domain:shapesinthefog.substack.com
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2hr ago
The cult of personality around Obama didn't hold a candle to Trump's. Obama was regularly attacked from both the left and right within his own party. You could be a Democrat in good standing and also an Obama critic. Meanwhile, in Trump's GOP absolute fealty is the bare minimum. Criticism, where it exists, is either of the 50 Stalins variety or carefully suggesting that perhaps the Tsar is being poorly advised.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
2hr ago
what I will never understand is how huge numbers of women were convinced by it.
What's so hard to understand? The promise of sex is something women can use to exploit men. Many women wanted to be able to more freely exploit men in this way without realizing men would also be more free to exploit them in return.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2hr ago
There was some real idiocy in thinking we could separate out the emotional components of sex from the act itself.
I can understand why the free love guys back in the 60s thought this was a compelling idea, but what I will never understand is how huge numbers of women were convinced by it.
birb_cromble
2hr ago
Have you seen a lifestyle that does always work out
I've never seen someone stop being a carnie.
I'm not sure if that proves or refutes your argument.
I can also get annoyed at the politics and the (especially online) culture.
A recent example: there was a shooting at Salt Lake City's No Kings protest a couple weeks ago. There is a brief video that shows what went down. It sounds like the SLCPD was aware that event volunteers were carrying pistols which resulted in reported "peacekeepers" (volunteer event staff) shooting a man armed with a rifle.
A pair of volunteers, easily identified by high visibility vests, observed this individual dressed in black "seclude" himself, don a mask, take out his AR, and approach the crowd with his rifle at what looks like low ready. The volunteers draw their pistols, aim at him as seen in the video, and allegedly shout at him to stop. The 24 year old panics, runs towards the crowd, and a volunteer fires 3 times. He hits the the suspect once, but then also kills a bystander beyond him. Turns out charges are not yet filed against anyone, although the 24 year old was initially arrested for reckless endangerment or some such thing.
The demonstrator -- reportedly a lefty anarchist John Brown Club adjacent type -- dressed in all black with a mask approaches the crowd by his lonesome. Apparently he was not prepared to be challenged. Despite the politics of the guy, the open carry fetishists guys, or people pretending to be them online were in absolute uproar about the violation of his rights. Of course it's unreasonable to intervene. How dare they! He didn't even fire a shot. These volunteers had no right to stop this guy from demonstrating if that's what he meant to do. They wrongly believed a different intent. They were probably so concerned about a shooting they created one. They fucked up so bad one of them killed an innocent man.
To me, a basic expectation for carrying in a public demonstration, especially doing so alone while obscuring one's identity, requires all sorts of technique, safety, and etiquette. Sling your weapon, signal your intent, and prepare to be challenged. Be a prosocial advocate. The freedom to demonstrate is limited in trivial ways with my expectations, but we get to have mass gatherings with firearms.
There's that absolutist SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED ideology floating around, where any violation of 2A rights is perceived as abhorrent, and thus worthy of maximum outrage.
I find it easy to believe takes like Rov_Scam's below. A trashy individual who can't manage to present himself as a decent, responsible person doesn't get what rights he is entitled to. Pretext for a judge to judge an individual as too irresponsible or dangerous.
Capital A-bsolutists are real, though they are less common among advocates. The absolutist rhetoric is some part cultural signal, part true belief (what is a right?), and part tactical. For the last bit, what benefit is there to giving an inch? 2A groups fight alone for a right, at best, most don't care too much about. The public is fickle and of limited value to the advocate's position. The world and many American jurisdictions set an example that incentivizes and justifies obstinance.
The 2A lobby is arguably more alive than ever, so that also contributes to being annoying. Where and when the lobby fails -- which happens -- many people scream with glee. A great many more shrug.
It's the duty of gun rights advocates to show that any given restriction is unreasonable
Unfortunately, yes. A government reinterprets, ignores, or dismantles a right, and the onus is on the citizenry to challenge it. This should carry additional explanatory power for any stubbornness. It would be nice to not require advocacy at all in a high-trust, high-functioning society. Lots of things would be nice!
Are you going to send a donation to a 2A advocacy group because, upon reflection of the details in this case or another, you perceive them as acting reasonably? As @gattsuru studiously documents for us, every little niggle, every small "in", each precedent and alternative interpretation that can be exploited gets explored fully.
kky
2hr ago
The deal with children of wealth is: if they turn out rotten, now it’s everyone’s problem. You never hear about the poor kid who blows a 1k inheritance in a strip club in one night, but the dumb company heir who goes bankrupt brings a lot down with him.
