nothing about the declining resale value of physical objects found in a typical home
This hadn't occurred to me in those words, but duh -- I can't see why anyone who wasn't deranged (or so desperate that they were looking for anything at all) would bother burgling a residence of anyone who wasn't very wealthy these days. And muggings -- who carries much cash? I often have less than twenty bucks in cash on me, sometimes none at all, for days at a time.
"He says not a word about hispanic gangs and nothing about the declining resale value of physical objects found in a typical home, both omissions which surprised me."
As in, more hispanic gangs = less property crime? Huh?
I didn't understand that bit at all either.
about the declining resale value of physical objects found in a typical home
On the other hand, isn't EBay a boon to burglars?
Almost all of the muggings around here seem focused solely on relieving the muggee of iPhone, iPod and the like. Nobody's got much cash.
Just this morning I was thinking about muggings. I could understand how there are muggings, but I couldn't figure how there are muggers in the sense of people earning a living primarily from muggings. Even leaving aside the smaller number of people who carry cash, two or three muggings in a given area tend to draw a police response. Unless the media is leaving out of bunch of crime (and I can't see why they would given that they always seem to be looking to play it up), the usual pattern is for one to four kids/young men to get caught if they don't stop after they mug enough people to make the paper.
The only thing I can figure is that if you want a career as a mugger, you need to mug people who won't go to the police. This would seem to mean you need to mug people who either don't have much or who are more likely to shoot you. In areas with a larger number of illegal immigrants, I could see other possibilities, but we don't have much of that.
I could understand how there are muggings, but I couldn't figure how there are muggers in the sense of people earning a living primarily from muggings.
Are there?
I have no idea, but in 70s and 80s police TV shows, it seemed to be a vocation.
I think maybe there aren't any more -- that it used to be a viable profession (not a good idea, but something where you could make a living for a while) back before ATMs when people carried more cash, but now it isn't. I bet property crime is much more heavily against businesses than individuals these days.
But, you'd need not just more cash (thought I agree that is a necessary condition) but also some reasonably low probability of arrest. Outside of New York and some other areas with great density, I don't see how it ever worked.
if you want a career as a mugger, you need to mug people who won't go to the police
Yup.
I'm surprised by the stats about break-ins; anecdotally there seems to be no shortage of break-ins for the purpose of grabbing laptops.
Well, sure -- you'd need a city to provide enough victims regardless. I think there also used to be more public drunkenness among people carrying enough cash to be worth mugging.
13: I was thinking about Omar, but he's not so much a mugger as someone who robs businesses. Just black-market businesses.
or so desperate that they were looking for anything at all
Does this not describe the modal burglar/car thief? The cop we spoke to when somebody spectacularly failed to gain entry to our not very well protected house a few years ago said that 95% of burglaries were carried out by opportunist crackheads and junkies looking to score. If they can palm off something for the price of a deal in a dodgy pub it's a win as far as they're concerned.
This idea of mugging as a vocation seems unlikely to me. I would assume drug addicts are the main group, along with other low-value property crimes.
(Still bitter about getting my car window smashed in to steal a $25-from-ebay stereo years ago)
Yeah, when my car was stolen a few years ago it was clearly not a money making thing. The person who stole it wanted to get to a traveller/gypsy camp near Reading, and mine was the only car on the street that didn't have an immobiliser or fancy alarm.
I lost two TVs, a stereo receiver, and an iPod to a break-in a couple of years ago (in a sleepy small town, not NYC).
When I was getting the police reports for the immigrant-heavy community I used to work in, it seemed like the usual pattern was that there'd be about 1-2 muggings per week, for iPod/iPhone, at the train station late at night, and otherwise the area (which most middle-class white people generally avoid) was relatively safe if you didn't actually have beef with someone in the neighborhood. Most of the muggers were described as young immigrant men, and given the culture in question, my guess was that they were mostly either kids still living at home, or one of the small group of homeless or semi-homeless reprobates who'd worn out their welcome in the community. So probably selling a hot iPod for $30 to get enough for some vodka or a sack.
I've been mugged at gunpoint 4 times in 3 different cities, most recently in 2009.
If people are staying home because they're unemployed then break-ins, muggings, etc. would go down, no? I'm surprised the Republicans haven't touted that as a benefit of letting Wall Street fuck the country over.
22: No shit? That's terrible, terrible luck. Is there any reason that you're at unusually high risk (like, you're a wholesale coke dealer)?
22: Really? I've never been mugged at all, though once I think I escaped an attempted mugging.
24: Halford's an entertainment lawyer, which is close. It was probably Charlie Sheen.
Does this not describe the modal burglar/car thief? The cop we spoke to when somebody spectacularly failed to gain entry to our not very well protected house a few years ago said that 95% of burglaries were carried out by opportunist crackheads and junkies looking to score.
The last official statistics for the UK I saw claimed that 70% of property crime was drug related. Having said that, it could just be the home office trying to justify the war on drugs. Seems to do the opposite to me, though.
mugging as a vocation
It's not just a job, it's a calling.
I was mugged once, in 1994, here in Mpls, by some guys who were high and paranoid that my friend and I were looking in their window -- we weren't. Strange evening. We had exactly $1 between us, which they tossed back. Mostly a lesson in why you should not smoke weed dosed with PCP.
27: I guess I'm speculating that the opportunist crackhead/junkie property criminals are what's left now that crime is so low -- that there used to be a tier of slightly less desperate professional criminals back when burglary/mugging was more lucrative, and that that tier of crime is what's gone away.
Mostly bad luck, but each time I was walking alone after midnight in an area on the border between a wealthy neighborhood and a poorer one. The most recent time was in Vegas, when I stupidly decided it was a good idea to walk back to my room.
70% of property crime was drug related
I've never been mugged or even had anybody try. I suffered through three break-ins in college that were drug related inasmuch as they stole a shitload of pot that we'd invested all of our meager savings in to sell, then returned twice more over the next couple of weeks to relieve us of the electronics and guitars they didn't get on the first time through. Don't rent basement apartments.
3/4 times the muggers were a band of black teenagers who (I'm guessing) were opportunists, not mugging by career choice or junkies. The Vegas time was a chick (!) and, I'd guess, a meth head.
I was burgled once in Brooklyn -- we'd just moved in, and you could step right in the window from the abandoned building next door. We were getting bars installed the next week. Never mugged.
Vegas seems like it would be a good place for opportunistic mugging.
I've never been mugged, but I was unusually infuriated yesterday by the temerity of some Larouchies who presumed to solicit my assent to, inter alia, their posters of Obama with a Hitler mustache. I like to think I present the world a benign, kindly countenance, smiling on little children and animals alike, but I hope my silent, grim reaction taught at least one lying crank to better assess his audience.
I was mugged once, in 1994, here in Mpls, by some guys who were high and paranoid that my friend and I were looking in their window -- we weren't. Strange evening. We had exactly $1 between us, which they tossed back. Mostly a lesson in why you should not smoke weed dosed with PCP.
Wait, so you were on the street, people came out of their own house and mugged you? What's the word for a reverse home invasion?
35: Having just been there, I'd think it was likely pretty safe on the Strip, just because it was busy and crowded. Once you got off the main drag, I'd have no idea.
38: Yeah, I was thinking off the Strip. People are likely carrying cash.
