domain:betonit.substack.com
hydroacetylene
3m ago
I understand that 'more abortions for black women(and this is South Carolina)' is your #1 priority. But no one said you can't complain about South Carolina not funding planned parenthood.
Throwaway05
6m ago
I think you can probably draw a line of separation between "normal" people who have personality traits, tendencies, hobbies, and political views I do not like and people who have severe mental illness (or an episode of the same with increased risk of recurrence).
Admittedly this guy was a lot further back so that the standards were different then they are today after some testing and improvement, but you have to work very hard to earn an involuntary stay and be very poorly behaved. Almost ALWAYS it involves true serious mental illness such and Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder, severe Borderline, or MDD with suicide attempt or suicidal ideation. Or. It involves someone who is so unpleasant, uncooperative, violent, etc. that they are almost always a dangerous criminal they just might not have gotten caught yet (and the latter bucket is much less common).
If you are a threat to yourself or someone else in a real and foreseeable way you will likely be so again and the amount of danger is quite a bit higher. This is not "I dislike Nazis and they could do bad things!!!" this is "30% chance of murdering someone."
Throwaway05
13m ago
The constitution is not a suicide pact, case law establishes restrictions to constitutional rights, 1A is the biggest place we see this. You aren't allowed to say anything and everything. This has been tested in a court of law to make sure that deranged actors do not ruin society and devastate the rights of others (admittedly with varying success and priorities).
The same for 2A. Jihadis can't have a right to nukes just because they are American citizens. That is not sensible. You can still be pro-2A and think that murders have lost their right to guns.
Ultimately your right to live supersedes my example crazy guys right to own a gun. If you believe otherwise you are in a gross minority.
If you think this guy doesn't have a right to kill you then you need to come up with a different way to prevent that because the legal system has already come up with their approach and you criticizing it can be easily blown off with "okay but like, how are you going to be sure you/your family doesn't get murdered?"
If you don't like the solution propose a different one that doesn't get you shot in the head for no reason.
felis-parenthesis
15m ago
Thank you for engaging whole heartedly with the riddle of the flute children. Your excellent comment has given me the push back I need to rethink my position (or to retreat from the bailey to the motte)
The suggestion "kill the person who asked the question" is to be taken seriously but not literally. Think of it as a cry of pain: For fucks sake, notice the fucking problem.
Taking one step upstream, the intellectual default is to treat power honey pots as exogenous. They exist. There is nothing to be done about it. Cope as best you can.
That is at least half true. Consider the maxim "those who do not work, neither shall they eat". Not true individually. Perhaps society is organised as 50% Slaves who grow twice as much food as they eat and 50% Masters who eat but do not farm. Or perhaps society is organised as 50% able-bodied who grow twice as much food as they eat and 50% children, elderly, and sick, who eat but do not farm. The fundamental point is that the collective cannot eat more food than it grows. This is going to create a power honey pot around farm work and the distribution of food, which is intrinsic to the human condition.
Endogenous honey pots are real too. Sometimes it is a matter of degree; we leave the lid off the honey pot, forgetting that it will attract wasps. Sometimes we create a honey pot that needn't actually exist. (Weak example: We need to mandate vaccinations to counter the distrust created by mandating vaccinations. If government had focused on earning trust, rather than demanding it, we wouldn't be in our current mess. Explanation.
A strong historical example flows from the slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". I used to believe that the problems in the USSR in the 1930s were fully explained by incompatible incentives. Implementing the slogan will lead to increasing problems with people hiding their abilities and accumulating needs. But I gradually noticed that death toll from the Terror was too high, and reached too far into the ruling class. There was something worse, down stream from "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
The problem with Utopian ideas that are not incentive compatible is that things go to shit. Then the ruling elite must construct mechanisms of coercion to create artificial incentives. There must be an Ability Finder General. There must be an Adjudicator of Needs. Imagine the surprise among the more idealistic members of the ruling elite when the battle for these position leads to them being sent to the Gulag.
