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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

I'm a white male with long scraggly blonde hair and this happens to me in basically every developed country.

Obviously long-haired hippies pose a security threat.

I'm a clean cut white male, and I was singled out twice in the same airport for one flight pos 9/11, pre liquids restrictions. I had 3 bottles of local Idaho vodka, flying from Boise to Chicago. It would have been less annoying if it wasn't literally the same TSA agent that searched me both times, once at the general security in the terminal then secondly "randomly" at the gate. Same agent. Ostensibly looking for weapons. The agent told me as such. Seeing as it was the same agent that had already searched me, I was a bit glib. "Did you miss something the first time around?" Somehow I made my flight. Dude was a jackass.

If I wasn't in a hurry to get onto a flight (which you clearly were if you got searched at the gate), I'd have asked for a supervisor at that point, especially if it was the same agent who had already cleared you at the checkpoint. That's entirely unreasonable.

That would have guaranteed missing the flight.

Yes, which is why the first part of my sentence starts with “If I wasn’t in a hurry to get onto a flight”. I specifically pointed out that in other circumstances that would’ve been my course of action.

Me too if I'm wearing a jacket. White but fat, all in the tummy. Obviously the Aussies find it too confrontational to ask me to open the jacket so they can check it's stomach and not explosives, so the "random" check it is.

There's also a great article out there somewhere (7+ years old, around the time they started the xray backscatter scanners) about an actor who changed her behavior as she went through lots of TSA checkpoints, and eventually concluded that the TSA random checkers were mostly picking people who looked like they wouldn't make a fuss.

Whatever you're getting from the airport, it's certainly not security.

> eventually concluded that the TSA random checkers were mostly picking people who looked like they wouldn't make a fuss.

This is my theory as well. Their job KPIs probably have something like "patted down x people per shift", so they pick people that will cause the least trouble for them.

I've recently started rocking a mustache and beard because razors are expensive and I can't be arsed. I think it has to do with how easy it is for people to "read" us. With facial hair it's harder to tell if I'm smiling or generally in a good mood. People fear the unknown? It's hard to empathize with a poker face, and trust in that face.

Your physical stature may (wrongly) come into this.

If you are a young male with a beard... skin colour wouldn't matter much. You are gonna get groped.

Total aside: non Gilette (etc) razors are extraordinarily cheap. After buying a double edged razor set (~40 iirc?), I pay ~15/yr in blades and shaving cream, shaving both my face and my head. Can't help you to be motivated to do so, however!

Buying a double edge razor was one of my best life decision. I'm still running on the 150 blades that I bought 1.5 years ago. I'm shaving 1-3 times a week and mostly keep the same blade for 2-6 shaves

The blades are so cheap, I could literally change my blades every single time and it would still cost me less than a Gilette razor.

Best decision here too. Although i think i got much bigger savings from using shaving brush + shaving soap instead. In my counry almost everybody uses gillete shaving foams in cans. They dont last very long and thus are super expensive. Gillette is huge marketing trick. I mean shaving soaps smell better, have enormous variety and are like 10x cheaper.

With blades you should change them every other shave. Only ones that last me longer are japanese Feathers i dont get it but these are most amazing. Also pretty expensive (still much cheaper than gillette) but totaly worth it.

I shave in the shower with the water directed onto my face. No foam required. I thought it would be really hard without a mirror but it only took a week to get used to it.

Wow. I tried that but i can't do it. The problem is not the mirror but it just kills my skin.

You are hell of a badass bear man.

Are these as easy to use as Gilette razors?

The savings sound good, but I'm a quite clumsy person, so if I'm going to be cutting myself every other day I'd rather pay the Gilette tax.

They're not quite as easy but I wouldn't say they're difficult. The main drawback for me is that it takes longer. I need two passes for a good shave with a safety razor, and each pass is slower.

I'm told it's a good time to relax and reflect, but... if I'm in a hurry I grab my quatro.

I prefer to use them even without considering the costs. It’s possible to nick yourself, but I’ve never done anymore damage than I’d previously managed to do with a Gillette, and it doesn’t happen that often (to me at least, YMMV).

Slightly harder, only. Have only got cuts in the same places I had before, around the chin area, but overall I actually get less minor cuts with safety razor than disposable multi-blade razors (have been using safety for around two year).

You'll likely cut yourself a few times at beginning as you learn the technique to hit the contours of your face. That was probably true with Gilette at beginning though right? You can buy a thing called a styptic pencil to stop bleeding. They're great, and super cheap ($1? something like that). I have a few in various toiletry bags. I cut myself MAYBE once every few hundred shaves and it was usually a bump I missed on the back of my head because I don't do it with a mirror.

The typical technique is with grain, against grain, cross grain for whichever direction the hair is flowing, but I usually stop after the second one because it's smooth enough.

Also blade disposal: use an old laundry detergent bottle instead of buying the little overpriced boxes.

Do you know that you can re-sharpen the blades, there's no need to replace that quickly.

Is the process you are talking about really honing or burnishing the blade?

I would expect a manual sharpening process to be vastly inferior to the factory edge.

I once saw someone on reddit talk about stropping their disposable razor on their jeans. Of course they were just cleaning it a bit.

A single Druby blade costs ~9 cents on amazon if you buy the 100 packs. Not sure how much time it’s worth to spend on sharpening them.

Same here. For me it's not the price, but shaving with double edge feels better (3/4 blade razors always felt they were pulling my face very strongly, and disposable 1/2 blade razors weren't sharp enough, double-edge seems the perfect fit for my beard). Shaving has also gone from a "chore" to a time for relaxing (getting a nice cream you can foam with a brush is very mind-quieting)

> or generally in a good mood.

Is anyone in a TSA line in a "good mood"?

Well I have healthcare but my job keeps me out of area/network pretty consistently. The airport is the only reliable way to get a physical.

I have a friend who's parents fled Iran when she was two. She grew up in Britain and then the US when her parents immigrated. She gets the 3rd degree every time she flies.

I'd guess they are hoping to find drugs on you, rather than, say, box cutters.

TSA is not chartered to look for drugs, and technically, they aren't supposed to be looking for them (though sometimes they find them in the course of their job- transportation security)

Do the TSA screeners get training on identifying drugs?

Even if not, the TSA does report drugs when they find them:

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...

It is basically an end-run around the constitution -- if the police were searching through your bags without your consent any evidence they found could be challenged on constitutional grounds. The courts have (afaik) found that the TSA's searches are a different category, "administrative searches," and therefore not unconstitutional; somehow, though, there is no problem with using evidence found by the TSA in a criminal case.

Also, since the TSA's mission is not limited to aircraft, it is entirely possible that "administrative searches" are coming to a public transit system near you. Presumably the same rules would apply.

And yet that's primarily what they're looking for

If that's the case then why does none of their fancy equipment detect drugs? Why are their canine units not trained to alert on drugs?

> If that's the case then why does none of their fancy equipment detect drugs?

To be fair, the GAO reports have shown that their fancy equipment isn't actually detecting weapons either.

But it sure detects the damned hair tie I forgot in my back pocket, and that’s the REAL threat they are protecting us from - elastic bands....

Seems pretty effective at detecting trace metals from handling artists' paints.

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