The hard life of a mugger, indeed. Too busy and crowded, you can't mug people. Not busy enough, if you try to mug people when the police come nobody is out on the street but you.
This was off the strip; I was trying to walk back from a restaurant to a hotel just off the strip.
Vegas off the strip is beyond depressing these days. I was there over the summer, working in a high-end office park that looked about 85% vacant. Big modern office towers just totally empty, landscaping still sort-of being kept up, but clearly sort-of going to seed.
What's the word for a reverse home invasion?
The Bush Doctrine?
Vegas probably has more surveillance cameras per square foot than any city on the planet. Also, the tourists (who are likely to be carrying cash) very seldom walk anywhere but the strip/downtown.
then returned twice more over the next couple of weeks
Some friends of mine in DC in the early nineties had their apartment broken into, and the thieves left a message on the answering machine saying they'd be back. The next week they broke in again and stole the answering machine.
Or:
What's the word for a reverse home invasion?
In Soviet Russia . . .
As for the article in the original post, there's something else missing from it that jumped out at me: the age of the unemployed.
I don't have statistics handy, but I've read that in the current recession, far more unemployed and/or long-term unemployed people are middle-aged and older, compared to in most recessions. They're not quite old enough to retire, or they thought they would be retired by now but they can't because of debt or bills or whatever, but no one will hire them.
I think people like that are far less likely to resort to muggings than the average twentysomething who can't find a job.
Might be a good spot to be a pickpocket, though.
45: Did it make the police investigation easier when they reported they'd been robbed by standup comedians?
Vegas probably has more surveillance cameras per square foot than any city on the planet.
That's right, baby! How do you think I got my own TV show?
48: Surveillance cameras and lots of security guards? Probably not.
Let's remember this is just an 8% drop. It's interesting but it doesn't mean mugging has become uncommon or unprofitable.
37: Yeah, pretty much. It went down like this:
[Friend and I walking home from his shift at the food co-op around 9:15 at night, four young Black guys come racing out of an apartment building]
Young Black guys: "Hey! Hold up there! Why were you looking in our windows?"
Friend and I: "What? We weren't looking in your windows."
Young Black guys: "Yes you were. Sit down!"
[We sit down]
Young Black guys: "Why the hell were you looking in our windows? Don't you know that's gonna get you messed up?"
Friend and I: "Seriously, we weren't looking in your windows."
Young Black guys: [considering this for a minute] "Well, give us your money then."
Friend, opening his wallet: "I don't have any money on me."
Me: "All I have is a dollar."
Young Black guys: "Whatever, you can keep it. Alright, get out of here, you better run like you ain't never run before."
Friend and I: [run down the block to bus stop, get on bus that is just pulling up] "Hey, we just got mugged, we need to get out of the neighborhood"
Bus driver: [grudgingly] "So you can't pay the fare then?"
I think there was also some commentary along the lines of "Shit, you two have got to be the stupidest white boys ever."
I've never been mugged, but I think these kids were planning to mug me once (I was carrying a bike up a small hill/cliff), but I said "man, don't fuck with me today. I'm really not up for it", which apparently did the trick, as they said "shit, if we were gonna fuck with you we woulda done it already" and wandered off.
A friend of mine evaded a mugging (by an unarmed teenager) by throwing a salad at them and running.
Another friend grew up in a poor, black neighborhood, and got pretty used to kids trying to mug him. His strategy was to chat with them for as long as they cared to talk, asking why they wanted to mug him and suggesting alternate means to get what they want. I think they mostly got tired of him and wandered off.
55.2: The tossed salad maneuver.
A guy grabbed me crossing a vacant lot in Samoa once, and I had to clock him with an empty beer bottle and run. I'm not sure, given the language barrier, if the intent was property crime, sex crime, or if I misinterpreted the situation entirely.
It occurs to me that cash carrying may be down, but the gold in jewelry is very expensive now. I did some rough calculating, I think your average man's wedding band would have more than a 1/5th or so of an ounce (troy) of gold if it were 24 karat.
56: In Samoa, mugging is considered a compliment. The equivalent of "My, what nice things you have!"
He talks about the demographics and attitudes of African Americans, but writes nothing about hispanics, who are about as numerous and about as disproportionately affected by the bad economy in the US.
I don't know whether or not gangs are any more serious now than when I was growing up; the only gang conflict (a firebombed house and a set of murders) that made the papers and only gang graffiti near the place I live looks to be central American, hasn't gotten visibly worse with unemployment.
I have a couple of concerns with hispanics in particular. First, that Mexico's disastrous conflicts will come north. The simplest explanation for why this hasn't happened is that the police cultures differ in important ways across the borders. Go Joe Arpaio and Rampart, I guess. Second, if only for humanitarian reasons, deporting "central Americans" who have grown up in the US and been convicted as members of organized criminal enterprises seems short-sighted; here's one article. That's different from domestic biker gangs or descendents of the P-stone rangers or whoever, who seem basically a static blight
My most colorful mugging was inside a grocery store, the first 24-hour market on Chicago's north side in the mid-80s. Gunpoint, guy was clearly high. In grad school, I learned that college kids are enthusiastic burglars.
On rereading, I noticed that he doesn't talk about violent crime, which is also down, more complicated and more important than property crime.
56: He wanted to help you recycle the bottle.
I once got into a they cross the street, I cross the street, they cross the street thing once near the what was at some point in the 70's the poorest zip code in the US. Then I unzipped my jacket and brushed it behind the .45. They crossed the street and went looking for their $5 somewhere else. It really doesn't pay to fuck with someone in a chronic almost suicidal depression.
56: He was trying to squash a deadly spider that was on you.
There was a more dangerous mugger who would have attacked you had he not claimed you first.
Once when I was headed to my car with two girls, two teenagers approached us and the bolder of the two asked if we had anything for him. I said no and we continued to the car, when he asked where he was sitting. I told him he wasn't getting in the car and waited until everyone got in, jumped in, and started the car. As I got out of the parking spot I lost track of him and suddenly heard him tapping on the window with a handgun. I was reasonably sure at this point that he wasn't going to fire so I floored it, and looked back to see him running after the car (rather than aiming).
56: The tossed salad maneuver.
Hey, come on now, this is a family blog.
61: Not entirely implausible -- the deposit on the big bottles was about a quarter the price of a new beer. Turning in the empties after a big night would buy you enough to start drinking again the next day.
66: That's why I always keep a wrapped present in the trunk of my car - to avoid awkward situations like that.
I've been on the receiving end of street violence, but never mugged. I've had a few beggars try begging with menaces a few times but I've 'Glasgow'd' up a bit and that's done the trick. Once with a very heavy looking Scottish guy at Victoria Station it got a bit closer than I'd have liked to actual violence. I had no illusions who'd have won but was fucked if I was going to give him any money. After a bit of eyeballing and snarling he moved on to someone else, though.
58: Yes, my neighborhood council mailing list has warned us about a spate of jewelry-snatchings.
73: I don't even have a neighborhood council.
Young Black guys: "Yes you were. Sit down!"
[We sit down]
The response seems like an error both tactical and strategeryical, but I can't quite explain why I think that.
70: Very green of them. The bottlers, not the muggers.
Re 75
Because you can't run and you will get booted in the head. I've made this mistake and have a 1 inch scar on my face where my teeth went right through my own lip. My mistake was not standing up early enough rather than choosing to sit. Outcome the same though.
