https://www.scouting.org/program-updates/citizenship-in-society-merit-badge-discontinuance/

At least one of the changes is already easily verifiable.

I slacked off in high school and went to community college.

Where I continued slacking off. I sat in the back of one of my history classes because it was near an outlet, so I could plug my laptop in, pretend to be taking notes or whatever, but in actuality was just goofing off for most of the class

Next to me sat another slacker, he was goofing off in much the same sort of way, and we hit it off.

He became, and still is, one of my best friends. Most of my friends I can actually trace back to him in some way or another. He’s one of those people whose ability to meet and befriend people everywhere he goes borders on the magical.

One day we met up to go wander around a local flea market/farmers market. We ran into his best friend who also happened to choose that day to go wandering around the aisles of junk looking for hidden treasure.

And that friend brought his girlfriend with him. Years later she would become my wife.

It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. We all wandered around together for a while chit-chatting, and eventually we ported ways. She didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time, nor I on her, I actually don’t think she even remembers this story.

Since we shared pretty much the same circle of friends, we would bump into each other occasionally at parties and such. For a few years I don’t think either of us really thought much about the other, we were just friends of a friend who seemed cool enough.

Eventually, of course, the two of them broke up, as tends to happen. We all stayed in pretty much the same social circles, but she and I didn’t have a whole lot of direct interaction.

One day, that friend from community college hits me up. He’s heading over to the house that she was renting with a couple roommates, no real plans, just chill, have a few beers, watch movies, maybe get some food. So I tag along.

It was basically the three of us hanging out in her living room, and her roommates occasionally wandered in to grab a beer from us before disappearing back into their rooms.

We refer to that night as “The Accidental Nazi Night” because just picking random movies from Netflix, we ended up choosing Iron Sky (about Nazis on the moon,) Equilibrium (dystopian movie with an authoritarian state surprising free expression and such,) and Fire with Fire (where the main villain is a Neo-Nazi)

So that was my first time really spending any sort of quality time with her, just chilling in her living room, killing a case of beer, and watching movies of varying quality.

We became pretty good friends after that. The house she rented basically became the usual hangout place for everyone, so I spent a lot of time there. Funnily enough, she tended to hang out in her room away from all of the action while we were all making a ruckus downstairs.

And so things went for a few years. I’ll be honest, I never really had her on my radar as someone I was interested in dating and was content to be friends.

Apparently she was very interested in me though, and was laying the flirting on pretty thick, and it all went over my head. Eventually she realized she would need to resort to more drastic measures, and one night as we happened to be leaving a friend’s party at the same time, as we got to our cars she grabbed me and kissed me.

And I’ll be honest, that broke my brain a little. From my perspective it kind of came out of nowhere. I kind of had to rethink everything about us and decided, “yeah, fuck it let’s see where this goes”

And so here I am a decade or so later, married for 7 years, and pretty happy with how things all turned out.

I work in 911 dispatch, trying to inject a bit of reason into stupid and scary situations is a big part of my job.

–

I had a call one time, they guy had been threatened by a bunch of teenagers with knives on a bus

The bus came to its stop the teens got off and so did this rocket surgeon (instead of, you know, not getting off at the same stop as a bunch of armed kids who were just threatening you)

That’s about when he called and I answered.

This idiot was following them.

I told him not to, and reminded him that they have knives.

He told me it was ok because he had a knife too.

So I basically had to explain to him why that was fucking stupid.

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Another time, I get a call from someone because there was a crazy guy with a machete out on their porch.

Her stupid fucking husband wanted to go outside to fight him. So I had to keep telling her to make him stay inside.

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We had a domestic once, we actually got calls from both parties. One half was outside the house, the other half was inside, and they’re basically standing at the front door yelling at each other.

My caller was inside. I told them to just close and lock the door and wait for the police. They did. Problem solved, right? Arguing stopped, the other party even walked away from the door after that. I get all the info I needed and hang up.

Except like 2 minutes later, I see that we’re now sending EMS out to that house.

Because my stupid fucking caller opened the door to start arguing again and got pepper sprayed by the other party.

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Those are probably the three biggest stand-outs I’ve had so far, but I’m really hard-pressed to think of any disturbances or domestics, that couldn’t have been resolved, or at least kept from escalating if at least one party would have just walked the fuck away. Close the door, roll up your window, go into another room, step outside, walk down the block, go sit in your car, etc.

Or hell, even just sit there and ignore them.

But no, they always need to get the last word in. They can’t swallow their stupid fucking pride for even one second.

And it’s really disturbing that those kinds of people are making their ways into law enforcement type positions.

It’s not a new phenomenon, and it’s not just ICE, it’s regular cops and such too.

But these aren’t the kinds of people who can help solve problems. These are the kinds of people who are problems.

Some of it comes down to the way so many of us are underpaid.

I’d get a hell of a lot of use out of a pickup truck if I had one. Not enough to want to daily drive it, but enough that it would be worth having.

But for most of my daily driving, I could just about get away with an electric golf cart (the way laws are in some states I probably could use something like a golf cart, but my own states implementation of NEVs and such are a little stricter)

In an ideal world I’d have some little electric sedan for most of my daily commuting and errands, and then a truck (though probably a small one) for when I need one.

But I don’t have the budget for 2 vehicles, nor the parking space for them.

