2D3D
1hr ago
The phrase *women and children " brings up mental images of adult human females and children of both genders typically lower than puberty age. The actual "women and children" used in politically sensitive messaging like Palestinian populations attacked by Israel or refugee migrants to the west is actually dominated overwhelmingly by males of "indeterminate" but definitely postpubertal age, with the generous lower bound being 15 years of age and typically presenting as 17-25 year olds, which fits the legal definition of "child" if you flatten every bearded youth as a 17 year old.
When you see pictures of "women and children" refugees look for whether it is a candid shot and not a file or staged photo. The afghanistan evacuation c130 was a candid photo that revealed most "refugees" are healthy adult males, not sympathymaxxing weakling women or babies. Noticing that these adult males are the ones seeking help invites the question of where are the women and if the women are safe where the males are fleeing then why are the males fleeing to begin with.
2D3D
3hr ago
Nothing woke BECAME popular, popular things became infiltrated and then woke and then shitty. Tumblr clapbacks are mistaken for dollar spend. No population of genderqueer women rushed to play Dragon Age 2 because they finally felt representation with Taash, women play hotter characters in MOBAs of all stripes, women were the ones that used the armor set change thing more than male players and women used it explicitly to make off meta but attractive outfits visible on their characters.
Look if you want to see what pop culture women spend money on that men don't its not girlboss Rey or Junker Queen fatsuits, its romantasy billionaire bedroom bestiality or instagram experience photoshoots. In China women spend hundreds on Imperial Banquet cosplay dining experiences where they are dressed as noble consorts to be served hand on foot by nubile waitresses in delicate filigree.
Women applaud inclusive options for a theoretical other woman that wants to be catered to, but they aren't going to spend money at the Lesbian Collective Art Fair themselves. At the much maligned dashcon 2014 there was much clowning on the genderqueer performative identity panels, but what the girls attending were REALLY fired up on was the discussions on superwholock slash. Woke shit is just signalling, actual consumption is marginal at best.
2D3D
4hr ago
When Kabul fell to the Taliban, there was a widely shared picture of an overcrowded C130 filled with refugees. I love that picture because it is FULL of men, with barely any women or children. I contrast that with the fall of hanoi where evacuees had women and prepubescents. My liberal friends actually had to stop for a second to wonder what "women and children" really meant, and anytime refugees got raised in any conversation subsequently they all bit the bullet immediately before I could play the photo card.
2D3D
14hr ago
Its how pop-pop showed he loved me back in the day and Ol Joe gotta keep up the good old ways. Plus their hair smells of strawberry and its just so nice you know.
2D3D
15hr ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/dungeons-and-dragons-elon-musk/684828/
In This Thread, 2D3D Wonders Why Race Concern Shit In Pop Culture Still Matters
So, Elon Musk apparently had a spergout over WOTC because WOTC apparently did a faerun land acknowledgment and apologized for racially essentializing... well, anything (or everything, I can't tell).
Per the article,
After a designer at Wizards said that the company’s priority now was responding to “progressives and underrepresented groups who justly took offense” at those stereotypes, and not to “the ire of the grognards”
And that made Musk tweet an implied consideration to buy out Hasbro, owner of WOTC. Perhaps he should keep away from napkins and lawyers for a few weeks, but WOTC staff and progressives have more to lose from a Musk takeover than Musks does if he accidentally commits to the sale.
My questiob is WHY do progressives still want to fight dead battlegrounds either lost permanently to the enemy or scorched to irrelevance.
I trust this forum understands the broad strokes enough to make a culture war summary unnecessary. Anything white nerds love must have more women and minorities and it must explicitly come at the expense of the white nerd favourites. Duke out details in the comments if necessary, the battle itself isn't the point.
The progressives won the previous round already. They got the victory lap of defeating racial essentialism by incorporating noble blacks, I mean orcs, in the rulebook a few years back. Vice, Kotaku, Polygon spammed articles about how this proves the rejection of white supremacy by the powers that be. Hooray for the Resistance, we are now the New Republic. Did I mix my factions? It doesn't matter, and apparently neither did the battle. Because WOTC still saw fit to dig up ancient corpses and put them on trial for heresy.
