domain:acoup.blog
Jiro
11hr ago
One major issue with the law right now is that even the most bullshit allegations cost money and time to fight against, and even doing something like trying to get the costs covered by the one suing you is itself expensive and time consuming, especially when that is rarely given even in cases where the lawsuit is bull.
This works in both directions. "Trump did bad things with Epstein and I have this letter proving it" is probably a bullshit allegation. And it costs time and money to fight against. Unlike the usual situation, Trump can afford to cover the costs. Oops.
Supah_Schmendrick
11hr ago
things like small claims court where a company sending a lawyer to show up and handle things would be more expensive than just giving the person suing you some money to drop the case.
I don't know about where you are, but in CA the whole point of small claims court is that a lawyer can't represent someone; it's fully in pro per by requirement.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
11hr ago
Gattsuru?
Supah_Schmendrick
11hr ago
I mean, yes, compared to the utterly defanged western europeans the Ukranians are fearsome. But I thought that the main lesson of this war has been Russia's incompetence and that their military production/procurement seems to be corrupt as hell and mostly faking their "advanced" capabilities.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
11hr ago
The criticism from leftists is that:
I actually think that United States has already hitched itself to an economic system (capitalism) and a political system (classical liberalism) that by their nature tear down power just by existing.
does not square with:
I think that the hard part is getting all strata of society to embrace the creative destruction of capitalism. Most people are economically illiterate, and easy targets for bad economic thinking.
Either humans are capable of toppling non-meritocratic structures (e.g. ladder-pullers, by your example) in "free" market societies by design, or there is a "tragedy of the commons" and it's a first mover's race to the top that devolves to oligarchy or feudalism. My take is that there is no such thing as a "free" market, just like there is no such thing as objective absolute individual liberty. "Free" tends to be defined by whoever happens to be winning the market at that point in time. To that point:
eliminate fair competition through regulations and laws that make it harder for a new competitor to enter the fray and take them down.
are we going to ignore things like cartels and monopolies that exist in absence of regulations and laws? I'm willing to cede that there are bad actors who rent seek through regulatory capture, but are you willing to cede that there are bad actors that rent seek through market capture?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
12hr ago
If the politicians across both parties are making up national security concerns as a false justification to suppress rival companies or speech, or use them in other negotiations then that also seems like a major issue of a different kind.
Maybe, but it's been business-as-usual for decades.
That being said it certainly doesn't seem fake, Tiktok is clearly a Chinese owned app with direct access to the eyes of our children.
And allowing "our children" to see things put out by the Chinese is a national security threat exactly how?
gattsuru
12hr ago
As a side note, I should add that both Ani and Bad Rudi have been removed from Grok’s iOS app as of this morning. No real public info on why, or if that’s temporary or permanent.
TowardsPanna
12hr ago
Standard Notes is the best, in my experience. Nice and simple.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12hr ago
In anime, gap moe, or gyappu moe ギャップ萌え, is a type of moe where a single character or scene features two vastly different and perhaps opposing characteristics, unlikely to occur with each other. Specifically, the term refers to moe 萌え derived from this "gap" between the characteristics.
A classic example is a heartless school delinquent who finds a stray cat in the rain and decides to keep it. The gap between his usual uncaring self and his pet-caring self is considered gap moe.
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
The most downloaded app, as of today, is the Tea app. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a gossip forum for ‘red flags’ about individual men intended to Help Women Make Better Dating Choices.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
12hr ago
Any stream on the internet to an audience of more than zero runs the risk of someone screencapping it unbeknownst to you. This really should be in the "basic internet safety" checklist, right after "once it's on the internet it's on the internet forever".
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
First, I do not think that any formerly communist country has an abstinence-only constituency on par with the US evangelicals
Poland is likely the most religious country in the western world. Georgia thé country also has a large religious right, although like other poor second world countries in Eastern Europe EU membership is the overwhelmingly main political issue. Ukraine and Romania also have religious-conservative interests that are politically important, although driven by ethnic splits in some cases.
It is correct to note that Hungary talks about Christian values and proceeds to sleep in on Sundays. That is not necessarily true for everywhere in Eastern Europe.
