I feel like people who lived in corrupt countries have a lot to teach Americans, who now live in an openly corrupt one... How to grease wheels, how to make powerful friends for one's own advantage.
(Sure maybe the "elite" were already obviously openly corrupt, but now that it's reached to the lower levels of society...).
America is not a corrupt country in the sense that places overseas are. You will go to jail for trying to openly bribe the police here and political hysterics aside rule of law generally prevails.
What has happened is that America has slipped from being a high trust society to a medium trust one.
> from being a high trust society to a medium trust one
I think both falsehoods here are things many people want to believe because not being just like all those other places “overseas” is important to the cultural identity.
Not really. The difference is police in poorer countries can be bribed with the amount of cash you can keep in a wallet. In the US, it requires a large public donation to a political campaign or "charity". Bribes very much exist, and if you think you can't do it, that just means you're not rich enough. In poor countries too, the ones getting arrested are the ones who can't afford the bribes.
If you believe that guy to be Christian, you might also believe a lot of other things. His answer to what he thinks about the bible and what his favourite quote is, was: "I don't want to go into the details."
The vast majority of American Christians, particularly Evangelicals, believe he's a Christian and overwhelmingly support him on that basis. Whether he is or not is irrelevant - he's clearly the man that American Christians want.
A lot of people calling themself Christian, can be in sects and I think that is the case in the USA. This has been the case a lot during history. Remarkably, during the big old concils determining the true faith, an overwhelming majority has been believing in the believes clarified as being wrong. Majority is simply not a concept to determine truth, and Christianity doesn't take it to be this way.
> he's clearly the man that American Christians want.
Maybe he is, maybe he is not. What people actually want, what they tell you they want and what the person wants they vote for can be three completely different things.
If your definition of "Christians" doesn't include hypocrites then there have never been Christians, and if it excludes millions of people who profess the faith then it isn't useful.
You seem to be implying that Trump supporters aren't "really" Christians, or even if they are maybe they didn't really vote for him? I don't know where the ambiguity you're trying to imply here actually exists in the real world.
Christians voted for him, said they voted for him, said they believed he was sent by God, and have vociferously and steadfastly supported him over three election cycles. Despite his infidelity, and his vice, and his corruption, and his pride, and his warmongering, and his sexual abuse and everything else about him.
At some point you have to open your eyes to what Christianity in America actually is.
The statement that there isn't really a true Christian besides Christ himself isn't really new and I think accepted by most. :-)
> You seem to be implying that Trump supporters aren't "really" Christians
No, I didn't meant that, I was initially only talking about Trump. I think it necessary for them to think of themself as Christian, and they need to at least try to act as that to some reasonable level. My issue was that to me it seams like Trump doesn't even try. His ramblings violate charity in fundamental ways and he doesn't try to cover that.
> Christians voted for him
Fine.
> said they voted for him
Did they vote for a story he told them, or did they vote for what he actually does. This doesn't absolve them of their responsibility, they still voted for a liar in this case, but it does matter how much they will object and how likely they are to vote differently.
> they believed he was sent by God
That violates teachings of Christianity in a fundamental way. If it didn't, every Moslem would be called a Christian. There is no revelation after Jesus Christ.
> what Christianity in America actually is.
I think there aren't only Evangelicals in America, there is some important guy coming from there, I think he called himself after a lion or something.
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> he's clearly the man that American Christians want.
You should read up on what happened when the "German Christians" got what they "wanted".
I remember gift cards originally being novel in the early 2000’s because they could be swiped like a credit card for purchases, unlike gift certificates, which they replaced.
If you had a girlfriend in the late 80s, I don’t see how police could have been bribed with gift cards as long as you can remember.
I should also add that I myself have never heard of it being common to bribe SF cops with gift cards, in any decade.
I do believe that you are writing the truth, but it is extremely unbelievable to me. To be honest, I've never been pulled over for traffic violations, but bribing officers with gift cards being "common" sounds like it could lead to some really bad place. It's a good thing it hasn't yet. Bribes have many drawbacks compared to traffic tickets.
