How dare you! – Greta Thunberg
Here’s yet another unusual song cover to prove that “cultural appropriation” is awesome; it was provided by Radley Balko, and the links above it are from Franklin Harris, Rick Pettit, Kevin Wilson, Popehat (x2), The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, and Stephen Lemons, in that order.
- R.I.P. Fred Willard.
- The shopping cart test.
- How to solve all problems.
- Antidepressants or Tolkien?
- Buying a TV set while black.
- Retro-future tech is mighty cool.
- The best satire cleaves closely to the truth.
From the Archives
- Clubs need to learn that the bad old days of exploiting dancers are over.
- Another “sex trafficking” hysteria film for future generations to laugh at.
- Rubmaps may be the new prohibitionist bogeyman to replace Backpage.
- One of the best feminist arguments for decriminalization I’ve ever seen.
- Most of this is the usual garbage, but there’s one rather amusing point.
- This will be much more common due to the ramped-up war on whores.
- Finally setting the record straight on decriminalization in Rhode Island.
- Strippers are spearheading the movement for sex worker labor rights.
- Liz Brown, Kaytlin Bailey & Maya Morena on “sex trafficking” hysteria.
- Despite propaganda, what they’re targeting are ordinary escort sites.
- Better to be seen as dangerous seductresses than pathetic “victims”.
- Attractive women have been used to market sports for generations.
- Anti-human rights groups voice support for “Cuckoo Clock” McCain.
- A retrospective of my work from May 2015 and (mostly) May 2016.
- Post-Backpage, anti-whore pogroms turn back to low-hanging fruit.
- Mar Brettmann is a sleazy opportunist selling anti-whore snake oil.
- You are not “accountable” to government; it is accountable to you.
- Another twist in the New Zealand migrant sex worker controversy.
- Because mentioning their sex practices wasn’t quite lurid enough.
- Grown woman pretends to be harmed by lame ’40s elevator joke.
- Most “prostitution” cases come apart like wet toilet paper at trial.
- Another fashion magazine comes out on the side of sex workers.
- How to totally destroy your relationship with your teen offspring.
- Even Reuters is starting to listen to sex workers about “rescue”.
- An unbelievable number of useful idiots complained about this.
- A rare case where a rapist of sex workers is actually convicted.
- Even some mainstream journalists saw though Copmala’s lies.
- Not an outcome one would expect in prohibitionist New York.
- This sleazy tactic started in Canada, then spread to the UK.
- More racist cop sexual fantasies about Nigerian juju rituals.
- In a post-apocalyptic future, a predator stalks human prey.
- Abolishing due process for whores established a precedent.
- Cops, fascism, Grumpy Cat, Tim Conway and much more.
- Being well-educated doesn’t mean knowing everything.
- Touring the Scottish Highlands with Brooke Magnanti.
- Another good anti-prohibition article at New Republic.
- Marijuana prohibition will soon be a thing of the past.
- We did warn you this wouldn’t stop with sex workers.
- A “dark underworld” that’s somehow “in plain sight”.
- Rape victims are increasingly treated like criminals.
- Dare I hope for a return of “creepy clown” hysteria?
- Traveling in a good, though exhausted, headspace.
- What our government calls a “correctional facility”.
- Cops, Greek, cake, nightmares and much more.
- Please, David Rosen, become a prohibitionist.
- These are some of the nuns behind Ruhama.
- Pictures of Brooke Magnanti & me in the UK.
- Why do people have such trouble with this?
- I’m not going to bother quoting this trash.
- Do you give discounts for regular clients?
- The state says this isn’t a punishment.
- Then they came for the strippers…
- A pretty typical “leader”, really.
- This totalitarian idea won’t die.
- Just 1500 isolated incidents.
- On replacing my old car.
- The end of the internet?
- Rapist cop of the week.
- Welcome to the future.
- It’s already here.
Regarding the Shopping Cart Test, one might form two corollary tests to determine the state of a society:
1) The larger the percentage of unreturned shopping carts in a given society, the worse the moral state of said society.
2) The larger the percentage of people in a given society who advocate coercive measures to assure the return of shopping carts, the greater the tendency towards authoritarianism in said society.
Although I have not conducted a formal survey, my casual observation of local stores is that well over 90% of shopping carts are not returned to the rack by the person who used them.
Some stores actually hire people to round up the carts and put them into the rack. Some stores also have gizmos on shopping cart wheels that supposedly lock them from spinning if they are taken farther than a few hundred feet from the store.
Again, without a survey, I have never heard any politician publicly advocate coercive measures to assure the return of shopping carts.
In fact, where I live, county law makes theft of a shopping cart a misdemeanor. To commit a theft one presumably has to take the shopping cart off the parking lot and intend to keep it.
I have seen hundreds or thousands of homeless people wandering the streets with their belongings packed in obviously stolen shopping carts. But I have never heard of anyone prosecuted for shopping cart theft.
So, solely by your tests above, I would conclude that the USA, at least where I live, is an amoral society, with with little or no tendency to authoritarianism.
We could go into detailed discussions of all this (e.g., leaving the cart in the parking lot versus actually taking it home) but I think a more important point is how different folks interpret J. S. Mill’s harm principle:
” … the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against [their] will, is to prevent harm to others.”
Some people believe this is universal and reciprocal — You shouldn’t harm or coerce others, and others shouldn’t harm or coerce you.
Some believe in a tribalistic double-standard — that certain groups or categories of people have the right to impose their will on others in certain ways, and others have no right whatsoever even to complain about it.
Then there are the large number of vulgar egoists in this country who figure they may do whatever they want, simply because they want to. Give such a person a badge, a gun, and a pair of handcuffs …
I am thrilled to learn that there are high schools with mariachi bands.
I wish my high school could’ve had one.