The police have no legal duty to protect you. Quite the opposite in fact. Public duty doctrine - the idea that government owes duties to the public at large - has been interpreted by the US legal system as only applying to people of a protected class per the 14th amendment. They owe you no duties as a individual citizen, and they cannot be compelled up enforce the law on your behalf if they decline to do so. They also cannot be held accountable if their choice to refuse protection by law or enforcement of law results in harm to you.
The specific court cases are
Warren v District of Columbia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia - " The Court adopted the trial court's determination that no special relationship existed between the police and appellants, and therefore no specific legal duty existed between the police and the appellants."
DeShaney v Winnebago County - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County - "The court opinion, by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, held that the due process clause protects against state action only, and as it was Randy DeShaney who abused Joshua, a state actor (the Winnebago County Department of Social Services) was not responsible."
Castle Rock v Gonzales - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales - "The Court's majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia held that enforcement of the restraining order was not mandatory under Colorado law; were a mandate for enforcement to exist, it would not create an individual right to enforcement that could be considered a protected entitlement under the precedent of Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth; and even if there were a protected individual entitlement to enforcement of a restraining order, such entitlement would have no monetary value and hence would not count as property for the Due Process Clause."
So in cases of rape, beating to the point of brain damage, and murder, the police don't have to lift a finger if they so choose, and you can't do anything about it.
And this sets aside the issues of race of "for profit" actions in the American justice system.
]]>I'm re-reading "Neptune's Brood" and a scenario comes to mind. Branch 50 (and presumably branches 1-49) had to infiltrate those systems, essentially as a covert activity. They can't re-ignite the beacon and beam out and build their ships in system without giving away their location. They'd need to jump in and somehow cover the fact that "holy shit a ship just appeared out of nowhere, that's impossible". They also can't bribe people to assist them (at least at first) because any money would be denominated in Atlantean slow dollars, which don't exist (and if you had them they'd be worthless or reveal that Atlantis is still around) Now I'm guessing that as an in story way, that comes down to 1) the governments aren't monitoring the whole system for ship traffic 2) exploiting holes in the data system of a polity to get their registry/history/ids forged so that it appears they are legitimate 3) come in carrying something with physical value to establish funds and move to a 4) As a corollary explanation for 2 and 3, they had the records of how a criminal conspiracy had infiltrated various governments and institutions to screw them over, so they could use those same processes and practices to exfiltrate (eg know that manager A can be bribed with B to do C) 5) even with the variation between polities inter and intra systems, there is sufficient standardization and overlap that there aren't huge gaps (eg they speak the same language, best practices in computer science have been standardized, GAAP follows enough for accountants to work in different systems, etc) so they won't out themselves as "alien" and there are no language/culture/protocol barriers to overcome
Now someone mentioned Babylon 5 in another comment thread, so it got my mind thinking on the parallels here - Morden had to infiltrate multiple established governments. But in that scenario the destruction of his ship wasn't known, he already had political and economic connections to play as the expeditions organizer before he left on it. And more importantly B5 was based on the standard classic space opera setup. No realities of space travel intruding, panopticon, 3d printers, etc. Computers are next to nonexistant so having to interface your literally alien system with them isn't a problem. Bricks of bullion are valuable rather than being a horrible waste of mass to lug between the stars. You know the drill.
So let me posit the scenario to consider: How would the agents of an alien power infiltrate a more modern space opera setting (eg akin to the one in NB; we have a realistic world built on current trends in technology and are constrained by the realities of traveling/living in space) with the intent of gaining influence among the dominant class/organization to bring it under their hegemony/working for their interests.
If you are bothered about how will methane breathers pass for human, go ahead and take the scenario of multiple worlds like out or merchant princes or assume they grabbed a sleeper ship on a one way trip to the oort cloud or something for their agents, but the point is the infiltrating civilization has nothing to cross reference with what they are infiltrating.
The question is less about "science fiction possibilities" and more about "how do you infiltrate, manipulate, coerce, and subvert" with zero ground for context. Think "first contact situation" meets "intelligence operation". We have trouble infiltrating agents into organizations in Afghanistan and North Korea, now imagine if those groups were really as alien as the nuts like to hype it as. Then add in things like pervasive monitoring systems and that smuggling operations for leverage are kaput because 3d printers and pirate bay mean that cocaine or diamonds you brought in can be synthesized with a few hours of work.
thoughts?
]]>this needs to be a thing
]]>I wonder if Pete would be opening himself up to K syndrome if he started contextualizing Enochian with Aramaic like he wants to. He wouldn't be performing "magic" but he would be thinking about the aspects of it really hard, would that be enough to open the door to infection? Particularly as the stars come right?
]]>Then the follow up that he is the only one there whose children were still kids.
:(
That whole scene was absolutely brutal. It reminded me of reading the police report walkthroughs of the school shootings or workplace rampages that we have far to often here in America.
]]>It'd be like the situation with Blackwater in Iraq - a bunch of testosterone amped jackasses thinking they are better than they are actively making the situation worse by shitting the bed and walking away and leaving the government forces to be killed and clean up the mess.
]]>I'd have thought that kidnapping a co-worker and attempting to feed them to eldrich horrors so as to discredit another co-worker and advance to their position would get you shitcanned, even setting aside the angry assassin ghost apparently destroying her.
Is there a short story in that, or am I just confused as to what happened?
]]>But I decided that would be mean and I wanted to read it instead of trolling the internet.
Then I did read it and holy crap that's a body count of long term characters.
You really don't shy away from killing your darlings, do you?
]]>http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.abstract
"We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues."
The gibbering madness can spread through facebook
]]>So what subreddits would you say are usually worth following then? (though they are currently overrun with soccer fans)
I tend to avoid the place as it seems to be a hole for the worst of the ostensibly libertarian really authoritarian corporatist reactionaries who get their jollies from racism, sexism, and kiddie porn
Thanks
]]>For comparison that's on par with the transfer from blacks to whites in the northern part of America, albeit for a much shorter time. Similar processes too - redlining, manipulation of zoning, regional job targeting, rental mortgages etc.
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