domain:worksinprogress.co
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2hr ago
You're eliding the difference between civil and criminal law. Civil torts exist to settle disputes, criminal law to punish injustice. Refusing to pay a court-ordered judgment would eventually be a criminal offense.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
I’ll buy that Jones won’t live in poverty, might have an account in the caimans, and that the plaintiffs won’t get much at the end of the day.
That he’s a master money manipulator? I doubt it. He’s a true believer crank, a group which has a long history of making dumb legal mistakes and hanging themselves. This is another case thereof, and more than likely he will actually lose everything except his house and car.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
Yes. Punitive damages are designed to discourage bad behavior. But we also have caps on punitive damages because it is protection against people who aren’t well liked. Do we think Sandman would’ve gotten a billion dollars from numerous news companies that in unison seemed to slander him?
RaiderOfALostTusken
2hr ago
I sometimes think that in the vacuum of having any national identity (which is bad, patriotism is generally bad as many here would say), the national identity has just become some kind of "feel superior to the americans". It happens at political levels when Dobbs was passed and Trudeau made a big thing about abortion and contracepton. It happens with healthcare, we accept mediocrity because "at least we aren't the USA" and i think we do it with immigration too.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Fair enough.
I guess I’m wondering if there’s any way to signal this displeasure. Or why it has barely been weaponized for the culture war.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
Does he? Ive heard him apologize for example on Joe Rogan. What also is wrong with Jones’ business model. It is part entertainment part conspiracy theorist. Both of those things are legal. He even sometimes is right!
Who is he slandering that has power over him?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Slow news cycle, I guess.
Remember the Pelosi break-in?
Pertaining to the discussion down-thread on the subject of young men and women disliking each other:
The New York Times just published the latest iteration in what feels like a semiannual analysis of dating after 60. The article itself contains the usual "no-duh" realities (old people come with baggage, the machinery doesn't function like it used to) and far-reaching copes (it'll be the best sex of your life, less drama involved), but of particular interest this time around is the unusual tenor of the comment section.
I always enjoy reading these articles and their comments despite (or rather, because of) having a ways to go until becoming a member of the relevant age bracket. The typical reader reaction usually involves stories of finding love late in life, rediscovering the joy of intimacy, meeting new and interesting people to treasure their remaining time with, etc. But man, whether it's a generational shift or a sudden change in attitudes, the elders are much more unhappy this time around. Most of the top comments describe a vehement dislike and/or disgust of the opposite sex, all in a single direction: these women simply hate dudes. Here are some representative excerpts:
"...after a lifetime of having sex with men who have no clue about women's bodies and how to please them, old men waving their bottles of little blue pills and complaining about their 'needs' are not appealing. I'd rather go out for lunch and take in the latest exhibit at a museum with my female friends. They are far more interesting."
"Men need to feel intellectually superior to women and I got sick of playing dumb a long time ago."
"The LAST thing I want is to have someone else to take care of. I enjoy solitude. There is a huge difference between being alone and being lonely."
"75% of domestic violence is committed against women. A third of female murders in 2021 were by their intimate partner. No, not all men. But statistics matter. And they show that women have a lot more to lose in opening their hearts and homes to a man."
"I'm in my 50s and this is already true. The men are fine, but my women friends? They are traveling, learning, reading, exploring. If there was a pill I could take to become a lesbian I'd swallow it so fast...."
"I am appalled by the first photograph in the article which shows a man’s hand around the woman’s neck, even though his thumb is on her cheek. I think it was a thoughtless choice and I am willing to bet that many abused women relived trauma when seeing it."
"Statistically, men are far more likely to leave their wives when the woman gets a cancer diagnosis."
This is the rhetoric that younger generations are hearing from their parents and grandparents. Lifetimes spent with and for another person, only to openly resent those decades of effort late in life. With the hysteria of "sexual assault" at the other end of the spectrum, both independent sexuality and committed intimate relationships are massively disincentivized (or at least, that's how it looks to someone just beginning to figure out the structure of their life). The only guarantee of a lifetime of happiness, it seems, is to stay free of interpersonal bitterness, free of legal and social humiliation, free of sacrificing your own interests for someone who hates you; to live an entire life alone.
