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ActuallyATleilaxuGhola

Axolotl Tank Class of '24

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joined 2022 September 08 09:59:22 UTC 

				
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ActuallyATleilaxuGhola


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Axolotl Tank Class of '24

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 08 09:59:22 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1012


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My impression of historical US-Euro relations is that while realpolitik was always an important component, there was a sense of shared ideology (liberal democracy) and cultural history that strengthened the bond relative to, say, US-Egyptian or US-Indonesian relations.  We were the "free countries," we were the "Western nations," and until recently, we were "Christian nations."  However, mass immigration, multiculturalism and its consequent curtailing of civil liberties, and militant secularism and progressivism seem to have severely weakened those identies in Europe and made room new identities to assert themselves.


I see US-Euro relations decaying to the more transactional relations that the U.S. has with culturally alien countries.  European countries making noises about cozying up to China sounds bizarre when operating under the assumption that the old identities hold, but it actually makes sense if Europeans now simply view China and America as two ideologically-alien superpowers who offer different sets of incentives and obligations and who can be played off one another for benefit.


I think a lot of the outrage about "European ingratitude" from the American right is caused by right wingers failing to realize that European 2025 is not the Europe of 1950, or even 1990.  Many Europeans seem to already view America as ideologically alien and thus view the relationship as totally transactional.  It would be like expressing gratitude to your ISP for providing internet service after you sign a contract and pay your bill.  Trump's more transactional approach aligns with this new reality, and so it's probably a good thing -- unless you're an American progressive, in which case, since you hold religious beliefs in common with European progressives, you  probably view this development as needless division and infighting amongst enlightened nations that diverts time and energy away from pushing back the ever-encroaching forces of ignorance and oppression.  That said, I sense a rift between American and European progressives as well, mostly in complaints from more traditional European socialists who see American "woke" progressivism as an irrelevant distraction from material problems and/or a form of American political and cultural imperialism.  So perhaps even the bonds between progressives on either sides of the Atlantic are fraying and will not be strong enough to maintain a US-Euro relationship beyond the merely transactional.


This explanation is certainly too pat, and there's more nuance to be explored, but do you think this is more or less the direction in which things are heading?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Homeowners of The Motte -- what would you differently if you could do it all over again?


I plan on building a house in the next 12 months on a lot about an hour away from the Gulf of Mexico America.  It's going to be a two-story 5BR house with porches on the front and the back, built in a traditional Southern style.


I'm a bit overwhelmed as I don't even know what I don't know about building, and I want to avoid making costly mistakes that I'll have to pay to renovate later (or worse, be unable to fix at all).  Happy to hear both from people who built and people who bought.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This doesn't seem to be the case in China. Even today, there are people who can trace direct male lineage to Confucius who lived around 500 BC.




I saw one of these guys in Qufu when I was a student.  He was writing and selling calligraphic scrolls on the side of the road.  He had a sign with his portrait on it and some official-looking, diploma-like certificate stapled to his sign.  "Wow, is he really an actual descendent of Confucius?" I asked my professor, who was born and raised not far away.  "Probably, I don't know. There are a lot of them." she replied.  She seemed completely unimpressed. And that was when I began to wonder if I was a bit naïve.


Westerners often credulously believe claims like this because (1) Chinese have a radically different view of "lying" that Westerners don't have natural defenses against unless they've lived in China or a similar third world country, (2) Chinese (individuals too, not just the government) find it in their interest to promote stories that prove China's equality or superiority to the West, (3) all the sources that would debunk nonsense claims like this are written in Chinese and this unable to diffuse into the Western consciousness.


"China" does not have 5,000 years of history any more than "France" has 3,000 years of history.

Chinese did not invent soccer, or sashimi, or beer, or the seismograph.

Chinese cannot trace descent from antiquity with a level of confidence that would be taken seriously in the West.

