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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • The way marriage is set up presently, it is made for the needs of a majority, but there are many outliers.

    Firstly, of course many people cohabit very happily for a lifetime, there’s no requirement to get married. They settle their affairs with bespoke agreements property contracts and wills. It works fine for them - it’s just a bit more complex than the standard package that marriage presents , but not a real problem.

    Don’t want marriage, but quite fancy the tax benefits? In the UK you can opt for a Civil Partnerships which handles most of the outliers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_partnership_in_the_United_Kingdom

    Bottom line -for people who want to get married, there’s marriage. For people who want to formally merge most of their financial affairs and tax obligations, there is civil partnership, for everyone else, there are bespoke legal and financial arrangements and contracts.

    No compulsion, no loss of autonomy (other than mutually agreed) and certainly no slavery.

    Good, eh?




  • A relationship is work.

    Absolutely. And it’s an oath is just a commitment to work at it, and not just throw up hands at the earliest opportunity

    There is no right to the rest of someone’s life on either side should they change their mind or evolve in different directions;

    It’s not a “a right to another’s life” it’s a commitment to a shared life. And yes, that commitment can not work out, which is why divorce is now thankfully pretty easy.

    that is slavery

    Not using any common definition of the word, no.

    I have no right to stop them. This is true equality and freedom. It is a fundamental human right.

    See, divorce - above. Some marriages don’t work out, or are abusive. That doesn’t mean there’s no value in marriage.




  • It’s not clear to my why you draw parallels with slavery. Spending a massive sum on the days is not an intrinsic prerequisite for marriage, neither is a dowry.

    All marriage is, is a formal public oath between two people to spend the rest of their lives together, to look after each other and to share resources.

    As an institution, it has many benefits including to the married people’s health. It also negefurs the state in that the mutual commitment to care it tends to reduce healthcare and social costs. So the state may provide some benefits.

    The main disadvantage is that she stacks the dishwasher wrong.










  • I have smart radiator valves I use to reduce heating cost. During weekdays the morning when the heating comes on, I know the main living room isn’t going to be used, so the rads turn themselves off, coming on late afternoon, just before the kids get home.

    Smart bulbs are only really used while we are away on holiday, to simulate people being in.

    I have solar panels, batteries and am on sn agile electricity tariff that changes every 30 minutes with 24 notice. Automations make sure the batteries are charged up ahead of any peak rate. Occasionally energy prices go negative if there is an excess of wind power on the grid. At that point my immersion heater starts heating water in my hot water tank, saving gas and making me money.




  • Also be a little wary of the ‘recorded side effects’. In the UK (and I’m sure its not alone), the NHS asked people to record any medical event that happened for a period post-vaccination that could conceivably be a side effect, in an abundance of caution - the idea that they could then sift the data for any actual side effects.

    People often quote this raw data ‘look n people had heart attacks after vaccination’ - without factoring the expected number of heart attacks if that cohort had not been vaccinated. There’s some great stuff in the raw data like people who suffered twisted ankles. Reasonable to record, as say a statistically significant increase in twisted ankles could (say) suggest balance problems were a side effect (they aren’t)