Annoying New York Times articles

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

Ball is part of a very diverse conglomerate.

http://www.jarden.com

[ursus arctos]

Annoying New York Times articles

I thought I was pretty au courant with the portfolios of publicly-traded conglomerates, but I had no idea.

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

I guess they can make massive deals with Target, Wal-Mart, etc.

[delicatemoth]

Annoying New York Times articles

People who shouldn't be allowed out without parents or guardians - latest

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

I hate everyone involved in that story.
Whatever happened to common fucking courtesy?

Jesus wouldn't recline. I assure you.

[Sam]

Annoying New York Times articles

I first heard about that recliner blocker thing through an article on Lifehacker. I'm sure the author of said article would be among the group in delicatemoth's link who are said to be defending the guy using the device.

Lifehacker has some quite useful stuff on it sometimes, but a lot of their articles - especially those about how to travel in more comfort or negotiate your way to small improvements in your own life - seem to have a general gist of, 'Just be a complete cunt to other people, they probably deserve it anyway for not being a Lifehacker reader like your good self.'

[Renart]

Annoying New York Times articles

The libertarian utopia: everything that used to be a matter of common sense and courtesy turned into an opportunity for extortion, haggling, and exchange of money.

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

Renart wrote: The libertarian utopia: everything that used to be a matter of common sense and courtesy turned into an opportunity for extortion, haggling, and exchange of money.

Precisely. This should be on a bumper sticker, etc, and attributed to Thomas Jefferson so that everyone will pay attention to it.

They have no concept of "collective action problems" and work to make it impossible for Americans to understand them either.

The pervasiveness of such problems and the need for collective solutions to them is so obvious that the concept was covered on the first day of the first class I had in economics at PA Governors School at Wharton, which is hardly a bastion of socialism. Fortunately, our teacher was a grad student studying "decision science" rather than econ, per se.

Thinking about such problems has led me to be a bit more interested in various ideas of "anarchy" (in the sense of a flat power structure, not chaos and bedlam) I was reading a guy from the Alternative Seminary who was arguing that anarchy isn't Christian per se, but that it offers the best hope for a system in which Christian values can be properly practiced. That makes a lot of sense. It's hard to love your neighbor, let alone your enemy, when the system demands that you are responsible for squeezing everything you can out of them.

[ursus arctos]

Annoying New York Times articles

Another flight diverted.

An outburst over a reclined seat led an American Airlines flight to divert to Boston, at least the second such incident in the US this week, authorities said.

A passenger, Edmund Alexandre, became upset after a woman reclined the seat in front of him on the Miami-to-Paris flight on Wednesday night, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office said.

Alexandre, who is from Paris, continued to be disruptive when a flight crew member attempted to calm him, following the crewman down the aisle and grabbing his arm, authorities said. Two undercover federal air marshals on the flight then subdued Alexandre and handcuffed him, the US attorney’s office said.

Now that we have a French citizen protesting, I am afraid that even more "real Americans" will feel it is their patriotic duty to recline.

[linus]

Annoying New York Times articles

Why do they feel so compelled to divert the plane just because of one obnoxious passenger? Can't they just arrest him at arrival? And what about the costs of having overpaid federal marshalls on random flights, another symptom of the military/security industry in the US going out of control...

[ursus arctos]

Annoying New York Times articles

Those are good questions.

The marshals are obviously part of US security theatre, but you would think that their ability to subdue the guy would if anything had made it LESS necessary for the plane to divert.

I thought that this was the most reasonable piece I've seen on this.

Air travel is marvelously cheap and convenient these days, but part of making it so cheap and convenient is cramming lots of people into a very small aluminum tube with as little fuss as possible. This calls for greater self-restraint and politeness, not the unleashing of all the pent-up rage lurking in the reptilian recesses of our brains. Everyone in this story should be ashamed of themselves, except the hapless fellow passengers who were subjected to this collective tantrum. Unfortunately, if experience is any guide, the offending parties probably feel more self-righteous and justified than ever.

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

linus wrote: Why do they feel so compelled to divert the plane just because of one obnoxious passenger? Can't they just arrest him at arrival? And what about the costs of having overpaid federal marshalls on random flights, another symptom of the military/security industry in the US going out of control...

How do you know they're overpaid? Marshals transport prisoners and deal with people in witness protection, among other things. And I can tell you that almost no amount of money would make me want a job where I had to deal with assholes on an airplane. As a tax payer, I'd like to pay those people well so the job attracts good applicants.

I don't think the marshals are security theater, exactly. They might not be cost-effective given the odds of an actual attack and the probability that, post-9/11, the crew and other passengers could probably stop the terrorists anyway, but unlike a lot of what the TSA demands of passengers these days, the Marshals might actually be able to do something thwart a crime on a plane.

But rather than stop terrorism or crimes in the sky, the sky marshal programs has probably just incentivized terrorists to focus on non-airplane-related plots. That helps the airlines, but doesn't really help society overall. Thus, the airlines should be the ones paying for it, not all the tax payers. Then again, if we left it up to the airlines, they'd probably hire extremely underqualified private security at a rock-bottom wage, which could lead to a Ferguson-like situation in the sky.

