As happens occasionally, the Internet is fighting the ageless war over the Age of Consent. The problem with this war is that both sides are somewhat right and both sides are stupidly wrong.
The Age of Consent - be it 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21 - has no basis in fact. There is no arbitrary number of days or years that accurately defines when a human being is capable of taking full responsibilty for their choices. For some microscopic percentage of people the age is 12. For other people the age is, well, never. For practical purposes, at some point we just have to throw up our hands and say "Hey, it's all on you now." We also need to be able to admit that this point is completely arbitrary. It protects some people, and holds others back.
I got to watch this process happen myself. When we were both around 20 or so, one of my close friends got his 16-year-old girlfriend emancipated, married her, settled down from his exceptionally wild ways, then started going to church and having kids and generally being a responsible adult. In their case, Age of Consent was a problem, they got around it, and it's a story with a happy ending.
On the other side of the controversy, we have the people who want to abolish the age of consent. This is not so that they can sell kids mortgages or complex investment schemes or engage in other contractual issues that presently requre an adult signature. 99.9% of them are a bunch of old creepy guys who want to fuck little kids. The other 0.1% are academic types who see the legitimate problems with the Age of Consent, but aren't bringing any alternatives to the table.
The reason that society in general has problems with old creepy guys fucking kids is that close to all of these relationships are predatory in nature. On one side you have an allegedly human being with far more experience, knowledge of long-term results, and capacity for persuasion, and on the other side you have an inexperienced newbie. There is no form of contest where this would be considered a fair match.
Let's look at the inverse situation, where young (say, in their 20s) attractive women date or marry old guys for their money. Many people look down on this and possibly consider it immoral, but virtually nobody considers it predatory. Whether we approve of it or not, we can all agree that everyone is fully aware of what's going on and what the trade-offs are.
As far as I'm personally concerned, the creepy old guys who want to fuck little kids are more than welcome to debate this matter with the internals of a woodchipper as they pass through it.
This leaves the academic types, who in typical academic fashion remain deliberately detached from reality. Yes, they are right that the Age of Consent is deeply flawed. For better or worse, it attempts to solve a serious problem in a crude and ham-fisted manner, and it mostly succeeds. It also fails quite often. It's a trade-off.
The deeper problem is that academics not only detach themselves from reality, they actively despise knowledge gained by real-world experience - we typically call this "wisdom." They hate wisdom because it drops giant reality bombs on their Utopian fantasies. It prevents them from living their "life of mind." When you combine an ivory tower detachment with compelete denegration of wisdom you get insanity. As I like to put it, "The life of mind leads to minds of madness."
I would be more than happy to replace the Age of Consent with a more precise, fair, and accurate system that protects those unready to make serious life choices and allows those who are ready the freedom they deserve. The problem is that no such system has been proposed. If anyone could create such a system it would be one of the greatest achievements in history. But I'm not holding my breath on this one.
Yes, the Age of Consent is crude bordering on stupid, but it serves a purpose and until something better comes along we should keep it in place.
Don’t worry!
His “very smart people” are totally right about things this time when it comes to trade.
There is zero - I repeat, zero - moral difference between the people who pushed for "experimenting" with lockdowns because "we have to do something!" and the people who push for "experimenting" with trade wars because "we have to do something!"
Musk is out.
Musk put himself in a corner where he can't rip into Trump and he has to play nice probably at least through the midterms, but just look at the guy's face and watch him refuse to give a straight answer here. He put a lot on the line with endorsing Trump and starting DOGE, and Trump absolutely stabbed him in the back. Trump's supporters will blame congress, but Trump has very openly and loudly endorsed all of the DOGE-defying moves that congress has made, and has viciously attacked the one congressman (Thomas Massie) who has stood against it.
The reason is simple: Trump cares about trophies. Cutting the budget is not a trophy. DOGE trying to take a chainsaw to government was a trophy, but as soon as DOGE became more of Musk's than Trump's trophy, Trump stopped caring about it because congress offered him a Big, Beautiful Bill as a trophy instead. Just like the FBI offered the opportunity to build a Big, Beautiful new headquarters building for them (Trump loves buildings!). ...
As comedy slowly slides into unfunny wokeness hell, the last comedian standing (assuming he doesn't drop dead first, I mean just look at the guy; he's a trainwreck) will be Doug Stanhope. He closed out his recent special "The Dying of the Last Breed" with this bit on how important it is that we be able to make fun of anything. Because making fun.
Language warning, duh.
Preliminary Q2 numbers for Argentina are in. This is still subject to adjustment but so far their preliminaries have been pretty accurate under the Milei administration.
Slashing spending works. Trump and Bessent are very optimistically projecting economic growth of 3% doing the opposite of what Milei is doing to deliver 7.6% - and climbing!