Yup, they reused bottles for long enough that they'd get a wear line where they rubbed against each other in the beer crates.
78: It seems like everywhere still does this but the U.S. There are definitely wear lines on German beer bottles.
(Clearly when I say "everywhere but the U.S." I actually mean "Germany".)
When I interviewed at Heebie U, a secretary told me that recently she'd left her purse in her office and gone off for awhile, and someone had taken her purse, and she just couldn't believe it.
I listened politely but was thinking "Uh, yeah, lock your office or take your purse. What do you expect?"
Now, six years later I'm like "Holy shit! Someone took her purse out of her office!? Here?" When I got my laptop, Jammies recommended that I get a lock, and I asked IT, and they said no one uses those on campus.
The surrounding town is very sad and down on it's luck, but the campus is weirdly safe.
Back at a previous job, the secretary/receptionists were losing their purses. All they could do was be sure everybody got a lockable space, but the new people didn't always adjust quickly or get a key right away.
81: At the UofC anything not bolted down will walk. As in, the microwave and the fridge in the grad student lounge -- in the middle of the day.
75: Oh, indubitably. They were 4 or 5 really big, athletic looking guys though. There was no way we could outrun them, and the whole situation was just so weird. Didn't even realize it was a mugging (to the extent that it was) until a few more seconds in.
The only crime related text-alert I've gotten from Heebie U has been for - I swear to god, this was about two weeks ago - some threatening graffiti in the library basement. Apparently it was from some unsavory song lyrics. I hadn't heard of the musician.
I'm sure there's a normal amount of crimes like sexual harassment and rape, but possibly old-timey levels of silence around them. Anyway, GRAFFITI!
At my work, we have a fairly harsh penalty for failing to lock your laptop. They check every night, and if yours is locked improperly, you have to retrieve it from the security desk the next morning. And an email gets sent to your boss, your boss's boss, and your boss's boss's boss. (Not that they care, or even check their email. But it's scary for new people who don't understand how things work.) Three strikes and you get a desktop computer instead.
Not terribly unreasonable since we work with sensitive customer data. Now including pictures of people's living rooms.
But the locks are finicky and it can be hard to tell if you did it right.
One day, a colleague of mine thought he'd locked his laptop properly, but in the morning it was gone. So he went down to the security desk and asked them to show him how to secure it properly. So they sent someone up to lock the laptop for him.
The next morning, when he came in, his laptop was gone. It had not been properly locked. Eventually, security agreed to expunge the second offense from the record.
56: The tossed salad maneuver.
Hey, come on now, this is a family blog.
60: I was thinking the effect of hispanic gangs might be the reverse. When I lived in Chicago, the neighborhood I lived in was very safe, but when you crossed to the other side of Clark St., it became very dangerous. Someone explained to me that my side of Clark St was controlled by the Latin Kings, but the other side was disputed territory. My first thought was "God bless the Latin Kings."
I wonder what property crime rates would look like if identity theft/credit card fraud/other methods of e-larceny were included. There must be some subset of professionalized criminals who have gone completely virtual, it just seems like an infinitely easier and safer way to steal money. You'd have to really understand the sociology of crime to understand the impact that would have on petty street crime though. I would imagine that at least some small-time street criminal types might get enlisted to e.g. use forged credit cards in stores before the fraud alert went out.
88: Because the Latin Kings in Chicago just sat around and got high, so far as I ever saw. (The Gangster Disciples were genuinely scary and unpleasant.)
The Black Gangster Disciple Nation is a gang which was formed on the South-side of Chicago in the late 1960s, by David Barksdale, leader of the Black Disciples, and Larry Hoover, leader of the Supreme Gangsters. The two groups united to form the Black Gangster Disciple Nation (BGDN).
The gang has made several attempts to legitimize their image. Some members dropped the "B" and began to call themselves GDs or Gangster Disciples.
No, no, it's more the "G" part that doesn't sound legitimate.
89. I read a paper article I can't link which said that a very significant number of criminals who wold have been doing medium scale robbery in the past have gone virtual because it's safer as much as anything. There's an infrastructure - websites you can only access by introduction where you can buy card details and whole personal identities which are priced by the likely time they'll last before they get shut down by the security companies. Big business. (What Andy Kelp is doing since Dortmunder retired.)
Because the Latin Kings in Chicago just sat around and got high
We need more gangs like that.
I've been mugged at gunpoint 4 times in 3 different cities, most recently in 2009.
That reminds me of an old SNL skit from the 70's. News reporter: "Statistics show that a person is mugged in New York City every 30 seconds. We spoke to that man..." [Hilarity ensues.]
Where on Clark? Insane Unknowns and Vicelords were the other names. Danger as far as I knew meant particular people, particular houses much more than affiliation. Actually, "danger" was mostly property theft and sometimes bruises in my immediate experience and that of people I knew, kids really.
After HS, I worked with guys who had disaffiliated themselves with BGD after getting caught and doing short prison terms. To hear them talk, violence in the course of making money was done pretty carefully, the exceptions being young guys who were basically freelancing by robbing a store or a small-time unprotected dealer. So "gang members," without regard to their affiliation spent most of their time getting high, along with everyone else.
cash carrying may be down
But is this really true? I'm convinced that I carry more cash precisely because I have easy access to it. If it wasn't easy to get cash out of a machine, I'd use credit cards more.
Medicare fraud apparently has better payoff and lower risk than drugs etc., though I imagine you need a bunch of cultural capital and capital capital to start up.
89: use forged credit cards in stores before the fraud alert went out
Yes, I suspect this aspect of the black market is both a keystone, and much larger than is commonly believed. There's also the grey market interface, legitimate stores that either use or sell stolen goods, or facilitate various scams. I think the white middle-class supposes that everyone in working class neighborhoods of color who has no visible means of support is somehow involved in the drugs trade. Except insofar as a lot of people smoke weed, I doubt this is really the case. I think the black/grey market economy is both much more diverse and much larger than the government would like to admit.
I gotta get that Venkatesh guy's books at some point.
96: There was a time not very long ago when your average person didn't have credit cards. After that, there was a long period where most places where your avereage person spent money (for example, the grocery store) wouldn't take them. We had values and, if you didn't want to carry big wads of bills, check books.
100: Man, that really was the golden age, wasn't it?
I'm convinced that I carry more cash precisely because I have easy access to it. If it wasn't easy to get cash out of a machine, I'd use credit cards more.
A lot of people at my old work used check-cashing places. They had gotten into bad credit situations, or were trying to hide income from a partner, or had never qualified for a bank account, or what have you.
96: There was a time, not long ago, when it took forever (=sometimes months) for a charge to show up, making it much more difficult to know what one needed to have on hand to pay the credit card bill. 'Twas often better to pay by check to keep track of things.
95 West Rogers Park. I say "dangerous" in part because a guy was shot in front of the L station closest to my house.
101: I was so thrilled, and thought it was so decadent, in college in 1991 or so when for the first time I shopped at a grocery store that took credit cards. My finances were in good enough shape that I had money for groceries but close enough to the line that the smoothing effect of being able to charge food and pay it off next month was nice.
