OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
12d ago
I think the difference is before there is addiction, someone might be able to have 3 servings of alcohol a week (or whatever the recommended amount is), without much temptation to binge. But after someone has had an addiction to alcohol and recovered, they cannot have any serving of alcohol without a strong temptation to binge. There are alcoholics who are able to avoid alcohol entirely, but not many who are able to go from alcoholic to having a healthy moderate relationship to alcohol.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Given that the public terms of the ceasefire Hamas rejected was predicated on 1) Proof of life for the remaining hostages and 2) releasing the hostages, that is the plain reading of the tweet. Hamas was unable or unwilling to provide proof of life for any of the remaining hostages.
If Hamas agreed to release the hostages, then there would have been a ceasefire for at least six weeks, possibly forever.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo 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
3mo ago
I'm willing to bet that chart is used to diagnose hoarders, and it gives that much variation to trick people into being more comfortable saying, "I'm a six," because six is towards the middle and there are worse options. My grandparent's house had rooms that were between 5 and 10. My grandmother had Alzheimers and would purchase things for her 'baby' (all her children were grown adults) and stuff them in one of the vacated bedrooms until you couldn't enter the room, then start over again in a different bedroom.
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
20d 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
1mo ago
I know anecdotes aren't data but there are two people I know:
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A software developer at my company was on a performance plan for poor quality of work and poor communication with others. Also, the thing he excelled at and the reason he was hired, web development, was no longer a thing our company needed, so he was stuck doing something he wasn't interested in. People throughout the organization constantly complained that the tools he built were terrible. His bosses were discussing firing him for years and were about to pull the trigger.
Then he transitioned, divorced his wife, left his kids behind, and told everyone he was a woman. Suddenly she was untouchable for six months. No one dared criticize her or her work for a while. Then eventually the effect wore off and she was fired about a year after transitioning.
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Someone who transitioned as a teen who then worked odd jobs but had poor attendance due to the side effects of her medication. At one point she was my kids babysitter, but she would have to leave the baby alone for 30 minutes at a time while she processed her bowel movements. After she left us, she went to work for a major tech company as a game tester, where she was let go a month later due to poor attendance.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo 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
1mo ago
My husband bought a matching set of a wedding band and an engagement ring. He was trying to plan a "will you marry me" thing, but I accidentally called him my fiance at one point, and in response he gave me the engagement ring unceremoniously. He held onto the wedding band until the wedding itself, where rings are exchanged in the ceremony.
My engagement ring has a sapphire centered, with several small diamonds and sapphires studding the band of the engagement ring and the wedding band.
Before the wedding, around when I went dress shopping, I bought a wedding band to give my husband. It is a simple band, with no engravings or settings, that matches the band of my rings.
We're both conservative, but counter-cultural. We didn't follow the script from movies, TV shows, or internet advice columns. But we also talked about marriage and starting a family for a long time before our official engagement. We knew what the other thought was important about the engagement process and what we didn't care about at all.
But in the normal course of events:
3 rings total. The man gives the woman a ring with a large stone during the engagement. Then at the altar, the man and the woman exchange simple rings. It is possible and recommended for the man to buy a set upfront if he's confident the woman will agree to the engagement.
The man "pops the question" on a date. Usually a more fancy date than usual.
Diamonds on a gold band are still favored. Find out ahead of time if your Girl Friend has any aesthetic or ethical reasons that they do not like diamonds. You can go necklace shopping for her birthday, for example, and see how she reacts to the suggestion to get a diamond necklace. Sapphire is a very good alternative, about as durable as a diamond for all practical purposes and come in some nice colors.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
This series has a list of interesting proposals for amendments that are not policy-based but rather attempt to fix some of the areas where governance has fallen apart. For example:
- All Bills which raise or appropriate money, or which issue or limit the size of the public debt, or which fix the salaries of Officers of the Government of the United States, shall originate in the House of Representatives, and shall not be altered or amended by the Senate.
