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Amadan

Letting the hate flow through me

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joined 2022 September 05 00:23:21 UTC
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Amadan


								

								

								
								
									
								
								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Letting the hate flow through me

				
				
				

				

					10 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 05 00:23:21 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Okay, but I don't count third worldist AI bots as people. Are there real people who believe this? Eh, there is someone who believes any proposition you can verbalize.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My understanding is that marital prospects for the median Indian guy are pretty dire, actually.


Incidentally, do you think Americans moving to lower cost of living places (which has a negative impact on the economy and housing for locals) is evil? How about American "passport bros" going to poor countries where their American dollars (and US passport) allows them to outcompete local men?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Those are social advantages, but yes, an American in Mexico would have more or less the same buying power and quality of life as a local. That's why many less affluent Americans' retirement plan is to move to a poor country.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was waiting to read your take from God-Emperor Trump's Naruto-world.


So look- it was never in doubt that the US could inflict massive amounts of destruction on Iran, and that any military conflict would be one-sided in our favor. This is not news. Of course we can bomb Iran's infrastructure to rubble. We've always had that capability. No one thought Iran was going to pull a rabbit out of its hat and clear the skies of US planes or take out a carrier group.


Hell, we could invade, conquer, and occupy Iran if we really wanted to. It would be enormously costly, but I don't think anyone doubts that the US could do that if we were willing to pay the cost.


Your definitions of "victory" seem limited to "We hurt them worse than they could possibly hurt us," along with a lot of wild predictions that the Iranians are so completely cowed now that they will be good boys and do none of the things they've been doing for the last 50 years that have so aggravated us. No more sponsoring of terrorist groups, no more inflaming regional conflicts, no more threatening oil shipping, no more trying to build nukes.


The problem with your triumphal narrative about how Iran got totally recked is this: yes, they did. We have totally recked countries before. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. (I'm not reaching back for WWII, because those countries we actually occupied and changed regimes and turned into the good boys they are today.) The US is very good at wrecking countries.


As events play out even today, we know that Iran can and will rebuild, even after losing most of its military capability. And it's still capable of firing missiles at its neighbors, it's still got oil money which will still go to Hezballah and the Houthis, et al, and as for tolling the Strait of Hormuz, let's just say it seems that what the US is saying and what Iran is saying are two very different stories.


I know you do not believe it's possible to doubt Trump's glorious divinity without suffering from TDS, and that no one who does not bask in his aura will ever do anything glorious, not even sit in a hot tub contemplating fucking another man's wife. But I just read your confident predictions about how Iran will totally no longer be in the nuclear or terrorism or troublemaking game at all, followed by you denying that any continued conflict with Iran could possibly be evidence that perhaps they have not been brought to heel quite as throughly as you insist they have, and all I can say is -


What the fuck? Seriously. What the fuck.


What did we accomplish? Yeah, we kicked the shit out of Iran. Whoo-wee. Never doubted we could do that. It's ridiculous in one sense to say the US "lost" the war when Iran is the one with a bunch of dead leaders and sunk ships. But what was our objective? What was our win condition? All the things you say we have already achieved, which Iran is denying we have achieved at all, and which you are tacitly admitting we will still have to fight them again in the future to prevent them from achieving. Spending all this money, causing all this destruction, for an end-state that appears to me to put us in no better a position than we were before it started, at great economic cost, if not "losing," certain does not look like "winning" to me.


We "won" in the same sense that we "won" in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. No one would argue those countries scored any kind of military or economic or political defeat against the US. And yet. Does anyone really think we "won" those conflicts? That we achieved our objectives and it was so worth it that we'd do it again if we had it to do over? That we couldn't have spent national treasure on better purposes?


When the war started, I was not enthused, but, well, I also do not like Iran. So if we actually toppled their regime, or at least crushed them so thoroughly that they became a non-player in the region, and we will never, ever have to worry about an Iranian nuclear program again, I'd have considered it a questionable but at least definable victory.


Instead, right now I see a Trump TACO and you still insisting he's the greatest thing ever with the fervor of a Maoist admiring mangos.


You are right. You cannot make other people see reality. What do you even want me to say?




