The Wordsmith&#39;s Forge

Every Sperm is sacred

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greghousesgf

hahaha I watched that movie this morning! Monty Python has an answer for everything!

(anybody besides me think that song sounds like Leslie Bricusse?)

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kengr

I am *amazed* that they let children hear such language. also they topless young girls.

:-)

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It was a much earlier era...

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That also differs by culture. There's a European cartoon about a man with a prehensile penis.

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If they get a ruling that embryos must have a surrogate, could someone spin that into paying women for unwanted pregnancies?

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It's a good angle. Nine months worth of 24/7 childcare with no breaks would add up fast. Plus the fines for worker abuse, of course, since breaks aren't possible.

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Well, wet nursing used to be a standard profession, and some people apparently still do that for work.

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See, this is where investing in uterine replicators would be a good idea..

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Are they at the looking-for-investors phase? I hadn't heard anything, but then again, I don't usually peruse finance magazines.

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I believe so, yes... it's beyond proof-of-concept but not yet production.

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Might not hurt to look into it then. I don't usually gamble the stock market, but maybe it'll be the next Apple stock.

I suppose the rule of 'don't bet what you can't afford to lose' applies as well to stock as to Vegas...not that I've ever been to Vegas either.

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Some types of investment are frankly gambling, but not all. The original idea was about 1) sharing the risk so a loss was not catastrophic, and 2) putting money into things you want to exist. The latter is what I do on Kickstarter. Even if the occasional project fails to deliver, I am still backing things that I believe to be entertaining or important.

Microloans and small loans are investment opportunities that create small businesses and lift people out of poverty. And bankers only want to loan money to white men who already have money. They care fuckall about people of color, women, queers, or anyone else -- who are most in need of starting businesses because most companies also care fuckall about providing goods and services to such people. If you loan to a black woman, then even if her business doesn't succeed, at least you showed her that somebody cared enough to pitch in.

Don't bet what you can't afford to lose, but understand that not all benefits consist of cash. That's something most investors have forgotten.

I mean, sheesh, we haven't even pulled our stake out of the food co-op even though we don't shop there very often anymore. We go occasionally, and we want them to exist, so they can keep it. That's a form of investment. So is banking at a credit union, which is another type of co-op. Those things have community and service benefits, as well as sometimes being a better buy.

It's like permaculture: obtain a yield. But you get to decide what "a yield" means. To me, small businesses existing and leaf mulch are yields. To other people they're trash. I note that my approach isn't cooking off the atmosphere.

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>>Some types of investment are frankly gambling, but not all.<<

Get-rich-quick schemes don't have a great track record of success, whether gambling or investment. And yes there are lower risk investments...but the % of return usually goes up along with the risk - at least for those of us with too little money to rewrite the rulebook.

>>Microloans and small loans...<<

I read a book about that once. There are a bunch of good ideas.

>>...at least you showed her that somebody cared enough to pitch in.
Don't bet what you can't afford to lose, but understand that not all benefits consist of cash. That's something most investors have forgotten.<<

I don't have a ton of discretionary $, so I have to be choosy as to where I put it, and correspondingly when I invest in people its typically an investment of skills/time/craftwork.

The last couple of $ investments I remember were fairly small. I remember there was one that was $5 as an investment in someone's self-worth. Another time I used $10 to buy some (old and scruffy) stuff, and then fixed it up into a decent-quality Useful Resource for someone. Neither of those are things I am expecting a big monetary payment from, but hopefully by investing in people, that will turn into something good for the universe.

>>It's like permaculture: obtain a yield. But you get to decide what "a yield" means.<<

Having people like you well enough to bail you out of life's misfortunes is a fairly good yield, but it doesn't exactly show up on an accounting sheet.

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>> Get-rich-quick schemes don't have a great track record of success, whether gambling or investment. And yes there are lower risk investments...but the % of return usually goes up along with the risk - at least for those of us with too little money to rewrite the rulebook.<<

That is true.

>>I don't have a ton of discretionary $, so I have to be choosy as to where I put it, and correspondingly when I invest in people its typically an investment of skills/time/craftwork.<<

Sensible. I often do the same. However, when I checked microloans online, Kiva seems to start at $25 contributions. That's the price of a new hardback book, and reachable for many people.

