OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
I love America. I love George Washington. I love Thomas Jefferson. I love Betsy Ross. I love our stupid national anthem with notes that most people can't reach. I love the Constitution, and the Liberty Bell, and our National Parks. I love the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers. I love our aircraft carriers and our war planes. I love the Grand Canyon and the Bald Eagle. I love supermarkets and farmer's markets. I love our long and fraught journey to secure each citizen the greatest freedoms enjoyed by man on Earth.
I love them in the same way I love my parents, who I didn't choose and aren't necessarily the best, but they raised me as best as they were able. To say that one country is the same as another to me would be to say that one random couple is the same as my parents to me.
Is this something only people raised in America feel, or does anyone else feel that way about their homeland?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
I've mentioned on here a few times that our family has an Au Pair and I work from home most days. This happy arrangement is going to come to an end and I'm of mixed feelings.
First, for those who don't know, there is a program in the State Department that is designed to connect families with young women across the world who would be interested in taking care of children in exchange for living in America for a year. The host family has to provide a separate room and pay a weekly stipend. It's a "cultural program." As part of it they are supposed to take a couple college courses every year. There is a lot of abuse, but I pay my Au Pair more than the minimum, don't ask her to do more than just keep the kids alive, and buy her whatever she asks for that seems reasonable.
When interviewing Au Pairs (it's a lot like an online dating service, with profile pages and matches) I always asked, "What are you hoping to get out of becoming an Au Pair? What benefit are you looking for?" The answer was almost always, "More experience speaking English." This seems reasonable, as a good American accent probably gives people a huge advantage in business.
Anyways, the State Department is reviewing the Au Pair program, and has proposed a series of rules that will break it for most families. I don't want to count every toothbrush I buy her, or make sure that she only eats $10.88 worth of food every day. Regardless of what is financially feasible, I'm not going to do it. There's just no way to live with someone in your house, monitor them to this extent, and then still trust them with your kids.
But then the question turns to, "Who is going to watch my kids?" I have four kids, ranging from 10 months to 6 years. There is a preschool we send one child to for 1/2 day socialization, and she likes it well enough. I could send the others to their Summer Camp. But the 10 month old would be too young, and daycare for a 1 year old is already booked up for a year.
Then there's the reality that I'm not giving my kids the attention I want to. Work takes over too much. I might technically be off work at 4:30, but someone puts a meeting on my calendar at 5, or I really need to finish these three five emails, and before I know it it's Dinner Time. I have all these worksheets I want to do with my two oldest and practice penmanship (which they really struggle with.) I want to take my kids outside to play. I want to go for walks. But I also want to be held in esteem at work. As long as work is there, I will put off my kids because kids can wait but work can't. But that is a LIE. Kids grow up, and toil is forever.
I don't want to send them off to a church preschool from 7 to 5, and then pick them up, feed them dinner, do homework, and kiss them good night. That's not how I was raised. That's not what I want for my family.
So I will likely become a stay at home Mom, once my Au Pair's contract ends. I'm looking forward to taking my kids to parks, splash pads, libraries, festivals, and other public areas around my city. My city is actually really family friendly. I know it is hard work. I took half a year off work when I had my second child. I know it can be isolating. But I have the example of my mother, who make lots of mom friends and seemed to have a blast when my siblings and I were young. Thinking about making this change fills me with excitement and hope.
The two downsides - and they are huge - is money and the Future. Money is easy enough to explain - we will have less of it. My husband makes enough for us to live on, if we had no debt we would have a good amount left over after all the mandatory bills (food, mortgage, utilities, etc.) Unfortunately, we have debt. There are some student loans that are almost paid off and we are in a payment plan with the children's hospital after three of my children were hospitalized for a cumulative of 27 days, 10 of which were in the ICU. With this debt, we are still able to make due, and live a good quality of life, but we would need to be careful to limit things like how much meat we buy, how many clothes we get the kids, etc. Once the debt is paid off in a couple years, it's all fine. But we will have to live frugally for a couple years, or risk falling into more debt.
