Oceans Yet to Burn
Month
Charles Mingus
(via babylon-crashing)
I feel like this is a callout post just waiting to find me.
I still want to write a story about a God of Commerce coming into existence and revolutionising the economy of gods, prayers, and worshippers.
Balderdash! The prayer market regulates itself!
With a limited pantheon it can become an oligopoly or cartel!
Okay, but who is the deity of the State?
Now we’re bordering on NationStates.net territory, my dear Anon.
I, for one, back the Techno-Principality of Greater Rock Springs.
Their combination of Neoreactionary, Demi-Confucian, Muskian, and PAP principles, fused with a synthetic Sino-Japano-Anime-American metaculture and corporate backing practically assures their success against the bio-primitivists and the Communist Block.
What I really want to know is who @xhxhxhx is betting on.
Who are you betting on? Answer in the comments below.
Other issues with attempting to replace Nationalism include many Liberals are currently ideologically prohibited from noticing what is required to induce Liberalism and are instead obligated to pretend that it just happens on its own.
This is why we aren’t seeing a focus on the cousin marriage stuff for instance, when it’s an obvious vector for preservation of illiberal and oppressive cultures in otherwise liberal or social progressive environments.
Input carefulness and gentleness, get back laughter, beer, and miscellaneous History Facts!
In all seriousness, though, I don’t want to stereotype bros and am not sure what level of irony you’re operating on. Thank you for the ask, however.
@thathopeyetlives. Also, they seem to think that Han Chinese are not white.
I wonder in how much this will come into contention in about 10-20 years. There’s definitely a gap in appearance vs the various kinds of whites, but Han Chinese in America are a prime target for resource extraction, the People’s Republic of China is actively trying to weaken the cultures in outlying territories, and already East Asians are being disadvantaged by academic affirmative action policies.
“Charlie, you really need to get over that thing with your ex,” I said. “I’m worried it’s going to get in the way of our investigation.” We were waiting in the lobby. A murder investigation on a double platinum had high priority, and now that we’d found a connection between two of them, headquarters had handed off all our other priorities. So I wanted the prognosis on our suspect before leaving, and maybe, if we were lucky, we could continue the interrogation.
Charlie opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again and sighed. “It’s just… it’s been tough, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“Well how could you know, Vick? You live for the job. I’ve never seen you dating anyone, not even a man. You never take time off, and you never talk about your love life.”
“Trust me,” I told Charlie. “I know. But the past is the past, and the future is the future. Chairman Liu said it, I believe it, and it’s why I’m here.”
I got up, walked over to the vending machine, and ordered three soft drinks. The money was automatically deducted from my account. Admittedly, I had a lot of overtime pay, but I didn’t always have a choice. I tossed the first to Charlie.
Charlie caught his easily. “Chairman Liu Cola. Very funny.”
“Best soda made in Outer Hong Kong,” I said.
“Only soda made in Outer Hong Kong,” Charlie replied.
“That’s not true. There are some unlicensed soda vendors down by the dock markets. I mean, if you don’t mind getting sick, of course. Just a little sick.”
I passed Huan his green can of soda. Then I leaned against the wall, cracked mine open, and had a drink.
Huan looked contemplative as he drank his soda.
“Who is Jack?” He asked. “And who is Camille?”
“You think this goes deeper?” I asked.
Huan took another drink.
“I’m thinking it’s a problem if our only suspect and lead on the case dies without any follow-up.”
“True, but there are probably a million Jacks on Earth,” I said, “so it doesn’t help us narrow it down that much - assuming she was even telling the truth. Say, do you guys think maybe she was concussed?”
But inside, I was worried that I might know just who “Jack” was.
“Maybe,” said Huan, “but don’t they check for that?”
A door opened at the far end of the room, and a man in a white hazard suit stepped through. We all looked over at him.
“Officers Charlie Lin, Victor Fang, and Zhang Huan?” The man asked.
“That’s us,” I said.
“I need you to come with me, please. We need to check whether you’ve been exposed.”
Maybe the reason so many Leftists think white nationalists cannot be deconverted is because they cannot deconvert them.
If you believe in collective ethnic ownership of the land, you believe in one of the core components of ethnonationalism. And if you believe that ties into race, you believe in a core component of racial ethnonationalism.
Asking a white nationalist to come down from the tree of white ethnonationalism is not going to work while you, yourself, are up a tree of ethnonationalism. It’s hypocritical, and hypocrisy is not very convincing.
The real alternatives are more in the realm of individualism - placing individuals over ethnic groups (and ethnic group membership) - and civic nationalism - placing the nation and national culture above ethnic groups. But both of those are very unWoke.
right after the con chair took the mic, she introduced one member of the convention committee, who proceeded to name 8 or 9 American Indian tribes that had lived in Southeast Michigan in the past and said that “we are their guests here”.
