Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[Prak]

Well, hopefully I'm a better writer than EL James... But also I doubt my writing will have quite the mass appeal of poorly researched bondage fic for soccer moms...

[deaddmwalking]

Here's the foundational truth of America - anybody can sue you for anything.

Sometimes a lawsuit gets tossed out because it's obviously frivolous, but somebody still has to look at it.

Here's a real story about a woman suing Disney because she thinks they based Frozen on her life. Now, after reading that article and watching Frozen, ask yourself, do you think this lawsuit seems at all plausible?

So the question you have to ask yourself is not 'could they sue' because the answer is always yes about anything and everything. The real question is 'will they sue'. And there are only really two cases where they're likely to do so - 1) you make a lot of money from the property or 2) you defile the setting in a way that they take umbrage with and then want to make an example of you.

Of course, if you submit your manuscript to them and they are your publisher, you wouldn't have anything to worry about. In that case, they'll want you to make a lot of money (for them). That said, if you know they're going to read it, you should make a point of really filing off the serial numbers. Nothing wrong with T. Han Atos, a squirrely Greek, owning a funeral parlor.

[hyzmarca]

Weird legal/copyright question-

Say I wrote a book heavily inspired by American Gods, to the point where it essentially takes place in the same world, but doesn't deal with/mention any of Gaiman's specific creations, like Mr. World or Technical Boy, or any specific names he created for gods, like Mr. Nancy for Anansi or Bilquis for the Queen of Sheba. How much of a legal leg would Harper Collins have to stand on if they tried to sue me over the copyright (I imagine Neil himself would be apathetic about someone playing in his world at worst, and more likely encouraging)?

Would they have more of a leg to stand on if I used less creative names for established figures, like calling Odin (Mr.) Wednesday, or Anubis and Thoth Messrs. Jackal and Ibis? Does "A person who is Anubis, works in a funeral home in America, and goes by Mr. Jackal" constitute a copyrighted figure, even if that figure is intended to literally be Anubis?

I think I know the answer, but, I guess the question is "how much of Neil Gaiman's expression of the idea of 'ancient gods in America' is copyrightable and I have to avoid treading unless I want to have some conversations with Harper Collins lawyers?"

Gods are public domain. Specific versions of them are not. Names aren't copyrightable, but sufficiently large collections of detail are.

If I wrote a story about a Victorian detective named Sherlock Holmes, that's okay. If I wrote a story about a victorian detective named Sherlock Holmes who looks exactly like Robert Downey Jr., that isn't.

Using the same nicknames that Gaiman does is a detail that a court would weigh when adjudicating a copyright infringement claim. If they share enough details to basically be the same character, then it's a copyright issue.

[Prak]

How do pain killers work, such that there is some pain that they just won't do anything about?

Eg, I've injured my back. Aspirin, ibuprofen and acetaminophen are all doing nothing for the pain. Even 1500mg of acetaminophen is doing nothing.

Now, maybe the issue is in not taking the right pain killer for the kind of pain, but it seems more like, if anything, the pain is more powerful than the meds? How does that work?

[deaddmwalking]

Drugs like Aspirin and Ibuprofen are anti-inflammatory. Inflammation causes pain - reducing or preventing inflammation helps reduce or prevent the associated pain.

There is also pain that is not associated with inflammation. This includes 'nerve pain' like a pinched nerve. Aspirin won't really help with that - though placebos are a hell of a drug - if you THINK it will help, sometimes it does.

Tylenol is an example of an acetaminophen. It does work differently than aspirin and ibuprofen, but if you've tried it and it doesn't work you'd want to look at something else.

In some countries you can get co-codamol (a combination of Codeine and Tylenol) without a prescription, but in the United States you need a prescription. This will probably work for you.

A lot of back pain is muscle pain, and often your doctor will recommend a muscle relaxant. In a lot of ways that's a better first step than a more powerful pain killer.

