Pretty sure these state laws are considered dead letters.

Except in North Carolina where you can still get a civil judgement against you for seducing away a spouse.

Anyway, it's good to know where the quote from the other day was from.

Is Civics class in high school still a thing? Back when I had it, the teacher would kick off each week by reading some of the bizarre blue laws that were still on the books in various jurisdictions. "It shall be a misdemeanor to bring a monster within the city limits" is one that I still remember.

From the link:
In a few jurisdictions only the married party can be prosecuted for adultery. If the other party to the relationship is not married, he or she may be prosecuted for fornication instead of adultery.

What.

4: That's why the really horrible stuff is in the suburbs.

5: It makes a kind of sense. You're abetting adultery, not committing it, if you define adultery as cheating in a marriage.

7: yes, but my "What" was directed at there still being an actual offence of "fornication" on the books.

It probably sounds less archaic in Mandarin.

Sorry, from the link about US adultery law.

Oh. They don't even give a shit about being backward in huge parts of America.

They'd rather have their people being backward than being forward, clearly.

I think the backward-foreward distinction matters for sodomy, not fornication.

There main use of adultery statutes these days is that the fifth Amendment allows people to not testify about their criminal conduct. E.g. President Clinton could have pleaded the Fifth Amendment regarding Monica Lewinsky, since the acts violated adultery and sodomy statutes in effect in DC at the time. (The sodomy statute, which has been repealed, criminalized blowjobs even if the co-conspirators were married to each other.)

Note the distinction between adultery statutes and the North Carolina criminal conversation statute: Only a married person can be prosecuted for adultery, but an unmarried person can be prosecuted for criminal conversation if their fuckbuddy is married. The statute was relevant in a med mal insurance coverage case in the past decade or so. A psychiatrist committed malpractice by (among other things) fucking his patient. Since the defendant's med mal policy excluded criminal conduct, and fucking a married woman was a crime, he lost his insurance coverage.

There was also a case, not sure which state, where a the jury hung on a rape charge, after the defendant testified the conduct was consensual. The prosecutor accepted a guilty plea plea and much shorter prison sentence on an adultery charge rather than risk another trial..

13 But see Grove v. State, 179 Ind. 459, 462-67 (1913).

Famously, in the US military adultery is a crime (UCMJ Article 134). It's definition was recently changed to include non-PIV sexual contact. See, DoD is staying up to date!

You don't want to make it too difficult for foreign powers to blackmail your officers. That wouldn't be playing fair, see.

There are also a lot of idiosyncratic/out-dated local laws. New Orleans has many municipal codes about behavior on the streetcar. A cursory glance at my city's code shows a ban on minors working in poolrooms, a requirement of a $50 deposit for any carnival that comes to town, and a remarkably detailed section on which goats may be lawfully kept in the city.

Chickens in cities are a thing. How long before goats become fashionable?

Famously, in the US military adultery is a crime (UCMJ Article 134).

If that had been true in the UK military, we'd have lost at Trafalgar. And Waterloo.

I just looked and Pittsburgh updated its laws on keeping goats in 2015. There's a two goat minimum.

So do you have enough?

The set of goats can be empty, but if not empty, you need two or more.

He got one back in December and he's got another one coming next winter. The Goat of Christmas Past and the Goat of Christmas Future.

Not your best, ajay.

I regretted it as soon as I posted it. Not up to much, I agree.

I thought Moby was joking about the two goat minimum but he's serious? It actually is illegal in Pittsburgh to keep exactly one goat?

Otherwise they get lonely. Pittsburgh is a famously kind and considerate city.

20 True unless the French also had the same law.

28 is at least right in the first sentence.

I am looking through my city's animal control law code and there are some gems.

6.04.360 - Sale of novelty small fowl and rabbits prohibited.