Endogenous! The power honey pot exists because it is created by the unfolding logic of that particular system. It didn't have to exist. People could have looked ahead and decided on a different path. It would have saved their lives.
A weaker example, (but from 2025, so more relevant) is UK Prime Minister Starmer putting VAT (the UK's fancy sales tax) on "School fees". The UK has a "pay twice" system of secondary education. Government run schools are free at the point of use. You have already paid for them through your taxes. If you are unhappy with the education that your child is receiving, you can send them to a private school (traditionally called a "public" school, meaning open to any child whose parents were rich enough to pay the fees, and contrasting with the practice among the nobility of engaging a private tutor to teach their children exclusively.)
Sending your child to a private school saves the government money. They don't have to provide a place for your child in the government school. However, you get no refund of taxes. You have already paid taxes to provide that place and must pay a second time to fund the private school.
Starmer had two motivations. Tacitly, levelling. He wants to destroy private education so that every child has the same education, even if it is not very good. Explicitly (fig-leafly? cloakatively?), money. The money has run out and the government is thrashing about, desperately seeking new sources of money. This has somewhat backfired. Many of the parents who send their children to private schools struggle to afford the fees (the pay twice structure makes this hard). Some are admitting defeat. The addition of VAT makes the price too high and they send their child to the government run school. Providing the place costs the government money. (Hence the sense that though the government says it is trying to raise money, this is a fig leaf over levelling.)
For fucks sake, notice the fucking problem. If we want to remake society according to our own Utopian design, our best bet is to capture the education system. Then we can design the curriculum and ensure that every-one's children are taught right-think, regardless of their parents wrong-think. Starmer hasn't noticed this. He wants money. He wants equality (but doesn't much care what is in the curriculum, provided it is the same in every school). But he is squeezing private schools. Every child moved from a private school to a government school is a drop of honey in the pot. VAT is only a small matter; he is leaving the lid of the honey pot ajar.
Nobody else in the UK is noticing that the lid of the curriculum honey is left ajar. This is what I am trying to point to when I say "the intellectual default is to treat power honey pots as exogenous."
This example might not resonate in the USA, because the right has noticed that the public school curriculum is a power honey pot and maybe the left noticed first and its wasps have already arrived; the fight is starting.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
26m ago
You have not proposed an alternative.
Nor do I need to. If you're actually a 2A advocate, it's not somehow the "default" that if a psychiatrist thinks a person deserves to be committed that they lose their gun rights forever. If you think that for gun rights to apply, the proponents of gun rights must come up with a solution to all crimes which could be prevented by taking away someone's gun rights, you're not a 2A advocate.
gattsuru
28m ago
The specific law here holds that a "commercial entity" (some carveouts for Google) that serves material on the internet "more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors" must use either commercial or government identification of age, or be subject to fines up to 10k USD per day plus 250k if a minor sees it. There's pretty widespread potential to interfere or discourage adult-to-adult speech that is only obscene to minors, or even some speech that isn't obscene at all so long as it comes from one of these companies.
There's also a compelled speech problem in the original bill, 14-point font inclusion of a substance addiction help line level. This is currently blocked, though it had a weird period where that block was under an administrative stay for nearly six months.
WhiningCoil
29m ago
Hey, you hit me back! I don't want to hear any complaining about me hitting you first!
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
34m ago
Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic - Abortion.
It sounds to me like Congress put a condition on federal Medicaid funding, South Carolina is ignoring it, and the Supreme Court is saying "the federal government can enforce the condition by taking away South Carolina's Medicaid funding" knowing it will not actually do so, effectively nullifying the condition Congress put in place. Maybe the court decision was right, you don't want to create a situation where the government is buried in endless lawsuits, but it certainly looks like the executive branch is just blatantly ignoring the law. If that's acceptable, I don't want to hear any complaints about Democrats refusing to enforce immigration laws.
Throwaway05
36m ago
You have not proposed an alternative.