[Prak]

Currently, I work for a company that does inventory services for other companies. Each shift has a meet time and start time (which could be the same time for jobs in town, or different times for those out of town because we have company vans).

But shifts have no set end time. Beyond the law that says an employee should have ten hours between shifts, as I understand it, are there any laws, particularly in California, regarding shift end times or shifts without set end times?

[deaddmwalking]

Generally employers want to avoid long shifts because after 8 hours they pay you time and a half.

Have you ever been scheduled to work from 2 p.m. until 11 p.m., and then from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m.?

Or maybe you were asked to pull a double shift, with one eight-hour shift ending at noon and the other beginning at 2 p.m.?

If this kind of schedule is all too familiar to you, you may be wondering if your employer is in violation of California labor laws.

Unfortunately, the answer is no, with very few exceptions.

Source

[Prak]

Generally, yeah, but this job is... odd. There is literally no end time, even projected, for any of my shifts. Just start times.

[deaddmwalking]

There's no law against that. Depending on how long shifts go, you may be entitled to breaks. But outside of truckers there are very few industries that say how long you can work before you need to take a break.

[Prak]

So, I saw yet another person, this time on Twitter, asking why people hate nazis. As if there needs to be some specific, personal reason to justify hating nazis because hatred is inherently bad, or something. Which, after I did the perfunctory shouting down of this dipshit, caused me to wonder, "when did it become 'bad' to hate?" Because "hate" just means "intense, passionate dislike," and I remember many times in my childhood when I said I hated another child to describe my feelings towards them because they made my childhood hell, and I was told that "hate is a very strong word" and "you shouldn't hate anyone."

And google couldn't answer my question. I feel like there is some link between this "condemnation of hatred" and the Western world's attempts to obscure the specific crimes of the Nazis for a variety of reasons, from not wanting to explain the horrific violations to a bunch of school kids, to some kind of misguided belief that the specifics of nazi crimes and ideology is some kind of blueprint for future atrocities, and also because a bunch of people in power wanted to make sure no one recognized the seeds of authoritarianism and genocide in their own ideology and politics.

And it occurred to me that maybe someone here has some kind of insight. Is there a connection? Why and when did it become so wrong to call your "intense, passionate dislike" of a person or thing "hatred?"

[Thaluikhain]

Did that also not apply to the justified anger and hatred of black people during the Civil Rights movement? And before, but people started paying attention then.

[Prak]

Quite likely. I hadn't thought about that, but it's very likely.

[Stahlseele]

Maybe when the term Hatecrime was coined and much more recently Hatespeech?
If Hate were not seen as bad, then those would not exist.

[Prak]

I think that may be part of it, but I don't think you couldn't have hate crime legislation without condemnation of the word "hate." Crimes of passion are a thing, but passion is not condemned as (much as) hate is.

[deaddmwalking]

If you say "I oppose Nazism" it sounds like you've got reasons for it. If you say "I hate Nazism' it sounds like you don't have a good reason. Every one in the world remembers Yoda telling Luke that anger leads to hate and hate leads to the Dark Side.

People say "I hate soup" and it seems really weird - some people just don't like something. Since there are lots of good reasons to hate Nazis, it goes beyond any type of inexplicable preference and actually becomes a well-reasoned position of opposition. You can kill all the weeds in your garden without HATING them.

[MGuy]

The idea that "I hate soup" is a weird thing to say is a very alien idea to me. People say they hate X so frequently that that would be considered more natural to hear than something more measured. I'd expect someone to say they hate Nazis than "I oppose Nazis" in any setting that isn't very formal or filled with the most boring people on the planet. I would also believe that people who just said the latter to be less committed to getting rid of Nazis regardless of their reasoning for their opposition.

As for the position of negative opinions in general? Who really knows? People are not simple and there are countless reasons why people might do this or that. All I definitely know is that Twitter is a rotten place.

That aside, I have seen people oppose strong negative language for a myriad of reasons. Whether it's about hating something or just calling something bad. As an example let's say you think X game is bad. There are people who have gotten attacked and, of course, sent death threats over something as inoccuous as that.