... you would think that their ability to subdue the guy would if anything had made it LESS necessary for the plane to divert.

Yes, you'd think that. Diverting the plane is definitely security theater.

Air travel is marvelously cheap and convenient these days, but part of making it so cheap and convenient is cramming lots of people into a very small aluminum tube with as little fuss as possible. This calls for greater self-restraint and politeness, not the unleashing of all the pent-up rage lurking in the reptilian recesses of our brains. Everyone in this story should be ashamed of themselves, except the hapless fellow passengers who were subjected to this collective tantrum. Unfortunately, if experience is any guide, the offending parties probably feel more self-righteous and justified than ever.

This is right on. I don't know if it's better in more socialized countries, but in our country, way too many people are fixated on securing "their rights" and "what they deserve" in any and all situations. It's all part of the aspirational bullshit that most advertisers and Republicans rely on to stay in business. I can't think of any situation where the tension between this myth and social realty is more extreme than on an airplane.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Annoying New York Times articles

Air travel is marvelously cheap and convenient these days, but part of making it so cheap and convenient is cramming lots of people into a very small aluminum tube with as little fuss as possible.

Cheap it may be, convenient and marvelous it definitely isn't. The bare bones solution is simple:

1) Take out some seats.

2) Put up the prices.

People who have to travel for work, get reimbursed. The rest of us can just fly less.

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

Business travel is less necessary than it ever has been and that trend is unlikely to change. I've seen this in declining attendance at the medical meetings I go to. It used to be that you really had to be there to get the information and hear the presentations. If you missed something, you'd have to buy the cassette tape (A fucking cassette! And this wasn't the 70s, this was, like 2003, I'm talking about) at an extortionate price. Getting a copy of the presenters' slides was a huge hassle.

Now it all be webcasted/podcasted, etc. There's some value in meeting people face to face and the unforeseen serendipity of mingling in receptions and so forth, but for more and more people in all lines of work, the value of that is not worth the several thousand dollars it costs to fly, stay in a hotel, and pay to attend the meeting on top of the time away from the office.

[ursus arctos]

Annoying New York Times articles

Third flight diverted over recline fight.

[caja-dglh]

Annoying New York Times articles

You gotta fight
For your right
to have legroom

[ursus arctos]

Annoying New York Times articles

It's often West Palm to/from New York, isn't it?

Same route that had the wacko arrested for accusing the woman in a hijab of being a anti-semitic terrorist.

The flight is less than 3 hours long. These people need to chill out.

[Incandenza]

Annoying New York Times articles

Back to the NY Times...

It’s called the “typing awareness indicator,” and a few months ago, my therapist ordered me to disable it on my phone. “It’s causing you too much anxiety,” she said, pointing to the iPhone I had in a white-knuckle grip. “It’s giving monumental weight to matters of a text message.”

But we weren’t even talking about text messages ... exactly. We were talking about the time between text messages. Specifically that little gray bubble with the ellipses that pops up on your iPhone while the person on the other end of your text message is writing a response.

Or, in my case — in the particularly high-stakes conversation at hand — it was the bubble that popped up to indicate typing, then disappeared to show he had stopped. Then came back up to show typing, then went away again. Then returned for what seemed like an eternity (he must be writing something deep, right?) only to produce a response so benign (you know, like “cool” or “ya”) that it could only be topped by the humiliation of the bubble never returning at all (meaning he was flat-out ignoring me). Which I would know, of course, because I could see that he had read my message (that’s called a “read receipt”).

“The three dots shown while someone is drafting a message in iMessage is quite possibly the most important source of eternal hope and ultimate letdown in our daily lives,” said Maryam Abolfazli, a writer in Washington who has tackled the topic. “It’s the modern-day version of watching paint dry, except you might be broken up with by the time the dots deliver.”

For some time, sociologists have studied the way that new technology affects the brain; the way that constant updates prime us to fear we’re missing out, or the way we crave the adrenaline rush brought on by a constant stream of digital micro-communications.

But what about the tyranny of the text bubble? Indeed, there are real problems in the world. But this was the kind of modern-day technological minutiae that had the ability to jail me in a very specific cognitive hell.

Getting pretty close to DIAF territory.

[WOM]

Annoying New York Times articles

ursus arctos wrote: It's often West Palm to/from New York, isn't it?

The dangerous wealth/age/cultural irritability axis.

[ursus arctos]

Annoying New York Times articles

Yup, it's the Entitlement Express

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

Incandenza wrote: Back to the NY Times...

It’s called the “typing awareness indicator,” and a few months ago, my therapist ordered me to disable it on my phone. “It’s causing you too much anxiety,” she said, pointing to the iPhone I had in a white-knuckle grip. “It’s giving monumental weight to matters of a text message.”

But we weren’t even talking about text messages ... exactly. We were talking about the time between text messages. Specifically that little gray bubble with the ellipses that pops up on your iPhone while the person on the other end of your text message is writing a response.

