hooser
8mo ago
The US movement to abolish the death penalty goes back to the 18th century, when multicultural considerations weren't a thing. I will leave this link to Perplexity's quick summary that has further links.
You are correct that currently people are concerned with the death penalty in part because it affects black men more than white men. (And that nobody cares that it affects white men more then Asian men or black women, etc.)
hooser
8mo ago
I'm going to disagree with Freddie on this one. Not about the two specific people he alludes to--for all I know his description is accurate there--but for his general observation of a trend in self-effacement among successful people.
Success is very, very relative, and the more successful you are in some way, the more keenly you are aware how much more successful some other people are in that same field. Unless you're literally the apex, and who knows even then. The inner view of being successful is very different from the outer view.
When I was studying math in grad school, I was keenly aware how much faster and more prepared some of my fellow grad students were. (I paid much less attention to the students who were slower and less prepared.) When I got my PhD, I was successful (in getting the PhD). And yay for me! But I also understood just how much of a near-miss that success was, and that among my cohort there were other newly-minted PhDs who had much more impressive accomplishments under their belts.
Then I got a tenure-track position at my first choice (a small selective liberal arts college). Again, yay for me! But I understood how much that depended on the very generous bump I got being a woman (which was even more pronounced back then). I got that bump in getting the interview (I know the other candidate, also a woman, which was statistically unlikely). I got the bump when I got into my PhD program--that was right around the time when all the math departments started getting serious about recruiting women. I got the bump earlier when, as an undergrad, I went to an NSA-funded summer program literally for women considering mathematics as a career, which generously funded travel to reunions every January at the Joint Math Meetings. The networking opportunities were so good that I got a network even though I suck at networking.
I could go on through other milestones, but I hope that by now I made my point. Yes, I succeeded, but I have an internal view of what that success entails, and how it compares to others in that same field. So if someone is impressed that I was a tenured math professor, my natural inclination isn't to run a victory lap.
PS. I do not have an impostor's syndrome. I figured that if I got accepted / hired / tenured and I wasn't up to stuff, that's their problem. If it didn't work out, I can always go make money.
hooser
8mo ago
Interesting Guardian article, thanks for posting! However, I don't see how it's different from using popular songs in enhanced interrogation. (I am supposing that those rooms were used similarly, which may not be the case.)
The Nikken Sekkei gymnasium evokes the moon craters, for me. I rather like it, but my one beef is that it looks too much like a rock-climbing gym without actually being one. Are the kids allowed to scale up those cratered walls?
When I think of bomb shelters, I think of metro stations in Kyiv (e.g.) because of the grade-school drills of taking shelter there in case of a nuclear attack.
I hear that US kids stopped doing hide-under-your-desk drills back in the 50's, but back in USSR we still did drills in the 80's. Kids-these-days have live-shooter drills, though, which provide much more vivid fodder for imagination.
hooser
8mo ago
Hey, kudos for rephrasing the can-architecture-be-evil post with such cool discussion questions! I love it when we can focus on concrete examples and delve into them.
If I had to choose one of the prison cells for myself, I would avoid #1 or #6, because bunk beds imply roommates. If I had to choose between those two, though: #6 is in a dilapitated condition, so likely that prison is (as the kids say these days) under-served; #1 is brand-spanking-new, so maybe that prison has more resources, so that's a plus in its favor. However, for sheer architecture, I would prefer #6 to #1 because the beds are the same low height, meaning that my roommate and I will have less conflict when choosing the beds.
Out of your other examples, I would choose #5 because it seems to have the most potential for solo exercise. I understand the point you are making in your order, but the dark reminiscent-of-midieval-dungeon coloring doesn't bother me, I actually find it soothing. (The bright coloring for #1 reminds me of hospitals, though that would depend on the smell.)
If instead I were a prison warden choosing the architecture for the inmates I will oversee, I would prefer the designs of #1, #2, or #6 because the furniture is built-in and looks fairly violence-proof. For comparison, #3 has all that loose furniture that an inmate can pick up and wield as a weapon.