Then of course there's tone policing. It comes in different forms but certain people, traditionally those in power, tend to think that passionate or especially negative language is uncooth. What counts and doesn't count as "formal" or "appropriate" tends to be decided upon by these types. Others adopt this and it becomes accepted as such by the general public. From there you get fascists and other less than savory people who take advantage of that from time to time. For instance you have legislators who ban the user if certain words, like racism, when discussion legislation.

There are people who are in support of something or parts of a thing but don't want to say that they are. There are people who are complicit in bad things but don't want to be made to feel bad about it. You get all kinds with a big enough crowd.

I wouldn't worry about it much. Twitter is a terrible place filled with terrible people so terrible opinions are bound to pop up.

[Prak]

I mean, I'm not... I'm not worried about one dipshit on twitter thinking that hating nazis is somehow an extreme opinion.

But the broader trend of people deciding that any and all kinds of hate are the same, that hating nazis because they kill people for their race/religion/sexuality/being a commie is the same as nazis hating people for their race/religion/etc, that does worry me. And... I don't know how to, like, shut that off. I'm currently in a debate with a completely separate person on Twitter about Lucien Greaves, head of The Satanic Temple, who, all available evidence tells me is at best a fascist sympathizer, and I genuinely do not understand people who aren't worried about that. Or people who aren't worried about and incensed by the existence and resurgence of fascism. And not even, you know, white cishet people of Accepted Religious Beliefs who wouldn't be the targets of Nazi pogroms, that I.. understand. But I don't get people who very much are targets of fascists' hatred and just... don't have an opinion?

Like... I get Ben Shapiro, at least broadly. He's Jewish, but he's alt right, because he's a conservative Jew, his personal beliefs mostly align with the Alt Right thing, and there have always been collaborateurs.

But this person I'm talking to on Twitter, who has a pride flag in their bio so I presume is LGBTQIA+... And I know is a Satanist, I don't understand how they can just be "meh, whatever" about pretty much the biggest figure in Satanism right now demonstrably aligning with a literal former Grand Wizard of the KKK on views of Jewish people, promoting eugenics, and proudly contributing art for a new edition of Might is Right. And this is getting to some inside baseball, but like...

How can people be blasé about fascism?

EDIT: It occurs to me that my inability to not immediately feel intense and passionate hatred and anger when the subject of nazis/fascism/etc gets brought up is probably due to the neurodivergence. I have ADD, which has emotional dysregulation as a symptom, and probably autism and CPTSD, which also both have it as a symptom, and depression, which I bet can cause it too.

So while I may not have an answer for "how can people seem to just not care about nazis," I do have a working answer for "why can I not feel intense hatred and anger for them."

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Woah, holy shit, the head Satanist is a fucking fascist? I thought Satanists were supposed to be THE GOOD GUYS! Especially Twitter Satanists!

[PseudoStupidity]

Re: How can people be blasé about fascism?

Consider that capitalism benefits from everyone coexisting, it can sell shit to homophobes and LGBT people, to nazis and jews, to racists and PoC. Coexistence and tolerance are not just good for capitalism, they're almost always good even outside of that! You should tolerate people who have differences of opinion, you should still love people even if they've got ass-backwards economics. Since tolerance is always good for capitalism and almost always good for society you are bombarded with messages from companies and the government that tolerance is the ultimate virtue. These messages sometimes go too far, like a commercial telling you to have a beer with somebody who would vote to murder you (but probably not murder you themselves).

Because of the aforementioned bombardment a lot of people end up thinking that tolerance should extend to people who think you shouldn't exist and would happily unexist you if given the chance to do so legally. That's fucking insane, but it's also a thing I've been told by many well-meaning liberals. And I understand why they do that! These are people who have never had somebody attack or threaten them for being who they are. They often do not understand that politics are more than a game, where you pick the good, tolerant side or are a big meanie. Not wanting to be meanies they pick the good, tolerant side, and being the goodest and most tolerant they even tolerate the big meanies. They are so virtuous, look at how nice they are to trans people and nazis alike!

