netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
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User ID: 647
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
10hr ago
Which reminds me: I hope you’ve read the latest Bay Area House Party.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
10hr ago
Book 2 of The Expanse. Probably a third of the way through.
There’s a certain predictability to the side characters, where you can kind of sum them up in one phrase. Distraught biologist father. Traumatized but vengeful marine. Unassuming career bureaucrat.
By taking certain character beats and setting details for granted, it implies what I want to label a conservative worldview. Of course the bureaucrats hold all the real power. Of course they push the authentic men and women, the soldiers and pilots, around like chess pieces, then get surprised when they act out. Of course the unassuming grandma among them is the most effective, and of course she blames her male colleagues for letting testosterone rule their decisions. There’s a single paragraph about how the fertility crisis didn’t survive contact with universal basic income. This is kinda plot relevant but also reveals a lot about the author.
Maybe I’m just calling it conservative because it reminds me of Tom Clancy. People show up, perform their story-function, and leave. Sometimes they’ll expound a bit of background. If they’re heroic, they’ll be demonstrably skilled at their area of expertise, and they’ll probably get to show moral or technical superiority over an outsider. If villainous, they’re played completely differently. Still competent in a scary way, only failing if a protagonist is around.
I can’t exactly say this is a bad thing. I kept rolling my eyes for the first few chapters, but by this point, I’m committed. Axiomatic worldbuilding is good. Leaning on tropes makes the story run smoothly. Above all, the Expanse benefits from the strength of its main cast, who embody the space-opera traditions.
Good fun. 7/10 so far. We’ll see if it holds up.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
12hr ago
It’s funny. I’d heard that his other books, especially Iron Council, were absurdly socialist, but I didn’t get that from PSS at all. Class consciousness didn’t seem like it would have helped anybody. The best-laid plans of birds and men never survive contact with cryptids.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
13hr ago
You’re telling me that having a low Epstein number isn’t all that exclusive a club?
These files follow the same statistical rules as Scott’s classic post about Atlantis. The central example of “links to Epstein” is somebody who went to his creepy island and spent time with some teenage girls. The more you expand that definition, the more people are going to fit into it, but the less meaningful it gets. Marrying someone who once pitched him a business opportunity is a much wider circle.
I think your last point is right. This is at the intersection of several cultural bubbles, which elevates it from trivial to gossip-worthy. Don’t draw too many conclusions from it, you know?
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
13hr ago
Standard fantasy. One ubermensch, possibly Chosen by fate or the gods, who will unite the fractured polities and just do things.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
13hr ago
I agree that ProPublica falls somewhere between “biased” and “disingenuous,” and I tried not to rely on their testimonials. It is unfortunately difficult to find reporting which doesn’t trace back to those articles.
How would you interpret the Barnica case? Did the elevated risk of sepsis, which would then qualify as life-threatening, itself qualify as life-threatening? Does preventing the infection make the abortion unnecessary? Rov_Scam described it as
If option A means potential prosecution and option B means a possible hike in malpractice insurance premiums, option B wins every time.
Now, I do think it’s reasonable to ask what happened to the potential prosecutions. I wasn’t able to find anything other than Texas v. Rojas, which as you noted has gone quite poorly for the state. The fact that it took nearly 3 years between Dobbs and those charges suggests that either Texas isn’t really willing to go after providers or that illegal abortions are in fact hard to find. This is compatible with a strong chilling effect, but it’s not good evidence for it.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
15hr ago
What makes you say that?
Most abortions are performed before 14 weeks. In 2021, there were about 4,000 performed at or after 21 weeks. See table 10 at the end of this report. They tail off fast, too. The number of abortions after the second trimester, let alone right up to birth, has to be really low.
To be clear, I do think abortions past the point of viability are immoral. I do recognize that laws like MA’s will allow more of those. What I’m trying to say is that allowance is unlikely to be used. Later abortions are more traumatic, more dangerous, more expensive. They are already heavily disincentivized at 20 weeks. If you have reason to believe otherwise, please tell me!
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
1d ago
I kind of wish I'd dropped it. It tries to come together into something to make the last few hundred pages worth it, but that something is just more misery.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
1d ago
I’ve heard some pretty good things about a hit of heroin.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
2d ago
Which ones do you have in mind?
- Crain wasn't ambiguous. The law clearly required a recorded ultrasound, and the first wasn't saved, so they went back for a second.
- Barnica was similar. Since the delayed stillbirth wasn't guaranteed to kill her, they had to wait until the heartbeat stopped.
- Cox was ambiguous. Nobody involved could figure out if they were going to face prosecution. I'm not even sure if Paxton knew what he'd do, which is why he warned the doctors through Twitter.
- Ngumezi I hadn't even heard about. She died after being prescribed a miscarriage drug rather than a faster but politically-fraught D&C. Note that the doctor responsible has been disciplined, but still practices.
