Police are modern. They came into existence after the United States did.

The first contracted law enforcement was in the early 1600s in Scotland, unless my random 2am fixation on the history of how shitty cops are is wrong.

And a quick search tells me 1611 in Edinburgh.

Cops have been bastards for longer than the US has been around.

Sitting in whichever space I can fit it, usually tangled up with my wife's bike.

Space isn't abundant where we are and they're bulky.

But hey, weather is off-and-on good enough to ride, so we get to use them plenty.

"Our glorious handling fees" vs "their barbaric tariffs"

You know, quantum resonance in the Heisenberg compensators. Sometimes the dice spit out an impossible number.

Don't even get me started on the time we rolled a natural negative

I once had the opportunity to take a really nice microscope from a school district I was working for when I was 18.

I was working on sorting all the old curriculum for 1st-12 grades core subjects for disposal/recycling and then receiving new stuff.

They were updating the entirety of all science departments and the highschool was getting rid of their old microscopes. The ones that were in working order were to be placed aside for donation, and the non-working ones simply tossed in the dumpsters.

I was allowed to take whatever I wanted that was to be thrown away, but I figured I didn't want to spend time and money tracking down the right bulb to fix the best non-working one, and decided not to take one.

Current me is cursing younger me because I could have easily swapped out the light with a LED, and even if I couldn't, there were LITERALLY microscopes with broken optics and working lights, and I could have just taken one extra one for parts...

Young me was dumb.

I did snag a mostly-complete rock sample set for demonstration of various geology testing techniques. Also a fist-sized chunk of silicon.

So I wasn't completely dumb.

I have told managers, to their faces, I do not have a smart phone... While holding my smart phone.

So far, while most have quite noticeably glanced at my phone, none have actually called me out on it.

If any of them ever do, I will just get a prepaid flip phone and use that for work.

I'm always a fan of "best possible outcome" for 20, and "worst possible outcome that doesn't immediately kill anyone" for nat1.

If you're 2ft tall and trying to destroy an iron wall and roll a 20, you successfully scrape some iron off the wall. It doesn't just collapse spontaneously. If you roll a ~~0~~ 1, your attack bounces off and your weapon breaks. Luckily it didn't rebound and hit you.

It makes things more believable, however rule of cool is obviously above that. So if you can do a flip off a cliff onto the back of a dragon and convince it to attack the tarrasque for you before it eats you, and roll a 20 for all that, you better believe that dragon now considers you it's deity, and will die in a ball of flames, acid, ice, etc, in your name while flying headfirst down the tarrasque's throat. The tarrasque obviously dies from this, since it's so epic.

I guess it really depends on the stakes.

A former friend cut contact after we had an argument about this.

Paraphrased:

Me: "if your uncle arrests someone for assault, and his friend waited for him outside the target's house and drove him away, would the friend not also get arrested for being an accomplice?"

Her: "yeah, the guy knew the crime was going on so he definitely is part of it"

Me: "So if your uncle is standing in line at a protest to 'keep things peaceful' and then he just stands there while the cop next to him drags a peaceful protester to the ground and starts beating them, and two others begin pepper spraying and shooting bean bags at people's heads in clear violation of many laws from local to federal, and your uncle doesn't even speak up? What is he? Come on, laws were broken by his buddies and he's not confessing, and is in fact helping cover up the crimes, so if he's helping with crime, and knows about more crime, but doesn't come forward like a good law abiding citizen, what is he."

I was way more petty about it than I needed to be, but all cops means all cops and don't fucking try to lecture me on how your preferred cop is somehow special. A bad apple spoils the bunch, use the whole fucking proverb or don't bring up apples again, bitch.

Read the story and be pissed by how any news outlet phrases it in any way other than "this man was murdered in a pre-meditated manner after prolonged harassment from psychotic neighbors who previously murdered their dog"

Rorschach was right about one thing, people like this shouldn't get to go to jail. Rabid Animals get put down.

Fight fire with napalm.

Works every time.

Here's the one that convinced my dad that connecting everything is bad:

Your smart fridge knows what's inside and knows you just added a 12 pack of soda and donuts to the shopping list. They sell that data to a bunch of companies, including your insurance company. They know you have diabetes.

Your insurance rates just went up for the fifth time this year because your insurance company knows what you're eating.

And it's a good thing you don't drink beer or your car insurance would have gone up 'due to increased risk factors.' too bad you wanted to buy a new car this year.

Not only can you not afford it now, the price went up because they know you want a car. I'm sure they would make a payment deal with you though.

And every company will know all about the deal, the beer, the donuts, and all it took was sending money to whatever company had the information, and they were more than happy to sell it.

The more we allow companies to freely operate like this without regulation and without proper punishment for breaking the rules, we will continue sliding toward the hellscape of Ferenginar. For the non trekkies, it's a hyper-capitalist species of profit-driven assholes.

They wear their title proudly. Openly admit it in the streets.

And yet for some reason, are allowed to continue to operate freely.

Our country goes to war for less.

Edit: A friend of mine got this shoved in their mailbox today

Totally not domestic terrorists...