>> The last couple of $ investments I remember were fairly small. I remember there was one that was $5 as an investment in someone's self-worth. Another time I used $10 to buy some (old and scruffy) stuff, and then fixed it up into a decent-quality Useful Resource for someone.<<

Very prudent.

>> Neither of those are things I am expecting a big monetary payment from, but hopefully by investing in people, that will turn into something good for the universe.<<

Based on my observations and experience, I would bet that you've saved the day doing that at least once. Possibly the world. Most times, you won't know when you've done it. But if you read interviews and biographies, you'll see people talking about times they were saved, and thus you can learn the pattern of things that tend to save days, people, and sometimes worlds. It's the little things that matter.

>> Having people like you well enough to bail you out of life's misfortunes is a fairly good yield, but it doesn't exactly show up on an accounting sheet.<<

It does when they actually bail you out, though.

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>>However, when I checked microloans online, Kiva seems to start at $25 contributions. That's the price of a new hardback book, and reachable for many people.<<

Well, if investing $ my thought would be:

- for something where I reasonably expect to get a product, swag, etc, are the goods something I would want and are they worth the $25? ("Do I want or need a thneed? Also is this thneed worth $25 to me?")

- for donations (or long-shot investments) is the cause I am donating to something I want to support? ("Do I want to donate $25 so that thneeds will maybe exist?")

$25 is a reachable goal, but I would still be choosy about it. Is the $25 better used as an investment/donation, funds to buy someone a birthday present, funds to by myself something (necessity or luxury), etc.

>>Based on my observations and experience, I would bet that you've saved the day doing that at least once. Possibly the world.<<

I can actually identify a few 'save the day' moments, though they aren't the dramatic save-the-day-with-sirens sort. Stuff like giving someone a sweater I keep in the car, because they have to walk home in freezing weather with an underdressed kid, making a communication device for someone, administering first aid, explaining "You can't /say/ that to people!" before they actually say that to people-other-than-me and end up getting punched or arrested, etc.

Saving the world... Helping kids and families with small kids ticks up the odds, as does the fact that I am often passing along basic skills and resources. I also know at least a few of the people I have helped are activists, social lynchpins, or both, and those sorts of people have a very large potential reach. (At least one of them I know has since assumed a community leadership/mentor role, so that ended up as a kind of pay-it-forward thing.)

Also, any save-the-world bits may still be incubating, especially if it will be one of the kids who haven't finished growing up yet.

>>It does when they actually bail you out, though.<<

In my experience, accounting (in the modern sense) usually tracks money and stuff that can easily be converted into money. So, how much bail money, the $ value of donated food, maybe "I save $480 a month because my friend drives me to the doctor."

But modern accounting is very poor at tracking other things, like wildflowers planted along the roadside, the time-compassion devoted to helping a friend through a rough patch in their life, the joy you get from a crafting hobby and then giving away your projects.

Or in other words, "Bob paid my 25,000 bail and now I can go to work" is trackable, but "Bob stayed at my house for a week because I was having a mental breakdown, and my mental state improved" is less so.

Plus if I thing of gifted time, care, resources in terms of money, I usually feel like I am not contributing much of value, since other folk's 'earnings' seem to be more than whatever I can scrape up. (I may be an unreliable narrator, re: the monetary value of my work.)

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Not that I've heard, but the tech is up to working on sheep or pigs, and is near-ready for human trials.

When it comes to arguing over when it's ready for humans, I think they're overlooking an obvious answer: trial it on premature babies that definitely wouldn't survive without it. The edge of current technology only offers about a 30% survival rate at 22 weeks, and the outcomes are not great with lasting problems common. But they don't have to start there, they could start with ones born even earlier, because then you're not risking anything.

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That makes sense, though /someone/ will probably find an ethical hangup with it.

I also remember that preemie incubators got their start as sideshow attractions.

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I do not consider creating unwanted infants to be a good idea, especially with over 8 billion homs on a planet that is drastically overstressed already.

Though if the generating parents wish to put up embryos for adoption (some do) and if Alabama is willing to foot the bill for their gestation, then this could be a way to help childless couples have a baby to raise. I sincerely doubt that is what Alabama wants to do, even though it would actually make a good life for those parents and babies.