If your neighbor goes off of his medication and keeps following you around as you leave your house saying "Nybbler you raped me, I'm going to shoot you."
What do you want to do with this guy? Sure you could get him committed, but he'll be admitted, get stabilized, go home and go off his meds again and then go buy a gun and shoot you.
Especially in NJ the cops won't get involved because it is clearly a psychiatric matter not a criminal one.
faceh
39m ago
That right there is the time I think the Husbands should be willing to sacrifice their libido on the altar of fertility.
If she carries your kid for 9 months and is now willing to commit to raising it with you, then you can either abstain for a few more months, or do self help for a while.
But yeah, the addition of kids leads to a lot of biological, economic, and just pure scheduling issues, and the guy's desires probably don't reduce at all, so somebody is likely going to compromise.
haroldbkny
42m ago
Ah, I see. Well, that makes more sense, then.
faceh
43m ago
Yeah, I'm sort of gesturing at the absurdity that comes with these busybodies trying to enforce rules heavily, when the only way they can really make punishments stick is to literally have the cops show up and arrest them.
That is, if the troublemaker doesn't abide by the busybody's authoritah.
And getting arrested because you wouldn't stop running in the pool area or did too much horseplay is just a bit absurd.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
44m ago
Dunno if it's fun but phailyoor will probably blow his gasket at the PM of Albania using ChatGPT so obviously to write out his argument: https://x.com/ediramaal/status/1938739319168024656
Albania's an irrelevant country and English is probably not his native language but really... See this is why I think it's so naive to go 'just tear out the plug'. If ASI or AGI or powerful AI is hostile, it'd be like ripping out your own spinal cord. It'll be AI in your comms, AI needed to even execute the order, AI needed to verify the security of your transmissions and your identity as a legit commander.
Crowstep
45m ago
this seems potentially pretty society altering
Birth right citizenship is a bizarre American (meaning the Americas) custom. Why on earth would you reward illegal immigrants by making their children citizens? It's a planet-sized moral hazard. Just because you benefitted from it doesn't mean it's good. Crimes should have negative consequences, not positive ones.
faceh
45m ago
Good on ya for doing some math.
I haven't looked to see if there's any reliable research, I'm just kind of going off the general odds that the more kids you have, the higher chances that at least one of 'em will be a screwup.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
51m ago
This is not about NJ gun laws this is about the more general involuntary commitment process.
It's not about the more general involuntary commitment process. It's about whether entering into that process should carry the same stigma as a felony conviction with respect to gun rights.
For other rights we prohibit people from abusing them (see: restrictions on free speech such as harassment).
We don't, however, take away their typewriters, computers, or pen and paper.
gattsuru
56m ago
Basically credit card transactions or services using those transactions. It might allow MindGeek-like auth, but the US doesn’t really have that. Presumably with a good faith effort to validate that the credit card holder’s name is above 18, though it didn’t come up in any args I could see.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
57m ago
I didn't say that, I just said you can't say "the purpose of the law is support the child because the law says so, it's in the name, stupid". You do this multiple times so I'm only addressing it once.
Your rules are absurd and demonstration nothing because they could apply to a lot of laws. "You can't refer to the purpose of the law in describing what it does" would make many laws illegible.
The fact that the support ends when the child reaches age of majority This is also compatible with the mother support theory.
No, because it expires when the child no longer needs support.
How would you propose disentangling "mother support" from "child support." Any money given to a mother to support her child necessarily benefits her.
Do the needs of children scale with the father's income? They eat more food? Wear more clothes?
I am fine with a rich man having to pay more than a poor man to support his children. If you're rich you shouldn't get to leave your children in poverty because you don't think you owe them anything. If you want to propose a cap, I'd be amenable, but not if it's the bare minimum because fuck those kids (and their mother).
I'm less concerned about this part than other elements, but to the extent that it matters, it is a solved problem. You make it an EBT card with similar controls. Courts can pull the records on a moment's notice. There's way less deniability because the funds aren't co-mingled. This isn't rocket science. Wouldn't be surprised if some places already do this.
