OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
22hr ago
I've written some fanfiction, but I think I'd rather make friendships in the physical world. It's better for my kids, better for networking, better to have someone who can lend a hand in real life from time to time.
If someone in the community I lurked on reached out to me and said, "Hey, I saw your post on TheMotte and recognized that you were talking about us, would you like to join an online game together?" I would accept in a heartbeat. But I don't necessarily want to create a new online attachment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
When I was a teenager I found a community of fanfic writers who I adored. They had their own shared canon and one of them was a Powerhouse of writing. Spitting out chapters longer than some books, filled with classical and pop-culture references, philosophical musings, good-vs-evil clashes, tense heroism, etc.
I would check their bio pages every day. Eventually they got a forum and I lurked there too. I watched them talk amongst each other and I wanted so badly to be their friend. A couple of problems:
They were clearly adults, and I very much was not. My parents forbade me from reading fanfiction. Obviously I ignored this directive, but I wasn't able to make an account because my parents also managed my email address.
But it would not be an exaggeration to state that this group of fanfic writers had a strong impact on my outlook today. These fanfics formed me the same way the Aeneid formed generations before me.
And more than that, I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be their friend so badly. They were the coolest people ever.
By the time I was an adult and could sign up for an account, they had slowed down publishing. I re-read the corpus of work, commented on chapters, joined the forum, but I was an interloper, an outsider. I never could explain to them just how much they meant to me. I tried not to be weird, but I think I was probably very weird from their perspective.
Around the time I created an account, fewer chapters were published. Eventually it was all gone. No more posts on the forum, no more chapters published. They all knew each other outside the forum. Maybe they moved to discord.
Ten years later, I still have dreams where I find them, they welcome my presence, and we become online BFFs.
My husband thinks it's not weird that I had a fandom interest that defined my adolescence, but the damaging part was that I thought I could be one of them. The biggest Star Trek fan never harbored delusions that they would one day be friends with Gene Roddenberry, but through the magic of the Internet and semi-public spaces I had a sense of intimacy with these people who had no idea I existed. To some extent the Internet is mostly lurkers and I am certainly not the only kid who lurked on their forum.
I think people call this a Parasocial relationship, and it is one of the dangers of the Internet that was never explained to me as a kid. I knew not to share my real name or address. I knew not to talk with strangers. I didn't know not to lurk and pine for a friendship I would never form.
I think I came out of it mostly unscathed except for the occasional twinge of sadness or embarrassment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
The spirit of it would. It might need to be written something like, "Cannot exceed 50x the total compensation for the lowest paid employee or contractor, or person who does work at a jobsite owned by the business." It would be difficult to get the spirit of the law into reality, but this thread is for Absolute Ruler territory, so I could just threaten to execute anyone I felt was going against the spirit of the law and see if that decreases chicanery.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
True. It would be very hard to get the spirit of that law conveyed into iron clad words, even if I had unlimited power.
I wish I could see a counterfactual world where every company was organized into a co-op like the Mondragon Corp and see what the downsides are, before gaining unlimited political power and imposing that on people.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
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Total compensation for the highest paying job at a company cannot be higher than 50x the total compensation for the lowest paying job at a company.
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Mandatory conscription for two years after high school, no exceptions for college. The default is Army Corp of Engineers, who will be tasked with maintaining and expanding infrastructure across the US. The only exception is for married and pregnant women. Unmarried and pregnant women can defer until their youngest child is 2, married women who become pregnant get to skip entirely.
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All new HOAs and ROAs are now required to maintain a clubhouse on HOA property. This clubhouse should be able to safely hold 25% of residents and contain some sort of kids' play equipment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
Have you ever read "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman? It is a pretty tragic book that should be read by any medical professional. Whenever someone doesn't take their meds or has a bad experience with a doctor I think about this book.
Spoilers, a little Hmong girl with epilepsy is treated by American doctors who run into issues such as 1) her family doesn't know how to read instructions in any language, 2) her family doesn't understand time the same way, and 3) her family isn't really certain that epilepsy is a bad thing and think the doctors are possibly harming her by trying to take her seizures away.