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Well, now the ruling is interfering with IVF treatments - because any mistake resulting in the death of an embryo is now considered a form of homicide.

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That's a foreseeable problem that many people predicted. I wonder if it was deliberate or just collateral damage.

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I can imagine someone not in favor of the law exploiting logical consequences.

Would someone in favor be opposed to IVF, and if so, why? I'd usually assume ignorance, not malice.

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Some people vehemently oppose IVF, and sometimes other fertility treatments, as "unnatural" or "playing god" or the like. That's not really a pro-life stance, but then neither is the rest of that platform -- and it certainly fits the anti-woman platform that actually exists.

Why any man wants to make women miserable is beyond me. That's just asking to have your balls kicked down the street. Happy woman, happy you.

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Well, at least they're consistent. (Does not mean that I approve.)

>>Why any man wants to make women miserable is beyond me. <<

Easy, they think we are things, not people, and things do not have feelings.

>>That's just asking to have your balls kicked down the street.<<

Most men also do not see us as threatening, though it likely has several variations:
- the things-not-people thing again
- the [cultural] assumption that women are not formidable combatants
- dominance theory, where the only people you have to worry about are your level and above
- the never-thought-about-it assumption that women exist to make life pleasant and comfortable, like hose elves

Doesn't help that a lot of us women are mentally declawed at a very young age, either.

>>Happy woman, happy you.<<

Well, only if other people's happiness impacts yours.

I observe that a lack of empathy in a socially-functional person often manifests as their assigning their own emotions to other people around them. Essentially, the brain fills in a blank space with the emotional data they have available, where a more empathic brain would pick up on the outside feelings and not need a substitution.

Now, lack of empathy doesn't have to mean a personality disorder, it could be that the anti-empath:
- is sick, injured, traumatized, or has basic needs like food or sleep that are unmet
- doesn't not respect their communication partner or consider them a person (common with prejudice, also parents trying to assign kids feelings)
- never really learned to empathize (more common with people raised in privilege)
- just plain don't have an innate skill for it, which could be basic personality (the engineer always trying to fix people) or part of the person's brain structure/biochemistry/mental state (alexithymia, some neurodivergent folks, some mental illnesses, TBI)

So, empathy can vary depending on a whole lot of things. Also, compare affective empathy [you feel sad, so I feel sad] with cognitive empathy [Your cat died, you probably feel sad, I should offer you tissues and say 'there, there.']

Anyway, with men specifically... in this culture most men are not traditionally taught empathy, and men are a higher social 'class' than women and genderqueer folks so there is often no significant consequence to lacking the skills (until a favorite woman or other gender gets fed up enough to walk away).

And that's how we end up with guys who think mansplaining a woman's feelings to her is a good thing. Seriously. (And no IT IS NOT!)
>.

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seleneheart

Think of the tax deductions though! Probably not for federal but maybe Alabama income tax?

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If you wanted to increase your population, then a logical approach would be making embryo storage and even fertility treatments tax-deductible.

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thewayne

In which case the mere act of freezing them is probably a war crime against the Geneva Convention (which I haven't read) and all embryos should be thawed and implanted IMMEDIATELY!

FREE THE CHILDREN!

[end snark]

From:

greghousesgf

where are they going to find volunteers to do all those surrogate births??

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They won't get volunteers, especially since southern states have next to no health care for women. They'd have to pay people, and that's expensive.

Even more LULZ! Some of those babies are bound to be nonwhite and statistically speaking at least 10% of them will be queers. Seriously, wait 18 years and look for T-shirts that say, "Alabama made me queer!" :D

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greghousesgf

That's kind of my point, almost nobody would volunteer to give birth to all those kids.

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I'm wondering if they'll make the next obvious mistake, and pressure or force women in prison to do the gestating work. Probably also without reading the extant laws on surrogate rights and payment.

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There's precedents, and extremely unpleasant ones.

I think if they try that, the historians can remind folks about indentured servitude, how chattel slavery got new slaves, and the whole sex slavery thing which is ongoing even today.

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>> I think if they try that, the historians can remind folks about indentured servitude, how chattel slavery got new slaves, and the whole sex slavery thing which is ongoing even today.<<

Forcing women to bear unwanted children is already indentured servitude and sex slavery. Doing it to women in prison is just a little more blatant. In zoological terms it's called brood parasitism.

