domain:aporiamagazine.com
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
I've a similar feeling when the word 'must' appears in journalism.
In other fields, 'must' is an obligation, or a consequence of a previously established condition. An apple must fall when subject to the law of gravity. A spouse must maintain a certain level of relations lest they be divorced into an exspouse. A racer must move faster than the competition to win.
In journo-speak, 'must' is much more likely to mean 'something the writer wants the subject to do, but they don't actually have to do.' The politician must take a certain position. The government must take a certain policy. In such cases, though, the consequences of not abiding the 'must' are, well, that they clearly did not have to do what they must have done.
To me it's a red flag of advocacy journalism, outside of specifically technical/consequential framings of the earlier sense.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I believe the theory that Gypsy kids are an economic resource to their parents is due to their utility for typical Ziganeur activities like welfare exploitation, petty crime(which can combine with schooling pretty well), and charity scams.
And I'm going to talk a bit about ultra-religious communities, because I can tell you don't actually live in one- the highest status thing in an ultra-religious community is to become a member of the structure of the religion. This is why Haredi families gamble on their boys becoming rabbis even though the supply exceeds the demand and yeshivas provide no secular education whatsoever(and ultra-islamic families do the same thing with madrassas). For tradcaths grandmotherhood is higher status than having single adult children, but not as high status as having nun/priest children. The desire to be mothers comes from exposure to babies and small children, not from social status(which pushes young women towards the convent). You could not replicate this effect in a society where people don't already have 5+ children. Now of course there is no option for tradcaths to drop out of education at the age of 7 or 8 and enter full-time preparation for the cloister, so it kinda comes out in the wash(and haredi women seem like an afterthought/ultra-islamic women like property).
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Amish civilization is dependent on trade with their technologically advanced neighbors, though. You can have premodern subsistence farmers at shockingly small scale, that's just not what the Amish are.
Forty-Bot
1d ago
Well, it would be more like
Having hefted his mace, he swung at her as hard as he could
but I don't think that sounds any better
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I have to admit, this is a bit like kneecap getting accused of terrorism. AFAICT, there is no positive- literally none whatsoever- to children's screentime, and videogames don't have great social effects either. But government overreach is also bad.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
My unhealthy obsession with designing houses continues unabated.
One somewhat strange aspect of the IPMC (International Property Maintenance Code) is table 404.5, which lays out the minimum areas of living rooms and dining rooms based on occupant count.
| Occupants | Living (ft2) | Dining (ft2) | Total (ft2) | ⌈Total per occupant⌉ (ft2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 120 | 0 | 120 | 120 |
| 2 | 120 | 0 | 120 | 60 |
| 3 | 120 | 80 | 200 | 67 |
| 4 | 120 | 80 | 200 | 50 |
| 5 | 120 | 80 | 200 | 40 |
| 6–∞ | 150 | 100 | 250 | 42–1 |
Obviously, it is nonsensical for the total required assembly area per occupant to bounce around like this.
IBC (International Building Code) table 1004.5 states that a dining/living room with tables and chairs should have 15 ft2 per occupant. Therefore, I am inclined to think that it would make sense to superimpose on IRC table 404.5 a failsafe minimum of 45 ft2 per occupant.
AfterEpictetus
1d ago
You have statistics on overturning custody agreements to back that up?
yofuckreddit
1d ago
I realized I didn't see your first paragraph. If you are interested in bikepacking I highly recommend taking the plunge on a 3-night route or something. It is still very hard - I would train at least a month or two beforehand - but a route that's rated a 5 or so on that site is doable with grit. Finding even a single friend to join you will make it a lot more fun.
Anything in particular blocking you or giving you second thoughts?
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
I love it when writers attempt to paint a world entirely in shades of grey while never telling the reader what to think...
Time was, we just called that "good writing". But it's depressingly uncommon these days. :(
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
And then the characters make some offhand comment about a magic spell that lets you switch gender which certain people who were "born in the wrong body" use to cure their condition.
At least that's better than the BG1 expansion from a few years back, which (in a world where perfectly effective magic to change your sex exists) had a transgender character. It was so fucking stupid that I did not and never will buy that expansion, no matter how good people say it is otherwise.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
Completely agree, there was a lot going on in that movie and although I can't say that I enjoyed watching it, I was left thinking about all of the different things that it touched on for days afterward.
anon_
1d ago
I disagree. If the court got it wrong somehow, no responsible parent would let their kid stay in an unsafe situation just because the law said they had to.
