Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
And? The ban was done according to the rule against sharing people's location data, so what more do you want? It's a private company, after all.
I'm not sure there's anything I "want" as such. I'm just amused by Elon's quick 180 on his own free speech commitments.
Can you point to an instance of you being upset about a non-leftist account being banned? Why do you care about this one?
I'm not sure I could point to an instance of my being outraged at a leftist account being banned, tbh. I care about this one because of its plain demonstration of Elon's lie about being committed to freedom of speech on Twitter.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6mo ago
I apologize if this comes off as straw-man-y but if your argument is functionally "Hamas is so evil they should not be allowed to continue to exist so it's fine when Israel kills thousands of innocents to stop them" then your argument is missing a few steps! Someone put this more pithily than me on Twitter but if Israel killed my whole family, who have nothing to do with Hamas, in pursuit of killing some Hamas member my first response would be to start Hamas 2. Do you imagine that a lasting peace is going to be achieved by killing thousands of innocents to get rid of Hamas?
I suspect a majority of the people who are calling for a ceasefire agree you that Hamas is evil. I've seen lots of people make points about how Hamas oppresses Palestinians in Gaza. How they haven't allowed elections in almost 20 years. Those people just disagree that Hamas is "murdering thousands of innocent people to stop them" evil.
But if these people think that a cease fire with Hamas will lead to a long standing peace then they are delusional.
I don't think most people think a present ceasefire will lead to long standing peace, I think they are much more focused on the immediate goal of preventing the deaths of thousands (tens of thousands?) of innocent civilians.
Welcome back to the United States House of Representatives quest to choose a Speaker. Now in week 4.
The current Republican Candidate is Mike Johnson (R-LA). There hasn't been much by way of public dissent from Republicans on Johnson (at least that I've seen) so he may be someone that has a real chance. Frankly I'd be a little surprised that Reps opposed to Jordan would be fine with Johnson given their similarities. There has been little public dissent and allegedly was not much dissent in the Republican Conference after he was selected. First vote expected to start shortly.
ETA:
By a vote of 220-209 Mike Johnson becomes the new Speaker of the House on the first ballot.
Third vote for Speaker of the United States House of Representatives set to start shortly.
What I'm hearing is the plan now is to do marathon votes, potentially through the weekend, as a strategy to wear down the holdouts and elect Jordan. I'm skeptical this will be successful. Allegedly some Republicans are saying they will go home for the weekend, Speaker vote or no. That is a bit of a sketchy place to be in because if enough go home (10) that means Hakeem Jeffries will be elected Speaker rather than Jordan. I imagine there would be some immediate votes to vacate the chair if that occurred but not sure how they would turn out. Also some Republicans have apparently been pressuring McHenry to bring legislation to the floor without a bill empowering him and he threatened to resign rather than do so.
ETA:
At the end of the third ballot results stand at:
210 - Jeffries
194 - Jordan
25 - Other
4 - NV
Jordan losing ground from the second vote as expected.
ETA2:
Reporting coming out of Republicans closed conference following the vote indicates the holdouts have no demands and want no concessions, they just don't want Jordan to be Speaker. If 8 people will never vote for McCarthy, 20 people will never vote for Scalise, and 25 will never vote for Jordan I'm not sure how this ends. One Rep was pictured carrying a resolution to oust McHenry as Speaker Pro Tempore. Maybe his replacement will be more amenable to doing legislative business without an empowering resolution? Apparently Jordan's latest vote total is the tied for the lowest in a vote for candidate for Speaker by a majority party since 1911 when the House was set at 435 members.
ETA3:
Jim Jordan has reportedly lost an internal ballot (88-112) and is out as Speaker Designate for the Republicans. As an amusing aside the 8 Republicans who ousted McCarthy have apparently circulated a letter claiming to be willing to accept some punishment like censure or expulsion from the Conference if it helped get Jordan elected. One problem? Rep Ken Buck has voted against Jordan all three times and apparently did not sign off on being included in the letter.
Apparently House is now going home for the weekend, lots more people expected to put their hats in the ring this next round.
Here we are two weeks after Kevin McCarthy was first removed as Speaker for the United States House of Representatives. About to have our first vote on the House floor to try and select the next Speaker.