Sometimes there isn't much a doctor can do.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
I have noticed that Bitcoin goes up in times of uncertainty, and then goes down when things get calmer. But the first rule of Bitcoin is not to buy it when it's back in the news, and it's been reaching highs. So probably don't buy Bitcoin now.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
It's the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that the customer service company set up with the brand.
I don't know what company you're emailing, whether it is large or small, but it is likely they outsource some of their support to a multi-client service desk that can handle tier 0 or tier 1 requests. The company is paying for a 3-4 day SLA, and if the service desk goes over that length of time there are penalties. Because the multi-client service desk has a multitude of clients, each with a different cadence for emails, the service desk will prioritize emails according to SLA, ensuring all emails are answered with the least financial penalty to the service desk.
I don't have any experience with 3-4 day SLAs (that seems excessive to me) but I have seen emails sit in a queue all day, getting answered by the night guys at 10 PM, because the SLA was 24 hours and other companies had <2 hour SLAs.
Sandman, if you haven't already. The other graphic novel I would recommend is Batgirl (2000—2006). It stands on its own and is quite beautiful.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
The saints are very disgusted with their faults, more so than the average sinner. But that verse also does not exclude the possibility of a saint having sinned in the past, but over time has shed the habit of sin. After all, the next verse is "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
But because I do not think that we will meet the standard of God's law in this life
I think you are correct for many, if not most Christians. But I also genuinely believe that many of the saints were able to completely cease all inclination to sin in this life. And I believe that for the the rest it happens during Purgation after death.
We do not enter heaven by loving God and our neighbor
100% agreed here, we can only enter heaven by Jesus's sacrifice.
When a sin is forgiven it is forgiven because God forgives it. God does not count the sin on you, yes. Jesus has told visionaries that He can't even remember the sins they've confessed. (Obviously a bit of a metaphor, as God knows everything.)
I think the radical thing Catholics believe, that you disagree with, is that the forgiveness of sins is not itself sufficient for Heaven. (The forgiveness of sins means that a Christian is going to Heaven, but it doesn't mean by itself that the Christian is ready for Heaven.) In order for Heaven to not be a tyranny, the people in it need to have willingly let go of attachments to sin as well. We lose this attachment in this life, little by little, by willfully forming the habit of conforming to God's will. And if there is any attachment to sin left over at the moment of death, it needs to be removed by the cooperation of God and the sinner. (Put out of your head any specific idea of a place of Purgatory. I'm referencing just the idea of purgation, whether that's an instantaneous change or a difficult trial.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
14d ago
But Paul isn't talking about that. What Paul is referring to is specifically that having one's sins forgiven, covered, not counted against oneself suffices to make one blessed. The focus is not on how that is attained, but upon how the blessing (and, per verse 6 and verse 9, righteousness) consists in the forgiveness of sins.
Catholics believe in the forgiveness of sins. What are you arguing against?
The proposition that there will neither be sin nor attachment to sin in Heaven?
The proposition that at some point, (in this life or in the next) sinful people lose their attachment to sin through the graces of Jesus' death and Resurrection?
That this purification requires some assent of the sinner's will, some kind of cooperation with Jesus?
Can you go to Heaven without loving God and Neighbor?
Can you love God without keeping His commandments and repenting if you fail?
Can you keep God's commandments without doing good works?
Do good works happen automatically, or does the Christian need to accept Jesus's graces? In other words, can a Christian reject Jesus' graces and refuse to do good works?
I view it as nothing short of tragic that a people who suffered so much due to being viewed as inferior, who struggled for so long to be viewed as equals and treated with dignity, who endured all kinds of injustices in the hope that we would overcome...only for science to prove that it was fruitless all along. It's so dispiriting the possibility that all the problems in our community: crime, poverty, ignorance, are intransient. How are you supposed to deal with that without becoming utterly nihilistic?
There were many hundreds of African societies pre-Colonization with their own codes of conduct and methods for enforcing it. Genetic descendants from these societies may have a harder time conforming to English Common Law, but that doesn't mean that crime and poverty follow necessarily from a lower average IQ score.
I don't view it as a racial thing. Take race out of it and we can have more productive conversations with people outside the Very Online Right. Everyone knows that some people are smarter than others (even if someone believes everyone is smart in their own way, they have to admit that the child with Down Syndrome has less than most.)