The Future one is harder to explain, but I can't stay home with the kids forever. By the time the youngest is 10, if not sooner, I need to go back into the labor force. I think that is where my mother messed up. She put her foot down on her identity as a homemaker, ended up not doing much during the school day, driving us around to sports in the afternoon (until I was able to drive, and then she had even less to do.) The cognitive decline you see retirees experience, she seemed to get when she was 50. She kept the public areas of the house clean, cooked dinner (badly), and otherwise watched Masterpiece Theater. Shortly after I graduated college, my parents divorced. Now she is a real estate agent with no sales and sometimes manages to convince her friends to pay above market rates to clean their house.
I see a few possibilities. I have a Master's degree, and can probably get a certification and find work as a school teacher once the children are in school. I don't have any particular interest in this. I think of schools as enemy territory, so to speak. It would be nice if I could instead home school my kids (I'm not going to leap straight into that, but it's a possibility now.) Maybe I could teach at a Catholic School. The benefit of being a school teacher is obvious, I would be off work most of the same days that my children would be.
The other idea I'm entertaining is to start my own business. I've been thinking up a small catalog of things I could crochet. Things that could only be done by hand, look unique, and would take me less than two hours a piece. I could buy a stamping kit for 1k and sell personalized jewelry. I could lean into the Mommy space, and sell "calming jars" and other kid trinkets.
The idea would be to do something for a few hours a week, just enough to keep a storefront and a tax ID. If I actually turn a small profit I can use to buy a zoo membership or something, that would be a bonus. As the kids get bigger, I can spend more time on it, eventually either actually making it a full time job, or pivoting back into being a wage worker. It seems like it will be easier for me to get hired if I can say I started a small business, rather than I took time off work to care for small kids.
I'm open to any and all suggestions.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
I think we're about 3-5 years out from a "the Science changed, idiot" with a side helping of blaming repressive conservative gender roles for the prevalence of transition between 2014-2025. 40 years from now kids will learn how the election of Republican Donald Trump coincided with a large surge in transitions, so obviously it was a Republican phenomenon. Some internet pedants will conduct statistical analysis of congresspeople to demonstrate that the evidence is more blurry.
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.
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
17d 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
2mo ago
Also isn't this problem solved if people just... Not cede territory to the crazy. How is the evaporative cooling so strong here?
Seattle adjusted for Covid hard. So for two months, it was immoral to walk around outside. And then for two years it became immoral to walk around outside without a mask. And going for a walk with a mask gets uncomfortable. So by the time people felt like they could go outside again, the streets were already, percentage-wise, more homeless than not.
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.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
I don't think what you are saying contradicts each other. A la "The Last Psychiatrist," having incorrect beliefs and assumptions about your own skills and relationship with the world is what craters self esteem. Fewer kids testing themselves on dangerous playground equipment created a rise in anxiety disorders and people who cannot perform risk management.
No one knows what Liriope and Cephisus did, but whatever they did, it worked: he didn't even recognize his own reflection. That's a man who doesn't know himself. That's a man who never had to look at himself from the outside.
How do you make a child know himself? You surround him with mirrors. "This is what everyone else sees when you do what you do. This is who everyone thinks you are."
You cause him to be tested: this is the kind of person you are, you are good at this but not that. This other person is better than you at this, but not better than you at that. These are the limits by which you are defined. Narcissus was never allowed to meet real danger, glory, struggle, honor, success, failure; only artificial versions manipulated by his parents. He was never allowed to ask, "am I a coward? Am I a fool?" To ensure his boring longevity his parents wouldn't have wanted a definite answer in either direction.
I would expect such a person to have very low self esteem once they are grown.
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
2mo ago
I mean law schools do
Maybe I don't want to ideologically concede all future lawyers (who also tend to become future lawmakers and judges). I think society as a whole suffers from this DEI bottleneck, even if some people for now can get decent jobs as nurses or plumbers from going to a community college.
