Passport pique


  • Garbage Person

    Whenever I have to deal with the US passport application process I am reminded of the superior efficiency and customer service of the DMV.

    Look, I get that there's a problem with divorcées absconding to Japan with Junior, but the renewal process for minors under 16 is just ridiculous. We've already established that both parents consent to a passport, but no, renewals turning in a valid passport have to use the same heavyweight procedure as new issues.

    And it doesn't help that most post offices only take passport applications during school hours. One has to either hunt around for the few after-school appointments or take the unexcused absence and pull the kid from school. Because the kid has to be physically present.



  • Around here, even a new issue isn't a big deal (get the form, fill it, bring it back with proof of identiy, proof of residence and photos). I've never had a passport before 16, though (and never been the legal guardian of a minor needing a passport).


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Greybeard said in Passport pique:

    I get that there's a problem with divorcées absconding to Japan with Junior

    Is it a big problem? Is it a problem that it is the passport office's duty to solve?



  • @dkf said in Passport pique:

    Is it a big problem? Is it a problem that it is the passport office's duty to solve?

    Possibly. It may be quite an efficient and effective obstacle to child abduction. Conceptually it doesn't sound unreasonable to enforce that all legal guardians consent to passport issue.

    Overall, it's probably less disruptive and more effective than to try to enforce the same at the border control. The only WTF is not opening post offices outside school hours...


  • area_pol

    @Greybeard Well, America will be great again in just 2 days (and counting!), so why would you want to travel anywhere anyway?!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @japonicus said in Passport pique:

    Possibly. It may be quite an efficient and effective obstacle to child abduction. Conceptually it doesn't sound unreasonable to enforce that all legal guardians consent to passport issue.

    But that is an inefficient measure since the passport may have been issued with consent while the parents were married but the removal of the child is happening during the process of a divorce following marital breakdown. That's an entirely reasonable scenario:

    1. Couple marry.
    2. Couple have child.
    3. Couple get passport for child (e.g., for family holiday in Cancun).
    4. Couple have marital breakdown (e.g., because of infidelity).
    5. One partner removes child from country; child at this point has passport (see 3) yet not consent of both partners for travel (see 4).
    6. Divorce processed by courts.

    The border control agency are more able to handle this than the passport office, as they actually have a control point at the right point in time. The passport office does not and cannot. It therefore shouldn't be the job of the passport office to enforce this sort of thing (unless there's been an actual court order instructing that the child's passport be invalidated pending resolution of #6; at that point it is the court that is in charge, not the bureaucrats).


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dkf said in Passport pique:

    But that is an inefficient measure since the passport may have been issued with consent while the parents were married but the removal of the child is happening during the process of a divorce following marital breakdown.

    Yes, it's obviously not a solution on its own but I can't see why it's not something that should be done. TRWTF is how difficult it is to work through the bureaucracy, not that all the legal guardians consent to the passport.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said in Passport pique:

    TRWTF is how difficult it is to work through the bureaucracy

    You guys have the most annoying bureaucracy that money can buy.


  • FoxDev

    @dkf said in Passport pique:

    @boomzilla said in Passport pique:

    TRWTF is how difficult it is to work through the bureaucracy

    You guys have the most annoying bureaucracy that money can buy.

    But only after they've filled in Form Q11/9B, 'Requisition of Annoying Bureaucracy Grade Eight', filed in triplicate, and approved by no less than Bureaucrat 1.0 and two others grades 2 through 10, with the requisite five stamps each.


  • area_can

    @strangeways said in Passport pique:

    @Greybeard Well, America will be great again in just 2 days ago (and counting!), so why would you want to travel anywhere anyway?!

    NodeBB'd TFY


  • Garbage Person

    @dkf Japan is a notorious haven for parental child abduction.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Greybeard said in Passport pique:

    @dkf Japan is a notorious haven for parental child abduction.

    It's all the tentacles, isn't it?


