#its not only ethically unjustifiable

[cupcraft]

It is really interesting to me, and by interesting i mean so scary and baffling, to see how Dream's cultivated a fanbase.

To his fans, he is loyal to people that "dont care about him", he is "endlessly kind even though some people dont deserve it/arent receptive to it/are people who hate him", he is "helpless and doesnt know what he's doing", he is someone who "makes honest mistakes", is "mature in the way he handles controversy/situations". Dream has cultivated a persona of being loving, kind, loyal, mature and rational, but also equally helpless and in need of saving from a large fanbase. A lot of it stems from him being a white man, but it also stems from the way he's cultivated a fanbase within the power he has in parasocialism.

It is this that allows him to subvert controversy. Dream says or does something racist? It's "he already apologized so its okay", it's "he didnt know what he was saying", it's "ya'll are too sensitive", it's "all people do is want to victimize dream who is loving/kind/loyal/etc." Dream has grooming allegations against him and he admits to the messages being true and real and thus admits to flirting with minors and it's "dream is the victim". His twitlonger is on priv and it's considered "mature and rational". His initial horribly response is ignored because "of course dream would be upset :(! he just is so in need of our help and defense". And then there's the situations of doxxing that people bring up that dream has experienced things that are unjustifiable, but only as a matter of deflecting dream from ever being able to cause harm never as a point of empathy and importance in discussing that as an issue in itself.

It just really reminds me of many other cc's fanbases who continue to have a cc with issue after issue, cause harm after harm. It never matters. The consequences are ignored because those who allow the cc to get away with these things, dont think it affects them. And they dont care who it effects.

And that's the danger of it. To view someone in a position of power who can do real harm and has done real harm as infallible and incapable of anything harmful either due to viewing his heart as perfectly pure and kind or viewing him as helpless compared to everyone else, or to view anyone who critiques the cc as just blindly hating him stuck in an echo chamber of "he can do no wrong" is dangerous. it's dangerous for marginalized fans and fans who are victim to dream's harm or similar situations of harm because you are actively justifying and causing more harm in a cc's name who doesnt really gaf about you. To throw away all morals, ethics, beliefs, all for the sake of destroying people around you for one person. It's just i'm terrified for you too.

[kvothbloodless]

I will say the whole "that's AI" "no it isnt" thing, the whole "AI is ginna make it impossible to tell whether a photo is real or not" thing, kinda drives me insane. Like. You remember photoshop exists, yea? This is nearly word for word the way the (only somewhat unjustified) panic about photoshop went. And its true! The existance of easily accessed photoshop Did make it slightly harder to determine whether a photo was real or not! You had to use some common sense and always retain some skepticism about anything other than a well verified image. But this didnt cause any like. Massive widescale issues.

So Im always just Baffled by this line of fear about AI cause like...this doesnt actually make the problem any worse? Photoshop is already extremely widespread and accessible? AI is probably not going to have a large effect on the number of well disguised fake images circulating, once the initial buzz runs out (alsp happened with photoshop, afaik).

Continuing with slightly more serious thing under the cut

This is also true for AI porn. Like, im not gonna get into the ethical debate about it, but regardless of anything else. Fake porn of celebrities already exists! There are in fact multiple websites dedicated to it. Using photoshop. A creep taking someones photos off facebook and using photoshop to make porn of them is Already an issue, which is why there are already policies about it, which can neatly be used with AI doing the same thing, because its functionally identical.

I cant remember the exact post, but there was one going around a while ago that essentially said "the barrier to doing [bad thing] isnt really how easy it is to do or how accessible it is, its people being willing to do it". AI is a decent step up from photoshop in terms of accessible ways to make decent quality fake images, but its a Miniscule increase compared to the one that occured when photoshop and social media became widespread. Since then, the barrier has been "how many people are willing to lie or be creeps", and AI isnt really going to have that big affect on how skeptical you need to be of important images that might be fake or how careful you should be with images of yourself online.

[ewingstan]

So all the wildbow protags seem to have some frog-being-boiled trick about them where you are nodding your head along with all their choices and then look up from where you started and start noticing how bonkers things have gotten. But how exactly that manifests differs between books in pretty interesting ways.

Taylor makes a bunch of choices that read as understandable for an awkward teenager trying to make the best out of a bad situation, but it doesn’t take long before those choices become pretty clearly (although crucially often not to the extent that they would stick out while reading through the first time) indicative of a much higher willingness to use people as tools than the norm, not be motivationally hindered by empathy, etc. And of course in hindsight a lot of her choices are less careful utility calculus and more an expression of her desire for friendship and control as well as her need to be invaluable in whatever circumstance she finds herself in.

Blake has a much more prototypical set of ethics and motivations, and these largely don’t change throughout the text. He starts and ends as your stock angry but fundamentally “good” YA protagonist. He’s just put into situations where the morals of that type of character means he acts like a horror movie monster. Which is a pretty neat thing for a text to do, to take your typical Percy Jackson-esque character and show that “hey if you put him in enough situations then he could end up asking a facebook group of teenage girls if they want him to kill any of their husbands.”

Sylvester is an interesting case because he starts performing actions the audience would consider objectionable well before they’d get acclimated to it as they could in the case of Taylor or Blake. He performs extrajudicial killings of rouge academics for the government using manipulation and underhanded tactics while peeking up people’s shirts. It’d be tempting to say that his gradual transformation is into an okay person, and that might be true to an extent—the seeds to him eventually rebelling from the academy get planted early and slow shifts in his perspective before that point could be detected going a while back. I don’t think that would be the whole story though. It would probably be more accurate to say that you don’t notice how much Sy’s matured until he’s at the point of rewriting his personality to an adult’s persona.

Its much too early in my reading of Ward to be able to say if the pattern is going to hold. But I found it interesting to see one of the big morally questionable decisions be made early, and in a pretty noticeable way. I’m talking about Victoria secretly tailing Rain home after the capture-the-flag game, after he specifically denied her offer to follow him for protection. It doesn’t read as totally unjustified or anything, she is doing it to protect someone’s life when she has good reason to think its threatened. But she’s also doing it because she’s suspicious Rain’s been lying. And she flies in uncomfortable conditions for hours to find out what he’s up to. Its a huge breach of privacy, and while well-intentioned, it does read strongly as Cop Shit™. And while I only have my own response to the text to go off of, it kind of feels like it was meant to be framed as a pretty ethically questionable act on Vicky’s part. So if I was reading this with no knowledge of the story, I might think “Oh, wildbow’s done the here’s-how-being-in-the-social-position-of-the-criminal-puts-certain-behavioral-pressures-on-you story, now he’s doing the here’s-how-being-in-the-social-position-of-the-protector/peacekeeper-puts-certain-behavioral-pressures-on-you story. We’re gonna see how the moral beliefs that make someone strongly want to be a superhero, and the system of designated “heroes” they get slotted into, cause a lot of shitty behaviors.” But from everything I’ve heard, that is very much not the type of story I’ll be getting! This isn’t the “ACAB doesn’t exclude the well-intentioned cops” story, this is the “we do need a carceral justice system because people need to face punishment for past crimes and also some people are just inherently evil” story. And right now I’m not seeing how we get there?