Iran will not be allowed to maintain a nuclear weapons program






Iran will not be allowed to continue manufacturing missiles to bomb its neighbors






Iran will not be allowed to continue funding paramilitaries to harass and terrorize its neighbors






Iran will not charge some kind of unilateral toll on the Strait of Hormuz




!remind me 1-3-5 years


(And don't think I don't notice how much weasel-room "unilateral" gives you.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What value does this comment have? What's it's point other than to be randomly nasty, unprovoked? Don't do this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is becoming tiresome, and you're very close to a permaban already.


I'm loathe to ban you for such a petty, low-effort comment that from anyone else would just be an eyeroll, but you have exhausted all slack and charity. Yes, I know, you were joking. (But not really.) You do not have the leeway to throw jibes like this.


You are duly warned. Next time, I will ban you. Yes, even for something as minor as this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
copypasta like this is more appropriate for the Friday Fun Thread, and arguably not there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The fuck, man? How is this useful? You don't have to encourage or validate people posting in the Wellness Thread, but it's also not an appropriate place to take a knife to someone asking for advice just because you have a bone to pick with them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well,  not to keep getting post-modern, but who defines what is and isn't post-modern? Like I said, I think Cormac McCarthy is very much a post-modern writer, but there are critics who disagree.


Catch-22 didn't seem post-modern to me. But it has been a long time since I read it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Dunno that "everyone" hates neocons, and even if there aren't any here, this is definitely an attempt to build consensus.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I should ban you for the trolling and personal attacks, but you're kind of amusing. The trolling isn't that amusing, though, so that was your one freebie.


Remember, while you feast on the schadenfreude and disrespect, the schadenfreude and disrespect is also feasting on you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Here's my take:


I don't think people should write posts using LLMs, and my inclination is to warn/ban anyone who does it.


The problem is that I have to be pretty damn sure because it's easy to register false positives. Already people tend to assume any long wall of text was probably written by an AI. So given a choice between being trolled by AI posts or overzealously banning anything that smells at all like AI, I'm going to mostly let it go.


Of course when you admit using AI it presents a problem, because we appreciate the honesty but don't want you to keep doing it.


There is also a gray area where people are using AI to "help" them write posts. We obviously cannot ban anything touched even a little by AI, but how much is too much? @self_made_human  uses AI to draft some of his posts. I dislike this, but....shrug


Personally I like AI, but not for writing anything I care about. Your words here should be your own...unpolished, half thought out and all.


That's my opinion but we haven't really settled on an official mod position other than pure AI posts where you just paste the output of an LLM are right out.


Your record as a troll means I'm less likely to look on this charitably, but other mods seem disinclined to mod it and honestly I was only suspicious, not certain. So you get a pass this time, but do not treat this as an invitation to keep testing how much you can get away with.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree with @07nk. Shakespeare is meant to be performed, not read, and reading a play is almost always an inferior experience. Sure, some people do enjoy reading his plays because most of them have some banger lines, but the drama, the humor, the intensity, is all in the performance. It's why there are so many "interpretations" of Shakespeare using the same lines but completely different sets and costuming and you can still deliver a compelling experience even if they don't look like Elizabethans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, I wasn't posting as a mod, so I appreciate the sentiment but you're allowed to dislike my posts.


I thought my thesis was clear enough, but evidently not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Oh boy, literature sniping, my favorite kind of geek-out.


So, what is art? You're right to observe that "If I like it it's good" is a shallow way to judge artistic quality. Clearly the purpose of art is not merely to entertain and enthrall.


On the other hand, "To increase collective well-being?" Shades of Fredric Wertham–all that is not wholesome, morally fortifying, and artistically meritorious should be thrown out! Art can be just a thing to entertain.


Art, in my opinion, is all the things people look to it for: entertainment, escapism, a display of talent and craft, a few moments of amusement, but also meaning, reflection, new lenses through which to see the world, education, enlightenment.


No book or other work of art, of course, is going to be all of those things. Some will be none of those things.


I am one of those people who thinks there is such a thing as "good" and "bad" writing and that there are, if not completely objective, then at least generally agreed-upon rubrics by which you can judge it. It's more than style (19th century classics would be considered "badly written" by modern stylistic standards) but it's also more than theme or symbolism or capturing some essential essentialness of the human experience or your place in the world or the current zeitgeist or whatever.


I'm going to take the very unchallenging centrist view that you can like high literature and comic books at the same time. You can enjoy both experimental postmodernism and Extruded Fantasy Product like Brandon Sanderson.