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla Japan is full of tentacle parents? :o



  • @dkf said in Passport pique:

    @boomzilla said in Passport pique:

    TRWTF is how difficult it is to work through the bureaucracy

    You guys have the most annoying bureaucracy that money can buy.

    No they don't. The French have the most annoying bureaucracy that money can buy. It's called "Assurance Maladie". It took me five months to get them to make me a Carte Vitale (state health insurance smartcard) when I moved here as an adult.

    But that was easy. My wife's card took three and a half years of back-and-forth, and eventually involved a visit to an avocado.(1)

    They say that the French income tax people used to be even worse, but they have been reformed somewhere along the way, because my experience says they are efficient, polite, and helpful.

    (1) The French word for lawyer is "avocat", but this is also the French word for avocado.




  • Impossible Mission - B

    @Steve_The_Cynic said in Passport pique:

    (1) The French word for lawyer is "avocat", but this is also the French word for avocado.

    Huh, that's weird.

    In Spanish the word for lawyer is abogado ("advocate," like the French version,) but the word for avocado is aguacate, or possibly palta depending on which part of the world you're in.

    So do lawyer jokes need to be redirected to the 🥑 thread now, or just ones in French?


  • FoxDev

    @masonwheeler said in Passport pique:

    @Steve_The_Cynic said in Passport pique:

    (1) The French word for lawyer is "avocat", but this is also the French word for avocado.

    Huh, that's weird.

    In Spanish the word for lawyer is abogado ("advocate," like the French version,) but the word for avocado is aguacate, or possibly palta depending on which part of the world you're in.

    So do lawyer jokes need to be redirected to the 🥑 thread now, or just ones in French?

    you know what's really fun?

    The word "avocado" comes from the Spanish aguacate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word āhuacatl [aːˈwakat͡ɬ], which goes back to the proto-Aztecan *pa:wa which also meant "avocado". The Nahuatl word was also used with the meaning "testicle", probably because of the likeness between the fruit and the body part.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @accalia Huh. I did not know that.

    I did know, though, that the ❤ symbol was originally associated with "love" because of the resemblance it bears (particularly if turned upside down) to a certain body part that is not the heart...


    Filed under: can't unsee it


  • FoxDev

    @masonwheeler said in Passport pique:

    @accalia Huh. I did not know that.

    I did know, though, that the ❤ symbol was originally associated with "love" because of the resemblance it bears (particularly if turned upside down) to a certain body part that is not the heart...


    Filed under: can't unsee it

    it does make me laugh every time someone mentions 🥑


  • FoxDev

    @accalia said in Passport pique:

    you know what's really fun?

    The word "avocado" comes from the Spanish aguacate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word āhuacatl [aːˈwakat͡ɬ], which goes back to the proto-Aztecan *pa:wa which also meant "avocado". The Nahuatl word was also used with the meaning "testicle", probably because of the likeness between the fruit and the body part.

    Then you'll also like https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/orchid

    From Latin orchis, from Ancient Greek ὄρχις ‎(órkhis, “orchid, testicle”)



  • @masonwheeler said in Passport pique:

    I did know, though, that the ❤ symbol was originally associated with "love" because of the resemblance it bears (particularly if turned upside down) to a certain body part that is not the heart...

    From Wikipedia:

    Various hypotheses attempted to connect the "heart shape" as it evolved in the late medieval period with instances of the geometric shape in antiquity.[5] Such theories are modern, proposed from the 1960s onward, and they remain speculative, as no continuity between the supposed ancient predecessors and the late medieval tradition can be shown. Specific suggestions include: the shape of the seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as an herbal contraceptive,[5][6] and stylized depictions of features of the human female body, such as the female's buttocks, pubic mound, or spread vulva.[7]


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @hungrier said in Passport pique:

    stylized depictions of features of the human female body

    Huh? The explanation I heard was that it was related to the shape of a plant whose shape, in turn, looked like a certain male part...