As for "hostile architecture": I got a puppy. She chews on everything. To discourage her from chewing on the furniture, I spray a sour/bitter liquid on it--like hostile architecture, though less permanent (which is a drawback since I need to re-spray it). My spraying is "hostile" to my puppy's desire to chew on the furniture, but it's actually friendly in the sense that it guides her away from a behavior that causes friction with me.
hooser
8mo ago
Pew Research Center did a comprehensive poll in 2023 on spirituality (aside from religion) in US, with intention to periodically repeat it. They say that there aren't any good longitudinal surveys on the subject.
Glancing through the breakdowns on spiritual beliefs, there are indeed some gender differences once we get past the stuff of organized religion, like:
-
85% women / 77% men: "there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it"
-
on the flip side, 12% women / 21% men: "the natural world is all there is"
-
22% of Americans are "spiritual but not religious".Among those, 57% women / 42 % men.
Nowadays, whenever I meet a woman or gay man who's millennial or younger, I'm counting the seconds until they ask me "so, what's your sign?"
Could it be that you're being subtly hit on? Asking "what's your sign" is a low-stakes maybe-flirt, in my observation. It's asking something about you that you probably don't mind sharing, general time of year when you're born, and it's a starter to a conversation about you (or your interlocutor) that is mildly personal.
Unless the ladies are pulling out star charts. That would bust my hypothesis.
hooser
9mo ago
If transferring a male convict to a women's prison was made conditional on their having undergone a penectomy/vaginoplasty, I imagine the policy would be much less controversial than it currently is, as it completely negates the possibility of the male in question raping a female inmate (possibly leading to pregnancy).
I would support that. We already have various levels of security for male prisoners (minimum / maximum levels). We can adjust the women's prison to be the meek-and-weak prison. Women who demonstrate a history of attacking other inmates can be transferred to the minimum security prison.
hooser
9mo ago
And yes you have people malingering so hard they'll cut their dick off if given the option.
Maybe that's a win, in a sense. If a male with sufficient propensity for violence or anti-social behavior chooses to castrate himself, I'd be happy if that procedure was paid for with taxes. I would be OK with the additional tax burden there.
hooser
9mo ago
Is plastic surgery an essential medical procedure that a Department of Corrections must pay for, if a prisoner is sufficiently distressed about it? And if a M-to-F transwoman undergoes full reassignment surgery, will that prisoner be transferred to women's prison in due course?
A federal judge ruled the Indiana Department of Correction's ban on gender-affirming care is likely unconstitutional, and an inmate from Evansville is at the center of the lawsuit.
The prisoner (neé Jonathan Richardson, now Autumn Cordellioné) is serving a 55-year sentence for almost two decades for killing one's baby stepdaughter. The prisoner was diagnosed with gender dysphoria four years ago and put on testosterone blocker and female hormone.
While the medicine has helped, the lawsuit states Cordellioné continues to experience symptoms of gender dysphoria including depression and anxiety. [...] Cordellioné was on a wait list for evaluation for the surgery, but a new Indiana statute does not allow the DOC to provide or facilitate "sexual reassignment surgery." The ACLU [representing Cordellioné] argues in its suit that for some, the surgery is a medical necessity. In this case, Cordellioné is seeking a orchiectomy, which removes the testicles, and vaginoplasty, which is the construction of the vagina.
"By prohibiting the surgery, regardless of medical need, the statute mandates deliberate indifference to a serious medical need and therefore violates the Eighth Amendment," the suit states. "Additionally, the statute discriminates against Plaintiff and other transgender prisoners in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution."
The judge agreed, issued a preliminary injunction against the Indiana statute in question.
Here's a summary of the statute (HEA 1569, passed in 2023) that perplexity.ai provided:
It prohibits the Indiana Department of Corrections from performing certain surgical procedures for the purpose of altering the appearance or affirming an inmate's gender identity if it's inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth. Specifically, the law bans the following procedures [gives a list including castration and vaginoplasty, and in general removing healthy tissue or non-diseased body part].: The law does not define "gender" or "sex" but appears to use "sex" to refer to an individual's sex assigned at birth.
The law doesn't prohibit hormone therapy (which the prisoner got) or social transitioning:
The lawsuit states Cordellioné has lived as a woman to the "extent possible" while in a prison housing only men. She has been permitted gender-affirming items such as makeup and "form fitting clothing."