I should have been clearer. The way the bribes work is you have a friend who works on the force find out what the ticketing officer likes. Then you give the GC to the friend who gives it to the ticketing officer. People who grew up in the city invariably know at least one or two people on the force.
I like the use of "go dark" when discussing police, considering so many American police agencies now use black patrol cars with black lettering on them so they can't be seen.
Meanwhile, in the UK, police cars are tarted up with fluorescent geometric patterns to make them as visible as possible.
It certainly shows a contrast in intent. One is "Here I am, come to me for help!" and the other is "I'm the secret police, show me your papers while I switch off my body camera."
Yeah this is a silly cultural thing. I participate in a non-law enforcement, completely volunteer emergency response organization, and other members will buy black tactical vests that "look cool" with their name and the organization on them. Meanwhile... I wear the... brightest most neon thing I possibly can because when I am in the middle of a four lane road directing traffic, I want to be brighter than the sun because I don't want to get hit.
From volunteers up to the ICE gestapo, people watch too much TV where the cops get to shoot things up and look awesome doing it, and that's often what they want to be.
Most countries have both marked and unmarked police cars.
Now, there are counties / cities in the USA where the requirement on contract between text color and body color aren't as clear, and then are abused by the police to have even their marked vehicles blend in more.
If the police were intentionally there to help then they wouldn't be abusing this loophole, or the people making the rules would correct it. The fact that they don't is the tell.
"To Protect and to serve" is just the LAPD motto (other departments decided it made them sound good so they copied it). US Courts have generally disagreed that police inherently have any such duties.
We’re Sorry!
This website is unavailable in your location.
Error 451
It appears you are attempting to access this website from a country outside of the United States, therefore access cannot be granted at this time.
I spent a couple years in Europe and found that most local news websites in the US blocked access entirely. My guess was that they all share IT resources / policies of the conglomerate news corp, who decided it would be cheaper to simply ignore traffic from GDRP countries.
I have the same experience. I assumed it was a mix of (as you say) not wanting to deal with EU rules, but also not wanting to deal with licensing concerns (eg "do I have the right to show this media in this country").
Part of why I assumed the latter is that sports, in particular, had a high occurrence of "this content isn't available where you are" blocks.
There are a thousand and one legal reasons one may wish to block a region, including Europe. From anti-gay speech laws in Hungary, through the VAT/tax obligations that kick in at one cent, to all sorts of watershed rules and disclaimers and alien and unjust laws (such as lese majeste laws, or absurd British 'online safety' laws).
Every day I see Europeans on here sharing tips how to de-cloud and de-America, bemoaning the open Internet, yearning for Balkanisation. Cool. Well, this site does it for you. You're welcome! Enjoy!
While it may not look flattering, it is absolutely a correct usage of the 451 status code. From the standard itself[1]:
This status code can be used to provide transparency in circumstances
where issues of law or public policy affect server operations. This
transparency may be beneficial both to these operators and to end
users.
...
This status code indicates that the server is denying access to the
resource as a consequence of a legal demand.
You could get pedantic over whether or not this counts as a legal demand, but the example makes it relatively clear that "legal demand" here is fairly broad.
GDPR law does indeed make it illegal to serve certain web pages to EU visitors. If the operators are not willing to make amendments to comply with the law, then responding with HTTP 451 is the most correct thing to do. It doesn't mean the law is inherently bad, but it does mean that serving the request would be illegal, because that is how the law is written.
If this feels "completely inappropriate", then maybe it's because the modern web platform is completely ass-backwards in the first place. One must wonder why we're continuing to tolerate giving effectively static web pages so many privileges on our computers passively. I think browsers should flat-out start removing said privileges from websites that abuse them.
It is illegal only if the website uses pervasive user tracking. Its like with cookie banners - they are not necessary if the site is not deploying the surveillance on the users.
