Posts by TracyMac
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Hard News: The mathematics of marriage, in reply to Euan Mason,
I totally agree that "polygamy" smacks of horrible patriarchal institutions - despite the fact it's supposed to technically mean "multiple marriage" these days, there is the etymology and associated baggage.
That's why a bunch of hippie Westerners invented terms like "polyamory", which still gives me the shits with its wankiness, but is the best way to describe my relationship style.
Sure, there are a bunch of unreformed Mormons who call themselves "polygamists" in the US, and traditional Middle Eastern/African immigrants (not just Muslims) in many places, but I would guess there is a good proportion of us liberal polyamorous types in Western societies, in comparison. That is, engaged in multiple and more-or-less egalitarian relationships (no less so than the majority of marriages/relationships in broader society - in fact, I would go so far as to say they are often more egalitarian).
Since it is the laws in countries like ours that we are considering, I don't see why it should be too problematic to support multiple marriage laws. If you are concerned about the effects on communities that endorse "harem-style" setups, our marriage laws now make no difference to those situations , evidently, oppressive or not.
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Hard News: The mathematics of marriage, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Fair enough.
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Hard News: The mathematics of marriage, in reply to Moz,
I disagree it has to be done at "much greater expense" after the initial transition if standard-form contracts are developed for these kinds of transactions rather than the custom ones we have to do these days. (Unless of course we're entering into a heterosexual marriage.)
But regarding toy-throwing, one can have an ideal and still grit one's teeth and endorse the marriage equality bill. Which I did (petition, email to MP, yadda yadda).
In terms of my ideals, it feels like a backwards step, not even incrementalist. But in terms of practicalities in achieving rights equivalent to everyone else in this society, what else can you do?
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Hard News: The mathematics of marriage, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
If someone..., and one also .., then it is perfectly logical ....
Good old modus ponens - if a infers b, and a is true...
Of course, propositional logic has nothing much to say if the premises are ridiculous. Sure, you can make a logical proof, but whether or not the actual argument has merit in a legal or moral/ethical sense is something else entirely.
As for the remark about "what is marriage equality", come on, disingenuous much?
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Hard News: The mathematics of marriage, in reply to Emma Hart,
Also, waffle makers, the four-way ones. Toaster ovens are so mono.
Anyways, as I have said before, being a queer poly person who is pretty fervent about the whole thing ("activist", meh), this is why I don't actually support marriage as a legal concept, full stop.
If you want to share finances/property/kids guardianship/power of attorney yadda yadda yadda, then make contracts for each of those things. Maybe it'd make monogamous hets think a bit more what they're getting themselves into as well - I am continually amazed at how ignorant people are about what marriage contracts actually entail.
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Xmas day at Oriental Bay. 29 degrees, give or take.
La Grande Jatte, anyone?
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That Freakonomics abortion = less crime thing has been thoroughly debunked, more than once.
I think about the only assertion of Levitt and fanboy-Dubner's in the first book that could go essentially unchallenged is the amazing fact that most drug dealers are poor. ::youdon'tsayface:: (also not Levitt's research)
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Just to put a question a friend had over the weekend to the hive mind...
Said friend was a member of a minorly-iconic Flying Nun band a number of years ago. Given the joys of internet publishing, friend and ex-bandmates would love to post up some of their classic audio clips on a site like Bandcamp or Soundcloud (which would be better?)
Given the joys of copyright in this day and age, how vigorous is Warners likely to be about pursuing anyone who uploaded such audio clips? Or, probably preferably, how easy is it to reclaim copyright from the publisher? They haven't exactly been responsive to email enquiries - i.e. no response at all. While it makes no difference in terms of copyright, they are not intending to make money off these clips. The vinyl itself has been out of print a long time.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I was thinking of some grand reason encompassing ASCII character code sorting with ALL CAPS vs normal title case letters (all capital letters in ascii have lower number-codes than lower case letters, so tools using the ascii codes in the background will sort caps before lower case - it's rare though).
But on further examination, perhaps it's a simple matter of someone inserting some extra rows in a spreadsheet table, not quite in the right place. :-)
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Field Theory: The Force will be with…, in reply to DexterX,
Perhaps for me it's exactly the fact it's a HERO myth (young clueless dude with unknown magical powers finds them and himself) that it bounced off me . I tend to find the whole trope tedious in the extreme, unless it's done well. Princess Leia is in there, but really, her big hero moment is when she strangles Jabba. Maybe she was actually an awesome politician and held the whole Rebel Alliance together - who knows?
Ok, great, it spawned off a whole huge amount of associated media and that's cool if you're into it. But in terms of actual inspiring-to-me scifi films, Bladerunner blew my socks off. It's not plot by the numbers, the "world" doesn't require people running around in monkey suits, and it has plenty to chew on in terms of the wider context of the story.
Because a story is simple and universal doesn't mean we all relate to or like that particular renderinng of it. There is plenty of trash I enjoyed reading and watching in my teens (Anne McCaffrey springs to mind) and I enjoy it as "comfort reads" from time to time still. But I don't expect anyone else will automatically have the same response and enjoyment of them as I did at the time (I wouldn't particularly recommend McCaffrey to a teenage girl now), and nor would I point to them as exemplars of deathless Art that must be experienced by everyone.