Rov_Scam
2hr ago
this conditions the availability of a constitutional right on knowing exactly how to frame a matter for the tastes of whatever judge or judges he was unlucky enough to pick months or years before seeing the court room, having the funds to hire lawyers (and since the guy isn't pro se, instead being represented by this guy, having the funds and knowledge to hire 'competent' lawyers), having the capabilities to act well as an effective witness at trial, and come off nicely-enough presented while sitting in court for a New Jersey judge to like him, (and don't know about a community services organization offering low-cost outpatient services). Few of these matters could be verified without a time machine; none are in the public record to even make sure that the judges are properly summarizing it.
I hate to break it to you, but the same applies to any other area of the law, including whether the state can revoke your own liberty for a period of years. Yes, there's the added protection in that case that you will be entitled to an attorney if you can't afford to pay for one, which attorney will probably do an adequate job but might not, but in any event, all the other concerns you raise still apply. If you have suggestions on how we can idiot proof the legal system so that any moron can act pro se and get similar results to those that lawyers get now, I'm all ears, but a more realistic approach is to do more to ensure access to legal services for those who can't afford them.
As a side note, while that attorney was on record for the appeal, it isn't clear that the guy was represented at the initial hearing. Based on the available record, I'm inclined to believe that he wasn't. It's clear from the appellate record that the guy wasn't prepped to testify, probably hadn't looked at the records he was using to make his case, and relied on the report of a regular treating psychiatrist rather than a forensic psychiatrist who would have testified in court. There are attorneys in Pennsylvania who specialize in this sort of thing and no, it isn't cheap, but it's what you have to do.
The main point I want to make, though, is that you're treating this as though these hearings are prerequisite to exercising one's Second Amendment rights. But they're not; this is the case of someone who was already adjudicated ineligible to purchase firearms based on a separate proceeding, at which the right to own firearms was collateral to the determination. To the extent that he has any right to the expungement of that record, the burden of proof is on him, as the state already met theirs. The procedural posture here is no different than that of a convicted felon petitioning the court for an expungement so he can buy a gun legally. The judge denying that petition isn't revoking any right, she's merely declining to reinstate a right that was already revoked in a prior proceeding.
There is no right to an expungement; it's entirely a creature of statute. New Jersey could just as easily make expungement unavailable in any circumstances, or have a process to restore some disabilities involuntary commitment results in but retain the prohibition on owning a gun, or only allow expungement in circumstances that don't apply here, and the guy would have been SOL from the start, and this case wouldn't exist, and no one would be bitching about how his rights are being violated.
This whole matter is complicated by the fact that we are dealing here with expungement and not an alternative process for restoration of gun rights. Most other states have some process for this, but an expungement is much easier to get in New Jersey than in other states, the standards are similar to those the Feds use, and it's ultimately a stronger system since an expungement's ability to remove the disability isn't reliant on whether the process is compliant with the Federal guidelines. Whether or not there's a constitutional right for there to be some mechanism to restore gun rights to those with a history of involuntary commitment is an open question. The Sixth Circuit ruled that the Second Amendment prohibited the permanent revocation of rights just because someone was committed at one point in his life, but it didn't elaborate with regard to what was necessary to restore those rights.
In any event, it's hard to see what the court did wrong here. The guy has the burden of proof to show he should get an expungement, and he provided very little evidence beyond "I'm not nuts and you should take my work for it". He lied to the court about the circumstances surrounding the commitment. He admitted to intentionally misrepresenting his mental health to the doctor whose opinion he was relying on. How is the court supposed to base a determination on a bare-bones statement made by a doctor whom the applicant admits didn't get an accurate assessment? The applicant's testimony lacked credibility, the doctor's report lacked credibility, so what's left? Even if you can pick your way through the weeds and offer some basis upon which she could have granted the expungement, that's a long way from saying that she made the kind of error that the appellate court would reverse, and the two Republican judges who wrote the opinion seemed to understand that.
AvocadoPanic
2hr ago
What exactly was the
conspiratorial ideology
that led her to natural family planning and away from hormonal contraceptives?
aceventura
2hr ago
Thank you for your comments. They are very thoughtful.
"Does not always work out" was an inarticulate and convenient shorthand for this basic idea I was getting at: both young men and women should be judicious and careful in adopting a "trad" lifestyle solely because it presents an alternative to modern day degeneracy. A young woman, let alone a teenager, shouldn't expect to LARP herself into marital bliss by emulating a TikToker.
You can't just opt to take the good parts of trad life while never facing any possible negative results.
Completely agree, and that's why some level of moderation and humility is required before venturing into unchartered territory.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
I've noticed the quality at my local jersey Mike's has declined precipitously since the PE buyout. I've basically abandoned the place.
Which is a shame as they used to send us dozens of BOGO coupons that made them fairly affordable.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
Okay let me actually think about this deeply and come up with what I'd consider acceptable policy.
I figure felony and involuntary commitment should be considered around the same in terms of severity (we'll come back to this).
