[Hard: Failure] — My god. It's beautiful. It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your entire life.

— "According to our survey across various platforms, it was revealed that certain modders are actively developing a means to transform Yasuke, originally depicted as a Black man in the latest Assassin's Creed installment set in Japan, into an authentic Japanese character."

[Trivial: Success] — The run-on chaff breezes past you, leaving only the core conceit. "Depicted as". Changing him "into an authentic Japanese character."

— Certainly takes far less imagination to view a Black samurai as a Black samurai than the tone of this article would suggest.

[Challenging: Success] — I need you to not listen to what your instincts are about to tell you. Ignore them and walk away from this. Close the tab, close the article. It isn't worth your time.

— Pull your gun.

— Yes, Ukraine has no serious chance of coming out of this with anything remotely resembling a victory and the immediate brokering of peace has been the only sensible path forward for the past two years.

— "You know...I'm not going to tell a Palestinian voter to vote for Biden. I'm really not. I won't."

— But...

— "What I am gonna do is tell a white voter who couldn't find Gaza on a map 6 months ago to miss me with their work-from-home-slacktivism and choose the lesser evil."

[Easy: Success] — Of course. Only the white votes matter to her.

— If a DDOS were launched on this website right now — if the feds came crashing down and an emote of a DPRK soldier took the entire server with it — this woman would hurl herself in death's way to post for you. You are sure of this —but why?

— Hold on, who is she to me?

— She is your half-sister.

— "I love pot. I can't get enough of the stuff."

— The Union leader raises an eyebrow. "Oh, do you, Harry? Excellent! Truly wonderful. I'm certain you'll find many men in the Union who would share your moral position on drugs. Not that they use them, of course! It would be both illegal and extremely unprofessional to be under the influence of drugs at the worksite."

— He's lying. He doesn't know that you're cool, yet. Everybody lies to uncool people.

— People don't think I'm cool?

— What? No, everybody thinks you're cool. But you're a cop, so he's expecting you to be a narc. Narcs aren't cool.

— "So, you wouldn't mind if I...smoked in here, would you?"

— "Actually, Harry, I would very much prefer if you didn't smoke anything in my office. It's my lungs, you see. Can't handle all of that second-hand stuff. It's nothing against you personally. You can step outside if you'd like to spark up." Evrart grins, tapping his fingers on a stack of papers. "Besides, there's still the matter of your missing gun to attend to."

[Hard: Success] — Nobody tells you what to do, least of all a civvie. It's time to show him what happens when someone refuses the request of a uniformed officer. You'll have to wait until he clocks out before you can strike, but he'll come back in the morning to the skunk-scent of a message.

New task: Smoke a blunt in Evrart's office

[Legendary: Success] — The weight of a world is lifted off of a dozen others. In Vietnam, in Bangladesh, in Timor, in Cambodia, in Chile, in Cyprus; the undercurrent breathes a collective sigh. One more piece is off of the board. The empire is running out of material.

— τελειωτικό χτύπημα.

— What happens now?

— For you, Detective? Or the world?

— For the world.

— Nothing.

[Hard: Success] — An old man who did his damage is dead. His spirit is gone, but the mark will remain. Him being gone solves nothing.

— And for me?

— For you? You celebrate.

[SIGHT] — Right there. That blotch of blue stapled to the end of the username. The suspiciously low follower count. The community notes calling them out for misinformation. This Twitter poster bears a sort of digital aposematism; all the hallmarks of someone who vastly overestimates their own importance.

— And this no-name on some non-descript Discord is a revisionist on top of everything else, if not wholly against Mazovian thought. You're not wasting your time engaging with this drivel, are you?

— I'm engaging with it, alright. I'm engaging with it hard.

[Hard: Success] — Ooh, yes, good show, comrade! An excellent show, indeed! What will it be, then? Inducing a massive struggle session? Manipulating the power users to eventually seize control of the server? Death threats? Goodness, I hope it's death threats!

— "Kim, take a look at this post. It's a revisionist."

— "That would appear to be so. Does this have something to do with the investigation?"

— "Absolutely. If we can find some evidence to connect this post to this murder, then we're gonna blow the whole case wide open."

— "Of course." The lieutenant turns his attention back to the crime scene. "Let me know if you find anything else, Detective."

— Nobody ever lets you have fun anymore.

[Hard: Success] — The perspective on the doctor's right hand is impossible, like an Escher mezzotint. The ring and middle fingers cannot connect to the palm at the angle they're sticking out from it. The "baby", similarly, is anatomically incorrect; the large, hollow tube emerging from its right shoulder doesn't match any bone that a human has.

— Israel's own Kahan Commission also found that their Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, was directly responsible for a failure to ensure the safety of civilians in Beirut. He refused to resign, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin similarly refused to fire him. After someone threw a grenade into a peace protest and blew up eleven people, Sharon then decided to remain within the cabinet, but step down as Defense Minister. 51.7% of Israelis polled thought that the Kahan Commission was unfair to Sharon.

— What was he doing in the cabinet without a title?

— Biding his time. Sharon was made Prime Minister of Israel in March of 2001.

