The trick is, they don’t really care about enforcing it - just having it as a potential charge to pursue when they hate someone.

This just in: Breathing is illegal. They’ll only bother prosecuting critics of Trump though.

There’s a movie called Rebel Ridge in which this practice, and a corrupt police department, serve as the antagonists. It’s a very harsh movie but very vindicating conclusion.

You know how police are regularly accused of having racial prejudice? The common joke is that you join ICE if you’re too racist to be a regular cop.

I’ve always wanted a tv episode or something that works out like this; a long lead-up of “Why doesn’t he notice she’s interested in him?” ending with the guy finally stating he’s just not interested.

“He heard a loud BANG through the phone”

Sentences that can be taken in two ways.

She doesn’t have to be struggling herself to see other people’s struggles and try to amplify their voice.

Even when people are millionaires, it’s a reality that they likely can’t just turn over their whole fortune at once to fix things. I’d generally guess people like this donate a lot to programs trying to fix these issues.

I don’t mind saying, I’m writing a book, and this is one of the conversations near the end. One character says to another: “Yeah, things are better. But can any of us truly say that things wouldn’t have improved if that terrorist hadn’t threatened everyone?”

Thankfully, in the story’s case, the reply to that quote is that while explosions and deaths were far more visible, a variety of powerful people were already making broad changes - just in a slower and less risky way. Of course, that’s fiction; and is not saying those things are a guarantee in the real world.

I’m going to warn you: There’s a lot that ICE and the administration have gotten away with because of people claiming “No way. Their actions would be too ridiculous if that’s what it was. There must be more to it.”

What we knew already even before scarce details emerged:

• Judges are extremely slow to take deliberate actions, to affirm their position as a fair arbiter that gives all sides chances to respond
• ICE has scarcely ever provided sufficient evidence for many of their arrests, including most of the high-profile ones
• The immigrants involved in this crime showed no indications of being violent or dangerous (even though ICE claimed they were)

So no, I don’t think ICE can be given benefit of doubt in this case. Every officer involved with this one can be arrested - and they can provide their argument when they go on trial.

I’m imagining something like being able to go to a lawyer, or journalist’s office - somewhere they’d have established notaries, and show them a driver’s license or other notable documentation. They wouldn’t be granted rights to record that information permanently, but would grant a cryptographic signature sourced from their office to express that their office has seen them.

This would rely on professional trust - that the people you show your info to will not record it; and, that if they for some reason have to, they won’t turn it over to warrants. By the same token, they’d be trusted that they’re not inventing people from thin air.

You’re right that someone engaging online long enough could be exposed. That would then rely on any effective “Right to be forgotten” laws to erase unnecessary data.

This is the one thing I hoped for out of crypto/blockchain.

You, commenter, don’t need to know that I’m “Brian Brianson, a citizen living at 123 Abenue Avenue”. But, it’s good to know that the person commenting is a real person who has been seen and verified by someone, as a simple true/false flag. If there were good ways of verifying basic conditions of people you interact with online, without exposing personal details, then it could curb botnet opinionation as well as be useful for a lot of things.

One track is made from subgrade steel and has a risk of derailing the trolley. The other is filled with explosives and shrapnel. Do you change the track?

I am American, but I’m lucky enough to live in a city where bikes are relatively practical.

It’s common to think of libraries as Public Book Rental, but recently most have expanded their services quite a lot.

• Rentals of items many households may only need briefly, like tools to find insulation gaps
• Online services that allow for digital renting of comics, manga, audiobooks, and even streaming services like Kanopy that have both old and new movies/TV shows
• Printing services; so that you don’t need to buy an ink cartridge for one printout one month, then another 4 months later when that cartridge has dried
• Tax prep assistance; because fuck Intuit

Libraries were admittedly the reason I started the thread but I’m also curious what other things will be mentioned.

I think at some point in time, I might have been a little bit more susceptible to this. I’ve had a very hard time getting a girlfriend, in part because of a terrible dating sphere - ironically, very much caused by rapists like Andrew Tate. So really, the men frustrated by lack of attention should be blaming Andrew Tate, not worshipping him, but the same situation is true for, say, businesses suffering from government regulation joining lobbying groups, etc.

Loneliness combined with the requisite image of male strength kind of forces people to either admit to being a loser, or “taking charge” in a way that demonizes the rest of the world. Being turned down repeatedly denies them a lot of power, so they’re eager to steal some back in any way they can, even if it’s for a cause that doesn’t actually help them.

As for why I never fell in there; I had good parents, and a financial cushion. If I was always starved for cash, chances are mental stress like that might’ve actually pushed me into very poor choices.

I call this Shadow the Hedgehog darkness. When something wants to look dark and mature from the outset, but it’s really a form of childishness. Same appearance takes effect for a lot of “dark” anime, where people are routinely betraying and causing pain, and “At its heart most of humanity just wants chaos” blah blah.

I do think there’s a lot of horrible stuff in the world, but it’s usually far more banal than anything these edgelords envision. When put face to face, people usually want to be kind to each other. But we’re not put face-to-face often enough.

Buy a bike, and often that sense of freedom comes back.

Still getting around, still able to use public transit at its best, but also able to fill in the other parts of trips with a form of low-stress exercise.

Ask them to prove they’re a citizen. Driver’s licenses don’t count. Being white doesn’t count (could be Russian).