I'm always a little bit confused about how gang territory works nowadays. We just had a shooting over North this summer of someone who was allegedly wearing the wrong colors (although it also was suggested that she just happened to look like someone that the shooter had beef with.) Sure, there's a non-trivial amount of gang graffiti in my neighborhood, and some occasional slash wars. But other than that, nobody really seems to do gang stuff, as opposed to regular non-gang criminal activity. There's minimal street dealing, virtually no obvious prostitution, fights are pretty rare and all sorts of people are able to walk the streets any time of day or night. I'm sure some stuff that is sub rosa would be more apparent to me if I were in a different demographic, but even that just shows how limited the scope of things is.
I've got $108 in my wallet right now. But I've never been mugged, and I'm not going to tell any of you the route I take from my office to the bus.
105. Huh, OK. I lived on the other side of Howard in Evanston. There was that neighborhood by Jonquil & Paulina best avoided which spilled over in front of the Howard station sometimes, but I didn't think that had much to do with LKN. Did you read Adam Langer's Crossing California?
I still wave at rob's old house when we drive up Ridge to CA's parents' place.
107. Dealers learn about each other and competing stock/prices from their customers. I expect that this is true regardless of whether or not they're in gangs. Gambling, hookers, and certainly extortion probably work the same way. Lowlifes are usually none too bright and happy to find someone who will listen, and go into lots of detail about other people's problems or good luck, though not their own.
Street dealing isn't too easy to spot until the neighborhood is completely destroyed. A lot of the time it's just some kid taking a long time to smoke or drink coffee in front of the convenience store, won't sell to a stranger.
111: There was open dealing on my corner in Rogers Park, and the neighborhood was still pretty ok. (Greenview and Fargo -- this is the early to mid 90s. It's pretty yuppie now, really.)
My dad lived on Fargo then, after had I left home, by Rogers. He liked most of his neighbors; there was a telescope enthusiast in the next apartment building who would set up in the courtyard on clear nights. Small world.
111: Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of dealing at our convenience store. No one with eyes would doubt that. But there doesn't seem to be a true open-air drug market of the kind portrayed on TV anymore. And very little open-air prostitution. And I'm 100% certain there are tippling houses and houses of ill-repute around, not on my block as far as I can tell though. It's just that none of this seems to be openly gang-related. If there are turf wars or even turf disputes, they seem to be being handled in a way that makes them totally opaque to civilians.
Where is our resident cop in this thread? It's crying out for him!
||
How do I find out what role, if any, a community bank has played in the mortgage crisis? Our home loan, though a series of sales, has wound up in the possession of Bank of America, which is currently being sued by Nevada, New York, its own shareholders and AIG for fraud covering every aspect of the crises.
Key Bank, located right here in Cleveland, is offering 15-year fixed rates at 3.749%. But just because they are local, doesn't mean they are innocent. Googling around shows that they have been sued for overdraft fees, and have plenty if irate retail customers saying their accounts were closed for no reason or they charged me for something they weren't supposed to. However this is all small potatoes compared to BoA. Is there something else I should look for, or should I just call 1-800-blah blah blah today?
|>
You are going to refinance your mortgage to boycott Bank of America?
I assume you know that refinacing with Key Bank would in no way assure that your home loan would not though a series of sales wind up once again in the possession of Bank of America. That's totally out of your control. Refinance if 15-year fixed rates at 3.749% make sense for you; otherwise, forget it, and just send the checks where they tell you.
117: CA's bank, also local, is trying to corner the "We don't suck!" market, by eliminating overdraft fees and giving 24hr grace periods to get the money in the account, etc. I don't remember their name, but I can find out. I realize this isn't what you asked!
If you want to include a nasty note of disapproval along with each check, that's probably a positive step.
If, as is often the case in Cleveland, your house has dropped in value, you may be doing B of A a favor by refinancing.
118: Yes
122: My house has gone *up* in value the last time I checked.
I don't know much about the local gang scene in my neighborhood, though I try to learn by talking to the cops. But there's clearly real territory that is held and that shifts. Every few months you'll see something like the "BPS R 20s" (black gang, the R stands for "Rollin'" blood affiliation) tags replaced with "XVIII BK" (18th street, Mexican gang, BK stands for blood killers), but only to an exact line and no further.
AFAICT (a) my neighborhood is totally gang infiltrated and (b) under current gang rules, this doesn't have much of an effect unless you are a black or Latino teenager. They're not into property crime or visible dealing or mugging or street fighting, and they don't care about the white professionals, so it really doesn't seem to affect me personally, except for the tagging (which I do hate). OTOH if I was 16 and black I probably would be in serious fear if I had to walk to school every day; there was at least one extremely nearby murder.
His strategy was to chat with them for as long as they cared to talk, asking why they wanted to mug him and suggesting alternate means to get what they want.
I dream that I would muster the sang-froid for this defense, but I doubt I'd get past "here you go. thank you."
I wonder if I'm just totally oblivious, or if gangs really aren't a big thing in NY. I don't recall seeing any significant news coverage, and no one's ever pointed out gang graffiti or someone wearing colors to me.
BTW, according to some lunatic I used to read on the internet, but who seemed sort of trustworthy, the reason white professionals aren't targeted is that the EME has greenlighted hits on gang members who do drive bys on civilians or otherwise get the cops too heavily involved. So, if you do something that causes a public splash (like killing a nonaffiliated professional) and go to prison, you will be killed, or at least lose your anti-rape protection, in prison.
126: I think maybe they aren't? I know that when I first moved to Chicago I was entirely baffled by the "no colors" signs outside bars and terminology like "gangbanger" (not what I thought!).
Cleveland wasn't as bubblicious as a lot of coastal areas, so I'd guess KeyCorp was more victim than perpetrator in the mortgage crisis. The company took $2.5 billion in TARP money.
But look, if you and others took your business a way from Bank of America, so that BofA really started to feel the heat, they'd just go to the Feds with their hands out. What you really need to do is head to Public Square and join the Occupiers.
126: The Sharks got into home steam cleaning gadgets sold on TV and the Jets are in New Jersey.
B of A assuredly owns the servicing rights rather than the loan itself, and could easily end up with them again. Besides the fact that you can't pick your servicer, it's not clear that there's a "good" one to be had.
Gangs in the sense we're talking about them here are very much a Chicago and LA thing, with affilliates to those cities spreading to different cities. It's not just drug-dealing crews ala the Wire, but something pretty specific to both cities since the late 1960s. And there are affiliations between LA and Chicago -- the Blackstone Rangers (or P-Stone rangers) are in both cities, though who knows how close the connections really are.
I was mugged, fairly painlessly, when I was 16. The guy wanted my wristwatch and I found myself explaining to him at length that it was a piece of shit which he wouldn't get anything for, and he eventually duly agreed and let me keep it. My mate, who had given over his watch without demur, said he thought I was setting us both up to be done over. So did I. I said all that stuff entirely without thinking and was appalled to hear myself doing it - it certainly wasn't any kind of conscious defiance. I have no idea why I did it, it was insane.
123: And more power to you. But refinancing costs a great big deal of money. As noted in 132, you can't really know what you are dealing with or how it hurts or helps B of A.
Figure your costs and refinance only if it makes sense for you. If it does, then get picky about the bank.
132: There may not be "good" servicers, but there are certainly bad ones.
I don't know which ones, though.