Personally my compromise is a mid-sized SUV that fits most of my needs well enough. Others may decide that the best compromise for them is to daily drive the truck. I don’t think most of those people have actually thought too deeply about whether that’s actually a good choice, but I’m sure that for some people it does actually make sense.

I love small trucks. My parents have a '93 ranger, it gets pretty good mileage with that little 4 cylinder engine, and has a 7ft bed, and it’s hauled all of the lumber and furniture we’ve ever needed it to.

It’s only rwd, so it’s kind of shit in any kind of weather, and it’s 0-60 time is probably best stated as “eventually” but that’s realistically all I need from a truck.

I like the maverick, but I’m not a fan of the short bed. I’m crossing my fingers that maybe they manage to finagle a midgate into it somewhere down the line.

Otherwise I’d really love for them to bring back something like the 90s style rangers (or Tacoma, S10, Dakota, etc.) as a hybrid or electric, or hell even a decent modern 4 cylinder turbo could probably give a nice mpg and performance boost. The modern versions of those small trucks are significantly bigger than I need them to be, and in at least some cases you can’t even get them in a long bed configuration anymore.

You can and I’ve looked into them

Fact of the matter is still that I live in a townhome with no parking besides my 2 assigned parking spaces, an HOA that definitely wouldn’t like me leaving it on the front lawn, and to put in in the back of my home I’d have to get it over a curb and drag it through about 5 neighbors’ back yards to get it under my deck (and the HOA might still have something to say about that)

So to have a trailer of my own, I’d have to find somewhere to store it, and since I don’t have any friends with extra space in their driveways who will let me leave it there, that would mean more ongoing expenses.

Parking is an issue in a lot of places. I have 2 parking spaces I can use, and they’re needed for my car and my wife’s. I don’t have anywhere convenient that I could park a trailer.

And I could rent a trailer, but that can be a pain, the handful of times I’ve done it the places nearest me didn’t have the trailer needed in stock on the days I needed it, and if you need it frequently enough it can get pricey

And, frankly, towing a trailer is a skill that some people just don’t have. They might do just fine in truck, but throw a trailer into the mix and things can get weird quick.

If I were the type of person who was willing to give AI the benefit of the doubt and not assume that it was just picking basically random numbers

There’s a lot of cases where it can be a shorter (by distance) walk than drive, where cars generally have to stick to streets while someone on foot may be able to take some footpaths and cut across lawns and such, or where the road may be one-way for vehicles, or where certain turns may not be allowed, etc.

I have a few intersections near my father in laws house in NJ in mind, where you can just cross the street on foot, but making the same trip in a car might mean driving half a mile down the road, turning around at a jug handle and driving back to where you started on the other side of the street.

And I wouldn’t be totally surprised if that’s the case for enough situations in the training data where someone debated walking or driving that the AI assumed that it’s a rule that it will always be further by car than on foot.

That’s still a dumbass assumption, but I’d at least get it.

And I’m pretty sure it’s much more likely that it’s just making up numbers out of nothing.

Another one

I was home sick one day, my sister was at school, the phone rings and I answered it. It was an automated message, something about the school being aware of a school shooting threat and that there was no danger at this time.

It was really light on details, I called my mom who worked at another school in the district, she had no clue what was up. I couldn’t really find much information, it kind of trickled out over the next couple of days.

A lot of parents went to pick their kids up early, my mom texted my sister to see if she wanted to be picked up she didn’t really care, enough kids left early that classes were basically put on hold and they were just goofing off and watching movies and such. There were a bunch of cops and news crews showing up at the school so she figured she was probably about as safe there as anywhere that day.

Anyway, eventually the details started coming out, there was a kid who was planning a shooting, it was still a long way off if it was ever going to happen at all, but he tried to recruit another kid, and that kid turned him in.

The would-be shooter didn’t actually go to our school, he was homeschooled. His parents had pulled him out because of bullying a few years prior. He was a few years younger than me, so I don’t think I was ever in the same school as him, I think he would have been a freshman when I was a senior.

Now my school didn’t exactly have a major bullying issue, it happened a bit, like it does in every school, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of anyone who had it especially bad.

Now this kid was fat, he may have been almost as wide as he was tall, and I’m sure he got plenty of bullying for that, but this is America, we had plenty of kids in our school who were just as fat, and again, no major bullying problems. Hell, I am/was pretty fat myself, and a bit of a weirdo to boot, and I was actually fairly popular in high school.

But apparently the real reason this guy was bullied was because he was just a real racist, misogynistic, homophobic asshole. If anyone deserved to be bullied, it was probably him. He basically was a bully himself, he was just too pathetic for anyone to take him seriously.

And yes, it does sound a lot like I’m describing Eric Cartman.

He did have one gun (that his parents apparently bought him) but no ammo, as well as a bunch of mall ninja swords and such, and a bunch of airsoft and pellet guns. Of course the local police made a big deal of showing off his “arsenal” when they confiscated it. I almost wanted to see his fat ass trying to lug all of that shit into school with him. I doubt he would have made it up the front stairs of the building before getting winded.

But it doesn’t end there.

Remember the kid who he tried to recruit who turned him in? He of course got all the congratulations from the mayor and police chief and such that you’d expect. And then he tried to break into the would-be shooters house to steal his Xbox.

And at some point during the various trials and such, the would-be shooters mom got in trouble for trying to smuggle him food while he was in juvie.