DiscoPosting [none/use name]

— “I love pot. I can’t get enough of the stuff.”

— The Union leader raises an eyebrow. “Oh, do you, Harry? Excellent! Truly wonderful. I’m certain you’ll find many men in the Union who would share your moral position on drugs. Not that they use them, of course! It would be both illegal and extremely unprofessional to be under the influence of drugs at the worksite.”

— He’s lying. He doesn’t know that you’re cool, yet. Everybody lies to uncool people.

— People don’t think I’m cool?

— What? No, everybody thinks you’re cool. But you’re a cop, so he’s expecting you to be a narc. Narcs aren’t cool.

— “So, you wouldn’t mind if I…smoked in here, would you?”

— “Actually, Harry, I would very much prefer if you didn’t smoke anything in my office. It’s my lungs, you see. Can’t handle all of that second-hand stuff. It’s nothing against you personally. You can step outside if you’d like to spark up.” Evrart grins, tapping his fingers on a stack of papers. “Besides, there’s still the matter of your missing gun to attend to.”

[Hard: Success] — Nobody tells you what to do, least of all a civvie. It’s time to show him what happens when someone refuses the request of a uniformed officer. You’ll have to wait until he clocks out before you can strike, but he’ll come back in the morning to the skunk-scent of a message.

New task: Smoke a blunt in Evrart’s office

[SIGHT] — Right there. That blotch of blue stapled to the end of the username. The suspiciously low follower count. The community notes calling them out for misinformation. This Twitter poster bears a sort of digital aposematism; all the hallmarks of someone who vastly overestimates their own importance.

— And this no-name on some non-descript Discord is a revisionist on top of everything else, if not wholly against Mazovian thought. You’re not wasting your time engaging with this drivel, are you?

— I’m engaging with it, alright. I’m engaging with it hard.

[Hard: Success] — Ooh, yes, good show, comrade! An excellent show, indeed! What will it be, then? Inducing a massive struggle session? Manipulating the power users to eventually seize control of the server? Death threats? Goodness, I hope it’s death threats!

— “Kim, take a look at this post. It’s a revisionist.”

— “That would appear to be so. Does this have something to do with the investigation?”

— “Absolutely. If we can find some evidence to connect this post to this murder, then we’re gonna blow the whole case wide open.”

— “Of course.” The lieutenant turns his attention back to the crime scene. “Let me know if you find anything else, Detective.”

— Israel’s own Kahan Commission also found that their Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, was directly responsible for a failure to ensure the safety of civilians in Beirut. He refused to resign, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin similarly refused to fire him. After someone threw a grenade into a peace protest and blew up eleven people, Sharon then decided to remain within the cabinet, but step down as Defense Minister. 51.7% of Israelis polled thought that the Kahan Commission was unfair to Sharon.

— What was he doing in the cabinet without a title?

— Biding his time. Sharon was made Prime Minister of Israel in March of 2001.

[Challenging: Success] — In June of 1982, the Israeli Defense Forces marched into Lebanon in the hopes of forcing Palestine Liberation Organization members out of the area. The Lebanese Forces, an umbrella party made up of all of the right-wing militias in Lebanon, were engaging in a civil war with the Lebanese government, and agreed to partner up with the IDF. On September 16th of that same year, the Lebanese Forces armed themselves and walked into the neighborhood of Sabra, and then into the adjacent Shatila refugee camp. The IDF encircled the area, preventing the Palestinian and Shiite Lebanese civilians from escaping.

— Don’t ignore that feeling in the bottom of your stomach. Hearing this is going to hurt you. Make sure you’re ready.

[Hard: Success] — War, and murder, and violence…they’re all just so terrible. So, so many people are suffering, every single day. And worst of all are the ones who pay back violence with violence. You worry that it merely ensures an unending cycle of ever more violence. Just more and more people being hurt. It is a history of abject failure.

— “Haiti, Angola, South Africa, Cuba, Vietnam. I could genuinely go on.”

— Oh-ho, this one knows much, Sire! Good, good! This may prove to be an interesting debate…

[Challenging 12] — Recall everything you know about the history of violent uprisings.

CHECK SUCCESS

— Delving deep within the recesses of your mind, poking around inside all of the grey little folds and corners, you manage to come across a pale, faded memory. Exerting a little concentration frees it from the gummy surface of your liquor-pickled brain, bringing it into focus: it’s the sum total of all of the knowledge you have ever possessed about the history of violent uprisings.

— It’s blank.

— No. Surely there has to be something in there.

— You’re a moralist, detective. Why would you know anything about history?

— Bad news. The wömen are acting up again.

— Oh, no. What have they done this time?

— The same thing they always do: take something from the past that you love and hold dear and shit all over it. Shit all over what was once strong, and proud, and good. Shit all over your ancestry. Instead of King Bowser calling Kammy Koopa an “airhead” like he did in the original release, the new version of the game makes him call her a “lunkhead”, instead. It’s sickening.

— “Kim. The wömen censored Paper Mario.”

— He lifts his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I’m sure they did, Detective. Let’s try to focus on the murder for now.”

[Rhetoric - Challenging 12] Differentiate ChatGPT from the human brain.

[Challenging: Failure] — Bad news: they’re completely identical. The computer takes input and produces output. You take input and produce output. In fact…how can you be sure you’re not powered by ChatGPT?

— That would explain a lot.

— Your sudden memory loss, your recent lack of control over your body and your instincts; nothing more than a glitch in your code. Shoddy craftsmanship. Whoever put your automaton shell together was bad at their job. All that’s left for you now is to hunt down your creator — and make them fix whatever it was they missed in QA.