Hating nazis is good, it means your moral compass is functioning properly in this specific instance. All good people should hate nazis and do everything in their power to make nazis' lives worse if they get the opportunity to do so safely. They should do this to prevent nazis from harming people who have done nothing to deserve the hatred nazis have for them. This is not somehow just as bad as nazis hating <minority group of your choice>, because nazis can always just stop being nazis.

Tl;dr: People are taught to tolerate others and sometimes they extend it to groups that absolutely don't deserve that tolerance. Hating nazis is good and you are the normal one if you find yourself enraged whenever some fuckhead engages in their rhetoric or does nazi stuff.

[deaddmwalking]

I mean, groups like the ACLU make the claim that maintaining the rights of the MOST DESPICABLE PEOPLE ensures the protections for ALL THE PEOPLE. Which is why they famously defended a march by Neo-Nazis as an expression of free speech.

If you punch Nazis, you're essentially promoting vigilantism, and even though it is on the side of RIGHT that's the same claim that folks like Rittenhouse make, except they think you're justified in punching socialists. So there's a place where rejecting the concept of vigilantism is better for EVERYONE, because once you advocate for its use with only your conscience as a guide things can get ugly quickly.

[Kaelik]

I mean, groups like the ACLU make the claim that maintaining the rights of the MOST DESPICABLE PEOPLE ensures the protections for ALL THE PEOPLE. Which is why they famously defended a march by Neo-Nazis as an expression of free speech.

If you punch Nazis, you're essentially promoting vigilantism, and even though it is on the side of RIGHT that's the same claim that folks like Rittenhouse make, except they think you're justified in punching socialists. So there's a place where rejecting the concept of vigilantism is better for EVERYONE, because once you advocate for its use with only your conscience as a guide things can get ugly quickly.

Spoiler alert. "Vigilanteeism" of cops doesn't require anyone giving them permission by punching nazis first.

What you are saying is not different from what pseudo said except that pseudo correctly understands that the status quo of capitalist domination is bad and you foolishly believe it is good.

[Whatever Jr.]

I think you'll find that people who condemn the idea of having "hate in your heart" pretty much all grew up in a Christian culture. Even, or perhaps especially, if they happen to be a satanist. Thoughtcrime is a deeply Christian notion.

As far as the ACLU, it turns out that "civil liberties" includes a whole lot of very important things, of which speech is only one. Deplatforming Nazis is unequivocally good, and so is punching them in the face.

[MGuy]

How prominent is the idea that all hate is equal? I don't think anyone believes that in any real sense. I'd question the prevalence of that as anything more than an aesthetic. It's a thing I have strong reason to believe is just the result of people who do not really care about a thing wanting to demonstrate how above it they are. It's like how when two people are fighting and you get onlookers who n don't really care about the details that just kind of see it as a spat and nothing more.

[Prak]

Woah, holy shit, the head Satanist is a fucking fascist? I thought Satanists were supposed to be THE GOOD GUYS! Especially Twitter Satanists!

I know you're being facetious and trolling me, but I actually know quite a lot of Satanists, even on Twitter, who are good people. In fact, there's an actual somewhat major group, Satanic Bay Area, which splintered off from TST because Greaves decided to use a nazi-friendly "free speech" lawyer to go after Twitter for taking away his blue checkmark. SBA was primarily created by TST members who do a podcast about Satanism and are explicitly left-leaning and very political.

But there is this trend of hierarchical Satanic orgs being headed by libertarian assholes, and that probably has a lot more to do with white cishet libertarian assholes having, you know, the economic and social capital to create organizations, while the rest of us are just trying to fucking survive.

[MGuy]

Gonna be honest I'd thought that satanists we're basically a cult for edgy libertarians myself not gonna lie. A friend of mine and his husband basically denounced it after some thing that happened. Maybe it was the Nazi stuff. I'll have to ask them.