Ｉｍｐｌｉｃｉｔ Ｅｔｈｎｏｎａｔｉｏｎａｌｉｓｍ
~You can’t stop the ethnonationalism because you are ethnonationalists~
I’d be pissed off too, Tron Guy, having to sit there and listen to that without objecting that no, it’s still ethnonationalism when Leftists do it, and no, Leftist rationalizations are just rationalizations.
If I go to one of these things, maybe I’ll wear a Lee Kwan Yew T-shirt.
right after the con chair took the mic, she introduced one member of the convention committee, who proceeded to name 8 or 9 American Indian tribes that had lived in Southeast Michigan in the past and said that “we are their guests here”.
Ｉｍｐｌｉｃｉｔ Ｅｔｈｎｏｎａｔｉｏｎａｌｉｓｍ
~You can’t stop the ethnonationalism because you are ethnonationalists~
right after the con chair took the mic, she introduced one member of the convention committee, who proceeded to name 8 or 9 American Indian tribes that had lived in Southeast Michigan in the past and said that “we are their guests here”.
Ｉｍｐｌｉｃｉｔ Ｅｔｈｎｏｎａｔｉｏｎａｌｉｓｍ
(I refuse to use the grammatical atrocity “woke”)
Ah, but that’s what’s so brilliant about it. It’s perfect for mockery.
Of course, this kind of thinking is why I have a low Woke Score, but…
The reason? Women are now far more likely to be well-educated and earn more, but not the blokes with whom they mate. Yes, women are marrying down more than ever before. For men, it’s hypergamy, the concept of marrying above your station. Women are pitching their sights a lot lower, hypogamy. Both of these risk the long-term stability of relationships and the answer is monogamy. Joke. It’s actually homogamy. More about that later.
damn those hypergamous men!
seriously though these numbers require very careful handling
regression to the mean
(actually this is the exact example used by Thinking, Fast and Slow)
Is regression to the mean sufficient as an explanation? If we assume that marriage partners aren’t selected for income at all, we’d expect women to marry up more than they married down due to the pay gap, so it seems to me that there remains something to be explained when we find that the exact opposite is occurring.
Have you accounted for the higher rates of both incarceration and homosexuality in men? Oh, and dying off faster too. Basically, there are fewer “eligible” men than women.
Hmn… no doubt this situation will be described as sexist later on. (”A net transfer of wealth to men! How dare they! Where have all the good men gone!”) Though while in my extended family an executive married a blue collar man, said blue collar man was still a very manly type (and fairly sharp, had his own business at one point). Big, tall, works with his hands, likes hunting and fishing, and other things I can’t quite describe.
(Unlike a few other members of the extended family, I approved of this relationship. He’s a pretty good guy. Trustworthy.)
I’ve talked about women wanting status in men, and I think the trick is actually in that gender segregation of professions everyone hates so much. If the career track has no women in it, or few women in it, then it still works for proving masculinity even if it’s low-earning. (It’s a status track that he’s further along that she isn’t, as compared to her being better than him at literally everything.)
Though now I’m wondering about the death rates of lesbians and bisexual women relative to men.
I have come to realize that a big problem with Tumblr Discourse is that Tumblr was never meant to be used as a platform for political discussions of this caliber.
That is what Forums are for, they have moderators.
Of course, this only works if the moderators are unbiased, but let’s ignore that for now.
True, but forums aren’t blogs, so actually the preferred Discourse can’t happen there, either.
Have you ever met someone on the internet that you liked so much that you sometimes sit there and think “Oh man there are people who are lucky enough to see this person IN THE FLESH ON A REGULAR BASIS and I wonder if they realize how LUCKY they are”
Ah, but the people that know me IRL don’t know I’m the person that I am online, where I can safely have fewer social boundaries and present myself however I want, and filter my thoughts through text.
The trick’s on you, dear readers! The grey-skinned cyborg you imagine dutifully making these posts while in Union Army cosplay does not exist!
They’re both characterized by a situation of sudden (and unpredicted) scarcity because of a breakdown in the usual supply chain that provides a good, and the price of that newly scarce good increasing dramatically.
One is where someone who already has a stock of the newly scarce good increases the price and reaps a windfall profit from the event. The other is where someone acts to increase the supply of the newly scarce good, and charges a price commensurate with the extraordinary measures required to do so (ordinary measures, by definition, no longer being adequate to provide a supply).
There are good reasons why we might want to treat these two cases differently, and yet I see very few people, on either side of the debate, willing to make the distinction.
In particular, if you put in tons of time and effort driving supplies to a disaster area from somewhere unaffected by the storm, you should be allowed to sell things for whatever price they sell at. Because getting more supplies to a disaster is good and if you’re not allowed to sell above a stupid definition of ‘at cost’ that doesn’t take into account ‘putting a thousand miles on my car’ or ‘losing my entire weekend’ or ‘the risk that I was wrong and this wouldn’t be needed’ then there will just be fewer supplies for disaster survivors.