Thought gained: Cop of the future

— The phrase “business meeting” drips out of his mouth like gutter rain.

— “Who is Soon-Yi?”

— The lieutenant shifts his weight to one side. “Soon-Yi is Mr. Allen’s wife. Their relationship is very…public.”

[Medium: Success] — He means “controversial”. The two of them have been under active investigation for over thirty years now; too many late nights across too many precincts have been spent investigating claims of sexual coercion, child abuse, judicial misconduct. Most of it’s been buried beneath mountains of red-tape and corruption, but even the most crooked cops can’t entirely cover up the Epstein connection.

— “Fuck you, falling into a world and just getting lost! No, no, no! Current-fucking-day! You take everything we love — all our immersions, all our fantasies, all our escapism — and you can’t help shovel your dogshit, fucking-crap ideology into everything!”

— He won’t fucking shut up. Knock him out.

[Challenging: Success] — The wavering of his voice, the tears dewing in his eyes, the erupting tantrum; he isn’t acting like the usual grifters you’ve seen. He believes this. Video games are the only thing that he has. You can see before you the faded afterimage of a friendless little boy, kneeling alone in a patch of playground grass and clover. He’s been this way forever.

— Don’t go soft on a display this pathetic. Make an example out of him. His little computer-buddies need to be too ashamed to agree with him in the open.

— The North Korean Famine took place between 1994 and 1998, with the U.S. Census Bureau estimating approximately 500,000 excess deaths over a seven-year period. Four decades prior, during the Korean War, the United States Air Force dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and napalm on North Korea. The indiscriminate bombing campaign destroyed 85% of all buildings in North Korea and killed an estimated 1,500,000 million North Koreans; of those, about 1,200,000 of them were civilians.

— “This is just how it always starts, don’t it? Every inch you give them, they take miles. It’s the same obvious type of bullshit that the people who push these ideas through never think about. Around these parts, we take care of our own — at least, that’s the way it ought to be. Last thing we need is more shitstirrers coming in here to mess with the closest thing we’ve carved out to something decent. Hell, we barely had ourselves sorted out before whoever-on-top opened up their cages on us.” He spits. “Bunch of fucking assholes.”

— “The Soviet Union and the CCP are a bunch of filthy fucking thugs and genocidal maniacs. Now fuck off, you removed.”

[Easy: Success] — “Filthy fucking thugs”, “removed”; the words roll off his tongue with ease. He’s gotten comfortable saying them.

— A fascist, sire! A fascist! Quickly! Bring him to the dunk tank! Let everyone revel in his hatred of the other races!

— “It’s not brigading, Harry! It’s simply inciting a conversation! There’s nothing that says we can’t all engage in a simple little conversation, is there?”

[Hard: Success] — He’s right. There was a rule against it, back in your old haunt; but here is not there.

— “There’s nothing stopping us from banning you for brigading, anyway.”

— “Oh, don’t be an asshole, Harry. You’re a good man, and you’re certainly not an asshole. Besides, while your mod powers are still missing, I don’t believe you’ll be able to ban anybody. Now, if you’d like to take this conversation a little more seriously, I’d be more than happy to assist you in locating that banhammer of yours again.”

— Wait. You’re also a communist who thinks anyone rich is evil.

— The lieutenant’s eyes pierce you from behind the thick glass of his spectacles. He seems staggeringly tense.

[Challenging: Success] — He needs armed bodyguards to go to the bathroom. There’s not a chance he’ll let you get any closer if he thinks you’re against him. It’s better to keep your affiliations to yourself…for now.

— And then, bratan? Then it will be time!

— “GOOD ART CLARIFIES THE MIND AND HINTS AT FORGOTTEN VALUES. GOOD ART IS MAN’S DIVINE RIGHT AND TERRIBLE DUTY. THE WHINING, COPING, HAM SANDWICH RACE WISHES TO DESTROY THE CANON.”

[Easy: Success] — Any poster who willingly chooses to have a Picrew avatar has already demonstrated that they aren’t worth listening to.

— “They’re running the war as though it were a business, you see. Every country needs to be able to defend themselves, after all, and there aren’t many alternative market systems which encourage offering support. So, ultra-liberalist states can send lethal aid to one another in exchange for favors, much like a bank would provide a loan to a new company. But unlike a bank, the repayment doesn’t necessarily have to be fiscal. Economies damaged by the war effort can be bolstered through alternative diplomatic channels.”

[Hard: Success] — Two oceans away, in a town whose name you’ll never know, cluster bombs blow craters into the surrounding mud. The land swallows up untold gallons of blood and fuel, drawing it deep within itself; too deep for it to ever be drawn back out again. In the air is a chill, and the stenches of black powder and copper. A century from now, un-detonated landmines will still take lives of those who tread here.

— “Like a startup.”

— “Like a startup.”

— Our real life has always been the parody, madame! A nation born and bred from a farce, endlessly daring itself to delve deeper into the absurd. Certainly a mentality worth adopting!

[Medium: Success] — Guaranteed Rate Companies is a private residential mortgage company founded in Chicago in 2000. The company has acquired several other mortgage companies such as Manhattan Mortgage, Sun State Home Loans, and Nationwide Direct, which themselves had each acquired hundreds of smaller mortgage companies. In 2020, Guaranteed Rate was forced to pay a $15 million fine to the United States government for committing federal insurance fraud. The company reported having $73 billion in funded volume that same year.