It's been a bit of a tumultuous two weeks. At the beginning of last week Steve Scalise (R-LA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Kevin Hern (R-OK) announced their candidacy for Speaker. Hern subsequently dropped out before any internal polls of the conference had been done. Scalise won the initial round of internal Conference votes over Jordan on Wednesday 113-99. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday around 20 Republicans came out as hard no's on Scalise, more than enough to deny him the Speakership. Scalise subsequently dropped out leaving Jordan as the presumptive candidate. On Friday, shortly before the internal Conference vote, Austin Scott (R-GA) declared his candidacy for Speakership though went on to lose the internal vote 124-81 to Jordan. While there have been subsequent developments indicating many of Jordan's critics have come around the margin in the House is so close there may still be enough to deny the Jordan the Speakership.
This is a presently ongoing event and I'll update as the situation develops and I am able.
ETA:
As of the time of this writing the first ballot is still being counted but five nine Republicans have voted for someone other than Jordan, meaning he will not be Speaker on the first ballot.
ETA2:
At the end of the first ballot the votes stand at:
212 - Jeffries
200 - Jordan
20 - Other
2 - NV
With 2 NV that means the total to win is only 216. House now in recess rather than another vote. This vote total is within a couple of votes of where McCarthy was for the first three days and eleven ballots in his Speaker campaign. Hopefully this one doesn't take so long.
ET3:
No more votes today, House has gone home.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6d ago
I enjoyed the article. I think I'm one contributing factor here is what Scott identified over a decade ago in should you reverse any advice you hear. People in either sex positive or purity cultures are probably in thick information bubbles that take those positions to pathological extremes. This is probably even worse today than when Scott's article was written.
I suspect a lot of people operating in an enthusiastic consent framework would agree with the author that the circumstances she describes some of her friends having sex under were problematic. There's a reason those articles have the disclaimers they do. I suspect they would do so using a language of consent, that various kinds of pressure had rendered the sex in question not really consensual. The problem with this angle is that it turns what is supposed to be a simple and intuitive concept into one that hides a lot of complexity and nuance.
From my perspective it seems like there are two key issues. Firstly, women feel a social and interpersonal pressure to have sex they don't want. Like they need a good reason not to have sex with someone. This is totally backwards to how it ought to work. You do not need any reason to refrain from sex with someone beyond "I don't want to." "No" is a complete sentence, as they say. Related to the first, many men apparently feel no compulsion to respect that "no." Badgering women into having sex with you after they've said no is apparently fine in some people's minds. So the question, then, is how we create the social conditions so that women feel empowered to give that "no" and men feel compelled to respect it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
A question: Is dressing in drag (that is, a man dressing like a woman potentially with makeup and so on) an inherently sexual act? I ask because it seems to me differing beliefs about the answer to this question are at the root of differences in belief about the propriety of events like Drag Queen Story Hour and perhaps related to trans issues more generally.
For my part, I think the answer is "No". This isn't to say that nobody ever dresses in drag for the purpose of engaging in a sexual fantasy, certainly some people do. Similarly I do not intend to claim drag events are always appropriate for children, I've been to ones that certainly would not be. There does not seem to me anything inherently sexual about someone in drag reading an age appropriate book to children though.
So I guess I'm interested in hearing from people who would answer the opposite way to my posed question and why they think so. Some ancillary questions: If it were a cis woman dressed similarly would it be equally inappropriate? Or is the fact that it's a man dressed that way central to the impropriety? Is there an implied inference that the only reason a man would dress in drag is for a sexual purpose? That seems like a failure of imagination to me.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I keep meaning to make a post about the dichotomy between what I think of as "private reasons" (the reasons that convince some individual of some position) and "public reasons" (the reasons that might convince some group of some position) but this post will have to do for now.
For my part: I am probably about as SJW/Woke/whatever as they come in regards to LGBT issues in both a public policy and cultural norm sense. Separately I think it is exceedingly unlikely that either gender identity or sexual orientation are fixed from birth and have no connection to cultural factors. For clarity's sake I don't believe LGBT people can will themselves otherwise any more than I think non-LGBT people can will themselves LGBT but I do think there are cultural factors that influence where on that spectrum one ends up. I suspect where I depart from many people who believe the prior statements is that I don't think of people being trans or gay as being strictly worse than cis or straight such that society or government ought to be oriented around the minimization of such people. That is, my "private reasons" for supporting LGBT people legally and socially aren't conditional on the immutability of the traits in question, from a cultural context perspective.