Disclaimer:
Moby Hick is not a licensed financial consultant. Technically, he might be an unlicensed financial consultant, but he isn't sure if that means anything legally. Moby Hick is a licensed driver, but no matter what he tells his wife, he knows he's not really good at driving except when there is no traffic or hills. Moby Hick is not at attorney, though he used to go to the law library to read because the regular library had shitty chairs. Moby Hick's knowledge of mortgage refinancing is limited because he heard somebody say "We need .75 of a point" and he can, when sober, multiply very quickly in his head.
COI statement:
Moby Hick and his various 40** plans own stock in many banks including Bank of America. Moby Hick's personal banking has been dicked over when the FDIC closed the perfectly reasonable bank he was using at least partially because said bank lost a ton on the housing market in the Cleveland area. He is on his third mortgage servicing company and 66.66% of those companies have managed to pay the home insurance.
Disclaimer, II: He often forgets to sign his comments but does not, by this admission, claim any of the unsigned comments except 137.
137: I really wish I could think of a suitable witticism about how, if you're going to express two-thirds as a percentage at all, the last digit should really be a 7, but nothing comes to mind.
139: There's a line over the last six, but you can't see it.
In a perfect world, in response to 138 I'd now be able to quickly and easily search the fucking archives for unsigned comments numbered 147, to see which could most embarrassingly be attributed to Moby.
The digital revolution hasn't yet gotten us very far, it seems.
Or, you know, 137. Whatever. The fucking archives.
The Hammer is dropping some refi science.
Politically motivated crime? Or ass with a bb gun?
I have not read the OP, but I find this somewhat surprising.
I'd think that people would steal gold, because it's worth so much.
Also, I met a guy last weekend who manages one of the big parks in NYC a couple of weeks ago. He said that anecdotally crime was up in New York.
The cop we spoke to when somebody spectacularly failed to gain entry to our not very well protected house a few years ago said that 95% of burglaries were carried out by opportunist crackheads and junkies looking to score.
Exactly right. Stuff that's easy to carry and easy to move. Gold, small electronics, handguns, etc. Prescriptions are a big score, particularly Oxy.
There's a metric shitload of open air drug dealing and prostitution about, it's just that most people have no idea what they're seeing.
Like Halford said gangs with the whole color thing is heavily Cali in origin. The red and blue thing being Bloods and Crips of course with the Hispanic equivalents being Nortenos and Surenos. We get it up here with the Hispanics but don't have a significant black population. Lot of Polynesians though, mostly Tongan.
I got mugged at gunpoint a couple of weeks ago about a block from my house. Was walking home from work (late at night, I'm a bartender) and a guy jumped out from a car that drove up next to me. Seemed pretty deliberate rather than an opportunistic robbery, we've had a bunch in our neighborhood lately.
They did have the misfortune of robbing one of the few salaried bartenders in the city, so didn't get any cash. I was more annoyed that they took my backpack which had my work shoes in it.
the reason white professionals aren't targeted is that the EME has greenlighted hits on gang members who do drive bys on civilians or otherwise get the cops too heavily involved.
I've heard similar and suspect a lot of it has to do with that hit El Monte in the 90's where that Sangra kid flipped out and shot the kids and the mom in the house as well as the guy who was the actual target. That brought a lot of heat.
Also, I met a guy last weekend who manages one of the big parks in NYC a couple of weeks ago. He said that anecdotally crime was up in New York.
I SAY THAT TO ALL THE BOSTONIAN GIRLS
Also, I met a guy last weekend who manages one of the big parks in NYC a couple of weeks ago. He said that anecdotally crime was up in New York.
Anecdotally in my neighborhood too.
There's a metric shitload of open air drug dealing and prostitution about
I'm pretty sure I'd notice if there was a lot of open air prostitution about. Solicitation, maybe not so much, but prostitution itself would catch my eye.
I was mugged once (well, bike-jacked to be more precise). I'm moderately confident that the mugger was new at it and didn't know what he was doing (e.g. he didn't take my phone or my backpack which had a laptop in it). The vague impression I had in Berkeley was that most muggings (which there were a lot of, certainly more than there are in Harlem) were part of gang initiations for gangs in Richmond.
The point I always like to make about muggings is that my property loss ($120 cash plus a 3-year old bicycle that was $300 new) was less than what you'd have in most fender benders, and although the experience was frightening it wasn't actually more frightening than some near car accidents I've been in. So walking/biking home at night is still better than driving from a safety point of view.
Apparently the LA gangs have set up subsidiaries in El Salvador, thanks to mass deportations.
That's MS13, and it's been true for at least 20 years now, though I read something that said that MS13 is now basically run by the Sinaloa cartel. I have no personal knowledge!
I doubt I'd get past "here you go. thank you."
I draw the line at thanking the mugger. I have my pride!
Never been mugged, although lived around crappy neighborhoods pretty much my whole life, so this determination has never been tested.
147, 149: gswift has arrived! Looking forward to enough colorful anecdotes to take this thread to 1000...
150: This was at a very subdued meal, he was a friend of a friend, and my boyfriend was standing right next to me.
And I really should preview my sentences before I post.
Oh man, yesterday was skeev day. I went with couple Homeland Security guys to talk to someone who lives in my beat about a child porn investigation. So the HS guys have this list of IP's they got from the Italians regarding that child porn site that was all over the news a couple years ago. They've done a number of warrants on people who downloaded from the site but they've also got a bunch were people visited the site but didn't download. What they're doing with those for now is paying them a visit and asking for permission to run a search program on their computer.
The look on this guys face when they explained why we were there was not reassuring at all. He goes upstairs to call his brother in law the lawyer for advise who naturally tells him to not let them look on his computer. But the best face he can think to put on it is to say he's concerned we'll access his passwords. Ha. Oh, and while he's upstairs I happen to look down and his work ID is hanging on a lanyard on the doorknob. Doubtless his career choice as an elementary school teacher is pure coincidence.
160: HS is running child porn investigations? I missed when they got that brief. I would have thought FBI.
160:
I've received that same kind of call about checking out a computer, only to have my advice rejected bc the officers said they werent interested in child porn, just forging.
147: it's just that most people have no idea what they're seeing
I believe this is broadly true, but I just don't think it is the case with me & my neighborhood. For one thing, there's just not a lot of middle-aged white guys hanging around. Like, none. So any dealing & soliciting that's going on must be, at the very least, all most completely confined to people who are either in the neighborhood already, or who are indistinguishable form those who are.
The dealing at the convenience store (and perhaps the cellphone store next door) likewise seems to be all in the family. And it seems to be largely just weed. It's pretty notable for me to see a crackhead/tweaker/heroin addict around here, precisely because they stick out so much, you know? IF there were a lot of them, like for an open air drug market, they would not stick out as much.
The link in 163 is ridiculous. It's out of character for Islamic terrorists to get child porn because it's immoral Western decadence? Hello. And if they wanted to send secret messages surely they wouldn't choose an illegal medium, but rather one of the many legal, unwatched media like cat macros.
Also, the motto of DHS is Defense in Depth of Duplication.
I read a paper article I can't link which said that a very significant number of criminals who wold have been doing medium scale robbery in the past have gone virtual because it's safer as much as anything.
I think I've made this argument before. The big decline in property crime and low level violence roughly matches the era of sending out prefilled credit card application forms. CC fraud is significantly less socially unpleasant than break-and-enter or robbery, especially in the UK where the Consumer Credit Act 1975 rams the cost of fraud, undelivered, or unsatisfactory goods to the bank in the first instance.
