#supreme court justice eve

[fakeoldmanfucker]

I need to find the person who turned down Thiel's application to a Supreme Court clerkship and shake their hand.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Elon Musk reacts as Brazil’s ban on X takes effect

Billionaire investor Elon Musk lashed out at a Brazilian Supreme Court justice early Saturday as internet service providers in the country started blocking his social media platform X following a court order.

In his ruling on Friday, Justice Alexandre de Moraes gave the country's telecoms regulator, Anatel, 24 hours to shut down X, blocking its access in the country of about 203M people, South America's largest.

The Associated Press reported that major operators has begun to comply with the order after midnight local time on Saturday. De Moraes also gave Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet's (GOOGL) (GOOG) five days to prevent downloads of X.

"𝕏 is the most used news source in Brazil. It is what the people want. Now, the tyrant de Voldemort is crushing the people's right to free speech," Musk, CEO of EV maker Tesla (TSLA) and space exploration company SpaceX (SPACE), wrote on X.

"The Brazilian people will learn of his crimes no matter how much he tries to stop it," he added.

Continue reading.

[contemplatingoutlander]

This is a gift🎁link so anyone can read the entire NY Times article, even if they don' subscribe to the Times.

Jamelle Bouie does another excellent job of looking at current events through the perspective of American history. In this column, he compares the current Roberts Court with the infamous late 1850s/ early 1860s Taney Court--the Court that lost all credibility with its Dred Scott decision. Below are a few excerpts.

If the chief currency of the Supreme Court is its legitimacy as an institution, then you can say with confidence that its account is as close to empty as it has been for a very long time. Since the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization nearly two years ago, its general approval with the public has taken a plunge. [...] In the latest 538 average, just over 52 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court, and around 40 percent approved. [...] At the risk of sounding a little dramatic, you can draw a useful comparison between the Supreme Court’s current political position and the one it held on the eve of the 1860 presidential election. [color emphasis added]

[See more below the cut.]

NOTE: Remember that back in the 1850s/1860s the Democrats were the party that supported slavery. The Democrats and Republicans switched positions on civil rights in the late 20th century.

It was not just the ruling itself that drove the ferocious opposition to the [Taney] Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which overturned the Missouri Compromise and wrote Black Americans out of the national community; it was the political entanglement of the Taney court with the slaveholding interests of the antebellum Democratic Party. [...] Five of the justices were appointed by slave owners. At the time of the ruling, four of the justices were slave owners. And the chief justice, Roger Taney, was a strong Democratic partisan who was in close communication with James Buchanan, the incoming Democratic president, in the weeks before he issued the court’s ruling in 1857. Buchanan, in fact, had written to some of the justices urging them to issue a broad and comprehensive ruling that would settle the legal status of all Black Americans. The Supreme Court, critics of the ruling said, was not trying to faithfully interpret the Constitution as much as it was acting on behalf of the so-called Slave Power, an alleged conspiracy of interests determined to take slavery national. The court, wrote a committee of the New York State Assembly in its report on the Dred Scott decision, was determined to “bring slavery within our borders, against our will, with all its unhallowed, demoralizing and blighted influences.” The Supreme Court did not have the political legitimacy to issue a ruling as broad and potentially far-reaching as Dred Scott, and the result was to mobilize a large segment of the public against the court. Abraham Lincoln spoke for many in his first inaugural address when he took aim at the pretense of the Taney court to decide for the nation: “The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.” [color/ emphasis added]

[formatting edited]

[ariiiiih]

Usually, we think He Xuan became the Supreme because of his hatred for Shi Wudu, which was also told by Xie Lian(“Hatred was what made Ship-Sinking Black Water”). However, the plots do not actually support this. And I think the contexts that MXTX created for the blackwater arc had some contradictions, or at least made the analysis of He Xuan’s character hard.

He Xuan became the Supreme before he went to the Upper Court (a ghost in a good disguise must be a Supreme—like XL checked HC’s hand and hair), and he went to the Upper Court to investigate what Shi Wudu had done. So, he had no idea about the fate alteration that Shi Wudu did when he went to Mount Tonglu. Then, how could his hatred for Shi Wudu support him to become the Supreme?

Therefore, other things supported him.

I have two possible ideas (one is more abstract, and one is more personal/specific):

First, his hatred for the unfairness and injustice existed in the society.