Except it is patently clear that the audience for this public shaming doesn't exist anymore. The volume of pop media culture wars has deflated in the face of victory, and perhaps Sydney Sweeney deadeyeing a millennial journo hoping for self abasement to atone for even being proximate to white advocacy is emblematic of how irrelevant this public opinion war is. You can, in fact, yeschad someone trying to make you feel guilty for not grovelling for zillenial approval.
But what exactly is the battlefield now? Racial/sexual/gender/whateverfuck representation? Moral ambiguity of 'bad' people unless the bad guy is generational trauma/white supremacy? Sinecures for adherents via "narrative consultancy"? Is the objective to win a battle or just to make noise.
Theres a destructive incentive structure here that I can't parse out fully. The unwoke are perfectly happy to sit back and be gradually edged out, as seen from the ready faggification of media starting with Will and Grace and reaching a high point (maybe) in Bridgerton where intraracial relationships are the enemy (maybe, I don't watch Shondaland slop). Or maybe the ongoing media projects where you can't have minorities be bad guys anymore - its always a white guy somewhere at the end pulling strings. Except if its Giancarlo Esposito.
Back to topic. The unwoke are silent dragged along consumers, the woke think they can accelerate the slide or celebrate the slide, suddenly reactionaries Notice and generate backlash, and the woke get smacked in. Retreating in confusion, they conclude that the issue is the message not being made clear enough, and the message is doubled down despite vocal opposition.
Rinse and repeat, but always back into defeat. Social justice went fucking nuts in 2016 because Trump descended from his golden staircase to snatch victory from Hilary Clintons anointed hands, and without the popular vote it seemed that this was merely a technical mistake, one that needed to be message disciplined to ensure the course of history is maintained. Biden won as a moderate but governed as a progressive because his brain turned to soup about a year in and the entire white house was Jill roleplaying Eleanor except without enough balls to lead a relatively competent cabinet, so the progressive staffers wrote every communique and channeled The Groups. Opposition was simply the last gasp of straight white men (and blacks and gays and women and asians and latinos and....)
Then Trump won, the illusion shattered for about a year. But now the same dead fights are being rehashed.
I don't really have a concrete point to interrogate in this culture war. My stance that any media featuring a minority front and center being likely to suck because it always means the writers room can't have room to criticize stupidity is enough for me to optimize my consumption because I'm an old moron and nostalgia for old shows from my youth gives me enough tinglies. Yet the strength of reactionary pushback to culture war attempts clearly shows that this is a conflict progressives seem intent on reigniting, and it should be clear that they not only lost the previous rounds but the upcoming battlefield is likely lost. The Dispatch sold a million copies and none of their characters were "body positive" in any way. Contrast that with Concord that literally was dead on arrival with their fat ugly minorities, making me wonder if the skirmishes being reignited are just masochists indulging in a public humiliation/victimization kink.
2D3D
21hr ago
Texiera (author of The Emerging Democratic Majority) and on a meta level Fukuyama assumed the Obama ascension was a teleological endpoint: the old order of stale white christians is over, we have in our unconstrained state decided that a young charismatic black man with 00s liberal sensibilities and economic acceptance of "help us to help you" support. These commentators failed to predict that the neoliberal equilibrium would be actively disrupted from within by insurgents looking to seize the spoils for themselves. Texiera was sounding the alarm by the end of Obamas second term about the social justice movement cannibalizing public patience, and now Texiera is considered a nazi by whatever progressive commentariat exists.
2D3D
21hr ago
Its probably something boring yet procedurally ruinous, like the party island being access capitalism at its finest and attendees not disclosing their presence. A guest list showing Pelosi at the same venue as Sheikh Iwantobuyalotofjets and CEO of myjetsareITARconstrained can be coincidence but its still fuel for congressional investigations.
