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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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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
These aren't innate properties of the left and right, but rather the difference between the internal power dynamics of an ascendant movement with entrenched cultural and bureaucratic power and fragile that has claimed the mantle of Orthodoxy, and the internal power dynamics of a fragile, cobbled-together movement of people with little in common other than having been branded Heretics by that Orthodoxy.


The Orthodoxy can survive internal power struggles and status jockeying because the movement's survival hinges on institutional and cultural control. If one president is replaced with another, it doesn't really matter.  The media and institutions will run cover for him regardless of whether he's a charismatic black(-ish) Harvard law professor or a senile, creepy, vaguely racist old white swamp creature.


The Heretics are still shocked to find that they have somehow collectively grabbed hold of a small sliver of power. Many of them recognize that the only reason there's a Heretic coalition at all is that the current Heretic-in-Chief is a rallying point for all groups.  The Landian tech bros and the evangelicals might hate each other and want their own guy in charge, but they both realize that replacing the current Chief Heretic would mean that they go from having a sliver of a sliver of power back to having no power at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"E-prole" is a great coinage.  It captures the alt-slop normie aesthetic while avoiding all three of those now very tired words.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is interesting and timely for me.  We have a legendarily dysfunctional QA team at my company, and as the DevSecSREInfraPlatformOps manager, my biggest beef with them is that they have been killing our Lead Time to Release (time between dev having an idea and that idea getting released as a feature for customers).  They manually test almost everything, do nonsensical "verifications" (mocking responses from external APIs when they could just... use the APIs), and don't know how to code at all.  Dev and automated testing might finish in a few days, but QA takes 2-3 weeks(!) and they batch multiple changes together which confounds results.  They have been given a half dozen opportunities to change and learn but they have always made excuses or refused.  At one point they even had convinced a (former) director that they needed outsourced QA members to help with the workload -- and then promptly shifted 95% of their work to the outsourced QA!


Just this past week, I asked for a Claude Code account and started trying to vibe code a replacement for our QA team, partly out of curiosity, partly out of necessity (we have an OKR to reduce lead time), and just a little bit out of spite.  I was not optimistic because this is a very poorly documented 10+ year old codebase cobbled together by devs who have all since resigned to escape the mess they've created.


First, I told Claude to pull down all the test suites described in Qase and cache them locally.  Then I told it all of the paths to local copies of our frontend, backend, mobile, and infra repos.  I asked it to analyze each one.  Then, I asked it to begin writing tests for each Qase suite, starting with the simplest ones like "login." Sometimes it would get confused (it shows you its thinking) and I would interject a message (you can send messages while it's thinking, unlike other LLMs) to explain some important bit of knowledge.  Eventually, after repeating the same info several times which had apparently gotten lost in the context window compaction process, I told it to create a file called TRIBAL.md to record all of these contextual bits I was telling it that were not evident from simply reading the code. I also had it write a CLAUDE.md that points to all the repos, instructs it to read and update TRIBAL.md, BUGS.md and TODO.md, and contains descriptions of other tools it has created for itself (helper functions, data seeding scripts, env vars and credentials, etc).


So far I don't think I've written a single line of code and it has automated 85% of web QA tests.  I have had the test vetted by code rabbit and I plan to check them manually before release.  I am quite impressed, though I'm still curious to see how it will try to handle mobile testing. Claude Code really is next level compared to Gemini, Copilot, or Grok.


All that said, I am very aware that this project is probably riddled with false assumptions and nonsense code.  I am still not optimistic about the final result, although given how dire QA is, our director might try it out anyway just to see if we can reduce our dependence on them.  Either way, it's been a good way to get familiar with a SOTA coding LLM.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for January 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Good to know, thank you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm increasingly disappointed that activist judges aren't even pretending to be arbiters of the law, but are just doing whatever they want.




To me this, just proves that the Trump admin has (accidentally?) struck a small vein strategic gold.  Apparently directly antagonizing the left causes a small but significant fraction of their institutionally embedded partisans to lose control and let their masks slip.  This seems like evidence in favor of the efficacy of further accelerationism and direct antagonism from the right.  Previously, it was believed by many on the right that long-march leftists were simply too clever, disciplined, and coordinated to challenge directly. Instead, the only option was to "exit" or to go full Benedict Option.  But no longer.  It must be frustrating for the more self-possessed and strategically-minded leftist partisans who are quietly manipulating procedural outcomes in a plausibly deniable way.  Their grandstanding compatriots are giving away the game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for January 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I suppose you're trying to tell me they're Pakistani which is theoretically interesting but does not change the thrust of my post.  Is there some catch-all term I can use to avoid these tedious corrections from Indian/Bengali/Pakistani/etc people?  I suppose "South Asian?". Or "subcontinental," though that sounds like it might offend people.  What's the preferred term to refer to this collection of peoples? If there isn't one, I'm probably just going to have to continue saying "Indian."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for January 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The three Birminhgam residents photographed and interviewed have Arabic/Indian(?) names and are clearly not ethnically British, while the garbage man photographed and interviewed is clearly ethnically British.


