domain:moultano.wordpress.com
07mk
18hr ago
At what ages does one normally outgrow Santa belief in America? I never believed in Santa (I recall being told around the age of 4 or 5 and finding it absurd, especially since our family didn't have a chimney), but also, Korea didn't have as much of a Santa culture as America. I moved to America in 1st grade, and I don't recall my non-believing of Santa ever being something that even came up, so I figured that, by grade school age, kids had outgrown it. But it sounds like that's actually not the case?
Quantumfreakonomics
18hr ago
The specific prohibition is against “hot drinks”. Coffee and tea are brewed hot. Monster (as far as I know) isn’t.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
18hr ago
I am actively working on finding a spouse with whom I can raise a family;
I swear I've thought you were married with kids for years.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
18hr ago
I hurt myself doing hammer curls. Just too much weight after too long a time of not having that particular motion in my routine. My problem is that after an initial crappy couple of weeks, the issue has lingered for a few months now. It's not terrible; I can do about 70% weights on my gym routine with no extra pain, but there's consistent low-level pain to it that occasionally flares up when I try to do things like one-handed pull a bag of cat litter out of a shopping cart.
I think the problem is one of the extensor muscles, on the outside of the forearm near the elbow. During previous elbow injuries, I've had great success working it out with exercises, either flexing the wrist against tension using rubber bands or getting a Tyler bar. But nothing I've found has really helped with this one.
Any advice or suggestions?
anti_dan
18hr ago
The rest of the case is on PACER, there are several unavailable documents that, most importantly, stake out ICE's position, as well as the order granting the TRO.
However, if I take the judge's written orders at face value I think the original article was not as misleading as I had anticipated.
Basically, I thought the article was describing the normal application of 18 USC 3142(d) (and analogous provisions in the immigration law, particularly 8 USC 1226) and the associated rules of criminal procedure (such as rule 43) where a detention-eligible defendant is physically unable to be brought to court, in this case because he is hospitalized.
Instead, what appears to have happened is a very odd plan by ICE. I don't know why they did what they did, whether it was just laziness, forgetfulness, pants on head level stupid, or an intentional ploy to generate a test case.
Again, in a normal case, you'd file charges or file for removal and then go to a judge and say, basically, "hey we know the statute says we have to release this guy in 10 days, or have a detention hearing. We can't have a detention hearing because he can't come to court because he's in the hospital." Then the judge sets it over a few days or weeks depending on the diagnosis and then you have the hearing once they can come to court. ICE did not do this. Why is the question, because there were entirely well worn legal ways to keep this fellow detained.
Arguments for laziness/forgetfulness: This case is in California. ICE in California is essentially blockaded within its own facilities. To actually fingerprint and process the defendant requires them to get him into the facility or a similar facility (which local municipalities won't let them use), and then he'd have to be taken back to the hospital. This is a lot of work for essentially finalizing what in their mind is a formality. Once he's fingerprinted they know they have the right guy, and by the way he's in the hospital so he's not "really" being detained in that he can't go somewhere he needs to be.
Arguments for pants on head: This appears to be pants on head stupid. They could just file the right paperwork for a removal proceeding and have mooted this entire habeas petition.
Arguments for intentional test case: The petition itself appears to be highly focused on, and critical of what they call the DHS “Interim Guidance Regarding Detention Authority for Applicants for Admission,” which according to the petition "claims that all noncitizens who entered the United States without inspection shall now be deemed “applicants for admission” and subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A)." This is a new interpretation of the law that ICE and DHS appear to be intent to apply to this fellow. It is easy to see why, this new interpretation, if adopted by courts, would make their lives much easier. It also apparently has many other "test cases" pending which largely are being pursued in places like California that have mostly hostile judges, so DHS has fared quite poorly (at least according to the petition). On this last point, I think the petitioners really have a point. That new guidance is likely to fall and never be reviewed by SCOTUS because it is pretty dumb.
So, that is basically what I am able to glean from the very incomplete record in the case, because most of the documents are not available even to someone with a standard PACER account that normally gets you all the filings in most cases.