This was derived from his life experience (chap 53, pp.27-28): the officials hid his test scrolls and exchanged them for blank ones; fiancée and sister were forcibly taken and died; he was unjustly imprisoned…We could see his tragedy was caused by the powerful malevolent officials who bullied and oppressed the common people for their benefit, the unfunctional social system that couldn’t help the citizens seek justice. (Does this sound familiar? Yeah, that what was Shi Wudi had done, which makes me feel he was just a representative of the cause of this kind of tragedy among the common people in ancient China). Such injustice made him hate them, which made his soul unrested, like what Xie Lian said: “He died filled with murderous intent and resentment…I don’t think a soul hammered into shape by such means would easily rest in peace. Instead, he’d thirst for revenge.” (chap 60, pp. 135)

So, He Xuan went to Mount Tonglu to make himself capable of killing unjust people afterlife. 

There’s no direct description, but we could speculate it from the books.

First, each Supreme acted for their 执念(unshakeable and stubborn belief, the closest word I found in English is fixation, some translators will translate it to obsession, but it is not proper here). For instance, Bai Wuxiang hated mortals, so he created ghosts and monsters from Mount Tonglu. Hua Cheng loved Xie Lian, so he kept searching for him for eight hundred years and supported him no matter what happened. So He Xuan must act for his 执念, and killing injustice----the malevolent people who bullied and oppressed the common people for their benefit----is a reasonable action.

Second, in the Puji Shrine, when Hua Cheng looked through the scrolls that Shi Wudu had put for Reverend Empty Words, he pointed out the people he killed, and Xie Lian found they were all lawless malevolently evil tyrants, and he pointed out the people that He Xuan killed (chap 51). Implying by the type of people that Hua Cheng killed and the fact that Hua Cheng knew the people that He Xuan killed, it was highly possible that He Xuan also killed these types of people, just like what he did in the eve of Hanlu when he was alive.

(belike: Hua Cheng (threw a scroll): Have a look. He Xuan (quietly looked through the scroll, pointing to some names): I’ll take those. Hua Cheng (took the scroll back, casually glancing at the names left for him): Good. Half half this time. (they were splitting the kill list)

And why he decided to use “killing” as an approach to punish the unjust? Because the system in the society at that time didn’t allow him to get his just and punish the unjust fairly. For instance, when he tried to seek justice for his fiancée and sister, he got into jail. If the system is not functional, then he would be the one who executes the final judgment.

Second, his love for his family. While his love for his family is obvious, why this is a reason that he went to Mount Tonglu? He wished to bring the truth and just to his love, the innocent family. This is similar to the reason that Hua Cheng became the Supreme for Xie Lian: to be powerful enough to support and protect the ones we love. If He Xuan couldn’t be Supreme, he wouldn’t have any chance to investigate the truth of fate exchange and kill Shi Wudu in the end.

Then, how did his 执念 change as he realized the truth of fate exchange?

But before going into this, I want to talk about a “problem” in a plot that MXTX created.

The fate exchange could be speculated at the very beginning when He Xuan went to the Upper Court.

Let's see what information He Xuan needed to speculate fate exchange: the birth details of Shi Qingxuan; the fact that he has met the Reverend Empty Words; the time that Reverend Empty Words stopped disturbing Shi Qingxuan was close to the time that He Xuan met Reverend Empty Words; they died at the same time, but one became the god, one the ghost. Are those pieces of information hard to collect? No. Because Shi Qingxuan “is not one to hide anything” (chap 65, pp.241), and there’s no point for him to hide these from He Xuan and He Xuan even purposely being close to Shi Qingxuan to collect information about his brother. And is the speculation hard to make? No. See how Xie Lian quickly found the truth of fate exchange? He even didn’t have any information about He Xuan. And He Xuan is smart, there’s no reason for him not to have this reasonable speculation. 

Then, what is the reason let him take the revenge hundreds of years later?

The first thing I thought of was evidence.

We learned that Hua Cheng had speculated Jun Wu purposely controlled the time He Xuan took his revenge: when Jun Wu felt Shi Wudu was a threat to him (and when Xie Lian ascended, like another test for him: will he help Shi Qingxuan hide the truth of fate exchange because Shi Qingxuan is his friend?), he would “leak the fate-switching affair” to He Xuan (chap 119). Based on the analysis above, the truth was speculated a long time ago, so here must have the direct evidence. And we know He Xuan acted quickly when the evidence was found. Otherwise, there’s no way for Jun Wu to control the time of revenge.

However, if it is evidence, then it means He Xuan wasn’t a hundred percent sure that Shi Wudu did fate exchange. Then, his years of hatred for Shi Wudu didn’t hold up. Though it did make sense just based on the plots, it seems to make the story lack tension. From what Xie Lian had thought after the blackwater arc, we could see there’s a parallel he wanted to make as a contrast between He Xuan and Hua Cheng: If Hua Cheng’s love for Xie Lian didn’t change for eight hundred years, then He Xuan’s hate for Shi Wudu should be same. However, this is not the case according to the analysis above.

So, how to resolve this issue?