And yes, the laws get used that way: After Katrina a guy heard that people needed generators, so he bought 19 of them in Kentucky, rented a U-Haul, and drove them to New Orleans. The police arrested him and confiscated the generators (which they did not distribute to disaster survivors). He intended to sell them at double the cost, and people were eager to buy them at that price. He served four months in our brutal inhumane prison system for ‘price gouging.’
And yes, the laws get used that way: After Katrina a guy heard that people needed generators, so he bought 19 of them in Kentucky, rented a U-Haul, and drove them to New Orleans. The police arrested him and confiscated the generators (which they did not distribute to disaster survivors).
Yeah, this is what I’m worried about. The law will end up being written in a stupid way that makes the situation worse than not having a law.
Thx, but isn’t that a fanfic site?
So technically, couldn’t only fanfics of Whiteout, rather than Whiteout itself, get posted there?
The broken-looking figure of Rain Bailey had propped herself up in a chair, out of the bed. Her black hair was a mess, and mostly covered her eyes. She looked at the floor, tiredly. Then, she looked up.
“So, the cops of this Hell world are here to interrogate me, huh. Little demons of order trying to keep the peace in a den of debauchery and sin. Or is it devils? I never could keep the two straight. Fuck you.”
I paused for a moment. “Why did you kill Daniel Blake?” I asked.
“These bodies we have,” she said, “they’re abominations. My body is an abomination. It shouldn’t exist. It makes me sick. So fucking sick, doing these twisted things. The pleasure of sin is an illusion. It hollows out your soul. When he decided not to pay me, I finally realized it was just too much. Seemed like as good a place to start as any. To start ridding this world of filth.”
Charlie gritted his teeth, then couldn’t hold his tongue back. “If you hate this shit so much, why did you buy an F3 body? Hell, if you hate it so much, why not just get a regular job?”
“I bought into the bullshit of this city. The philosphy of it. ‘We’re not degenerates’, they said, 'we have rules.’ But this city is rotten to the core with filth. The rules just make it better at hiding it. It’s sick with perversion. Look at you, pretending to be 'NeoHan’. NeoHan isn’t even a real thing. It’s a warped, funhouse mirror copy of the Chinese, who aren’t even that great anyway. A fake ethnicity. Were you Chinese? Were you ever even Chinese?”
Charlie gritted his teeth again. I looked at her.
“Did you kill Robert Cang?” I asked.
< She’s clearly delusional, > Huan’s voice said through the cybercomms in my head. < I don’t know if any of this will even be admissible as evidence. >
< Fucking pleasureboats. > Said Charlie. < Never trust an F3. >
“Yeah, I guess.” She said.
“Why?”
“I dunno. Looked at me funny.”
She was lying and she knew it, but why? A drop of blood ran down from her nostril, and she licked it. Then she coughed.
“Waaaaiit a minute,” she said with a half-smile. “Those reports on the forums weren’t bullshit after all.” She looked at me. “'Victor Fang’, huh? Jack, why are you pretending to be Chinese? Haha. Hahahaha. Hahahaha! The irony of it! The irony of it all! Camille sends her regards!”
The laughter quickly turned into a vicious coughing fit, and the cloud of AR health indicators around her began to turn red. The door soon opened and the nurse rushed in. I and the others moved out of the way.
“What happened?” Demanded the nurse as he rushed to her side.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She was laughing and then she went into a coughing fit.”
“Help me get her into the bed!” Said the nurse. She resisted, but we soon lifted her and pushed her back onto the bed.
The nurse gestured for me to get out of the way, and the bed took off out of the room and down the hallway at a fast walking pace, the nurse following along.
“'the fuck? I’ve never seen a Buster grenade do that.” Said Charlie.
“…Jack?” Said Huan.
“There is no ‘Lesbianism Bomb’, Tom. She left you because you stood her up too many times.”
common misconception is that i want to be a girl but thats wrong
i want to be a shapeshifter capable of shedding one form and moving onto another at will, a perfect entity with total mastery over my physical and spiritual form
(… and also a girl)
Putting in disaster gouging laws is not really the virtuous thing, because
- Any cop you have out enforcing the anti-gouging law could instead be either pulling dudes out of flooded houses, trucking in water, handing out waters, or guarding supply points
- It isn’t going to actually increase the amount of drinkable water entering the zone
- Not every random trucking water in but charging for it is going to charge $42 a bottle. If someone charges some lesser amount, it may also still cover their fuel costs and time off work to get out there
This policy is more of a looking good than doing good thing. It lets the politicians get away without actually doing anything, spending any money, or successfully bringing more water into the zone. (It also costs resources to keep all these laws on the books.)
Having supply depots already nearby as part of a multi-layered civil defense system capable of responding to a broad range of emergencies is the actual virtuous policy, the tough one that we can’t actually have because reasons.
I know @collapsedsquid suggested that having supply depots would be defeated because tax breaks for the wealthy, but that isn’t the only factor.