Wouldn't you still protest that she might be eating some of the food bought with the EBT card (which she almost certainly is)? Or, again, that being given money to buy food for her child means she can use some of her other money for not-child things? It does not solve the problem from your perspective (which is that we should somehow prevent the mother from benefiting in any way).
Do you actually know what typical child support is? Because you seem to think the median child support payer is being drained of half his income or more and it equals or exceeds the amount actually needed for basic living expenses for a child. This is not the median situation.
I have financial obligations to women all across the country and their children. No bailing on that one, unfortunately. I'd probably feel less bad about child support if it meant I never had to pay strange woman to raise another man's kid.
That's a slightly different issue, because enforcement is hard and society picks up the tab on deadbeats. But I'd be on board with much harsher measures for men who can't/won't pay- "lithium mines," sure. I don't think you actually would be, though.
Who cares? Nobody has any concern for the welfare of children when it collides with the needs/wants/whims of women. If a woman's right to drink smoke and snort as much as she wants while pregnant is inviolable, I don't see how a man's right to stay home and play video games shouldn't also be etched in sapphire.
I am pretty sure there are laws under which women who abuse drugs and cause their children to be born addicted, or with birth defects, can be charged, though that's another hard to enforce law. If you want to make it illegal for a woman to drink, smoke or do any drugs at all while pregnant, I think it's impractical, but let's say I agree in theory. The point of child support laws is not to make sure men and women are being "punished" equally, it's to provide for children. "Well, if we cared about children, we should do this also!" Okay, if I agree in theory but also acknowledge we can't/won't do that, what now? Fuck them kids because it's unfair to men? Some things are unfair for biological reasons (where a lot of these conversations wind up, usually about the time the proposal that a man should be able to disavow any responsibility or obligation for children he fathers emerges).
Throwaway05
59m ago
This is not about NJ gun laws this is about the more general involuntary commitment process.
How do you want to prevent people who want to hurt themselves or others from owning firearms?
If you don't like the current state what do you want instead?
For other rights we prohibit people from abusing them (see: restrictions on free speech such as harassment).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1hr ago
Is Texas just requiring the same sort of "age verification" that's existed since the '90s (the website asks "are you 18?" and you click "yes")?
No. This new law effectively requires adults to upload their driver's licenses for age verification.
HB 1181 requires a covered entity to “use reasonable age verification methods to verify that an individual attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older”. To verify age, a covered entity must require visitors to “comply with a commercial age verification system” that uses “government-issued identification” or “a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data”. The entity may perform verification itself or through a third-party service.
(I don't know what "a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data" would be.)
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
"There was an analogous restriction at the Founding" is not a talisman you can wave around to justify any gun restriction, using precedent that is considerably later than the founding. Bruen is a dead letter, but if it were actually followed it would protect a hell of a lot more gun rights than NJ -- or even the Federal Government -- allows.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1hr ago
the greater risk of women having impossible standards for men
A lot of women who are heavily invested in gay M/M content report enjoying it because it feels "safer" and "less complicated" than hetero content. They want to enjoy a romantic relationship in a "voyeuristic" way without having the worry about the imbalanced power dynamics that are intrinsically a part of any relationship between men and women. If the characters in the story are both men, then she can enjoy it without having to worry about the possibility of "self-inserting" as the female character and getting too personally enmeshed in the story, which could dredge up uncomfortable hang-ups about her own real life sexuality. It's not so much about running to the image of an idealized man as it is about running away from the dangers that real men present.
Obviously, it's something that she mostly has to work out for herself. I think the best thing you can do is to just set a good example in your relations with your own family, and if it ever seems appropriate to bring up, be open and honest about your own political views, what you perceive as the deleterious effects of modern wokeness, etc (the danger here isn't so much the porn per se, but rather the fact that the communities for this type of content tend to be filled with radfem and woke types who could reinforce negative beliefs).
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
-Involuntary commitments are always correct.
I'm already off the train.