OliveTapenade
18hr ago
For what it's worth I put that one in because I have heard others talking about it. Personally I cannot remember ever believing that Santa was real, but neither can I remember ever being edgy about it. I can't remember anyone else ever believing that Santa was real either. My recollection of being that age is that of course we all knew it was a game of pretend, and of course we all played along with it for fun.
I may have been very atypical, I don't know. I have never thought about what to tell children about it myself. We'd probably just play the game, but I don't think I'd go to any real effort to hide the truth if a kid was curious.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
18hr ago
And the Jews get a bad rep for being rules-lawyers. What exactly is so condemnable in coffee or tea that isn't caffeine? Is it all the tannin? I sincerely doubt that John Smith would have given chugging Monsters a pass if they'd been a thing back then.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
18hr ago
Quantumfreakonomics
19hr ago
I didn't know we had Mauritanian slavers on this forum. Truly nothing is beyond our reach.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
19hr ago
Telling kids about Santa is actively good. On the most basic level, it is super fun and memorable. It gives them a shared experience with other kids, and a useful way to offload some of the authority strain of parenting (Yes, sweetie, I am here and can be tantrumed against, but Santa is a cold and merciless god who cares not for your tears, but judges you for them.)
And on the deeper level, it teaches kids that some things they are taught about the world are not true.
And on the deeper level, it teaches them that some of those lies are useful.
Now, telling my daughter that if she went into the basement then the Krampus would kidnap her in a sack and take her to Spain... that one might have done a touch of damage.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
19hr ago
I am increasingly happy to have turned down invitations from two pairs of hot bubbly blonde Mormon missionary girls in a row, I had an intrusive thought pop into my head, perhaps I should attend their sermon that Sunday, I wasn't doing anything important and it would be funny. I'm glad I didn't, because I look at this and think "there but for the grace of God myself go I".
I find the invocation of @2rafa's advice particularly interesting. Her argument, as you present it, is to "embrace the benefits of a loving and welcoming religious community and to try hard not to ruin the experience by thinking too deeply and skeptically." This is a known strategy, but coming after a discussion on the downsides of wireheading, it creates a certain cognitive dissonance.
At the end of the day, humans are very prone to rationalization. You are clearly benefiting to some degree from compromising your epistemics. You've landed a date, and it might lead to marriage. You've found a sense of community. Is the cost of lying to yourself worth it? That's for you to decide. My concern is that you will likely succumb to the deep pressure to suppress your doubts, to fall in line and parrot the party line so hard you forget that you once didn't believe it.
Maybe you're the exception. Maybe you've found a way to have your cake and eat it too. Or maybe in a year or two you'll be writing posts about how you used to think the Book of Mormon was allegorical but then you prayed about it and received personal revelation that it was literally true, and I'll be reading them through my fingers like a horror movie.
The part that really gets me is how perfectly optimized the whole system is. The missionaries approaching you at the mall when you're tired and vulnerable. The Young Single Adults ward (which I'm convinced was invented by someone who read about PUA tactics and thought "what if we made this... holy?"). The way every social incentive pushes toward deeper commitment. It's like watching a chess grandmaster play against someone who's only just learned how the pieces move. Someone who, deep down, doesn't want to win, and would benefit in obvious ways from throwing the game.
If you had been capable of living a lie, of snatching all the benefits of their community without compromising yourself (leaving aside the virtue of not being a liar), then I'd be marginally less concerned. Good luck, I can't really find it in me to condemn you, but I wish you hadn't gone down this rabbit hole even if it has hot blondes and fun, family-friendly activities along the way.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
19hr ago
This reads like a passage from an updated Bonfire of the Vanities. Someone needs to write that novel.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
19hr ago
Ah yes, 'just make characters with character' but they can't be all eye candy, even if it's a video game, and it literally only exists for the purposes of escapism. And they can't all be white - even if it's historically accurate, even if the story takes place in a time and place where there were next to no non-white people and white people were actually racist, proper racist unlike the 'less comfortable with people who don't look like them' racism of today, the kind of racists who fought over nationality, you have to put some other races in or it's white supremacy.
As for mukokuseki, no, that's Whig history. In the early days of idpol 'the white skin enjoyers' were basically non-existent in terms of presence, especially in the anime scene. All the racists there were racist like me - at all times willing to talk to and work with and befriend and bang any other race but unwilling to self flagellate over imagined historical crimes.
