Imperial on a TV interview about ITAR: “You mean you haven’t discovered <algorithm allowing desktop computers to compute full-body supersonic flow with shocks from a grainy tabloid photo>? Here let me help you with that.”
raises QR code for linked paper to camera
ITAR officials begin pulling out their already thinning hair
I am a little torn here between conflicting thoughts.
I mean, on the one hand, I’m pretty sure part of being cleared to have classified information there is submitting yourself to a geas not to violate the Official Secrets Act or its regulatory implementation.
(Not so much because they expect people to pull out classified manuals for forum points, but because of the long and inglorious history of people being seduced, tricked, or tortured into giving up information, and rendering them neurologically incapable of so doing rather cuts through the whole tangled mess.
Also, of course, since you have to remove the geas in order to do it¹, it makes tracking down leaks really easy…)
On the other hand, while not totally transparent, I suspect the Imperial Military Service is more transparent than most military organizations about their equipment specifications for two reasons, one being maintaining at least the spirit of transparency by classifying only the things that really need to be classified, and the other being…
…well, you know that WH40K quote about camouflage, and the Space Marines using bright armor and heraldry because “Our principle is that what the enemy can see, he will soon learn to fear…"”?
There’s a similar principle behind “If they can understand how outclassed they are, maybe they won’t pick a fight with us”.
On the gripping hand, there’s also special security procedure BASILISK FIDELIS and its implications, and suddenly I am deeply amused by the thought of someone trying their hardest to post classified IMS files and instead posting a multi-megabyte text file containing only repeats of “Good boys don’t post restricted military information on the extranet.”
- The geas is sophisticated enough to recognize that there are occasionally exigent circumstances on which you might have to override its judgment. Unfortunately for those who might abuse it, this provision activates a non-overridable sub-geas to report what you just did to Information Control.
The companies most affected by ITAR and EAR, notably, are going to be the ones afflicted by executives crying into their beer when they discover that Artifice Arms, etal., don’t have to suffer under any equivalent.
The Empire, after all, loves it when people tie themselves inextricably to/up with their supply chain…
“Correction We are not currently permitted to just buy and sell countries due to treaties, constitutional amendments, laws or other standing rules and/or obligations that came into force after that transaction. A sale may still be possible however the amount spent squaring the sale with the affmentient treaties and etc will likely be almost as much if not more than the nominal sale price with no guarantee that the sale will go through until a not insignificant amount has already been spent.”
So here’s a thought:
When applying the traditional order of precedence for ceremonial and formal occasions, Imperial propriety would afford the President of the United States the dignities of an emperor. (Not a stellar emperor, obviously, but a planetary emperor, on the grounds of being a continental ruler. Governors of individual states are probably somewhere around “grand duke”.)
…of course, our current incumbent has no dignity with which to support the dignities.
So, to the question: what is the rule-based, rather than wealth-based, equivalent of nouveau riche?
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I could see some easterner think about selling some of the Federal lands:
From Gemini: The federal government manages approximately 28% of the land in the United States. The vast majority of this land is located west of the Mississippi River, where nearly half of the land area is federally managed.
The screaming would be amusing.
Now I am imagining something like:
War Thunder devs: “So if someone is capable of posting it, it’s not anything we need to worry about? You are wonderful people, can we buy you a drink?”
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Seeing some stories today about further racism-in-university-admissions scandals, and so, ahem:
According to the Curia’s ruling in Duke v. Dipshit (3126), such institutions as yours may be as spectacularly racist as they please, provided only that they do so flagrantly and blatantly, thus enabling the citizen-shareholder at large to know the precise slant of the playing field, and the appropriate degree of contempt with which to regard your actions. Good day to you, sir.
If you’re looking for the word to use, not sure.
My translation of “rules-version nouveau riche” would be “someone more concerned with demonstrating the power, not being the power.”
So, here’s another fun post-contact linguistics question:
What will we call imperialism then?
(“You can’t have that. That’s our word.” Besides, even if it wasn’t:
- The inevitable embarrassing political parties and interest groups that spring up themed around “Let’s try to be a little less like us and a little more like them” will want the word; and
- Their inevitable opponents will feel very silly trying to argue that Imperialism is imperialist.)
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In other really embarrassing post-contact organizations:
The Flatten the Earth Society.
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One thing you have to be careful about when Imperials move into your town…
You really need to have local law enforcement/fire marshal/etc, etc, etc go and talk with them about the reasons why you don’t set off homemade fireworks in your local municipality without a permit. And sometimes even with a permit.
Last year, we had one of our expats show…shall we say too much enthusiasm without enough sense? After the fires were put out and we got together enough of the body parts, he was even willing to pay for all the damages sustained, including a full-body rebuild of one idiot who clearly should have let the God of Evolution clearly remove them from the gene pool.