I suspect the reason immutability features so heavily in modern discourse is because it was a rhetorical convenience in the United States. At the time the gay rights movement was gaining steam the United States was in the midst of several other civil rights movements more closely tied to immutable characteristics (black americans and feminism). I believe there was a widespread perception (probably correct) that those traits apparent immutability was key to the eventual success of their movements. Tying LGBT rights to a similar notion of immutability was, therefore, a convenient rhetorical move (a compelling "public reason") to get people on board with LGBT rights in a similar way.
I think this dichotomy between "public" and "private" reasons explains a great deal of perceived motte-and-bailey/hypocrisy in our political discourse.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8mo ago
It seems fine to me. If you want to enjoy the legal benefits of limited liability or operating as a corporation rather than a natural person the government wants to know to whom those benefits are actually accruing. Incorporation and limited liability are ultimately creations of the government. What's the counter argument? That there's a natural right to be able to operate a legally distinct entity in a way that shields you from liability of that entity's operations? I'm skeptical.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
What makes Dune such fertile ground compared to, say, Lord of the Rings?
This paragraph threw me for a loop. My impression is that Lord of the Rings is way more of a cultural Thing compared to Dune. Like, there also LotR video games? Action adventure, turn based RPG, RTS, even an MMORPG! There are movie series both live action and animated. All these vary wildly in quality so I'm not sure savvy licensing is the reason for their existence and success. Not to mention Lord of the Rings influence on the development on fantasy as a genre of media in general.
Apologies for not commenting on the more general question on your post, which I don't have many thoughts on, but feels like a very specific cultural bubble to regard Dune as more fertile ground for inspiration than Lord of the Rings...
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
The way she framed it conservatives in Singapore made a deal: "ok, we'll give you decriminalization, but we want to make sure it doesn't go further than that" (to that end they even "fortified" marriage in law). She makes it sound like it's an obstacle to overcome, not a compromise to be honored.
I mean, yea, from her perspective it is. I'm curious how you think this compromise works. It seems like your perception of it entails that, since the sodomy law is repealed, nobody is ever allowed to argue for the legalization of gay marriage for all time. This seems like a strange perspective to me, and certainly is not how I understand it. The compromise is about particular legislation happening now. Not about some commitment to never ever changing laws or advocating they be changed in the future.
Yes, it's like expressing a preference on what kind of food your neighbor eats, or how often they have sex. It's none of your business, and it's creepy to poke your nose into it.
I think there are many relevant moral differences between states and individuals and between state policies and individual preferences that make this comparison inapt.
Do you see some creepy aspect in the story about American Evangelicals spreading their views on homosexuality in Ghana? Or is your only problem with it that you disagree with them?
The second one. I think evangelicals spreading their views in Ghana is bad, because I think the views being spread are bad. I have no particular issue with people trying to convince others of their viewpoints more generally.
There was a literal international conspiracy to get them to stop. It didn't not involve direct force, but these people did not recognize they're putting their nose somewhere it doesn't belong. Also, keep in mind when I brought up experimenting with different setups, I explicitly mentioned marriage, not sodomy laws.
If the conspiracy doesn't involve means or ends that I think are objectionable I struggle to see why I should object to its existence.
They explicitly talk about coordinating to change sentiments within countries as well. This is something they should not be allowed to do, in my opinion.
How would you even stop this? Should Singapore not be allowed to participate in the global internet, because maybe they'd see things that would change their views on LGBT people? Does the Singaporean internet need to be censored to ensure their present social values are maintained forever and ever? Is it bad to show people ads depicting LGBT people as normal people if such ads convince people that bans on sodomy are wrong?
Mostly yes. Especially if it involves conspiring to use corporations, NGOs, the country's own youth, infiltrating their media, in order to "convince" those countries to change their laws.
