Fabulous Bell in the Raadch
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"Not formally; informally if they take a ship and go find something we won't hunt them down."

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"I guess that could be a pressure valve but... it's still really weird to me. You have homeless shelters! Are the people in homeless shelters concerned about their careers and how silly they look? Have you somehow genetically engineered away the desire to be loud and provocative about politics on the Internet and that's okay because it's not a physical alteration to the human body?" (Wing rustle.)

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"Oh! No, there are lots of edgy teenagers who blog about how the system is evil. I can send you links if you want. They don't get much readership and lots of sites won't host them but they exist."

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"I don't exclusively expect this from teenagers."

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"I'm sure some of them are older. The point is - doesn't your society have any opinions that, sure, people have, but they don't talk about and they're horribly embarrassed if someone brings up evidence they believe it?"

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"Examples aren't leaping to mind - I guess maybe a combination of that force and total surveillance could produce what I'm seeing though? No anonymity."

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"Oh, we don't have an anonymous internet, no. We tried it. People were horrid. Engineering social media people weren't horrible on took some time, that also might be some of what you're seeing."

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"...that was a matter of engineering?"

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"Yeah. How do you structure content so that people don't share nothing but medical conspiracy theories and outrage about terrorist attacks."

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"I am really curious about that but bet it was the subject of some scholarship I can read later."

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"It was fascinating! I'd be happy to send you links! ...I probably would censor criticism if it seemed important, it just doesn't. Sometimes there are some good points and then more respectable people make them more respectably."

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"Just not so much about the war crimes and the not committing them?"

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"That criticism seems good to me."

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"You said you didn't get many essays on it."

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"It's been a thousand years. I don't want to discourage the essays I do get, even if they require - highly unusual circumstances."

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"I can write more essays."

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"If you like. I don't need persuading not to do Garsedd again."

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"I didn't really care for demanding the mutineer back from the Rrrrrr either."

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"Most of the decision-relevant information is secret so I can't defend myself there."

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"Probably you know lots of secret aliens facts so maybe there's a good reason hiding in there." Sigh. "But this meeting was supposed to be about my magical powers, where do you want to start?"

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"Uh, when did magic start? Has it been around for all of human history?"

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"No. Swarms started appearing in 1420 and magical girls started happening in 1421. We're from 2003 and year 0... or year 1, I'm not positive, usually I'd count on being able to look it up... is indexed at the ostensible birth of Jesus Christ, a possibly outright fictional religious figure who if he did exist was probably not born then."

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"Do you know what caused them to start?"

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"No clue. No even really good guesses. I'd been of the opinion they ought to pay a lot of attention to the constellations in starscapes, see if those were a hint, but all we know is that they got two girls to compare and they didn't match outright - that could have been seasons or something - sorry, I haven't gotten to starscapes yet -"

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"Why don't you explain that -"

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