Which one of you asked for a cyberpunk dystopia? It was Nephilium wasn’t it? Sounds like something he would do.

This is my review of Bone Haus Brewery Legend of the Red Ghost:

Remember when we used to poke fun at China for their dystopian surveillance state? That was fun back then, technically it still is but then they started doing it in Europe. Yeah..about that. They’re putting them in cars now.

From July 7, 2026, all new cars sold in the European Union (EU) will be required to be equipped with driver monitoring cameras that point towards the driver’s face. The purpose of the system is to reduce traffic accidents caused by distracted driving, but there is little regulatory description as to how the collected video and data will be handled afterward, and privacy concerns have been raised.

This driver monitoring camera system is called the ‘Advanced Driver Distraction Warning System (ADDW),’ and it uses small infrared cameras mounted near the steering wheel and on the dashboard to track the driver’s gaze. If the driver looks at their smartphone, a child in the back seat, or the radio for an extended period while driving, the system alerts the driver with a warning light, sound, and vibration.

Now anyone that has driven in Germany, or at least owned a German built car is familiar with their distracted driver laws. There was a time they didn’t have cup holders because it’s distracting you from paying attention to driving 115 on zhe autobahn. A social concern one can no longer choose to violate at their own risk.

Don’t worry, they going to do it here too. (TW: TOS)

But you can just drive a older car, or maybe not at all to get around this Orwellian system, until you realize there are cameras everywhere. Now I view Flock the same way I view a company like Axon or LockMart. Are they evil for building these systems? Not necessarily, because the demand was created by evil people in your government; somebody was going to build them but there is certainly a loose sense of morality building a business model around it.* There all over the place, pretending you don’t notice.

Its like raptors. It doesn’t freeze when you look at it. You stare at Flock it stares right back at you.

But this is America! We would never stand for this! Sure we won’t. Someone will show up with a paintball gun or a Skillsaw, take up a new hobby in falconry, or maybe even figure out where the control box is and light the electronics on fire. All of which sounds much more interesting than the ideas coming from the EU to fight this.

Clearly, they are still trapped in the COVID timeline

Legend of the Red Ghost? You may be wondering what is this? Well its an old fable people from Arizona tell their kids to scare them into never wanting to walk around the desert at night. Unlike some of the other ones you may be familiar with, like La Llorona, or the guy with a hook, this is not just a hallucination brought on by extreme dehydration and peyote. It actually did start as yet another downstream effect of government decision making. The red ghost you see, is a skeletal figure riding a camel covered with fiery red hair. Camels in Arizona? You bet. The Army tested camel’s ability as a beast of burden for their purposes in desert operations at Ft. Huachuca. They found them to be proficient physically but less than ideal temperamentally so they mothballed the program and released them into the desert. When Arizona became a state, the legislature recognized the feral camels as property of the federal government, and outlawed camel hunting. I’ve never seen one in the wild but supposedly they’re out there. What does this have to do with beer? Nothing really other than this one being a red Altbier. Its nice, I can’t find this classic style very often aside from the occasional Alaskan Amber…even Fat Tire isn’t on the shelves anymore. So I was happy I found it. It is true to style and I ended up drinking all four on the spot while watching football. This was back in February so I mean actual football. Bone Haus Brewery Legend of the Red Ghost: 3.8/5

*See that? That’s how you use a semicolon!

About The Author

mexican sharpshooter

mexican sharpshooter

WARNING: Glibertarians.com contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. https://youtu.be/qiAyX9q4GIQ?t=2m22s

69 Comments

  1. The Late P Brooks

    There was a time they didn’t have cup holders because it’s distracting you from paying attention to driving 115 on zhe autobahn.

    Having a cup of coffee perched on the edge of your seat between your legs is so much safer.

  2. rhywun

    I like the masks. Retrofuturey.

  3. Furthest Blue pistoffnick (370HSSV)

    I’m not saying a fella could (or should) paint his license plates with Rust-Oleum 214944 reflective transparent coating…

    • Sean

      Do they make something like that for IR?

      What about IR reflective films?

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Note from legal: we don’t recommend doing this.

  4. Stinky Wizzleteats

    It’s not like we’re going to live forever if we don’t get in a car crash. This ridiculous safetyism uber alles has gotten completely out of control and it’s going to make driving a far more miserable experience than it already is.

    • Chafed

      Absolutely. I’m looking forward to the statistics on how many crashes were caused by this new system scaring or distracting the driver.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        …or the car shutting down at highway speed due to a programming error.

      • Chafed

        I didn’t even consider that. Oof.