This means default to no for gun acquisition for people in those categories. People deserve rights including the right not to be limited in their behavior when possible, however other individuals deserve the right to be free of molestation and incidents of bad behavior skyrocket once you look at the pot of the population that are felons or involuntarily committed. Schizophrenics crime rates are lower than many might anticipate but this is in part driven by underreporting and the most heinous crimes in society are committed by violent psychotics, both of those facts should be kept in mind.
Both involuntary commitment and felony charges get misused. Trump is now a felon. A patient who was diagnosed with cancer at age 19, made a credible attempt to end their own life in the setting of that stressor but then survives and has no further interaction with mental health care? Yeah seems like both of those shouldn't be limited.
Therefore there should be an adversarial process to get permission to own a gun again (like an expungement hearing). Yes this puts a time and financial burden on people to regain their rights but they lost them for good reason and the majority of people who go through either of those are appropriately labeled.
Okay so why does this guy not deserve his gun? Well: involuntarily committed. Reading between the lines looks like for good reason at the time despite his protestations to the contrary. Now he also appears somewhat disorganized, likely has mild cognitive impairment and has poor judgement (why was he not organized in his defense? Where's the lawyer? He admits he is lying to healthcare professionals...). It's not unreasonable to assume the guy is full of shit. Navigating expert witness testimony, dealing with HIPAA and subpoenas and all the good stuff is time consuming and expensive, likely it would establish that the guy was lying about ongoing psychiatric care and the reason for his admission, the judge skipped ahead and tried to look for a justification and found one. If the guy hired a lawyer he'd be fine.
For basic rights the idea is probably that both the responsible and irresponsible are supposed to have them (and that includes 2A even though the latter part of that scares people). But once you've gone through the first "hit" it seems reasonable to make the standard now be that you have to be responsible. This guy clearly fails to establish that he is now responsible.
Okay back to why Invol and Felony should be labeled as similar faults.
Maybe the best way to make this case is to look back at one of your other points: "Sure, who are the courts going to believe?"
Most medical schools give students a chance to witness (continued) commitment hearings during the psychiatric clerkship.
Here's how it goes:
Public defender: Don't talk. If you don't talk the judge will let you go.
Patient: Okay.
Judge: Let's begin, on the matter of...
Patient: I DO NOT RESPECT THE COURT'S AUTHORITY THE JUDGE WORKS FOR THE NORTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT AND HE RAPED ME LAST NIGHT.
Public defender: "..."
Their are absolutely doctors and facilities that are soft in their commitments but especially in large urban areas you'll see patients get discharged with situations like:
-"I'm going to go home and kill myself" (16 year old and parents say they can go home safely)
-"I'm going to shoot up the school" (criminal/police matter not a psychiatric one if no pathology is present)
-Patient who won't speak to anyone in the facility because they think everyone works for the CIA but takes steps to shower, eat, and sleep.
Involuntary stays are usually appropriate.
What complicates matters in the public imagination is that most conditions that lead to commitment involve some impairment of insight so when they complain on the internet they withhold details and context and make it seem like they were abused by the system.
yofuckreddit
2hr ago
Pikmin is such a strange game for me. I was obsessed with the visual design and marketing, read so much about it.... but never really played it. The time limit wrinkle was such a big deal and one of the things that I thought was interesting. To this day it's still the game with the highest obsession/time-played ratio.
Strategy games in particular always have an interesting tension with QoL features that aren't apparent unless you're really into the genre. In Company of Heroes 1 and for most of 2's life, for instance, AT guns would fire at infantry despite being almost totally ineffective. Tank destroyers would do the same. Members of the community argued almost entirely against these units being smart enough to prioritize what they were best at automatically. The compromise was a toggle that allowed you to control the target validity algorithm. FWIW it's a feature that I'm still stunned anyone put up with not being in the game to start.
gattsuru
2hr ago
Also, 2A rights are still largely intact? Some states can screw with you a bit or place some minor restrictions on firearms, but none have been able to ban them outright.
aqouta
2hr ago
So... even though the twin studies can't really be proven, despite two decades of intensive, worldwide research focus and ungodly amounts of funding, he still argues they are "mostly right."
There's two sides to this tango, they've not been proven right, but neither have they been proven wrong. The pathway between genes and outcomes is very complicated. It would have been nice if there ended up being some really simple way to map everything out but we can't even do that for height, let alone something as difficult to nail down as intelligence. The question is nurture vs nature and the twin studies convincingly argue that nature is a very large share. Scott convincingly points out that educational attainment may itself have some problems as a proxy for intelligence.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
2hr ago
someone using natural family planning within a Catholic marriage
That isn't what the article describes.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2hr ago
Our Orthodox parish has a lot of relatively recent young female converts who come out of the New Age scene and apparently converted to Orthodoxy during the Covid era. Some other women in their circles went Pentecostal. This, combined with the more recent wave of young men into Orthodoxy (like in other Western countries), has recently led to some marriages, and more appear to be on the way.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3hr ago
I've seen firsthand that the "trad" lifestyle does not always work out.