- There are apparently others in Ngumezi's situation who haven't received tearful ProPublica coverage. Did I miss something high-profile?
The state has made it clear that anything which looks like an abortion will receive extra scrutiny and political pressure, legal or not. Doctors have responded by shying away from the procedures which are most offensive to lawmakers. This is an obvious chilling effect!
@The_Nybbler will tell you that all of these were unambiguous, that the doctors responsible are immoral cowards, or worse, leftists, and that obviously the state would never make life difficult for an innocent man. I think, in my reasonable judgment, that he's full of shit.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
Another story: after my grandmother passed, we found a little black notebook from her mother describing a trip from Illinois down to Florida in the late 30s or maybe the 40s. It was more or less the first time she’d traveled. She noted every time they had to stop for gas, the prices, and whether my great-grandfather had to top off the oil. Apparently that was every few stops. Beautiful handwriting, too. Point is, I could see a vast expansion in mobility as automobile and road coverage took off.
I need to see if I can find it again.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
My sister went to one out in the New Mexico desert that did.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
Oh, man. You’re one of yesterday’s lucky 10,000.
What’s your background with music? Have you tried a guitar or something before? Edit: I see your comment below. Yeah, I think the string spacing masks the structure. At least it does for me. But I learned on a single-note-at-a-time wind instrument.
And did he talk about modes, or the minor scale??
Learning about this stuff is so cool.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
That’s in pretty poor taste, but I will admit that I chuckled.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
Right.
All states “legalize abortion up to the moment of crowning” under some conditions. 10 states, most of them left-leaning, stripped the conditions. On the other hand, states like CA and NY, which are usually furthest left, didn’t feel the need.
This suggests that “legalize abortion up to the moment of crowning” was not really what “the Left wanted.” It’s more like a side effect of 1) avoiding Texas-style ambiguity and 2) countersignaling that they aren’t like those icky red states.
If one believes that unnecessary abortions are really quite rare, or that they are permissible if unsavory, then that looks like a good trade. If not, then it looks like leaving a loophole for sickos.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
You missed Alaska, Michigan, Minnesota, and Maryland.
But every state has an exception to save the mother’s life. Even some of the most conservative, like Alabama, allow aborting nonviable pregnancies.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
That’s how my brother and I are doing it.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
Would you extend this much charity
Yes. Something like “the right wants to punish women for having sex” would be a ridiculous claim, even if some laws occasionally have that effect. Even when some of the fringe will cheerfully say as much! I believe conservatives when they say they really want to stop the baby murders.
Massachusetts says that this law is supposed to reduce uncertainty in an already-tragic situation. In doing so, it creates the possibility for an abortion right up before crowning. I hope that never happens, and I would be disturbed and disgusted if it did—but it is not the goal of the law. Polling suggests most Americans think like I do, and support bans with exceptions rather than unrestricted abortion. I expect most residents of Massachusetts would feel the same way.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
There’s just so much. I keep finding a new cave or treasure which I somehow missed on all previous playthroughs.
And that map! That beautiful, sprawling map.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
Why stop there? More Canadians are killed by cancer, heart disease, COVID, and accidents than doctors. More Americans are killed by themselves than by other people with guns. Reasoning with raw quantities is more likely to get assisted suicide expanded rather than abolished. You won’t dismantle the master’s house with his tools.
a concerted effort on the part of certain factions
Who, exactly, do you have in mind? Doctors? Liberals?
ridiculous claim
It is a little ridiculous. Most states still have restrictions after 5 to 6 months, including California, Virginia and New York. Most states will also allow extremely late abortions…if only to save the mother’s life. Some, like Texas, have been intentionally vague about what they would and wouldn’t tolerate. Massachusetts claims that it’s rescinding its second-trimester exception specifically to help mothers in that situation. There is no insinuation that anyone involved would be happy about a D&E.
In conclusion, I think you’re overfitting the trend. Abortion laws are relatively stable now that the post-Dobbs reactions have smoothed out. They also don’t really connect to suicide or organ donor laws on the left. For the religious right, they’re all spiritual concerns, but the material facts don’t line up.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
Yes, but with a particularly gormless, class-driven sort of trust.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
3d ago
That only goes to 1950, though. By which point America is almost fully electrified and coming off a generational economic boom. I wouldn’t be surprised if working hours peaked right after WW2.
A casual search found this totally unbiased article, which suggests the U.S. started movements for paid time off, but Sweden and Germany adopted them first.
I know the eight-hour workday became popular over the course of the 1800s. I could see the paid vacation as a Progressive outgrowth of that sentiment.
I recently encountered this not-a-review about Crichton.
I suspect that the same is true for what I was calling “conservatism.” Tropes, even Boomer or GenX tropes, reduce the narrative friction. We readers get to model Avarasala or Bobbie with minimal cognitive overhead. Very practical, very effective for a thriller, since we want to move from plot point to plot point.
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