[Challenging: Success] — In June of 1982, the Israeli Defense Forces marched into Lebanon in the hopes of forcing Palestine Liberation Organization members out of the area. The Lebanese Forces, an umbrella party made up of all of the right-wing militias in Lebanon, were engaging in a civil war with the Lebanese government, and agreed to partner up with the IDF. On September 16th of that same year, the Lebanese Forces armed themselves and walked into the neighborhood of Sabra, and then into the adjacent Shatila refugee camp. The IDF encircled the area, preventing the Palestinian and Shiite Lebanese civilians from escaping.

— Don't ignore that feeling in the bottom of your stomach. Hearing this is going to hurt you. Make sure you're ready.

[Endurance 12] Listen to the rest of the story.

— An estimated 3,500 civilians were killed in the ensuing massacre. Janet Lee Stevens, an American journalist present in the area, wrote that she saw "...dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles."

— What happened after the massacre?

— Nothing. The UN held a vote to condemn it, which passed. Representatives and speakers for the United States, Canada, Singapore, and Ireland complained that it was unfair to call the actions of the IDF and Lebanese Forces a "genocide". Elie Hobeika, the Lebanese Forces leader accused of ordering the civilians to be killed, was later assassinated by an Israeli car bomb before he could testify as to who was responsible for what.

— There's nothing Israel can accuse Hamas of that they haven't already done themselves.

[Hard: Success] — War, and murder, and violence...they're all just so terrible. So, so many people are suffering, every single day. And worst of all are the ones who pay back violence with violence. You worry that it merely ensures an unending cycle of ever more violence. Just more and more people being hurt. It is a history of abject failure.

— "Haiti, Angola, South Africa, Cuba, Vietnam. I could genuinely go on."

— Oh-ho, this one knows much, Sire! Good, good! This may prove to be an interesting debate...

[Challenging 12] — Recall everything you know about the history of violent uprisings.

CHECK SUCCESS

— Delving deep within the recesses of your mind, poking around inside all of the grey little folds and corners, you manage to come across a pale, faded memory. Exerting a little concentration frees it from the gummy surface of your liquor-pickled brain, bringing it into focus: it's the sum total of all of the knowledge you have ever possessed about the history of violent uprisings.

— It's blank.

— No. Surely there has to be something in there.

— You're a moralist, detective. Why would you know anything about history?

— Bad news. The wömen are acting up again.

— Oh, no. What have they done this time?

— The same thing they always do: take something from the past that you love and hold dear and shit all over it. Shit all over what was once strong, and proud, and good. Shit all over your ancestry. Instead of King Bowser calling Kammy Koopa an "airhead" like he did in the original release, the new version of the game makes him call her a "lunkhead", instead. It's sickening.

— "Kim. The wömen censored Paper Mario."

— He lifts his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I'm sure they did, Detective. Let's try to focus on the murder for now."

— Of course, but not every post has to be purely for the person it's replying to. Sometimes — sometimes — it's enough just to be for everyone else reading it.

— The New York Post, Vanity Fair, Euronews, The I, The Kyiv Independent, The Daily Star, The Sun, Radio Free Europe, Business Insider, International Business Times, and a handful of other non-English media outlets you've never heard of.

— It's called "The Secret". The basic idea is that there's a latent psychic energy that all humans tap in to in order to manifest reality. Most of this is done subconsciously, but a select few who truly believe in this supersensual spirit field can use its power to re-shape the world around them. It's as powerful as it is dangerous.

— Can I build communism with this "The Secret"?

— No. People only use it for small things, like hitting two fewer red lights on the commute home from work, or finding five reál in an old coat pocket.

[Medium: Success] — Aaaugh, this is pointless! Nobody's ever snorted an idea, or shot up positive thinking! Your interests are a lot more material than that, baby. The Frittte liquor shelf is just around the corner.

[Rhetoric - Challenging 12] Differentiate ChatGPT from the human brain.

[Challenging: Failure] — Bad news: they're completely identical. The computer takes input and produces output. You take input and produce output. In fact...how can you be sure you're not powered by ChatGPT?

— That would explain a lot.

— Your sudden memory loss, your recent lack of control over your body and your instincts; nothing more than a glitch in your code. Shoddy craftsmanship. Whoever put your automaton shell together was bad at their job. All that's left for you now is to hunt down your creator — and make them fix whatever it was they missed in QA.

Thought gained: Cop of the future

— The phrase "business meeting" drips out of his mouth like gutter rain.

— "Who is Soon-Yi?"

— The lieutenant shifts his weight to one side. "Soon-Yi is Mr. Allen's wife. Their relationship is very...public."

[Medium: Success] — He means "controversial". The two of them have been under active investigation for over thirty years now; too many late nights across too many precincts have been spent investigating claims of sexual coercion, child abuse, judicial misconduct. Most of it's been buried beneath mountains of red-tape and corruption, but even the most crooked cops can't entirely cover up the Epstein connection.

— "Fuck you, falling into a world and just getting lost! No, no, no! Current-fucking-day! You take everything we love — all our immersions, all our fantasies, all our escapism — and you can't help shovel your dogshit, fucking-crap ideology into everything!"

— He won't fucking shut up. Knock him out.

[Challenging: Success] — The wavering of his voice, the tears dewing in his eyes, the erupting tantrum; he isn't acting like the usual grifters you've seen. He believes this. Video games are the only thing that he has. You can see before you the faded afterimage of a friendless little boy, kneeling alone in a patch of playground grass and clover. He's been this way forever.

— Don't go soft on a display this pathetic. Make an example out of him. His little computer-buddies need to be too ashamed to agree with him in the open.