Any money spent on civil defense depots with stockpiled water filters would also have to contend with complaints that it was depriving resources from any other groups - for instance, from education, healthcare, etc. It might even get accused of being racist for being connected to some distant probability-calculated need rather than the immediate needs of the local community. (Tho that last one can be reduced somewhat by giving the ¾ shelflife MREs over to homeless shelters.)
there are already cops who are protecting from vague looters rather than pulling dudes out of flooded houses, does that mean we need to abolish private property?
It isn’t going to actually increase the amount of drinkable water entering the zone
it will prevent the thing where people with spare cash go to a supermarket, buy out the entire stock of water, and then resell it at much higher prices after the disaster.
Well, looting non-essential items will harm people afterwards, and there are reports of some people shooting. Though if I could allow people to loot water bottles from abandoned houses without all sorts of secondary consequences, I would.
What I’m thinking is that we won’t get a law that’s written intelligently, but one that also prohibits guys from buying out all the waters in a store in a neighboring county, putting it all in a pick-up truck, and driving it in to the disaster area to sell. And we should want someone to do that, even if it gets sold for $10 a bottle, since it increases the available water.
Venezuela, which is pretty messed up right now, keeps trying to legislate prices on things like bread, and it isn’t helping there.
Putting in disaster gouging laws is not really the virtuous thing, because
This policy is more of a looking good than doing good thing. It lets the politicians get away without actually doing anything, spending any money, or successfully bringing more water into the zone. (It also costs resources to keep all these laws on the books.)
Having supply depots already nearby as part of a multi-layered civil defense system capable of responding to a broad range of emergencies is the actual virtuous policy, the tough one that we can’t actually have because reasons.
I know @collapsedsquid suggested that having supply depots would be defeated because tax breaks for the wealthy, but that isn’t the only factor.
Any money spent on civil defense depots with stockpiled water filters would also have to contend with complaints that it was depriving resources from any other groups - for instance, from education, healthcare, etc. It might even get accused of being racist for being connected to some distant probability-calculated need rather than the immediate needs of the local community. (Tho that last one can be reduced somewhat by giving the ¾ shelflife MREs over to homeless shelters.)
I once got into a long after-class argument with my econ professor about anti-gouging laws during disasters, and he genuinely told me that a superior option would be to drop massive amounts of cash over affected areas via helicopter (a literal helicopter drop) so that everyone could collect it and have the ability to purchase goods at their market value. I tried to point out that the lack of competition caused by a severe supply shock eliminates any upper constraint on prices, so a helicopter drop could just lead to local hyperinflation that would rapidly wipe out the money’s value, but he cut me off before I could get to it.
Pretty sure he had a PhD.
Okay, but that spike is only temporary, depending on just how difficult it is to get out there and just how regularly the government does this. If there is suddenly $200,000 laying around for buying water, then someone will get a boat or a truck and bring water.
No, what you really have to worry about is that some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.
some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.
No but see that’s not real anarcho-capitalism, just like every time corporations do something bad that’s not real capitalism. As ancaps have never ever told us within drug law and gun law discourse, people always obey vague ephemeral principles like the NAP, except during all of human history. And this is definitely different to every time a tankie claims that nothing was real communism.
I mean technically, once the state either debases the currency by printing it or seizes the currency so that they can helidrop it into disaster zones, I think you’ve already left anarcho-capitalism.
I once got into a long after-class argument with my econ professor about anti-gouging laws during disasters, and he genuinely told me that a superior option would be to drop massive amounts of cash over affected areas via helicopter (a literal helicopter drop) so that everyone could collect it and have the ability to purchase goods at their market value. I tried to point out that the lack of competition caused by a severe supply shock eliminates any upper constraint on prices, so a helicopter drop could just lead to local hyperinflation that would rapidly wipe out the money’s value, but he cut me off before I could get to it.
Pretty sure he had a PhD.
Okay, but that spike is only temporary, depending on just how difficult it is to get out there and just how regularly the government does this. If there is suddenly $200,000 laying around for buying water, then someone will get a boat or a truck and bring water.
No, what you really have to worry about is that some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.
“Temporary” still matters, a lot, when we’re talking about access to water in a disaster zone.
They might hold out for it, though, and if it became a common practice then dudes would line up with trucks full of waters along the storm boundary, excitedly waiting to go, driving down the price due to the expectation that the seller would make less money later for anyone that could afford to wait a little longer.
It just ignores that one dude with a gun can get all the money for himself, which is a frequent thing we see with economic thought ignoring the realities of force even while implicit force is, though useful, the basis by which property can even exist.
the sj hiding in my brain: uh why are you reading a book where the two main characters are boys, written by a man, i really think that you’re reinforcing harmful and incredibly oppressive structures-
me: could you just, fuck off, and let me read my adventure novel about archery and fantasy rangers in peace, without commentary, for ONCE
you: haunted by the ghosts of your past who sing in chorus in your mind ever onward, seeking to bind you in chains of your own making
me: busy writing something arguably even more problematic than archers, fantasy rangers, or even gay archery-focused fantasy rangers
I once got into a long after-class argument with my econ professor about anti-gouging laws during disasters, and he genuinely told me that a superior option would be to drop massive amounts of cash over affected areas via helicopter (a literal helicopter drop) so that everyone could collect it and have the ability to purchase goods at their market value. I tried to point out that the lack of competition caused by a severe supply shock eliminates any upper constraint on prices, so a helicopter drop could just lead to local hyperinflation that would rapidly wipe out the money’s value, but he cut me off before I could get to it.