That is why I am suspicious of claims Supergiant were 'just making characters' when they made a bunch of changes that all just so happen to appeal to the woke ideology. Maybe you are too young to be around for the start of this shit, but I'm not. I have seen the insidious 'just make characters with character, but also they have to follow these rules or you're cancelled' argument and the death by degrees it enables.
Also, at a glance. And yet Hestia is one of the most popular characters in that franchise, because she has character - despite being pretty. Why are progressives obsessed with looks?
Edit: accidentally hit post too early, added the last sentence.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
19hr ago
The dog has been bred to be docile. It hasn't been bred to find arbitrarily bad living conditions enjoyable. Artificial selection cares little for your quality of life.
NewCharlesInCharge
19hr ago
Given the social consequences of being a Santa-isn’t-real edgelord child, I think it may be poor parenting to spill the beans too early.
Before having kids I thought I was definitely not going to entertain Santa delusions, now I definitely am. Looking out for their social wellbeing is one of my big value-adds. Kids can’t anticipate how bad it would be for them to be generally whiny, smelly, angry, etc.
clo
19hr ago
They do if you want to make money.
If you believe whites have all the money and you believe Representation Matters, then naturally if you want to make money they need to be eye candy and white.
I don't believe representation matters, personally, but hey, given how much people seem to care about it then that's the argument. And people like eye candy more than eye ugly.
Soteriologian
19hr ago
We use shock collars on the employees at all my firms. They’re there to do a job: they receive food and some coins as the carrot, but there has to be a stick, too. I don’t see why dogs should be any different.
OliveTapenade
20hr ago
Got to admit, of all the examples, that is not one I expected to occasion any controversy.
I was also somewhat tempted by "circumcision is child abuse" or "circumcision is surgical mutilation", though I think that's just the noncentral fallacy, rather than concepts being opportunistically expanded and diluted. It's also a proxy with a larger and more comprehensive argument behind it - that in general we seem to have a rule against unnecessary, permanent surgical procedures being done on children without their consent, or when they are unable to consent, and circumcision does not qualify as an exception to that rule.
plural
20hr ago
They do matter because what's on the front page of Reddit is decided by what is bot upvoted. And the first comments are controlled and decided before it reaches the front page. It's all inertia after it gets there. You could say that because they reach the front page they're more pollutant to the truth because there's more eyes on them but I really don't think that people in 2025 are looking at Reddit and either not completely ignoring and avoiding political content or are not fully on board with the positions that are always fully left even knowing that some of them might be lies.
Maybe there are people being incepted by lies from Reddit but my guess is that those people are just being incepted by things they already wanted to believe anyway. This is all quixotic at best.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
I think its an effort thing. Dem mayors instruct their police to not even try to stop rampant arson and not to bother investigating afterwards, and on the off chance they do then the Dem DA doesn't prosecute it.
But is it? The idea that the 2020 riot crimes were under-prosecuted is an article of faith on the right, but I haven't seen any real evidence that this is the case. The Major Cities Chiefs Association compiled a comprehensive report about the law enforcement response to civil unrest in 68 major cities between May 25 and July 31, 2020. During that time period, they recorded 2,385 looting incidents, 624 arsons, 97 burned police cars, and 2,037 police officers injured. They also recorded 2,735 felony arrests. The report isn't detailed enough to break down the number of individual felonies reported, but the 5,143 incidents named above is as good a guide as any (it goes without saying that looting incidents could have had more than one perpetrator, but this is balanced by the fact that the same people may have been involved in multiple incidents, and that some of the police injuries weren't due to assault by protestors). With that caveat, we get a rough estimate of a 53% clearance rate for riot-related felonies.
To put that in the proper context, nationwide in 2019 arson had a clearance rate of 23.9%, and burglary had a clearance rate of 14.1%. Even if my estimate is inflated, and I admit that it probably is, it's still a long ways away from suggesting that these crimes were significantly under-investigated; if that were the case, I would expect the totals to be substantially lower than the averages. Again, I admit that this data isn't ideal but... do you have any other data? With how much this has been repeated I'd expect something, at some point, coming out to back this up, but there's nothing. No studies, no disgruntled chiefs of police saying they were hamstrung by liberal prosecutors, no pardons from governors, nothing. On the other hand, it doesn't take long to find contemporaneous quotes from mayors affirming the right to peaceful protest while reminding people that lawbreakers will be prosecuted, or imposing curfews that they didn't have to impose, or bulletins from local police asking for the public's help in identifying rioters.
