Esoteric Merit

I'm always of two minds about comments like this. On the one hand, I appreciate the the vote of confidence that I'm succeeding in making the text approachable. On the other hand, I know that I'm an average technical writer at best, so it feels kind of like I'm benefiting from other people's misfortune on account of the fact that many major tabletop RPG publishers have seemingly never even heard of technical writing!

This month people have been tearing Flock cameras off their poles. Perched above public streets, they are birdlike things, weatherproof, and they photograph every passing car and file it in a searchable national database. Somebody cut two of them in half at Washington Avenue and Westcott in Houston, spray-painted the wreckage, and left an American flag on one of them. Police were notified on the morning of the Fourth of July. Somebody severed a camera in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. The police department posted the photograph itself and collected more than twenty thousand comments. “Not all heroes wear capes.” “Give them a medal.” Here is what the cameras do when nobody cuts them down. Cops use them to hunt immigrants and to follow ICE targets across state lines and to find women who ended pregnancies in states where that is a crime and to watch exes and to watch women they want, without a warrant and without a judge. A cop types a reason in a box and the box does not check. A man in Burleson, Texas, told deputies his girlfriend had taken abortion pills. He showed them the photographs, the FedEx envelope, the instructions. Deputies opened a death investigation into a non-viable fetus, and the district attorney told them the state could not charge her, and they searched anyway: 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks, a month of everywhere she had been. The reason they typed was had an abortion, search for female. The search reached Illinois and Washington, where what she did was legal. They found her in Dallas. She came into the sheriff’s office a week later, and they thought she had come to explain the fetus, and she had come to report that the man who called them had put a gun to her head. A sheriff in Jerome County, Idaho ran his wife’s plate more than seven hundred times in three months. He typed the same reason every time. Test. The attorney general found nothing to charge him with. He retired in April. The Institute for Justice counts at least twenty-two officers who used the system to track people they were romantically interested in, and calls that almost certainly an undercount. And the cameras keep falling.

• they've started detaining students liberally. if you're going to the protest or coming from it they're very likely to detain you (the police has spread it check points all across central delhi). you'll be denied entry by auto or even walk, they'll either try to scare you away or detain you. if you're coming from other state especially by railway you'll be asked what are you here for & be asked to prove it.

• the government has blocked 17 metro stations surrounding jantar mantar. for some reason they're also covering up janpath & other nearby metro stations. all entrances to jantar mantar have been closed off & a complete internet shutdown near jantar mantar.

• they are denying lawyers contact with their clients. they've also been denied entry in police station to speak to their clients, that inspector has apologized qa of now & an internal investigation for his behaviour is said to have started.

• they're also making sure that the protesters have no access to food, water or electricity. last night electricity supply to janpath was cut off ++ the police are now stopping delivery men at check points & seizing food ordered by supporters from all across the country (don't worry they have enough food).

• cafes & shops in connaught place have been given a legal notice to shut down by 6 (since many of them were providing free water & washroom services to protesters). even nearby hotels have denied room booking to doctors.

• many creators have been offered money to speak against the protest & start a hate campaign.

• we are under complete state surveillance. the police is using meta ai glasses to record the protesters, and is later running a facial recognition check on them.

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.