- The Senate shall vote on all such money bills within one year, voting by the Yeas and Nays, and the affirmative vote of a majority of the Senators duly chosen and sworn shall cause the bill to be passed. If, after one year, this vote has not been taken, the House may present the money bill to the President of the United States for signature, in like manner as if it had been passed by the Senate.
- These provisions may be enforced by judicial proceedings.
But even something as anodyne as this would probably become polarized once one group of people took up its cause.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
22d 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
1mo 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
4mo ago
Nobody seriously defends the superstitions of Christianity
The different bubbles that we are in fascinate me. If someone asked me, I would say that Christianity has never been more or better defended before now. In fact, I have heard a Catholic Bishop thank New Atheism for revitalizing Christian Apologetics.
The content coming out from Capturing Christianity, Jimmy Akin, and Bishop Barron is both sophisticated and unafraid to defend the foundational positions of Christianity, dive into thorny philosophical weeds, take atheistic arguments seriously, and approach topics from a scientific, rational perspective.
I can feel your disbelief across time and space, so let me give an example: In his video on "Time Travel Prayer," Jimmy Akin explains the methodology of a study where patient records from prior years were randomly assigned to a prayer group or control group. After praying for the patients in prayer group to have gotten better in the past, the researchers looked at the outcomes for the patients and found a statistically significant correlation between the prayer group and recovery.
Despite this result supporting his argument, he took the time in his show to talk about how studies can be done hundreds of times, with only the results that the researchers like getting published. And that this practice can make even random chance look statistically significant on paper. And that, though he has no evidence this happened in this case, it is important to keep in mind when papers shows weak significance around surprising things.
Sounds a lot like how a rationalist would approach a topic, no? I highly recommend checking out Jimmy Akin's Mysterious world - most of the topics are not religious in nature but they are a lot of fun. He has pretty soundly debunked the Loch Ness Monster, Loretto Staircase, and a number of odd things.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
18d ago
The difficulty with meta-studies on saturated fat vs unsaturated fat is that studies use lard or chicken fat as their example of saturated fat, when in reality those two fats are highly unsaturated. This leads to farces like "Learning and Memory Impairment in Rats Fed a High Saturated Fat Diet" They analyze the fatty acid composition of their lard and it is only 30% saturated. Despite this, the study uses lard as their Saturated fat intervention.
Specific to Hooper et al. (2020) that your linked article uses for it's argument, I am looking at their studies and am having trouble finding which showed a benefit from substituting polyunsaturated fat with saturated fats. At the most, I see some that show benefits from reducing fat entirely, which I would agree with. Reducing all fat will reduce the amount of total linoleic acid and a High Carb, low fat diet would be good from my understanding. (Low fat means < 15% calories from fat, most low fat studies have 30% of calories from fat, which is practically the normal amount of fat intake in a SAD, but that's another story.)
Hooper's results don't seem really indicative of anything. Your link extols the results of this figure, but outside the couple tails where they got the Saturated fat intake really low, there doesn't seem to be a clear correlation between increasing Sat Fat and disease. Under 9% of Sat fat only has data on a few risk events, which makes me think that there are only a handful of studies with that amount of sat fat. I'm trying to figure out if this data point reflects the studies that went with High carb, low fat.
However, the figure in question still shows that when dietary saturated fat reaches >12% of calories, markers improve! Risk of Stroke goes way down. CVD goes down.
Weight isn't studied in the Meta-analysis at all.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
It's largely a function of how much exposure the kids have gotten in public. In Summer 2020 my family had a habit of walking to an outdoor shopping center, ordering lunch, and eating it outside every Saturday. The first time, my one and two year old girls were fussy. One kept throwing her shoe, and we ended up eating cold food at home. By the return of the rainy season they knew what to expect. We were able to eat a full meal, walk around afterwards, let them run ahead a little.
A month ago my Church had a dinner function. My kids (age 10 months to 6 years) behaved pretty well for an hour, waiting for food, talking with adults who were doing the standard, "what is your age? Where do you go to school?" The baby wanted to be held, but that is to be expected. They ate dinner quickly and with utensils and without spilling an abnormal amount.