How do we as a society accommodate this? How do we provide everyone with a role that challenges and interests them, while providing for their needs? How do we include everyone in the social contract, so that breaking the law becomes offensive to everyone? How do we ensure that top talent goes into the positions that need it, and these positions are rewarded enough to encourage the smartest people to do their best? How do we do this without screwing everyone else?
I'm not talking about changing laws, but first societal attitudes. We first have to agree that these are good things. Right now, the conversation shys away from acknowledging differences and puts everyone into the same grind together.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
15d ago
My sister in laws kids still end up in one on one meetings with their priest and so on.
If this is true, it needs to be reported to the parish's safety coordinator (assuming she's in the US.) The only circumstances where that should be happening is during confession, and now the standard for children is to have confession in a place that is visible from the outside (like through a window or in an unblocked corner of the church) or completely physically separated, like an old-style confession booth. Now, the sister-in-law might be bringing her children to a normal (adult) confession time, but if there are no specifically-labeled confession times for children, it is within her right to schedule a child-safety-compliant confession for her kids.
"If there is a need for a confidential discussion or training session with a minor, it should occur in a location that is in view of other persons, and the minor should have first and immediate access to the exit."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
It supports the narrative that most Israelis can just "go back where they came from."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
But for every person like me, there's someone living at their parent's house (parental support), that their parents own (home ownership), with a long term girlfriend. There isn't a material difference between them and the requirements you list. The things keeping them from having kids are attitude and perception.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
18d ago
To some extent this is just what being settled in a place looks like, though.
My parents moved into the state when I was 4. Six years later, they moved into a new-build neighborhood. My mom talked up the opportunity with friends and a couple of her friends also moved into the same neighborhood. I. Those six years in between, she had made friends with dozens of families, just by exchanging phone numbers with other moms at the playground, meeting their friends, arranging play dates, going out to coffee, etc.
My experience with cities, apartments, and dorms is the physical proximity creates emotional distance. People don't even look each other in the eye, let alone learn each other's names. It's too intimate by default, so people take steps to create boundaries.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
18d ago
I loved growing up in the suburbs. I knew everyone on my culdesac. We were a ten minute drive from various friends of my mother who had children around my age. We went to church activities every week, sports, library events, etc. We weren't bored or bereft of social interaction.
In NYC I feel like being friendly puts a target on your back. But it might just be that I was socialized for one type of friendly, and don't recognize other forms.
I recently moved to a suberb outside a small city in a flyover state. I was quickly invited to attend a Welcome New People catered dinner at my new church, where we were paired with another family who checks up on us all the time. I am constantly invited to more parish activities, including a program that just pairs families with similar aged kids to meet up at least once a month to do whatever they want.
The nearest coffee shop has a consignment store with crafts made by local patrons. There's a festival every week in the downtown. I know most people on my street.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
18d ago
I'm confused about your list of needed things. I don't know anyone who grew up with all of them. Looking at just my family tree I have:
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One set of grandparents had their first son on a US Base in West Germany. Moved back to the US to a part of the country far away from other family, bought a house in the suburbs, and had five kids all told. (Missing: house at first baby, labor support)
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Other pair of grandparents had moved from Ireland, didn't have any relatives to help. Had 12 kids on a single policeman's salary. (I'm not sure when they bought their first house, but they were missing labor support.)
-My parents had me and my brother in a one bedroom condo, about a five hour drive from my father's parents. My parents both worked at the time and I was in daycare. After my brother's birth they moved to a lower cost of living state and bought a house. My father had a job lined up, my mother did not. She transitioned into a Stay at Home role, which ended up being mostly permanent. Three kids total, but my mom was 33 when she married so she did her best. (Missing: house at first baby, family support.)
-My husband and I rented a two bedroom in a quadplex when we had our first. We couldn't afford daycare in the region, nor could we afford for one of us to stay home. We worked split shifts that first year so we could watch our daughter. He started working at 5 AM, I worked from 1:30 PM to 10. We were far away from either of our families. Eventually we saved up, had promotions, rented a house, had three more kids with an au pair to watch them, and bought a house in a lower cost of living state.