My first theory is He Xuan actually had the evidence a long time ago, but there’s another reason that stopped him from taking action quickly, some Jun Wu-like reason, you know he had to make sure He Xuan took revenge at the time he wanted.

My second theory is He Xuan’s hatred is more abstract, and Shi Wudu is just no more than another person who fits his framework of injustice, like the tyrants in Fu Gu. So, it doesn’t really matter whether he had the evidence of fate exchange.

So, did his 执念 change as he realized the truth of fate exchange? Not really. Also, it fits “the hundreds of years of hate contrast”.

(I now don’t have other ideas about the reasons that make He Xuan take revenge hundreds of years later now (there may be some beefleaf versions, but you know it is not the case). So, welcome to share your thoughts:)

Hate and love are just like the two sides of a coin, why we hate injustice and unfairness because we care about the people living in this world. Shi Wudu and He’ family is an instance/ representative of this framework. Why he didn’t disappear after killing Shi Wudu? One of the reasons is the unfairness and injustice would never disappear, is his positive attitude toward life. The resistance is an eternal subject, while the love for life is a great song.

People usually forget He Xuan was raised with love, and this family love is powerful. He Xuan himself is a person who fights for a living, and never gives up. He could once get lost, be affected, and suffered by his pain and hate, but in the deep side of his heart, I believe he still finds himself and his direction.

[offender42085]

Post 1307

Robert Vance Dingman, New Hampshire inmate 70966, born 1979, incarceration intake in May 1997 at age 18, sentenced to life with possibility of parole, parole eligible June 2034

Murder

In May 2018, a Superior Court judge ruled that the state’s new recommended sentence for convicted teen murderer Robert Dingman doesn’t constitute a de facto life sentence.

Dingman was serving life without the possibility of parole for shooting his parents, Vance and Eve, to death in their Rochester home in 1996.

Dingman, who was 17 at the time of the crimes, was seeking a new sentence following a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled it unconstitutional for juvenile offenders to be given such sentences.

The state was requesting of the Court that Dingman be resentenced to two consecutive, 25-year sentences — one each for the murders of his parents. The defense has argued such a sentence would constitute a de facto life sentence due to Dingman’s age.

In a ruling, the state's Chief Justice determined the state’s recommendation isn’t the equivalent of a life sentence.

An aggregate 50-year sentence would give Dingman the possibility of release at age 67, which is less than a Centers for Disease Control analysis that found the average inmate’s life expectancy to be 76.

Robert and younger brother Jeffrey Dingman shot their parents as they arrived home from work in February 1996. The brothers wrapped the bodies in garbage bags and hid them in the attic and basement. They then played and partied over the weekend, returned to school Monday and were arrested after their parents’ coworkers called police.

Testifying at his brother’s trial, Jeffrey said he shot his parents first but said Robert instigated the killings and taunted each before firing the fatal shots. Prosecutors said Robert chafed under his parents’ rules and curfews, and in the months leading up to the killings the boys considered several outlandish plots, including poisoning their parents or pushing them onto thin ice.

Jeffrey, who was 14 at the time of the murders, received 30 years to life in a plea deal in exchange for confessing to police and testifying against Robert. Jeffrey was paroled in March 2014.

4l

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Igor Bobic at HuffPost:

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign warned in a new ad that Donald Trump could be unbound if he returns to the White House following this week’s Supreme Court ruling giving presidents expansive immunity from criminal prosecution. “Nearly 250 years ago, America was founded in defiance of a king, under the belief that no one is above the law, not even the president — until now,” says the narrator in the ad, which was released ahead of the Independence Day holiday. “The same Trump Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade ruled that the president can ignore the law, even to commit a crime — because Donald Trump asked them to,” the narrator adds. “He’s already led an insurrection, and threatened to be a dictator on day one. Donald Trump can never hold this office again.”

[...] In a controversial 6-3 decision Monday, the Supreme Court’s conservative justices shielded Trump from legal liability for some of his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, namely those that were “official” in nature, such as his conversations with Justice Department officials. The high court sent the case back to a lower court to determine what conduct alleged in his indictment for election subversion is immune from prosecution. This includes his pressuring of local officials to create fraudulent slates of electors in states he lost in the 2020 presidential contest.

On Independence Day Eve, 2 days after the infamous Trump v. United States SCOTUS decision, President Joe Biden put out a brutal ad that warns the nearly 248-year-old history of America that defied a king could be in jeopardy if Donald Trump wins the election.