-The type of people who are involuntary committed are not safe to own guns.
Certainly many of the type of people who are involuntarily committed are not safe to own guns. However, I know one person who was involuntarily committed as a result of a drug reaction (to prescription drugs); while the commitment may have been correct at the time, they certainly shouldn't have their gun rights taken away forever.
-Even if both of those true, you need a trial to take the guns away.
Yes. Taking someone's constitutional rights away, especially on a lasting or even permanent basis, is a Big Deal. It shouldn't be done without a trial.
If the problem is the third option, how much are you willing to pay to facilitate that? Are you willing to have people temporarily held in custody in some form until after the hearing, because they've been tentatively described as someone who can't have guns for safety reasons but they can't be taken yet?
We already have this; the problem is that just being held means they lose their gun rights forever.
Your frustration with overall NJ gun laws (which are braindead) make it easy to miss Chesterton's fence, the alternatives are force.
The relevant fence is Schelling's, not Chesterton's. There isn't one on this slope, as the NJ gun laws demonstrate. And when I bring up NJ gun laws, the first argument from many "2A advocates" I get is "they aren't the way you say". If I demonstrate they are, the answer is "good". That's not being a 2A advocate.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
Okay, initially I wrote a rather harsher response, because the combination of projection ("You are being snide! You are responding with Nuh-uhs!") and the old "emotional investment" gambit (a low class tactic usually seen in forums where going to straight to ad hominems is the norm - "Huh huh you are arguing with me, you must be emotional about this! Like a woman!") annoyed me. However, from your lengthier reply I think you are arguing in good faith and deserve a kinder response. So, just to make a few points in order:
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If you are referring to Revolutionary France, that was more than 200 years ago. 200 years was your criteria, hence my confusion.
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A common tactic I see, usually from Christians, is to accuse atheism of being responsible for the mass atrocities of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al, when the defining feature of communist dictatorships was communism. State enforced prohibitions or control of religion are just one aspect of communism. It's not the atheism that is their ideological driving force, it's the Marxism. (Indeed, I would argue China never really became "atheist" in a real sense. They just replaced Confucianism with Maoism.)
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I still disagree about Rome and the Weimar Republic, and I think you haven't really brought much evidence to bear that "control of women" was the defining or even most significant failure leading to their collapse. Even you back down a bit from that proposition, merely citing it as a contributing factor.
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Yes, I am kind of personally invested in my society not collapsing, but I don't think I am just ignoring evidence that it is. I just think we are on a long slow decline for a lot of reasons, not a rapid collapse that is happening because of modern hypergamy and male avarice.
To address your broader meta point: no, I am not going to accuse you of being personally misogynistic. But anyone proposing something like "Women must be controlled or their sexuality will destroy society" has to grapple with the essential misogyny of that position. You can bite the bullet and say "Yes, for the good of the species, women must be treated as property." You can propose social guardrails (like Christianity) that hopefully will constrain them in a less brutal fashion. You can argue against the premise (I am far from sold on it). Or you can go full blackpill and say "Who cares what women feel, they aren't even people." (Not hyperbole, that is more or less the position we have actually seen a handful of people take here over the years.) But a lot of this talk about how women being able to choose and the feminization of society seems to just complete lack any empathy at all for the position of a (female) person being told to accept a society where she has little or no say in who gets to fuck her and when and whether she will be impregnated. That's stating it in its bluntest terms, but it's hard to dismiss the hysteria of of women wearing Handmaid's Tale cosplay at protests when they can actually see men who really are proposing what they fear. For those who are honest and say "Yes chad" to that, okay, points for being forthright about it, but you don't get to sneer at feminist arguments anymore, because they are actually right about your intentions.
Texas is requiring that pornhub make potential viewers upload a photo of their driver's license. Presumably if a parent uploads a photo of their driver's license to let their kid watch porn and Texas attempts to enforce the law against pornhub then that would be a different lawsuit but let's be real, the tiny number of people who actually do this won't get caught.
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