I don't understand why "convince" is in scare quotes, what methods were employed that aren't covered by that label? I guess I just disagree that convincing people to change their ways by argument is wrong.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8mo ago
A few news articles I've read have mentioned that McCarthy announced the inquiry without a vote of the House because he thinks he wouldn't have the votes to get it to pass. The article you linked even quotes a Republican who says they'd vote against it. If McCarthy doesn't have the votes to even open an inquiry I'm skeptical he would have the votes to actually pass any articles they had drafted. It would be a pretty amusing end to this that Republicans spend all this time investigating Biden and aren't united enough to actually pass the articles that are the result of that investigation.
Somewhat amusingly Politico reports there's a Trump era Office of Legal Counsel memo that claims federal executive agencies can ignore subpoenas in impeachment inquiries unless those inquiries are opened in response to a vote of the House.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2mo ago
I'd like to hear more about why we can't argue in that direction. Is this like a hypocrisy claim? That since science isn't literally true it would be hypocritical to criticize theism for not being literally true? Or is this more that the acknowledged limits of scientific inquiry do not permit disproving theism?
I am content with believing that the particular empirical claims theists make seem to all have non-theistic explanations. If there is some causally inert god or gods out there, who do not interact with our reality in an empirically testable way, I am not that concerned with their existence.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
18d ago
What are the circumstances such that the "powers that be" would be able to assassinate Trump but not his VP? Especially if Dems take back the House, as predicted. Assassinating both of them would likely mean President Hakeem Jeffries.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8mo ago
What about hugging?
Yes, nonconsensual hugging is generally bad.
What about hand shakes?
I am not sure how you do a nonconsensual handshake? But yea, bad.
Back pats?
Nonconsensual ones are bad, yes.
Was my old aunt sexually abusing me when I was 10 and she'd plant a big lipsticky kiss on my cheek?
Maybe!
Did I sexually harrass my dad when he was lying in a hospital bed in a coma and I kissed his forehead?
Probably not.
Or am I being outrageous?
Yes.
Is it bad, but the same way answering your phone in the library is bad rather than sexual abuse?
It is (much) worse than answering your phone in a library but probably not as bad as the median example of conduct described by the term "sexual abuse."
But is answering your phone in the library bad enough to lose your career over?
Probably not, but forcibly kissing a woman might be.
Could there be a middle ground perhaps, where it's not something people should do moving forward but we don't crucify this guy for not being American?
People learn what to do and not to do because of the consequences for the things they do. I am pretty sure he is criticized for forcibly kissing a woman, not for "not being American."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
How did Brinton know the luggage contained women's clothing?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6d ago
Yes, women playing coy is definitely a problem. Maybe this is just me but I think the better option is just... not having sex with women who do that! They can either learn to ask for what they want or no one should have sex with them. Errors in the direction of "some people miss sex they could have had" seem much better than errors in the other direction.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
What do you mean by "support this?" I would think it would be a good thing for such a pill to be available. I'd support anyone who wanted to take it (which I think would be quite a lot of people). I would oppose it being forced on people and support people who wanted to undergo a more traditional gender transition as an alternative.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
At the time I was shocked at how this wasn't apparently a big story. It's trivial to scroll through the email exchanges and find examples of government agents reporting content to tech companies, who would then take the content down. There are obvious First Amendment issues that at the very least need to be publicly discussed, but most likely need to be prosecuted.
Why is it a violation of the First Amendment for the government to report content to a social media company which they believe violates that social media companies terms of service and for the company to subsequently remove the reported content after finding that it does? And what do you mean by "prosecuted"? What criminal laws have been violated?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I feel like a key issue in the "theft" metaphor is a distinction between the literal property (some number of dollars) and what that property can be exchanged for (its purchasing power). The "theft" that happens due to inflation does not actually entail taking any of my literal property, just a decrease in what that property can be exchanged for. The "theft" accomplished by FTX and other crypto exchanges involves the taking of actual property. The same logic that says inflation is "theft" to people who save currency would suggest it is "theft" from homeowners when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and causes home prices to fall or that Elon Musk "steals" from $TSLA owners when his own sales decrease the price of the stock.