[grandhotelabyss]

While she’s on your mind, any thoughts on Sontag’s “Fascinating Fascism”?

As a piece of argumentative writing, a literal case for the prosecution with its exhibits A and B, it is as good as they come. It's harder to evaluate her Americanization of the (not wholly unjustified) Frankfurt School paranoia, fascism lurking at the end of every human need and desire, as if it were in fact the name for our original sin or total depravity. The aside, for example, about 2001 as fascist-adjacent art. Surely this goes too far—as if anything monumental or visionary were thereby fascist, as if she'd aimed at Wagner and hit Sophocles—and all the more troubling in light of the essay's open defense of elitism as counter-fascist strategy. This looks forward to what I persist, despite Blake Smith's friendly critique, in thinking of as The Volcano Lover's proto-Hillary-2016 authoritarian anti-fascism, its pitting of the enlightened elite against the alliance of deplorable masses and backward elites, which Hillary was happy to extend to noxious threats of prosecution for Americans just the other day:

The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocuous ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established.

Then again I haven't seen a single work of Leni Riefenstahl's. I remember her obituary in Artforum in 2003, describing her late work—marine photography—as issuing a challenge to Susan Sontag to find something fascist about a picture of a fish. (Sontag might have done it, too, since she just barely outlived Riefenstahl.) As for the essay's second part, the indictment of S&M and gay male culture, which we now know that she knew from sneaking into gay clubs dressed as a boy, I think it extends the essay's excessive severity, again in the Euro-leftist's Olympian posture, to a censure of all fantasy, of people who are desiring wrong, or even of desiring at all, as if she were about to break out with Adorno's "homosexuality and totality belong together" except about sexuality tout court—

Left-wing movements have tended to be asexual, and unisex in their imagery. Right-wing movements, however puritanical and repressive the realities they usher in, have an erotic surface. Certainly Nazism is "sexier" than communism (which is not the Nazis' credit, but rather shows something of the nature and the limits of the sexual imagination).

—and moreover offers a fetishism and even negative idolatry of historical fascism designed to mislead its readers about what the next instance of the totalitarian tendency would look like when it emerged. (Her slight naivete about humanitarian intervention later is the result.) Not a mistake she made, ironically, in her riposte to Adrienne Rich's attack on the essay for insufficient feminism, where she showed a keen awareness that even feminism itself may harbor fascist tendencies, a rehearsal for her later or even belated denunciation of communism as fascism with a human face, a claim she entertains but evades in this polemic.

[onewomancitadel]

I'm not a fan of the fact that Dune Prophecy is based on Brian Herbert's books (which I consider to be noncanonical) and I am generally emphatically against prequels and I do notttt like this expanded universe business - that is to say, I have every reason to be disinterested in this show, perhaps most of all, as I have elaborated at length upon, that the Bene Gesserit story I enjoy is God Emperor into Chapterhouse - but despite that one of the things that made me happiest this year was Dune Part Two. Even through its unjustified book divergences and various other issues, I still loved it enormously and incongruently, and so if I can put that aside, I might still find something to enjoy in Dune Prophecy.

The Bene Gesserit are hard to get right because the basis on which the BG operate does not fit easily into stereotype. They're not girlbosses. They're not really femme fatales. Up until Heretics, they're never even "sexy"; I wonder how much the influence of Eileen and her passing played into this, because she had such an influence on the books (I mean, even in the sense that he felt more comfortable writing sexual material by himself). They're a political force, but not a neutral political force - this is the exchange of women within a feudal system, with the careful control of reproduction, the body as a politic, writ large instead as a political body. It works specifically for the setting, because without the fabulistic conceit (and, yes, many of the psychoanalytic and biologically essentialist ends; I can't expand here but I think this idea is evolved in some interesting ways though, centrally explored through Paul), it just wouldn't work the same way. I think that, for Frank Herbert's foibles (the aforementioned, Alia's arc in Children of Dune), he had very specific thematic and narrative ends which bolster the BG and consequently the female cast generally that they are given serious aims and roles in the story. That the women of the BG order engage in the exchange of women - Jessica and Leto's relationship is much darker in the books, but also, weirdly, more trusting - works as a potent narrative device because their morals and their beliefs and behaviours are so far and alien, measured in centuries, their lifespans fit as a collective, yet it's also an unnervingly fitting and dangerous critique of women acting under patriarchy and facilitating it. Except there is a sort of beauty to that ambition, a sort of righteousness, and I suppose that's one of the things I love so much, and so specifically, about Dune, is that you can sit with all of that, and you're allowed to appreciate it. At most you can tell Frank gets really fired up about bureaucrats.

But it's through that feudalistic exchange of women and the specific talents and practices and inherited body of knowledge in the BG, that is, the total mastery of the body as an internal and external force including the very soul made material in transference, which translates to that political and ethical responsibility they hold and enforce, not in the sense that women stay a man's rough hand - paltry and boring - but as actual participants and lessoners in society. For better or worse. It's interesting because the shift in Odrade's arc in Chapterhouse is not to reject that force, but to reject obedience (which is part of their relationship to the Tyrant), and obedience to an overwhelming maw of reactionary fear. "We are to punish them." It's the moment that's worth reading all three books for, to me. He tests them against the Honoured Matres and the Bene Tleilax alike: the Bene Tleilax do what they do with no moral aim, up until a very particular change in Heretics, but that twist only really makes them a further foil to the BG. The axlotl "tanks" (that's not the twist I'm referring to) are a literalisation of what the BG do, made extreme. So how different are they? I think that is not just a rhetorical question because of the literal technology involved.