Tiber727
12hr ago
Who said it had to be a single theory? Freddie gave an example of teachers in California who want to make school anti-racist. What do we call that group? If you say CRT they will say it's an obscure legal theory not taught in high school, even when you read the supporting material and they straight-out say they are making policy decisions inspired by CRT.
There are several people out there who say there are not enough [insert non-white-male group here] in [industry, fictional story or type of art, etc.] and flat-out state that they are selecting for or wanting to select for said group. What is this group or idea called? Well it's certainly not "woke" because that word means nothing (yet somehow they know the meaning enough to parody it).
Whether all of these people have ever-so slightly different beliefs is irrelevant. The terms "Democrat" and "Republican" manage to lump enough concepts together to be useful as terms even if almost everyone in the set will disagree with at least one of the ideas/policies in the set.
Freddie is saying that it doesn't matter if they deny that they have a banner. If you're all standing really close to each other doing very similar things, you will be treated as a group even if you didn't come as a group. The exasperation is people are tired of the game where if you critique the idea they say, "What idea? I'm not suggesting anything other than being a decent person and teaching history!"
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
Ok, but what’s the likelihood democrats will won them back? It seems like they’d need Newsom ‘28 to not go after people who donated to his opponents(lol).
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
I notice you’re leaving out another solution- loser pays. Yes this means personal injury attorneys will get more selective about cases they take but that’s probably not a bad thing.
Another similar option, just ban someone from seeking further redress for a while (forever?) if they're found to be constantly abusing the courts.
There is an existing process for doing this against repeat filers of frivolous lawsuits. It mostly gets used against incarcerated individuals who file dozens if not hundreds of bizarre lawsuits, but it exists.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
12hr ago
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
12hr ago
That's a rather confident assertion that reads mostly as a very broad generalization/insult.
Pongalh
12hr ago
on top of that system. Also, you can "tame the beast" a little bit if you have enough smart rules in place for how capitalism works. And you know? I feel like that's a valid and defensible worldview/proposal, even if you disagree.
A defense of the PMC is essentially a defense of this added layer. You really do become more capitalist in the minds of progs by gutting layers of management and HR that work to offset pure macho entrepreneurialism. Or by undermining NGOs and non-profits, which they'll happily concede are private sector manifestations. Size of the state or public vs. private are not really where the action is anymore. Left vs. right all takes place within a permanent indispensable and inescapable capitalism.
The right that wants to woo the left by going after a portion of the private sector, i.e. engaging political economy on the left's classic terms, can't get any traction, because the left has moved on.
chooky
13hr ago
I understand liking the Kamina-centric beginning, but more than the deranged crescendo of stakes in the second half?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
13hr ago
Less. Stefferi is from Finland.
quiet_NaN
13hr ago
She says, after intentionally splashing her naked body on the internet.
There is a difference between streaming and putting a recording up.
At my local swimming lake, some women sunbathe topless. They do not care too much about men oogling their breasts. If a group of assholes were to start discussing the merits of their breasts, they could always cover up and end the show.
But if some jerk walked over and started to take pictures, they would certainly become very upset and hopefully call the cops. While they do not mind a few guys seeing their tits, they do not want to end with a topless picture of them ending up on the internet for eternity.
No_one
13hr ago
There were also anti-government snipers in Ukraine, cooperating with the most radical protesters and fired on both the protesters and the government, trying to spark a bloodbath.
Some of the activists were now saying, during the trial that they were shot from behind by unknown people who were in the part of a hotel which was controlled by opposition.
Of course, good people who have been brought up on a steady diet of pro-social propaganda and who have been groomed to be morally invested into a sordid little geopolitical pissing match have to believe that their side would never, ever do anything shady or horrible.
^^@FistfullOfCrows it's all kabuki.
quiet_NaN
13hr ago
I'm sure we could hash out some set of circumstances where it was not fine. Lets say there's a Married mother of children who does porn without the knowledge of her husband, and not only does this trigger emotional distress for the husband, it can also nuke his reputation and lead to a divorce fight over the kids.
If she is cheating on him to do porn, that would be bad.