Basically what you are saying is it should be illegal to load that page unless they change it. And it is illegal. They have no interest in changing the page. Therefore, they are preventing the page from loading as a result of legal reasons, not because there is any technical issue with loading the page.
I don't know how to break this to you, but that is the correct status code. They can be forgiven that they didn't make a second status code for "Page Can't Be Loaded Because It's Illegal But Actually It Should Be In Many People's Opinions".
I'm not in favor of pervasive internet tracking, but that doesn't change the reality: it is illegal for them to serve you that page. Putting it that way does make it sound bad, but what do you want to do, invent new words to make it seem better? It's what it is.
It still means the code is correct. It just means that there isn't some technical problem but intentional behavior, and there is some governmental policy at the root of it, rather than say a billing/account issue etc.
Saying "they could just not collect data" is like saying "they could just not show porn" or talk about Winnie the Pooh or whatever.
But you do need a GDPR specialized attorney to review all of what your doing even if you don't use any cookies.
Why? Even logging an IP address in a request log is creating records controlled by GDPR.
When TV news in the US is broke and only gets along because large companies buy up stations to control the news, its hard to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on complying with laws from another continent.
That sounds like a great example of why you need a GDPR specialized attorney to review everything you do then…or just return status code 451 and call it a day.
ma resident here. there's massive corruption within the ma state police. the karen read trial uncovered a fair amount but i suspect we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. stories like this sadly don't surprise me.
I feel like people who lived in corrupt countries have a lot to teach Americans, who now live in an openly corrupt one... How to grease wheels, how to make powerful friends for one's own advantage.
(Sure maybe the "elite" were already obviously openly corrupt, but now that it's reached to the lower levels of society...).
America is not a corrupt country in the sense that places overseas are. You will go to jail for trying to openly bribe the police here and political hysterics aside rule of law generally prevails.
What has happened is that America has slipped from being a high trust society to a medium trust one.
> from being a high trust society to a medium trust one
I think both falsehoods here are things many people want to believe because not being just like all those other places “overseas” is important to the cultural identity.
> rule of law generally prevails
Not going to agree or disagree, but I just want to make sure you're claiming that while being fully aware of, say, the following:
https://www.insidernj.com/the-abcs-of-pba-cards/
> You will go to jail for trying to openly bribe the police here
I am absolutely not convinced of this. I truly believe a significant fraction of US police would, and perhaps do, accept bribes.
the US AG is pretty openly accepting bribes if you hadn’t noticed
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It does vary. Rural sheriff departments being one example.
Roadside Civil Asset Forfeiture is still a thing...
Urban city police departments being another example.
Suburban police departments are another example
Not really. The difference is police in poorer countries can be bribed with the amount of cash you can keep in a wallet. In the US, it requires a large public donation to a political campaign or "charity". Bribes very much exist, and if you think you can't do it, that just means you're not rich enough. In poor countries too, the ones getting arrested are the ones who can't afford the bribes.
Bribe? No no, it's a tip.
> You will go to jail for trying to openly bribe the police here
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-aide-homan-accepted-5...
In addition:
Things you can do in the USA right now without punishment (as long as you the corrcect kind of Republican)
* Try to kill the vice president.
* Terrorize the capital
* Try to kill police
* Rape
* Being a pedophile
Things you can and will be killed or punished for, or that the government is getting vigilantes to go after.
* Walking
* Exercising your rights under the Bill of Rights
* Literally upholding the law
* Speaking negatively about the President
* Following Christianity
* Being Jewish
So, yeah, it's fairly corrupt.
I haven't even talked about the white collar crimes that are happening every day. But none of the above is hyperbole.
> Try to kill the vice president.
I assumed you were referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Paul_Pelosi but that ended with a 30 year sentence. So what are you referring to?
1/6 and the gallows with Pence's name on it and the mob looking for him.
Well, I knew what he was talking about.
I missed that aspect of 1/6.
