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1/31: Never forget

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Where were you when you first heard the news on 1/31/07?

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Comments

At Sullivan Station thinking the world was ending because someone had never seen Lite-Brite or Aqua Teen or both.

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Always reminds me of that great Danger Mouse CD "The Mouse and the Mask", still listen to that semi-regularly.

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I was headed to work and travelling with my elderly neighbor and we ended up outside stuck in the confusion and brutal cold. Later when I saw the two art-student types who wanted to turn it into an art-happening a la John and Yoko ("we will only answer questions about hair,") I really wanted to slap them. Or anyone.

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I think we all wanted to slap the idiots who thought anything with lights and wires was a bomb.

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Yup, Menino and the Boston PD embarrassed Boston that day. Other cities had these installed and no one freaked out. We have how many thousands of college students here? If they had asked one of them what it was they could have told them it wasn't a damn bomb.

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It was sinister because it had WIRES and BATTERIES and she was FORCED to cover the embarasment with the sorts of excessive punishing charges she usually reserved for convenient scapegoats.

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Not like we would ever really have to worry about somebody putting a bomb in a large crowded space in Boston.

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This wasn't a 60lb pound backpack, dropped and left and then blown up.

This was a freaking litebrite that was there for sometime before somebody hit the conniption button. I know because I noticed it and thought (in the daylight) that it was graffiti.

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The day our city on the hill played the fool on the hill.

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What about the time they asked everyone in the entire metro area to all shelter in place because a single teenage terrorist was at large in Watertown?

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I lived in Fields Corner when they were trying to find that kid; restaurants and stores were ridiculously busy. It was a warm day too so people were outside grilling and enjoying a day off from school or work.

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but it was a preposterous police state type request to even issue given the nature of the threat.

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Unless we had reason to believe he had more bombs?

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Shooting up Watertown, including each other, ordering families out of their homes without probable cause, disobeying orders with self-deployment, and then pointing heavy weaponry at residents that were obviously not the suspect for hours on end weren't great either.

There was a massive failure in law enforcement training and communications which unfortunately has been mostly swept under the rug rather than act as a wake-up call for better training standards. If metro-Boston ever had a Bataclan, Mumbai, or Westgate Mall type scenario with a coordinated team of crazies I shudder to think of the butcher's bill. I'm not terribly confident even a lone Vegas style madman could be stopped with any urgency after the fiasco in Watertown.

There should be a massive emphasis on training and coordination. The state and local departments seem more concerned with expensive toys that bleed budgets on maintenance. What good are MRAPs when departments can't even use their radios effectively with bordering towns or other state agencies?

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And on top of that it was citizens who found the brothers in Cambridge and then the brother in a boat in Watertown.

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And your point is?

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Dearest bootlicker, my point is that cops in America are overpaid and overrated.

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That wasn't just the city.

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And they shut down the T, and all Amtrak service north of friggin *NYC*! I had friends coming up by train. If they had even run the train as far as Providence I could have picked them up.

That will teach people to depend on mass transit instead of driving.

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They sure tried to one-up themselves a month later when they blew up the city's own traffic counter.

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The region's public safety community did very well on Mooninite day. Most of the $3+ million spent on the event went into their pockets.

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Slow news day ?

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These sub-freezing temperatures always make the news slow down.

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It's got to do with molecules and what not.

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The cold, yes, a little.

The real problem is when Verizon gets wet. Turns out all those little megabytes are "dry-clean only".

I come home on a rainy day, my wi-fi is usually connected but "no internet" and I end up having to reboot the router.

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I didn't get home from work via T until 8 PM that day (I was usually home by 6), because of that nonsense. Somebody suddenly decided those things were bombs even though I myself had been passing various ones for several days (including one in the Fort Point area that the authorities seem to have missed). If I was passing them and noticing them, so was everybody else. Any rational person saw them for what they were. What a joke of a delayed reaction to nothing.

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Wow, has it been that long?! I'm so old.

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I was at the dump in Readville with my father. It was a pretty cold day and I had a lot of lumber to unload. On a side note I use to see the the eastern European dude DJ artist parties all the time after the smoke cleared from the hysteria they caused.

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zebbler encanti experience are very well known and liked music producers

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At Oak Grove where there was no information why the trains weren't running and I ended up taking the commuter rail into Boston. Good times!

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But not bombs either.

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I wonder if the Transit Police police ever had to explain why they mismanaged this fiasco and I wonder if someone could explain how one of these artists managed to get a high paying gig on First Night. .

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In history! Right up there with Mike Brown and CH kids.

