If you seriously dig into literature or film you'll find that many of the stories don't fit into the hero's journey at all--or only fit if you make the "journey" so generic as to be practically tautological.
As for the claim about people's lives. People who are serious about art almost invariably keep enjoying the "basic" classics; many musicians keep listening to Bach all their lives. Faulkner claimed to read Don Quixote over again every year. It is possible to find novelty in the well-worn.
There's 4,000 movies available for free on YouTube. More if you pay for YT Premium. That's just one example...any streaming stick will give you loads more.
True, you have to have Internet, but you're going to have Internet regardless.
Compare to the 1980s where you had to drive to a Blockbuster and pay $3 or $4 a pop for VHS.
And you can still rent movies. Heck, if you want to live in the 1990s, your local pawn shop or flea market has tons of DVDs you can buy for less than a 1990s rental.
All good points - and that 1980s rental cost would be ~$11 inflation adjusted - for a rental at VHS quality where you also had the costs of driving to pickup/return the tape.
> In matters of bathroom, locker-room, and sports segregation, universities will define sex categories based on reproductive and biological criteria.
In other words, trans people can't use the bathrooms matching their gender identity.
> Calls for ideological diversity, not just at the campus level, "but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit."
In other words, every academic department is susceptible to ideological litmus tests defined by the state. If Trump's white house feels like your Computer Science department has too many Democrats in it, you fix that problem or you lose your funding.
> Restricts student visas to foreign students who ... "are ... supportive of, American and Western values."
In other words, another ideological litmus test, only in this case the consequence is that foreign students can be thrown out at will.
> Requires that "university employees, in their capacity as university representatives" as well as all colleges, faculties, departments, and other academic units "abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events"
In other words, tenured faculty lose their right to free speech.
> In other words, trans people can't use the bathrooms matching their gender identity.
I think trans people who "pass" can do whatever they want, and in practice it won't be an issue. I do support actual sex segregation in any area of life women will have no chance without it (like sports). The bathrooms thing is stupid, I agree.
> In other words, every academic department is susceptible to ideological litmus tests defined by the state. If Trump's white house feels like your Computer Science department has too many Democrats in it, you fix that problem or you lose your funding.
Every academic department already has really strong ideological litmus tests. It got way less intense with Trump's election, but it's still there. It's not subtle. You can be really good at what you do, but if you're religious or conservative you have no hope of getting a job in tons of fields. Sociology, for instance. It has nothing to do with how good you are at what you do, it's overt political testing. It was (in the case of many University of California schools, like Berkeley) actually the first line in hiring decisions.
> In other words, another ideological litmus test, only in this case the consequence is that foreign students can be thrown out at will.
I think this is reasonable if there's an objective standard. "Doesn't support listed terrorist organizations" is a reasonable standard. The standard should be written in.
> In other words, tenured faculty lose their right to free speech.
"...in their capacity as university representatives...". So no, nobody loses his or her right to free speech. It's just that when you're acting as the mouthpiece of the University, you shouldn't be political if you want federal $. And I wholeheartedly support this. University presidents being political was a fucking disaster (see Reif at MIT).
It is not. Trans people, frequently, look like the opposite sex. Hence there can be no reasonable enforcement of this policy. Cis people, frequently, look like transgender individuals of their own gender. Hence they are liable to receive harassment by any attempt to enforce such a policy. Harassing people, cis and trans, merely trying to use the bathroom in peace, is a far greater imposition than merely existing in the same space as someone else.
Nonetheless, even in cases where someone has managed to somewhat disguise themselves as the opposite sex - or think they have done so - they will still be expected to respect boundaries, and stay out of spaces designated for the opposite sex.
Respecting boundaries means not concerning yourself with the genitals of a person merely trying to use the bathroom. You cannot enforce a policy regarding someone's sex without inspecting their genitals. How is that respecting of their boundaries? How does that lead to a person feeling safer in the bathroom?
Why are you people who insist on male incursion of female spaces so obsessed with "genital inspection"? No-one is asking for this strawman.
Your assumption seems to be that if no-one physically stops these men, they can and will do what they like, with impunity, and that there's no chance of them simply respecting women's boundaries. Is that what you mean?
>Your assumption seems to be that if no-one physically stops these men, they can and will do what they like, with impunity
That seems like a reliable assumption to me. Your assumptions seems to be that if you make a "rule" concerning who can go into which bathroom based on a hidden characteristic, no one will take it upon themselves to enforce this rule, and thus to make frequently wrong guesses regarding this hidden characteristic. That seems like a poor assumption.
>and that there's no chance of them simply respecting women's boundaries
Different people have different boundaries. Different people have different standards as for who should be sorted into which bathrooms. One person's arbitrary standards cannot dominate everyone else's lives. Instead, rules must be made based on reason and fairness, as I demonstrated above.
