Frivolous Suits

Been pondering the notion of anti-SLAPP suits (essentially, frivolous lawsuits which attack free speech; see Popehat for information).

And I've come to a rather curious conclusion.

Anti-SLAPP statutes don't go far enough.  Statues in general protecting against frivolous lawsuits don't go far enough.  It's not enough that when the threat is brought to bear that there be repercussions - the threat itself is an act which suppresses and harms freedom.

The -threat- of a frivolous suit should be treated as the threat of physical violence that underlays it.  To whit, it should be treated no differently from a threat of physical violence, subject to the same laws which govern threats of physical violence.

Does anyone see a reason why such threats shouldn't?

Okay people...

...I'm disturbed by my audience and where a significant percentage of them are coming from.  So let's take a page out of Munchkin Wrangler's book, only with more mockery and less helpfulness.

"Orphan porn" - Really?  I'm just a little squicked by this, because the word "orphan" in that context makes me think of Annie.  I'll be generous and assume you're fine with adult orphans, although at that point it's kind of like preferring Jewish porn, which in the US at least is going to be largely indistinguishable from anything else.  Unless they do something weird with a Star of David.  Don't want to know, don't want to know, don't tell me.

"Alcohol abuse blog" - When I'm not on a diet, this blog could probably be a case study, but the fact that I have no issue giving up alcohol to lose weight suggests this isn't the place for you.

"affirmative action for orphans" - I'm curious who was looking this up and why.  I don't believe parentage is something companies put in their standard question form.  If somebody is, they're probably looking to -make- some of the aforementioned orphan porn.

"most boring topics of conversation" - You've come to the right place.  You don't really want to go out with that girl/guy on Tuesday, do you?  Well, have no fear.  Memorize any one of my posts and start spouting it off without giving them a chance to respond and I guarantee you'll wriggle out of any future dates.  I recommend one with lots of cussing.

"misogyny misanthropy" - In my experience misogyny is merely mislabeled misanthropy.  Men and women who hate women generally hate men as well, they just hate them differently, but when you hate men for stereotypical reasons you're just supporting the patriarchy (somehow), so hey, it's misogyny.

"free porn videos" - Try redtube or wankdb.  My "Porn" post isn't actually erotica, at least for most people.  If it's erotica for you, well, okay then.  If it looks like a video, you need to cut back on the mushrooms.

Privilege

I've heard the idea kicked around by some people, primarily in dismissing the Tea Party and like-minded groups, that "These people just want some of that white privilege they've heard so much about," or some variant on that theme.

Then there's the idea of "underprivileged" - which generally means either poor or belonging to a minority group.

Then there's "male privilege."

But none of these are accurate.  Privilege is a legal term; it's not the opportunity to do something, it's the specific and legally granted right to do so.

Normalcy is not a privilege.  Being able to walk is not a privilege; I'm not privileged because I can walk through a door.  It's not an advantage I have.  People who are unable to walk are -disadvantaged-.  They are handicapped, in the literal meaning of the word.

Normalcy does not and should not begin at the worst state of being imaginable, which is what arguments in favor of things like "white privilege" come down to; somebody is privileged because they -aren't- disadvantaged in a particular way.  Such a mindset is that of somebody who pursues single-mindedly as a semblance of normalcy that is which wrong with themselves and with others.

As with affirmative action, the language and philosophy of privilege is such that, if everybody were systematically reduced to the worst state of being imaginable, the problem would be solved.  Meaning that it is a morally bankrupt philosophy and a poor criteria by which to define social problems.

Every Programmer...

...goes through this experience at some point:

You're going through some infrequently used code, and stumble across something idiotic.  Something mind-numbingly stupid you cannot believe anybody could possibly have done.  You pull down the revision tree...

...and discover that it was you who wrote it.

That was me just now.  I suppose a little humility every now and then can't hurt.

Federal War on Men

Link

Page 18, 19. Compare rape statistics for women against "Forced envelopment" statistics for men.

"Forced envelopment" is what female-on-male rape is called by a Federal Government which refuses to acknowledge it as rape.

There are cases of male victims of rape being forced to pay child support to their rapists - quite a few, in fact.  How messed up is that?

This, right here, is why I regard feminism as a morally bankrupt ideology.

That's all.

I don't usually do link posts, but...

Link, for whatever of my readers aren't already a follower of Aretae.  It's worth it.

I have...

...a complicated relationship with the paranormal.

On the one hand, it is completely and totally bogus.

On the other hand, I have accumulated, and continue to accumulate, a lot of very weird personal experiences, to the point where I wonder if my own outright rejection is justifiable any longer.

It could be chalked up to - I've lived so many years, I should expect a certain number of weird happenings, and I simply remember them so clearly (by virtue of their relative oddness) that their number is inflated by comparison to my other, less memorable, experiences.  But this isn't intellectually satisfying.  It's waving away evidence on the basis that there's not more evidence available - without any basis for deciding what an appropriate level of evidence would be.

Of particular concern to me is that the weird events are -not- randomly distributed.  My last home was weirdly full of them.  Waking up one morning to discover the oven turned on and an object placed inside, for example (and very obviously very recently - it had only just started to melt).  Twenty year old medical documents belonging to a previous occupant of the house (presumably, they weren't mine) showing up on a floor that had been clean the night before.  Night terrors, which I haven't had before or since, involving shadowy figures standing over my bed and staring down at me.  (I had two of those, one night after another.  The first was a typical night terror.  I wasn't afraid or in dread on the second, however, which is atypical - in fact I was irritated about being woken up for this crap again, and took it out on the shadowy figure.  That it didn't happen again, after happening two nights in a row, I count as a third oddity.)  Other extremely atypical dreams, including one in which I died.  Footsteps on floorboards, odd scratching noises, places in the house which felt fundamentally wrong, odd behavior of electrical devices, other things, all of which could be individually dismissed, but which amounted to a very bizarre period in my life, which ended as soon as I moved out of that house.

Those were hardly the only moments, but they were the most pronounced; while the non-randomness of the oddities throughout my life generally suggest against the possible explanation of Littlewood's Law, the extremely high degree of clustering of bizarre events in that house outright denies it.

There are other things I feel more reluctant to get into, relating to the relationship between my intuitions and the world at large; these at least, in most cases, have plausible explanation in that I'm simply extraordinarily good at thinking.

But as I have grown older I have grown decreasingly inclined to dismiss outright those with unsubstantiable beliefs.  If nothing else, I see with increasingly clarity how one could believe those things, even if my own preference and position is that they do not hold true.