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Bartender_Venator


				

				

				

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joined 2023 April 20 03:54:53 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
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Bartender_Venator


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2023 April 20 03:54:53 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 2349


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ah yes, I tend to forget the remake exists. Testament to the uglification of modern animation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Glad to see Reason is still in business; I wasn't aware. Of course, this fellow did, by all the eyewitness accounts, reach into the reflecting pool and start pulling the lining up, to the point where the park police noticed and demanded he stop, but maybe, given his background, he's just a pool lining autist, and also a true libertarian who believes that every citizen has a right to audit the structural integrity of the pool without state coercion interfering.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This originates, in the modern tradition, from Hobbes - he argued that no man knows another's business so well that he can claim to rule over another through virtue of superior intellect (obviously, an idea murdered and buried by modern states). But, in that framework, it's also perfectly compatible with absolute monarchy, so long as something occupies the position of sovereign-but-not-master. Lewis, in that Anglo-Christian inheritance, can only agree that no man can be master based on contingent facts about the world, as you point out. A man, or artificial man, fit to be master cannot exist, because we are fallen and the science to create artificial men (including the body politic) is also fallen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think in order to do real damage with your bare hands it has to be at least a bit fucked up already. Interesting that they don't seem to have attempted to bring charges against the other people who were apparently apprehended by the park service, but this guy seems to have really tried to get it - pulled up a lot more than either of the two women and then started beefing with the cops.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Honestly don't have an obvious candidate to mind, it's not the sort of fiction/movies I go for. The South African novel series Spud would be a good example, though it's aimed at kids of that age and very much not high art - Spud suffers through all the angst and pimples, but he ends up in a loving relationship and on course to as normal a life as one can live in SA. Generally the sort of people who do more artsy things tend to be older, and more focused on the negative, or at least the aporeic aspects of the psyche.


Stephen King is one of the absolute last people I'd go to for an accurate portrayal of that kind of interiority. I think insofar as a man can write this, the obvious go-to is Twin Peaks - except that Laura Palmer has to be this cipher, that we only learn about from others, precisely because Lynch can't be in that part of her head (note the extremely strong parallels between the EoE hospital scene and the scene of Laura putting on her stockings in FWWM, both beating you around the head with "I KNOW YOU'RE TURNED ON BY THIS CHARACTER AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD ABOUT IT").


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
With the Romans we knew that they explicitly sorted soldiers based on experience. The Triarii were probably generally in their thirties, and while they were spared some of the scut-work they were kept in reserve precisely because their experience was valuable and potentially decisive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not really "about the horrible inner experience of [female] teenage sexuality", except, uh, maybe some true crime narratives I'd prefer not to read. Given the general higher cultural discomfort involved (as I typed that sentence with male/female I half-expected some jackass will call me a creep just for that), I'm guessing not a show, but a book by a woman author, maybe an Anna Kavan type. Maybe an arthouse film.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, besides being the greatest anime ever made, is explicitly about conservative-inflected questions of political philosophy. If you like Death Note and Jojo the space battles (plenty of just as keikaku) should entice you enough to fall in love with the rest of it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, Evangelion is in part a story about the horrible inner experience of male teenage sexuality - it's unsurprising that a woman viewing it either wouldn't notice it at all and just see fanservice, or be disgusted enough to just look away and not think about it.


I suspect a show with an equivalent treatment of female sexuality would disgust most men, probably far more so given that they don't have "ugh, men" as an easily available response. Which makes me wonder, now that I think about it, because I can't think of a work like that (to be fair, my reading list is pretty male and not very teenage). If we were to do a 2x2, where you have Evangelion as male/negative and, say, Twilight as female/positive, what's the female/negative?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
When you are using an assumed name and trying not to get found out, it's good practice to pick something phonetically close to your original one - "Matt" becomes "Mike", etc. - so that you react more naturally when you hear people use it. Not sure you need that level of obfuscation, though.


I would also say try to steer clear of the most extreme names. You don't want to do the cowboy equivalent of naming yourself "Lilith"; it's not good for the soul.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There are guys in the various successors to DOGE working on, shall we say, more prosocial variations of this. The red-teaming is definitely going to happen in the legal field, but it's not going to work unless you have hard-nosed legal realists actually taking those arguments before a court (i.e. deciding which arguments will actually work and which courts will be friendly to them).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Every time I meet an intelligent person who cares deeply about a particular policy area, I tell them the same thing: go to the right and become their guy. The left (and the GOPe/Tories/etc.) are just not interested - $bad_policy is that way for a reason and many people's jobs depend on it staying that way - but the populist right probably has no idea what they want in $policy_area, and if you can come in, be the man with a plan on $policy_area, and be a team player otherwise, you have a chance utterly unprecedented in living memory to make a change actually happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you see me at Butterworth's wearing the secret Mottizen symbol, tap me on the shoulder and I'll get you a drink.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Google needs to keep acquiring hungry talent and keep it away from the warm, suffocating embrace of their internal bureaucracy - not an easy problem to solve. Cash and compute are the table stakes to compete, but they don't win you the competition.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have been banging this drum for a long, long time, and have only got more cynical about the possibility of putting together a Republican policy apparatus that is able to fight the left on scale (what hani calls "incompetence"). But there's more than one way to skin a cat. Every month since Trump came back into power, I'm seeing smart guys I'm in groupchats with go to Washington - sometimes to take a job, sometimes just to talk to someone - and taking meaningful Ws that don't make it into the press, the exact sort of thing that the OP describes. The future of the right may not be building a vast apparatus of company men, but tightening the OODA loop, getting faster and leaner, and doing more with fewer people. As such, the real question is less "how long did it take the Admin to roll back some crazy trucking regulatory rule" and more "how long did it take between some anon in the industry noticing this crazy rule and the Admin acting."