Nobody actually gets hurt, J. Random Crackmonkey gets his crack, and the costs land on a BANK. What's not to love?
From the criminal POV, of course, it's inside work and much less risky, and you don't have to deal with large amounts of cash that could get stolen!
Meanwhile, Richard Stallman's rider. No brown M&Ms, but waaay too much discussion of when not to say "Linux" when you mean "GNU with the Linux Kernel", and parrots.
What's not to love?
The fact that it funds large technically-adept criminal empires. The Russian mafia do not sound like nice people.
But that may still be an improvement on criminal empires based around other forms of crime.
168: I love the parrot bit.
If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I can visit with, that will be nice too.
The big decline in property crime and low level violence roughly matches the era of sending out prefilled credit card application forms.
Wouldn't surprise me a bit. Dopers with warrants for forgery, illicit use of a credit card, etc. is a regular occurrence.
But that may still be an improvement on criminal empires based around other forms of crime.
Not an expert, but I'm not sure that it is possible to establish or maintain a criminal empire based on a single illegal enterprise sector. By definition, if nothing else.
171: I remember doing so analysis of criminal records and the first thing I had to learn is what is "uttering" in the sense of a criminal activity.
There's been a sharp increase in muggings in my neighbourhood recently. According to police stats, not anecdote. Very often within a five minute walk from me, generally near subway entrances. While a very large proportion target phones, they often take everything else (e.g. if you're carrying your laptop in your backpack you're fucked) The area is by no means poor, and while quite close to a low income area, both my neighbourhood and the poorer area right next to it have been gentrifying like mad over the past dozen years or so. The scary/annoying part is that while before virtually all the muggings in my area were late at night, they're now quite common in broad daylight. The cops hold regular townhall meetings and say they are 'aware' of the situation. As far as I can tell the one tangible action they took was to try to stop disclosing details of crimes to the Times neighbourhood blog. On the other hand the only time people have tried to mug me was in Eastern Europe. Also, if I'm going to get mugged I prefer here to Eastern or Central Europe; the muggers there are as likely as not to be more interested in beating the living crap out of you than in your money.
174: Interesting. You wonder how many actual muggers it takes to make a bump in the statistics like that? Ten guys? One guy?
119: Molly believes we can get a contract that specifies that it cannot be resold. This is one of the things we need to investigate further.
We are in a position where refinancing might be a good deal anyway, which is part of why we are looking at this.
Molly believes we can get a contract that specifies that it cannot be resold.
I doubt that that's possible.
176: I'm sure you can if you looked hard enough, but I would guess it is expensive. Recent innovations with subprime, tranches, and private guarantee corporations aside, the whole mortgage factory has been going for decades. Rates are lower because a home mortgage is a commodity and because of government backing. Either of those involves the sale of nearly every mortgage issued.
When I was in New York, the most widespread form of crime I saw - leaving aside the political news I was helping cover at work - was bootleg DVDs. You wouldn't see them much in the central part of the city, but I rode the entire length of the subway system while I was there, and there was a always a point in outlying areas of the Bronx, in Queens, in Brooklyn when someone would walk through the cars offering movies. Mostly it was barely spoken, just someone showing dvd covers and walking through the aisle, but occasionally someone would make a pitch. I got the impression that the people who sold quietly weren't fluent in English. I also saw people who fit the exact same profile selling movies in a rather large fast food establishment around 168th st.
The last month I was there I subletted a room in Inwood. I was unemployed and around the neighborhood at all hours and while there was definitely an increased police presence around the 1 stop every afternoon when the schools let out, and though there were a few corners that always had teenagers on them in the evenings, I didn't see any identifiable criminal activity (but I probably wouldn't be able to recognize anything but the most obvious forms). A couple of times at a grocery store I'd see people take out thick stacks of cash, but they were small bills, probably from tips (working deliveries?).
22: I think it's pretty obvious that halford attracts bad people because there's something really wrong with him and he's fundamentally broken. also, I don't know quite how to say this without being rude, halford, but you look kind of rich. have you ever considered, say, ditching the patek philippe in favor of some sweatpants with a big pee stain on them? not that it's your fault or anything, but three separate times and you're the common factor? maybe you should think about how you might have contributed to the situations? of course, even people who walk on the streets in shitty neighborhoods don't deserve to be mugged, but after a while you have to consider, why me particularly? a good long look in the mirror may be helpful. not that it was your fault! also, did you give up the money like a little bitch? once that's happened, muggers can sense it sometimes. just, you know, trying to be helpful. also, you're naturally going to be affected by your previous experiences; maybe you overestimate the amount of muggers there are, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Nice to see you didn't split, alameida. Hang in there.
180 is very true. I mean, Halford, it sucks that you got mugged, but if you keep talking about it over and over in that way, after a while people's sympathy is going to wane and they might say things they regret.
Well, guess what. The moment I walked out the door tonight to go to the convenience store, a young man on a bicycle rode up and asked me if I wanted to buy a touchscreen phone. He was also headed to the store, and was asking everyone if they wanted it for $40. Finally one of the weed dealers was like "hey, if you haven't sold it by tomorrow, swing by and I'll see what I can do" -- partly, I think, just to get him off everyone's case.
Only in America!
have you ever considered, say, ditching the patek philippe in favor of some sweatpants with a big pee stain on them?
Now I have a mental image of him with pee-stained sweats tied around his wrist.
185: that could work! he could tie a clock on them.
good news: I'm not getting evicted! I can stay in my dream house! bad news: my first thought was, "now I can get locked up in the ward without inconveniencing anyone." also, loss of affect generally has made me unable to feel excited. god, I love my house SO MUCH! I should be thrilled. instead...fuck, I don't know. I've never been so grateful for narnia's strict anti-gun and no street-dealing ever laws. though to be truthful I was on the phone a few days ago with someone who's using, and I didn't ask for her dealer's number. and her dealer is great, too. so perhaps I am merely underestimating myself. on the gripping hand I've gone full robot: xanax AND valium. fuck a bunch of feelings. I am being honest about this with my doctor, whom I'm seeing tomorrow, and I am perfectly aware that it is a sub-optimal strategy, especially when combined with painkillers and muscle relaxers (needed for stupid immune system problem), and 3 other psychiatric meds (hey, no haldol or that, what the fuck, the one that tragically makes manic dream girls fat, seroquel) please don't tell me it's a dumb idea. I know it's a dumb idea. I'm not wasted or anything, but, as I say, full robot. NOBODY goes full robot.
I wish I had some Valium. My doctor is like the opposite of a Dr. Feelgood though. Dr. Thinkbad, I guess. I never get to take anything that will actually make me happy, at least, not with a prescription.
get a new doctor, yo. she said, just having paid $500 out of pocket to see dr. feelgood, who is not on my insurance plan. only he has the anti-migraine meds that actually work. hideously expensive but there's no amount I won't pay to not have a migraine. it's TOO FUCKING BRIGHT at the equator.
Nobody actually gets hurt, J. Random Crackmonkey gets his crack, and the costs land on a BANK. What's not to love?
Not so fast. If someone compromises an existing legitimate account and completes a purchase using that account, the merchant's on the hook, not the bank. At least in the US. It totally sucks for small merchants, as I can attest, having worked for one. (The bigger ones eat it as the cost of doing business.)
