domain:betonit.substack.com
gattsuru
18hr ago
"We won't enforce the 10k USD/day, promise , unless it gets too gay" is putting a lot of trust in Ken Paxton.
EDIT: I agree that he very probably won't go after the vast majority of such websites. I also think the only thing limiting him from picking up the weakest-looking inmate and slamming them into the wall is wanting to get some as-applied challenges settled first, and the one-in-one-hundred risk of that will make a lot of changes in behavior.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
He openly admits he's a eugenicist, prioritizes abortion access, and c'mon, do you really believe the population of South Carolinans he doesn't want reproducing isn't extremely black-heavy?
In @hydroacetylene's defense the OP has been pretty open (both on the motte and elsewhere) about their belief in the significant "eugenic benefits" of maximizing access to abortion in states with large populations of negroes and/or Trump voters even if they have never clearly stated what those benefits are supposed to be.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
I guess I like orgasms more than you. Or maybe you get much more enjoyment out of videogames than I ever have.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
I tried to read the book review before making a top level response, I really did. But I couldn't make it past this part without going on a rant:
In practice “deep” just meant “un‑measured.”
It should certainly raise our hackles when an organization claims its strengths are unmeasurable. Like maybe these people are lying.
But more to the point, there seems to be this mentality of the educational institution being what matters. Not results, not the kids. The system. Spending more money on public schools is automatically better, even if it's spent on buying cigarettes to pass out to the kids it's better than spending the money on some not-public-school-related thing. Iron law I suppose.
None of this is casting shade on individual teachers, who mostly care about how the kids are doing, would like to be paid more but wouldn't everybody, and are simply very conformist women who've been taught that people pulling ideas out of their assholes are 'experts' who should be listened to. Union heads and admins, on the other hand...
I think we see this mentality on wild display with the principle in this first section- she is, by virtue of her position, entitled to deference and respect and obviously knows best, correspondence to reality be damned.
I went to a Montessori school from first through sixth grade, this wasn’t a completely unschooling experience (in first through third grade they made us learn how to read, learn basic arithmetic, etc. but 3rd - 6th grade is basically as you described, except that in addition to the library we had works (such as a board that used beads for doing long division etc.), which we could choose from). I learned a lot of roman history, played a lot of RuneScape and developed a love of gardening which I have retained to the present day. I had no trouble catching up when I entered a regular middle school for 7th grade (I actually tested a year ahead in my science and math courses). This experience has left me with a very strong belief that kids should be taught how to read, preform basic arithmetic and learn to socialize with others in elementary school and otherwise be left alone.
Like heroin, consuming it feels really, really good, significantly better than 99% of other experiences, and it puts you in an incapacitated stupor, often for between 1-3 hours a pop. Some people want to try to keep children and teenagers from having unrestricted access to this drug. Do you think they have a valid concern?
I'm more on Team Gooner, which I'm sure will surprise absolutely no one, but this metaphor seems to occlude more than it illuminates. I've got some complaints about its accuracy, but assuming it for the sake of this discussion:
`1. Why is this 'drug' different from any other over-the-counter one, not just that people want to restrict children and teenagers from having access, or even that the state gets involved in restricting access, but that it's so vital that state restrictions can put sizable burdens on adults doing things entirely away from minors? Things like alcohol or cigarettes have the obvious physical ramifications that you're pretty clearly -- no one's getting cirrhosis of the dick, here. Am I missing some other parallel, or what distinguishes gooner materials from vidya or youtube or people who get way too into painting minatures or spend every weekend at a sportsball game?
`2. Why is this 'drug' so bad for minors such that we're willing to accept onerous restrictions on adults, and yet not something we need to hold against the adults themselves. There are restrictions like alcohol and cigarettes and the entire DEA. Maybe Texas won't end up being that bad, if only by the standard being set so low, or maybe we're just being cautious because it's so dangerous otherwise?
Or are restrictions going to keep going on from children and teenagers to everyone else? Because a lot of people, including the Texas politicians writing this bill, pretty clearly want to restrict it in general.
`4. Why is it so hard for advocates of these restrictions -- either on minors, or on everyone -- to actually focus on this 'drug'? No one was gooning from a single 1970s Playboy or a couple grainy standard definition videos; it's supposedly something specific to modern porn that's so much worse... and yet the Texas law here wouldn't just cover a 1970s Playboy, but even material softer-core or less overtly prurient than that. Even people here treat hobbyist weird content as at best as acceptable side effect.