Ad:

[princelysome]

The Supreme Court’s Contempt for Facts Is a Betrayal of Justice

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

#20yrsago Waldrop: 1954 was a GREAT time to be a kid http://www.infinitematrix.net/columns/waldrop/waldrop13.html

#15yrsago Seder for liberated robots https://web.archive.org/web/20090816092953/https://papersky.livejournal.com/443771.html

#15yrsago Adobe: Once you license software in France, you can only use it in French https://web.archive.org/web/20090814174633/http://www.mcelhearn.com/?p=670

#15yrsago Visualizing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book https://flowingdata.com/2009/08/11/choose-your-own-adventure-most-likely-youll-die/

#15yrsago EVE Online creates exotic financial instrument to combat gold-farming https://web.archive.org/web/20090813113841/http://www.massively.com/2009/08/11/the-fight-against-rmt-in-eve-online/

#15yrsago Anti-health-care loon says Stephen Hawking wouldn’t stand a chance under British health care system https://web.archive.org/web/20090806222911/https://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=333933006516877

#5yrsago Imagineering In a Box: free instructional video series from Disney and Khan Academy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv7sBCHvBEA

#5yrsago Brazil’s highest court rules that Bolsonaro cannot use criminal investigations to harass Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/09/huge-victory-press-freedom-brazil-supreme-court-bars-bolsonaro-investigating-glenn

#5yrsago Donor maps show just how widespread Sanders’ support is https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/02/us/politics/2020-democratic-fundraising.html

#5yrsago Big Pharma’s origin: how the Chicago School and private equity shifted medicine’s focus from health to wealth https://newrepublic.com/article/149438/big-pharma-captured-one-percent

#5yrsago Adversarial Fashion: clothes designed to confuse license-plate readers https://adversarialfashion.com/collections/all

#1yrago The Sacklers woulda gotten away with it if it wasn't for those darned meddling feds https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — The United States Postal Service has released a new series of Forever stamps honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Jewish Supreme Court justice and liberal icon who died in 2020.

The stamp, which became available for purchase on Monday, shows Ginsburg wearing her black judge’s robe and signature white collar. It was announced last year as part of the postal service’s 2023 lineup of new stamps, reflecting a jump on the service’s standard timeline for honoring deceased people.

The stamp’s release comes three years and two weeks after Ginsburg’s death at 87, after 27 years on the Supreme Court. Her death, from pancreatic cancer, came on the eve of Rosh Hashanah at a time of intense political polarization — which deepened as then-President Donald Trump pushed through a conservative replacement despite a looming presidential election.

“Honor an icon of American culture with this new Ruth Bader Ginsburg stamp,” the USPS says on its website. It says about Ginsburg: “She began her career as an activist lawyer fighting gender discrimination. She went on to become a judge who was unafraid to disagree with her colleagues. Ginsburg gained a reputation as a respected voice for equal justice.”

The RBG stamp costs $.66 but will hold its value over time as part of the Forever series. The portrait was drawn by Michael Deas, who has painted dozens of stamps, under the direction of the USPS’ Jewish art director, Ethel Kessler. The stamp will be celebrated at an official unveiling Monday evening at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Postal Service’s special edition stamps commemorating notable Americans have included many Jews, including the physicist Richard Feynman in 2005, cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg in 1995 and, in 1991, comedian Fanny Brice, the inspiration for the musical “Funny Girl.” The series in which Brice appeared was drawn by the Jewish illustrator Al Hirschfeld. Last year, the service released a special-edition stamp featuring the Jewish poet Shel Silverstein.

The USPS has also offered a range of Hanukkah stamps and last year introduced a new one, its ninth since 1996. The new stamp, which remains available, was drawn by Jeanette Kuvin Oren, a Jewish artist who also designs ritual objects for home and synagogue use.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

A bad year for the bad guys

In key countries around the world, 2022 was the year democracy proved it could fight back.

On the night of February 23, the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I attended a reading group with a number of prominent Washington foreign policy experts and journalists. We had convened to discuss the work of Carl Schmitt, an interwar German political theorist who believed — among other things — that politics is, at base, about violence. The fundamental political distinction, in Schmitt’s view, is between “friend and enemy”; the fundamental political act is killing one’s enemies. A peaceful democratic world is, in his mind, a fantasy; ultimately, politics would always return to brutality.

As we were wrapping up, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on television to announce a “special military operation” in Ukraine. The mood in the room was dark, full of foreboding; one of the world’s largest and most fearsome military powers appeared on the verge of gobbling up a smaller and weaker neighbor. A world some of us believed was governed by rules and democratic politics felt like it was giving way to Schmittian barbarism.

At the time, the Ukraine war seemed likely to be the first of several catastrophes for the democratic world in 2022. In Brazil, the world’s fourth-largest democracy, a looming presidential election was expected to lead to a democratic crisis — its own January 6 moment. The US midterm elections seemed almost certain to elevate supporters of Trump’s election liesto key electoral administration positions, raising the likelihood of another meltdown. This all came amid a decade-long decline in the number of democratic governments around the world, a global transformation that seemed to herald a new world order with China as its leading power.

