly!
Cops don’t get charged when they murder people outright, in the street, in a jail shower, so this would be no biggie to them.
I mean, that’s morally wrong and all, but I’ve come to expect this sort of moral bankruptcy from anyone connected to law enforcement.
Darth Sky Maul
Dammit, Wired, I AM NOT USING AN AD BLOCKER.
Read faster!
That’s weird because i’m using 2 ad blockers and i didn’t have any problem getting to the article.
wow, that’s pretty scathing.
It’s not based on speed but “distance scrolled.”
taa;dr; [too anti-ad-blocker; didn’t read]
After they merged with Continental, they aggressively reduced supply on major routes to push down vacancies and fill planes. They pulled all the same bullshit the other major carriers did with baggage fees etc… the merger shouldn’t have been approved without customer protections in place.
Wall street likes the new numbers, humans hate the new conditions. United increased the division between the classes of seating. A pull from a social psych study about how the perception of unfair treatment (e.g. seating classes) increases the chances of “Air Rage”