If you are incapable of critically examining what you consume (at least to the degree that you recognize, "Yeah, this is kind of crap, but it's fun") then you probably aren't getting much out of anything you consume but whatever time it takes you to consume it. But that doesn't mean reading things just to be entertained is bad in and of itself.


Of the works you mention, I have yet to tackle Infinite Jest (I read DFW's debut novel, The Broom of the System, and was so thoroughly unimpressed I've been putting off tackling IJ). I have read Thomas Pynchon, and while I still love The Crying of Lot 49, it's not a coincidence that that's one of his shortest novels. Gravity's Rainbow was an ordeal to get through, and I only finished it out of sheer determination. Like several other commenters, I would not categorize either Slaughterhouse-Five or Catch-22 as post-modern. Satirical and cynical, certainly, but post-modernism is not just irony and counter-culturalism.


I think, therefore, that you are completely wrong about post-modern not being "real" or there not being anything "there" (at least two of your books aren't post-modern at all, and they definitely do have clear themes and plots). Post-modernism is also not just a "stylistic" exercise. Post-modernist books are generally characterized by being "experimental" and defying the conventions of traditional novels–hence, non-linear storytelling, unreliable narrators, metatextual references, disregard for conventional plot and characterization, etc. But there are always ideas there, and I would argue most of those books do have a cohesive (if meandering and self-indulgent) narrative.


I'm bemused that you praise Blood Meridian (which is also one of my favorite books), as many people consider Cormac McCarthy very much a post-modernist writer, and if anyone can be accused of writing in an abstruse way as a "stylistic exercise," it's him. (He demonstrates both how you can break punctuation and sentence structure rules, and why they exist.)


The fact that what you love, someone else will hate, and what you find deep and meaningful, someone else will find cheap trash, is why it's very hard to arrive at any real consensus on artistic "quality." I've dunked on Brandon Sanderson plenty, but I have read a lot of his books, and I have seen people say that they got a lot of value out of his handling of various kinds of mental illness, etc. (To which I want to say, "read something better," but there I go again.) I both love and hate Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Pynchon (I'm 50/50 for any given book), and there are people who are fierce devotees and people who think they're both just orthographical prestidigitators.


The vast majority of writing is crap. This has always been the case, we just didn't have so much writing produced at such scale. People will argue that the likes of Charles Dickens and Herman Melville and Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen and Victor Hugo and Miguel de Cervantes are only well-regarded today because they had comparatively less competition; this is true, but they also had a comparatively much smaller audience. They are admired today because in one way or another they captured something about their time and place and wrote about human lives we still find interesting and relatable today even if we are far removed from those eras.


But! All of them (except maybe Tolstoy, who was rich and also batshit crazy) were also writing for money! They were very much writing to their markets (Cervantes wrote the sequel to book one of Don Quixote because a rival was plagiarizing him!) And a lot of people dunk on all of them for being pedestrian or prosaic or culture-bound or just boring and consider them to have been the Brandon Sandersons of their day. (They had plenty of critics in their own time.)


I remember reading an interview once with Piers Anthony, the original Dirty Old Man of SF&F, who was once an enormously prolific bestseller before kind of falling out of favor with the fandom. He genuinely considers himself to be a Great Author who will someday be recognized alongside the likes of Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy. While it's hard to imagine the author of The Color of Her Panties being so remembered, who can say? It may well be that Brandon Sanderson is remembered as the great American fantasy writer of the 21st century.
I think there is something to be said for telling literature snobs to get their heads out of their asses. At the same time, there is something to be said for telling Millenials whose literary horizons never expanded beyond Harry Potter and Twilight to Read Another Fucking Book. (But you could say the same thing to a lot of hippies and neckbeards who never read anything but Tolkien and Heinlein.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@JeSuisCharlie isn't just accusing us of being biased towards each other, though. He's accusing us of giving special protection to Indians because of you.


Presumably the only reason we haven't banned the Joo-posters is that none of the mods are Jewish (afaik).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So, your theory of mind is that I go extra-hard on anti-Indian comments because I am (kinda sorta in a distant online way) friends with @self_made_human?


Why do you think I don't go hard on anti-MAGA posts since I'm about equally friendly with @FCfromSSC, then?