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
8mo ago
My mom visited my family recently and kept commenting on how busy I was, while I ran around trying to take care of my four kids (one a infant) while on maternity leave. She spent most of the time on the couch or "cleaning up" (really, messing up the careful system we have to make sure everything gets cleaned up.) She spent almost no time with the kids, let alone in a way that would have taken them off my hands. She was mostly determined to take posed photos of the kids, culminating a very staged attempt at getting a video of her reading a book to all the kids, keeping two of them up past their bed times. I don't think she learned anything from the experience, though the video is hard to watch with all the crying from the younger two.
I had an Au Pair, but she left the weekend before my mom showed up. It was a month early, and we would then have a gap between Au Pairs, but we didn't question her decision to leave too much. A week before she left, the Au Pair started asking me about my mom's visit. It turns out she had been under the impression that my Mom was coming over to take care of my kids, because that's what happened in her country when a new baby was born. I could only laugh.
My mom had me when she was 33. She has struggled with her weight since bearing kids and has low energy, was diagnosed with something wrong with her thyroid at some point. Playing with the kids would be hard for her on a physical level. I don't think she even has the strength to carry the 2 year old.
There are a lot of factors in lower fertility. Increased maternal age has effects for multiple generations, overall decline of health in the older population means less help to the next generation of mothers.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9mo ago
Reminds me of the MJ-12 documents. As Skeptoid theorized:
During the early days of the cold war, the Air Force became concerned that such UFO groups might conceivably collect actual sensitive information about classified Air Force capabilities. It stood to reason that Soviet spies — who were no dummies — might reasonably attempt to infiltrate such groups. It was perfectly plausible that the UFO groups on stakeout formed a pipeline of classified information to Soviet spies. And so in an ironic twist, the UFO groups, who intended to support national security by revealing what they thought was an alien threat, actually became the national security threat themselves.
...
How was the Air Force to deal with this potential leak? They could have arrested the UFO guys, but among the various types of fallout that would create was the fact that such arrests would certify to any Soviet spies that the information was indeed valuable. Another way to deal with it was with disinformation, to discredit the UFO groups by persuading them that their observations did indeed pertain to aliens, and not to actual Air Force capabilities. Soviet spies were much less likely to take interest in claims of flying saucers than they were in film of American F-117A aircraft. So the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) developed a new expertise: Feeding made-up disinformation about aliens and UFOs to the UFO enthusiasts, indicating that the United States did indeed have deep relationships with aliens. In some cases, this information — which was exactly what the UFO groups salivated for — was actually provided in exchange for information about the UFO groups' movements and what data they may have collected.
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
11mo ago
The day after the Daily Wire made some sort of indication they were going to develop kids programming, I bought an annual membership. I've only watched a DW movie/show a couple times since then, but I've renewed the membership once already. It doesn't matter that they don't even have any kids programming yet, I want to encourage them to make it.
Angel Studios has three kids shows, one for the preschool age and two that are probably TV-Y7. They aren't religious in nature, one teaches civics from a right wing stance, but the other two are non-political. They just don't include anything that would have been objectionable to a Republican 20 years ago. These shows are free to watch, but new episodes are crowdsourced (so if you want to see what happens next, pay up!)
There aren't many options, but the Right is starting to wage the culture war, in the sense of changing the culture kids are exposed to.
Disney plus includes shows and movies from more than 15 years ago. If a parent controls the remote, they can show their kids more wholesome programming. There's even ways to block specific shows in the parental controls. A truly dedicated culture warring parent could probably manually block all new shows every morning.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Why is Eisenhower asking a Catholic woman? Eh, weirder things happen in wartime.
There are a few criteria for waging a just war according to Catholic doctrine:
- The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain.
- All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
- There must be serious prospects of success.
- The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
I think your scenario takes for granted #1 and #2. The historical record bears out #3, but it could be an interesting exercise to determine if this could have been known at the time. Your question is getting to the heart of #4.