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Its probably a boiling frog problem in that I am used to the passive assumption of many people that my uterus is free real estate.for some reason, this seems more active and also more annoying, likely due to something on my mental classification system.

Although...I remember the epic fussing people did over the rumors that government healthcare would forve-harvest organs from sick people.

I wonder if kicking up a fuss about the governament force using organs would do any good?

Also, might these laws be argued to be in violation of the Third Amendment? Or does it not count because infants aren't soldiers?

Or more directly, could the government quarter civilians or civilian workers in private homes?

https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-iii

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>> Its probably a boiling frog problem in that I am used to the passive assumption of many people that my uterus is free real estate.for some reason, this seems more active and also more annoying, likely due to something on my mental classification system. <<

It's more active to pressure or force a woman to host a frozen embryo, because that requires medical intervention (and in fact medical rape to place it), than it is to force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy after she chose to have sex. But if she was raped, then it's a continuance of rape.

>> Although...I remember the epic fussing people did over the rumors that government healthcare would forve-harvest organs from sick people. <<

China does that. They murder people to order. If you're rich enough, you can go there and they'll run a match so they can butcher a prisoner for whatever you need.

>> I wonder if kicking up a fuss about the governament force using organs would do any good? <<

It's worth a try.

Notice that there is no other situation where one person can be forced to supply their body for another person's need, even to save a life -- not even something as simple as donating blood. And civilians who aren't emergency workers can't be expected to risk their life for someone else because they didn't sign up for that, but pregnancy routinely kills women -- especially black women, especially in America, and most of all in the same states that are using women as sex slaves.

There are already wrongful death and harm cases in the pipes because, despite the "technical" exceptions in the laws, doctors won't perform life-saving abortions for women who need them, even in an emergency. And the ones I've heard about of those were wanted pregnancies that went wrong, which just adds insult to injury.

>>Also, might these laws be argued to be in violation of the Third Amendment? Or does it not count because infants aren't soldiers?

Or more directly, could the government quarter civilians or civilian workers in private homes? <<

Well, the original specified soldiers. You'd need to have a legal clerk look up in a law library whether anyone had ever challenged based on having a civilian forced into their home.

It likely doesn't matter because the illegitimate Supreme Court doesn't feel bound by precedent either. They just do whatever they want and then it's everyone's problem.

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>>...because that requires medical intervention...<<

Ironically, I have heard that as an argument for why miscarriages are okay, but abortions are not. I think there are similar arguments for 'taking herbs to regulate your cycle' versus pharmaceutical contraceptives.

(Yes I know about the whole problem of jailing women for miscarriages in some places.)

Also, now I am wondering about the logistics of trying to drag God into court for murder (i.e. a miscarriage). On the one hand, God is cognizant enough to know the law, on the other I am unsure if the U.S. legal system allows for people to sue nonhuman entities. I think patent law says patent holders must be human...dunno about criminal charges.

>>China does that.<<

The example I was referencing were the hysterical rumors about how Obamacare would destroy civilization as we know it...given the number of social changes that were going to destroy society, you'd think we'd be a smoking pile of rubble by now.

>>Notice that there is no other situation where one person can be forced to supply their body for another person's need, even to save a life -- not even something as simple as donating blood.<<

Yes, if the law was consistent not only would stuff like blood and organ donation be mandatory, but stuff like medically-necessary blood thinners and having sex (of whatever type) would have to be declared illegal.

After all, if a woman is not allowed to drink alcohol because she /might/ be pregnant, then people should not be allowed to engage in behavior that might make their tissues and organs unsuitable for donations, such as taking certain medications and having sex (since sex sometimes spreads nasty diseases like AIDS.)

This might actually be the best option for protest - everything from signing up pro-abortion politicians for every organ-donor charity in existence (or even just calling out those who aren't organ donors) to walking around and loudly explaining to folks that it is a crime against society for them to drink beer/buy Viagra/get married/engage in extreme sports and so on, because it might risk someone's life. (Ideally this would be targeted at the kinds of people that favor forced pregnancy.)

I have occasionally wondered about handing out organ donation tracts to abortion clinic protesters, which would be a fairly simple and low-key option.

