catreadingabook

@catreadingabook@kbin.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the right to abortion a "negative right" or a "positive right"?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I'm against forced birth, but have to point out that there is the argument, whether realistic or not, that the parent can always give the baby to the foster care system once it's born, so their obligation would be limited to 9 months total.

  Personally what I take issue with is the inconsistency of forced-birth laws in the absence of comparable forced-labor laws. In a world of ideal policy, maybe we as a society might agree that a person should be obligated to sacrifice their time and health for the sake of preserving or creating human life. But then it shouldn't be applied only to adult women who had consensual sex. Why shouldn't non-pregnant people be forced to tend a farm for 9 months to produce food for those who are starving, or to spend 9 months working 80-hour weeks at an emergency call center with no pay?

  I suspect the answer is that the rights themselves are not the issue here, but rather the motivation to punish women who have consensual sex.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the right to abortion a "negative right" or a "positive right"?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In the academic sense of the term, negative rights include the right to not have things done to you (e.g., to not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law).

  Positive rights include the right for you to do something, generally as against others (e.g., the right to have food, healthcare, or education be provided to you by other people).

  I'm not sure it is useful to try to categorize abortion rights, for similar reasons why it would be difficult to categorize the right to try and grab the only parachute on a crashing plane. Even if it causes injury or death to others, our general tendency is to treat positive acts of genuine self-preservation as a negative right, if only in the sense that we would never enforce a rule that prohibits the person from trying.

  A funky brain teaser on the topic might be whose right of life prevails when a perfectly healthy person turns out to be the only match for 5 patients with failing organs, one needing a new heart, another needing a new intact liver, etc., who are each about to die if we don't kill the healthy person and harvest their organs for transplant. And would the answer change if this wouldn't kill the healthy person, but severely decrease their quality of life - such as involuntarily taking one of their lungs and one of their kidneys?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not knowing wtf Kevin is this weekend⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  (TOS spoiler for one episode)

  Just in case any lurkers are still wondering: I think - but don't remember 100% - the guy everyone's calling Kevin was some random crew member in TOS who took over the ship's control room and started trolling the ship's PA system, until the main characters managed to break into the room and subdue him. The episode gave him an unreasonably long monologue with the PA system, during which he sang an entire song ("I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen").

  No idea where the memes about him started though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I crazy, or are Americans going insane?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  First of all, nice bait, looks delicious, think I'll chow down.

  I think this because I’ve spent over a decade of my life trying to understand where people come from and getting nowhere with helping them.

  This mindset sounds closer to the problem than to the solution. Do you truly believe that the best way to interact with an extremist is to blindly judge them, then assume that they will question their entire worldview because one person, who has made no good faith effort to understand them, decides to call them names?

  Many extremists, though perhaps not most, feel the way they do because they honestly believe they are doing the right thing. They listen to the lived experiences of people they trust and discount the words of people they do not. The blind judgment of others only 'proves' to them that it's all one big conspiracy, everyone else are sheep, and that they are the only ones who can think for themselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI generation is on fast track to kill porn industry.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it has to be somewhere in between. This 'real deal' theory doesn't explain the popularity of hentai, but at the same time, OnlyFans shows that some people reaaallly care about the personal element. I would bet niche kinks (especially those 'illegal to make but legal to watch'?) will lean heavily on AI for content, but the rest will probably change based on our culture's attitude toward AI in general.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do any languages have words for left & right that start with the same letter?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Most people in first world countries will probably understand 'L' and 'R' anyway. But hypothetically, the problem could probably be solved by adding another letter, the same way we know that 'T' is for 'Tuesday' and 'Th' is for 'Thursday.'

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My god.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Casualties... 8 crew members subpoenaed, 15 sent to mandatory arbitration. Let's not let their sacrifices be in vain. Ready the counterclaims. Prepare to file!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Is Computer Security Advice So Confusing?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Advice against phishing emails can be reduced to, "1: Never click on a link, call a phone number, download an attachment, or follow instructions you found in an email unless you were already expecting this exact email from this exact sender. 2: If you really want to do those things, search up the organization's website directly and use the contact info they provide there instead."

  imo it's the ad-hungry articles stretching everything into 10+ pages that's making advice so inaccessible to people. Super annoying because it dilutes the real, simple message that's already there, it's just locked behind an adwall.