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My right to be alive supersedes your right to have a gun.

My right to have a gun does not interfere with your right to be alive (which isn't a right, anyway; at best you may have a right for others not to kill you). The right to keep and bear arms may increase the danger to you, but if that's sufficient to strip it, you are not a strong advocate of the Second Amendment.

Involuntarily committed people have usually committed a crime

No, this is not the case -- especially not if you restrict "crime" to felonies. And "usually" isn't the correct standard for depriving someone of a right anyway.

It is not assessed through a jury of peers, but this is why I'm asking what you want instead, because if you want that shit gets worse - do you want to be held until the legal system gets its shit together instead of just discharged from the hospital? Do you want your taxes to balloon?

These are not in fact the options. Another option is to not deprive those who have been involuntary committed of their right to keep and bear arms once they are released.

Your rules are absurd and demonstration nothing because they could apply to a lot of laws.

I would agree that there are many laws whose motivation for being bear very little to relation to their stated purpose.

No, because it expires when the child no longer needs support.

Sure, but she has less going on in her life now that needs any support. Hard to say from this one alone. Which brings me to:

How would you propose disentangling "mother support" from "child support."

Well, I would say we take a look at whose benefit the terms of the policy correlates the most with, which leads me to Exhibit A, the smoking gun:

I am fine with a rich man having to pay more than a poor man to support his children.

I am once again left to wonder if children of rich fathers need more food and clothes than the children of poor ones. What's the thing that children need more of when their father is richer? I really can't overstate how damning it is that the amount of funds demanded for child support bears almost no correlation whatsoever with the needs of any actual or theoretical children being supported.

You used the word "punitive" to describe my likely motivation for having skepticism toward modern child support policy, but to me it seems like a great descriptor for how child support policy itself actually works. Its terms make very little sense if you want to believe that it's actually about supporting children, and much more sense if you impute that its actual motivation has much more to do with look dude, ya had sex, now pay up.

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'd feel a lot better if the number were derived from what children actually need, rather than how much we think we could and should extract from a given man.

Do you actually know what typical child support is?

I know how it works. It's absurd. In most places, if you go and fuck some loser who works at the grocery store deli, you get like eighty bucks a month which isn't nearly enough—and then me and other taxpayers have to pitch in to make the difference. But if you manage to sack a Guy In Finance, you get a gorillion dollars.

It gets really bad if you think of all the myriad, trivial ways that the funds could be made to better seek the actual needs of actual children that could be implemented but aren't. I'd be way less offended about how the numbers are calculated if the funds that were clearly in excess of what the child's needs went into some general pool that was drawn off to support tougher cases. But that's not how it works, all of that excess needs to go to the mother who bagged a high value guy. I suppose that's the bounty she earns for a sexual conquest that puts a high earner to work for society's reproductive needs. Sorry, little Timmy: apex maneater Stacy needs her meal ticket.

Wouldn't you still protest that she might be eating some of the food bought with the EBT card

There's a practical, happy medium of oversight that exists between none at all and hellhole 1984 panopticon. I find it suspect that we choose one of these extremes. I've given you an example of a trivial to implement solution that would substantially increase the auditability of funds ostensibly earmarked for the support of children for very little added friction and inconvenience to the people involved. I could probably think of a dozen more, but I'm not going to waste too much effort on this one as I doubt that anything I could offer would change your opinion about me. I mean, you've already read my mind over TCP/IP and know my true sentiments:

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.

My most preferred model is that accountability for reproductive outcomes be assigned based on possession of the power to shape those outcomes. Things have gotten more complicated since Dobbs, but before that, here in the States, the entire process of human reproduction from start to finish was considered a woman's private affair by the most supreme court in the land. Responsibility should have been assigned accordingly.

I understand that this isn't how it works, and probably not how it will ever work for reasons that may never cease to frustrate me. My second-preferred solution is that we keep the spillover as contained to the most nearby man as possible, and in a way that empowers individual men to avoid this situation as far as practical.

I understand that this probably won't happen either, and that I'll probably just be made to pay women to fuck other men and bear their children for the rest of my natural life.

But I am allowed to complain about it.

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.

There aren't. Not here in the States. I've looked. I did, however, find cases of children afflicted by these diseases suing their mothers for what she did to them and losing due to being considered as having no standing. Can you at least understand why I might be quite unimpressed with what our civilization demands from women when it comes to reproduction, and why I might not see where exactly it gets off demanding anything from men?

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

Why? Would it be too inconvenient to her to not have to fucking poison her own child?

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?

"Fuck the children" is indeed the position of our civilization whenever the interests of women and children collide—and yes, if we are going to continue to do that, I would like the trifling, self-centered interests of grown-ass men to prevail over the welfare of children, too. Fuck 'em.

Some things are unfair for biological reasons

Biology doesn't write our laws or determine how they're adjudicated. Simple as. Men are biologically stronger than women but that doesn't stop rape from being illegal.

usually about the time the proposal that a man should be able to disavow any responsibility or obligation for children he fathers emerges

This would, in fact, be what peak justice in reproductive affairs looks like. Although as a matter of implementation detail, I'd much prefer an opt-in model. What women do with their bodies is nobody else's business, or it is. Pick one.

