the esoteric and dark arts (reading a book)

Who are you to criticize the first police force entirely made of Operators

That's where I'm at

This is true but also doing this is table stakes for a real company. If you can't do this, you aren't a real company, you're just a person with a hobby (and should operate that way)

Finally, my time

when I see people go in a crank direction like this i just assume they had a really bad breakup or a furnace is leaking or something

That's your moral line in the sand? It wasn't the DOD or DHS contracts, or corporate capture of open source, or the Github acquisition, or...?

It would be less depressing if these people were plants or CIs, but they really just read it in a zine somewhere and think they're keeping everyone safe by being Leftist Jason Bourne.

I do local education about cybersecurity sometimes. Many people who will roll up and insist that you're all gonna get arrested unless everyone does no phones, no IDs, no cloud apps - and then loudly talk in public spaces w/ strangers about their desire to burn cop cars & overthrow the government.

I think telling people not to bring phones to a protest is actively harmful and I push back against it any time I see it in spaces