But as the year winds to a close, the story has turned out to be quite different. Instead of showing weakness, democratic systems displayed resilience. Instead of showing strength, authoritarian systems displayed vulnerability. It was, all in all, a surprisingly good year for democracy.

In Ukraine, the initial Russian lightning strike was decisively repulsed. It has devolved into a grinding conflict in which Ukraine, despite brutal losses, managed to repulse the Russian attack and even retake significant amounts of territory — with major support from the democracies of Europe and North America.

In Brazil, right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro lost his reelection bid and left office quietly. His most aggressive effort to overturn the results, a lawsuit alleging fraud, ended in a hefty fine for his party for engaging in what the chief justice of the Supreme Electoral Court termed “bad faith litigation.”

In the United States, election deniers lost every swing state race for governor or secretary of state — crushing defeats that may have even undermined the former president’s standing in the GOP.

And in China and another influential authoritarian state, Iran, major protest movements emerged, each calling for democracy and free elections. While the Chinese protests appear to have slowed, they were the greatest popular challenge to the government since Tiananmen Square. And the Iranian protests are still going strong, posing a formidable threat to the Islamic Republic.

These events pointed to an old truth, hard-won knowledge from the struggles of the 20th century: Democracy enjoys some fundamental advantages over its autocratic rivals.

Authoritarian systems have a tendency toward groupthink and ideological rigidity, frequently proving unwilling or unable to properly assess information and change course when existing policies prove disastrous. Democracy, meanwhile, tends to be widely supported by people who live under it, creating problems for authoritarian forces who are too blatant in their aims to subvert the system.

This does not mean that democracy will inevitably triumph in any specific country, let alone across the globe. Democracies have weaknesses, ones that authoritarian-inclined forces inside democratic states have repeatedly proven capable of exploiting. In 2022, elections in Hungary, Israel, and the Philippines all showed that the authoritarian challenge remains enduring and potent.

But when we look at the year’s events in the world’s largest and most influential countries, the story is on balance a positive one. The authoritarian governments that were supposed to outcompete democracy floundered, while some of the biggest democracies staved off major internal challenges.

In 2022, we lived through a relative rarity in recent memory: a decent year for democracy.

Continue reading.

[awideplace]

Posting this as it is akin to the Ask I received last night on here

Eugenics is a social movement that supports the supposed improvement of the human population via selective breeding and other means. It was originally developed by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, and based upon Darwin’s theory of evolution. The word eugenics literally means “good birth” and comes from a Greek word meaning “well-born, of good stock, of noble race.” The goal of eugenics is to make the world (or at least a country) a better place by guiding the course of human reproduction and “purifying” the gene pool.

Eugenicists advocate genetic screening, birth control, segregation, transhumanism, euthanasia, compulsory sterilization, forced pregnancies, and abortion. Eugenics was practiced openly in the early decades of the 20th century in many countries, including the United States. Several state laws were passed allowing for the forced sterilization of institutionalized people. Such a law in Virginia survived a court challenge, with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing in the decision, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind” (Buck v. Bell, Supreme Court, 274 U.S. 200, decided May 2, 1927). After WWII, eugenics by that name fell into disfavor when the extent of Nazi atrocities became known.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, was also a proponent of eugenics. Sanger railed against the “reckless breeding” of the “unfit.” In her book Woman and the New Race, she wrote, “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it” (Chapter V, “The Wickedness of Creating Large Families,” 1920). She desired “to breed a race of human thoroughbreds” and would rather a society “produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts” (Radio WFAB Syracuse, February 29, 1924, transcripted in “The Meaning of Radio Birth Control,” April 1924, p. 111).

The Bible does not specifically mention eugenics, but the idea behind eugenics—that man can better himself by ridding the world of “undesirable” people—is definitely not biblical. And the methods promoted by eugenicists, including abortion, euthanasia, and racial segregation, are wicked practices. God told mankind to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28; 9:1, 7). No exception to that command is given in Scripture, and there is certainly no racial modification to that command suggested anywhere in the Bible. For social engineers to usurp God’s authority over life and death in order to create a self-defined “master race” is evil. Biblically, there is only one race—the human race—with everyone having descended from Adam and Eve. Racial discrimination and ethnic superiority go against God’s very nature: “God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (Acts 10:34–35).

English theologian G. K. Chesterton wrote in his 1922 book Eugenics and Other Evils, “There is no reason in Eugenics, but there is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory, but they will be painfully practical about its practice” (from Chapter VIII, “A Summary of a False Theory”). Since that practice involves abortion and euthanasia, eugenics is simply murder.

