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Since the story has already hit the HoF, I assume you lot are relatively aware of what went down with aristarchus and myself regarding his "control the narrative and push other discussion down the page with lots of top-level AC posts that nobody can tell are all by the same person" tactic and me modding the posts Spam for it.

Well, martyb/Bytram gave me a good chewing on and reversed the mods because that particular type of spam isn't covered in the moderator guidelines. And he's absolutely correct. I maintain that it definitely should be and something covering it may very well be added to the moderator guidelines soon but it was not there when I did the moderating.

We'd barely finished discussing it in a private, unlogged staff channel when Azuma Hazuki was out in the main channel assuming that I did the moderating and that I wouldn't be held accountable for it even though she got mod banned for misusing the Spam mod by myself earlier. She actually had something of a point mixed in all the angry. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. So I mod banned myself.

Feel free to have a good laugh at me and look for a story on the moderator guidelines in the next month or two.

One of the gifts that Jasmine gave to me was introducing me to The Arkells. Her parents got her tickets to see them live and I was forunate enough to be invited to go see them with her.

I had never really listened to them before meeting Jasmine and she was a big fan of them. Initially I thought they were only so-so. I went to the concert and they blew me away. I started listening to them at work, and I freaking love them!

They are currently on tour for their Rally Cry album, which can be listened to here: YouTube.

I think these guys deserve to be the next Tragically Hip. They are great representitives for Canada and I think they make great music. Just putting this out here because I think they are underrated and awesome.

My favourite song at the moment: Show Me Don't Tell Me.

Check them out! You might like them too.

I'm a builder. And, I'm a New Yorker. Often said, the greatest builder in New York. They call it New York, frankly it's not so new. When we build something there, something else has to come down. Otherwise known as demolition. So important, and it can be a lot of fun too. 1966, my father held a tremendous Demolition Party at Steeplechase Park. On Coney Island. He had it catered with a very classy spread, Champagne (I didn't drink!) and tons of sexy models wearing only Bikinis. We all got to throw bricks through the windows. And smash the horrible Funny Face. Magnificent time for a 19 year old guy.

1980, another tremendous Demolition. That time, by me. Bonwit Teller, dowdy old department store that was very detrimental to property values on 5th. Avenue. It dropped very quickly, such a pretty picture. And the whole city celebrated that one.

But, look what they did in Massachusetts. They had one Coal Power Plant. Known as Brayton Point. So beautiful -- but it had a lot going for it besides looks. It was their insurance policy. When the hurricanes came through -- and in Massachusetts they get a lot of them -- they had electric. Because Coal never stops, it keeps going and going. Unlike Wind. A hurricane comes through, the Wind Power totally stops. You think, "oh, hurricane is so much wind." But, it's too much so they have to do a total and complete shutdown. You wanted to watch TV. Sorry darling, the wind is blowing too hard.

And, so sad. They demolished the Cooling Towers of Brayton Point. Something that was only built in 2009. They built it just when Cheatin' Obama began his horrible, and costly War on Coal. The timing was not great. And in fact it was the absolute worst time to build that one. They thought it would last forever, it only lasted 10 years. Could have lasted much longer, the owners didn't want it too. Because they're putting in Wind. They call it Off Shore Wind Farm. People don't know this, these so-called Off Shore Wind Farms don't just destroy the Off Shore -- and the property values of our Coastal properties. They don't just kill all your beautiful birds and spread horrible Cancer everywhere. They come on shore too. With so much wires, so much Digital & Machinery. Takes up a lot of space and they haven't worked out, how can they put all that out in the ocean. Because turning Wind into something that can go out over our Energy Grid is not easy. Many big machines & Digital. So ugly, so dangerous and that's what they want to put in.