It is unlawful for any person to display, sell, offer for sale, barter or give away in the city, any live baby chicks, rabbits, ducklings or other fowl as pets or novelties, whether or not dyed, colored, or otherwise artificially treated; provided, however, this section shall not be construed to prohibit the display or sale of natural chicks, rabbits, ducklings or other fowl in proper facilities by dealers, hatcheries or stores engaged in the business of selling the same to be raised for food purposes.

Have you checked the sumptuary laws?

31: That's clearly targeting an established practice that they are trying to end. My mom would always talk about how they got a chick and a duckling for Easter. They fed them up and then ate them (with the smaller children told the animals were sent to live on a farm).

I don't see how that isn't foo purposes.

Arguing that might result in removal from the bar.

Well-played.

I'm just dropping in to yell about something irrelevant because I haven't seen my lover in weeks and I'm bored: how has no one, over the last two decades, devised a simple subscription service, browser add-on, app, whatever, where you get charged monthly for reading individual paywalled articles to your heart's content? Useful features would be:

- ability to enter individual subscription information for publications to which you subscribe directly
- ability to donate additional funds (tip jar)
- ability to initiate subscriptions from within the app if you tire of paying per article

I'd guess the answer is that the profits would be zero sum between publications and app developers and neither would find the economics very appetizing. But who cares about economics when it would be so nice for me to use?? Fuck the Internet.

Blendle? Still not profitable, apparently.

37 Yes to this. I'd gladly pay say, 50 cents to read an article at the NYT or WP or whatever but I'm not subscribing. And they'd probably get more money out of me per annum that way anyway.

I have subscribed to the WP for quite a while now, mainly just to show the NYT all the money they could get it they were just a little less shitty.

They dump McArdle and I'll subscribe to the WP.

It's amazing to me that the particular hack niche McArdle occupies still exists. It seems so irrelevant in the Trump era. Maybe I'm wrong.

Goats are very herd-oriented animals. Keeping one by itself is cruel to the goat. Also,a solitary goat it is much more likely to break out of any kind of fencing. Two goats may have the capacity to break out, but they don't have the incentive.

We also have a fine for feeding feral pigeons, but only applicable within two small shopping districts in the same moderately affluent section of the city.

42: Even more amazing is that they employ columnists worse than McMegan. She's merely predictably dumb in service to the interests of the class to which she aspires to be a hanger-on. Bretbug and Thiessen are that plus really twisted.

45 me

Yes. Thiessen is the worst.

These things are not uniquely American. I can remember when Frinton-on-Sea Urban District Council had a bye-law forbidding householders to keep a steam roundabout in their garden.

Thiessen's the only one without a U of C connection; maybe that's why he doesn't give me the same kind of creeps as the other two DaveLHI mentions. Speaking of Chicago, an apartment lease I signed in fall 2000 had stated restrictions on parking one's carriage or velocipede in the building corridors.

I love the idea of aspiring to be a hanger-on.

Bye-laws being the regulations whose penalties include exile.

IIRC my childhood home's deed included a commitment not to manufacture bricks or charcoal.

Not even sun-baked bricks?

It was made of sun-baked bricks.

Cob?

48: I know what "steam" means, and I know what "roundabout" means in Knifecrimic, but what I pictured by combining those concepts is not what a "steam roundabout" is.

A merry go round powered by steam?

Either that or it's a sex thing.

56: Yes. I was thinking roundabout in terms of the traffic control device.

A Cleveland Roundabout is definitely cause for a criminal conversation case if it happens in North Carolina.

After 5pm. On a Sunday. They're not total fascists.

After 5pm. On a Sunday. They're not total fascists.

Oops.

They tried to be total fascists. They didn't have the votes.

I vote for Steam Roundabout being one of those oddball British desserts, like Spotted Knickerbockers and Figgy Treacle.

spoken like a man that doesn't know his spotted dick from his figgy pudding.

||

I'm making a recipe that calls for light coconut milk but I only have regular. Other than calories, will substituting one for the other make any difference?*

*I don't think there are any blue laws on the books in my jurisdiction forbidding the practice.

|>

Maybe use lime juice as a better substitute?