Pretty sure he had a PhD.
Okay, but that spike is only temporary, depending on just how difficult it is to get out there and just how regularly the government does this. If there is suddenly $200,000 laying around for buying water, then someone will get a boat or a truck and bring water.
No, what you really have to worry about is that some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.
Thx, but isn’t that a fanfic site?
So technically, couldn’t only fanfics of Whiteout, rather than Whiteout itself, get posted there?
They’re both characterized by a situation of sudden (and unpredicted) scarcity because of a breakdown in the usual supply chain that provides a good, and the price of that newly scarce good increasing dramatically.
One is where someone who already has a stock of the newly scarce good increases the price and reaps a windfall profit from the event. The other is where someone acts to increase the supply of the newly scarce good, and charges a price commensurate with the extraordinary measures required to do so (ordinary measures, by definition, no longer being adequate to provide a supply).
There are good reasons why we might want to treat these two cases differently, and yet I see very few people, on either side of the debate, willing to make the distinction.
what I wanted to say but couldn’t be bothered
Easy to suggest, very tricky to solve as a matter of policy.
The government could just state that it’s willing to pay some inflated price to anyone able and willing to get desired goods into a disaster area (and then take over distribution once they’ve reached the area). That would pretty easily separate the two functions (increasing supply vs final distribution).
Alternately, the government could just do such a good job with disaster relief directly that there wouldn’t be a huge shortfall in supply for necessities, and price-gouging would be more of a nuisance than a crisis.
Of course, either of these presupposes a level of shit-togetherness-having that the US government has not demonstrated during any recent disasters…
Schemes like the first one have the verification problem, you have to verify that the goods are both being delivered and being sold at appropriate prices.
Problem with the second one is just that disaster preparation is a waste of taxpayer money that could be going to tax cuts for the rich.
I believe that the second can be unlocked with a new ideology and a new design of government.
Oh dear, our dear Kissinger-san has vanished. Such a shame, he was a chill dude.
I guess I never really understood why Nineteen Eighty-Four was a stable equilibrium, if the world it described was at all true, because the fundamental thing is the game, either within states or between them, because there’d always be actors of greater or lesser talents, because there’d always be shocks to technology or inputs, so that there’d be no equilibrium
it’s good and fun to imagine this sort of terror, but I always found it hard to imagine it as a permanent state, because it seemed so fragile, so dependent on the virtues of the leadership and the competitive equilibrium between states – and I know the predictable answer is that the airbase is a little North Korea, but, with the caveat that I haven’t read the book in years, that never seemed like a strong or plausible reading of the text to me
like, Orwell was great at Stalinist terror, but even Stalin emerged through intra-party competition, and even Stalin was threatened by inter-state competition – as Adolf Hitler was done in by it – so it’s just hard to imagine that equipoise surviving anywhere for long, much less one that survives everywhere
the thing I’ve always feared is collapse, the collapse of complex societies, because collapse is the terrible thing we see again and again, and the thing you can’t insulate yourself against
if 1984 ended in collapse, with the factories torn up, the money turned to rubbish, with Smith on the dole and working on the black market, drinking himself to death, and all the little old tea-drinking pensioners wishing they hadn’t done away with Big Brother, and maybe it hadn’t been so bad being Airstrip One, and maybe we’d all have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those awful Continentals – but even that wouldn’t have been all that bad
the thing that really chills me is the Dark Ages
like, you read these books and you realize, like, hey, they don’t have pottery anymore, they barely trade, they’re barely literate, and they just fall into darkness for centuries, where even their names are forgotten
like, that’s the dystopia, to me
I have another three segments of Whiteout queued, and it’s both kind of annoying and exciting since I want to show them to you right now, but if I do that then there won’t be any more queued, so we all have to wait.
Anyhow, if you’re enjoying the Whiteout story, make sure to like the posts so I know how popular it is.
The article about “why we need price gouging in times of crisis”, is some odd shit. I can assure you that there is plenty of water to go round, even if it isn’t as much as normal. Many people did buy ahead of time, however when you get 28 inches of water in 3 hours instead of 3 days and you have to leave your home, you are not carrying the case of water. So kindly fuck off with you random garbage articles, I disconnect with most ancaps when it comes to compassion. Do I believe we need laws, nope, but I believe we need compassion, and Joe Blow selling water for $42 is anything but compassionate. This is the very reason a lot of people do not believe an anarchist, free market, voluntary society can work. I am watching my neighbors who have never flooded be plucked from their homes in boats, losing their entire life, and I got to read that fucking trash. Kindly fuck off. Want to show the world anarchy can work, do like the countless people out lending a hand, donate a case of water, come help me cook for the shelter, and STFU.