`5. There's a model of addictive personalities as responding to spaces they can't get fulfilled otherwise, in the same way that mineral deficiencies can drive people to find weird or even inedible things delicious. In addictions with serious chemical dependency or withdrawal it's hilariously wrong, but gooning doesn't seem to have those things, and some gooners even challenge themselves to go long periods without (... usually in November, for acronym reasons).
That old TLP article has a punchline in the middle about how "Pornography is a scapegoat", and while TLP puts it on ego and narcissism because... uh, well, he's a coastal psychiatrist. There's a pretty mindboggling set of statistics about the sorta thing (not-Aella) people usually do before consensual sex, and everything from dating to marriage to mixed-sex casual meetups are all down the tubes.
Is this missing nutrient model wrong, here? If it's right, might it suggest to something else that's driving more of the changes in behavior people think is downstream of a couple hours on an unexciting hobby and a jacked right wrist? Because if there's something broken in relationship formation well before sex (or, uh, handies), removing that outlet might cause people to start putting a lot more effort into working around the break... or it might end up with a stampede of people going over a creaky bridge held in place by one rivet. And given how broken relationship formation is (especially for <18s and <25s), I'm not optimistic about that.
EvanTh
18hr ago
You could always get a final ruling, rather than a preliminary injunction, from a court of competent jurisdiction.
If you say that getting a final ruling takes way too long - well, yes, that is a problem we urgently need to solve.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
Sure, but photos of a topless woman will only ever be enforced against pornsites or LGBT stuff.
gattsuru
18hr ago
They have to get rid of "content harmful to minors". That's theoretically less expansive in many ways, but in practice it's far broader than all but the softest-core definition of porn.
Throwaway05
19hr ago
That is not a plan.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
19hr ago
Exactly. Korean tests are, by their very nature, actually not good at assessing intelligence. It's all multiple choice. You can't do writing as multiple choice, you need an essay response to assess real comprehension. But if there's an essay then it becomes subjective and open to endless appeals and lawyering, whereas multiple choice is consistent, uniform and totally fair. Just get the right answer loser!
I remember having to study the 'theme' of 'belonging' in some awful book English teachers probably think is profound. That did not help me understand or wield English any better. The only way to get better is to read and write widely, not obsessively study a single text at 10x the intensity of what I was doing just because it's on the test.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
Unskilled labor has never been enough to support a family- that's why poverty was abject well into living memory. A teenage breadwinner requires supplementation by welfare.
It's certainly possible for a teenager to pay for groceries, diapers, and a room in a flophouse. But not wanting to do that is the reason we don't marry as teens.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
19hr ago
They're in your settings. Note that there's a "themes are not officially supported" warning messsage.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
19hr ago
There are themes?
gattsuru
19hr ago
It’s a convention from role playing communities indicating either out-or-character comments or side discussions not attached to the main thrust of the current discussion.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
I mean, I think it's worth noting that part and parcel of the traditional system is Unsubtle Hints to Put a Ring on it Already from the woman's male relatives before this comes up. Of course people in the past didn't date for years and live together without having sex- because they dated for a couple of months and then got married. Some of them had sex first, of course, but it's a lot easier to wait two months than two years. Shotgun weddings preserved the woman's honor because courtships were just short enough that it came out in the wash anyways.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
19hr ago
This factsheet from <del>Mindgeek</del><ins>Aylo</ins> confirms it.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
This was the original meaning of citizenship, incidentally- it would be recognizable to an Athenian that one of the perks of citizenship status is the right to make citizen babies.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
So they have to get rid of the porn?
Whatever you think of porn on an individual level, it has ruinous effects on society. A chilling effect on porn is clearly 'good', even if a determined actor can still get it. 'Not having porn on hobbyist sites' seems well worth whatever inconvenience it causes to people with the weirdest hobbies ever.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
I mean, masturbation pretty clearly does feel really, really good. It, uh, results in an orgasm.
AvocadoPanic
19hr ago
How are Rose and the new boyfriend?
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
Last I checked a majority of what PP does is not-social-conservative-approved-but-uncontroversially-healthcare stuff like STD treatments. That being said, this is still the equivalent of the state of New York not sending federal gun safety program money to the NRA, despite being the nationwide leader in elementary school gun safety training and range safety training. They kinda made their bed and now must lie in it.
Ken Paxton is not running for reelection(he wants to be a senator instead) and only targeting homosexuals and pornsites is... very like him anyways.
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