Eugenics is not commonly called by that name today, but the underlying philosophy is still evident in medical genetics. Today’s genetic screening and fetal gene manipulation are vestiges of eugenics. When a possible genetic defect is diagnosed in an unborn child, some couples choose to abort the baby. Unborn children with Down syndrome are one example: in the United States, an estimated 67 percent of the unborn diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted; in France, 77 percent; in Denmark, 98 percent; and in Iceland nearly 100 percent (“‘What kind of society do you want to live in?’: Inside the country where Down syndrome is disappearing,” cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland, accessed 6/22/20). It’s eugenics by a different name, as people continue to attempt to identify and eliminate genetic material they consider “unfit” or undesirable.

Eugenics is a meritless and immoral social engineering experiment. It is a slippery slope in which Chesterton’s scientific madmen abrogate the authority of God and seek to create their own utopia on Earth. Centuries ago, Job lamented the evil of his day: “When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up, kills the poor and needy, and in the night steals forth like a thief” (Job 24:14). This is the role of eugenicist: killing the poor and needy and those he deems “unworthy,” preventing a “poor quality of life” (in his estimation) by taking life, denying men’s liberty, and playing God.

One day as Jesus and His disciples were walking in Jerusalem, His disciples asked about a man born blind. They wanted to know “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, . . . but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (verse 3). Who are we to decide who does or does not display the works of God?

In direct contrast to eugenics, the Bible tells us to defend the weak and disadvantaged: “Uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. . . . Rescue the weak and the needy” (Psalm 82:4); “Blessed are those who have regard for the weak” (Psalm 41:1; see also Matthew 25:35–36; Acts 20:35). Killing the disadvantaged, culling those whom the more fortunate determine to be “unfit” for life, or weeding out the weak is ungodly to the core.

Source: https://www.gotquestions.org/eugenics-Bible.html

[theliterarywolf]

If Barbie was trying to go for a "both extremes are bad" angle, they did a poor job. Even if ST!Barbie apologized to ST!Ken for taking him for granted, that doesn’t change their society as a whole. The Kens still have no say in anything, and that’s treated as just fine. Hell, they asked for ONE supreme court justice and got turned down. I can see why people are annoyed when the real world is shown as a sexist nightmare, but the inverted version is portrayed as fine even though in some ways /1

it’s worse. The real world HAS female supreme court justices. Like, being a Ken SUCKS, and it doesn't get acknowledged or get better at the end of the movie. They’re just told to "find out who they are without Barbie", which really doesn't work when Ken was literally created to be Barbie's boyfriend. We can have an ongoing scene talking about how awful it is to be a woman, but actually addressing that the Kens are essentially second-class citizens? Nah. We’re just gonna joke about how they don’t matter. Multiple times. I expected some kind of equality in Barbieland at the end of the movie, now that they’d seen how bad the other extreme was, but no. “Everything back to normal except now maybe the Kens will bother us less”, and that’s the good ending. It was disappointing. (And before anyone asks, I'm a girl) /3

Okay, but if you watched my video, I pretty much say:

"Barbieland is seen as a net-positive... for the Barbies."

You'll notice how often posts about 'the protagonist of a story is not always the hero of a story'. Us as the audience can see that Barbieland is a magical dystopia ruled by toxic-femininity, that the Big Barbie Barage isn't a group of heroes going up against an evil foe, but the equivalent of toddlers screaming 'My turn!!'/'No, MY turn!!' over a playhouse set.

The new status-quo at the end isn't an ideal, it's a bandaid.

Actually, this response ran a bit long, so...

The whole Supreme Court thing... While, yes, it is still kind of 'come on, now' that President Barbie says no, 1. you can kind of understand why she doesn't want to give the time of day after everything that just happened, and 2. she grants them an Appellate Court. So there is at least a step in the right direction there.

Yes, Ken (as a concept) was originally created to be Barbie's boyfriend/husband/support, in subsequent decades even Mattel has tried to stem away from that. Hell, they actually broke up in the 90s! I'm surprised that a lot of people forget that. And, as a mirror...

Hold on, I have to reconcile with myself that I'm going to make this comparison. ...Okay.

In Judeo-Christian faiths, Eve is literally created to be a support and mate for Adam (being created from the rib, or established foundation, of Adam). Yet, women have eventually had to come and realize that they are more than that and that they can find their own identities and purpose.

Could the movie have presented a comparison like this a bit better? Yes. However, that's what that part was supposed to mirror.

But the whole thing shows a series of checks and balances. The real world does have fields that are typically male-only. Sometimes people who have talents for certain jobs aren't allowed to have them. Like America Ferrera's character clearly shows a love and talent for fashion and doll-design... But they have her as a secretary.