(Okay, he also put the money in to help some of our local vets with Imperial psych hardware because of their PTSD. But…)
The people in my head are deeply offended by the suggestion that they might kill (and/or maim (and/or incinerate)) anyone and/or anything that they didn’t intend to kill (and/or main (and/or incinerate)). That would be ridiculously incompetent, even if you people do insist on living in tarpaper shacks and dropping dead when a coronavirus looks at you funny.
The real problem is that y’all just don’t appreciate a four-hour drone-and-firework authentic historical recreation of the siege of Fort McHenry, complete with music and special effects that wouldn’t have been out of place at the Baryvekar Mechanikopera!
Some flag-flying patriots you are. Hmph.
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In things brought to me by random context that will prove less than hilarious and even somewhat unfair to many people:
All the universities and other institutions whose degrees and other qualifications no-one from the Empire will take seriously, because they graded on a curve.
(“We run a strict meritocracy here, soph. This data point doesn’t tell me that you’re smart. It just tells me that everyone else in your class was dumber than you.“)
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Just saw this meme today:
Submissions are welcome to explain Earth levels of copium and defining deviancy down to the Imperial visitor whose position, effectively, is that while they do in fact feel perfectly safe, having to lock up basic consumer goods in stores is about as prima facie an indicator that you can get of the large part of the local population defecting en masse from the basics of civilization, and it’s obviously time to declare martial law and occupy the place with extremely unsympathetic legionaries until some semblance of decency can be restored.
There is literally no common ground to be found between Team “That’s Just What City Life Is Like” and Team “Send Stormtroopers To Defend The Advil At All Costs”.
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The next question of course being why large swathes of the population have decided to defect from “the basics of civilization”, because generally speaking if large swathes of the population decide to defect, it’s worth examining why they feel they’re not getting a good ROI on the ‘cooperate’ choice.
To wit: If the largest supermarkets in the US are locking up baby products, ostensibly because of a fear of theft, is that because of a gross deviation from the basic concept of honesty from the general populace with a black market for baby powder, or is there something drastically wrong with the prices of baby powder and general systemic poverty?
“Send in the stormtroopers to defend baby powder” is only a viable solution for one of those causes.
On the other hand, if they see a sign on someone’s lawn saying “Veteran with PTSD, please be kind and go easy on the loud explodey fireworks” they’re going to be briefly very confused, and then quietly furious as to why the neighborhood is willing to invest in thousands of dollars’ worth of “patriotic” fireworks not not one cent into getting that poor soph the phychedesign help they need.
…general systemic poverty?
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That is, at best, the second step.
(If they were tasked to solve the problem rather than merely concluding that since the facts of the case exist, the civilization in question is, in official Exploratory Service technical terms, a festering shithole.)
Because you’re talking to Imperials.
To wit, people strongly acculturated to the Imperial metaculture which holds that a profound respect for the individual right to life, liberty, property, the obligation of contracts, the pursuit of eudaimonia, and reaping the bounty of life is literally the only thing that separates “peaceful, harmonious civilization” from “a bunch of angry monkeys flinging shit at each other in Hell”. Forever.
And as such have “Do not, not ever, do the thing, and if you ever think something has made you an exception to this rule, it hasn’t” metaphorically tattooed on the inside of their eyelids in letters of holy fire.
And thus and further, consider that while eliminating everyone who defaults on the Fundamental Contract is not a Fully General Solution, it is a Fully General Step Towards The Solution, on the grounds that all problems become more tractable when you remove everyone actively working to make the problem worse.
Which all Defaulters are.
Axiomatically.
Then you can start asking questions about the prices of OTC painkillers, although frankly, the notion that you are entitled to purchase anything at any price other than one the vendor freely offers or is willing to negotiate to is already enough to get you exiled from polite society on Eliéra. On Ólish, yeeted right off the planet¹. The ciseflish don’t play.
Other side-points would include a distinct cynicism rooted in the respect for individual agency and how it vitiates systemic explanations (“Being poor is often the result of misfortunate circumstances. Being scum, however, is a choice.”), and that they really, really don’t like what you’re implying about poor people.
(If the opportunity had arisen, I imagine anyone so ill-advised as to promulgate the “poverty causes crime” theory there without unimpeachable evidence of a causal link would have been sued into sociological oblivion by the first barrister to realize that the mother of all coadunate actions is just waiting for someone to come pick it up.)
- To get an impression of how ciseflish society reacts to the idea of price controls, imagine going to a nice, strait-laced part of Salt Lake City and holding a public meeting advocating for legally-mandatory universal prostitution. When imaginary you has scraped the tar and feathers off and healed the bruises, you’ll have figured it out.
Possibly relevant to understanding: this comment here -