Libertarian police

I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.

“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”

“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”

“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”

The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”

“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”

I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.

“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.

“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”

It didn’t seem like they did.

“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”

Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.

I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.

“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.

Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.

“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.

I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”

He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.

“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”

“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.

“Because I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”

I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.

“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”

He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.

I’m fairly certain it’s too “flood the zone with bullshit”, straight out of the Steve Bannon playbook. It’s so ridiculous that this is what we’re wasting our time on. Instead of discussing all the other real insane things.

I think you misunderstood what “the dumbest person in the room means”. It doesn’t mean to be literally dumb, it means to pretend to not know anything and boil down the conflict to facts instead of perception of what the other party wants. It takes fucking skill and experience to steer the conversation in a constructive way and to keep two opposing parties in check, steering the conversation away from conflict to understanding each others viewpoint.

I only go down on a rabbit’s hole ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

What might be the nearest solution to a nuclear reactor design they doesn’t go over budget, doesn’t get delayed decades, and doesn’t produce radioactive waste for which we don’t have a final storage solution anywhere* on the entire planet?

*I didn’t recently check if the storage in Finland is up an running yet.

I get this request sometimes on my work machine. Guess what? I don’t even have the rights to install it. Insanity

HELP WANT GOOD FOR GET PLAY?

The true stable genius. Such wow

You better get a glass of sparkling water in your hands, stat

No. I’m not buying that anymore. People know goddamn well that their actions hurt others. They just choose to ignore it, be it due to their greed, fear, insecurities, or whatever. But all those fuckers voting for extreme right wing policies are not stupid. Some might be gullible and buy into whatever bullshit claims that feed their fear. But they still look at others and their suffering, and decide to say “fuck you, I deserve what I believe is mine”. That’s not being stupid, that’s being a fucking cancer to society.

Yup! What’s extra “funny” is that the federal government will probably foot the bill and thus these dirty immigrants will cost the regular Joe exorbitantly more - both in lost contribution to the economy and taxes but also in fees for being detained - than they would have if they would leave them the fuck alone. It better yet give them a realistic path to citizenship.

Right wingers are either fucking dumb as shit or 100% morally depraved. It makes my blood boil to the point that I cannot follow the news. And I ain’t even living in the US. Just pisses me off to no end still how absolutely heartless and fucked people can be.

That’s what peak efficiency looks like haters.

The price ain’t the wtf part

Responsibilities take all the fun out of getting fucked up.

Made me stop bringing it. I wear my keys on a Climbing Carabiner and if it sits right it is perfect. But fuck off if it doesn’t, it’s pure anger in metal usb stick form.

It’s literally in the last paragraph of the summary. You didn’t even have to click the article. The EU can fine up to 6% of the global revenue.

Wondering the same here. I work in an extremely regulated industry as well. We have MS as a strategic partner but haven’t even deployed win 11 yet.
That said we have a deal to use co-pilot and also chatGPT. Both in a unique version that is compliant with company policies. Co-pilot integration into teams is not quite recall level but similar, think video transcripts, meeting and chat summaries, etc. I have no clue how this works practically but I assume there are some strict contracts regarding training data and data usage in place.

Never thought about that way, very good point. Pretty disastrous

Makes my hips look good as well 😏