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.

Could be a group chat but we all know they’re a twat

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

Yeah the meme is just trying to be superior edgy. We live in an old duplex and no, my landlord won’t let me run networking through the walls and ceiling. I tried cabled network over electricity sockets and it’s worse than a good wireless connection.

If a subscription makes sense anywhere it is for something like YouTube, totally agreed. According to YouTube stats 4.3 Petabytes of new data get uploaded every single day to the platform. That’s absolutely mindboggling.

This kind of pisses me off whenever people complain about YouTube pushing ads or charging money. It’s absolutely insane how much storage and bandwidth the amount of video hosted and uploaded every second requires. How could it possibly free?!

Bundled with YouTube Music it’s even extremely good value.
Spotify premium costs USD15.36 in my country.
YouTube premium, including YouTube music USD19.58.
That’s USD4.23 for no ads where I watch the most videos. Absolute no brainer in my opinion.

They just don’t want to choose. They want the TV on to fill the silence, not to watch a show. Maybe to watch the “news”.
Sometimes I miss the days of flow TV, you just turn it on and that’s it. No browsing the catalogue you just get whatever is on.

How this company could fumble their lead is truly impressive

That’s not how percentages work

That’s what peak efficiency looks like haters.

The price ain’t the wtf part

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

Yeah I’m affected but will probably keep my subscription. Spotify has a shitty track record as well and the price difference is still worth it to enjoy ad free YouTube on the TV. I feel like it’s still a good value to be honest. But it also does suck to get squeezed.

The best thing is these companies will say it’s not violation of your privacy because they sell the data without a direct link to your name or address. But guess what? They bundle it with all kinds of other identifiers like age, sex, weight, approximate location, whatever else you give them. The insurance company then takes that and modifies the category that is specifically this age bracket, approximate location, weight, age, beer and donuts in the fridge. And surprise! You fit all these “anonymous” identifiers.
But no harm done, your identity is safe 👍

Your last statement stands out to me. Have you considered that it’s the way you interact with whoever you’re interested in? Rather than your looks? Are you nervous, self-conscious, whatever? I’m asking because you keep insisting that your interested in individuals out of your league. That thought would make me nervous. And on the flip side self-consciousness or awkwardness or nervousness or whatever is not very attractive. Socially it’s more acceptable to rejected someone based on looks though.