And some very foolish people held a Demolition Party. They're laughing, they're getting drunk. Possibly they have models in Bikinis, I don't know. I know I'm very sad about it. My wife Melanie is very sad about it. And hopefully my son, who is 13, doesn't hear about this one. Because it's going to be a hard one to explain. And, I'm having trouble understanding it myself. Where was Governor Baker when they shut down the biggest, and ABSOLUTE CLEANEST Coal Plant in New England? They destroyed the biggest engine for their Economy, for Jobs and everything else. Big disappointment!!!! foxnews.com/us/massachusetts-power-plant-cooling-towers-demolition

The opioid is a tremendous emergency, what's going on there. National emergency on drugs. So many "people" dieing. And, so many young & beautiful lives -- and others -- totally devastated.

We’re doing everything to empower ourselves so that we can keep this poison out of communities and away from our children. We will not let up, we will not give in and we will never ever give up on saving American lives. We will end this terrible menace. We will smash the grip of addiction.

Some countries have a very, very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty. And by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do. So we're going to have to be very strong on penalties. Hopefully we can do some litigation against the opioid companies.

What the doctors can do. You know, opioid is prescriptions, and it's doctors and it's pharmaceutical companies, and they’re getting a little nervous now because we’re coming after them, and what they were doing is just terrible.

Now, Therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim April 27, 2019 as National Proscription Drug Take Back Day. Do your part today by participating at over 4,000 locations across the Country! DEATakeBack.com

I'll finish by summarizing what really angers me about this "social contract". First, as I mentioned, it's not really a contract nor is it usually invoked as such, but rather to excuse coercion. Any real contract would have provisions for a) honoring promises made in good faith and rejecting those made in bad faith, b) protecting the future of society, particularly of future generations, and c) apply equally to all, not just marginalized protesters who have good reason to dislike what's going on.

Second, it's commonly invoked to excuse tax collection for venal or short-sighted reasons. Sure, it's nice that older generations voted themselves a hefty pension and health services at the expense of younger generations (a near universal phenomenon in the developed world). But that dishonesty should be rewarded with a severe cutback to the benefits, not disruption of young peoples' lives and the decay of the society. Similarly, we're seeing most countries shifting to debt loads that are at least as large as their GDP (a crude measure of the size of the economy), again a glaring sign that the electorate isn't thinking about the future.

Third, it's telling that most advocates of the social contract can only point to simple things like roads or police as benefits of social contracts while the actual expenditures cover far more. If you can only point to 5-10% of government expenditure as a benefit (usually with a horrid inefficiency in benefit for the cost), then that's a strong sign to me that the government in question should be radically shrunk, perhaps as part of said social contract. Yet somehow the social contract is that we should pay our taxes, not that we should fight hard to reduce the government burden on our lives.

I think it's telling that social contract advocates can easily state what I should give to the contract, but have a hard time coming up with concrete examples of what I get from the contract. It's telling for example, that the link above was to a post rationalizing why there was some sort of "bargain" in place to presumably prevent the sort of parent/child problems mentioned in the story (and prevent pension fund looting as well).

In summary, I refuse to call this a contract, because it's not on so many different levels. Instead it is your social expectations which need not be either reasonable or honored.

Now, let's consider the matter of the "Rule of Law". A particularly poetic bit comes from end of some boilerplate in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

As an important aside, this document makes a huge appeal to the "social compact" in its preamble. The difference is that they wrote it down which is very different from most such appeals to the social contract as an intangible thing.

The bolded text above illustrates the fundamental dichotomy that the lawmakers of the time were concerned with. In rule of law, the law is written down and communicated via an established process with alterations possible in a consistent way. Just as important, everyone is beholden to the law equally. In rule of man, well, some dude decides what the law will be that day. Maybe they'll do so with great foresight and gravitas, but history is chock full of those who didn't.

Anyway, let's briefly consider the virtues and drawbacks of rule of law. The obvious virtue is that since the law is written down, it's not hard to figure out what's allowed or not. You don't have to worry about breaking laws that someone invented on the spot. It's a saner, more stable, freer society as a result.

The drawbacks? The primary one is that law need not be just or fair. There's plenty of stuff when applied to everyone benefits some groups inordinately.

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread. -- Anatole France

Technically, rule of law, but someone gets screwed.

Another problem is once you can write down rules, you can write down lots and lots and lots of rules. The developed world is an evolving example of how this can lead to a giant morass. Nor is there any foreseeable end to rule writing particularly given how such rules can interact with each other in unpleasant negative synergy, leading to rules to fix rules to fix rules.