A responsible parent with a reasonable predictor of the external world would realize that violating the order will lead to their child shortly being returned to that unsafe situation with less chance of ultimately getting a better solution.
anon_
1d ago
Now of course this is a non central example, but if you think it's impossible for judges to be morally wrong in a way that's terrible enough as to require risking everything by running afoul of the law, you clearly have unreasonable faith in the institution.
Of course they can be morally wrong! Or factually wrong! Or legally wrong! Or any combination of the 3.
The issue isn't that they are right, it's that violating a custody order will just get your ass thrown in jail and the custody order enforced and discredit further attempts to challenge it. Which, if it's a bad order, just makes it a lot worse.
children who have voluntarily run away with strangers
You have to wonder just what % of such strangers are not pederasts or pedos.
I mean, presumably most of them are. But what does that amount to? The article I linked suggests that more than 95% of "missing children" cases are runaways, but it is not clear what percent of those run away with someone else. If a 15-year-old runs away with her 16-year-old boyfriend, that often seems to get dropped into the same statistical bucket as a 6-year-old getting snatched off the street, or a 12-year-old who gets removed from an abusive home by her own mother or father violating a custody order. The numbers get turned into a narrative of rampant child endangerment, but the reality is more complicated than that.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
Reuters: African Union backs campaign to end use of Mercator projection
The African Union has backed a campaign to end the use by governments and international organisations of the 16th-century Mercator map of the world in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa's size.
"It might seem to be just a map, but in reality, it is not," AU Commission deputy chairperson Selma Malika Haddadi told Reuters, saying the Mercator fostered a false impression that Africa was "marginal", despite being the world's second-largest continent by area, with 54 nations and over a billion people.
Criticism of the Mercator map is not new, but the 'Correct The Map' campaign led by advocacy groups Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa has revived the debate, urging organisations to adopt the 2018 Equal Earth projection, which tries to reflect countries' true sizes.
"The current size of the map of Africa is wrong," Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter, said. "It's the world's longest misinformation and disinformation campaign, and it just simply has to stop."
Haddadi said the AU endorsed the campaign, adding it aligned with its goal of "reclaiming Africa's rightful place on the global stage" amid growing calls for reparations for colonialism and slavery.
'Correct The Map' wants organisations like the World Bank and the United Nations to adopt the Equal Earth map. A World Bank spokesperson said they already use the Winkel-Tripel or Equal Earth for static maps and are phasing out Mercator on web maps.
The campaign said it has sent a request to the UN geospatial body, UN-GGIM. A UN spokesperson said that once received it must be reviewed and approved by a committee of experts.
Other regions are backing the AU's efforts. Dorbrene O'Marde, Vice Chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Reparations Commission, endorsed Equal Earth as a rejection of Mercator map's "ideology of power and dominance".
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
That's a very absolute statement for which it's very easy to come up with counterexamples.
This is pretty low effort but just below the threshold at which I feel a need to drop a mod warning (people are allowed to make bad arguments and absolute statements that don't stand up to any kind of scrutiny). However, given your track record, I would suggest putting more effort into your arguments if you wish to actually make an argument.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
1d ago
This is sadly also endemic in assorted AIslop, in my experience you have to prompt LLMs pretty heavily (introducing its own set of issues) if you do not want your hypothetical fantasy/medieval world to be ruled by modern American politics. Not even relatively uncensored Chinese models are wholly immune to it.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1d ago
As if you can snap your fingers and just do it
You can if you’re China or some other centralized totalizing social environment. China can snap their fingers and mandate films, books, adverts, lessons, and class trips. These can successfully change norms so that women are socially judged by their motherhood + pre-motherhood behaviors.
How many instances throughout world history can you find where social status was not tied to material wealth?