If it's someone using compromised personal data to create a new account and make purchases, there I'd hope the bank would be on the hook, but I'm not sure. Anyone know? Someone steals your social and DOB and gets a Visa and buys shit from Amazon?
In any event, I've seen a metric shit ton of the former (including with my own checking account), and it sucks and is not victimless.
167, 190: it seems that credit cards in the UK operate in a way that puts the cost of fraud onto the large banks that a) can do something about security surrounding the credit cards they provide and b) can afford it, while in the US the cost of fraud lands on small shopkeepers and the large banks are completely insulated.
THIS IS MY SURPRISED FACE.
191
167, 190: it seems that credit cards in the UK operate in a way that puts the cost of fraud onto the large banks that a) can do something about security surrounding the credit cards they provide and b) can afford it, while in the US the cost of fraud lands on small shopkeepers and the large banks are completely insulated.
Merchants can also do a lot to reduce fraud and are getting most of the money. It makes sense for them to bear a big portion of the risk.
J. Random Crackmonkey
At first I thought Journal of Random Cr-what? No!
191, 192: Surprises proceed apace.
I want a bigger house and some valium and Stanley's credit card numbers.
Al, go Team Robot if it's what gets you through the day. Seriously.
I apologize if I was one of the upsetting people on the old thread. I'm still kicking through a lot of those questions for my own life and it doesn't mean I actually know anything helpful or can say things that are useful.
If it's any consolation, probably all of my pants have pee on them now. Alex not only peed on the floor but also dropped the soap in the (flushed, thank goodness!) toilet this morning. At least he misses the toilet in a consistent spot, but I don't really want to leave a sponge or a bucket there to deal with it because ewwwww.
At least he misses the toilet in a consistent spot...
If you order custom-made pants, they will ask you if you dress right or dress left. You can tell which by seeing which side of the toilet has a perpetually damp floor.
160: this would make me pretty nervous too, and I have never used and would never want to use child pron. But thumbnails from *any* site you have surfed can be stored in your computer memory. And I have, ahem, at least surfed adult / fully grown up porn. I have also had the experience of having pron sites pop up links to other pron sites that I did not aim my browser at initially. I assume thumbnails and other stuff from any initial page of such pron are somewhere in computer memory. Am I supposed to trust that their "search program" can tell the difference between an adult woman and an underage one? In any costume? Even the accusation of using child pron is going to ruin your life.
Maybe somewhat icky to represent the pron consumer viewpoint here on Unfogged, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who occasionally uses the internet for its traditional purpose of viewing naked people people getting it on instead of cute kitties hanging from baskets.
Maybe somewhat icky to represent the pron consumer viewpoint here on Unfogged
Somewhere, Ogged and Labs are weeping softly to themselves. We used to have thoughtful discussions about whether facials in porn were intrinsically or merely accidentally misogynistic, and now people are going all presidential to admit that they look at porn at all.
But your concerns seem realistic.
Photographing kitties hanging from baskets is mewsogynistic
I'm going to guess that Ogged was alone in defending the accidental side.
I don't think it went that way -- Ogged's porn schick was largely being vaguely disturbed about how it had gotten freakier in recent years. Not being a significant appreciator of videographic erotic myself, those conversations were all kind of abstract for me. But the blog has definitely gone soft in this regard.
At least apo doesn't look at porn.
But the blog has definitely gone soft in this regard.
It's no big deal. Happens to a lot of blogs. We can just cuddle.
Videographic erotica. I go to all this trouble to come up with a pompous sounding way of saying porn, and then I misspell it. Figures.
Now that this is the sex thread I will non-presidentially admit to having ordered a $100 "luxury vibrator" for my GF's birthday. I assume it has a special feature where it buys the woman drinks or something.
180, 187: Al, at least your internet persona doesn't sound full robot. Your drug cocktail if anything seems to make your comments even wittier, starting from a high baseline.
Some feminist, probably AWB, should provide a Good Feminist Seal of Approval for individual porn flicks, so that folks like GW don't have to worry so much.
It's not really a sex thread until LB's work blocks her.
I think the problems of whether Jane Random Feminist will think you're a jerk, or Officer Krupke will think you're a pervert with a demonstrated interest in committing sex crimes, are fairly distinct, and there's no guarantee that even Approved Feminist™ porn would be something that you'd want the cops finding on your harddrive.
True, but it might stop people from commenting presidentially. Anyhow, in the future everyone will be porn.
For an average of fifteen minutes. Those who find themselves being porn for more than four hours should consult their physicians.
207: she's probably got a lot on her plate, what with teaching, applying for more jobs next year, etc. You should nom someone else.
207: There's this. Their criteria seem good.
gone soft
Well, there's this thing we've never really talked about that we could try, I'm not sure if it'd work for the blog though...
I was surprised a while ago to find that tumblr has lots of smutty links, often with an aesthetic that's much less expoitative and depressing than most commercial porn I've seen. It apparently accounts for a lot of their traffic, heere's a discussion: http://gawker.com/5843915/the-porn-and-spam-behind-tumblrs-meteoric-rise
My main objection to porn is that it's pretty depressing, the people being filmed usually don't seem to be enjoyying themselves. Some of the stuff apparently made by amateurs seems different, but looking for it is unpleasant.
You should nom someone else.
NOM NOM NOM
||
Someone seems to have screwed with my work computer yesterday, such that all of the buttons on the numeric keypad on the right are now hotkeys -- pressing "5" for instance opens Windows Media Player. Does anyone know how to undo this?
Sigh.
||>
there's no guarantee that even Approved Feminist™ porn would be something that you'd want the cops finding on your harddrive
presumably the feminists would at least screen out the catholic schoolgirl uniforms
Well, what if they were empowered Catholic schoolgirls? These things are very tricky judgment calls.
199: Somewhere, Ogged and Labs are weeping softly to themselves. We used to have thoughtful discussions about whether facials in porn were intrinsically or merely accidentally misogynistic, and now people are going all presidential to admit that they look at porn at all.
I was never clear on what exactly ogged's rules were in that regard. For instance:
Commenter: An earnest and unironic "what is your favorite porn" thread
Oggie-Daddy: Just about the worst idea ever, unless your plan is to kill the blog forever.
Interestingly to me, the last time I was in court I struck up a conversation with a lawyer who does a lot of commercial disputes arising from the porn industry, one of which was on calendar before my case. Apparently the financing contracts, and even the contracts between the performers, are all written completely non-descriptively so as to avoid any mention at all of sex (i.e., Investor X hereby makes an investment in WidgetFilmCorp) so as to make the contracts non-laughable for a judge or jury. The contracts that specify the performance details (e.g., Amber Goodstroke will or won't do anal) are kept completely separately, and are handled by totally different people.
216: No idea. Have you tried "NumLock" to unset at least that part.
218: what if they were empowered Catholic schoolgirls
So Naughty Puerto Rican Judge pron? That should complete Halford's legal fantasy needs at the top end.
My main objection to porn is that it's pretty depressing, the people being filmed usually don't seem to be enjoying themselves.
Word. Probably the fault of men because it seems like it's easier to find genuine mutual enjoyment in girl on girl stuff.
219: Ogged's rules were, ultimately, privacy.
225: For the speaker/commenter/viewer?
