Are there aliens behind our currency?
Vice writes about how attempts to Uberize and Airbnb New Orleans is running into a cultural wall in New Orleans. Notably, a friend of mine who lives there and is a free marketeer in most respect hates Airbnb.
Mosaic writes about the precarious state of modern Judaism in the United States.
I don’t completely agree with the complaint here. If you want people to stop using your image for commercial purposes, you can do that. But failing to do that, it seems weird to say “We don’t mind people using our image for commercial purposes, as long as it’s not the people hosting our image.” This explanation helps a little, but not much. Still mulling it over.
Oilman or Cowboy? The oil boom is enticing more people to the former, creating a shortage of the latter. Or will the price cut solve the problem?
I’ve mentioned before that Texas is one of the few states even if you account for college cost inflation (Illinois and North Dakota being two others), that spend more on higher education than it did in 1987. Perhaps as a result, Texas A&M just swiped the University of Washington’s president.
Jailbreak! Some women in Brazil escape from prison by fooling guards into thinking that there is a mass orgy in their future.
Carnell Alexander has a warrant out for his arrest for being a deadbeat dad, for a child that isn’t his. Michigan does not have a paternity fraud (or mistaken paternity) law to protect non-fathers. The topic is up for debate in Washington state.
If you want the police to check up on a relative after they’ve had surgery, that might not be a good idea.
If you kill a classmate, taking a selfie with the corpse is a bad idea.
There’s something especially cool about buying a car with 900,000 miles on it.
Michael Booth argues that the Nordic nations are not utopias. They do stand to be the losers of the low oil prices.
Michael Brendan Dougherty takes on the role of mansplainer. {More}
Is political correctness a creativity-booster?
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13 Responses to Linkluster Sombold 344
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Modern Judaism may benefit from the rigidity of Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism. Young people raised in those groups who want something less doctrinaire might find the liberal branches of the religion more to their liking.
That would make sense.
As an Episcopalian, it frustrates me that TEC didn’t benefit more from the frustrations of the Pope Benedict era.
P8L2:
David Ward, an opponent to the bill, said the change may help some men get out of child support payments, but hurt the children who would stop receiving them.
Well, David, tough shit.
I’ve always admired you ability to see both sides of every issue with such nuance. 🙂
(I actually quite agree here.)
Bill Watterson was the artist who drew the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. He has a reputation for being difficult. He was often accused of seeing things as black-and-white. He liked to retort “Sometimes that’s the way things are”. He later turned this into a Sunday strip.
I was reminded of this by your comment, but, let’s be fair, sometimes things ARE black and white. Yes, a child benefits by having a father with more resources than fewer resources. That doesn’t mean a mother gets to choose any man that strikes her fancy to be the named father of her child.
Sometimes it’s NOT about the children. George Carlin once said in response to the common cliche, “F— the children” (not sexually).
Well, the nuanced argument is that a lot of these men actually know that they’re not the fathers. Or they suspect, and do not follow up because they don’t want it confirmed. And in this event, it is unfair to the children that they play the role of father right up until they don’t want to anymore, all the while depriving the child of their real father and/or leading the mother not to find a man that is willing to stick around (opportunity costs, basically).
Now, even this doesn’t excuse a lot of the things we sometimes read about, where the non-father was never invested, had no idea that the child wasn’t his, didn’t even know the mother, and so on.
It does lend itself to a middle solution, where there is a window of time for the father to challenge the paternity, after birth and perhaps again in the event of a divorce.
My own take is that, in the event that the non-father is willing to sign away all parental rights, then bonding never took place. It’s possible that some non-fathers do try to have it both ways, but I’m skeptical that the law should be built around that scenario.
In the Carnell Alexander case, he wasn’t involved in the child’s life in any way.
I will admit that it is a tougher situation if the child is born within a marriage than a child who is born outside of one. I think that outside of marriage, the presumption should be that the named father isn’t actually the father, while inside of marriage, the presumption should be that the husband is the father. If the husband wants to challenge paternity, he should have every right to do so (even without his wife’s knowledge). Maybe the time frame should be a year, perhaps longer if the husband is deployed overseas.
There’s no excuse in the Alexander case.
I have to admit, “Be nice or leave,” isn’t such a bad unspoken motto for a city to have (the piece about New Orleans).
I’ve had enough bad neighbors (rental houses near me) to know I’d be kind of leery of someone doing AirBnB in my neighborhood. I know most AirBnB patrons are just fine….but in New Orleans, where there is Mardi Gras….well, I remember the folks from my uni in Illinois who used to travel down there every year, mainly to get very drunk and people watch (especially the women doing what it allegedly took to get beads) and I could see residents of a neighborhood not wanting a bunch of outsiders to come in.
Granted, you’re free to do what you like with your property (within the constraints of zoning), but I tend to think majorly ticking off your neighbors is probably unwise.
Aside from zoning, there can also be the issue of condo association and HOA agreements and lease agreements prohibiting it. I don’t honestly know what to do about that.
Not much to do about it, no? If you’ve signed a contract that says you can’t do short-term sublets, then you’re bound by the contract, and the values involved are built into the price you’re willing to pay for a place.
Yeah, that gets in to what I don’t like about HOAs. But I’m not sure what can be done about them.
re the mansplaining links
Just thinking outloud here (in a virtual way)….
I have a hard time nailing down what “PC” is or how it’s any different from the way things always operate. Certain things are considered in bounds of “proper” or “civil” conversation, others are not, and still others are contested. For the latter, the contest often falls between those who feel disempowered by the bounds of proper conversation and those who are so empowered.
At the same time, I think I know what those two posts are talking about and I think I agree, at least in spirit if not in every detail. I used to be (to my embarrassment and shame now) a PC-type person they’re criticizing and I don’t consider myself to be anymore. But that said, I still get huffy when others don’t “check their privilege.” I’m thinking of a couple of commenters at OT who seem to be very privileged but either don’t acknowledge it or only acknowledge it perfunctorily and actually seem quite clueless. I overreact to that and although I don’t use the words “check your privilege,” I can’t say I’m any better than the PC’ers.