catreadingabook

I’m against forced birth, but have to point out that there is the argument, whether realistic or not, that the parent can always give the baby to the foster care system once it’s born, so their obligation would be limited to 9 months total.

Personally what I take issue with is the inconsistency of forced-birth laws in the absence of comparable forced-labor laws. In a world of ideal policy, maybe we as a society might agree that a person should be obligated to sacrifice their time and health for the sake of preserving or creating human life. But then it shouldn’t be applied only to adult women who had consensual sex. Why shouldn’t non-pregnant people be forced to tend a farm for 9 months to produce food for those who are starving, or to spend 9 months working 80-hour weeks at an emergency call center with no pay?

I suspect the answer is that the rights themselves are not the issue here, but rather the motivation to punish women who have consensual sex.

In the academic sense of the term, negative rights include the right to not have things done to you (e.g., to not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law).

Positive rights include the right for you to do something, generally as against others (e.g., the right to have food, healthcare, or education be provided to you by other people).

I’m not sure it is useful to try to categorize abortion rights, for similar reasons why it would be difficult to categorize the right to try and grab the only parachute on a crashing plane. Even if it causes injury or death to others, our general tendency is to treat positive acts of genuine self-preservation as a negative right, if only in the sense that we would never enforce a rule that prohibits the person from trying.

A funky brain teaser on the topic might be whose right of life prevails when a perfectly healthy person turns out to be the only match for 5 patients with failing organs, one needing a new heart, another needing a new intact liver, etc., who are each about to die if we don’t kill the healthy person and harvest their organs for transplant. And would the answer change if this wouldn’t kill the healthy person, but severely decrease their quality of life - such as involuntarily taking one of their lungs and one of their kidneys?

I’d imagine it’s the things that still kinda make it as headlines today, but don’t get much coverage anymore because everyone is used to it by now.

“By the way, this weekend’s mass shootings led to 10 deaths and 29 injuries total, a little more than last week. Parents, remember to bundle up your kids this fall semester with the latest BulletBlocker Youth Jacket, 10% off if you order today! Now back to the news you actually wanted to hear about: the former U.S. President allegedly commits even more crimes…”

(TOS spoiler for one episode)

Just in case any lurkers are still wondering: I think - but don’t remember 100% - the guy everyone’s calling Kevin was some random crew member in TOS who took over the ship’s control room and started trolling the ship’s PA system, until the main characters managed to break into the room and subdue him.

The episode gave him an unreasonably long monologue with the PA system, during which he sang an entire song (“I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”). It’s also a little weird that this one crew member can take over the entire ship even though he’s some average joe who we don’t really see again.

No idea where the memes about him started though.

🎶 oh, I can so just sit here and cry 🎶

but fr what worked well for me was blocking, deleting, getting rid of (or stuffing into a rarely used closet) anything that reminded me of them, then distracting myself 24/7 long enough to later process my emotions with a little bit of distance from the event itself - not to block out the feelings but to just avoid ruminating on them.

Mostly the point was buying time to provide my monkey brain with hard proof that I can survive without that person, that way it stops shooting me up with the Bad Chemicals every time I think of them.

That isn’t the defining characteristic, though [ETA: under the conventional understanding of the word, at least - apologies for appearing to ask you for clarification only to then argue with you about it]. There is already a word for that and it’s called entitlement. What distinguishes an incel is the added belief that there is something wrong with people who have romantic or sexual preferences that the incel disagrees with (as long as the preference is limited to consenting adults).

Personally my main gripe is with the implication that a person, who simply wants someone with traits that the person doesn’t have him/herself, is therefore entitled in a way that puts them in the wrong. To hopefully illustrate why that’s weird: I tend to be romantically interested in those bleeding-heart optimist types even though my own philosophy is relatively pragmatic. I admire that characteristic in others but have no intention of adopting it myself. It isn’t obvious that this fact, on its own, makes me an incel, even if optimism is more rare, desirable, or difficult to maintain.

I think the discussion would be clearer if you defined what you think incel beliefs are? The typical description I know of is, “Members of my preferred gender refuse to have sex with me because there is something wrong with them, and it’s their fault that I’m lonely.” It looks like here the assumed definition is, “I’m happy being alone unless someone extremely desirable comes along,” which imo is the opposite of incel behavior.

The reason you are getting called an incel here is likely because, by characterizing the latter opinion as something wrong with “so many” women when it is merely a lack of interest in dating most men, you start to come dangerously close to expressing the former opinion yourself.

I think it has to be somewhere in between. This ‘real deal’ theory doesn’t explain the popularity of hentai, but at the same time, OnlyFans shows that some people reaaallly care about the personal element. I would bet niche kinks (especially those ‘illegal to make but legal to watch’?) will lean heavily on AI for content, but the rest will probably change based on our culture’s attitude toward AI in general.