I don't know how to penetrate such obtuseness. I'm just going to keep pointing out that you're wrong, and if you want to advocate for changes in moderation, telling us we're doing things we aren't is a demonstrably unsuccessful strategy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You said this in modmail, and repeating it doesn't make it true. @KMC has been modded for saying similar things about "Negroes." People absolutely report posts that tee off on Trump voters, blacks, and other groups.


I can't even fathom your theory of mind that says we give special protection to Indians.


At this point, you're a broken wrong record.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You know better.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


My pet theory is that @Amadan is Freddie DeBoer. Hear me out.




Cute theory, except I'm not a leftist, I'm exactly the kind of liberal centrist Freddie despises.




but rarely makes a top-level post (has he ever?) on a new subject




SF nerdery. Which Freddie also despises.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Judging by the reports, this is not going over well. It does kind of read like a bit of trolling and dunking on your outgroup.


First of all, as much as I appreciate the (no doubt totally sincere and not at all tongue-in-cheek) flattery, I do not "rage" and I am not sure why you are they/theming me. My pronouns are "He" and "Go away."


More seriously, we have seen some of the rage-quitters and "I can't even" flouncers you mention, but really, not that many. And not all of them have been outraged leftists. For the most part, the leftists who can't stand to share space with HBDers and misogynists have already left. We do have a couple of very persistent mentally ill obsessives who keep screeching at us in filtered comments you never see, but again... not all of those are leftists.


Unfortunately, I do think evaporative cooling is leaving us with fewer and fewer posters who aren't one-note culture warriors, and very heavily skewed towards the right. I wish there was a way to recruit more people of diverse viewpoints, but even the SSC/LessWrong forums now think the Motte is a hive of scum and villainy because of who we don't ban. There really is a longer point to be made here, about how rightists have become the more ideologically "tolerant" faction. Not to say I don't get the sense that a lot of rightists are very eager to put leftists (and moderates) up against the wall - but they will at least talk to the other side while it's mostly liberals who now act like even engaging in dialog with a MAGA is starting down the dangerous path of seeing them as human beings.


The Motte regularly disheartens me and there still isn't any other place like it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Your account is newly registered, which means your posts are filtered until a mod manually approves them. Mods, however, can see your posts and sometimes one of us will respond to a post without noticing that it's still filtered and thus invisible to other posters.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You added a number of qualifiers and dropped others to elide context, as is your wont. We can all see what I have actually written in the quoted post and throughout this thread. Stop this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Amadan's claim that nearly all criticism of Zionism is derived from a pre-existing hatred of Jews for no reason.




I've refuted this several times. At this point it's fair to say you are just lying about what I said.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It didn't happen though. How could I think it was a good thing and it didn't happen?




Because Holocaust deniers (most of them, with the possible exception of the really low information ones) don't actually think it didn't happen.


Maybe you do really believe there were never gas chambers, and that the numbers are inflated, and there are discrepancies in the accounts of what happened in this camp or that camp. There are always question marks and inaccuracies in the historical record and "Holocaust deniers" excel at cataloging these to argue that the whole thing is a hoax. Like 9/11 truthers, like every other conspiracy theorist, it's not that there aren't questions, and things the public believes because they've become widespread knowledge that aren't actually true, or were taken from one particular account (soap made of Jews, for example, or human skin lampshades). So there are always things you can JAQ about.


But "the Holocaust" - a concerted effort to exterminate Jews - happened, and the strategy of the Holocaust denier is to try to convince people that actually the whole thing was fake because record books at Dachau don't match what someone said in an interview, or what have you. The reality of course is that they know the effort was made to exterminate Jews and they think it was a good thing, but they also know that the public is extremely unsympathetic to this and that Jews benefit from the widespread guilt generated by the Holocaust. So it's a political strategy to try to erode belief that the Holocaust happened, not a historical investigation.


This is why every time we talk about the Holocaust, you immediately jump to the specific things you have canned spiels about, like showerheads in Auschwitz and whether Hitler ever signed an order saying "Kill all the Jews." And try as hard as you can to avoid the obvious glaring holes in the narrative, like where did all those Jews go and how are thousands of people, from Nazis to Jews to German civilians to Allied soldiers, lying about what they saw?


If you were actually interested in historical truth it would be pretty interesting to hear you out, but I can't take any of your arguments seriously because to the degree you might have some interesting research about specifics, I know it's always in service of a very specific agenda and that you selectively omit or fabricate details according to whether the narrative serves that agenda.