domain:papyrusrampant.substack.com
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
6hr 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."
6hr 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_
6hr 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_
6hr 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
6hr 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
7hr 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
7hr 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
☕️
7hr 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.
7hr 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
7hr ago
children who have voluntarily run away with strangers
You have to wonder just what % of such strangers are not pederasts or pedos.
anon_
7hr 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
7hr 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.
rockbier1218
7hr ago
Thanks for the write-up, great read.
What was your playlist?
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
7hr ago
It is trivial to change TFR
It's not even close to trivial -- you're just flatly using the wrong word here. If it was trivial, then most countries would have done so by now. Changing people's behaviors is already tough enough, but changing them on a wide scale and with something as nebulous as social standing is going to be monumentally difficult. The word you probably want instead is "obvious", that it's "obvious how to change TFR", and I'd agree with you there that this will almost certainly be the most effective method. Perhaps it would be the only effective method, at least assuming societies aren't suddenly willing to plow 50% of their GDP into natal subsidies.
No responsible adult would violate a custody order.
EDIT to flush out:
Willfully 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.
This makes about as much sense as "if a police officer is violating your 4A rights, try to steal his pepper spray". I absolutely am not denying the predicate here: officers do sometimes step over the 4A, just that reacting in that way is straightforwardly counterproductive.
quiet_NaN
7hr ago
I would argue that all of these benefits (which I do not dispute) can be captured very well by the QALY/$ picture -- just add a term for quality of life effects on people other than the patient.
From a purely medical system costs picture, they are all externalities.
Still, from any non-terrible POV, GLP-1 drugs will at the latest be worth it at least when the patents run out and they can be sold for what it costs to produce them.
rockbier1218
7hr ago
I also like Past Lives and was excited for the movie but felt it was a snooze fest.
I think the main problem is simply that Dakota Johnson is not charismatic enough or good enough of an actor to be a leading lady in this kind of rom-com/drama. I also agree on Chris Evans being miscast, although he’s a much better actor than Johnson.
It’s maybe a bit of an unfair comparison but imagine this same film with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, the rom-com duo par excellence; you may actually have a fantastic movie.
Recently I’ve been on a rom-com kick and watching many of the old and new classics. Notting Hill, a movie with the aforementioned pairing, is completely ludicrous and when examined in depth the script is somewhat lackluster and the cinematography is nothing special. But when you have the equivalent of Ali vs. Tyson as the main event then nothing else matters.
For romantic movies the chemistry of the duo or love triangle is essential. Without it even the script of, say, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, or When Harry Met Sally won’t be enough to make the movie good.
quiet_NaN
8hr ago
it seems odd that my tax dollars payed for the research, and now I would have to pay the Danes, as it were, to use it.
I don't see the contradiction. Basic research is mostly funded through taxes of Western countries, and here the US was most prolific. This research is then made available to the public (though sometimes you have to pay Elsevier, which sucks).
Pharmaceutical companies then use that basic research to discover active ingredients and go through the long, grueling and expensive process of getting them approved as pharmaceuticals. In return, they get temporary monopolies ("patents") on their active ingredients. There is a lot to criticize about how this system works. Details about what can or can not be patented, and how the latter means that nobody will pay to turn it into approved pharmaceuticals. Drug pricing both generally and within the US in particular. That the financial incentives make it much more profitable to sell lifestyle medication to rich Westeners than to cure debilitating diseases in the developing world. The general role of the medical priesthood as gatekeepers which determine which substances I can or can not put into my body.
Criticizing that in this case, one of the companies which holds the patents is nominally Danish (Eli Lilly is nominally US -- but at the end of the day, most are publicly traded and probably have campuses in multiple countries) seems rather low on that list.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8hr ago
letting pedophiles run rampant
It feels to me like 1985 all over again.
Thanks to a legal system that often fails to draw (and often fails to even attempt to draw) a distinction between children who have been kidnapped by strangers, children who have voluntarily run away with strangers, and children who have simply been moved by a responsible adult but in violation of a custody order, it's nigh impossible to say for certain how many pedophiles are out there snatching kids... but "run rampant" does not appear supported by the evidence. I am... skeptical, let's say... that the people "working for free to rid their platforms of predators" should be allowed to do that, because I suspect there are many, many more vigilantes (and aspiring vigilantes) out there doing real and serious harm, than actual child-snatching pedos.
Of course we needn't get all the way to child-snatching; simply exposing children to various forms of degeneracy probably has long-term psychological impacts that are worth considering. But the research on this seems to be hopelessly muddied by culture war matters; moral panic over children's media exposure reaches all the way back to Plato (at least!). I expect we are all shaped by the media we consume, but not always in the most obvious or expected ways.
zeke5123a
8hr ago
Yeah — the other poster who is anti Trump believes Trump’s policies will be bad and therefore Trump’s voters will abandon him.
That is not unreasonable for anti Trump person to believe but isn’t necessarily the best reflection of reality. Take tariffs. Suddenly Democrats hate tax increases*. But it’s far from obvious how much of a tax increase it will be for American consumers. First, tariffs are on the import price which often is a small fraction of the overall price. Second, some of the incidences of the tax will fall on non Americans or capital. To the extent the tariff revenue is used to shrink the budget deficit, it could on net help consumers. Doesn’t mean tariffs are good (or this will work) but the idea that it’s the end of the world doesn’t make sense (especially by people who were pushing for mark to market taxation and significantly higher corporate and individual tax rates).
Take immigration as a concrete example. Jobs are meh but the mix of the jobs were foreign less and natives more. A dem would point to “limited job growth” whereas a Republican would point to “our people are getting jobs.”
I would bet all things equal life is pretty similar for a lot people on 2028 as it was in 2024. I think the one thing Trump could do to change that is passing some kind of massive zoning reform (he is stealthy doing some of that for large projects via the EPA).
*there are of course arguments that tariffs are bad kinds of taxes precisely because they are easy to avoid and therefore people will make non economic decisions. But this second order thinking is always absent in democrat plans so hard to take it seriously.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
At some level though what OP is positing is equally mixed: libs believed that torture was bad, that it wasn't useful (delivered no usable Intel), and that even if it did it would still not be worth the compromise in morals. The degree to which the middle term is driven by motivated reasoning is the battleground.
Similarly, anti immigration folks claim immigration is net negative in every way, pro immigration folks tell me it's positive in every way. The degree to which motivated reasoning, or per op simple dishonesty, is present is the battleground.
I don't think the broad mass of conservatives are motivated purely by economic concerns. That isn't contradicted by somebody popping up and saying well actually me personally... And even you yourself admit that some of it is cultural for you, so once again we're in the battleground.
Time was, we just called that "good writing". But it's depressingly uncommon these days. :(
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