I understand and agree to that.

I don’t think it materially changes my point about the types of claims raised on appeal. His claim is weak, or even very weak, but it’s at least the right kind of claim.

Congress has put many conditions on Medicaid, and only through controversial interpretations of various statutes is PP eligible in any state, let alone South Carolina.

But DNA can't solve that factual question. The jury already answered that question without DNA, which can only further implicate him. He can only go from 100% guilty to 100% guilty.

Another Stalin-related example of how political cults of personality work is a demand that you follow the personality's line even if they make complete u-turns.

"50 Stalins" uses Stalin as metonymy. It isn't about actual Stalin, and the fact that people behave in a certain way in relation to Stalin (and have to to stay alive) doesn't make that what "50 Stalins" is about.

Framing citizenship as a "reward" is completely nonsensical

It doesn't matter how anyone on the internet frames it. Illegal immigrants (quite rationally) do treat first world citizenship as a prize and lie and cheat their way to getting it. They do it for the same reason young third world men risk their lives coming across the sea on rubber dinghies and why rich foreigners quite literally buy it.

Well, the problem is that some people have the exact opposite intuition! They can’t see why qualia should pose a problem for physicalism at all. Thus the debate carries on interminably.

My right to be alive supersedes your right to have a gun.

People who dislike me because of X attribute (for instance jihadis) can have a gun. People who have said threatening things towards people like me can have a gun. People who have gone out and attacked people like me can't have a gun. People who have murdered people like me definitely can't have a gun.

That's what felons have done, committed a crime and so you lost the right. Involuntarily committed people have usually committed a crime (that does not go charged because we don't usually charge people for suicide attempts or attacking an ER nurse while psychotic), or have expressed a desire, willingness, and ability to commit a crime.

It is not assessed through a jury of peers, but this is why I'm asking what you want instead, because if you want that shit gets worse - do you want to be held until the legal system gets its shit together instead of just discharged from the hospital? Do you want your taxes to balloon?

Accept the current system, propose something else, or let your psychotic neighbor shoot you in the face.

You've also declined to say whether limitations should exist, which is clearly important.

Um, I dunno, suspect's blood found at the crime scene. Victim's blood found on the suspect's clothes, or in his apartment. I could go on but I don't have a decade to list all the scenarios where DNA evidence could be relevant in a murder case.

The legal system in many places in the U.S. has abandoned intervention when a problem is a psychiatric matter and not a criminal one. Some of this is clearly inappropriate such as situations where the police are exhausted or the DA refuses to get involved. Sometimes it is appropriate, if someone is a chronic schizophrenic who has lost touch with reality and is violent then it's not a criminal problem, the guy is obviously not guilty by reason of insanity.

The person does not belong in jail they belong in a state hospital, this issue in part being that the funding for those beds has been taken away so traditionally these days they go to jail instead (it's just not the correct disposition).

It also led to the 2000s, and the 2010s, and the 2020s. Lots of things look really great if you refuse to look at the long-term consequences. Meth, for instance.

I frankly have no idea how the judge in question here can honestly take a look at a forty-year period with no criminal history or further interactions with the mental health system or criminal justice system,

I think the implication of the proceedings was that this was not true, clearly wasn't true, and the court didn't want to waste time and money on sorting it so used other procedural grounds to close the matter.

Most people who fail in these kinds of proceedings are so allergic to basic competence and not being an entitled asshole that nobody who actually witnesses the situation feels bad. In the same that you look at most police encounters and go: "Should he have beat his ass? No. Did he absolutely earn it? Yes."

Most principled third parties read about these situations and fear some authoritarian judge taking rights away (which does happen) but the vast majority is "please give me something, anything to work with.....okay I guess you won't."

I understand what you're saying, but you're imposing a standard on the court that simply doesn't exist. He was involuntarily committed in 1983. He's presumed unfit to own firearms. You may have a disagreement about the process that was in place before 1987, but that's not what's at issue here. The guy isn't arguing that the record should be expunged because his original commitment was invalid, it's unlikely that he would be able to prove that it was invalid due to the passage of time, and the only way such an argument would work would be in the context of a ruling that all involuntary commitments prior to 1987 are presumptively invalid on procedural grounds. But again, that's not the issue here, and the court isn't going to relitigate this on its own.

Operating from that presumption, it's T.B.'s burden to prove that he qualifies for expungement, not the court's burden to prove that he doesn't. So, yeah, the court could have subpeonaed any number of different things, but they didn't, because they're under no obligation to prove that this guy is unfit to own weapons. That's already been established, insofar as the law is concerned, and if he wants the expungement, he has to provide the evidence himself. And what evidence did he provide? His own testimony, which suffered a debilitating lack of credibility, and a note from a psychiatrist which he admitted was obtained under false pretenses. The only thing we're left with that doesn't implicate T.B's lack of credibility is his lack of criminal record, which is persuasive but not dispositive. There's no provision of New Jersey law stating that the court has to grant an expungement just because someone hasn't committed any crimes for a period of time.

