Messages

I've tended to think that ideally, prostitution shouldn't exist. It promotes (male) sexual entitlement by allowing them to pay for sex and simply assume the other party wants it. If you're unable to obtain enthusiastic consent from someone, decent people (I think) would ask themselves "what can I do better next time?" and go home and masturbate. But since prostitution exists and seems difficult to abolish, I've supported decriminalization and regulation (buying sexual services is banned in Norway). Just like with the drug ban, the police are using the ban to bully sex workers, expel them from apartments and so on. Sex workers have even less power to refuse clients and protect themselves against STDs, violence and exploitation.

But in the healthcare role, at least, I guess there will be a need for sex work even in the future utopian society where we've abolished the gender prison. For a short while I worked in a care home for the elderly, and although I didn't enjoy wiping old people's asses very much, it is still a job that needs to be done and I respect people who choose to do it. Perhaps sex work isn't that different.

Read on Twitter that the Turkish Supreme Military Council (that decides on promotions etc.) is scheduled to meet in a few weeks. Perhaps Erdogan has been planning a major purging of Kemalist/secularist types from the army leadership and that those officers are trying to preempt it by staging a coup? Whatever way this will end (right now seems like coup is failing), it doesn't look good and won't bring any more democracy or stability.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/06/16/alleged-killer-british-mp-was-longtime-supporter-neo-nazi-national-alliance

And apparently he ordered neo-Nazi publications, including ones on DIY explosives.

It's a bit amusing to see Norwegian anti-EU politicians tell UK media that the "Norway option" is great and that life in the EEA is such a bed of roses, while at home the same people are arguing for Norway to leave or renegotiate the EEA agreement. If the UK wants to "regain sovereignty" and "control the borders", that option is shit. Norway does control agricultural and fishery policies, but in most other sectors we just have to accept EU regulations and directives with no means of influencing the decision-making process except for a few lobbyists in Brussels that nobody listens to. We have a "right of reservation", but it's mostly on paper and we've used it once (and then the next government overturned that decision). It's a tolerable enough agreement for a small country like Norway, but an aspiring (expiring?) world power voluntarily turning itself into a protectorate under the EU sounds just weird and degrading.

I'm a bit worried, though, that a Brexit will unleash all the ugly nationalisms of Europe and that there'll soon be no EU to speak of.

I've realized I know very little about economics, so now I've just started reading Anwar Shaikh's Capitalism - Competition, Conflict, Crises. It's huge (nearly 1000 pages), but interesting thus far.

The profit motive is inherently expansionary: investors try to recoup more money than they put in, and if successful, can do it again and again on a larger scale, colliding with others doing the same. Some succeed, some just survive, and some fail altogether. This is real competition, antagonistic by nature and turbulent in operation. It is the central regulating mechanism of capitalism and is as different from so-called perfect competition as war is from ballet.

Iceland is a mess today. Apparently the PM tried to blackmail his coalition partners into supporting him by threatening to call new elections. That didn't work, so he asked the President to call new elections, but the president refused. He did all this without consulting his own party, and now he has resigned, or his party has forced him to. It seems like the government is trying to go on like before only with a new PM. More protests tonight.

The PM of Iceland seems to have been involved in some really shady business:

1. Sigmundur Davið and his wife started an offshore company in 2007 which had bonds in three Icelandic Banks: Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir. *Owning bonds means you are lending money to the bank, which makes the Prime Minister and his wife "creditors" or lenders to the bank.
2. In 2008, the economic crash happened. Those three banks go into insolvency–meaning they collapsed and had to start paying off their debts as best they could–starting with people's savings and then bonds.
3. In 2009, Sigmundur Davið became the chairman for the Progressive Party and was elected into parliament in April of 2009. New transparency laws stated that Members of Parliament had to reveal any shareholding in a company that was over 25%. At that time Sigmundur Davið was still 50% owner of Wintris inc. with his wife owning the other 50%.
4. On December 31, 2009, Sigmundur Davið sold his wife his half of the company for $1 USD.
5. After the crash in 2008, creditors who took their money out of Iceland were charged a 39% "stability tax."
6. Last year, in 2015, Sigmundur Davið's government removed the 39% "stability tax" in favour of a deal which only asked for a "stability contribution,"effectively removing 2 billion Euros that would have gone to the state, but now goes to creditors: Wintris inc., his wife's company, Wintris inc., being one of those creditors.