This is precisely when people attack the price system, though, because people have the moral intuition that someone selling at higher-than-normal prices is doing something wicked and must be responsible for the price being that high, when they aren’t at all. The authorities interfering to stop local prices from being allowed to rise during a crisis is exactly why famines happened historically, it’s something that turns a localized temporary disaster into something worse. Price ceilings always create shortages, and that’s precisely what you don’t want in an emergency situation.
The choice isn’t between the guy selling water bottles for $42 or him giving them away, it’s between letting him sell them for $42 or not having water bottles there at all. Yeah, he isn’t being altruistic, but his greed is actually leading him to contribute to disaster relief efforts by showing up with water instead of staying home. You’re not being compassionate to disaster victims by telling those people to stay home if they’re not going to help for free, you’re taking away their opportunity to buy water that they apparently need badly enough they’re willing to pay $42 for it. The greedy asshole who was induced to drive from several states away with a truck full of water bottles just to try to make a quick buck is possibly making the difference between life and death for some people in need, even if he doesn’t have an ounce of compassion. The moral intuition you’ve got about price-gougers is backwards - that’s the important insight those articles are spreading, and this is exactly the time to spread it. If anti-gouging laws get passed after this hurricane, those guys won’t risk jail time to show up for the next one, and there will be a shortage where people can’t find drinkable water at any price. Trying to prevent that is beneficial as well.
Compassion is great, but one of anarchy’s greatest strengths is that it doesn’t actually require compassion to work, that people without any compassion in their hearts are still led by greed to work for the benefit of others anyway. A system that only works when people are eager to sacrifice their self-interest to serve others doesn’t work at all.
Okay, but “no price-gouging laws” isn’t incompatible with improved civil defense infrastructure, and calling it “anarchy” is stretching it. If the situation destabilized enough they’d call in the army, and there is still very much the risk of prosecution if you kill the man selling waters for $42 and take all of his waters, once the disaster clears.
Rebellion and break down in law & order in any area of the country undermines the authority of the state as the ruler and monopolizer of force and arbiter of law. Desperation is a key factor in breaking down law & order. Therefore, it would be prudent to create caches of limited, key supplies (such as clean water, water filters, and MREs) at various points in the country, cycling them out as donations to poverty organizations (or selling them) as they near expiration.
This serves both the internal (preventing looting, rioting, and loss of faith in the government) and external (decreasing the amount of death and dysfunction in the event of enemy attack) security primary functions of the state, and increases the scale of hazardous events required to bring down the government. Improvements in civil defense infrastructure also act as a multiplier on available military force as a credible threat for use in international politics.
“Why in the fuck would you just let someone wanted for murder go like that?” Asked Charlie, as we walked through the reflective matte-white halls of the OHK State Hospital. Our steps were in sync, though not really voluntarily. Old habits die hard.
“She made bail,” said Huan.
“How the fuck does some random biter make a five hundred thousand dollar bail?” Came the response.
“Don’t let the media fool you,” said Huan. “It may not be a license to print money, but there’s plenty of action to be had. A lot of old men, made young again, who are fed up with their wives. The adultery laws don’t apply to registered prostitutes.”
I grunted in acknowledgement.
Charlie sighed. “Why do we even have the adultery laws anyway if we’re going to let a class of people just ignore them?”
I kept in pace. “Because they’re not about love,” I said. “They’re about money.” Lots and lots of money.
Charlie muttered something about pleasureboats under his breath, but I pretended not to hear it.
The doors to the ward opened before us, and we followed the guidance towards room 8005, near the back.
“Just how hard did you hit this guy, anyway?” Asked Charlie.
“Oh,” I said, “I just used a Buster grenade.” It was true. I hadn’t even fired a shot.
“A Buster grenade put someone in the hospital?” Asked Charlie.
“Nah, I figure it was the fall that put ‘em in the hospital. The Buster grenade was just because they were dumb enough to keep shooting after they fell.”
Huan grunted in agreement.
“Remind me never to piss you off, Vick,” said Charlie.
The halls in the judicial holding wing were white, like the rest of the building, but they had a thick blue stripe along each wall. Tall unidirectional windows marked each holding cell. A male nurse was outside, facing away from us, checking the tools on a cart.
“Excuse me,” I said, “we’re here to see Rain Bailey Biyu in room 8005.”
“I’m sorry, but Ms. Bailey isn’t seeing anyone right now on account of her condition.” The nurse said without turning his head.
“It’s part of a homicide investigation,” I added.
The nurse turned and saw all three of us standing in the hallway. Black suits, black shirts, black gloves, matching sunglasses, and MetroPol AR[ar] IDs. “Ah, well,” he said. “Of course. Ms. Bailey is stable for now, but she’s not in great shape. The doctors want to have another look at her later because she’s not healing properly.”
