This Surrogacy Story

A woman is hired to be a surrogate; the couple finds out the kid will have a bad medical condition, and they want to abort the child. But the surrogate decides she can't allow it and flees to Texas... 

Pretty bonkers and quite a moral conundrum, actually...Richard Hanania thinks the lady should be charged with kidnapping. What an outrageous idea! To acknowledge kidnapping is to acknowledge personhood, which is to acknowledge that abortion is murder. Are we going there?

Some questions to consider: 

What if the unborn child didn't have a medical condition? But the biological parents still wanted the abortion? Would that change the scenario?

Who will raise this child? Who will pay for his/her medical care?

What happened to the pro-choice argument about "her body, her choice." Does this apply to the surrogate? Or to the biological mother? The biological parents? 

Does the biological mother here get more say over the situation than the biological father (as they would if she were carrying the baby)? Or, does the mother get less say since she's NOT carrying the baby?

That is to say, what if the father sided with the surrogate and wanted to keep the baby and the mother didn't?

This case is truly, truly difficult to square across numerous dimensions. 

Woke 1.0

Remember when the guy with tourettes yelled out the N-word at the BAFTAs and Jamie Foxx said "he meant it."

Well, I agree with Foxx's sentiment about the people who now say Woke 1.0 was crazy and are attempting to walk some of it back. Bullshit. They meant it. They just know they can't get away with it. 

Hollywood Troubles

An underrated aspect of why Hollywood struggles: tabloids and reality TV offer more fascinating mysteries and narratives these days - for instance, did Usher hire a body double or possibly clone himself to perform at Met Life?

Or, will they won't they, John Hinkley Jr and Jodie Foster.

DSA

It doesn't matter that Hong seems to have barely lost Wisconsin. She got 36% of the votes. This means a totally retarded DSA candidate can automatically get 36% of Democrats in a purple-ish state. I used to think we had 15-25% communist-types in the Democrat party. Now, it's at least 36% and probably closer to 50-60% in big blue cities. We're cooked as the kids say.

A Good TV Show Idea

A beautiful, newly single woman in her late 30s gets elected President and must balance her dating life with running the country as her biological clock is ticking. Sex and the City meets The West Wing.

Go.

Bad Business

LA Times: how a 200K ADU dream turned into 600K reality. 

Believe me, I can relate, but I think this article is a bit of a horror story. 

Firstly, the end result is a beautiful, built ADU that they rent out to cover the cost. You read that correctly. You build a beautiful thing, but someone else gets to enjoy it. Insane! Second, you just bought yourself a roommate. Now you've got people living in your backyard. Doubly insane! Thirdly, you're 100% thinking all the time: god, I hope they don't fuck up my nice place. Triply insane!

Wouldn't they have been better off remodeling (down to studs if necessary) the old house and making it beautiful to live in - and spending considerably less than 600?

For Those Who Think Girls Should Rule The World

What's their theory on the WNBA? 

 PS: the only thing more retarded than the WNBA is the Republican politicians threatening to arrest WNBA players

What Does It Mean...

That Chinese AI systems are pretty excellent at English-language answers. Is AI equally good in all languages? This can't be the case, right?

"I'm Against Israel" 

Didn't get to the paid portion of this, as it seemed like Andrew Sullivan was getting to my own question, but I find it fascinating how this guy just casually drops into a discussion that "he's against Israel."

I just don't understand what this means. How can one be "against" a country? It would be like saying "I'm against China" or "I'm against Egypt." It's so weird.