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Comment by holdenc | Hacker News Reader

I'd say welcome to China, but let's be realistic. America offers plenty of opportunities to get locked up for 24 hours for breaking selectively enforced laws (protest anything lately?) and then perhaps even worse for resisting arrest.

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> "He described having to watch anti-drug PowerPoint presentations and eat tasteless porridge. His employer, which runs an expat website, was told that he was detained. While it was embarrassing for him, he was not fired. Most importantly, he wasn’t deported. 'I wasn’t even fined,' he said. Since then, our normal expat lives have resumed."

We could learn something about drug-law enforcement from China.

Maybe not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akmal_Shaikh

The US military had already perfected boredom-torture by PowerPoint to the level of a high art form.

In Missouri you get fined for having mismatched blinds, and not having money to pay that fine will get you into court/ private prison.

Is that enforced at all? Regularly?

It makes sense that the "show me" state would prefer not to have any blinds at all.

Heh, but not true, speaking as a native of the state (born, raised, and retired to it). Nor is it a widespread law, certainly such a proposal wouldn't go down well here in the SW corner of it (especially in the very SW part I'm in that's culturally Southern), nor, outside of HOA procedural/contractual insanity can I see our Missouri Plan picked higher level judges approving of it.

How does anything like that ever become law? Or are you just winding us up?

Usually, it's a HOA that levies the fines, and then takes the person to court for failing to pay. The court orders payment, and has jailed some for "Contempt of Court" when they fail to do so.

I hadn't heard the blinds version, but a lawn care version made its way onto a "Penn and Tellers Bullshit" episode.

Citation needed

http://watchdog.org/252413/nanny-state-pagedale-missouri-fin...

So this is how false rumors spread.

According to the article someone mentioned below, it is true that something like this happens in one small town in Missouri. In fact it's so ridiculous that the New York Times wrote an article on it.

But it's not right to say this happens "in Missouri", that's as false as saying "In America you get fined for having mismatched blinds"

Whenever you hear something batshit insane about Missouri, it's probably safe to assume it happened in St. Louis County. Since splitting from the City in 1877, but especially since the Depression, the County has been an ongoing experiment in racism, poor governance, and predatory enforcement. There is no square meter of the County that isn't already oppressed by so many cities and villages and districts and commissions that it couldn't be split up for additional oppression. For decades, the first response to any political dispute has been to create another tiny little village or district or whatever. It's no surprise to find that one of these tin-pot dictators has been inspired to send people to jail for landscaping he doesn't like.

I'm not saying that we don't have problems in the rest of the state, but somehow we generally avoid reports like the following:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/...

(I don't feel about disclaiming St. Louis County: just ask them if they'd like to be associated with us hillbillies in the Ozarks.)

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