Paul Pelosi was never the Vice President of the United States.
He was not the target.
Nancy Pelosi was also never the Vice President of the United States.
Christians managed to have their guy as a president.
If you believe that guy to be Christian, you might also believe a lot of other things. His answer to what he thinks about the bible and what his favourite quote is, was: "I don't want to go into the details."
The vast majority of American Christians, particularly Evangelicals, believe he's a Christian and overwhelmingly support him on that basis. Whether he is or not is irrelevant - he's clearly the man that American Christians want.
A lot of people calling themself Christian, can be in sects and I think that is the case in the USA. This has been the case a lot during history. Remarkably, during the big old concils determining the true faith, an overwhelming majority has been believing in the believes clarified as being wrong. Majority is simply not a concept to determine truth, and Christianity doesn't take it to be this way.
> he's clearly the man that American Christians want.
Maybe he is, maybe he is not. What people actually want, what they tell you they want and what the person wants they vote for can be three completely different things.
If your definition of "Christians" doesn't include hypocrites then there have never been Christians, and if it excludes millions of people who profess the faith then it isn't useful.
You seem to be implying that Trump supporters aren't "really" Christians, or even if they are maybe they didn't really vote for him? I don't know where the ambiguity you're trying to imply here actually exists in the real world.
Christians voted for him, said they voted for him, said they believed he was sent by God, and have vociferously and steadfastly supported him over three election cycles. Despite his infidelity, and his vice, and his corruption, and his pride, and his warmongering, and his sexual abuse and everything else about him.
At some point you have to open your eyes to what Christianity in America actually is.
The statement that there isn't really a true Christian besides Christ himself isn't really new and I think accepted by most. :-)
> You seem to be implying that Trump supporters aren't "really" Christians
No, I didn't meant that, I was initially only talking about Trump. I think it necessary for them to think of themself as Christian, and they need to at least try to act as that to some reasonable level. My issue was that to me it seams like Trump doesn't even try. His ramblings violate charity in fundamental ways and he doesn't try to cover that.
> Christians voted for him
Fine.
> said they voted for him
Did they vote for a story he told them, or did they vote for what he actually does. This doesn't absolve them of their responsibility, they still voted for a liar in this case, but it does matter how much they will object and how likely they are to vote differently.
> they believed he was sent by God
That violates teachings of Christianity in a fundamental way. If it didn't, every Moslem would be called a Christian. There is no revelation after Jesus Christ.
> what Christianity in America actually is.
I think there aren't only Evangelicals in America, there is some important guy coming from there, I think he called himself after a lion or something.
-----
> he's clearly the man that American Christians want.
You should read up on what happened when the "German Christians" got what they "wanted".
Have you been to rural America? Flyover country? The south?
here in SF it's pretty common to bribe officers with gift cards to get traffic tickets dropped.
it's been like that as long as I can remember
also, in the late 80s I remember my GF's father bribing the SF building inspector to overlook something.
I remember gift cards originally being novel in the early 2000’s because they could be swiped like a credit card for purchases, unlike gift certificates, which they replaced.
If you had a girlfriend in the late 80s, I don’t see how police could have been bribed with gift cards as long as you can remember.
I should also add that I myself have never heard of it being common to bribe SF cops with gift cards, in any decade.
I do believe that you are writing the truth, but it is extremely unbelievable to me. To be honest, I've never been pulled over for traffic violations, but bribing officers with gift cards being "common" sounds like it could lead to some really bad place. It's a good thing it hasn't yet. Bribes have many drawbacks compared to traffic tickets.
But if a single one of them don't like that you tried they can ruin your life much worse than a traffic ticket.
“Oh whoops, I accidentally grabbed the wrong card from my wallet”
Nobody says “hey here’s the bribe”, they act like they’re mistakenly handing over money or whatever. This is basic bribery etiquette.