>>Well, the original specified soldiers. You'd need to have a legal clerk look up in a law library whether anyone had ever challenged based on having a civilian forced into their home.<<

Hm, I'd also want to check how it might affect renter's right. I wouldn't want to set a precedent where deed-holders can toss renters and residents out with no warning, especially since most people these days /are/ renters.

>>It likely doesn't matter because the illegitimate Supreme Court doesn't feel bound by precedent either. They just do whatever they want and then it's everyone's problem.<<

The Supreme Court is the official decider, but if enough people have strong feelings that the zeitgeist becomes different than the actual law, than precedents suggest that society will follow the zeitgeist, not the letter of the law.

Remember, lynching was illegal for a long time in its heyday, separate but equal was enforced in the first but not the second part, shanghai'ing was also illegal, and the courts declared that the Cherokee owned their land before the army chased them to the Trail of Tears. Oh, and I am fairly sure it has always been illegal to rebel against a reigning king, but history is full of such criminal activity.

So, just because the Supreme Court declares something to be right, doesn't necessarily mean that people will go along with it. And lot of Americans follow the Constitution with an almost religious level of devotion. I suspect if someone tried to repeal a core part of the Constitution, well, a lot of people might be upset.

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neotoma

You have to keep frozen embryos in liquid nitrogen tanks. The tanks are mechanically simpler than the freezers (no compressors to fail unexpected), but you have to keep replenishing the LN2.

Heck yes keeping frozen embryos frozen is expensive.

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The numbers I found didn't even specify if that was per embryo or per woman (if multiple embryos could be stored in a batch). But it was obviously going to add up fast.

I don't think Alabama did that math. Okay, technically the South is poor because it never had the kind of resources as the North. But being terrible with money definitely is not helping.

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>>But being terrible with money definitely is not helping.<<

That's not Alabsma or the South, its everyone.

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Not quite everyone. Granted there are some forms of financial incompetence or outright chicanery that are widespread, but there are also people who make a hobby of going to every town meeting and saying, "That proposal would lose the town money, and here is the math to show why." They drive everyone else batshit, but I think it's awesome.

Then there are the permaculture and homestead fans who look at articles claiming that factory farming is more efficient at producing food, they frown and go, "Mmm ... that doesn't sound right," then do the math to disprove it. Hell, Paris used to feed itself with market gardens a century or so back. They used the manure from all the city's horses to make produce grow like crazy.

Admittedly, I wish we had a lot more mathematicians in politics, but few of them have the tolerance for that much illogic and nonsense.

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>>Not quite everyone.<<

I still find it more efficient to assume incompetence of the masses, and revise my opinion upwards if needed.

>>Then there are the permaculture and homestead fans who look at articles claiming that factory farming is more efficient at producing food,..<<

Well, this is a cultural perspective.

Monoculture and factory farming are more efficient if the end goal is the biggest possible profit every year, with the clock resetting annually, and a bad year being an acceptable outcome (instead of a kill-all famine).

Permaculture is probably the best in terms of using everything, and also far outperforms everything else in terms of sustainability.

Homesteading is a balance of the two, and it curbs some of the more destructive tendencies of factory farming by ensuring that the people making the decisions get to deal with the outcome of all of the decisions, both good and bad.

>>Hell, Paris used to feed itself with market gardens a century or so back. They used the manure from all the city's horses to make produce grow like crazy.<<

I didn't know that. I wonder why they stopped?

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>>I still find it more efficient to assume incompetence of the masses, and revise my opinion upwards if needed.<<

Well yeah, I do that too.

>> Monoculture and factory farming are more efficient if the end goal is the biggest possible profit every year, with the clock resetting annually, and a bad year being an acceptable outcome (instead of a kill-all famine). <<

I would say rather, they allow you to produce the most food for the least work when you don't care about the damage done.

Intensive gardening requires considerably more effort but you can grow a LOT more food. I mean think about all the empty space in a tractor-tilled field vs. something like square foot gardening where every square inch is used or a food forest with its many layers.

>> I didn't know that. I wonder why they stopped? <<

Various reasons. Changing society, crowding, but a big part was industrialization meant fewer horses and thus less fertilizer. The market gardens relied heavily on a constant stream of nutrients.

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