  5. DEG

    Nothing really other than this one being a red Altbier.

    I don’t remember any Altbiers I drank in Düsseldorf being red.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      They say Killians is an alt-style, and that ones pretty red. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      • Nephilium

        Who released a Killian’s they’re calling alt? The mass market one I recall always being labeled as an Irish Red. But I am spoiled by nearly every brewery here doing an alt beer.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Did I get my reds mixed up?

      • DEG

        I think so.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        For our sake, I am not going to react by stimming.

  6. Common Tater

    MAKE AUTOMOBILES DANGEROUS AGAIN

    • mexican sharpshooter

      *cuts brake lines*

  7. Evan from Evansville

    Truman was brutally oppressed to ‘live’ a fake life. In fact, we’re ALL oppressed. Often faceless, our oppressors:

    AP: “Dangerous heat wave is building, will bring oppressive temperatures to much of the United States”

    So buck up, fellas. (Heat looks far more oppressive in metric.)

      • UnCivilServant

        SI is just knockoff Metric.

      • dbleagle

        Don’t wimp out. Use Kelvin!

      • UnCivilServant

        Excuse me, that’s LORD Kelvin to you!

      • Tres Cool

        No love for ºRankine ?
        Use it in our calculations all the time.

  8. UnCivilServant

    What does any of that have to do with collective responsibility to dropping the atom bomb on Japan?

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Actually, that’s a good question. Let’s ask ChatGPT…

    • mexican sharpshooter

      What does the commonality of surveillance cameras, as mandated by the EU and soon the US in cars, and Flock cameras in US cities have to do with collective responsibility to dropping the atom bomb on Japan?

      The connection you’re drawing is philosophical rather than technological. It centers on how responsibility is distributed when systems, rather than individuals, carry out decisions.

      Here’s one way to think about it:
      The atomic bomb and collective responsibility. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the act of one person.

      They required:
      – Scientists to design the weapons.
      – Military planners to select targets.
      – Political leaders to authorize their use.
      – Pilots and crews to carry out the mission.
      – Factory workers to build the bomb.

      Taxpayers and citizens who supported—or at least did not stop—the war effort.
      Political philosopher Hannah Arendt, among others, explored how modern bureaucracies diffuse responsibility. When many people each perform a small role, no one person feels fully responsible for the outcome.

      Surveillance systems work similarly Systems like:
      – mandatory vehicle data recorders or cameras,
      – citywide camera networks,
      – license plate reader networks such as Flock,

      also distribute responsibility. No single police officer is watching every camera. Instead:
      – engineers build the hardware,
      – legislators authorize its use,
      – cities purchase it,
      – private companies maintain it,
      – algorithms flag “suspicious” events,
      -officers act on alerts.

      Responsibility becomes shared across a network rather than resting with one decision-maker.
      The commonality[…]

      The common thread is the movement from individual agency to systemic agency.
      In both cases:

      – enormous power is exercised through institutions,
      – many participants contribute only a small piece,
      – each participant can sincerely say, “I was just doing my job,”
      – yet the collective produces consequences that no individual alone could.

      This is sometimes called the “problem of many hands” in ethics and political philosophy.

      An important distinction. There is, however, a major difference between the examples.

      The atomic bombings were a specific military action during wartime that caused immediate mass destruction. Surveillance technologies are tools whose ethical implications depend on how they are governed and used. They can serve legitimate purposes (such as investigating crimes or recovering stolen vehicles) while also creating risks to privacy, misuse, mission creep, discrimination, or excessive state power. Comparing them to the atomic bomb is therefore best understood as an analogy about the structure of responsibility, not as a claim that they are morally equivalent.

      Why people make this comparison

      Some critics argue that pervasive surveillance creates conditions where society gradually accepts increasing government or institutional oversight because each incremental change seems small. By the time the system is extensive, no one feels individually responsible for creating it.

      This echoes concerns raised by thinkers like Hannah Arendt, who argued that modern bureaucratic systems can normalize actions that individuals might reject if they bore sole responsibility.

      So the connection isn’t that surveillance cameras are “like” dropping the bomb. Rather, it’s that both illustrate how modern societies can organize immense power through distributed responsibility, making ethical accountability more difficult to locate even though the collective remains responsible for the system it has created or permitted.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      I appreciate the response. Thank you.

      You’re very welcome. That’s a thoughtful question, and it’s one that philosophers, historians, and political theorists have wrestled with for decades.

      One thing I’d add is that there are really two separate questions embedded in your analogy:

      Who is responsible? — This is the question of collective responsibility. Can a society be morally responsible for actions carried out through its institutions? This is where the comparison is strongest.