"Are you sure this will help us sell more burgers?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Then as soon as the Democrats take power again, they return.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, but what did he do?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I understand and empathize with your desire to use more apparently humane methods to get illegals to leave, but I think your proposed solutions have serious issues.


The extremists would likely pledge to take care of and pay for illegals and then say, oops! The illegals ran away and we can't find them!  Meanwhile, blue states will continue to quietly provide free social services to these "misplaced" illegals and make no effort to find them.  We'll end up back where we started.  Feigning incompetence and cluelessness is a powerful weapon.


As for paid deportations, it seems extremely obvious to me that those people will just come straight back. Worst case they might have to wait for a Democrat president to take office.  The cans of tuna will still be calling.


I agree with your claim in your OP that we should focus on removing the tuna cans.  Although I am strongly anti illegal immigration (and most legal immigration) I have a hard time getting mad about the free tuna in blue states when the red states refuse to punish employers hiring illegals.  It's a pretty big blackpill. One party is captured by rabid open borders activists, and the other party is subverted by "conservatives" who prioritize economic growth and personal gain above the preservation and flourishing of their nation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If Rittenhouse had instead e.g. attacked a cop who was shielding a BLM protestor and gotten shot in the process because he had a gun, a lot of of conservatives would've just called him dumb.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is one of those "anti-memes" that pops up every so often.  I have written about it and so have several others.  The majority of normies almost never actually engage in thinking, they're are just running on vibes and feels 24/7 and reacting to stimuli.  The normie's desire for truth is a weak and pathetic thing compared to his powerful overriding need to feel validated, righteous, and safe.  It's Haidt's lawyer and elephant, except apparently many people have a lawyer so small and frail he can barely make himself heard.


I call it an anti-meme because it's the sort of insight people (including myself) seem to instantly forget.  Because it's just too blackpilling.  What do we do with that information?  It means that dialogue is mostly futile and that the cynical demagogues and manipulators were right all along. It means that our democracy with its universal franchise is a sham and a joke. It means that people who are capable of actual thought must choose between postmodern linguistic cynicism and principled irrelevancy.  I suppose the silver lining of AI slop is that should you be comfortable with former, the barrier to entry has never been lower.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Immigration is a not a dichotomy between "full immigrant open borders" and "government thugs just executing people on the streets", there's plenty of room inbetween.




You're right, because in-between is exactly where we are.




The incompetence and open abuse of ICE is a fixable issue and you should be mad at the Trump admin for creating a problem that doesn't need to happen and causing unnecessary PR problems.




What sort of ICE behavior would you would find acceptable? Because from what I can tell the vast majority of anti ICE leftists seem to believe that the only acceptable ICE action would be "disband entirely."   They may claim otherwise, but I don't believe it.  If you take away ICE officers' guns, leftists will complain about "beatings." If you ban clubs and fists they'll complain about nebulous "excessive force."  It's strategic and disingenuous moving of the goalpost towards their ulterior goal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Leftists want to identify and harass or kill ICE agents.  If my brother or dad worked for ICE I'd want him to cover his face.


The memes are dumb, I agree.


I simply no longer care if people get killed while impeding efforts to deport invaders. As @Armin states succinctly, immigration is a ratchet especially when you have a rabidly pro-immigration media.  If people don't want to get shot, they can stay in their countries of origin or not get aggressive with federal law enforcement trying to work in a hostile area.


MAGA will lose the house because the average normie is clueless and because the persecution complex energizes leftist.  But there was really no way to avoid that as the entire media complex has gone into overdrive spinning a narrative of persecution since 2016.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"What kind of protein would you like?"


"I'll take some kelp with a slice of microbial mat."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This should have been your top level post.  Your China optimism is more convincing when you first trace your previous assessments and explain how you've changed your mind about China's prospects over time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


While perusing my folder of ten thousand unsorted images downloaded from 4chan




MOAR


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
When he would post semi-inscrutable posts about Russian philosophy and political theory I thought he was an interesting poster, but as someone with far more experience touching grass in China than he has, I'm having some serious Gell-Mann regret.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I read that as "nobody likes [the cultural products] they produce.". People like cheap 99¢ Walmart crap just fine.  Very few people care about "Ne Zha 2."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think the analogy holds.  Aren't those examples of people either collaborating with a fargroup or cooperating with a hegemon who already ruled them?  The analogy would be the Poles or Hungarians opening the gates of their capitals to allow the Ottomans to install a new government, not a few adventurers or bold dhimmis acting independently in service of a foreign adversary.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No way that's gonna happen.  Even the MAGA faithful are unimpressed.  The Greenland thing was a big mistake even by Trump-presidency standards.