How do you convince a 22-year-old of either sex that their perception is mistaken, that there is value in seeking committed relationships with another person?
Tomato
2hr ago
You should have kids. It’s incredibly, unbelievably rewarding. Unless you’re literally on track to be the next Lincoln, having kids will be by far the most meaningful and impactful thing you do. And kids need a stable family life, so you should get married first.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
NunoSempere
2hr ago
Surrogacy would solve problems related to giving birth, but would add additional complications, and it's also expensive. Still, maybe worth thinking about.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
No but we also can’t prove it was done as a result of Jones’ followers. Causation is really hard (people hear a lot of stuff and do random things all of the time).
zeke5123a
2hr ago
I don’t know (which is one reason I’m skeptical of IIED torts) but it isn’t a billion dollars.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
I don’t think the Sandy Hook parents (or at least some of them) are private—when you speak out nationally you become a public figure.
I do agree there is always a line between opinion and fact statements. For example, if we substitute “threat to democracy” with say “insurrectionist” you’ve gotten closer to statement of fact (Maddow could still argue that what a insurrectionist is is an opinion which is what his area of law is difficult).
And yes, I agree that wrongful death is not as compensatory as living victims. But a billion dollars? Come on. That’s lunacy.
confuciuscorndog
2hr ago
Why? While I think that it probably did happen as the official narrative depicts (mostly because I also think that if the conspiracy theory about using mass shootings to destroy the 2A were true, there would have at some point been a more consistent flood of them with shared characteristics exclusively targeting children to attempt to brute force the issue, instead of the more natural sporadic pattern they've actually happened in), because of emotional desires like "protecting the privacy of the families", etc., there's very little of an epistemologically complete case proving it, same as with most mass shootings (except for Columbine, which had an unnaturally high degree of transparency due to the (itself uproven) "Giving them publicity just encourages them!" meme not yet filtering much into the public consciousness).
For this reason, I was also somewhat skeptical of Sandy Hook for a while myself until, as mentioned, the follow-up that would have made it a likely conspiratorial act didn't materialize. Though that just means that in isolation it's a pretty questionable event, which it is.
With that said, I've never given much credence to Jones's formulation of a possible conspiracy with the parents as mere crisis actors and the kids as alive and well. That particular narrative makes no sense, as for one thing it postulates a conspiratorial entity trying to suppress the rights of all of society that would also bother picking some plan that avoids child casualties when it's far easier and more credible to just actually shoot them.
But if you consider a more realistic plot, like some shadowy interest-aligned ghoul shooting up an elementary school, forcibly dragging along some randomly-chosen isolated autist (who maybe looks a decent enough amount like the ghoul too, not that it matters tons as most mass shooters are relatively covered up) who could credibly be the culprit and executing him in a way that looks like a suicide, then leaving the body and having his fellows ensure that any evidence that places him at the scene is suppressed, while I don't think that is what happened, other than the aftermath I don't see any reason why it couldn't have been what happened. As far as I know, we don't even have publicly available footage of so much as Lanza shooting through the glass door to enter the school, even though it would be hard to argue that distributing such video naturally offends anyone's privacy rights or emotional concerns. (Nevertheless, given again that I am not actually a SH conspiracist, I just chalk this up to irrational normie emotionalism instead of anything conspiratorial.)
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2hr ago
Yeah I’m actually more on the psychosomatic pain train myself. It’s a sort of terrifying prospect when you consider just how wrong our understanding of pain is.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Think of it as the state’s interest in keeping people from being jackasses at trial.
The guy has been very consistent about 1) not cooperating, 2) not apologizing, and 3) continuing his business model. He keeps trying to make money off of slandering the people who have power over him. So he keeps racking up more punitive damages.
Catsnakes_
2hr ago
If she feels that way and isn't open to being convinced otherwise, she should get sterilized, not you. You're obviously not happy about the situation or about going to get snipped, and the "if only" melancholy is only going to compound after you get snipped. If you haven't already, make sure you communicate your feelings clearly with her but don't go get a procedure done you don't really want for her sake.
sliders1234
2hr ago
Whats the issue with Ginni? She organized a conservative protest?