2D3D
21hr ago
"Children" to the modal mind is prepubescent innocents who elicit protective instincts. Definitionally it also includes adolescents that are protoadults. Conflating the two is necessary to get the moral value immediately realized, and any attempt at deeper examination is met with hysterical screeches of "ARE YOU A BIGOT". Refugees are always stated to be "women and children" but you never get a picture of these huddled masses because people don't process bearded males as "children". The assumption that Epsteins sex island was a San Francisco Armory dungeon filled with crying prepubescents being abused by leering rapists is as rampant as the assumption that Rittenhouse killed 3 unarmed black men, and of course equally as fictional.
2D3D
21hr ago
Theyve been said before but theyre one of the few things still being said. Turns out "Trump is a racist nazi who wants to deport all brown people!" turns out to be the reason why he was voted in, so the attack angle must be retired. Maybe a few months later the progs will examine why that statement didn't work, but the priority is to find something that sticks.
2D3D
22hr ago
Its just oppositional. Bill Clinton got a sloppy from an intern while Kennedy was railing Monroe. Hillbots emails are a nonissue but got traction because everyone fucking hated her. Progs managed to hold their nose about Bidens only "flaw" which was the crime bill, and cons had to dredge up Hunter Biden level irrelevance to attack him.
Trump has been in public forever and has a whole suite of weird shit that is somehow teflon. All that weird Ivanka sex shit is fucking cringe but no one gives a fuck. Epstein is a last gasp for the moment, and when it turns out no one gives a shit about a glorified party host that brought in groupies for boring losers people will cast about for other shit. Music groups are full of teen and even preteen groupies and they still get defenders. No one really cares about the crime, only the one they want cast as a criminal.
2D3D
1d ago
The word 'mother' is conflated deliberately in order to sneak into the protected category. Eventually a new semiformal term will be arrived at that is a shorthand for the intent. We got rid of nigger as a racial epithet but now 'urban youth' fulfills the similar negative shorthand. Get rid of 'mother' as a positive term by conflating it with trannies and we'll arrive at 'truebirther' as the new social term. Or something less stupid.
2D3D
2d ago
Insurgencies dont succeed on the back of material support, they succeed on the back of domestic opposition to the ruling class. Muslims in India largely seem tolerant of even the rising hindutva because it is patently obvious to anyone with functioning neurons that Pakistans brand of islam just results in shitty outcomes for muslims than even within india. This means that the calculus can flip however and just because muslims in India have been relatively peacable compared to naxalite tamil khalistan assamese guju violence it doesn't mean they are eternally docile.
And hostility can manifest in ways potentially more disruptive than war. Indian politics outside the hindi core are already a fragmented mess of local parties who barely hate their local enemies more than whoever is in/outside of Dehli. Bangladesh hosting dissident west bengali assamese or bihari political intellectuals calling for political localism against whoever happens to be in delhi will foment more fracturing than any direct action. Bangladesh isn't going to be a new front, but a 60 second tiktok reel can destroy Delhis political grip more than 3000 black jets of Allah.
2D3D
2d ago
Geography dictates that Bangladesh is a fucking terrible place to fight because it is filled with rivers and crossings are exponentially more difficult now. Indian victory is not an assured fsit accompli.
Nevertheless the bigger issue is not a hot war but Bangladesh harbouring Bengali agitators in Assam and West Bengal who play up Bengali grievances in local language. Dehli had enough problems with Tamils during the Sri Lankan civil war, and Bengalis outnumber Tamils by a comical degree. The Indian Army may be able to prosecute a campaign to clamp down any active Bangladeshi military adventurism, the GoI definitely can't handle a renewed ethnic conflict.
2D3D
3d ago
Breaching the gentlemans agreement is more ruinous for India. The balochis and pashtuns are restless enough without Indian aid, but the Indian muslims are currently peacable. Supercharging the deobandi movement with external agitation is at minimum politically destabilizing and at worst secessionist. As it stands India has some breathing room with their naxalite campaign coming to an end, but Pakistan prodding of deobandi or even khalistani domestic terrorism will be bad for india.
Though frankly the greater risk for India is the Bangladesh Pakistan rapprochement. The fall of the Awami league has put Indias eastern flank back in play and if any secessionist movements in Assam gain local traction then India has a headache that will not be worth any amount of joy that can be gained from kicking in Pakistan.