"Truth" in China is not the same as "Truth" in the West.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I looked up the scandal on Wikipedia.  He allegedly had sex with a 17 year old (who he claims he thought was 19)?  That's what's made him radioactive?  Is there anything else I'm missing?  The wiki section for this says "UNDERAGE SEX TRAFFICKING" so I was expecting he was ordering 9-year Ukrainian war orphans to his house or something, but this really underwhelming. Technically a crime, yes, blah blah blah, but reminds me of the pearl clutching over Lewinsky.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Academic Agent always comes across to me as a meta-grifter whose grift is to claim that everyone else on the right is dumb and/or grifting (see also that skinwalker Hanania).  A grifter for hobbits with a slightly higher IQ. Okay, cool story bro.  Don't worry, I'll remember to like and subscribe to your Substack so that I can read your exclusive paywalled articles about how everyone else is a money grubbing shill.  On what grounds does this guy expect me to take him more seriously than the rest of the online political commentators?


Also @TheOneWhoFarts, do you have an opinion about this article?  Your post is just a summary.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 11, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hey, The Motte. Recommend us some books that are fun to read and that aren't about the destination, but the journey.  Books that delight the reader with clever turns of phrase, witty jokes or badass scenes every few pages.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for November 16, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In this post, @Walterodim confessed to his coffee and whiskey habits, which got me wondering:




How does The Motte enjoy its coffee and whiskey?




Coffee


I prefer buying fancy, freshly-roasted light roast beans and doing a pour over in a Chemex.  I grind my beans in a DeLonghi grinder (middle of the road quality wise), put the grounds in an unbleached paper filter that has been rinsed to remove the papery taste, and then pour hot water (slightly cooler than boiling) from a gooseneck kettle over the grounds.  Then I drink the coffee black, in silence, while it's still piping hot.


These days I've moved to a place where I can't get good beans at an affordable price, so I often get mediocre stuff and put a splash of milk in it to take the edge off of some of the less appealing flavors.


Occasionally, on Saturday morning or during holidays, I'll make myself an Irish coffee.  I make a cup of coffee, add a shot and a half of Tullamore D.E.W. Irish whiskey, whip some cold cream with a cheap little milk foamer, and then pour the cream over the back of the spoon so that it settles on top of the coffee.  These days, since it's autumn, sometimes I'll sprinkle a bit of brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg on top of the cream.  It's a nice little treat for a lazy morning.




Whiskey


Ah, the water of life. I prefer Irish whiskey and Tennessee whiskey.  I usually have a bottle of Red Breast 12 for sipping, Tullamore for mixing (or for my second glass), and then Four Roses as a "multipurpose whiskey."  I like to drink my whiskey neat with a small splash of water.  I used to make old fashioneds, but I don't feel that they're much of an improvement over just drinking the whiskey neat (and I'm lazy).


When it gets cold, I like to make a nice hot toddy with some cheaper whiskey.  I boil some water, pour it in a mug, stir in a bit of lemon juice and honey and add a shot or two of whiskey.  I like to use a covered Miir mug because it prevents the drink from cooling down too quickly as I sip it.  This is one of my favorite winter drinks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for January 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Any good homeschooling resources that TheMotte would recommend?


I want to start homeschooling my two elementary school aged kids from this year (one is early elementary, the other late elementary).  What are some good resources for learning at home? I'm interested in online tools (Khan Academy, stuff like that) but also premade programs and curricula, mail order/correspondence programs, anything like that.  Also, any resources on being an effective homeschool teacher without formal training in education.


I want to teach the usual basics skills, but I'd also like to teach formal logic, Latin, computer skills/coding, and handwriting.


I think there was also a recent thread about homeschooling experiences on here... I'll have to dig that up as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for January 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I quit drinking cold turkey 4 days ago.


I feel mild anhedonia, experiences I normally enjoy are muted or feel like they're happening to someone else and I'm only watching, if that makes sense.  I have too much energy during the day and it's hard to relax fully in the evening.  My appetite has dropped a lot, but I still want to eat because I've increased my lifting recently.  It's kind of the way you feel hungry when you have a cold.  You feel your body's need for sustenance, but no foods are particularly appealing.  My libido has dropped considerably, though that may also be due to the extra fatigue from increased lifting.  In the evening, light is too bright and noises are too loud, kind of like when you have a bad hangover.  My baseline stress level feels higher; on a scale of 1-10, I was previously around a 3 or 4 most days, and now I feel like I'm stuck at 6 all the time.  Sometimes I suddenly feel exhausted during the day and want to rest, but I'm too wired to actually relax before bedtime, sort of like when you've had too much caffeine to sleep.