There's no legal issue here. All we have is you disagreeing with the factual findings of a judge who met the guy and reviewed the entire record, which, fine, you're entitled to your opinion. But it's no different than people who disagree with a jury verdict based on news reports they saw on TV. It's a factual issue, not a legal one, and no appeals court is going to overturn a finding of fact unless the evidence is so overwhelming that the conclusion is patently unreasonable.

As I said, you are not a strong 2A advocate. You are not willing to, shall we say, "bite the bullet" and accept that there may be bad consequences to that right that cannot be fully ameliorated.

This is in bad faith.

No, postulating Jihadis with nukes was bad faith, because it conflated the subject we were discussing -- people who should be denied Second Amendment rights -- with the extent of the Second Amendment for everyone, in a way attempting to make limits on the latter justify limits on the former. Anyway, Jihadis have so far killed more people with guns than they have with nukes.

What's your favorite Nietzsche book?

(If you say Zarathustra or WtP you're a poser.)

keeps following you around as you leave your house saying "Nybbler you raped me, I'm going to shoot you."

...

it is clearly a psychiatric matter not a criminal one.

I have identified the problem.

There are always limitations. If I state that I have the right to murder people I disagree with because murder is expression of my speech. I will get laughed out of court for making this argument.

For 2A there are limitations..... well first of all what is a gun? I say a tank, a Warthog, and a fissile device are all guns. The court may say they are not guns and therefore I have no constitutional right to them. Some fictional guns are gun shaped and launch projectiles but are sufficient to destroy the planet. The government better ban them, I live on the planet.

Limitations must exist, else you live in a society where I can murder you legally for no reason because I assert it is my constitutional right to do so.

I don't think you believe that no limits should be placed on constitutional rights though, I think you are mad at the current limits, which are more expansive than what I'm asking for.

American citizen Jihadis absolutely have the right to guns if they haven't been convicted of crimes. We can't just have a member of the priesthood point to them and say "Man, those are some BAD muzzies" and no guns for them.

This is in bad faith. I didn't say Jihadis couldn't have guns. I said they couldn't have nukes. That is an example of a common sense limitation.

Certain people can't be trusted with certain powers. Determining this adequately is hard and frustrating. Nearly nobody should be trusted with nukes. Nearly everybody should be trusted with a fork and knife.

If you want to criticize an aspect of the current plan you need to either assert that no rights limitations are appropriate (which you have alluded to but not actually done) or come up with an alternative solution to the problem.

Indeed. And since Reagan made a set of rules and it led to the golden age of the 90s, that’s exactly the right lesson.

Yes, I get that.

I must have written exceptionally poorly for so many folks not to actually get my point.

'Legitimacy' means 'Emperor who is at worst neutral about my tribe'. The US isn't a nation anymore and everyone accepts it; an imperial government which takes your tax money(ideally as little as possible) to fuck off and spend on its own pet projects but doesn't demand anything else is far from the worst thing in the world- it's the default human governance arrangement. Trump makes a big show of this and that is why he's so successful at campaigning on 'legitimacy' when he's blatantly wrong. He has more black support than previous republicans because he doesn't talk about rap music and 70% illegitimacy and sagging pants- he doesn't want to impose red tribe values and religion(socially conservative but orthopraxic Christianity) on the black tribe. That plus caudillismo plus pomp is the secret sauce to Trump's 'mandate of Heaven'.

I'm not sure that the percentage of people who just want a good strong emperor to make the government leave them alone is a majority yet- I think Trump is Marius, not Caesar. But it's clearly a rapidly growing percentage that explains a huge chunk of Trump's appeal. The people who feel like their tribe's values and religion are something Washington wants to replace love him because of it, even if they're not ready to crown him with laurels when his troops force the senate to suspend elections.

The constitution is not a suicide pact, case law establishes restrictions to constitutional rights

So we've reached the "There are limitations, therefore this limitation is OK" stage of vitiating the Second Amendment.

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.

American citizen Jihadis absolutely have the right to guns if they haven't been convicted of crimes. We can't just have a member of the priesthood point to them and say "Man, those are some BAD muzzies" and no guns for them.

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.

You're not asking for a right to live; it's illegal to shoot you. You're asking for a right to safety, by taking away the guns of those who you think might shoot you based on some very lightweight procedure amounting to the word of a doctor. There's no such right.

what if you're homeless/transient and don't have a driver's license or any other sort of ID? That's the argument that's always been used against requiring voter ID, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply here.

Absolutely is!!! I think it’s mostly a meaning or community issue frankly. But our medical system is not well designed for that sort of thing.

I think this is a little far- the median white democrat is some normie teacher who thinks children should be planned and in a stable relationship that they might not be super explicit about needing to be marriage but they would be skeptical about non-marriage relationships filling the same role.