I will put aside for now how utterly annoying I find the assumption that, to be a woman, one wears makeup and form-fitting clothes. By all means fellas, go all 17th-century Versailles. My main question is this: if the Indiana Department of Corrections is required accommodate "gender-affirming" transitions, including the extreme surgeries of removing testicles and shaping the penis to look like a vagina, wouldn't the reasonable next step be to affirm the prisoner's womanhood by placing the prisoner in women's correctional facilities?
(My husband said that if he ever had to go to prison and there was an option to go to women's prison rather than men's, his only question is: what needs to be chopped off and how soon?)
Let me end on a controversial (for The Motte) note: maybe I simply shouldn't care. Cordellioné has been in prison since early 2000, which makes the person at least 40. So even if I don't see this person as a woman, this is a middle-aged male on testosterone blockers with some serious surgeries between his legs. How dangerous would he really be to the female prisoners, compared to other female prisoners already serving there?
hooser
9mo ago
some of the furries in the videos he watched were depicted as minors as young as age 16
How old were they in dog years?
(Asking for a friend...)
EDIT: This could be cougar porn
hooser
9mo ago
Soviet brutalist architecture can be very apt: consider in particular the Kyiv Crematorium (halfway down the list).
hooser
9mo ago
Imagine trying to defend yourself against 10 bullet-size drones flying towards your face with a small but lethal explosive charge at the tip.
I would use an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP). And looks like the Pentagon is on it.
hooser
9mo ago
Here's one from less than a decade ago:
The controversy began in 2013 when an IRS official admitted the agency had been aggressively scrutinizing groups with names such as "Tea Party" and "Patriots." It later emerged that liberal groups had been targeted, too, although in smaller numbers.
The IRS stepped up its scrutiny around 2010, as applications for tax-exempt status surged. Tea Party groups were organizing, and court decisions had eased the rules for tax-exempt groups to participate in politics.
[...]
A three-point declaratory judgment in the Linchpins case declares "it is wrong" to apply federal tax laws based only on an entity's name, positions on issues or political viewpoint. The judgment says the IRS must act evenhandedly, and politically based discrimination in administering the tax code "violates fundamental First Amendment rights."
One of the reasons I come to The Motte is that occasionally someone posts a link to a historical or recent event that's not at all known within my circle, but is alive and well in the memory of others. It helps me understand where people may be coming from.
hooser
9mo ago
@CrispyFriedBarnacles gave an apt example of JFK using the Fairness Doctrine to censor right-wing radio shows.
hooser
9mo ago
I would worry that IUDs would function as (literal) talismans in the minds of some women and men. "You have an IUD? Great, sex has no consequences!" Not true on a physical level (STIs/STDs) and not true on the mental/emotional/social level.
That's a good point. The consequences you list are serious, and they are carried by the person having sex (and that person's sexual partner). But if the woman has an IUD, the consequences of her sexual act won't be carried by a baby.
When I was a teen, it was generally known that one can drop by a Planned Parenthood and grab some free condoms, no questions asked. Quite a few of us availed ourselves of that option. Some didn't, but that didn't stop them from having sex. (They did ask friends for condoms sometimes.) Having a well-known option of easy-to-get free condoms didn't eliminate unprotected sex, but it reduced it.
I propose that if there was a well-known option of easy-to-get free IUD implants, then many more women would use that option, and that would greatly reduce the number of babies who must bear the consequences of their mother's sexual choices. The women who make poor life choices would still have plenty of natural consequences to deal with.
I would further propose valorizing the act carrying a baby to turn to give it up for adoption. Like in the 2007 film "Juno", for example. I honestly can't think of another popular movie, show, or book that presented giving-birth-for-adoption in a positive light, but I can think of tons that are from the child's perspective about the emotional pain of finding out you're adopted. I know some adopted kids, and they're fine. The whole mother-didn't-love-me-so-she-gave-me-up trope needs to die.
hooser
9mo ago
suggest abstinence and/or sexual discipline
Or suggest an IUD implant, those are super effective, last for a decade, and don't require sticking to a schedule (like with pills) or proper use (like with condoms). Also, IUD effectiveness leaves those others in the dust even with proper use.
Would you support making a free IUD implant to any female who wants one?
hooser
9mo ago
The only reason why he could do this was precisely because of his affiliations
The flip side was that if you do have an item not available to everyone else, that was an honest signal of great connections, and connections were the real currency.