66 it will probably taste better. Are there other fat sources in recipe?

I'm right now baking a plum cake. It's not the season for plums, but they had some from South America in the store and I wanted something easy to bake.

So, Wall Street thinks it's a great idea to have gas prices go up during this recession.

48, 55. I suspect "roundabout" in 48 was actually "runabout" in the original Knifecrimean. Steam runabouts were a real thing, and fairly common in the early 1900s.

70 wall street thinks whatever will help wall street is a good idea, and damn the consequences.

But upstate thinks they're crooked. The Schuyler seat was up for grabs, so I took it.

I've heard "what we gain on the swings we lose on the roundabouts" many times but never put it together that a roundabout means a merry-go-round. (and a steam roundabout means a carousel)

Agreed that maybe it would be more likely, and more of a source of danger, to keep a steam runabout indoors.

Apparently, small cakes don't last very long in this house.

||

So, I was looking at a news story about the direct payments. Everyone in the system gets a direct deposit next week (or the week after). In the system means you've paid or received refunds electronically. Folks not in the system are going to get paper check, beginning in May, rolling out each week in increments of 10k in income, with the final checks going out in September. The IRS website says they're going to post instructions on how to get them your bank account information, if you haven't already been paying them directly -- but they don't say when. Nor do they say what happens if you get them the account info after they've already pushed the big button and sent everyone the 1,200. They've made it hard to communicate with them.

So, I thought I'd best open an account and make an estimated payment, from my bank account, for 2020. (I always make estimated payments by check. Or direct from Vanguard.)

I'm supposing that the fact that I didn't already have an account and had to make one means I was in the paper check category. Anyway, we'll see if this works for the 1,200. There's no reason it shouldn't, right?

|>

I've always done checks, because I worry that the Feds would pull from my acct without asking. I'm still gainfully employed, so I can wait for a check.

I'm still paying by paper because of the identity theft a few years back and just never making estimated payments because reasons. Anyway, not having to pay until July is nice.

I thought not everyone gets a payment and there is an income threshold based on 2018 MAGI (since 2019 hasn't necessarily filed yet, although I already did because I had a huge bill and underpayment penalty/interest.) Anyway my withholding is all messed up, after owing so much I did the new super complicated W4 estimator and did what it suggested and the amount my employer withheld last paycheck went down. I think I need to just guesstimate some estimated payments and hope I'm in the ballpark, so I have no idea what the 1200 payment would do. I guess I'll just give it right back.

Since it's kind of on topic for the thread, I'll put up my theory as to why there are so few divorced couples in the Harry Potter stories and how Fred and George made so much money with a "joke shop." Through the use of polyjuice potion, you can have sex with the same person but have the physical experience of having sex with lots of different people, so there's less adultery and adulterous lusting, so there's less divorce. Fred and George are selling hairs from especially attractive muggles in the back room of their shop.

That's a good theory, except wouldn't it actually cause a lot of conflict in your relationship if you asked your spouse to physically transform themself into a different body before you had sex with them? It might be better to cast a glamour on them so that they look like a different person, without them knowing. Sure, deception maybe isn't great for the long term health of your relationship, but neither is being totally honest about not being attracted to your partner.

But yeah, Fred and George are probably making brisk business supplying polyjuice potion to escorts, or selling fleshlights that have been bathed in it.

You probably start with something like transforming into each other, then your younger selves.

Somewhat relatedly, I'm reading Magic for Liars, which so far is pretty fun -- it's kind of like if Claire DeWitt was dropped into the world of Lev Grossman's The Magicians.

I bought a copy of The Mirror and the Light, but I've found I can't read it because I forgot most of the characters from Wolf Hall and BUtB, and I might have to reread them before I start; and also because I'm so anxious and restless, and reading Hilary Mantel takes more concentration than I can muster right now.

INTO EACH OTHER?! So...you'd each have the experience of having sex with yourself? I'm not sure that's a common kink.