That aside, I also don't see how the conclusion follows from the premises or arguments. "We shouldn't put more regulations on cryptocurrency or banks because consumers don't have a risk-free way to preserve their purchasing power over some time horizon" is how I would summarize that final paragraph in the quote (and penultimate paragraph in the article). I just don't see how the argument connects to the conclusion.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
I mean, I think the prima facie case is pretty simple: entities that have an incentive to be profit maximizing have decided that paying these women to do the work they do is, on margin, worth it. The market is not perfectly efficient, of course, but I am not sure why I should believe you are more likely to be correct than the people actually making the decision to hire them.
I think that generally speaking creating tons of economic productivity is what frees up women from household tasks so they can in fact find full-time employment, it is NOT necessarily more women working which frees up tons of economic productivity.
I think it is, more specifically, technological development. It reduces the amount of labor needed to perform household tasks, freeing that labor up for other uses, and increases economic productivity at various tasks outside the home. Technological development simultaneously increases the benefits and reduces the opportunity cost of working outside the home.
I am asking with complete sincerity. How quickly would we notice if every single female quit their job overnight? (Let me be more specific, by 'notice' I mean 'what parts of society would actually grind to a halt such that economic activity was seriously disrupted?')
Almost all of them? Even in the heavily male dominated industries you mention women are somewhere between 10 and 30% of all workers. Do you think if 36% of all farmers disappeared no one would notice? What about 10% of all construction workers? Or hell, how about healthcare. Would no one notice if 88% of all nurses disappeared overnight? What about 38% of all physicians?
The real question is how much excess value a given female produces for the economy over and above the value she would produce if she were instead raising kids and maintaining the household. Childcare costs are 'internalized' if she takes over this role, but it still counts.
Yes, hence my proposal. One disparity here is that the value produced outside the home is partially returned to the women in question in the form of money she can use to acquire shelter, food, and all the necessities of life. If she quits working outside the home to raise a child very little of that value comes back to her in a form that can be spent to sustain herself. If the state wants more women to choose raising children then more of the value that action produces needs to come to them in a form they can use to sustain themselves.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
Leftwing news outlets and even the judge at trial all bewailed how poor Eps was made to suffer as the victim of conspiracy theories. This is uniquely generous! Maybe there are some other outliers (I know there's some grandma who went viral by apologizing for her participation and calling MAGA a cult). But, by and large, the same people calling J6 an attack on democracy are saying Ray Eps is a victim. Why? -- he wanted to attack democracy! I am not aware of the judges treating anyone else so leniently.
Two things can be true here. (1) that Eps committed crimes on J6 for which he deserves to be convicted and (2) he is unfairly the target of right wing conspiracy theories of being a federal agent. Eps can be a bad person in one sense and a victim in another. There is no contradiction here. In terms of how judges have treated other defendants, what other defendants have been the target of conspiracy theories like Eps?
Epps' suit against Fox News will be allowed to continue, suggesting the possibility that he could win millions of dollars. It's shameless. I don't suppose some secret tribunal met and decided that Ray Epps gets his payout. But nobody in DOJ is working to stop him from making millions. If the DOJ didn't like this, they could try to find something else to charge him with. (Double Jeopardy is no guarantee -- the DOJ made big headlines about potentially investigating Darren Wilson over shooting Mike Brown. If Merrick Garland wanted to, he would get on TV and say Epps deserves to be looked at again.)
Maybe I am the one who is confused but I'm pretty confident the DoJ does not have a mechanism to force someone to drop a civil suit. If Fox News did defame Eps by calling him a federal agent when he wasn't, why should the DoJ step in (to whatever extent it can) to stop him? Maybe Eps' actions are shameless if you assume he is a federal agent but from another angle he's another entity (like Dominion) defamed by Fox News and trying to protect his reputation.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8mo ago
I think the problem is you're envisioning "drugging" someone as requiring use of, like, rohypnol or other illicit drugs. I would be willing to bet that, in California, "getting someone so drunk they lose consciousness" counts as "drugging."
I think kissing people without their consent is bad and I don't think any of ("I was very emotional", "It has happened a lot in the past", "Some iconic moments are similar", "The victim didn't react the right way in the moment") are very good excuses or justifications. This is not complicated.
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