And, yes, we do have women on the Supreme Court. The... same Supreme Court that has also been fumbling the bag in recent news. So they aren't perfect for having some pussy on board either.

I mean, it's pretty clear that Barbieland wasn't a utopia at the beginning of the film or at the end of the film when Stereotypical Barbie essentially embraces death and chooses to live as a human in the real world at the end.

[rawralittlerawr]

Whispers: The United States of Christ on Kindle Vella

Dystopian / LGBTQ Fiction / Alternate History / Political Fiction

Read serialized fiction on Kindle Vella - The first three Episodes of EVERY Story are always FREE!

Alternate History / Dystopian / LGBTQ Fiction / Political Fiction

*A snippet from the Prologue in Episode 1 - "Dear Diary" *

Whispers: The United States of Christ on Kindle Vella

Thirteen years ago a radical religious group bribed and blackmailed three Supreme Court Justices to control the outcome of the civil rights case Obergefell v. Hodges. After their success in swaying the opinion of the court, the emboldened fanatics set their sights on the White House. 

Seven years after the bloody, Inauguration Eve coup, The United States of America no longer exists as a democracy. In 2028 things like freedom, liberty, and justice for all are just words without meaning, relics of the past.

For months there have been rumors that the madman in the White House has cancer, and will be dead before the new year. But his puppet masters are still alive and well, overseeing and controlling the daily lives of the People.

Welcome to The United States of Christ!

A cautionary tale set in an alternate Dark America

"This story feels timely and personal on so many levels for me, and I won't lie, I cried as I wrote the prologue and first chapter."

-Octavia Ambrose (pen)

Read the first three episodes for FREE and catch up before Episode 9 drops. Stay tuned for a recap of Season One so far, and a preview of what's coming up.

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 4.29

Beer Birthdays

Matthew Vassar (1792)

Robert Cain (1826)

Phillip Jacob Ebling Jr. (1861)

Pat McIllhenney (1954)

Tom Riley (1963)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Duke Ellington; jazz composer (1899)

Tommy James; pop singer (1947)

Rafael Sabatini; writer (1875)

Jerry Seinfeld; comedian (1955)

John Waters; film director (1946)

Famous Birthdays

Andre Agassi; tennis player (1970)

Luis Aparicio; Chicago White Sox SS (1934)

John Arbuthnot; Scottish scientist, mathematician (1667)

Thomas Beechum; orchestra conductor (1897)

Philippe Brun; jazz trumpeter (1908)

Daniel Day-Lewis; actor (1958)

Lonnie Donegan; folk singer (1931)

Nora Dunn; actor, comedian (1952)

Dale Earnhardt; automobile racer (1951)

Oliver Ellsworth; Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1745)

William Randolph Hearst; newspaper magnate (1951)

Celeste Holm; actor (1917)

David Icke; writer, conspiracy theorist (1952)

Irvin Kershner; film director (1923)

Rod McKuen; folk singer (1933)

Zubin Mehta; orchestra conductor (1936)

Donald Mills; singer, "Mills Brothers" (1915)

Kate Mulgrew; actor (1955)

Tommy Noonan; actor (1922)

Michelle Pfeiffer; actor (1958)

Eve Plumb; actor (1958)

Henri Poincare; French mathematician (1854)

Malcolm Sargent; orchestra conductor (1879)

Toots Thielmans; jazz musician (1922)

Uma Thurman; actor (1970)

Klaus Voorman; rock bassist (1942)

Rachel Williams; model (1967)

Carnie Wilson; pop singer (1968)

Fred Zinnemann; film director (1907)

[fresne999]

Just to add a bit onto this point. "The two party system is a mathematical consequence of the way we vote." For it's a point worth being repetitious about.

There are a number of types of mathematical consequences.

Presidents are not elected by the popular vote.

Democrats have won the popular vote and lost elections. Presidential elections are state by state slogs. While populous states get more electoral college votes than small states, because electoral college votes are 2 for each senator (and every state gets 2) + # of representatives, small population states have an outsized gravity. That's why swing states are a thing.

This is why Democrats keep talking about everyone needing to vote. What we really mean is presidential elections are decided by ridiculously slim margins.

But the math doesn't stop there. A government is made up of more than the chief executive.

Representative districts are gerrymandered in red states. This is where liberal voters are either stacked (all into one district) or cracked (broken up into many districts) so that liberal voters cannot gain political power either at the state level (which gets to draw the maps) or at the federal level, which controls the purse strings for things like funding/not funding Isreal.

This is why voting for state supreme court justices is important, because court cases are the primary way to fight that sort of thing once it's in place.