“You think it’s ECSD?” Charlie asked.
“You should pay more attention to television, Officer Lin,” said the nurse. “It’s never ECSD. ECSD is genetic. No NeoHan has Electro-Conductive Sensitivity Disorder.”
Charlie made a mild noise of embarassment, so I changed the topic. “Right, well, we’d best get in there now, then. We were informed the patient was ready for in-cell interrogation.”
“Yes…” Said the nurse. “You may go on in. I’ll stand outside and observe.”
I gestured at the door and it opened. We stepped in.
[ar] - Augmented Reality, an overlay of computer information over the real world.
So it turns out it is possible to view Tumblr posts in chronological order. …if they’re tagged, and up to a certain amount (a few hundred).
So later on, if you’re following the whiteout story and you missed a post and want to view them in chronological order to avoid spoilers, here’s the link, as well as the general format for tagged chronological Tumblr browsing.
https://mitigatedchaos.tumblr.com/tagged/whiteout%20story/chrono/
The next whiteout post is queued for tomorrow, and another one for the day after.
god it’s way past time we dissolved Western Australia
either get rid of all the states entirely and give more authority to local councils, or get rid of the federal government and let states print their own currencies, but the current split between state and federal is incredibly irritating.
That’s the part of the world @mitigatedchaos can be in charge of. It’s mostly uninhabitable, so who cares if it’s fucked up?
I know, you’re probably thinking this is a safe idea. “Let’s exile that lunatic to the vast desert of Western Australia. No matter how many bizarre plans they have, the collateral damage cannot possibly escape to the rest of the developed world.”
And of course, this seems perfectly reasonable. The diagonal of Western Australia is literally over two thousand kilometers in length.
It’s just over two point six million square kilometers in size. Even the construction of a Special Economic Zone kept wet by a nuclear-powered desalination plant would be dwarfed by four orders of magnitude by the shear scale of Western Australia.
But did you realize it’s possible to terraform the Outback with existing technology?
Who would fund such a thing? Well, multiple nations are looking to meet their climate commitments, and the newly-formed state of Technocratic Western Australia would be in a position to supply. A new city would need to be built to accommodate the infrastructure necessary to oversee this enormous project, along with a series of smaller and more temporary towns, allowing a great degree of flexibility in urban planning.
The scale of the project would ensure funding for the new regime for several decades, while power was consolidated and a new culture was forged across multiple immigrant groups brought in to provide the labor for the project. A tiered citizenship system, including education and service to advance up the hierarchy, with special status reserved for national heroes and more voice available in the National Delegation for loyalists, would place long-term political power in the hands of those committed to the new Western Australia.
As the trees spread across the continent, new development opportunities and industries would open up as the temperatures and local climates changed, paving the way for a nation of twenty million by the mid century.
The only thing preventing this future is that I am not in charge of Western Australia.
The other crucial thing preventing your plan is that nobody wants to live in your western australian towns, because it’s western australia.
According to the elaborate theory of mind I just created in the last two seconds, people either want trees or money. It follows, therefore, that they will be willing to move to the middle of nowhere for money and the promise that eventually, trees will come.
Seriously, try and imagine what Freud would say while reading your politics blog
Kinda makes you wanna take a shower
Me, watching as Freud grinds up and snorts my politics blog: Uh, dude, are you sure you want to do that?
Freud: *experiences seizure* the future is already here the future is already here the future is already here
The brightness of the optical camouflage shimmered in the light, as the dark hallway gave way to a chaos of orange and white construction scaffolding. The figure dodged and weaved through towards the light outside, their black clothing showing through as their cheap active camo suit flexed and folded. I followed.
“Stop,” I yelled, “in the name of the law!”
The light of day burst through as the figure reached the edge of the scaffolding, where the orange plating gave way to the air outside. Beyond was the old Ivory Rose building, the first to be condemned in Outer Hong Kong. Its demolition had been tied up for legal red tape for years as it slowly degraded.
The combat software in my head spurred up, sensing my direction as the figure leapt. I watched as the guidance path unfolded before me, carefully matching the trajectory, and I pushed off after them.
Hey, you only live once, right? Or maybe twice, in my case.
The chasm to the street below us whipped past in what seemed like only a fraction of a second, and then I tumbled and rolled through one of the broken windows on the other side, a chunk of debris nudging into my back.
The figure stumbled, then got up and ran. “Hey!” I shouted, “You can’t just torch a crime scene like that! Stop right fuckin’ now and maybe we’ll go easy on you!” It was a lie, of course. Whoever torched it was probably the murderer, and IntSec wasn’t going to go easy on someone who capped a double platinum.
My ears buzzed. It was Charlie. < They torched this right, Vic. You cap ‘em yet? >
< You put the fires out yet? >
< Well, no, but - >
We dodged down a flight of stairs in the dim light, lit only by the red glow of emergency lighting expected to have long since failed. The building was a mess. Debris everywhere, garbage, bottles and drug injectors.