      How much power should institutions have? — This is the question of surveillance, privacy, and civil liberties. Reasonable people can disagree about where to draw that line, and democratic societies often revisit it as technology changes.

      An interesting tension is that democracies ask citizens to authorize institutions to act on their behalf, while also expecting those same citizens to hold those institutions accountable. When technology makes institutional action more powerful or less visible, maintaining that accountability becomes more challenging.
      Your question also reminds me of a broader pattern in history: technologies are often introduced for exceptional circumstances or clear benefits, and then become ordinary infrastructure. Railroads, fingerprints, DNA databases, CCTV, the internet, smartphones, and AI have all followed versions of that trajectory. The ethical debate is often less about the technology itself than about the rules governing its use, oversight, transparency, and avenues for redress.

      I enjoy discussing questions like this because they don’t have simple answers—they require balancing competing values such as security, liberty, accountability, and justice. Those tradeoffs are part of what makes political philosophy both challenging and relevant.

      • db

        they require balancing competing values such as security, liberty, accountability, and justice.

        Fuck You. Butlerian Jihad.

  9. The Late P Brooks

    This ridiculous safetyism uber alles has gotten completely out of control and it’s going to make driving a far more miserable experience than it already is.

    This libertine obsession with pleasure and enjoyment is why nobody takes libertarians seriously. That, and constantly yammering about “freedom” without responsibility.

    FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

      • mexican sharpshooter

        👏 Golf 👏 Clap 👏

      • Chafed

        😂

    • Brochettaward

      None of this is about safety and it’s one of those reasons I despise hearing political creatures talk about safety so much. It’s almost always a canard masking the true motives.

      When I hear safety, I reach for my gun.

      • Chafed

        Yes, but shooting your car isn’t going to help.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        For the people writing the legislation it’s not about safety but for the idiots who buy into it it is and it doesn’t help that cameras being fucking everywhere has been normalized. Welcome to the Brave New World.

      • R C Dean

        When I hear safety, I reach for my gun.

        Bet it has a safety.

      • UnCivilServant

        I couldn’t decide on a joke, so I’m going to install wheelguns in my wheels that fire wheels to take out other cars wheels.

  10. Brochettaward

    I get amused at the little folk who just second all the time feeling watched and objectified by flock cameras. As The First Of All Firster being observed is just the normal state of things. People stop and stare and ask for autographs and First samples from me everywhere I go.

    • Chafed

      Never First sample crazy.

      • (((Jarflax

        If no one first samples crazy how will the crazies end up with triple digit body counts and evolve into their Mega-Evolution form of AWFL?

  11. The Late P Brooks

    Simple, really

    Democratic socialists and academic experts say the ideology isn’t communism, but rather a belief that the economy should be run for the public’s benefit through democratic decision-making. The government should have an active role in expanding public services to address certain basic needs such as housing or health care, they say.

    “The information’s all in the title,” Susan Kang, an associate professor of political science at City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, told USA TODAY. “We want things that challenge the way capitalism distributes things. It’s never done by force. It’s never done by violence. It’s never done through tricks. It’s always done because we’ve gained majoritarian support.”

    “Nuthin up muh sleeve”

    • rhywun

      Associate Professor Susan Kang is dangerously ignorant.

      • juris imprudent

        No she’s a dangerous liar. A majoritarian decision is one intended to oppress minority dissent.

      • Ted S.

        Mendacious.

    • slumbrew

      “… the economy should be run …”

      Tell me you’re a commie without telling me you’re a commie.

      • Ted S.

        Or a fascist.

      • slumbrew

        True. Authoritarian shitbag, either way. But commie is the way to bet these days.

    • creech

      “It’s never done by force. It’s never done by violence. ”
      Oh, so it never goes beyond “Pretty please with sugar on it?” If you fall for that, then you deserve to be escorted to the ditch.

      • Mojeaux

        Welp. That was as groany as I suspected it would be. Shpip and my husband get along fabulously, and I’m just glad he hasn’t met my son because those three all together— OMG I would be driven to madness.

      • Ted S.

        You’re the one they’re going to miss in lots of ways.

    • Tres Cool

      She looks like Marilyn Vos Savant.
      And her accent is just adorable.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    Associate Professor Susan Kang is dangerously ignorant.

    I say she is an unabashed liar.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    A majoritarian decision is one intended to oppress minority dissent.

    But it sounds so much more genteel than mob rule.

    • Tres Cool

      Yeah they knew what they were doing.
      Im guessing the Hilux is the Aussie version of the Taco ?

Submit a Comment