In any with strong religious norms, a childless woman was seen as beneath a woman who had many kids. Religious communities do a good job at redirecting social status, but so can any totalizing social environment. In America you have the enormous problem of capitalism / consumerism which will need to be fixed for any national solution to occur, because you have some of the smartest people continually telling women that their social value is determined by buying and experiences things, with universities (effectively all of them behaving as businesses) telling them they need to be educated. And so lots of smart people actually think it’s higher status to be a poor academic (or even a struggling artist) than having a lot of money. If you’re at a party and there’s a poor artist, a prestigious academic, and then a plumbing company owner who makes $400k yearly, the status is not dictated by the one who makes more money. Heck, someone owning a cute coffee shop that barely turns a profit is going to have more social status in many circles than someone who does slant drilling and turns $500k a year. This is because our culture’s media / stories signal that these things are high status.
Or is it that they are a welfare class engaged in a holy war?
Their leaders are engaged in a holy war but the average member is just a normal person doing what their culture says to do, and in this culture the number of children is prized over everything. Both men and women are judged harshly or celebrated strongly based on their fertility. It’s seen as both a commandment and a blessing. The average member isn’t having kids for a nefarious reason, they are just taught through custom that it’s prized.
Or is it that gypsy children are an economic resource to gypsies?
Unlikely now that Gypsies are forced into schools in Europe. And look at historical figures: Ben Franklin’s father made candles, was his 17 children necessary for the candle business in an era with slaves and indentured servants? Of course not. Albrecht Dürer‘s parents were goldsmiths, did they need to have 18 children? Of course not. “Economic resource theory” never made any sense because you can look at rich non-farmers in history and see high fertility.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
FWIW, democracies are always susceptible to growing dependant underclasses that only exist to vote for "more gibs". It's a self-reinforcing tendency, and much more stable than any anti-welfare or anti-voter-generating tendencies.
Botond173
1d ago
children who have voluntarily run away with strangers
You have to wonder just what % of such strangers are not pederasts or pedos.
anon_
1d ago
It seems reasonable that in the mind of the accused, he would merely be acknowledging that the recipient is judged sexually desirable, which is not an insult.
While not an insult, this is a different kind of social faux-pas. Walking down most streets in the daytime (obviously the street in front of a club at 1AM is different, and I'm sure some influencer is wearing a skimpy outfit on TikTok) is not a place most people intend to be judged sexually desirable. It's a (very minor) social injury in the sense of bringing something more private into a more public area.
Compare it with having a woman in a class/meeting and someone saying out loud "let's all give an applause for how great so-and-so's tits look today". The injury from this isn't the insult, it's the public airing.
Even you don't think this is true.
When tyranny becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Let's imagine a plausible scenario: you live in Germany during the Kentler Project. One of the placed homeless children draws your attention to the fact his foster parents are pedophiles and that he's afraid of them. You decide to allow the child to stay at your place. This escalates into a legal battle where a German judge orders you to return the child to his legal guardians.
Do you, a responsible person, comply?
Now of course this is a non central example, but if you think it's impossible for judges to be morally wrong in a way that's terrible enough as to require risking everything by running afoul of the law, you clearly have unreasonable faith in the institution.
AfterEpictetus
1d ago
I disagree. If the court got it wrong somehow, no responsible parent would let their kid stay in an unsafe situation just because the law said they had to.
Of course plenty of irresponsible parents think they're responsible, so it's almost impossible to tell from the outside without an investigation and trial.
The reason I call it “trivial” is because it is easy to change behaviors and values when you have complete control over education and media. As I mention, China can do this while America will be unable to do it. Education and media are antecedent to social values which are antecedent to behaviors. You can train a woman to crave settling down to have children young through exposing them exclusively to media where women receive respect and esteem and attention for doing so, where the women doing this are shown as beautiful and alluring, where it is depicted as a satisfying and an all-moral purpose, where “maternal moments” are artfully selected in media to only show its positives, and where everything which opposes this is shown as psychologically disastrous / ugly / low-status / shameful / selfish. At a more sophisticated level, you apply all of this to prenatal behaviors beginning at the doll-carrying age, eg the traditionally feminine qualities of being meek, caring, loving, and docile, which makes a woman more likely to have children later on for a variety of reasons. A girl who grows up attached to the idea of loving and caring for a doll becomes a woman who wants to do this to a child; a girl who grows up with a modest sense of worth is a woman who does not fantasize about marrying a werewolf pirate billionaire. This is all easy, it is trivial. Two weeks of cognitive labor by a CCP-appointed team of 140iq social psychologists will be able to fix their fertility eternally.
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