And here's how he first reacted when confronted with it in an interview. 

Reports of more than 20000 (though I've also read 8000, but still impressive for a country with 330000 inhabitants) protesting in Iceland today. demanding new elections. And who has been leading the polls for months already? The Pirate Party. This could get really exciting.

Valid points, MMIX. In the OP I ignore my own plank while arguing that everyone have planks.

You're most likely right in believing that there is no God, that homeopathy is bullshit and so on. Those are definitely not the worst beliefs you can have.

But there is something that a lot of you seem to think: That you have reached some sort of point where you can look at the world objectively from. That you having the beliefs you have is completely based on your own rational thought processes and has nothing to do with the culture you live in, the information you've been fed from the outside world etc.

You do have prejudices. You have so many prejudices that it would be a hopeless task to fact check them all. Some of them are useful and more or less correct. Others are just wrong. But you wouldn't be able to navigate this strange world if you didn't have them, for instance if you didn't base how you treat people on ideas you have about how such and such people are. You can never be a blank sheet, a tabula rasa. You probably don't appreciate biblical references (I do! It has some interesting stories in it, and it has formed our culture in ways I doubt you are able to escape, however hard you try), but: You know the log in your eye? That's what you see with.
I understand that you care about having the Right Beliefs, or at least as close as you can possibly get.
You can use as much logical thinking as you want, but it won't help you if you don't have an understanding of context. What ideas and events have influenced you throughout your life, from your parents, the school system, the Internet and what ideas and events have influenced the people you're talking to/with/about?
Finding the time to have the Right Opinions about Life, the Universe and Everything is a privilege, and not very high on the list of elementary human needs. Beyond their physical and emotional needs, humans mostly just need a set of ideas that bring meaning to their life. Religion is often the safest way to get that. Coupled with heavy social pressure, it is also the easiest. And even then: People are more than their religions, genders, genitals, political ideas and favorite music. They're complex, but of course you have to simplify things to be able to engage with the world. Just keep the complexity in mind when you do so.
And remember that it's never an excuse, at least not after the first time.

By the way, you're not the end point of human thinking. You're just recycled half-assed 19th century positivists.

I'm changing old people's diapers for a living this summer. They're evil. But hey, it's work.

I have a question.

In the somewhat early stages of your sex lives, did any of you ever have a difficult time sexing because you were so overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all that you frequently broke into hysterical laughter? or found yourself thinking (possibly even out loud) things like "two of my fingers are in a vagina. people actually do this? this is ridiculous, like, what's up with the world"?

I'm going through that now.

Both my close female friends have been raped. And it has happened to several more who I know and look up to. What was perhaps most shocking to learn about were the reactions they got from their surroundings. For example: Friends who just continued their friendship with the rapist as if nothing had happened even after being told about it, and having promised to confront him.

It makes me angry. It makes me sad. It makes me feel guilty about how I thought about this a couple of years ago.

But also, the fact that they trust me enough to tell me about it makes me reconsider my value as a social being. Makes me think the neurotic, self-loathing part of me is wrong about most things. And that I'm worth more out there among people than inside my own head.

Anyway. The key is to make men listen.

That "Real Men" thing uses society's fear of deviants as blackmail to make people behave. The implication that such a thing as Fake Men exists is rather terrifying. I've never felt like a Real Man, and I don't think I want to.

Finished downloading today. Problem of Punishment is fine with me.

Hi, PD. Do you think it is wrong to have a policy of not having sex with women who don't identify with being feminists? In this world of lots of bad people, I feel it's necessary to set up some restrictions. Xoxoxo, Lenin

There's one problem with that policy: What about women who are feminists through their actions but do not self-identify as feminists?

True. Suppose I'll have to be a bit flexible.