What I also really like about the BG is that the specific thematic drive is not "lulz women control men with sex tee hee" - though this is a thing with the Honoured Matres, in contrast to the BG - but instead that libidinal forces organise life and society. It might sound like a fancy way of saying it, but what I really mean is that sex, sexual attraction, and sexual desire - indeed, lack thereof - motivate all sorts of behaviours and ambitions, and political desires, and culture and cultural values, and the identification of this fact and manipulation therein is a type of power they hold. The reason it is dangerous that Jessica loves Leto I is that she has given over power. She is not supposed to do this. (I think this is why Herbert retcons Paul being conceived out of love, not personal ambition to rear a kwisatz haderach herself, and having written this I think I feel somewhat better about the change; maybe these are confluent ideas in Dune).

The nuance of the BG is directly tied to the nuance of the Dune setting. The nuance of the Dune setting is what makes it Dune*: this is why I reject treating it as a straightforward didactic text, but the very common trend now is trying to outsmart a story, and fingerwag at people who seemingly don't get it. The BG are hard to get "right" in a desire to write a feminist story functioning as a moral invective - which fits women as political objects as opposed to sex objects.

I wish I could go see Dune Part Two again - it was a wonderful day out, honestly - and I was thinking that yesterday then read good things about Dune Prophecy, but I don't know what those good things constitute. So maybe I have to join in on Dune Prophecy.

*The unapologetic alienness and total commitment to what it is makes it Dune as well, and perhaps that's why Dune is hard to adapt.

[ospreyeamon]

So, at the risk of sounding incredibly heretical to Stars Wars as a whole, I’d like to ask this. What’s your opinion on the various force traditions, their beliefs, and the aspects of the force that draw upon? Are they all valid ways for a force adept to live by within reason or is one way or the other? Personally I tend to say that they are, it just ultimately down to the individual who decides what they use their gifts for.

Star Wars as a whole has soft worldbuilding and the Force is very much a soft magic system. For a soft magic system, it generally pays not to give a lot of hard answers about what it is and how it works. They tend to depend strongly on things like emotion and intent which are difficult to pin down. I think that's why the Force is considered so resistant to scientific study; it's like if you set out to study physics and immediately encountered Wave-Partial Duality. This force changes its behaviour depending on where you are, what you want, and what mood you're in? What a pain to analyse. So, I don't think any Force-tradition or philosophy should be set up as definitely correct because a soft magic system presents best with a certain level of mystery or ambiguity left about its workings.

The way I think of it, the different traditions are different cultural lenses through which the Force is viewed. They are all observing the Force, interacting with the Force, thinking about the Force. But the Force is vast and complex and contradictory; it's not at all something that can be neatly narrowed down into something easily digestible. All the traditions are based upon the reality of the Force but are incapable of capturing that reality in its totality. True understanding is striven for, but never reached.

The Jedi and Sith both model the Force as having two aspects, but the Voss don't. Are the Light-side and Dark-side of the Force things that objectively exist, or is that just a useful short-hand to communicate that the Force exhibits differing behaviour in the presence of differing levels of emotion? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And that's not even bringing ethics and morality – source of ten-thousand flame-wars – into it. If there's one thing I am sure about when it comes to the Force, it is that the Light-side and Dark-side aren't the Good and Evil aspects of it. Good and Evil are just useful short-hands to bundle concepts for discussions of ethics, morality, and right-behaviour (which is why getting everyone to agree about how to define them is a futile cause). We invented them like we invented honour and justice.

The Dark-side is the aspect of rage, but rage may come in response to an unjustified killing. Rage recognises injury and unfairness, real as well as perceived. The Dark-side is the aspect of fear, but fear may come in response to the risk that other people could suffer. Fear warns against danger. I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that the Dark-side of the Force is more dangerous – but even if it were desirable to live a life free of risk, it isn't possible.

When you ask if they are all potentially valid frameworks for a Force-adept to live within, by whose definition of "valid" do we judge? Yours? Mine? Their own cultural tradition's, when all of the traditions have produced more than one? The people who actually have to put up with their behaviour, assuming those people could reach a consensus on the matter?

To give a straight answer, yes, I do agree with what it is I think you're saying.

What I really would like to see from the depictions of the traditions is more nuance and internal diversity. Let the embrace-love vs eschew-attachment (includes bonus arguments about what is love) be ancient conflicting branches of Jedi philosophy, rather than the writer’s preferred interpretation for that particular spin-off. Let the better-to-be-lawful Jedi and better-to-be-good Jedi tussle. Let Sith write off the whole "expunge all vulnerability, only power matters" thing because it obviously conflicts with the "pursue your own goals, screw other's opinions" thing. Let branches of Sith naturally-select away from backstabbing LOL because the known cheaters are outcompeted by cooperative groups over the long-term. Even better, let the Jedi and Sith's societies struggle about how to deal with the fact that they can mind-trick people.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Iceland cancels commercial whaling this season on animal welfare grounds, hailed as ‘a major milestone in compassionate whale conservation’ by HSI / Europe

Minister Svavarsdóttir ends decades of senseless whale killing and begins a new chapter in Iceland’s relationship with whales

Humane Society International / Europe

20 June 2023

BRUSSELS ― As news breaks that Iceland has cancelled this season’s commercial whaling on animal welfare grounds, global animal protection charity Humane Society International says it is thrilled and relieved at the announcement that will spare hundreds of whales from agonising deaths.

It urges the Icelandic government to make it a permanent ban.

Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Svandís Svavarsdóttir announced that Iceland’s whaling vessels will not kill any whales this season due to the conclusion that “the fishing method used when hunting large whales does not comply with the law on animal welfare.”

The suspension lasts until August 31st, which effectively cancels this season’s whale killing.

The minister’s statement continues:

“It is necessary to postpone the start of the whaling season so that there is room to investigate whether it is possible to ensure that the hunting is carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Animal Welfare Act.”

Ruud Tombrock, HSI / Europe’s executive director, said:

“This is a major milestone in compassionate whale conservation.

Humane Society International is thrilled at this news and praises Minister Svavarsdóttir for ending the senseless whale killing, which will spare hundreds of minke and imperilled fin whales from agonising and protracted deaths.

There is no humane way to kill a whale at sea and so we urge the minister to make this a permanent ban.

Whales already face so many serious threats in the oceans from pollution, climate change, entanglement in fish nets and ship strikes, that ending cruel commercial whaling is the only ethical conclusion.”

The announcement follows the Minister’s op-ed last year in which she said she saw little reason to permit whaling after 2023.

Publication last month of an independent report by the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority ― commissioned by the Minister ― revealed some whales killed in Icelandic hunts had taken up to two hours to die, with 41% of whales suffering immensely before dying for an average of 11.5 minutes.