All the reputational stuff is indirect, and applies to basically any behavior the public finds offensive, from talking to a black person, being in public with uncovered hair, saying "Guten Morgen" instead of "Heil Hitler", smoking, putting up a Dem/GOP lawn sign, or wearing a bikini at the nudist beach. The question of how much one should conform with expectations for the sake of one's (and one's family's) reputation is a difficult one and not specifically tied to porn.
So say that the wife is camming only (or in an open relationship) and is also blurring out her face (so there is no reputational risk). Or that her husband (in the case of an open relationship) is taking part in a gang bang video while wearing a mask.
I honestly do not see the problem. I mean, if the couple had agreed to a no-sexting-third-parties rules beforehand, that would be a breach of that, obviously. You might argue that in an exclusive relationship, such a clause is generally implied.
If we're going that route, then we have to also have to come to the conclusion that it is utterly fine for men to ogle up the pages of the high-class magazine with the naked women,
Why not?
AND to be a full-on gooner who consumes hours of porn portraying the aforementioned stuffing of holes and similar levels of degeneracy.
I will grant you that at some point, this will likely affect the ability of a politician to perform his duties as an elected official. My comparison would be smoking. A politician who is chain-smoking and can not function in a government building where smoking is forbidden would be problematic.
On the other hand, I could not care less if the politician was a chain smoker a decade ago, or if he spent half of his waking hours jerking off.
I will also state that I don't think there'll be any harm done by a blanket soft ban on anyone who stars in a professional pornographic film from holding a political position.
Fortunately for you, the Constitution leaves who is allowed to run in elections pretty much to the states (apart from a few protected categories like race, sex and age (over 18)), with the current SCOTUS, you might get away with disenfranchising porn actors.
Let us suppose for the moment that anyone who has ever participated in a porn movie is a terrible human being and any candidate who did not have a porn past would make a better government official, i.e. that your rule would improve things on the object level.
This is also a new rule, which always carries a cost on the meta level. It also establishes a precedent. At the moment, the only large group of adult US citizens who do not enjoy the franchise are convicted felons (in some states). Your rule would mean that states could decide to remove any non-protected group from the ballot: perhaps plumbers (after all, a lot of porn actors play plumbers, kinda suspicious). Or employees of oil firms. Or people who have been to a pride parade.
Now, if the current president had run on a campaign promise to fuck a person from every county which had voted for her in the oval office on lifestream during her term and won through the horny vote, then I might agree that the overbearing influence of porn actors is a problem which has to be solved, but in the actual world, it is totally a non-issue.
Some people do not like to be represented by Jews, porn actors, MAGA, SJW, men, women, nonbinaries, plumbers, oil execs, DC elites, Blacks, Hollywood actors, reality TV stars, draft dodgers, veterans and so on. There is a really simple thing you can do to avoid that outcome: don't vote for members of your disfavored group. Sure, sometimes the vote goes the other way and you end up with a president you find terrible, but that is still better than the equilibrium of someone disenfranchising their outgroup.
I am absolutely 100% fine with keeping people like this out of public office.
I do not see the problem with her. Clearly she was wrong believing that a live stream would not be recorded or that the voters were not going to care, but come on, she was fucking her husband. How much more traditional family values can you get?
Apart from the probability of people recording, streaming sex is like leaving the blinds open on your fifth floor apartment with the explicit intent that anyone in the next building who has binoculars could see you fuck. Not my kink, personally, but who am I to judge?
If this is the level of desecration of marriage which you think should prevent someone from holding office, you probably think Bill Clinton or Donald Trump are Satan incarnate.
Freddie's title:
I guess maybe I'm being uncharitable by interpreting this as "Please associate with each other as a cohesive, organized political movement so I can attack the principles of your group rather than deal with the 17-headed hydra that is contemporary social liberalism". Maybe I shouldn't have use the term "single theory".
You and Freddie both are painting contemporary social liberalism as a monolith, with the implication that it's a coordinated effort with offices and political committees. Maybe there's a reason that it's so hard to wrangle these disparate movements together (and why they seem to cannibalize through debates on intersectionality):
This, but unironically.
Cherry on top:
I've actually seen the pendulum swing way harder in the past couple of years, with many more complaints of too many non-white male characters. It seems to be the consultants, focus groups, and corporate America that are guiding these decisions - not some National Wokism political action committee.
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