The source of this myth seems to come from media reports showing that 90% of the protestors were arrested had the charges dismissed. But this is accepted as a blanket fact without any context: These dismissals weren't for felonies or serious misdemeanors, but for summary offenses like disorderly conduct, loitering, and failure to disperse. The arrests themselves weren't made in response to any investigation, but as crowd-control techniques for when they felt things were getting a bit too rowdy. But crimes have elements that prosecutors must meet, and when police aren't making arrests with an eye towards prosecution, their cases aren't prosecutable. If you haven't personally witnessed a protest like this, the process generally goes as follows: The police declare a gathering illegal. A dispersal order is given. Whoever doesn't disperse is arrested by officers on the scene and loaded into paddy wagons. The officers who made the arrest stay behind, and the arrestees are booked by yet another officer. They're charged and released.
If you want to actually prosecute a case like this, you run into problems at the preliminary hearing. There's no police report. You can't produce the arresting officer as a witness; hell, you probably can't even identify the arresting officer for a given defendant. People arrested in different locations might be comingled at the precinct, so you can't even say where the guy was arrested. And even if by some grace of God you do have this, while the case gets easier, it doesn't get easier by much. First you have to establish that the protest was illegal, which may be the case if a road is being blocked, but is a tough row to hoe if it was a permitted protest that the police got uneasy about and hadn't yet seen any violence. Then you have to prove that a dispersal order was given in a manner such that the individual defendant would have heard it, which is tougher than it seems in a loud area with people moving around. But the real problem comes when you have to show that the defendant was given a reasonable opportunity to leave. The typical tactic used to facilitate mass arrests was to form police cordons around the perimeter to prevent the crowd from fanning out, then closing in to make arrests. A lawful protestor is thus presented with the dilemma of being told to disperse by police while simultaneously being prevented from leaving the area. And that's if you're lucky enough to have a real crime to charge. Most of these arrests were for charges like disorderly conduct and loitering whose elements are vague and are dependent on detailed police testimony showing that the defendant actually met some reasonable definition of disorderly and wasn't just arrested because the cop didn't like him.
But it rarely ever gets that far, because the cases have almost zero evidence, the prosecutors know this, and they dismiss the cases before they ever get in front of a judge. The one exception was Detroit, where the mayor, a former prosecutor, decided to charge all of the minor offenses that amounted to being in the wrong place. The poor assistant sent to present the cases to the judge had to suffer the humiliation of having dozens of them dismissed immediately after he admitted that he couldn't produce any evidence whatsoever. The DA's office dropped the remaining cases shortly thereafter.
Compare that to the Capitol riot, where everyone who merely entered that building and wasn't on a short list of people was guilty of unauthorized entry of a government facility, a misdemeanor carrying a penalty of up to a year in jail. There were thousands of hours of video posted to the internet within the next few days, enough in total that investigators could more or less track everyone's entire route through the building. People were bragging about their crimes on social media, posting selfies of themselves inside. And there was no shortage of people calling in to provide identification of people they recognized. Prosecutors had more evidence than they could dream of, and there was broad bipartisan consensus that the perpetrators should be prosecuted. Remember, this investigation started immediately after the incident, while Trump was still president, and it wasn't until months later until Republicans gradually came to the conclusion that it wasn't a big deal. Trump had weeks to issue pardons to anyone involved but he didn't. Was Biden supposed to call of his dogs in the middle of the investigation because Republicans suddenly decided it was better politics to let the people off?