I should have been clearer. The way the bribes work is you have a friend who works on the force find out what the ticketing officer likes. Then you give the GC to the friend who gives it to the ticketing officer. People who grew up in the city invariably know at least one or two people on the force.
I like the use of "go dark" when discussing police, considering so many American police agencies now use black patrol cars with black lettering on them so they can't be seen.
Meanwhile, in the UK, police cars are tarted up with fluorescent geometric patterns to make them as visible as possible.
It certainly shows a contrast in intent. One is "Here I am, come to me for help!" and the other is "I'm the secret police, show me your papers while I switch off my body camera."
Yeah this is a silly cultural thing. I participate in a non-law enforcement, completely volunteer emergency response organization, and other members will buy black tactical vests that "look cool" with their name and the organization on them. Meanwhile... I wear the... brightest most neon thing I possibly can because when I am in the middle of a four lane road directing traffic, I want to be brighter than the sun because I don't want to get hit.
From volunteers up to the ICE gestapo, people watch too much TV where the cops get to shoot things up and look awesome doing it, and that's often what they want to be.
It’s like when governors or mayors wear DHS windbreakers after some emergency, as if they’ve just come off the front lines of the response.
Hey that 5 minute helicopter tour of the emergency may have been windy for a few minutes
> I participate in a non-law enforcement, completely volunteer emergency response organization
Can I ask you to expand on this part? I’m really, sincerely curious.
Sure, it's the other US-CERT which is not related to computers. ;D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_emergency_response_t...
Thanks!
Most countries have both marked and unmarked police cars.
Now, there are counties / cities in the USA where the requirement on contract between text color and body color aren't as clear, and then are abused by the police to have even their marked vehicles blend in more.
> It certainly shows a contrast in intent
If the police were intentionally there to help then they wouldn't be abusing this loophole, or the people making the rules would correct it. The fact that they don't is the tell.
The UK has unmarked police cars.
Generally agencies on both sides of the pond maintain a small variety of vehicles; horses for courses.
I'd rather the bad guys have a harder time spotting police when they're going to get caught.
Real life isn't like the movies. It's not a game of cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians.
Police are supposed to "protect and serve."
> Police are supposed to "protect and serve."
"To Protect and to serve" is just the LAPD motto (other departments decided it made them sound good so they copied it). US Courts have generally disagreed that police inherently have any such duties.
I'm more concerned that multiple of the people mentioned think it's OK to drink, on the clock, with a badge and a gun.
Maybe cops should start logging a breathalyzer result at clock in/clock out.
They should, but I'm sure they would find a way around it.
I have never seen this from a US website before:
We’re Sorry! This website is unavailable in your location.
Error 451 It appears you are attempting to access this website from a country outside of the United States, therefore access cannot be granted at this time.
I spent a couple years in Europe and found that most local news websites in the US blocked access entirely. My guess was that they all share IT resources / policies of the conglomerate news corp, who decided it would be cheaper to simply ignore traffic from GDRP countries.
I have the same experience. I assumed it was a mix of (as you say) not wanting to deal with EU rules, but also not wanting to deal with licensing concerns (eg "do I have the right to show this media in this country").
Part of why I assumed the latter is that sports, in particular, had a high occurrence of "this content isn't available where you are" blocks.
Great point, I had never thought of that!
Except I'm not in Europe.
mirror https://archive.ph/2Xln7
Ironically enough on a “going dark” post, trying to access the site from outside the US is forbidden…
A completely inappropriate use of the 451 HTTP status code. Europe is not censoring anyone. It’s just a website that refuses to protect user privacy.
BTW, https://archive.is/2Xln7
There are a thousand and one legal reasons one may wish to block a region, including Europe. From anti-gay speech laws in Hungary, through the VAT/tax obligations that kick in at one cent, to all sorts of watershed rules and disclaimers and alien and unjust laws (such as lese majeste laws, or absurd British 'online safety' laws).