But after an hour we had to leave. The event organizers began a speech. Dessert was served. The two year old left his seat and couldn't be coaxed back on. Probably most problematic, the couple next to us commented, "your kids are very well-behaved," in all sincerety, which is a universal signal for kids to start knocking over water cups. We said goodbye and left, with everyone acknowledging that it was probably wise for us to leave and they all said they were thankful we came over to the event.
But if I took the same kids to a place they never have been before, like a theater, I don't expect them to do half as well. We would need to work our way up, first with a movie they have seen before and I can walk out of at any time, then with a clown show or something, eventually the ballet.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo 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
28d 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
3mo ago
It all seems bizarre to me. Before this incident, I had an idea that if a member of the cabinet or other high-ranking government official was unaccounted for, even for a couple hours, Secret Service would be notifying the President, intelligence agencies would be tasked with tracking them down, and we'd know by the end of the day if they were kidnapped by an adversary, fell into a sink hole, whatever.
I'm not clear yet how this scenario updates my priors. Could the Defense Secretary have been kidnapped by Russia without anyone knowing? His top staffers didn't know he was hospitalized until the next day, how did they find out and why didn't they find out sooner?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
There's really only one or two forms of intelligence, spatial and verbal. The rest is personality. So how does genius display itself when a stereotypical woman burdened with it?
She identifies BS but doesn't directly confront it. Rather she works to circumvent it and cushion the negative impacts of it.
She is thrifty and knows how to make a meal out of leftovers, leaving nothing to waste.
She is able to order the day around everyone's needs and weaknesses. If a child is too cranky to do homework after school, she makes a routine in the morning.
She binds communities together and makes a society run on gift instead of transaction.
She is able to hold dozens of people's expectations, needs, wants, and histories in her head and exploit this information to accomplish her goals.
She is a good project manager. I think society has lost something when the smartest women became project managers instead of free community builders.
The Ur-example is from Proverbs 31:
A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
She selects wool and flax
and works with eager hands.
She is like the merchant ships,
bringing her food from afar.
She gets up while it is still night;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her female servants.
She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night.
In her hand she holds the distaff
and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
She opens her arms to the poor
and extends her hands to the needy.
When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
She makes coverings for her bed;
she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
Her husband is respected at the city gate,
where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them,
and supplies the merchants with sashes.
She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done,
and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.
The SEC has proposed a new type of company, a Natural Asset Company (NAC.) As the main proponents, Intrinsic Exchange Group, state:
By taking a NAC public through an IPO, the market transaction will succeed in converting the long-understood – but to-date unpriced – value of nature into financial capital. This monetization event will generate the funding needed to manage, restore, and grow healthy ecosystems around the world and bring us closer to achieving a truly sustainable, circular economy.
While there are also criterion for farmland and mixed use lands to qualify, it sounds like they expect the public to buy shares of land to pay the owners to not develop it in certain ways. I'm not sure how popular this idea will become. Carbon credits are a thing so there might be some buy-in from the public.
Margaret Byfield at Real Clear Markets takes a dimmer view of NACs:
The best comparison would be using the air we breathe as a cryptocurrency of sorts. And, these natural assets that collectively belong to all of us would now belong to corporations run by what many would call environmental special interests.
Based on just this first sentence, I'm not sure she knows what a cryptocurrency is. Maybe she means it will be subject to a speculative bubble. However, the consequence that most concerns her is that other countries could own stakes in our Natural Parks:
Another feature of these new companies is that the land belonging to sovereign nations and private landowners alike can be subject to the control of NACs. Sovereign nations, such as the United States Government, can provide their lands to private investors, including those outside the United States. China, for example, may be able to invest in an NAC and effectively be a stakeholder in our national parks. Russia could assume control of lands currently leased to produce oil and place them off limits for future natural resource development.