One final thing—when people try to compare cases and show that person x got so much time for a felony while person y got so much time for "just entering a building" with the implication that the two sentences are disproportionate, they often don't take an important factor into account: Plea bargains. The people in the Capitol riot who merely entered and did nothing but walk around generally were able to enter pleas that avoided jail, and the ones facing felony obstruction charges got away with minimal jail time. But the Capitol riot had a disproportionate number of defendants who refused to take plea deals when the evidence against them was overwhelming, and went on to put forth horrible defenses that did nothing but piss off the judge. The argument can be made that this is unfair, and there shouldn't be a penalty for making the state prove their case. I can agree to a certain extent, but this misframes what is going on. They aren't getting penalized for going to trial, they're getting a light sentence for not going to trial. The alternative is that no one would be offered a reduced sentence.
Furthermore, the law grants a degree of lenience to people who appear to be remorseful for their crimes and take responsibility for their actions. Is this something we want to encourage or discourage? Should a first-time offender who admits he made a mistake, apologizes to the victim, and appears to have a genuine desire for self-improvement get a similar sentence to a defendant who continues to insist he did nothing wrong even after the jury says otherwise? These are things we can disagree about, or discuss, but wherever you land, that's the system that we have now. It doesn't matter whether you're in a Democratic area or a Republican area, people who take deals and show remorse will get lighter sentences than those who don't.
What irritates me the most about these arguments regarding January 6 is that they're almost without exception put forth by the kind of people who don't think that the criminal justice system is harsh enough. They talk about how police are hamstrung by liberal city governments, about how liberal prosecutors aren't aggressive enough, about how bleeding heart prison reformers don't understand that jail isn't supposed to be fun. But the minute they're on the receiving end of the system as it normally operates, injustice is everywhere. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is suddenly concerned about prison conditions. The minutia of overcharging becomes an issue. They seem to forget that in these liberal cities police make arrests every day and courts hand down sentences every day and that prosecutors don't just let minorities off the hook because they feel sorry for black people. One would have thought that when their own side fucked up it would have maybe given them some perspective. But no, they make excuses for why they shouldn't be punished before going back to whinging about how the cops aren't harsh enough.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
20hr ago
This is tempered by the fact that this arrest was obviously only possible by employing the surveillance state to its fullest extent. People get squeamish about facial recognition technology, but using cellphone location data is both less "emotionally" invasive as well as more durable as a tracking mechanism. Maybe carrying around constant location trackers in our pockets is a bad idea?
I'm all for limiting government surveillance, but the cell phone location of part of story does not seem to have anything to do with that. From the article:
However, geolocation data from his 911 call showed he was standing above the fire in a clearing merely 30ft from the blaze as it rapidly grew, prosecutors said.
If you don't want the authorities to know your location, consider not using the "tell-the-authorities-your-location" service.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
20hr ago
I will gladly pay twice as much for strawberries or steak in the U.S. if it means Americans get those jobs. I currently live in Japan, and so I'm already essentially doing that. It's really not that bad.
Butlerian
Not robot-ist just don't like 'em
20hr ago
The dog has no capacity to understand the role of an "actor"
You think the dogs running on treadmills to turn spits in Victorian England “understood” how their motive power was being transferred through cogs and widgets to procure a homogeneous meat temperature so the Earl of Chelmsford could entertain his dinner guests with delicious roast? Come on, requiring that a dog understand its role in order for its work to be morally permissable is ludicrous.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
20hr ago
Citizens shouldn’t have to worry about being detained for even a few hours by federal agents just because those agents randomly decide your license is fake, especially in a country like this where limiting government overreach was a core value of our constitution.
I agree. Unfortunately we are in a state of exception, because a large proportion of the people within our borders are not supposed to be here, and until very recently they were coming in at a faster rate than we could kick them out. Once there are almost no illegal aliens in our country, I will gladly join you in support of strengthened civil liberties to prevent ICE overreach (coupled with extremely strict and aggressive border controls, of course!).
I am a white American. My neighbors here in Japan like me well enough. I perform community service and pay taxes. I have children here and am well-integrated into the community. If I had come here on a tourist visa 5 years ago and the Japanese immigration services finally caught up to me and deported me, would you find that outrageous and unjust? For consistency's sake, you may respond to me in this thread saying that you would. But if your eyes passed over a headline reading "American man deported from Tokyo over illegal visa violations" would you immediately be shocked and upset by this? Or would it pass beneath your notice as a mundance "dog bites man" story? The outrage over punishing immigration crime really seems like an isolated demand. It's only bad when America does it, for some reason.
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