Kitty Block, CEO of Humane Society International, said:

“For those of us who have been campaigning for many years to end commercial whaling, to see the day that Iceland decides to stop killing whales and retire its harpoons for good, is truly historic.

Economic factors have certainly played a significant role in the demise of this cruel industry - with little demand for whale meat at home and exports to the Japanese market dwindling - but it is the overriding moral argument against whaling that has sealed its fate.

Harpooning these magnificent giants not only causes unjustifiable suffering to those whales who are killed but also unimaginable distress to the rest of their pod who witness their family members being chased and slaughtered.

Iceland is already one of the best places in the world to go whale watching, and the country stands to attract even more ecotourists now that it has abandoned whaling forever.

The world now looks at Japan and Norway as the only two countries in the world to still mercilessly kill whales for profit.”

FAST FACTS:

The International Whaling Commission agreed to enact a global moratorium on all commercial whaling in 1986.

Iceland left the IWC in 1992 but returned in 2002 with an exception to the moratorium, despite objections from multiple nations. 

Since re-joining the IWC, Iceland had killed more than 1,500 whales, including fin whales.

Iceland suspended hunting fin whales in 2016 due to a declining market for whale meat in Japan.

Hunting resumed for the 2018 season when 146 fin whales were killed, including a pregnant female and a rare fin-blue hybrid whale, plus six minke whales.

A single minke whale was killed from 2019-2021, and 148 fin whales in 2022.

Fin whales are classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as globally vulnerable to extinction despite decades of recovery since the commercial whaling moratorium.

🤍🐳🤍

[djuvlipen]

In a new collective complaint to the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) against France, the ERRC and eight French NGOs assert that expedited procedures for the imposition of fixed fines on Travellers in France for "illegal halting in order to set up a home even temporarily" is blatantly discriminatory, further criminalises Travellers, and constitutes a violation of their fundamental human rights. 

This expedited procedure is discriminatory in specifically targeting a minority group, and repressive in allowing no room for discretion, and taking no account of individual circumstances. 

It also ignores the complete failure of national and local authorities since 2000, to provide adequate facilities for accommodation of Travellers, as stipulated in the Besson Act. Under this act, French districts with a population of 5000 or more are required to equip sites for Travellers with a minimum of one toilet and two showers per every five caravans, to assess the needs of Travellers in the areas of education, and social and economic assistance and implement programs as necessary, as well as to provide access to housing to Travellers wishing to stay in one area. 

Twenty-three years on, the French opt instead for more coercion. The collective complaint describes this fixed fine for illegal halting, which represents a further assault on the nomadic way of life, as “completing the legislative arsenal that contributes to the systemic discrimination of Travellers”. 

ECSR 2010: ‘Travellers have been victims of unjustified violence’ 

This new complaint to the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) follows on from an earlier ERRC submission, when France was condemned by the ECSR for its failure to provide effective access to housing for Travellers. In this case, the Committee found that France had violated the Revised Charter because eight years after the introduction of the Besson Law, only a minority of relevant municipalities had implemented it, leaving a shortage of halting spaces for Travellers in the country. 

The Committee also noted that many of the stopping sites did not meet the statutory requirements regarding regarding sanitation and access to water and electricity: 

“The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights observes that in some cases, sites are created outside urban areas or near to facilities which are major sources of nuisance (such as electrical transformers or very busy roads), making them difficult – if not dangerous – to use, particularly for families with young children.”

The Commissioner also observed that evictions are a particularly problematic issue, plunging families into a climate of fear, and often “involve brutal methods, tear gas and the destruction of personal property”. Following some evictions, the National Commission for Police Ethics (CNDS) has found that unjustified and disproportionate acts of violence were committed. The ECSR found that Travellers “have been victims of unjustified violence during these expulsions.”

In its conclusions, the Committee stated that France had not only failed to take account “failed to adopt a coordinated approach to promoting effective access to housing for persons who live or risk living in a situation of social exclusion” 

Gendarme: “There’s a new law, and President Macron has said that there should be fines".

One Traveller whose testimony is included in the submission, explained how gendarmes came one day to the parking lot where their caravans had been pitched for six years to move them on and impose fines. The gendarmes ignored the fact that the owners had given the Travellers verbal permission to be there in return for them keeping the area clean and tidying up truckers’ litter and waste. When they objected, the gendarmes threatened not just to fine two people, but to fine everybody including the children, and stated “There’s a new law, and President Macron has said that there should be fines".

The Travellers had no option but to move to an approved halting site, where he described the conditions as ‘indecent’   “There is no heating in the showers. The electrical outlets don't work. There are rats as big as my little dog. But we don't have a choice because if we move out of this field, we get fined. In the area there are not enough places for Travellers. For example, there is a transit site in a town nearby Fougères, but it is never open because it is always flooded. So maybe on paper everything is OK, but in reality, nothing is OK. 

Above all, we are told ‘why don't you go to such and such a town? You're Travellers, you just have to move!’ My children go to school here … My wife is under medical care here. We've been in the area for over thirty years. We are from this town and we want to stay here.”

Macron deliberately targets Travellers, and “saves a lot of time for many people”

Fixed fines, initially reserved for traffic offences, were created by a 2016 law to modernise justice in the 21st century, which put in place an exceptional procedure Amende Forfaitaire Délictuelle (AFD). That the AFD implemented since 19 October 2021 specifically reinforcing criminal sanctions against Travellers, was made clear by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, during his closing speech at the Beauvau Security Conference on 14 September 2021, where he declared that 

"We will save a lot of time for many people, we will lighten the procedure, but we will also make it possible to respond to unacceptable situations on the ground by having the same approach, by means of lump-sum criminal fines for the illegal occupation of land by Travellers." 

Compounding the racist targeting of Travellers, the complaint maintains that this procedure will affect the most vulnerable:  those who cannot find authorized land to settle on, who cannot buy land or who cannot access the so-called ‘reception areas’ on account of the prohibitive tariffs. Repeated fines and direct seizures of their assets, will consequently lead to further impoverishment and criminalisation. To avoid prison or poverty, those who cannot find a place on authorised land, will be forced to settle. 

These people will see their financial situation deteriorate as a result of fines to be paid and direct seizures on their bank accounts. The consequences will be the criminalization and massive impoverishment of the traveling population. To avoid bankruptcy or imprisonment, the only solution for those who cannot find authorized land will be to stop traveling. This procedure constitutes a direct attack on Travellers’ nomadic way of life, can only serve to increase hostility and oppression against an already stigmatised minority, and as such, is rotten to its core. 