Or, in my case — in the particularly high-stakes conversation at hand — it was the bubble that popped up to indicate typing, then disappeared to show he had stopped. Then came back up to show typing, then went away again. Then returned for what seemed like an eternity (he must be writing something deep, right?) only to produce a response so benign (you know, like “cool” or “ya”) that it could only be topped by the humiliation of the bubble never returning at all (meaning he was flat-out ignoring me). Which I would know, of course, because I could see that he had read my message (that’s called a “read receipt”).

“The three dots shown while someone is drafting a message in iMessage is quite possibly the most important source of eternal hope and ultimate letdown in our daily lives,” said Maryam Abolfazli, a writer in Washington who has tackled the topic. “It’s the modern-day version of watching paint dry, except you might be broken up with by the time the dots deliver.”

For some time, sociologists have studied the way that new technology affects the brain; the way that constant updates prime us to fear we’re missing out, or the way we crave the adrenaline rush brought on by a constant stream of digital micro-communications.

But what about the tyranny of the text bubble? Indeed, there are real problems in the world. But this was the kind of modern-day technological minutiae that had the ability to jail me in a very specific cognitive hell.

Getting pretty close to DIAF territory.

Is that what that means? I thought maybe it meant the other person was typing but it doesn't seem reliable.

It can be useful to know when the "conversation" has ended, or hasn't, but if you're really worked up about it then you have some kind of serious OCD or something of that kind. It's not a problem with modernity or the technology. It's a problem with you.

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

I have to say that if it were up to me, the seats in coach wouldn't recline at all. They don't go far back enough to become significantly more comfortable to the recliner but they make it MUCH less comfortable for the person behind them. If we're going to use the language of economics, it's clear they are not Pareto efficient. One person is a little better off while another is much worse off. If it were a financial transaction, I, for one, would pay absolutely nothing for the right to recline a few inches while I would want to charge at least $100 per hour to somebody seeking to buy the right to recline into me. I suspect that for most people, the numbers wouldn't be so extreme, but overall if it were left to negotiation, not many deals would be struck.

I'm only 6'1" and I barely can fit my legs in the space allotted on most flights. God help anyone taller than that.

While we're at it.

I fucking hate flying. In my previous job, I had to travel to a conference about 10 times a year including twice to Europe. I was really upset when I lost that job, as I discussed here. In my current job, I go to maybe two meetings a year and never to Europe. But to be honest, as time goes on, I find that I don't miss the old job and don't think I'd go back if I could. Largely because I don't miss traveling, especially now that I have Tonka. Being at home is sooooooo much better than being on the road. The hassle of a long flight to see a European city I've never been to before and may never see again is probably worth it, but if I never have to fly to Chicago or Denver again, that's fine. Nothing against those cities, but I'd rather drive all the way across country that fly on the airlines. Driving to California is not practical, unfortunately, but it would be more pleasant.

Not sure how I'll get to do some of the Euro trips I want to do. I'm trying to sort out some finances. But at least when I do visit, I can do it properly and not spend the whole time in a shitty meeting hall. And Europe's meeting halls are shittier than ours.

And if I never attended another medical meeting at all, that would be fine with me. I will. In two weeks, in fact. But it's in DC so I'll drive. Fuck yeah. They're all the same, really and most of what I get out of them could have been done online. I digress.

But really, flying is awful. I don't know how some of you who do a lot of it can stand it. I suspect some of these people flipping out about the reclining aren't just mad about that. That's just the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. (poor camel. Didn't deserve that.) That there aren't more mental meltdowns on flights is the oddity.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Annoying New York Times articles

Yeah. All that.

Basically I'd be happy to stay within walking distance of my house for the rest of my life. If I did need to go any distance then train or or boat would be the favoured options, given there's no regularly scheduled airship service these days.

[WOM]

Annoying New York Times articles

Yeah. It's all friggin' tourist charters these days.

[San Bernardhinault]

Annoying New York Times articles

I could happily fly every day if you gave me a window seat, clear skies, and a flight that was only over coastline, mountains and desert. And a decent book in the outside chance I get bored of the view (a recent flight from San Diego to Portland straight up the Sierra Nevada and Cascades was a wonderful experience, for me - I read about 3 pages of my book, and that was while taxiing).

As for reclining, if airlines don't do the sensible thing of removing reclining seats from cattle class short-haul, then people should be taught the basics of seat etiquette in their modern Swiss finishing schools, along with how to get off escalators and move away, how to put your smartphone away when in conversation, and so on.

The basics, as far as I'm concerned:

Never recline on a short haul flight of under 2-3 hours, unless it's a very early morning/late night flight
On long haul, don't recline until after the first meal service has been cleared
If you're going to recline, check that you're not about to crush the person behind's laptop screen. If they have a laptop out, let them know you're about to recline so they can prepare
Ideally, actually ask if they mind, first
And if anyone asks you if you mind them reclining into you, you always say that you don't mind, just to encourage them in being courteous.