< Then shut off your mouth and get to it. >
A surface projection appeared in my eyes, overlaying the darkness, a green grid wrapping around the shapes in the hallway, like in movies that were already old when I was a kid. The figure stumbled again as they ran. Maybe they couldn’t see in this light. Big mistake. Now I had the advantage.
A section of the grid was red up ahead, and the figure rushed forwards, tripped, and fell into it. There was a loud, feminine cry accompanying a thud and a crash about a floor below.
“Surrender now!” I shouted as I approached the hole in the floor. A gunshot rang out and a bullet whizzed by my head. I jumped back.
“Alright then,” I said, as I reached into my jacket and withdrew a canister. “We’ll do this the hard way.”
Combat software didn’t control your movements. Not directly, anyway. Instead, you sort of leaned in to it, as a learned habit. It put tiny pressures on your arms and legs and other muscles, and you just had to follow those pressures. Canister in hand, the combat software sensed my microgesture intent, and projected a path before my eyes.
With one smooth motion, the canister went flying, then rebounded off the wall. The suspect’s second shot missed it as it came back down and burst open.
There was a yelp and a jolt. The things could disable anything that wasn’t paramilitary grade, at least temporarily. “I told you we could’ve done this the easy way,” I said.
I leaned over and looked into the hole. The cheap active camo had shorted out. Now I could get a good look at the face and other identifiers.
I could feel my sweat as I started to cool off.
Rain Bailey Biyu, age 34, sex F3. Resident status nickel. Previous offenses…
< HQ really dropped the ball on this one. It’s the fucking hooker. >
< You’re kidding… > Said Charlie.
I sent Charlie a live snapshot. I was definitely not kidding.
< Ah, geez, > said Charlie. < Why do the pleasureboats always cause so much trouble? >
Huan’s tone was measured. < Careful, Charles. I don’t want our investigation getting disrupted over accusations about slurs. >
Charlie acknowledged.
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/28/denver-area-arrest-neo-nazi-stabbing/
False flagging is for everyone! Being an idiot who, apparently, cuts himself with a knife he just bought, then makes up a completely disprovable story and wasting police time is this guy’s special thing though.
Yeah, I figured it was a good idea to hedge that previous post. I support prosecution in this case.
“Double platinum,” said Huan, flicking through the victim’s information.
The dim orange light of the interface lit his virtual face, his expression grim. “Second one in two weeks,” he said. Details of man’s life flickered before him, dynamically summarized, as he gestured through them in his mind.
Robert Cang Bai, age 52. Senior Engineering Manager, Prescott & Associates. No known enemies. One prior conviction, for a parking ticket, twelve years ago. Double Platinum citizenship status, registered with the city of Outer Hong Kong. NeoHan, though that part was unremarkable.
“You seeing a pattern here?” Asked Charlie, standing next to him. Their dark suits and dark gloves, immaculately clean, were the uniform of the city’s homicide unit. “Two double platinums, two weeks, both high-ranking engineering managers, both in OHK.”
“Yeah,” replied Huan, “but that guy was killed by a hooker over a deal gone bad. This guy is clean as a whistle.”
I crouched over the body, examining the victim’s head. A single gunshot wound penetrated his skull, past all the barriers woven into his skull. Probably high-velocity ammo. Simple, but effective.
“It’s possible,” I said. “Go after the leader, and he may be replaced with the second in command. Wipe out the senior staff, and you can really damage the organization. I learned that from Trump.”
“Woah, decorated PacMet Officer Victor Fang was a MAGAtoon?” Teased Charlie. “I find that one hard to believe.”
It was quiet for a moment as Huan read through more information about the victim, before Huan added “why does a MAGAtoon immigrate to PacMet anyway?”
I was tempted to tell Charlie that I had been a lot worse than that during the Maelstrom. Instead I chose the sensible option.
“There is a plan,” I said. “It may not be a perfect plan, it may not be the best plan, but people follow the plan.” I gestured at the body. “Usually.”
Huan nodded knowingly, while Charlie looked on for a moment in disbelief.
“Besides,” I added, “the past is the past. That’s the promise of-” My eyes caught a distortion in the drone recording. A shimmering, translucent figure opened its hand, withdrawing a canister, and then a distorting brightness overtook the room.
“I think we gotta get over there,” I said.
“Yeah, we gotta get over there,” Huan said.
BUY LOW
SELL HIGH
Do you ever get nervous after using a pet name for the first time like dear, baby, honey, or anything like that
Oh, Kissinger honey darling san kun pal,
isaacsapphire Are you referring to the weird Subaru blogs?
Not just Subaru, they come in a variety of car-themed flavors.
My running theory is that they gather followers and then change names and transform into some other kind of spam blog, since if they’re not being monetized, what’s the point? Little digital caterpillars, chomping away at pictures of lamborghinis.
I’ve never actually seen this transformation btw, this is just a hypothesis.