Both supporters and critics seem to think that an NAC will be big deal. The IEG believes that, "The financing gap for biodiversity is estimated between US$598-824 billion per year, for climate change about US$5 trillion dollars per year, and for the transition to a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable economy, orders of magnitude larger."
But I have a hard time conceptualizing how a NAC will tap into all that wealth and power. What is the expected impact for the average Joe and for international politics? Will I no longer be able to "breathe the free air," as real life starts to resemble the Lorax movie? Will foreign countries strategically buy land and prevent Americans from accessing resources?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
If this becomes a nationwide thing, for people who want to avoid databases for privacy concerns, it could get a lot harder than just grabbing ProtonVPN and going to town. Maybe it would be adopted internationally and you'd HAVE to sign up for the database. Having such a hurdle to something that is arguably a free speech issue would be frightening.
Porn is not protected under free speech in the United States. Something that "appeals to the prurient interest" is only protected to the extent it has "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." (See Miller and Ashcroft.) "Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated... [and] representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals" are all restrictable without violating the first amendment (according to case law.) Maybe we will see a change to this after these cases are brought up to the Supreme Court. But for now, there is no First Amendment barrier to restricting access to this content.
In fact, it is already federally illegal to send a minor pornographic content over the internet. This is very rarely enforced, but it is the reason why there are those 18+ checkboxes on all your favorite websites.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
You can't escape from the problem of low-effort posting by stroking everyone's ego. (I don't think most people on this board are actually all that smart, we just have diverse interests and collectively can come up with some interesting conversations.) This is not the board that is going to enforce Liberal Orthodoxy and provide apologetics for why something on the Internet is Problematic.
If you read something that seems incorrect to you, but you are having trouble putting your finger on it, then explain what exactly (with your own words) you think is most convincing about the article and then give reasons why you think it might be wrong. (link to the article, do not copy/paste it.) Maybe it does not correlate with your personal experience. Maybe if you accept the argument you need to throw out some other component of your mental model of the world.
Or, if you cannot give a reason for it being wrong, defend it. Steelman it as best you can. That is the only way to get a strong rebuttal.
children raised by two same-sex parents have equal or better life outcomes to straight parents
What evidence have you seen that makes this a matter of "fact" to you? From my understanding, the studies that show this are about as high a quality as studies on trans-youth medicine, relying on parental-reports of well-being and slanted samples.
Meanwhile, studies on heterosexual couples show that mothers and fathers parent differently and children living with unrelated adults suffer from increased stress measured by cortisol levels.
Children living with nonrelatives, stepfathers and half-siblings (stepfather has children by the stepchild’s mother), or single parents without kin support had higher average levels of cortisol than children living with both parents, single mothers with kin support, or grandparents. A further test of this hypothesis is provided by comparison of step- and genetic children residing in the same households. Stepchildren had higher average cortisol levels than their half-siblings residing in the same household who were genetic offspring of both parents (Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, page 565.)
Parents and Stepparents even abuse and murder children in different ways:
Stepparents commit filicide at higher rates than do genetic parents. According to M. Daly and M. I. Wilson (1994), motivational differences generate differences in the methods by which stepparents and genetic parents kill a child. Using Canadian and British national-level databases, Daly and Wilson (1994) found that stepfathers were more likely than genetic fathers to commit filicide by beating and bludgeoning, arguably revealing step-parental feelings of bitterness and resentment not present to the same degree in genetic fathers. Genetic fathers, in contrast, were more likely than stepfathers to commit filicide by shooting or asphyxiation, methods which often produce a relatively quick and painless death. We sought to replicate and extend these findings using a United States national-level database of over 400,000 homicides. Results replicate those of Daly and Wilson(1994) for genetic fathers and stepfathers. In addition, we identified similar differences in the methods by which stepmothers and genetic mothers committed filicide.
Given this, my prior would be that a kid raised in a Same Sex household, where they are by default unrelated to at least one parent, would have poorer outcomes than kids raised by straight parents (where a larger percentage are raised by two related parents.) What have you seen that makes you confident otherwise?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo 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."
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:
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)
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.
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