2D3D
3d ago
Its precisely the timing calculus that let them defect. You can mathematically model this out as the penalty curve flattening out by the time its their turn on the ballot box, and the converse applies to the other democrats that held the line: their constituents wanted to win SOMETHING out of this fight but the politicians realized they had few victories achievable.
it just goes back to the fundamental composition incoherence the democrats find in themselves: overpoliticized liberals who dont need government services want the party to hold the line against evil trumplanders, while democrat politicians know their offices are getting drowned by calls for help from constituents. Ironically there is a simultaneous moral incoherence at the same time, where progressives insist on doubling down on cultural positions to keep coalitional discipline and liberals want to take the L and move on to winnable fights. There is little overlap between all these tactical and motivational principles, and within this incoherent mess an absolute spineless weakling like Schumer can continue plodding along.
Apologies for making this a total digression but including Raymond Reddington in that list is just absolutely laughable as "international man of mystery" goes because The Blacklist decided to Shyalamatwist by making Raymond Reddington, James Spader Moustache Twirling Hopkins Hannibal Channeler, a fucking woman.
It probably wasn't meant to be a girlboss attempt as much as it was meant to be a Smart Twist, but the reveal coinciding with the heights of cultural wokeness just made the entire series retroactively worse (I think, after the second season of Spader Smugly Wins I got tired of the premise). In any case the idea that Great (wo)Man Raymond Reddington is an aspirational touchstone for younger men to set themselves by is dodgy enough to begin with and became ridiculous later on.
The one US TV series that DID approach the AI apocalypse anything resembling competently was Person Of Interest, where it ended up being humans effecting their AI Godslaves. Otherwise most Great Man stories have to be small, since nukes and interwebz are unnavigable. Unless you're a leet hacker like Hugh Jackman who can keyboardhack while getting slopknobbed.
Knauf confirmed that the intent of the writing staff on The Blacklist (specifically show creator and co-showrunner Jon Bokenkamp and John Eisendrath, co-showrunner for the first eight seasons, and then solo showrunner in the final two seasons) was that the Red Reddington (James Spader) that we followed on The Blacklist for ten seasons was born Katarina Rostova, the mother of Elizabeth Keen, the FBI agent who was the co-lead on the series with Reddington until her actor, Megan Boone, chose to leave after Season 8.
@MaximumCuddles, this may or may not serve as proof. I personally noticed this theory when there was fucking ENDLESS spaderfacing about "well maybe I AM really your father or not hmm hmm hmm" that irritated the fuck out of me when watching Blacklist, combined with the lead actress just being very bad at doing anything other than white woman whining about this brainteasing, so I just caught up the summary when it finished and, yea, retroactively made my decision to dip early on worth it.
2D3D
6d ago
Perhaps I should be clear, treated as a shitty inferior member of the girls. The lowest caste, like the annoying younger brother good only for carrying stuff and explaining why ____ is so stupid. All the bad stuff of girl cliques none of the sisterhood crysession catharsis. I mean you can have that but you'll just be even less of a man in their eyes.
2D3D
6d ago
In every situation where men infiltrate women heavy spaces they either get rejected for being pervs or get treated as one of the girls. Unless you're good looking to begin with, bur you dont need to be IN the program for that to yield benefits just hanging around the water cooler "because it smells nicer here".
2D3D
7d ago
Takeover by the ballot box? Just walk in claiming political persecution, wait a few dozen years until they're sufficiently entrenched as a minority then start agitating for special rights to reengage a 'reformed' Russia. No grand takeover by superior slavic force of arms, but Muscovy managed to paralyze the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth with a single subverted member and they are repeating it with Hungary.
I mean, what IS Russias strategic goal. Subversion of the west relative to Russia? "Do nothing, win" is a leading strategy now. Restore the Russian Empire as a massive dickwaving contest? Say the magic word "anti imperialist" and tankies fall over themselves spreading cheeks to get buttblasted by noble communist Russia. Secure borders forever? Nukes already exist.