Back in USSR, in the eighties, I have known a fashionable young woman who had a Revlon lipstick case. The actual lipstick was long gone, but Margarita "refilled" it by buying whatever lipstick she could get (she bought as many as she could of the same color) and transferring the stick into the Revlon plastic case and then shaping the end of the stick to look more like the original Revlon version. When preparing to go out, she would use the other tube; the Revlon case she kept in her purse together with the powder compact. In public, included the girls-go-to-the-bathroom-together, Margarita would pull out the compact and the Revlon and gently touch up her lips.
(The publicly overt makeup touch-up was pretty common; it's a way of signalling I-act-a-lady-so-treat-me-like-one. Not merely performance of femininity, to use the modern parlance, but also performance of class, even in a supposedly classless society.)
The USSR did not allow imports of Revlon cosmetics (or other Western brands) for general sale. Having a Revlon lipstick case meant that Margarita knew someone who knew someone who could get stuff. In the soviet economy where shortages were the norm and officially unacknowledged, that connection represented a resource far more useful than a stack of cash. Someone who can get a Revlon lipstick case is also someone who may know where to get, e.g., some beef liver for your anemic kid, or insulin for your diabetic father when the apothecaries ran out. Yes, Margarita was a very useful person to have in your network.
Back to the US present, I notice similar signals among some women who clearly don't have much income but who wear designer clothes and carry brand handbags. Like, someone who has two jobs working as a caterer and a cashier, yet has an Yves Saint Laurent handbag and wears Agolde jeans. I used to think: wow, that woman has some serious credit card debt. But now I consider the possibility that it could be a signal of resourcefulness. Like, she knows where and when some serious sales happen, or where to get barely-used brand stuff at steep discount. Unfortunately (for such a woman), the credit card debt is the more likely explanation, precisely because just about anyone can get a credit card and then buy that brand handbag and jeans.
hooser
9mo ago
hooser
9mo ago
Thank you for finding the relevant passage.
Didn't the Nazis kill plenty of Poles, Roma and Slavs, or are we now defining Holocaust to only include dead Jews?
It's a good question, which WWII civilian deaths get (or should get) counted towards Holocaust. It wouldn't count, say, a Polish man who got hit by a jeep driven a German soldier on a typical patrol route. It wouldn't count if that same Polish man got shot by that same German soldier on that same patrol route. But would it count if, instead of the patrol route, this German soldier was rounding up Polish men in the neighborhood to be transported to a concentration camp, and shot this particular Polish man who was trying to escape the sweep? Or would it only count if that concentration camp's primary purpose was extermination, and not forced labor or internment (like US internment camps for Japanese-Americans)?
Does it only count if it was done by, or on behalf of, Germans?
(I don't know, I haven't thought about it before. I do know that my family tree got substantially pruned by both the Nazis and the Soviets.)
hooser
9mo ago
Your link goes to a long wikipedia page on the life on Simon Wiesenthal. Would you please clarify where in that long article is the claim that the estimate of non-Jews killed in the Holocaust was invented without backing of evidence?
hooser
9mo ago
I think a lot of women say they want say three babies, and may even continue to say that after they have a kid, but when they faced with the mental cost of doing so, or other changes they'd have to make, they say no, even though they still might say they want three kids if asked in a stufy, but they also don't want to give up x, y, and z about their current life either.
I agree that the current TFR rate matches women's revealed preferences. I also recognize that those preferences depend on the social structures that make the choice of having children far too costly. So there are lots of women who would like to have children sooner, or have more children than they do, but who choose otherwise.
I used to work at a small liberal arts college in Southern California. Student body almost all traditional college age (18-22), 2/3 female. All lived on campus by default, with but a handful of exceptions. Many of the students planned to teach elementary school at least for some time (Teach For America or JET program), many of the female students said they planned to get married and have children themselves.
In my two decades working there, only a handful got married by the time they graduated. One gave birth towards the end of her senior year, and all the girls went ga-ga over the baby.
So here were a bunch of young women who wanted children, who biologically were in their prime for having children, who were mature and responsible enough to take care of children, but who overwhelmingly did not have them. And it's reasonable to ask: Why?
Why? Maybe because our college was not at all set up for families, or for women with children. We didn't even have a day-care on campus. The handful of women who married, and the one who gave birth, got dispensation to live off-campus and paid through the nose for rent, whereas our college gave generous means-based subsidies to students living on-campus.
Maybe it was because our bachelors program was clearly aimed for unattached young people: everyone had to take a semester abroad, impossible if you have a young child.
Maybe it was because it simply wasn't done. These were smart, responsible young people, and they have internalized the ideal pattern of college--then career-- then family.
Maybe it was because these women themselves come from parents and grand-parents that followed the same pattern, who therefore have older parents and even older grand-parents, with few siblings or cousins, and the idea that your mother, aunt, or sister looks after your toddler while you finish your education and start your career is no longer a viable option.
(As an aside: ever since I was fifteen, I worked hard to hide hangovers from my mom. She got way too excited whenever I threw up in the morning. Really wanted those grandchildren.)
(As a second aside: yes, I shoplifted booze. My older over-18-but-under-21 friends assured me that it's better that I do it rather than them, because at worst I would have juvenile detention.)
My point is that revealed preferences of women regarding children depend on the institutions that those women inhabit, and currently those institutions make it very costly for young, smart, responsible women to have their desired children during their peak fertile years, even though those women really want to have children.
hooser
9mo ago
What's 4H, by the way?
4-H is a youth organization, very popular in rural US. They promote animal husbandry in particular. I go to the local 4-H Fair, where the kids show off their goats, chickens and such in very friendly competitions. Right after the fair, our local supermarket has 4-H Fair beef and lamb.
The children raise animals as food, not pets. There was quite a culture war controversy last year when a California girl put her goat up for auction in a 4-H Fair and then refused to give it up to the bidder.
hooser
10mo ago
my vote never counts in these elections anyway, and doubly so in Massachusetts
If you are in a solidly Blue/Red state and not excited for either of the major party candidate, you can make your vote count by voting for a third party candidate. It gives that party greater clout to influence the platforms of the major parties. Plus, if their candidate gets more than 5% of the national vote, that party gets access to some federal funds for the next election.
hooser
10mo ago
...convert umbrellas or walking sticks into effective melee weapons by attaching a sharp point to them.
Or maybe bring back the shillelagh, an Irish traditional walking stick / bludgeon weapon.
hooser
10mo ago
She could choose not to have sex.
That's exactly what's been happening: the trend among young people is to have sex less. It's even possible that the political divergence between young men and women will contribute to this trend.
While I, of course, support adoption infinitely over abortion, we have to face facts and realize that foster systems and adoption have statistically significant higher rates of abuse etc. It takes a lot of love and effort to raise a child, it takes even more to raise someone else's child.
I agree that the ideal is for both parents to raise a wanted child. In case of an unwanted pregnancy, the best outcome is for it to somehow become wanted.
Healthy babies are in high demand for adoption, and don't last in the foster system. Normalizing the option of carrying the pregnancy to term and then giving the baby up for adoption not only would reduce numbers of abortion but would help satisfy this demand. I doubt that adopted healthy babies are more at risk of mistreatment than babies who stay with their mother, and a quick online check bears that out.
The other advantage of normalizing giving-baby-up-for-adoption option is that a woman goes through massive biological changes during pregnancy which increase the likelihood of her wanting to keep the baby after all. That's the unwanted-pregnancy-becomes-wanted-baby scenario.
I love hearing the trivialities, you tell them well and they provide a humanizing dimension to the rest of your post. And this particular post is all about the challenges people have in humanizing their professional interactions, so very apropos.
I see that HR gets little love here, so I will defend them. The purpose of HR is to protect the company from the heat of human friction (metaphorically speaking). That means defusing interpersonal conflict when it may get out of hand, not escalating it.
For the most part, employees deal with normal interpersonal conflicts themselves, as people do. But occasionally someone can't, and it helps to have a clear process an employee can turn to. That's what a complaint to HR does, it starts this process. Someone from HR then hears that employee out, then thanks the employee for bringing the matter to HR's attention and assures her that the matter is handled. (The manner of that handling is confidential, but they'll assure her it's appropriate and in line with the company policy.)
HR does not burn a valuable manager over one temp worker's complaint for what she sees as a deviation from professional behavior.
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