I don’t even think she’s been charged. What’s the issue here?
I 100% agree that Ginni and Clarence are both very conservative. They both organize (legally) conservative groups. In Clarence case it’s generally the Federalist Society where he’s a big swinging dick.
2rafa
2hr ago
Crazy that he’s making $35m a year (assuming the $3m rate is usual) with this grift, given the margin on the supplements and clothes that’s a huge profit. What he said is vulgar, but something reasonable like $200,000 per parent(s) and then any additional claims if they could prove in court that they suffered additional financial burden due to the allegations (paying for security, being fired by their Jones-fan boss etc) would be fair.
guajalote
2hr ago
Yeah, even if it were indisputably true that the US economy is in decline, it's declining from the highest heights in human history. Even if Gen Z ends up being a bit worse off than Millennials, they're still better off than the vast majority of people who have ever lived.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
And it seems to me that the principles of the judgment are sound. A significant fraction of Jones’ debt comes from punitive, not compensatory, damages. This isn’t a novel legal theory. If justice were limited to compensation, we wouldn’t have jail time.
Let’s imagine Jones only had to pay compensation. If, hypothetically, he refused to do so, what would be the recourse? Should the state be allowed to add more penalties, even though they won’t go to the victims? The answer is obviously yes. A state which cannot punish is a state which doesn’t have a monopoly on force. It has a vacuum.
Lo and behold—between his endless appeals, procedural failures, and acts of creative accounting, Jones has avoided paying either category of damages so far. Meanwhile, he’s desperately kept spending money on his various businesses. This flies in the face of bankruptcy law. More importantly, it’s unjust, and he ought to see consequences for it. Even if that means adding numbers beyond the direct, personal compensation.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
2hr ago
This is incredibly simplistic, reductive logic, sloppy thinking that would not even remotely pass in regards to any other issue.
Using lots of adjectives does not add authority to what was essentially an empty assertion on your part. You are asserting that incel killing sprees are either a thing, or something we should be worried about. My assertion is that they are rare, isolated phenomena and that sexless men are of no greater risk factor in this respect than any other social malady, in terms of turning a few unstable people into killers. Your car analogy is more like "Sometimes car crashes happen because someone was transporting ducks in their car and the ducks got loose and caused the driver to lose control of the car; therefore, ducks are a threat to traffic safety."
But obviously you can ameliorate the issue with changes to society, same as any other.
I've already said we should should try to ameliorate the issue, because I genuinely do feel sorry for sexless men living lonely, miserable lives, and not because I am afraid of them becoming mass murderers. My point is that what you are posting is incel LARP. And also that you seem to put 100% of the blame on "society" for not providing pussy to every man who wants it.
I believe likely automatically renders false your assertion that there aren't that many lonely men these days.
I did not assert that there aren't many lonely men these days. I asserted that they are not a threat, or really, something we should be concerned about threatening society in a major way.
Read more carefully.
To completely dismiss the capacity for violence and change of so many people with shared incentives is what I would call arrogant, cavalier, reckless, and just plain bad civilizational reasoning.
The men with a capacity for violence and change are mostly not in the category of "can't get laid."
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2hr ago
Maybe that's right, maybe it's not, but if it's a signal that's sufficiently weak that it's hard to detect in the data, the advice for any given individual should be to get their shit together rather than moping about systemic decline that makes it impossible for them to profit from labor. Get a degree in petroleum engineering or accounting or chemistry or literally anything else that has a plausible practical use and get to work. Even if there is a broader problem, being a Debbie Downer and giving up before even getting started is a poor approach to life. Being a Debbie Downer in the context of the American economy circa the present isn't just a poor approach, it's comically ridiculous if one takes even a slightly zoomed out look at history.
Supreme Court justices are lifelong appointments with security details and both Thomas and Alito are tradcaths whose wives are unlikely to care very much what non-co-religionists think about them.
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