Whatever it is, going in guns out dicks out doesn't work. The west is uniquely vulnerable to Magic Words and Russia simply needed to speak human rights claims and they'd be free to run wild within western europe. Europeans can't bring themselves to admit that their experiment in humanitarian superpower leadership has rotted them from the inside, and they are happy to have their people exploited raped and murdered by anyone with the magic lable of refugee.
2D3D
7d ago
Its a tricky subject and the best response should be "shrug shoulders and blame Long Dead History" because when you tip the scales with your own grubby fingers its your fingerprints all over the black female wehrmarcht soldier or male asian confederate senator.
OR
go the way of the Greendale Human. Representation via eldritch horror
2D3D
7d ago
Aye, I read theres a blacklist, but it is precisely the 2nd order repetitions that show up on mass scrapes. In any case my statement is more about how force feeding LLM with pro trans ideology isn't actually happening compared with ingest and correctly. Though I'm eager to know if I'm wrong as well, since it would prove that LLM being fake and gay is a deliberate curation rather than a safetyism filter and tricking LLM Tay-style becomes on the cards
2D3D
7d ago
Surprisingly low for such a misogynistic culture. Female economic empowerment in Russia is almost an accidental byproduct of rampant alcoholism incapacitating male productivity. Yes Igor you sperm me so good with your vigorous maleness. Go take nap, you stud, I must clean banya.
2D3D
7d ago
I agree that this is possible, but LLM scrapers didn't get a preselected corpa to run on, the scrapes were let loose all over the internet and then processed later. While there is endless woke garbage on NYT or Slate or Huffpo, there is also Alex Jones (PBUH) 3 kb per page html slop, murdoch outlets and disqus rants easily scrapable by the spiders. The filtering has to happen post ingestion because the internet is just that big and we 2000 era semilibertarian refugees usually lament the downfall of our old haunts rather than step foot in the now-friendly territory we used to shun.
2D3D
7d ago
I dealt with a violently homophobic Ukrainian probably-an-actual-nazi who said that he would take tiddy skittles and bend over to suck black cock while being rammed by pakistanis if that would ensure Russia gets turned into glass. Its like the Sandanistas pretending to like Juche and gifting Kim Il Sung a stuffed crocodile, any ideology is acceptable so long as it comes with guns and ammo.
Everyone is dancing around the two issues that are verboten to explicate, especially in the USA: that a common overculture conflicting with libertarian sensibilities is a good thing for cost effective social organization, and that implementing said overculture onto culturally disparate populations inevitably requires sacrificing some forms of cultural identification which is impossible when cultural identification carries local power. 1950s postwar USA had a common commie enemy, a distinct life path that was socially sanctioned and available to most, and rising quality of life that could be enjoyed guiltlessly because envy was itself more transgressive than "greed".
Race is shorthand for culture, and much easier for progressives focus on race because it externalizes white blame onto immutable characteristics that therefore must be protected. Igbo and Yoruba are physically identical to outsiders but if I say that in Lagos I'd be lynched. Minnesota just had an election where the white winner Jacob Frey won by preaching unity across somali tribes and the somali contender lost because his tribes opponents refused to vote for him. Culture is what matters more, and even though race is the obvious proxy, it is imperfect enough to distract from tangible effects.
Obama was the genius that played both sides of the race angle: raised ENTIRELY white (his black father left him), dons a fro in college for black points and speaks legible jive for white curios and black hoodrats to feel equally comfortable with him. The significance of race died with him... until Michael Brown. I think Ben Shapiro is a dolt whose claim of right wing racial resurgence is only due to Obamas claim that "Brown looked like he could have been my son" is thin, but it did reflect an implicit race war rearmanent: shifting from grudging complaining to rahowa (directionally). The racialization of US politics (and all western politics are downstream of US politics like the fucking BLM shit in goddamn Berlin or Defund The Police in UK) is objectively a bad thing and any restarting of it is a fucking horrible outcome, yet the progressives insist on restarting it whenever they muster the brain cells to agree on an action befitting the progressive stack.
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