Also, where are people getting books? The libraries here are shut down and the wait lists for e-books are weeks and weeks long. My local bookstores are closed, and I don't really want to give Jeff Bezos more of my money than I need to.

My usual bookstore is taking electronic orders, but they are being "fulfilled by Ingram's," which, I don't really know what that is, or if buying from them counts as supporting my local bookstore. If parsimon were here maybe she could tell me.

I'm reading the Wallander books.. I'm finding the ebooks on the library app.

86: Yes, Ingram is a distributor, so if you order from your bookstore and arrange for Ingram to ship it to you, the local bookstore ends up with something like a 25-30% cut, which is less than the 40% (I think) they'd expect from an in-store sale, but still something. This is assuming list price on a new book. If there are discounts, the margin might be slimmer.

Also the sex-with-yourself kink kept coming up in those threads about whether people would fuck their (same-age?) clones or robot selves or whatever premise. Granted, it's no "is dressing up for the opera elitist?" but one can't always be at the opera.

One of the first fights I ever had with M was about whether having sex with your clone counts as incest or masturbation. Obviously it would be incest, since you'd be having sex with someone who shares your genetic makeup. He took the position that it was masturbation, which doesn't make any sense because your clone wouldn't share your consciousness. Ugh, eighteen years later it still makes me angry to think about it.

You can sign up for Kobo via an indie local bookstore and then the bookstore gets a cut. And then of course there's Library Genesis.

Also, the Internet Archive has responded to the crisis by basically temporarily ignoring copyright law. If only Halford were around we could argue about it!

90 I first had that same thought about the 2 James T. Kirk's in when I saw "Mirror, Mirror"

I'm enjoying this whole Polyjuice conversation (and finally I truly understand why it's called "polyjuice") but it was 90 that made me laugh out loud.

86. You could give your money to Barnes & Noble instead.

74. I like that much more than my guess as to the intent of the "roundabout" law. /clap

90. Kirk would only be into a "mirror" Kirk who had green skin. (ObDisclaimer: I know the actual Kirk in the series wasn't nearly the horndog that Zap Brannigan is in Futurama.)

The question would never arise for Kirk clones. They'd be too busy talking to fuck.

This issue was explicitly addressed in Undiscovered Country

At 37 seconds:

"I can't believe I kissed you."
"It must have been your lifelong ambition"

74.1 is correct. The point was to prevent any plebeian pastimes at what was trying to position itself as a patrician resort. They also refused to license any pubs.

Van Morrison substitutes hobby horses for roundabouts.

What are some good, ornately long expressions of untrust? I was trying to come up with some about federal leadership and my best so far is "I don't trust Seema Verma as far as I could throw her if she were wearing a dress made of lead," which is subpar, but that sort of thing.

"If she told me decapitation was fatal, I'd ask for a second opinion."

"She's so crooked, she could hide behind a corkscrew."

80 is fantastic, 81-90 as well. Mobes, you made me day with that.

How about the effect on the transformee? Looking like someone else would allow both literal deception as well as giving the freedom that comes from a disguise or (I guess) from successful roleplaying.

For hetero people, I think the question is about a gender-switched version of self. Personally I find the idea horrifying, not sure if this says something deep about me or just that I recognize that I like contrast in my partners. Literal clone is maybe also interesting?

There are a few fictional elaborations-- Milan Kundera's "Hithchiking Game" (I know he's not universally beloved, yes) and a Michael Winterbottom movie I liked a lot, Code 46 that explores ethical implications of a future where widespread cloning means nobody knows who's related.

100+101: Thank you!

Human clones aren't real.

Looking like someone else would allow both literal deception as well as giving the freedom that comes from a disguise

But wouldn't you recognize your partner from the way they fuck, or at least be suspicious? Each of my lovers has done things sufficiently differently that if you blindfolded me/blocked my ears and selected one of them to have sex with me at random, I'm pretty sure I'd recognize them from their style alone.

Roald Dahl's "The Great Switcheroo".

Oh, maybe "Every single word is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."

I should fucking well hope so.