Getting married is a common thread, but having a house or a nearby family caretaker is not as essential as you stated. My experience has taught me it's mostly a matter of wanting a child. I don't know anyone my age who wants a single child half as much as my husband and I wanted a big family.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
I think when rightists say they want to ban Critical Race Theory, they have in mind someone like Ibram X Kendi, and to stop public school teachers from teaching his books to kids. Which is very reasonable! He's a lunatic! But he doesn't self-describe as a Critical Race Theorist, so if you banned it, he would just shrug and keep on doing what he's doing.
Let's compare to another controversial topic: Common Core Curriculum. If a Governor ran on withdrawing from Common Core in their state, they might accurately state "Common Core is taught in our state's schools." This doesn't mean that any particular teacher is passing out copies of the Common Core standard and telling students to turn to page 68. The candidate means that the schools are teaching through the lens of Common Core, with the goal of teaching the topics preferred by the common core, skipping over topics that are not covered.
When someone on the right says they want to ban Critical Race Theory, they aren't trying to imply that teachers are going into obscure legal theory. Instead, a more charitable way to understand them is that they do not want Public Schools teaching through the lens of Critical Theory (particularly as it pertains to race.)
When looking at the specific bans that have passed through state legislatures, I haven't seen "Critical Race Theory." Instead, I see bans on teaching any single race is worse than another or uniquely bad for the ills of the world. For example, the Indiana SB 386 states:
A school corporation or qualified school shall not compel or promote, as part of a course of instruction or in a curriculum or instructional program, a person to adopt, affirm, adhere to, or profess an idea that:
(1) a person or group of people of one (1) age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin are inherently superior or inferior to a person or group of people of another age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin;
(2) a person or group of people should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin of the person or group of people; or
(3) a person or group of people of one (1) age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin cannot and should not attempt to treat another person or group of people equally and without regard to age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24d ago
Off topic, but how are you leaning on the DIS fight? Do you think Trian would be an improvement? Is Blackwell Capital even a contender?
A lot of people see it as a fight against woke Disney, or unaffordable Disneyland, or whatever their current complaint is, but I don't think that's a priority for anyone in the fight.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
26d ago
This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
28d ago
conditions that affect women differently.
This makes me hopeful that it will go into hypertension/heart disease/etc stuff. As a woman, I really don't want women's health care to be Birth Control and nothing else.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
30d ago
Yes, I am in favor of more palliative care options and honest counseling. But the question isn't whether you would let the child die but rather would you let the parents kill the child? Maybe the distinction is meaningless to your ethical system, but it is not to many people's ethical systems.
For context, my parents started at a high baseline of paranoia and desire to control my cultural inputs. My mom forbade me from reading Harry Potter books. At first the kids shared a computer that was in a public area, eventually I received my own computer in my room so that my siblings and I could play online games together.
I discovered fan fiction when I finished reading Artemis Fowl The Eternity Code. I was very upset at the ending and I wanted to know if another book would be forthcoming. I found a forum discussing the books which had a link to fanfiction.net. Before I knew it, I found fan fiction for all my favorite books and shows.
I was a very timid reader. I recognized that I was under the age of 13 and wasn't supposed to be in most places on the Internet. I was very good at avoiding any stories tagged Romance. I only read stories rated K/K+ (equivalent of G/PG). I was the model child on the internet, studiously avoiding things that were beyond my comfort level for cursing, violence, and sex.
But there was something naughty about fan fiction itself. I knew about copyright in general terms. Most fan stories had a line up top saying "I'm not making money off this, don't sue me!" I wasn't 100% sure this was more legal than pirating a book. So I kept it hidden.
Eventually, my parents finally figured out I wasn't spending 2 hours a day playing solitaire on the family computer and was instead going to the same website every day. Because I kept it hidden, it was automatically suspicious.
My dad went to fanfiction.net and looked up a book series he was familiar with (Discworld.) He changed the filters to Rated M and Romance. It took about five minutes before I was forbidden from returning to the site.
I got better at hiding it and to this day I don't think they ever learned that reading fan fiction was one of my main hobbies as a teenager. I read library books fast enough that it was reasonable to assume that is what I was doing in my room.
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