Every day I see Europeans on here sharing tips how to de-cloud and de-America, bemoaning the open Internet, yearning for Balkanisation. Cool. Well, this site does it for you. You're welcome! Enjoy!
While it may not look flattering, it is absolutely a correct usage of the 451 status code. From the standard itself[1]:
You could get pedantic over whether or not this counts as a legal demand, but the example makes it relatively clear that "legal demand" here is fairly broad.GDPR law does indeed make it illegal to serve certain web pages to EU visitors. If the operators are not willing to make amendments to comply with the law, then responding with HTTP 451 is the most correct thing to do. It doesn't mean the law is inherently bad, but it does mean that serving the request would be illegal, because that is how the law is written.
If this feels "completely inappropriate", then maybe it's because the modern web platform is completely ass-backwards in the first place. One must wonder why we're continuing to tolerate giving effectively static web pages so many privileges on our computers passively. I think browsers should flat-out start removing said privileges from websites that abuse them.
[1]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7725
It is illegal only if the website uses pervasive user tracking. Its like with cookie banners - they are not necessary if the site is not deploying the surveillance on the users.
Basically what you are saying is it should be illegal to load that page unless they change it. And it is illegal. They have no interest in changing the page. Therefore, they are preventing the page from loading as a result of legal reasons, not because there is any technical issue with loading the page.
I don't know how to break this to you, but that is the correct status code. They can be forgiven that they didn't make a second status code for "Page Can't Be Loaded Because It's Illegal But Actually It Should Be In Many People's Opinions".
I'm not in favor of pervasive internet tracking, but that doesn't change the reality: it is illegal for them to serve you that page. Putting it that way does make it sound bad, but what do you want to do, invent new words to make it seem better? It's what it is.
It still means the code is correct. It just means that there isn't some technical problem but intentional behavior, and there is some governmental policy at the root of it, rather than say a billing/account issue etc.
Saying "they could just not collect data" is like saying "they could just not show porn" or talk about Winnie the Pooh or whatever.
> It’s just a website that refuses to protect user privacy.
To be pedantic, they aren't refusing to protect privacy, they're refusing to comply with GDPR which requires more than just protecting privacy.
It could be that they just don't want to put a big dumb banner on their site.
You don't need a cookie banner if you respect users' privacy.
But you do need a GDPR specialized attorney to review all of what your doing even if you don't use any cookies.
Why? Even logging an IP address in a request log is creating records controlled by GDPR.
When TV news in the US is broke and only gets along because large companies buy up stations to control the news, its hard to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on complying with laws from another continent.
> logging an IP address....
Untrue. IP is an category of PII but its not PII in itself unless you're a law enforcement.
Separately, if you log IP addresses you're doing it to prevent abuse and to provide security to your server, you're already permitted to do so.
More on that: https://missinfogeek.net/gdpr-consent/
That sounds like a great example of why you need a GDPR specialized attorney to review everything you do then…or just return status code 451 and call it a day.
Fair point, thanks.
To be pedantic some more, they used a HTTP 301 to get you to a page that uses a HTTP 200. It just _says_ "Error 451".
Thanks, and I wouldn't even classify that as pedantic.
Sigh.
I should have suspected that’d be the case.
Or more likely, they set up a temporary redirect 7 years ago thinking 'oh we need some time to figure it out', and promptly forgot about it.
FWIW, it works for me from Canada.
Good. Those countries claiming global reach of their laws and regulations should not be surprised when people elsewhere refuse to serve their people.
From outside the US, you can use https://archive.is/2Xln7
It would have been comical if someone had altered the kill switches to instead alert someone to put extra scrutiny on the location when enabled.
ma resident here. there's massive corruption within the ma state police. the karen read trial uncovered a fair amount but i suspect we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. stories like this sadly don't surprise me.
I'm pretty sure most people apply for positions of authority so they can abuse it
Link is broken
https://archive.is/2Xln7
GPS works on triangulation. You need inputs from multiple satellites. Yes, clearly you can just ignore those signals.
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