On the bright side, my feels like it's working at 200% speed. While I was doing well at work before, now I'm absolutely crushing it.  I don't have heartburn or any other gastric trouble anymore, I don't have much appetite for junk food, and I find temptations to my various vices almost trivially easy to resist.  Getting up in the morning is getting a lot easier.  I have the focus and the patience to listen to chat with my kids in the evening after dinner.  I can handle more chores. I can take care of my wife better.  I can control my temper much more easily.  I spend probably 1 hour less per day lying on the couch.  I picked up a physical dead tree book and started reading it for the first time in many months.  I'm not thirsty all the time, and my body doesn't hurt as much when I wake up in the morning.  My heart rate gets back down to the low 50s when I sleep at night.  My sleep quality is much better.  And maybe best of all, I don't feel the sense of guilt and self-loathing I've learned to live with every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up.  That's probably what keeps me going each day more than anything, I don't feel like I suck anymore.


I was (am? well, hopefully was) a 5-8 drinks a night kind of guy which, while clearly not good, doesn't really seem like "real alcoholism" when you google alcoholism and read stories from people downing a fifth or two of vodka and blacking out every night.  But that amount was apparently enough to slowly change my mind and body over months in ways I hadn't even realized, and I'm dealing with the aftermath now.  It's very... sobering.


I wrote this as a personal reflection and thought I'd share it in case any other folks are on the same path.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				What to do when you get ratioed on themotte
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I sometimes decide not to post just because I don't want to get Gish galloped or have to litigate my entire argument from first principles. Usually it has something to do with a belief based on Catholic theology which most people here don't have a background in and (more importantly) seem to look down on as inferior to modern materialism/atheism/utilitarianism (maybe we just all have PTSD from the Great Internet Atheism Wars).


It's not that I don't like explaining or getting pushback, it's mostly just the shitty, condescending, or dismissive tone people sometimes use when responding.  Interestingly, the worst offenders are often members fellow right-wingers (edgy Nietzscheans, mostly) or centrist liberals.  The leftists who post here are often really charitable and succeed in making me sympathetic to their views (shout-outs to @Hoffmeister25, @gemmaem, and @chrisprattalpharaptr).


As much as I like TheMotte, I'm really busy and responding to rude or derisive people on the internet just doesn't seem worth my time. If you pride yourself on "telling it like it is" or "being blunt" you're probably one of these people.  Letting go of your righteous outrage and using a little tact and empathy goes a long way towards sparking good conversation and making this place more interesting and productive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I could have written this post, I feel the exact same, the whole thing made me even more cynical about the average person.  But what creeps me out the most is




Turn the switch on, and people who are ordinarily perfectly reasonable are frothing at the mouth saying you're killing grandma, you're a menace to society, you're a dirty plague rat. Turn the switch off and it's all forgotten. Like it never even happened. They don't even think about it anymore.




What does this phenomenon really tell us? To me, the implications are quite disturbing.


When I've gone around loudly proclaiming to be right about something (online or IRL) and then turn out to be wrong, I feel highly embarrassed when I get called out after the fact.  In my better moments I respond with humility, and in my worse moments I respond with rage or misdirection.  But the point is that I respond somehow, I feel something.


But a lot of the covid fanatics seem to simply not care at all that they were wrong.  When you call them on it, you might get a shrug and a "things were different then," or even just a vague confused stare -- why are you still talking about that?  Don't you know it's $currentyear?  Haven't you heard about Putin?


When they were shouting about killing grandma or plague rats, I had understood those utterances as words that containing meaning or argument.  But was I wrong?  Were the vast majority of people literally just making mouth noises that simply signalled their alignment with the current Correct Opinion?  I'm not being metaphorical here -- the Covid hysteria makes me wonder whether a large majority of our population just parrots slogans to jockey for status without engaging their thinking brains at all (outside of status calculation I guess)?  If so, this would explain their apathy about their argument being wrong.  "What argument?" they might respond.