Edit: Well, now I'm seeing more celebration from the MAGA side.  I guess it still works on the base.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, and also the Franco-Ottoman alliance.  But neither the Dutch nor the French actually wished to dominated by Turks.  It was a classic outgroup vs fargroup dynamic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not European so I'm genuinely asking -- is this still true? Will all the migrants also march lockstep to government propaganda?  Is there even any possible messaging that could work on both natives and migrants? Will the native populations still march in lockstep when they notice a suspicious lack of Pakistani, Afghan, Turkish or Nigerian faces the conscription office?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Moreover, it's obvious that there's a fraction of the American right (a powerful fraction? Who knows, but it tends to become evident in times like this) that just plain hates [Western] Europe.




Happy to be corrected, but IME this is mostly just Twitter ragebaiting and flaming.  Same for the "we don't think about you at all" people.  The average American likes (white) Europeans and mostly would be pleasantly surprised to meet one in America.


But there are a small but growing number of Americans who have negative of opinions of Europeans after coming into being treated rudely by European acquaintances for frankly nasty and discriminatory reasons.  I count myself among this group -- I've switched from unguarded friendliness to cautious optimism when meeting a European. I'm always on guard for some unsolicited jab about "Murka," or obesity , or guns, or something the current president did.  I never feel the need to comment negatively on their country, so this always feels a bit uncalled for and tasteless to me. It sometimes seems almost therapeutic, like they're finally getting some long-held grievances off their chest by being nasty to one particular person -- finally, they can settle the score by really giving it to this dumb American, who is more of a living caricature than an actual human being. Charitably, I think this sort of person sometimes just wants to signal that they are aligned with the high-status Americans (blue tribe) who they think enjoy making and hearing such remarks.  But it is IMO quite tasteless nonetheless.


I lived in Europe for several years as a young child and really felt at home.  I was welcomed and treated like any other local kid after I had mastered the language.  And there is no denying that Europe is our spiritual and cultural parent and to this day still exerts significant cultural influence on us.  I sometimes wonder if a lot of the "hate" from Americans towards Europeans is less like skin to that felt towards a rival or a foreign enemy and more akin to that felt towards a wayward family member who just can't seem to help himself.  Why won't dad sober up? Why won't big brother lay off the pills?  It's a sort of wounded love for the Europe they grew up reading and dreaming about as children, the cradle of the Western civilization that produced our great nation, a Europe they wanted to visit and admire, but that increasingly appears to be gone forever.


(I am fully aware of the irony. Physician, heal thyself, etc.  Just trying to paint a picture of what might be going on in the Twitter Euro-hater's head.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was pleasantly surprised to read a post from you that was not just more long-winded China-boosting, but you had to go and spoil it there at the end.  I used to find your posts much more interesting before you developed this fixation, tbh.  Do you live in China? If you do not, I strongly recommend you move there and work there.  As your Carney quote points out, it's important to "name reality." The most famous Chinese sage even has a term for this, 正名.  You'll love it.


Anyway, to address your main point, I don't see any rebuttal from you about why TiltingGambit is wrong, just more of your typical sneering about how Americans are arrogant and dumb.  It almost seems personal.  Chinese cultural output has made great strides in the last 15 or so years (when I was in college studying Chinese, China would come out with a martial arts movie that did decently in the US and the world maybe once every few years -- usually by Hong Kong directors) but it is anemic compared to that of the U.S.  Now they produce web novels that are read by gray tribe weirdos (I say this with fondness) but nearly zero normal or high status people in the west consume Chinese content.  An improvement but hardly a threat to American culture hegemony.


The way I see the Euro/Canadian threats to cozy up to China is that if they are still truly Western countries, they are probably bluffing.  What European nation would willingly submit to Ottoman or Mongol hegemony just to spite the Pope?  Overtures, sure, symbolic gestures and treaties maybe, but never submission.  If the enlightenment "globohomo" religion has mutated and innovated to such a degree that it is no longer recognizably a strain of Christianity (the soil of western civilization) but some new thing that sees both the Western Christian nation state and the Chinese civilization state as equally alien and thus roughly equivalent, then, well, the threats are probably genuine and there is probably no way to stop the break up of what was once called "western civilization."