One tip I heard was asking “how” questions as follow-ups, rather than “what” questions? It tends to encourage people to think through how the conspiracies might actually work, rather than just jumping from point A to point B.

Look, I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth with you about this because it’s not my area of expertise, but a cursory glance at the Wikipedia article, which was “supplemental reading” for the question of what people thought about the idea, suggests that the underlying legal mechanisms (admittedly, I’m analyzing this from jurisprudence of the United States so terminology and precedents may differ) have to do with granting standing to individuals and communities that otherwise might not have a direct enough connection to assert an injury. Some references, like to the Ponca, suggest that the goal is accomplished by enacting new criminal statutes; others by granting private citizens the right to sue those that harm nature.

The legal mechanisms are not rooted in granting “personhood,” but rather providing means of protecting nature, which is a completely different legal approach. Nevertheless, the “personhood” approach was an interesting one, and because this is Beehaw, I thought entering the conversation could be productive and thought-provoking exercise.

Again, I’m not going to spend anymore time researching source materials, but you have conflated “personhood” with environmental protection laws, which I was not addressing, and you have come off as rather condescending. If we had been talking about conventional environmental protection laws, I would have agreed with you that the law doesn’t associate legal liabilities with nature, but instead, you hijacked the conversation and changed the discussion. You suggested that the statement I made before you changed it was addressed to your new conversation, and suddenly what I said was “absurd.”

If we are actually talking about the premise of legal personhood rather than just ways to protect the environment, then the parallels to considering that a concept, like a corporation, could have legal rights and liabilities associated with agency are actually really analogous, and in the litigious society we live in, would become a matter for a court to decide.

As well-intended as this article might have ascribed, it felt like it was all over the place.

I have a counter-point that I’d like to hear your thoughts on: at least to some degree, it seems like part of the housing crisis is caused by private equity firms not being restricted from buying up property, artificially reducing the supply of housing that can be purchased by then renting it out, which artificially increases the cost of housing and making it less accessible. More of the population then has less wealth, while smaller portions of the population end up with more wealth, again making homeownership farther out of reach.

This is a facially stupid law. (And by “facially stupid,” I’m not even addressing the morally bankrupt policy implications, but rather critiquing the framework that is wholly untethered from how the law and a system of justice works.)

That’s why they’re choosing to pick on them.

… the cruelty is the point.

Look, this is politics and all, but blatant false equivalencies in a world of disinformation is dangerous, unenlightening, and unproductive. I’ll leave it for now, but try to be more thoughtful in the future.

To be fair, “liberal” was in the title when I posted the article, but I, like you, thought that was misleading, so I left it off.

Based on the Wayback Machine, it looks like the site was changed even before that: sometime between August 3rd and August 15th.

Thank you! The surfacing part was actually done mostly by hand because if a chicken and egg situation of making the inside components and adding the hinge, without throwing things off balance on the lathe. But after four prototypes, I definitely learned a lot!

I turned a ring “box” on a lathe and my fiancée said “yes!”