Yes, it's not news that the average person is not a deep thinker.  Everyone here is aware of that.  But to me, the above implies that many people are not just "not deep thinkers." If they were, that wouldn't bother me much -- they and myself would be essentially the same in that we both think, just to different degrees.


But maybe these people are not just shallow thinkers, but non-thinkers.  The difference between thinkers and non-thinkers is huge, and I am weirded out by the idea.  It almost feels like sharing a society with a bunch of p-zombies (EDIT: to be clear, I don't actually think these people are literal p-zombies).  Recent memes about internal monologues and "The Breakfast Question" come to mind.  If this model is closer to the truth, it changes my outlook on many things.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't understand the seemingly recent popularity of "tomboy gfs" (bonus meme).


There's a lot of meta-ironic shitposting on 4chan and sometimes reddit about how tomboys are the best because, as far as I can understand the arguments, they're bros that have a pussy.  I can kind of see how a bro-gf might have appealed to 14 year old me who thought feelings and femininity were totally gay, dude, and who just wanted to play Halo with my bros while we farted and laughed and punched each other.  But I can't imagine any well-adjusted man over age 25 feeling this way unless they're particularly feminine themselves (in which case they would be attracted to "tomboys" for a different set of reasons).


I've been attracted to feminine girls my entire life (yes, even as a 14 year old retard) and have, for as long as I can remember, found their femininity mysterious and alluring.  Is there an element to tomboy popularity that I'm missing? Is there an emotionally mature segment of men who are still into tomboys? Or is it all just a forced meme?


Edit:  Since this post has caused some confusion, let me clarify -- I'm asking about a narrow definition of tomboy as described in the meme and in threads about "tomboys", not "any woman who isn't 100% feminine in every way."  For those who don't want to click on the meme, the "tomboy gf" has the following non-traditional qualities:


    

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    Thinks makeup is stupid
    

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  • 

    Likes porn
    

    • 

  • 

    Likes video games
    

    • 

  • 

    Rough speech like "I'm gonna kick your ass/suck my dick/fag"
    

    • 

  • 

    Gets mistaken for a boy (presumably due to hairstyle and clothing)
    

    • 

  • 

    Puts you in headlocks/wrestles with yoy
    

    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for sharing.  But I'm nearly as tired of Holocaust-themed morality plays as I am of the Civil Rights Era-flavored ones.  Has anyone under age 70 not been bludgeoned through their entire lives with "Prejudice is bad!" and "The banality of evil!" and "Never again!" etc?


I don't understand people who write books on these themes in 2014.  Is there even the thinnest residue of stunning bravery to be mined and exploited by speaking truth to a (long vanquished) power?  I have to imagine that even blue tribers would yawn at yet another Holocaust tear jerker or To Kill a Mockingbird clone, "don't they know trans persecution or MAGA terrorism are where the points are scored in 2023?"  And even dispensing with the cynicism, is there really anything interesting left to say on these topics?  I'd wager that nearly any book you could write on them has already been written.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I want to stay up and F5 Twitter/4chan for hot election shitposts but I have to go to work tomorrow.  D:


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


HBD is even weirder as probably at least sort of real science that Blue doesn't dare to acknowledge the existence of, and even Red mainstream shies away from.




Blues generally have a worldview that is very uncomfortable to reconcile with HBD, so that makes sense.


Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out.  My theory is that conservatives as "progressives driving the speed limit" is broadly true, but that mainstream conservatives don't realize that they've absorbed many progressive axioms and that, consequently, they have sabotaged many of their strongest arguments against leftist programs like CRT.  When you're a conservative who believes in deeply in Equality, hates Racism, and believes in Women's Rights (but all "only to a certain extent and not as far as those crazy libs take it!") you've already given up the game.


So while a conservative from 1963 might have been comfortable with HBD, a conservative from 2023 has ceded too much ideological ground to feel comfortable with the idea.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My reactions to reading your synopsis:


    

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    This sounds like a social justice fantasy so outrageous that it borders on pornographic
    

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  • 

    This sounds like what might actually happen today if the races were swapped (and sure enough @Folamh3 says it was; do you have a link to the case?)
    

    • 



To your prompts:


    

  1. 