  • @RaceProUK said in Passport pique:

    Then you'll also like https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/orchid

    From Latin orchis, from Ancient Greek ὄρχις ‎(órkhis, “orchid, testicle”)

    Yes, from the shape of tubers that occur in pairs (TIL) on the roots of some species in the genus Orchis, which is one of the most common kinds of orchid in Europe and North Africa. The tubers are unique to that genus, though; there's nothing so anatomically suggestive in any orchid you might be likely to give your beloved.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @masonwheeler said in Passport pique:

    @accalia Huh. I did not know that.

    I did know, though, that the ❤ symbol was originally associated with "love" because of the resemblance it bears (particularly if turned upside down) to a certain body part that is not the heart...


    Filed under: can't unsee it

    Wikipedia says no.

    Summarized version: early descriptions of the shape of the heart were that it was pear-like. There was also a custom to draw it point-upward, which resulted in the pear shape having a dent in it where the widest part was, from the giver's thumb/finger covering it there:

    0_1484871575581_Roman_de_la_poire_heart_metaphor.jpg
    (1250s, earliest known use to represent romantic love)

    During the 15th century it got flipped around and the dent became intrinsic, also losing the aorta sticking out of the top.

    Here's an image from c. 1770 from which you can probably figure out the basic progress, given early art tended to be a lot crappier:
    0_1484871952144_Sacred_Heart_1770.jpg

    (If you want more detail and illustrations, go read the article.)

    Edit: semi-:hanzo:d


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @accalia said in Passport pique:

    @masonwheeler said in Passport pique:

    @Steve_The_Cynic said in Passport pique:

    (1) The French word for lawyer is "avocat", but this is also the French word for avocado.

    Huh, that's weird.

    In Spanish the word for lawyer is abogado ("advocate," like the French version,) but the word for avocado is aguacate, or possibly palta depending on which part of the world you're in.

    So do lawyer jokes need to be redirected to the 🥑 thread now, or just ones in French?

    you know what's really fun?

    The word "avocado" comes from the Spanish aguacate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word āhuacatl [aːˈwakat͡ɬ], which goes back to the proto-Aztecan *pa:wa which also meant "avocado". The Nahuatl word was also used with the meaning "testicle", probably because of the likeness between the fruit and the body part.

    I've got a couple avocados waiting to be cut up and eaten in the fridge.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @HardwareGeek said in Passport pique:

    there's nothing so anatomically suggestive in any orchid you might be likely to give your beloved

    I've always wondering if I was missing something there. I've tried to see the testicles in an orchid and failed


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @Dreikin said in Passport pique:

    I've got a couple avocados waiting to be cut up and eaten in the fridge.

    They're generally better when cut up and eaten at the table. It's less cramped that way.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @HardwareGeek said in Passport pique:

    @RaceProUK said in Passport pique:

    Then you'll also like https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/orchid

    From Latin orchis, from Ancient Greek ὄρχις ‎(órkhis, “orchid, testicle”)

    Yes, from the shape of tubers that occur in pairs (TIL) on the roots of some species in the genus Orchis, which is one of the most common kinds of orchid in Europe and North Africa. The tubers are unique to that genus, though; there's nothing so anatomically suggestive in any orchid you might be likely to give your beloved.

    Illustration:
    0_1484942109943_PMC2805612_1746-4269-5-41-2.png


  • FoxDev

    @HardwareGeek Fun fact I only just remembered: there's an orchid called 'fox testicle', and it can be (and has been) used to make ice cream.


  • Garbage Person

    @japonicus said in Passport pique:

    It may be quite an efficient and effective obstacle to child abduction. Conceptually it doesn't sound unreasonable to enforce that all legal guardians consent to passport issue.

    There is already a mechanism to register to be notified and given a chance to object to the issue of a US passport for your child.

    I don't see how either measure would be effective against the other parent getting a passport from the Japanese consulate.


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