A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
The TSA is something that shouldn't exist in its current form. They very often fail their audit checks and normalize invading your privacy to an extreme degree like body scanners and pat downs. If water bottles are considered potentially explosive then why dump them on a bin next to a line of people where they can go off? This is low grade security theater that inconveniences passengers at best.
It's security theater through and through.
Apart from the obvious failings of these checks, think about what kind of damage a single backpack of explosives can do to a packed airport during holiday season. You can literally put a ton of explosives on one of those trolleys, roll it into the waiting area and kill 200 people easily. No security whatsoever involved.
Reality is, most security measures are designed to keep the illusion of control. Nothing more. Penetration testers show again and again that you can easily circumvent practically all barriers or measures.
The goal is not to stop the people in the queue being attacked, its to stop someone boarding a plane with the means to hijack it
They fail gloriously at at that too.
Whenever they get tested the red teams manage to smuggle in everything needed to hijiack a plane plus a kitchen sink.
The few times that terrorists tried to board planes, they made it through security and were caught by other passengers.
That's what's changed. Before, a hijacking meant a free trip to south America or Cuba. Now it means you're likely to die if you don't stop the hijackers. A planeful of pissed off passengers determined to live are gonna stop a would-be hijacker.
They had to do something about the plague of people hijacking planes with bottles of water.
I’ll drown him! I swear to god I’ll drown him!
IIRC water happens to appear similarly to a lot of explosives on the metric they use for what the composition of items in the scanner is.
Improvements are being made though so soon we may be allowed to take water through unrestricted:
Why Airport Security Suddenly Got Better (13:01) https://youtu.be/nyG8XAmtYeQ?si=RTjA8GRuZaMIJs9d
Yeah, and you don't need the TSA for that. Just do as they already do: lock the cockpit.
Little known fact: many of the pilots behind those locked doors are armed as well.
The Flight Deck Officer program allows pilots to volunteer to become deputized Air Marshals. They receive training and are issued a badge and a gun.
Good guy with a gun, we're not mentally ill at all !
Police officers are mentally ill? Interesting take.
Also, we're talking about pilots that you are already trusting with you're life and the lives of hundreds of people with you. If they were mentally ill they could just crash the plane and kill you.
These guys are genuinely invested in maintaining the safety of human lives.
They should continue focusing on that instead of gun politics and their farcical contrived scenarios to have guns on a civil plane.
Ah yes, it's okay if we die, just don't take the corporate infrastructure with you when you go...
It's basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn't, and only inconveniences the poors.
The main reason that rule still exists is to sell overpriced water. Otherwise they could just ask you to drink some of it to prove it's water.
you are allowed to take empty bottles with you, just saying
Some airports have no place to refill and have only hot water in the toilet sinks. It's inhumane.
The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state...no representative wants to cut those jobs.
According to the story I heard as to the origin of the "no liquids over X amount" rule, years ago there was a terrorist that tried to smuggle hydrogen peroxide and acetone - which can be used to rather easily synthesize triacetone triperoxide (TATP, a highly sensitive explosive) - onto a plane in plastic toiletry bottles. They got caught and foiled somehow, and then the TSA started restricting liquids on planes. This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, if I recall correctly.
And I happen to know, from a reliable source, of someone who accidentally made TATP in a rotary evaporator in an academic lab. So it seems plausible.
Not that the rule is actually effective prevention against similar attacks, nor that the TSA even knows what the reason is behind what they do at this point, haha. I just thought it was an interesting story.
hydrogen peroxide and acetone
So there are worse cleaning chemicals to mix than bleach and vinegar
They treat people like cattle because they are protecting the airplanes and the airline's liability, not the people onboard or in line to board.
If people think it's unsafe people won't pay up to fly.
It's because all the shops inside want you to buy their shit.
It's actually stated on the TSA website that frozen liquids are permitted. https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/ice
Notice the footnote on every TSA webpage that their officers can always change the rules on the spot if they feel like it. So it’s always a gamble.
Big caveat
The final decision rests with the TSA officer on whether an item is allowed through the checkpoint.
Ah yes, the "rules only apply when I say they do" rule. Much legitimate.
The longer they discuss the less it is allowed.
Dear TSA,
The human body is mostly water. And it's way more than 3 oz.
I brought frozen fish with ice packs through TSA. The TSA guy was a fisherman and wanted to talk about fishing.
Do you think they get mad if I bring plasma
I've actually done this successfully. TSA agent knocked on it, and said no problem.
If i somehow would be stopped, I'd love to argue what is liquid or not, and what could be liquid if it's just hot enough.
Getting denied at security because you’re trying to bring steel beams
Or just bring an empty bottle through and fill it up at the tap/water fountain?
Some people think tap water tastes bad
I wouldn't drink tap water outside of continental Europe. Maybe the original OP is simply in a third world country like the US.
The US has pretty good tap water in most places. Of course there are outliers we are talking about a giant country.
While you are right to trust most tap water in Europe we also have a lot of outliers. Old plumbing being probably the biggest problem. But also the taste can be atrocious. The worst tasting tap water I ever needed to drink was in Barcelona.
Edit: and the worst looking tap water I ever saw was in Paris. (It was old pipes or something as it was brown, almost red)
Outside of Continental Europe
Oddly specific when of the 10 countries judged to have the equal best tap water quality, 4 are European islands (UK, Ireland, Iceland, Malta) and many Continental European countries score behind the US:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/water-quality-by-country
Is there a reasoning for this? The whole liquid thing has to do something with explosives?
It’s because of a particular incident. Similar to what happened with the shoe bomber and why you have to take off your shoes. Things like this are why we can’t have nice things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot