jericho
11mo ago
When I see people arguing for expansion of the death penalty to (child) rapists, this is often my main concern- if the penalty is already death, it increases incentives to go ahead and kill the victim before they become a witness.
Please elaborate. It seems to be limited to only the expansion of using the most severe allowable punishment (so would also be the case if the punishment for both murder and child rape were life without parole, but would not apply if the punishment for child rape were death but the punishment for murder was torture then death) for things less than murder.
One of the reasons why ancient legal codes where execution was a common punishment allowed for various different methods of execution, allowed for punishments beyond execution (such as also killing one's family, seizing lands and titles) etc.
Edit: To carry on the Qin example, if the penalty for being late was death but the penalty for treason was death and seizure of all your family's assets, there would still be incentive to not commit treason.
jericho
11mo ago
Thank you for elaborating, that makes more sense.
Maybe I'm being overly critical because it runs counter to my own views on justice. Not sure, to be honest.
Fair, even I have a point where I say "to hell with the utilitarian calculus, this must be punished harshly" (i.e even if somehow just making murder legal provided a drastic reduction in what we would currently call murders I still wouldn't be able to stomach such a state of affairs).
My only pushback would be that I do not consider this particular point arbitrary, because while for the rest
As far as I can see, a child rapist may as well escalate to child murder in order to eliminate a witness that may lead to his lifelong imprisonment. Or to his less long imprisonment. Or to his public flogging. Or to his being fined.
there is still possibility of a downside to committing another crime to reduce the chances of being caught for the first- yes, maybe they'll opt to take their chances with the death penalty to reduce their chances of life imprisonment or any imprisonment etc, but once the punishments are equal it is ALWAYS "correct" to commit any additional crimes that reduce the chance of being caught by any amount.
Looking at this graph, I could see where concerns about AIDS spreading from things other than men having sex with men would be high in the early 90's, though obviously men having sex with men would still be the main concern.
Between the slope on that graph at the time and the fact that this would be pre-HAART (which led to a dramatic decline in the death rate from AIDS) I think it was likely out of genuine, if perhaps out of proportion to the risks, concern.
Wrote below on some factors in the early 90s, but for my experience in the early 2000s your story sounds more plausible. We didn't linger especially on HIV/AIDS, other than still treating it as a death sentence, but we did also go over the worst case scenarios for every single STD as well as worst case scenarios for birth.
For the birth part, I do wonder if they really thought that part through? It certainly made the girls in my class not want to get teen pregnant, but it wasn't like the worst case scenarios they highlighted applied only to teens and I'm sure it turned at least a few off having children altogether, which I very much doubt was the goal of most abstinence-only groups.
Edit: I'm sure there's a longer post that could be made on how much of the propaganda spread to bring down teen pregnancy rates was too broad and actually served to make pregnancy and childrearing appear unappealing in a general sense.
Unfortunately for women who aspire to greatness, or even just happiness and contentment, their higher agreeableness and neuroticism causes them to cave to their haters more often than they reach escape velocity from the crab bucket.
I think this might be closer to the key. I'll (partially) be your internet rando with a penis, I'm not especially fit but I exercise and am not overweight and often get shit from my slightly to very overweight male co-workers for not eating or drinking more.
However, I also don't put much weight on what they say about such things so it has never become an issue.
I could definitely see someone who did care what they thought being negatively impacted, to your point.
Edit: FWIW, never had that issue about weight with male peers as a kid and I never encountered crab bucket mentality about academics either, though some of my nerdy male friends who went to worse schools have mentioned getting shit for being in AP classes. They also were not strongly impacted by such statements.
Interesting, in the Midwest I'd have a gigantic false positive rate if I assumed every guy (even if I just limited it to short + scrawny guys) who dressed like that was a trans male.
I could definitely see how this would stand out more some place like San Francisco where there are both less cis males dressing that way and way more trans males than in the Midwest.
Edit: Realized I misunderstood and you meant trans male therefore high chance of these appearance choices and not these appearance choices therefore high chance of trans male.
FWIW, my intuition would be that 1st generation legal immigrants are probably MORE assimilated than 1st generation immigrants in the early 1900s due to higher requirements for entry, but it does seem that young 2nd generation immigrants are much less pushed to assimilate / are less interested in assimilating.
I'll add the caveat that this impression is mostly from East Asian and African immigrant families I've interacted with in the US- the parents generally seem to want to emphasize their Americanness while their children seem to want to emphasize what makes them different, to the extent that quite a few of them resent their parents for trying to raise them as American rather than keeping up cultural traditions/keeping them fluent in their parents' native tongue.
jericho
10mo ago
What would your metric for this be? As far as I can tell, contemporary immigrants are assimilating just as fast or faster than historically as measured by things like language or intermarriage rates (e.g. my German ancestors moved to Iowa in the 1850s and didn't stop speaking German until WWI killed off German American subculture).
It seems like the US census information for bilingualism etc for 2nd gen immigrants doesn't start until 1940 (only for either 1st gen or those unable to speak English before that), which is of course after many of the European immigrant groups of the late 1800s and early 1900s had pretty well assimilated.
That is to say while this was not revealed to me in a dream, take this as basically my unsupported impressions from 1st gen immigrants vs 2nd gen immigrants in the 16-35 age range vs 2nd gen immigrants in the 50-80 age range (which of course also opens up the possibility that the older group are simply more assimilated due to age rather than anything generational) rather than any sort of rigorous analysis.
jericho
10mo ago
HBO's Rome, chock full of absolutely stellar performances (James Purefoy's Marc Antony is perhaps my favorite performance across all of television) and while the historicity leaves quite a bit to be desired it does such a fantastic job at creating a sense of time and place.
Other favorite would definitely be The Expanse, quality is not even across the run (first 3 episodes are unfortunately among the weakest which can put people off), but it reaches some outstanding heights in seasons 2 and 3 especially. Highly recommended to anyone who likes Sci-Fi.
jericho
10mo ago
Folks have already sung the praises of my heavy hitters (glad to see FFT getting so much love), so I'll add:
Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
Skyrim VR (modded, at least lightly)
Skyrim falls down in a lot of places compared to its predecessors in terms of story, characters, RPG mechanics, etc. Where it shines is its beautiful open world filled with interesting locations. And dear Lord is it a marvel to explore that world and its dungeons in VR. Unfortunately Skyrim VR out of the box is...lacking as a VR game, but with 3 mods (VRIK, HIGGS, PLANCK) and graphical mods to taste for textures and lighting, it gets there.
Fallout 4 has similar highs and lows to Skyrim so should also benefit from VR, but unfortunately I have been told that while Skyrim VR out of the box is barebones but functional, Fallout 4 VR is a bit of a mess.
jericho
10mo ago
Yeah, I actually bounced off the series when I first discovered it, went back into it due to the recommendation of someone who I trust in such matters and almost gave up again before I got to the good stuff.
Learning that the book series it was based off was itself loosely based off someone running a RPG on a web forum made a lot of the early installment weirdness suddenly make sense to me.
jericho
10mo ago
God I wish it wasn't cancelled.
I managed to completely forget about the movie being in production until a few weeks ago and am now trying to avoid hopping on the hype train for the next ~month.
jericho
10mo ago
May be worth noting the difference is almost entirely due to a growth in the bisexual category.
jericho
10mo ago
My concern is activists who want people, including kids, to be self-critical of their identity characteristics in a social, cultural and political fashion.
Self-deconstruction is inherently very unhealthy. It's not something that should be encouraged in any way, shape or form.
Would you mind expanding on this with examples of what you mean, especially any examples outside of trans stuff?
I think you're getting at something interesting here but I'm not fully understanding it.
jericho
10mo ago
Just wanted to say thanks to you and @DTulpa because this 3 comment chain did a better job at communicating my frustrations with the use of the term groomer while also communicating the frustrations of those who use the term groomer than basically the whole of the interactions I've seen on the Internet since the term gained popularity in the culture war.
I do like how people here on TheMotte will actually come out and say it when what they care about is that they don't think queer culture should be normalized and explain their reasons. I wish the greater culture war would focus more on object level concerns.
This is why I'm so fond of this place, I love when it actually lives up to its name.
jericho
10mo ago
I would genuinely be interested in hearing a similar play by play for the trip back at the end of the day.
jericho
10mo ago
Thank you for elaborating!
need "guardrails" to prevent vulnerable internalizers from taking these messages too seriously and personally.
Yes, absolutely. On the more serious side, this brings to mind Scott Aaronson's comment quoted in Untitled, on the less serious side of this David Mitchell bit.
Personally, to be blunt, I don't think there's much interest in actually putting up said guardrails.
Unfortunately I believe you're right. To the extent the trade off is even acknowledged (and it is generally treated as though it does not exist), it is acknowledged as being worthwhile.
jericho
10mo ago
While I played a bit of Minecraft early on, it was VERY early on, pre-nether.
During the summer of 2020 many of my friends and family, including those who hadn't played many video games in years, were stuck inside more for obvious reasons. So one of my friends spun up a Minecraft server for everyone to play on.
Between the new stuff added to the game in my long absence, the fresh world and people playing and building stuff at all hours (between furloughs, different shifts and different time zones) I was constantly discovering new things while playing and was often sharing that experience with people who I had not talked to as much as I'd have liked in recent years due to diverging paths in life.
Died down over time, once again for obvious reasons, but for a month or two it recaptured the feeling of playing games with friends back in elementary.
Didn't make up for all the stuff we couldn't do, but it definitely helped take the edge off.
I can't speak to the church experiences of others- but for an American protestant growing up in the 90s and 2000s, when talking about sin and temptation and all that during services, the focus was definitely:
The Flesh >>>> The Devil >> The World
I wonder to what extent people jumping to thinking Lewis was talking about the flesh was due to a "horses, not zebras" assumption based on the sermons they heard growing up?
Edit: I do think your assessment that Lewis is in fact talking about Susan being lured away by the temptations of the world rather than the flesh is correct.
jericho
9mo ago
If you do that effort post, I'll be interested to hear what you think of DS9. Basically all the Star Trek fans I know have low opinions of the more recent stuff, but DS9 seems fairly divisive for the exact optimism reasons you're talking about.
jericho
9mo ago
I believe the kid in Up is actually Asian (at least, I and others read his appearance as Asian and the character's voice actor is Asian).
There were black British characters in Hamilton (see here where the British soldier is a black woman). Also, the primary antagonist is Aaron Burr, not King George III, played by a black man. Unless by "all the villain characters" you literally mean just King George III, which makes me confused on the plural.
When being strangled to death, continued flailing is more a sign of not being dead/unconscious yet than of still being a threat.
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