[king-killaway]

Honestly Morality has nothing to do with personal thoughts or creative consumption, but it's rather on how you treat both yourself and others around you.

Having "bad thoughts" is irrelevant in this topic because the only thing that matters is the actions one takes.

Actions are their own moral decisions. Choosing to consume problematic media means basically nothing in the face of committing harm towards actual people.

This stands in relevance toward basically anything.

To publicly acknowledge that something you've consumed is problematic and receive backlash for it isn't unjustified. However, violent harrassment because of it is not and never will be justified.

To be viewed in the eyes of society is irreverent and inescapable. However the eyes of the mob are often filled with blood, and that is a problem.

To be told by the individual that an action committed is harmful and destructive is more inclined to hold truth, than the mob chanting for a witch hunt, or in more modern terms to be canceled.

One cannot choose whether something they have done has harmed another, but they can choose to strive for improvement in the future. That is often unjustifiable to the mob, once one harm has been committed it must mean more harm is inevitable. Which is just irrationally untrue.

Humans are remarkable creatures that have the ability to learn and rectify mistakes once made in the past, and more often then not they do.

Ethics are an often unequivocal matter for the laymen, whose understanding are basic principles and standards. But to a mob, they are uncritically divine, often taking complexity out of the equation and ending in a state of totality.

And that is dangerous. It removes individually and the nuances of situations involving these topics and discussion. It calls for instinctive reactions based on disgust and the idea of purification. Rather than complex discussions about complex issues. And in the end it creates black and white sides to topics that require grey areas.

Which is the point. Its easy to point at something uncomfortable and say its bad. It's much harder to critique something and find both the flaws and the pros. These devices are tactics designed to segregate individuals and lump them into boxes of differing opinions. Which in the end only helps to harm everyone involved. It creates barriers that must first be broken before any kind of progressive (in this context meaning meaningful) change can be accomplished.

It's a form of totalitarian ideology that serves no benefit than to the ones who have declared themselves the Victor. And in too often of a fashion they are not the ones who were marginalized nor suffers of systemic abuse. It only serves as a function of continuous harm, of miscommunication and misinformation, as a sort of propaganda, and overall as violent acts of control.

[tim-hoe-wan]

Speaking of Olivia, I need your completely "nuanced" (lmfao I'm sorry) take on the dwd drama. Do you think Flo was being unprofessional? Do you agree she should have pretended to be friendly? I'm on the edge because I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt since I have never heard a negative comment about her in regards to work ethic. But idk, in real life situation most people cannot do what she's doing.

Look I can't answer this pretending I never had any sort of intel during and post production of this film to say she was unjustified.

But let's say I'll judge it pretending I know as much as the next person. The thing is, it's not like what Flo did was unprecedented. Maybe it was unprecedented for women, but men have been able to actively badmouth their current projects or complain about the work environment and people never took an issue with it. Sometimes, people even cheer them for it. Flo for the most part, just shut her mouth. She never pretended all was kumbaya and neither should she, no one should lie if they were in a horrible working environment or experience. But it seemed she gave it the most grace she could have given. If "she was just being petty and used the misogyny against Olivia to up her rep," I think you actually have to read into it to see it that way. If you're just a casual viewer, she just didn't show up for full promo and the execs gave their full support when that part is stipulated in their contract. She was quiet when a video of her director making her seem like a diva surfaced online.

It's a situation you'd have to be obsessed to pin the blame on Flo. The whole promo was a problem on its own with only the director doing any promo. The leading male could have given more interviews but can't even pull him for a 10 min interview before his concert or on his rest day? Chris Pine only doing Venice? People just chose to focus on Flo when clearly the actors weren't fully there to commit to it after filming.

[pscottm]

This Strange Moment - by david c. porter - Garden Scenery

I am writing to you from a strange moment. Yesterday, for the first time in a very long time, a man was killed in America whose death was not part of the plan. He was a rich and powerful man, and he was not killed for any of the reasons we have been told the rich and powerful can be killed for: he was not killed by a spurned lover, a deranged stalker, or a foreign terrorist. The killing did not lend itself to being made a “referendum” on mental health and/or gun control, nor could it be made plausibly indicative of the “growing threat” of this or that enemy state. No, the killing occurred for a very simple reason, one which is obvious to everyone, but which will be spoken of by the mouthpieces of official discourse, if they speak of it at all, only in tones of disgust and condescension, because it is outside, well outside, the parameters of what they are permitted to recognize as legitimate – that being, that this was a man who made himself rich off the suffering and death of others. For this reason, understood by all, he was killed, and for this reason, given the lack of a legal mechanism by which he could have been brought to account for all the lives which he had sucked dry, and made himself fat and happy upon, it can hardly be considered unjustified. After all, had he not been stopped, he would have continued to kill until he was himself too old and infirm to continue, or had found some even more profitable set of thumbscrews to twist, or simply decided he was content with the fortune he had amassed, and retired into comfort and security. It is true, no doubt, that his successor will continue in his footsteps, and kill many more people themselves, because this is the nature of the business they are in, which is not the “healthcare” business but, rather, parasitic upon it, and which derives its profit not from providing healthcare but from withholding it, and demanding a handsome tribute for this “service” – but this successor, I suspect, will be somewhat more cautious in how they go about their business, how many they consign, for the sake of the margin, to expiration in slow agony. They will think twice, sometimes, about the decisions they make, not out of some remarkable rejuvenation of their shriveled ethical faculty, but out of simple, animal fear, a fear which they will deny feeling but will feel nonetheless. And even if this is not the case, even if this man’s successor is a creature too cold or stupid to be troubled by their own mortality, we can say, at least, that some accounting has been done, that no, the books have not been balanced, not by any measure, but that a fresh mark, at least, has been placed in the column of Justice, and, in these times, this is a great and rare thing.

[watchesuaesblog]

The Ethics of Wearing Copy Watches: A Debate

Introduction

Wearing copy watches is a serious moral issue that has led to a heated debate among consumers, ethicists and manufacturers. Counterfeit or replica timepieces, which are fake watches mimicking the original brands, have raised significant ethical questions about intellectual property rights, deception of consumers, economic consequences and personal values. In this regard, it analyses all these aspects to provide a full expression of the ethicality in wearing counterfeit watches.

Intellectual Property Rights

The discussion mainly revolves around intellectual property rights where luxury master copy watches companies make elaborate investments in design, technology and craftsmanship that go into their products. These investments are protected through trademarks and patents which prevent unauthorized replication. Wearing such fake watch directly infringes on these protections thereby undermining both legal as well as moral rights of the earliest creators.