I'm always a little arrested by this observation, particularly when it is offered as if in refutation of something. Have you seen a lifestyle that does always work out? If not, then surely this is no objection at all!
The grass is always greener on the other side; as always, the trick is finding the reasonable middle ground.
It seems rather to me that the trick is accepting that whatever your problems are, they are your problems, not someone else's--and are substantially the result of your own actions. Whether your own actions are, in turn, the result of some biological or cultural impetus, is a purely academic question. You can't just opt to take the good parts of trad life while never facing any possible negative results.
(Alain de Botton's Atheism 2.0 TED talk is a benighted classic for this very reason; he thinks we should find a way to incorporate all the good bits of religion into our lives, while keeping all the ridiculous nonsense at bay. It's not a terrible thought, but not only has that not worked out, I would argue that Wokism accomplished exactly the opposite--incorporating some of the worst ridiculousness of religion, without bringing along any of the tangible benefits.)
crushedoranges
3hr ago
"Dad, I want to get married to a husband who takes marriage seriously and wants to start a family with me."
"Noooooo, my daughter, you need to ride the cock carousel from fifteen to thirty and waste your time with cads and fuckboys! How else are you going to become a bitter wine aunt? The world needs more girlbosses. Focus on your career and I'll pay for your IVF in your late forties with the finest Oxford sperm!"
FarmReadyElephants
3hr ago
The Trump name will be enough to get them instantly top 2 in any statewide primary. They wouldn’t need too much talent to have a political career if they want it, though capturing the Presidency is a difficult feat
As a Desantis supporter, I was disappointed by the power of the Trump name with your typical chud Republican. But nevertheless it exists
Anybody who refers to Trump as God Emperor is putting on a trollish performance. Maybe they do support Trump across the board, or maybe they're more mixed, but it is not to be taken as sincerely held belief. It is said specifically for other people to hear and see, prompting either a high five or a sour facial expression to be mocked. One should also consider its usage in our ironic/post-ironic/sincere-but-not-really discourse.
I refer to him as God Emperor with some regularity, and I am nether religious nor an imperialist. This wasn't a good gotcha even when Kimmel did it. "Oh wow, did you see this photoshop of Trump on a golden chariot ascending to heaven wearing glowing laurels and weilding the Ancient Sword of Prophecy? How insane! Yikes".
I don't think the Left got this excessive with their Obama worship, but I think that's because it WAS taken more seriously. You don't want it to seem like a big joke. With Trump, just putting his face anywhere out of context feels like a punchline on its own. "Trump is watching you poop".
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3hr ago
Imagine thinking a President was practically the Second Coming
The QAnon stuff goes here.
and deifying him in art
...and the "God-Emperor" memes, among others, go here.
DTulpa
3hr ago
I definitely know a few hard leftists/socialists who were quick to go cold on him as well. But in general Dem normie-sphere, he was a gold standard POTUS who reigned without controversy, and his photos were posted wistfully in the Age of Trump.
I sense that too has been fading, though. Although I think that's more due to aging out of relevancy than a reappraisal of the man and his admin.
You could say they're not the real Left, but they're the one that matters.
And as a big Obama supporter for both his terms... yeah, there was a 'culty' (generously described as enamored) vibe going on. Even the Daily Show poked fun at this, with John Oliver even going to the DNC in 08 and getting little more than 'Obama will fix everything' from the crowd attendees.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
I believe a normal person should not have their rights abridged.
And a "normal person" will never have seen a mental health professional, will never have been confused about the names of his medications, will have three friends willing to swear he's moral enough to buy a firearm, etc, etc. In fact, perhaps a "normal person" wouldn't want a gun at all.
No. If you want to be a strong advocate of the Second Amendment, you must think those carveouts must be small and strongly limited. Carving out those convicted of a felony is OK. Carving out those who some psychiatrist once thought wasn't in such great shape is not. Carving out those who aren't socially connected enough to get people to vouch for them is not. Yeah, this is really hard, because it means some people who you probably don't want having a gun will (if you get your way) lawfully be able to get one whether you like it or not, but that's part of the cost of being a strong Second Amendment advocate.
Important to note is that you can sue for inappropriate involuntary commitment and that this is a major cause of malpractice claims. The opportunity to defend yourself from malfeasance is there. Yes psychiatrists have notoriously cheap malpractice insurance.
Sure, who are the courts going to believe, the psychiatrist or the crazy person?
The one that was supposed to be the most powerful of them all and ended up being the most useless. We've got the concept of "enumerated rights" instead, which is a diametrical opposite of what 10th amendment says. The Federalists were absolutely right - they warned us this will happen, and it happened. Though without the Bill of Rights it probably would be even worse.
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