Red states suppress liberal voters. This can occur by instituting voter ID laws and then closing all DMV in urban poor (POC) neighborhoods, and not having any bus lines out into those areas. By considering hunting licenses ID, but not student IDs. By making it harder to vote by mail or vote early. By reducing the # of polling places in dense urban areas so that there are long lines which in turn make it harder for working people to vote. By having only 1 polling place for a hundred miles on reservation lands, or requiring voter registration to be associated with a street address when many natives on reservations don't have street addresses. By insituting complex rules around how to get your vote by mail counted and then disproportionately rejecting votes by folks in liberal (or POC) areas.

The list of methods is long. The way to fight it is lots and lots volunteering. Volunteer to educate folks on how to register, get their votes counted. Volunteer at polling places. I mean, yes, donations for things like Vote Riders, or orgs like Four Directions (legal org fighting for native voting rights), but also volunteering.

Political parties require an enormous amount of infrastructure to turn out voters. It takes something like 5 contacts to get a non-habitual voter to turn out and vote. That's purely aside from the persuasive work of getting independants to tip your way. But not all contacts are equal. In terms of efficacy, it goes something like: deep canvassing (you know the person), canvassing, phone/text banking, hand written letters/postcards, and somewhere way at the bottom is the paid media you tune out or throw away. This is why I'm often skeptical of third parties as they currently stand. The amount of labor involved is simply astronomical, and I don't see the work happening. If it was, I'd see more of it where I live, and I don't.

As an example, as I mention often in these sorts of posts, I phone bank every week. The numbers we're calling are from a publically available voter roll list you can get from a county registrar. Every list is formatted differently, and they take a lot of massaging to get into the tool so volunteers can start calling. And there are a lot of wrong # and disconnected phones. Same is true for canvassing. Half of what you're doing leading up to the actual push in the weeks leading up to an election is cleaning the crap info out of the list. It's a lot of very boring and repititious volunteer work, and the one thing a campaign never has enough of is time.

I realize none of this is particularly sexy or even "why does no one care about the dying children" painful.

It is why folks like myself keep talking about structures. It's why when I decided I needed to take action, as a process oriented person, I focused on voting. Because voting is the lever by which all sorts of other changes can be made.

Voting up and down the ballot, because that school board election is -- as it turns out -- super important too.

There’s some common threads I see in the anti-voting posts going around, and I feel like I need to discuss some of them. Let’s start with the biggest one:

Voting to punish evil. I see lots of variations of this. Biden is supporting Israel, therefore we can’t vote for him. Is there any viable candidate who would stop the genocide? I don’t think the anti voting crowd actually cares. They are appealing to moral feelings rather than political strategy, because strategically, you have to realize that voting is not going to change foreign policy, and that change has to be pushed by other means. It’ll probably be something in the long haul.

Democrats should run someone else. First of all, this is a shit strategy. You don’t primary your president in the second term unless your party is falling apart. This may come from people from countries where replacing the head of government is easier, but the POTUS is the de facto party head. Also, going to the lack of thought to the goal — do you know someone willing to primary Biden and able to win who would do the things you want.

Biden hasn’t done anything anyway. This is just a way to bat away pro arguments. There’s plenty of lists of progress on lots of things. Student loans, insulin price caps, regulations, anti-trust.

Putting the entire Palestinian genocide on Biden. I’m not saying there’s not culpability there, but understand that the entire US government is in support of Israel, on both sides. It was a miracle we got a handful of Senators to call for investigations. We should cut off aid, absolutely. Who’s running to do that? And keep in mind that Israel chose to engage. US officials would have liked a more limited response, not out of care for Palestinians, but because they know from experience that it will come back to bite Israel in the form of newly radicalized Hamas recruits.

Liberals just have no hope for change. This is a new one. Just some idea that people are stuck in a rut and that’s the reason the two party system exists. The two party system is a mathematical consequence of the way we vote. There is reason to hope for change. The change, though, whatever means you choose, will take decades. Keep working at it. The hope is not that this election will fundamentally change things. The hope is that many small political actions over the years will push things forward.

Funnily enough, I haven’t seen a whole lot of third party promotion, just lots of this rhetoric aiming to punish. When voting, ask yourself:

Is this problem I have with this candidate something that the other candidate would be better on?

Are there other political actions I can take that will help?

What things can change with a different President or Congress, and what needs to be pursued by other means?

Withholding your vote as a punishment isn’t really going to help. Biden doesn’t know who you are or why you are not voting for him, and there is no one with a chance of winning that will do everything you want. But you have other means. Protest, organize, donate, build up alternatives, advocate for a different system.

Vote to give yourself space and get a little bit. Do other things to keep things moving.