From legal point of view, when people buy or wear imitation watches they increase demand for counterfeit products by supporting a market based on stealing ideas from others. This is not only harmful to the legitimate producers but also depreciates the value of intellectual property laws as such. Ethically seen discussed above; promoting counterfeit trade may be regarded as an approval of creative theft hence robbing industries that rely on properties.

Consumer Deception and Trust

Copy watches in uae can deceive many unsuspecting buyers into thinking they bought the authentic items. Even if the buyer knows he/she has acquired a replica, putting on copy watch can lead others into assuming it is genuine. As a result, trust and authenticity within different social and professional interactions can be eroded due to such deceit.

The right thing here is all about sincerity and openness with others mostly while trying to exhibit one’s own personality traits rather than hiding something about oneself. It is ethically unjustified for any individual who chooses to put on a knockoff watch so as to deceive others because this goes against honesty norms. The person behind this should therefore ask himself or herself whether his or her behavior corresponds altogether with values he or she would want to be seen as following. When this is revealed in any social setting, relationships and trust tend to suffer.

Economic Impact

Counterfeit watches are having significant economic implications thereby affecting the production and sale of genuine products. The booming replica market has negative financial consequences for the luxury watch industry, which relies on brand image and exclusivity. Smaller companies and artisans, who depend on fair competition and genuine goods, also feel its impact apart from well-known high-end brands.

Counterfeit watches are usually made where labor standards do not exist creating room for unethical labor practices. Therefore, employees here may face poor working conditions, inadequate remuneration or lack of lawful protection. Consequently, counterfeits have a broader economic implication ranging from lost revenue through rightful businesses to more general social and economic injustices.

Personal Values and Identity

The decision to wear a copy watch also reflects on an individual's personal values and identity. In some cases, people chose to wear counterfeit watches so as to access prestige associated with such luxury brands without necessarily paying premium prices for that matter. This however may be seen by others as placing higher value on appearance or popularity compared with truthfulness or ethical considerations at large.

The moral issue here lies in the struggle between materialism versus morality; putting on a fake watch can mean trading one’s ethics for personal benefits which can affect his/her self-esteem as well as damage his/her own integrity accordingly. It requires individuals to think about how they want their lives perceived by others and what kind of person they really want to be seen as being by other people around them.

Legal and Social Ramifications

Legally, purchasing and using of counterfeit products may have consequences that include fines as well as confiscation of the counterfeit items. The risk of legal action adds another level to the ethical debate even though the enforcement varies across jurisdictions. However, by wearing a replica watch, he or she is aware of the risks existing in such an act indicating a lack of respect for law and social order.

Falsehoods linked with counterfeits tend to damage individual relationships both at personal and professional levels. Such can be so ruinous especially if one’s circle values authenticity and conscious consumerism where they hold that originality matters most. This aspect draws attention to how our personal choices are seen by society while considering our status among others.

The Appeal of Copy Watches

Despite all this, there still exists demand for imitation watches in the markets today. Most people who prefer fake watches do so because they want their friends to think they have money without spending on luxury goods like Rolex. By having a copy watch; one can experience beauty designs from big brands but only at a fraction of actual cost.

It should however be remembered that this attraction has its own ethical implications discussed above. A good example is disposable fashion: we buy cheap stylish watches just because we feel like having them immediately which makes us indirectly involved into unethical trade practices by devaluating genuine industry products. Thus, it is about critical thinking on what actually drives you when you decide to buy something for yourself or someone else.

Alternatives to Copy Watches

There are other options available for those who love luxury watches but cannot bear the thought of buying them illegally due to their moral standing. A good number of well-known watchmakers offer affordable high quality timepieces which don’t infringe any copyrights or patents hence called replicas legally made by authorized dealerships who sell them as such without causing alarm on fakes infringement issues. Thus, it will be possible to promote satisfaction without conceding in terms of ethics.

Another option is that genuine luxury watches are available at lowered prices through second hand markets or vintage shops, where customer can purchase their original products responsibly. This way supports ethical consumption and the industries which are engaged into fair competition and innovations.

Conclusion

The morality surrounding counterfeit watches has various aspects including intellectual property rights, consumer deceit and economic aspects among others. As much as counterfeiting a watch may sound lovely, there is a great deal of ethical problem related to it. In conclusion, customers have to make informed choices by carefully weighing the desire for possessing luxuries against their long-term consequences which governs this complicated scene. Moreover, individuals who value authenticity, transparency and conscious consumerism should support such values by making choices that reflect their standards thereby contributing towards a just marketplace.

[rxshl]

CRITICS ON LIBERTARIANISM

A long-standing criticism of libertarianism is that it presupposes an unrealistic and undesirable conception of individual identity and of the conditions necessary for human flourishing. Opponents of libertarianism often refer to libertarian individualism as “atomistic,” arguing that it ignores the role of family, tribe, religious community, and state in forming individual identity and that such groups or institutions are the proper sources of legitimate authority. These critics contend that libertarian ideas of individuality are ahistorical, excessively abstract, and parasitic on unacknowledged forms of group identity and that libertarians ignore the obligations to community and government that accompany the benefits derived from these institutions. In the 19th century, Karl Marx decried liberal individualism, which he took to underlie civil (or bourgeois) society, as a “decomposition of man” that located man’s essence “no longer in community but in difference.” More recently, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor maintained that the libertarian emphasis on the rights of the individual wrongly implies “the self-sufficiency of man alone.”

Libertarians deny that their views imply anything like atomistic individualism. The recognition and protection of individuality and difference, they contend, does not necessarily entail denying the existence of community or the benefits of living together. Rather, it merely requires that the bonds of community not be imposed on people by force and that individuals (adults, at least) be free to sever their attachments to others and to form new ones with those who choose to associate with them. Community, libertarians believe, is best served by freedom of association, an observation made by the 19th-century French historian of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville, among others. Thus, for libertarians the central philosophical issue is not individuality versus community but rather consent versus coercion.

Other critics, including some prominent conservatives, have insisted that libertarianism is an amoral philosophy of libertinism in which the law loses its character as a source of moral instruction. The American philosopher Russell Kirk, for example, argued that libertarians “bear no authority, temporal or spiritual,” and do not “venerate ancient beliefs and customs, or the natural world, or [their] country, or the immortal spark in [their] fellow men.” Libertarians respond that they do venerate the ancient traditions of liberty and justice. They favour restricting the function of the law to enforcing those traditions, not only because they believe that individuals should be permitted to take moral responsibility for their own choices but also because they believe that law becomes corrupted when it is used as a tool for “making men moral.” Furthermore, they argue, a degree of humility about the variety of human goals should not be confused with radical moral skepticism or ethical relativism.