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I was at when I heard the new lunatic Congress person AOC told us the world was going to end in 12 years last week.
In Dorchester

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Did you name your son after yourself because you were too dumb to think of another name and you didn't realize the entire point of names is to differentiate people?

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And your proud of yours?
I think yours makes reference to you were a total denial.

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How did you get "yours" right, but not "your"?

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Is actually a reference to President's Trump penis, as described by the adult film actress that he had extramarital unprotected sex with.

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Everybody knows kinopio is a dickhead. I never realized he was named after Trump's dick tho, but it does explain a lot!

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But you must be to dumb to understand family tradition. Or the fact you can abbreviate names, ex. Michael = Mike, John = Jack, Jacob = Jake.

Do you need more examples? I dont want to hurt you fragile mind, it's a lot to absorb.

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*too

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So you believe the world is ending in 12 years then? OHH THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!! It must be true if a progressive I like says it is!!!! Amirite?

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Do they give out MAGA Merit Badges for things like hating on AOC or do you shrunken little right wing white males just naturally gravitate to misogyny on the regular?

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Why are you picking on her wording instead of hearing her message? Climate change is real f^#king serious, and politicians are ignoring it because they're paid off by various interests or they think it isn't a pressing issue, etc. etc. I applaud AOC for standing up for what's right, in spite of people like you that would prefer to tear someone down than stand up for what's right.

FYI, the 12 years came from a UN report that said we have 12 years to limit our impact before there is catastrophic and irreversible damage.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-...

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That’s it! Goodbye! I’m not going to waste my time arguing with a man who is lining up to be a hot lunch.

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Don't let the door hit your mooninites on the way out.

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loading... ERROR: facts destroyed narrative

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PRO TIP: throwing tantrums because you are frightened by a young Latina in congress won't restore your functionality.

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I don't think frightened is the word you're looking for.

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I was at my office - reading Universal Hub - and listening to co-workers bitch about MBTA delays.

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The news stations blurring out the approximately three lights that formed the middle finger.

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Warning my coworkers that used those branches of commuter rail and the Orange Line (Sullivan was where our buses went) that The Stupid had descended upon the city. Gave people time to reroute.

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Thankfully, I was done for the day and it didn't affect me at all.

But incidentally, a few weeks earlier, I'd been walking around campus and seen one of these Mooninite Lite Brites attached to the awning of BU's registrar's office on Commonwealth Avenue. I had tried to see if I could reach it to get it down, but it was too high and there was nothing safe to climb.

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn't go back with a stepladder or a broom to take it down and keep it, because Facilities certainly made it disappear pretty quickly. All I have to remember it is a small, grainy picture taken on an old flip phone...

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I just want to discuss hairstyles of the 1970s.

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The reaction was hysterical.

But Menino was great in getting a training exercise paid for by a media company.

I hope Peter is okay.

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1/31 is my birthday, and I was living just outside Paris, France watching this unfold. Interestingly enough, folks there didn't find things so 'amusingly stupid' as current Boston commenter types here seem to think stuff might have been.

But, then again, this is UHub, where the site owner can afford to send his daughter to Paris, for her tax write off reportage of never having seen a 'Large Truck Her Entire Week in Paris!!'

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What are you on about this time? Oh, yeah. Being snotty and snooty.

Might as well loop a .gif

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What are you babbling about?

Please leave my daughter out of whatever you're angry about (for the record, though, she's never been to Paris).

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I was working here in town, next door to and daily walking over and/or under a bridge that was the location of one of these "devices".

For the most part, I don't think police overreacted. It's their job to take potential danger seriously.

..and they have to be checked out, each report, even when it looks like a pattern of "harmless" prank devices, because there just might be that one that isn't a prank and the point of the rest was to desensitize people to them. Besides that - how many other emergencies, 911 calls, etc... that day had delayed responses because the lite-brites drew so many resources? What if there was another, major emergency that turned out to be a real threat? Complain about the OT bill that day if you want, but a lot of you would be the first ones crying foul if something else happened and response couldn't be quick enough or large enough because they hadn't called in extra people, right?

They should'a thrown the book at the little *&#^ that did this.

(... and yeah, I'm sensitive about this. I worked some in NYC, commuting through and occasionally working in WTC. Fortunately well after the bombing, but that necessitates a mindfulness of the issue.)

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What if every Dunks cup in the street so far has been empty, but one could still potentially contain a lit Roman candle? Or every car parked has been fine, but one could potentially contain angry bees ready to fly out of a hole when an alarm clock wakes them up. That doesn't justify shutting down the city wherever there's a Dunks cup or a car.

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Wow.

Is your day job writing tweets for the RNC?

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