Most people in first world countries will probably understand ‘L’ and ‘R’ anyway. But hypothetically, the problem could probably be solved by adding another letter, the same way we know that ‘T’ is for ‘Tuesday’ and ‘Th’ is for ‘Thursday.’

Casualties… 8 crew members subpoenaed, 15 sent to mandatory arbitration. Let’s not let their sacrifices be in vain. Ready the counterclaims. Prepare to file!

Judge Albright is kind of a (controversial) celebrity among intellectual property lawyers. Until the district started randomizing case assignments, everyone used to try to file in Albright’s court because he’s so plaintiff-friendly. The plaintiffs here got lucky with this judge assignment, too bad the Circuit Court is not amused lol.

Yeah I was scratching my head at this one. Cop had better have a really good reason here because otherwise, have fun getting Section 1983’d. I am not sure qualified immunity would apply against the right to peacefully assemble, unless either there was reasonably a threat of danger, or some legal authority made the assembly or its actions illegal (e.g. no one allowed on school campuses after 9pm, a citywide noise ordinance on weekdays, etc).

• am not a licensed lawyer and this is neither advice nor guaranteed correct analysis… just in case.

Advice against phishing emails can be reduced to, “1: Never click on a link, call a phone number, download an attachment, or follow instructions you found in an email unless you were already expecting this exact email from this exact sender. 2: If you really want to do those things, search up the organization’s website directly and use the contact info they provide there instead.”

imo it’s the ad-hungry articles stretching everything into 10+ pages that’s making advice so inaccessible to people. Super annoying because it dilutes the real, simple message that’s already there, it’s just locked behind an adwall.

I would really really recommend not underestimating the importance of medical treatment. It took me 4 tries to find the right medication (turns out an NDRI, not an SSRI, did the trick) to discover that actually, “normal” people are basically happy by default?? Like instead of it being this elusive reward that I had to work hard for, it’s like I can consciously hold on to my positive emotions and let go of the negative ones. Also, basic tasks that were endless nightmares before (laundry, cooking, phone calls) are now stress-free and even kind of satisfying?

I had the right tools before, like supportive friends, enough education about radical acceptance and coping skills, and a physically healthy routine, but it didn’t seem to help. And that makes sense now because it turns out, it barely matters how much happy chemicals your brain makes if it’s going to immediately throw them away. Not trying to tell you what to do (am neither a doctor nor a therapist) but I’m wondering if that’s what’s going on with you too.

P2W games are like, “You got 2 free skips! Let’s try using one now on this 5-minute timer.” & You know I’m waiting the full 5 minutes because after the tutorial every cooldown is like 8+ hours.

That’s actually hilarious. The legal consequence of not thinking about anyone other than himself.

Wait, why? Not to complain, but it’s essentially law that when federal courts have jurisdiction, a civil case may be ‘removed’ from state court and into federal (district) court upon the defendant’s request – and it seems pretty clear that federal courts have jurisdiction over civil cases arising under the Constitution. I guess the court technically has discretion in some cases, but that’s pretty surprising.

As with most social media, I think the voting system makes it worse. There is always an element of “playing to the audience,” in that the easiest way to get validation (votes, boosts, replies) is to make sure everyone thinks you’re morally or intellectually superior over the person you’re talking to, whereas an actual normal conversation would be focused on the exchange of new ideas and perspectives.

Stronger moderation could help, and filtering the less civil communities could help, but I suspect it’s just a natural consequence of having a built-in validation system that applies to every post and comment everywhere. As engagement in the fediverse grows overall, I could see it getting worse mainly because of more ‘vote-seeking’ behavior.

Completely speculating btw:

Separate complaints are generally addressed separately, even within the same suit. It’s unlikely one could have “tanked” the other.

I briefly looked over the original federal complaint vs desantis and the original state law countersuit vs the oversight district. The complaints in the other suit do point to different laws.

Since we all know these cases are going to get appealed no matter what, it’s entirely possible Disney could be trying to entice the Supreme Court into taking on the federal case down the line by whittling it down to just one issue (free speech).

Single issue cases revolving around constitutional arguments are like crack to the Supreme Court, they love to take these so that they can announce new rules or reasoning before applying it to the case, which they get to do when “”“interpreting”“” the Constitution.

Disney might suspect that the current Justices are drooling at the possibility of ruling expansively in favor of free speech.

Yes, but, what about those poor little multibillion dollar corporations who need their spam mail delivered RIGHT NOW? All these workers trying to, “not die,” is getting in the way of their profits!! :(