Some criticisms of libertarianism concern the social and economic effects of free markets and the libertarian view that all forms of government intervention are unjustified. Critics have alleged, for example, that completely unregulated markets create poverty as well as wealth; that they result in significant inequalities of income and wealth, along with corresponding inequalities of political power; that they encourage environmental pollution and the wasteful or destructive use of natural resources; that they are incapable of efficiently or fairly performing some necessary social services, such as health care, education, and policing; and that they tend toward monopoly, which increases inefficiency and compounds the problem of inequality of income and wealth.

Libertarians have responded by questioning whether government regulation, which would replace one set of imperfect institutions (private businesses) with another (government agencies), would solve or only worsen these problems. In addition, several libertarian scholars have argued that some of these problems are not caused by free markets but rather result from the failures and inefficiencies of political and legal institutions. Thus, they argue that environmental pollution could be minimized in a free market if property rights were properly defined and secured.

[123schoolproject]

Research for unjustified abuse cases

Source Title: New York appeals court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s sex crimes conviction and orders a new trial

Source URL: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/25/us/harvey-weinstein-conviction-overturned-appeal/index.html

What information did you find in this source? Record the key facts that you got from

this source.

Harvey Weinstein only got time because of the victims being able to express what he did to them if it was a whole different case and the victims wasn’t able to talk about what happened to them the crime would have been put as not guilty because now days they don’t look at the obvious evidence

What are some useful quotes from this source?

“The witnesses were there just to make Harvey Weinstein look bad,” Aidala said. “That’s the only reason why those witnesses were admitted. To show that he’s a bad guy. He was tried on his character, not the evidence.”

Source Title: Our System for Reporting Child Abuse is Unethical

Source URL: https://www.thehastingscenter.org/our-system-for-reporting-child-abuse-is-unethical/

What information did you find in this source? Record the key facts that you got from this source.

the cps takes more action into false accusation cases then they do for cases that are real abuse cases and it can cause death especially for the obvious abuse cases that are just classified from the parent as “oh my child just had a rough day at school’ or “oh my child just played extremely hard today my kid is so reckless its concerning”

What are some useful quotes from this source?

families who lost custody of their children after pediatricians reported child abuse but were incorrect.

The case concerns Maya, the subject of a recent documentary that depicts a powerful pediatrician specializing in identifying child abuse who, with other clinicians and the Florida Department of Children and Families, wielded complete power over Maya and her parents, forcing them to be separated because of alleged child abuse.

he system of mandatory reporting of child abuse is rife with ethical problems and can lead to unjustified custody loss.

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: 'I Will Forget This Feeling Someday'

I Will Forget This Feeling Someday by Yoru Sumino

discontented youth

isekai

sci-fi

teen romance

ya fiction

ya romance

My Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kaya Suzuki's ethical ambivalence toward the corruptive nature of interpersonal relationships has marked him as a vicious stoic by his early high-school years. For Kaya, goodness is a predictable corollary of convenience. The presumed arrogance of youth and the presumed certainty of adulthood are flagrantly unjustifiable vestiges of the human imagination. That is to say, people playact in a manner that comforts them to defy whatever it is they fear or to steal or obtain whatever they desire. Kaya Suzuki is not wrong.

I WILL FORGET THIS FEELING SOMEDAY is an intriguing work, if modestly undercut by the author's curious decision to staple a 127-page addendum to the book. Kaya sees through the miasma of optimism that typically plagues others his age: folksy camaraderie is unnecessary, adolescent relational dynamics are ephemeral, and the professional violence owned by supposedly mature adults amounts to nothing more than a game. In Kaya's rural town, it doesn't matter if he's mindful of neighborhood gossip and it doesn't matter if he listens to news stories about an approaching war. Humanity is endlessly selfish, so why bother?

"Most of us live and die without ever being special," Kaya says. "It's such an obvious truth, but most people don't seem to realize it — at least the people around me. But if you say something like that aloud, people get upset with you and act like it's an insult" (page 121).

And that's when he meets Chika.

In spite of the villainous truths that mar human pragmatism, Kaya meets Chika, accidentally, and through a kind of happenstance that forcefully occupies his mind for months at a time. At an abandoned bus stop, at the edge of his rural town, roughly half an hour before midnight, Kaya encounters a pair of glowing eyes. Shock and surprise (e.g., Ghost? Phantom?) give way to wild panic (e.g., Not alone?), which gives way to curiosity (e.g., How is it we can interact? Where are you from?), which gives way to restless enthusiasm (e.g., Our words are linked, but how?).

I WILL FORGET THIS FEELING SOMEDAY, at least the first 68% of it, is an excellent journey toward the precipice of low sci-fi, with a hint of philosophical rumination. Kaya and Chika's realms are bound; events occur in both worlds but wield asymmetrical reciprocity (e.g., seasonal weather occurs simultaneously yet unevenly; an injured pet in one world could equate to an injured person in another; a destroyed building in one world could equate to a broken window in another). Kaya and Chika's curiosity about one another, as well as one another's worlds, alleviates Kaya's boredom and stirs Chika's sincerity.

How does one learn about another world or realm when one cannot interact with that realm or its occupants? Why don't the reciprocal actions linking these realms line up? Why is Kaya the only one who can sort-of see, hear, and touch this otherworldly person? All good questions. All unanswerable. For a young man who regularly sees through the vanities his world offers, the possibility that he's not worthy of learning the truth of a universe beyond his tiny town in the sticks may prove interminably devastating.

All Kaya has for a guide is a floating pair of eyes and a patient, raspy voice. As such, the young man grows increasingly desperate for answers, occasionally pressing for violence and criminal behavior to validate his frustrations. Kaya wants to know Chika, wants to know more about her world; he also wants to protect her, his bond with her, and his perception of his bond with her, no matter the cost.

Chika is bright, affable, and inquisitive. But she is also painfully naïve. I WILL FORGET THIS FEELING SOMEDAY doesn't give her much depth beyond the role of a sounding board, a mirror for all of Kaya's basest inclinations, but the young woman serves up a meaningful warning when she says: "It might be impossible to avoid hurting others when you've really put your heart behind something, but if you go around intentionally causing people harm, someday you're going to end up hurting the things that you treasure, the beliefs you're trying to protect" (page 234).