Then I look at the doctrine of Double Effect. When an action produces both a negative and a positive effect, it is permitted if:
- The good effect outweighs the bad effect.
- The action is undertaken with the intention of producing the good effect, not the bad effect.
- The bad effect is not the direct cause of the good effect.
Given this, the most simple answer to "How many French civilian deaths are tolerable to ensure the success of Operation Overlord?" is one less than the number of lives saved by the success of Operation Overload, as long as the rules of Double Effect are applied. Of course, we don't live in a counterfactual world where we know for certain how many people would have died had we not acted. We should be careful and allow for our knowledge being imprecise.
There would be some actions that could not be tolerated - we could not attack civilians directly in the hope that it would redirect medical supplies from the military and therefore weaken the military. This would violate the "bad effect is not the direct cause of the good effect" clause. But overall, as long as we are attacking legitimate military targets for the sake of attacking legitimate military targets, and we are reasonably certain that each attack will save more lives than cause civilian deaths, it is morally permissible.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10mo ago
Taken individually, no single law in any state completely strips parents’ rights over the care and mental health treatment of their troubled minor teens. But pieced together, laws in California, Oregon, and Washington place troubled minor teens as young as 13 in the driver’s seat when it comes to their own mental health care—including “gender affirming” care—and renders parents powerless to stop them.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/when-the-state-comes-for-your-kids
Article presents an example of a 14 year old checking into a youth center and parents unable to retrieve them despite no cps investigation.
One mother I spoke with had had Child Protective Services called on her by her own therapist, after she had explained in therapy why she had chosen not to “affirm” her young trans-identified teen daughter. In that instance, the mom said, the social worker accepted the mother’s explanation that this did not constitute abuse. She counts herself lucky.
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.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10mo ago
I have seen trans women refer to their sexual organs as female penises, usually in the context of a spa serving female only treatment. The logic being, they are a woman, therefore female, therefore any sexual organs they possess are female, regardless of their function. But you will have to take my word for what it's worth because I usually see it on Reddit and Tumblr, two sites with terrible search.
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
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
Eh, Cornell is ok. Do you know what Cornell Engineering students and MIT students have in common?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
"But you said you are engaging in prayer, which is the offense," the officer responded.
"Silent prayer," she responded.
"No, but you were still engaging in prayer," he said. "It is an offense,"
I bake my neighbors cookies and so far one of my neighbors has even returned the plate (along with a bottle of wine.)
Two doors down there is a single dad with two kids around the same age as mine. Across the street is a couple with three kids, slightly older. Next door on one side is a retiree who lost her cat when she moved in. On the other side is another family with small kids.
I have a play structure in my backyard which makes my house a good place to invite kids over. Excuses are easy to find if I'm willing to put in the effort.
Suburbia can be a soulless hell. I need to cross a highway to get to any commercial space - restaurant, grocery store, other kind of shop. But I know right off the bat that most of my neighbors are homeowners, have jobs that can pay for houses and cars, have kids and the responsibilities that go with that, can follow the most basic rules of the HOA (I don't like there is an HOA, but recognize it as a filter.) As a baseline they are more trustworthy than anyone I pass on the street. I am putting in the work to cultivate those relationships but I believe it is worthwhile.
I remember growing up in suburbia, I rode my bike in the neighborhood with the other kids. I would go to other kids' homes and knock on their front door and ask, "Is Heather home?" I would kick the ball in my backyard over the fence and have to go to the street one over and knock on a stranger's door and ask if I could retrieve my ball. My parent's mostly watched me through the kitchen window - I had a great deal of independence even by the time I was five years old.
My mom met with friends almost every day, either at a McDonalds with a play place, a park, or someone's home.
The change, as far as I perceive it, happened around 9/11. Same neighborhood, same kids, same families, but people stopped visiting as much. I wasn't allowed to go out by myself as much. A layer of optimism was stripped away.
I guess that's why I think it is mostly an attitude thing, not anything inherent to the suburbs. And why I stubbornly believe I can create a community if I keep pressing my neighbors to interact with me.
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