Ogged's rules were fire for the heretic, but ice cream for the elect.
I don't know -- I've mostly looked at amateur stuff and there appears to be a lot of fun being had.
The people in 231 seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Going through the Bill of Rights and other amendments, everything besides free speech seems to either make no sense in the context of legal persons (bearing arms), already apply to them uncontroversially (due process), or not be of any use to them (the right to vote).
I demand legal-entity/fictitious person porn!
This is what happens when different threads are near the same comment count.
234: That's called "The Annual Report".
It gets really dirty when they start talking about corporate subsidiaries.
Gives a whole new meaning to "barely legal."
I got burgled recently, credit card and phone. Phone was used to call pron line and credit card was used to pay for it. If criminal didn't have his own card, I suppose porn is a good reason to steal mine, and then by using my phone, authorities can't trace card fraud back to his phone number. Nor can his wife. But funny thing is, he ignored all the other credit cards and even gift cards sitting on the same table. Also ignored computer sitting on my bed. He was after one thing only: the pron.
234: Especially the part where they liquidate their assets.
240: If you mean he called a phone sex line, I don't know if that is still porn. When you have another person performing just for you, that seems closer to prostitution than porn.
I guess phone sex is not porn. It doesn't rise to the level of prostitution either.
wait, phone sex isn't porn? can blind people not experience porn under any circumstances, only various forms of sexual contact (touching performers, etc.)? I think your definition of porn fails if it requires visual stimuli. I mean, usually includes, sure, but to the point where blind people cannot ever, definitionally, listen to anything rightly called porn? it clearly won't do to have merely the soundtrack of the porn film be porn for the blind person but fail to be porn for a sighted person in the same room iff the video feature has been disabled. if analytic philosophy has ever been good for anything, it ought to help us out here. with lots of lube and ass-stretching first, sure, fine. (god, analytic philosophy really is such a little bitch sometimes.)
196: thorn, please don't worry about it. you are about the last person ever on the list of people that would piss me off like that on unfogged. the things you had to say were perfectly reasonable and compassionate. and separately, sorry about the pee issues.
easy to be witty on team robot because you don't have any pesky feeling! this may result in filleting of one's opponent's being more thorough and vicious than required, but on the internet that's a feature. actually though, I realized I shouldn't get into any arguments with anyone online about feminism or any related topics because it is an inherent waste of one's limited time alive it's upsetting me right now. I was also reading game of thrones in order to get into more informed arguments about it online, and husband x gently suggested I read it later.
245: husband x wanders by no make the thomas nagel-ish objection, could super-intelligent bats not enjoy porn? if processing auditory stimuli allowed you to "see" shapes, could you, hypothetical person with bat-like sonar abilities, not be able to observe and enjoy the recording and subsequent playback of your fellow creatures having sex (by means of some amazing 800-speaker set-up stiplulated to be possible for the sake of the example)? this is why philosophers make the big bucks, people
245, 247: It isn't the auditory nature that makes it not porn. I think it is the interactivity that makes it not porn. A recording of a phone sex session played back at a later time would be porn.
the one that tragically makes manic dream girls fat, seroquel)
al, at least it's not Zyprexa. People gain weight on that fast. A woman weighing 128 will get ravenously hungry and go up to 170 in just a few months. Crazy!
190, 191. In Canada the credit card swipers at restaurants have PINs. If a merchant doesn't use the extra security feature, then he eats the loss if it was fraud.
249: Zyprexa with cheese is a bigger problem.
so phone sex is neither porn nor prositution? if I were to hire a prostitute to talk dirty to me from the other side of a screen while I jerk off is the arresting officer going to buy in on this "not prostitution" hypothesis?
253: I guess maybe prostitution requires contact or the potential of physical contact?
If you get the officer to buy in, you might have to share your screen, which could be awkward.
remember the sad story from the psych ward about how the meds were making this manic dream girl tragically non-pixie and fat, and she couldn't even understand how tragic the loss of her hotness was?
I've decided I need to convince the NYT that in a "mad men" spirit of emulating the early 1960s, good old-fashioned "nervous breakdowns" are coming back into fashion among white, ivy league-educated people. people are getting tired of the constant "addicted to this and that" thing and long for a simpler time when one's options were only drinking oneself to death or having a nervous breakdown. I think I need to find one other person for it to be a trend, but I'm sure I can manage, or in a friedmanesque way concoct one who's unwilling to reveal his name. styles section here I come, baby. it's important that mention of costs occur and that there is a picture of me and my cute children/philosopher husband in front of my huge colonial house, perhaps with my maid sweeping the yard with a broom made of sticks in the background. I think for maximum credit my husband is supposed to be an architect, but philosophy prof may well be in the #2 slot.
but philosophy prof may well be in the #2 slot.
The more polite among us say "head in the clouds."
254: aren't professional doms liable to arrest even if they don't allow even any licking of the boots?
I have no idea. But by "potential contact" maybe I meant "the potential of contact" and that they had to be in the same general physical area.
may well be in the #2 slot
If you can't even tell for sure whether you're having anal sex, you may need to dial back the meds a notch.
Also, I really don't understand the whole professional dominatrix thing. I have so many people telling me what to do that I can't imaging paying someone to do it.
259: If the DA and the cultural climate is oriented towards prosecution then a battery charge is possible since one can't consent to it, it's against public policy. If it's all verbal stuff then no. The DE did the research for a pro who wanted to know if moving to CA would make her life easier. Legally, no, actually, yes depending on the city.
Boxing and other contact sports have exemptions.
168: Meanwhile, Richard Stallman's rider. No brown M&Ms, but waaay too much discussion of when not to say "Linux" when you mean "GNU with the Linux Kernel", and parrots.
That's really, really awesome. The parrot part is the best, true ("DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you."), but there's a lot of great stuff there. And I don't mean that in a bad way! It seems like a pure distillation of a certain sort of geek sincerity: why leave to chance encounters that could instead be fruitfully shaped through the proper algorithm? And honestly, if your livelihood consists of going around and giving philosophy talks to computer nerds for three decades, you're going to need to set some guidelines. Plus, of course, the Free Software fundamentalism, but what do you expect? I wouldn't invite Gandhi to give a talk and expect to feed him McDonald's afterwards.
My second-favorite bit is probably:
In some places, my hosts act as if my every wish were their command. By catering to my every whim, in effect they make me a tyrant over them, which is not a role I like. I start to worry that I might subject them to great burdens without even realizing. I start being afraid to express my appreciation of anything, because they would get it and give it to me at any cost. If it is night, and the stars are beautiful, I hesitate to say so, lest my hosts feel obligated to try to get one for me.
Such decency! I love it.
long for a simpler time when one's options were only drinking oneself to death or having a nervous breakdown
That's an OR, not an XOR, Boolean fans!
247: all you'd need would be two little bat headphones to put on its ears. But they'd have to be super high fidelity, and you'd need some great microphones and serious processing gear to pick up the bat's squeaks, simulate how those would be reflected from the object you're depicting, and playing them back with the correct delay into its ears. And it would have to be done at a refresh rate of (I think) 50 Hz or so, twice as fast as a TV image.
Anyway, bats can see perfectly well in the normal way using their eyes, so you could just show them a DVD.
I feel that everyone is unfairly ignoring the existence of purely textual pron. Which could totally be engaged with in the form of a talking book, by a bat.