Kaya may have convinced himself that he has fallen in love with a person he cannot see and whose personal life he has trouble visualizing. Kaya may also have convinced himself he can artfully sidestep the "mistake" of believing himself special in lieu of merely being fortunate. But "human relationships were built on the knowledge that one day, whether it's tomorrow or decades from now, one [is] always destined to betray the other" (page 97), and it would appear vicious stoics are no exception to this rule.

I WILL FORGET THIS FEELING SOMEDAY takes place primarily in the protagonist's dull high-school years. Kaya makes friends, loses friends, alienates family members, breaks the law, and more. The young man's fascination with forming a bond with an otherworlder drives him constantly. But what happens if Chika leaves? What if Chika gets injured or harmed? What if Kaya proves too foolish to manage a romance that he himself refuses to name?

The latter 32% of the book muddles any sensible answer to these questions. Following a handful of time-skips, the author takes readers on into the life of a thirtysomething office worker who clings to a semblance of past emotions to survive each day.

As a child, Kaya Suzuki was not wrong when he spied the prickly gamesmanship and messy ennui that colored most people's mediocre lives. As an adult, some of that sharpness has been rubbed down and chipped away. And it isn't until Kaya-the-adult runs into an old acquaintance that his simple, selfish quest to be forgiven (and to forgive himself) can be remotely attended to.

For readers familiar with Sumino's previous works, this novel carries the emotional truculence of I Want to Eat Your Pancreas and At Night, I Become a Monster, with flashes of the Third Act of I Am Blue, in Pain, and Fragile. To clarify, topics of suicide, the irrelevance of youth, the death of kindness, and the ironic insolence of being pragmatic carry this novel's thematic weight from start to finish. Understanding other people is impossible, and the fragments of truth one gains by experiencing the greatest moments of one's life are often rendered obsolete the instant that wind of fascination blows by. Contentment is an illusion.

I WILL FORGET THIS FEELING SOMEDAY is not about daring to doubt that love can exist; this book is about steeling oneself for the painful reality that emerges when one dares to doubt the concept of love at all.

❯ ❯ Light-Novel Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads

[denimbex1986]

'Christopher Nolan’s latest masterwork, Oppenheimer, opens with a quote on Prometheus and the consequences of his most famous action—namely, stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humankind.

With bass-filled sound design and fiery visuals, the film satisfies viewers while touching on Greek mythology, the ethics of war and peace, the relationship—or lack thereof—between genius and wisdom, and the psychology of creating weapons of mass destruction.

The Promethean archetype in this context is a familiar one—the scientist takes the place of Prometheus and develops an unprecedented device to aid humanity without either anticipating or sufficiently caring about its destructive potential.

Seeing as I’ve promised you philosophy in this column, let’s examine a certain argument “Oppie” employs which captures the spirit of a philosophical tradition called consequentialism.

In the film, when asked if the bomb is big enough to end World War II, J. Robert Oppenheimer declares the weapon is big enough to end all wars. He predicts an unprecedented age of peacefulness achieved through mutually assured destruction.

Lurking here is the position that a nuclearized world—the world from which the moviegoer views Oppenheimer—is more peaceful than a non-nuclear world, which, though hypothetical for us, is the reality Oppenheimer lived and worked in.

This method—weighing the pros and cons of possible worlds—is a common practice in consequentialist philosophy. To determine the more appropriate alternative through this method, the decision maker should pursue whichever alternative produces the better consequences or outcome.

We can, at least in theory, try to calculate the value of a given situation by comparing it with alternative possibilities. This is most clear when one person must choose between two things.

As an example, let’s consider the question of whether one should cook dinner or get takeout.

If I cook dinner instead of getting takeout, I presumably do this because it creates a better outcome for my life in some way. I might gain 500 ‘units’ of happiness by cooking my own dinner, where I’d only gain 300 ‘units’ of happiness if I ordered takeout. I therefore get more good consequences for my action if I make my own dinner than if I order takeout, making this route more desirable through a consequentialist lens.

We see the same sort of reasoning from Oppenheimer’s position. Seeing two possible worlds—one nuclearized and one not—Oppenheimer weighs the suffering produced by warfare in each world and concludes a nuclear world produces less violence overall.

Though similar to my example above, this calculus considers what provides more happiness and less suffering for the whole world, instead of just one person.

In some ways, Oppenheimer’s reasoning seems justified. It’s reasonable to assume the onset of a third world war is more likely without nuclear weapons, given the absence of mutually assured destruction. Surely the death toll in such a conflict would be astronomical, and unnecessary suffering has indeed been thwarted by way of nuclearization.

In other ways, his reasoning is unjustified. While direct conflict between major world powers like America and Russia was, and continues to be, prevented by nuclearization, proxy wars have since produced violence and suffering despite the world’s unprecedented “peace.”

This “peace” is one maintained through the use of less powerful nations and their citizens as fodder—regions such as Iran, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine.

It goes without saying the 210,000 dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have something to say here.

More concerning still is the prospect that modern nuclear missiles won’t stay in their silos forever. Major world powers still possess nuclear weapons, and though they’re not currently in use, there’s no telling a nuclear armageddon won’t ensue in the future.

If Oppenheimer was aware—or at least suspicious—of this outcome, his argument becomes even less persuasive. Though major world powers no longer fight directly, they still fight. Since the glowing-green nuclear genie has been let out of the bottle, there’s always a risk for future nuclear destruction.

In Nolan’s film, we’re led to believe Oppenheimer was suspicious of great nuclear destruction, as he suffers from visions of the destructive force of his bomb on flesh and blood, as well as the planet overall.

Developing the bomb in the face of such suspicions can also have psychological consequences. This is notably evident when Oppenheimer leaves behind a cheering crowd to meet one fellow scientist crying in his partner’s arms, and another throwing up with bloodshot eyes.

Years after the war, in dialogue with Albert Einstein, Oppenheimer reveals the permanence of these psychological consequences. Referencing a prior conversation, he asks Einstein if he remembers early concerns about igniting the atmosphere upon nuclear detonation, thus ending the world.

Despite the possibility of atmospheric ignition being ruled out after testing, Oppenheimer tells Einstein he believes this worry has nonetheless come to pass, and the world-ending chain reaction he foresaw had begun.

The film then concludes with an apocalyptic vision—and perhaps an inevitable one—of nuclear weapons being detonated from pole to pole.

Chained to a proverbial rock and tortured for the rest of his life, Oppenheimer would live and die with this vision. Perhaps we’ll meet our own ends by its realization. Whichever way the dice fall, Oppenheimer serves as a cautionary tale against opening boxes whose contents we’re not prepared to handle.'