    "No" to all those questions.  Alabama in 1996 is much closer to Alabama in 2023 than to Alabama in 1926.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Not very differently.  Which is to say, both back then and today the jury would have been quite fair and just, unlike the ridiculous civil rights fantasy the movie portrays.  Alabama today might actually be slightly less tolerant than Alabamians in 1996, since back then they were on board with "colorblind" race relations as a sort of truce.  Now, racial identity politics and tribalism are on the rise, but I still don't think it would be enough to change how the trial would be handled.
    

    3. 

  3. 

    Light sentence for the murders of the two scumbags, and whatever the standard sentence is for unintentionally shooting someone.
    

    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I liked the rules and aesthetics of pre-2003 MTG (last set I played with was Judgment).  The game seems to have changed a lot in 20 years, so what are the latest sets I can play with that will still feel the same?


Bonus questions:


    

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    Can I just ignore Planeswalkers for casual play?  They always seemed kind of dumb to me, I liked them much more as lore characters than cards
    

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  • 

    When did WotC start censoring stuff? I'd prefer to buy cards before then.
    

    • 

  • 

    What's the best way to get bulk cards before a certain era? I don't care about value or quality, I just want to play some casual games
    

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I can never shake the feeling when reading stories like this that the person in question is in fact a hardcore devotee of the religion of empiricism or humanism with all the implicit metaphysical positions that come with that relief, gazing longing at other religious traditions but too rock-solid in his own faith to ever forsake the Enlightenment pantheon.  I kind of get it, as a Catholic I look at the beauty and solemnity of the Orthodox faith, the strong communities of the Evangelicals, the relative seriousness with which some Jews and Muslims incorporate God into their lives, and I am envious and wish that I could partake in those communities.  But my reason and faith lead me to Catholicism and no matter my issues with the Church I can't will myself to disbelieve in what seems to me to be the Truth.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


to a point where families are becoming far too expensive to sustain.




Can you expand on why you think families are too expensive to maintain?




will decadence necessarily mean decline?




I believe so, and I think it might take a century or two.  The future will belong to the people who "show up" genetically which means eventually the vast majority will have hardcore trad parents and or grandparents, hardcore in the sense that they resisted the current corrosive liberalism by virtue of their personality traits,  cultural or religious tradition, or whatever.  There was some triumphalism during the age of New Atheism about how fast many faiths were hemorrhaging members, but I think that those were the easy pickings and eventually a hard core will remain, and the numbers will stabilize and then reverse course.  Of course, it's possible by then that the groups will be small enough that they can successfully be painted as "dangerous to democracy" by liberals and destroyed with punitive laws, taxation, lawfare, and targeted propaganda.  Who knows.




how can traditional norms become tenable enough to be a potential solution?




I've come to believe that this is impossible, or at least unbelievably difficult.  Liberalism, scientism, and humanism have thoroughly penetrated every level of education, entertainment, and "common sense" morality, to the point where it's the water in which every westerner has been swimming for at least several generations.  This is a trumph for the secular humanist/liberal projects, but  unfortunately it turns out that the axioms in which these projects rest lead to beliefs that are incompatible with societal flourishing (while being great for - a certain definition of - atomized individual flourishing).  It's hard enough to remain Christian swimming in this water, nevermind trying to convert the fish who believe they are totally at home in it!  It would be like parachuting into North Korea and trying to convince a random North Korean farmer --while you are both still in North Korea -- that the U.S. president is actually a good guy and Americans mean them no harm and that they should unilaterally disarm and then engage in trade with the archenemy.  Even if the farmer wanted to, the years of slogans, of propaganda, of emotional speeches by the dear leader would make it extremely painful to change his mind, and even if he did, he would be under constant mental and emotional pressure to "deconvert." So it goes with traditional values today.  Absent an authoritarian right wing theocratic coup, I think you're out of luck.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				What to do when you get ratioed on themotte
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Just curious -- what's your objective in engaging with people on TheMotte?  Are you mainly here to raise awareness about and defend your own beliefs?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
While there certainly is fear porn, I think there really is more risk in some ways for modern women simply because being a deadbeat dad carries way less stigma than it used to, and everyone is highly mobile.