That brings us to the conversation about rule of law that I linked above. I was accused of equating "legal with moral" even though the complaint was about rule of law. The subsequent discussion devolved to claiming that rule of law is amoral because the laws that comprise it are amoral. Somehow the immorality of arbitrary tyranny via rule of man was ignored.

This I find is a sadly common occurrence. People who laud the intangible social contract often heap scorn onto its written instantiation as rule of law. But rules that are concrete are vastly superior to vague and unspecified rules that aren't - particularly when the harm from and penalties for violating the [intangible] rules can be capricious or even nonexistent, often depending on the mood of the person that day. Such grotesque and unfair inconsistency should be avoided.

Very strong, very smart move by King Salman of Saudi. Who gave the Thumbs Up to "execute" 37 Radical Islamic( or Islamist ) Terrorists. Alleged Terrorists. It's known as Death Penalty, folks. We need to bring that one back. Saudi Arabia, they have very few problems with crime. Because they have Death Penalty. I'm working very hard to bring it back for the Federal. But, we need it in our States too. California, Nutty Governor Newsom canceled all the Death Penalties. And crime there has gone totally and completely out of control. It was already very high, now it's OFF THE CHARTS. Time for a Total Recall of that guy!!!! foxnews.com/world/saudi-arabia-executes-people-terrorism-allegations

Year Zero (our year 2022, the year the United States is 'reborn') was (and will be?)(is?) a dystopian vision of a future in which your government worked against you.

...or... a game and technology and music...

...or a technological Easter Egg hunt...

...or ... a concept album that i would call brilliant!

September 2006, Trent Reznor (THE guy of NIN unless touring) decided to shake things up a bit. He decided that music and marketing would work brilliantly together if worked in a fun, interesting and puzzling way (not marketing, but an "artistic concept"): what he got was a thriller and marketing he couldn't have expected.

He hired a company called 42 Entertainment to help promote his coming album by giving out clues to a larger puzzle.
The first piece of the puzzle were tour t-shirts (the With Teeth tour) with highlighted letters that spelled out "I am trying to believe".
"This phrase was registered as a website URL, and soon several related websites were also discovered in the IP range, all describing a dystopian vision of the fictional "Year 0"."
---https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(album)

USB keys were left in bathroom stalls at tour venues. Clues left on web-sites, clues leading to web-sites, phone numbers, email addresses, videos and mp3's.
Phone a number found from one of the clues and you are left with a message telling you "By calling this number, you and your family are implicitly pleading guilty to the consumption of anti-American media and have been flagged as potential militants."
Another clue told fans to not drink the water because the government had drugged it, but other clues led to a phone number that when called, a message said simply "I am drinking the water, so should you".

Leaked songs gave clues: The Great Destroyer, when played in mono, gave clues saying "Red Horse Vector". Was there a website for it? You betcha!

Finally at the release of the Year Zero album, fans discovered that the black CD cover when warmed, exposed a string of binary numbers that when translated into ASCII read "exterminal.net"
###
0110 010 1011 110
00011 101 00011
00101 0111001 00110110
1011 010 010
1101110011000
010 11 011 0
0 0 01 0 1 1 1 00 110
1 1100 1100 1 01 01
11 0 1
0 0
###

The Year Zero story takes place in the United States in the year 2022; or "Year 0" according to the American government, being the year that America was reborn. The United States has suffered several major terrorist attacks, and in response the government has seized absolute control on the country and reverted to a Christian fundamentalist theocracy. The government maintains control of the populace through institutions such as the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano, as well as increased surveillance and the secret drugging of tap water with a mild sedative. In response to the increasing oppression of the government, several corporate, government, and subversive websites were transported back in time to the present by a group of scientists working clandestinely against the authoritarian government. The websites-from-the-future were sent to the year 2007 to warn the American people of the impending dystopian future and to prevent it from ever forming in the first place

It's an interesting 'total package' concept, and there's 2 more years to go: but has this dystopian vision already arrived?