> For example, do all people have a right to health care? No, because, in the extreme, it leads to logical contradictions with other rights. (E.g. Doctors being forced to provide care at gunpoint.)
In the same vein, people do not have a right to a fair trial--in the extreme, this would lead to a contradiction with other rights (e.g. judges being forced to practice law at gunpoint).
> people do not have a right to a fair trial--in the extreme, this would lead to a contradiction with other rights (e.g. judges being forced to practice law at gunpoint)
Could be avoided by restating it as "a right to be tried fairly or otherwise not tried". The right of the citizen to have crimes against him investigated and brought to justice, that's another matter.
Your counterpoint doesn’t make sense because the government establishes laws. A trial is an application of the laws of that government. The quality of a trial being “fair” is just a marketable quality of that government.
Healthcare, on the other hand, is not necessarily the government’s domain because people have the freedom to live unhealthily if they want. There is no law which says you must keep yourself healthy. How do you even measure that for different people? For what it’s worth, I think people should get universal healthcare because populations getting sick impacts productivity.
> From 2000 to 2015, the number of states with these punitive policies increased more than 2-fold from 12 to 25, and the number of states requiring health care professionals to report suspected prenatal drug abuse to child protective services or health officials increased from 12 to 23
and i know a policy isn't a law but the word punitive is right there, so
People take drugs recreationally, but that doesn’t always translate into worse health outcomes. The term “substance abuse” is also unnecessarily judgmental in this case because it assumes lack of self-control. Someone can be in control and take drugs, and not worsen their physical or mental health. But a growing fetus will be impacted by whatever drugs are taken by its bearer, either mother or surrogate (we don’t know). So I get the point you’re making, but the law you’re citing doesn’t work as a good enough counter example to my point (at least I don’t think so) because this law isn’t about the individual’s health, but about the fetal health.
I think a better counter example to my “there’s no law which requires health” statement are anti-smoking stipulations against people born after a certain year. So essentially, anti-smoking laws do make an assumption that you’ll get unhealthy if you smoke, and therefore you shouldn’t. However, policymakers can say that you’re not obligated to healthcare as a right because there are different laws which are already protecting your health, and they would be right in their own place.
The reason I think universal healthcare makes policy sense is that health outcomes are dependent on randomness. Someone can have bad genetics, or be born into environmental conditions which impact their health, both things which are random and not under personal control. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave national productivity up to randomness, especially when environmental factors like pollution can have deterministic effects, like worsening population-level health outcomes. For a country as big as the US, healthcare should be left to the states to decide, but most states will find that providing healthcare will result in better productivity (I think).
> because this law isn’t about the individual’s health, but about the fetal health.
this is just twisting definitions. The law can't remove the fetus if the person carrying it is abusing drugs (or whatever), so the law applies to the person carrying the fetus. That is a "law that says you can't be unhealthy" and the reason is "because it hurts the fetus".
we also put people that have pica disorder into mental hospitals, because they eat things that are not healthy.
That's why the whole concept of rights is completely useless. It has no real metaphysical bearing and people just use it as an ever expanding wish list. There are only values and morals that arise from the synthesis of values and truths.
The notion of moral rights can be seen as a form of value and as such is about as workable as other notions of value e.g. virtue, duties, obligation and the good.
Your example proves my point. If there are no judges, the government has to let you go free. They don’t force anyone to become a judge.
A better example might be that your right to a jury trial conflicts with my right to freedom of movement, but the government explicitly resolves that contradiction by making it a crime to avoid jury duty.
Your example proves my point. If there are no judges, the government has to let you go free. They don’t force anyone to become a judge.
What about the victims' right to justice and to be secure against violations of their rights (bodily integrity and health, property, freedom of movement and flourishing)? If there are no judges and all the criminals are left to roam the streets, they are free to continue victimizing anyone they choose. Seems to me that these rights have a lot of mutually incompatible features. You can't provide for one person's rights without compelling action from another.
> But the case was thrown out in August 2023 — not for a lack of evidence, but because the Crown took too long to bring it to trial under a set of strict timelines that have reshaped the way criminal cases are handled since a landmark 2016 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Yes, but it's nonsense to equate identity with difficulty. The goth scene originated in a London nightclub, for goodness' sake (the Batcave). There are goths in every big city, and in a lot of cases they move to places _where the scene is_ so that they can participate.
Basically an uninteresting conclusion. Of course a "non-expert" reader isn't going to be able to distinguish between AI and Walt Whitman--a "non-expert" reader likely won't even know who Walt Whitman is. "Expertise" is needed to even make the question meaningful.
As for the claim about people's lives. People who are serious about art almost invariably keep enjoying the "basic" classics; many musicians keep listening to Bach all their lives. Faulkner claimed to read Don Quixote over again every year. It is possible to find novelty in the well-worn.
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