You can get married and have a kid with a guy who seems great.  Then 5 years into the marriage he gets bored and cheats, there's some mild tut-tutting but in current year there is no shared, deeply-rooted community that you both belong to, and neither of you are particularly religious, so he has no reputation to preserve and suffers little to no personal, professional, or moral consequence.  And what few consequences he does suffer simply evaporate when he moves two states away to live with his new wife and family.  This is in fact exactly what happened to aunt of mine who was an all around decent middle class person.  Her husband simply got bored and left, and that was it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it's a real thing




Yeah, real in that people make the claim.  As @hydroacetylene pointed out, tons of people also claim descent from Muhammad. This lineage also has a wiki page, does that prove that it's "real?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for November 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Everything you listed except Celery is how I got into tech and make six figures now, lol.  I don't know how computers work** since I don't have a CS degree and don't do tech stuff for fun (anymore), but I agree that a lot of people use the tools you listed terribly (especially Terraform and k8s, wtf).  But I'm curious what your objections are to the tools you listed.  How would you do things differently?  Usually when I run into someone who pooh-poohs those tools, they're the sort of person who wants to write their own epic genius 1337 codegolf in-house tool that has zero documentation, is full of idiosyncracies, and will become someone else's pain in the ass when they leave the company in a year.  And then it's a part of the workflow that I have to use/work with/work around/slowly start making plans to sneakily deprecate.  I dunno, I'm in my mid 30s.  Maybe in a few years I'll start to get crusty too.


**by this I mean I have only basic knowledge about DSA, time/space complexity, Linux internals, etc.  compared to turbo nerds who spend every weekend contributing to OSS for fun


ETA: One thing that I think is lost on a lot of engineers is the value of legibility.  Terraform might suck, but you can explain what it does to some dumb non-technical stakeholder or some mid/low-quality engineer. It has tons of docs, and there are lots of slick videos explaining it on YouTube.  HCL sucks, and it reinvents a lot of basic programming concepts but worse (for_each), but it's pretty easy to get started with.


There's also the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" factor.  As a manager, part of my job is pushing for new/better tooling.  If it's something mainstream and there are case studies or tons of threads about it or some Gartner bullshit or whatever, I can budget approved easier.  What I pick is almost certainly not the optimal tool/software, but I have to get shit done and I can't let perfect be the enemy of good.


This also comes into play with public cloud (touched on by @ArjinFerman).  I've never worked anywhere that has fully optimized cloud spending, there's always tons of waste.  But after the corporate card is attached to the AWS account, I can provision servers/containers/clusters when I need to, and I only get yelled at about billing once a year as long as nothing ever gets out of hand.  Is it wasteful, inefficient, and dumb?  Yes, but that's just a reflection of the wasteful, inefficient, and dumb nature of the vast majority of human organizations.  It's not a technical problem.


tl;dr a lot of the devops/infra people know these tools are dumb/inefficient but the alternatives are endless red tape or deadlock.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Did they want western-style atomizing individualist freedom in the first place?


There is freedom in social obligation and in existing in a definite hierarchy.  You are free to focus on things in life outside the culture war, freed from an obsession with the political that has seeped into every aspect of western life, even into the formerly sacrosanct household, poisoning the most fundamental human relations (man/woman, parent/child).


Likewise there is a sort of slavery in western "freedom."  Slavery to vice born of anomie.  Nothing matters, all choices and lifestyles are equal.  Many people experience a sort of analysis paralysis and just choose the past of least resistance.  Not to mention the nigh-mandatory participation in politics; as they say, you may not be interested in it, but it is interested in you, and it's not going to leave you alone (and some true degenerates engage in it willingly, even spending their free time furiously refreshing a certain CW thread...).


Consider that your definition of "freedom" is one among many.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How much stock do you put in the age of someone posting? How much in their "stage of life?"  Does it matter to you whether a poster is in high school? University?  Do you care if a poster is only in their teens or early 20s, already in their late 30s, or early 40s, or approaching senescence in their mid 50s?  Does it matter whether they're married or not, whether they have kids or not?  Whether they're male or female? From the first world it third world?  Do any of these factors affect how you read their posts?


Some of these definitely affect me, but I can't decide whether it's a good heuristic or just a knee jerk reaction.