Edit: as if to reward me for making this poast, this just crossed my feed - tl;dr the Admin changed the definition of "harm" in the Endangered Species Act such that you're allowed to build things even if it might disturb some rare fruitbat or gecko.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Google having more money than God is part of their problem. It's like asking why a fat old guy is losing a footrace.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It doesn't appear to be in the wikipedia article, so my favourite anecdote about this is that, a while after the establishment of Israel, a Japanese delegation visited the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and brought as a gift a beautiful, hand-bound Japanese translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for July 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't know what exact comments he's been making, but the example you give isn't worrying at all. Bar workers absolutely do take dislikes to people all the time, and maybe your friend was an annoying drunk one night. Now, "this bartender is out to get me" would be worrying, but complaining to your friends about a bartender who's probably complaining to his coworkers about you is normal, if petty.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Give 'em the hemlock!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"We had to change some of the details to avoid invoking harmful stereotypes, so now the Jew is a werewolf and the Nazi is a vampire"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Your comment plus username makes me chuckle at the idea of setting loose a bot account trained to imitate Scott Alexander as closely as possible (mods, this is a joke)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I rather doubt it as well, given the effects of the original trench warfare, but given that it's a common talking point I'd like to disprove the theory for myself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would explain your situation and the outlines of your personal knowledge to Claude, ask it to write you a CLAUDE.md based on that, and then keep asking that 'new' Claude questions about the basics as you go along. Hey Claude, what's a harness, should I be using one for my project, and what are the trade-offs?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll restrict myself to one point of historical autism (leaving aside things like "slave patrols", where you need to do more serious work to get out of nonsense 2020-history, or LLMs' obsession with easy contrasts): your AI has gotten the role of the Anglo-Saxon sheriff wildly wrong, and has essentially read the later Normans back into it. Anglo-Saxon sheriffs did not preside over a shire court, where shires existed, and accounting for the incredible legal variety of what a "shire" was and how it operated - they were intended as functionary stewards, junior to the (supposed) legal representative, the ealdorman, with minor input into the local lord's justice. Posse comitatus is also a hell of an anachronism even for the Normans. If you mean the levy, the sheriff had no power to summon it except as instructed by his lord, and if you mean the hue and cry, that could be raised by any figure of sufficient local standing.


If you're interested in looking further into the subject, I found in my younger years that the origins of state prosecution are actually the more interesting thread running through early English law. My LLM expands:




Before the twelfth century, prosecuting a wrong in England was the victim's own business: homicide, wounding, and theft were pursued by the injured party or his kin through the appeal, a formal private accusation brought in the shire or hundred court, and liability was discharged through compensation — wergild and bot to the victim, wite to the king — so that the Crown's stake in crime was fiscal before it was jurisdictional. It is precisely that fiscal stake, John Hudson argues in The Formation of the English Common Law, that generated state prosecution, rather than any prior theory of public justice. The Norman kings had already made the community collectively answerable to the Crown for unexplained death through the murdrum fine, and the Leges Henrici Primi (c. 1115) enumerate the placita coronae, pleas reserved to the king's jurisdiction alone, whose profits — amercements, forfeited chattels — belonged to him; but a revenue stream contingent on private appellants was a revenue stream full of holes, since kin might settle, be bought off, be intimidated, or simply not exist. The Assize of Clarendon (1166) plugged the holes: twelve lawful men of every hundred and four of every vill were sworn to present anyone reputed a robber, murderer, or thief, and the presented were tried — by ordeal of water, before the king's itinerant justices — whether or not any complainant came forward. This is the decisive step, because it created, for the first time, criminal proceedings that ran entirely at the king's suit: the offender identified by the community's oath rather than a victim's appeal, tried in the king's forum, his chattels forfeit to the king on conviction, and, by the Assize of Northampton (1176), mutilated or exiled even on acquittal if his repute was foul enough. The machinery built to secure the Crown's judicial revenue thus became, almost as a by-product, the machinery of public prosecution: the doctrine that crime is a breach of the king's peace, contra pacem domini regis, answerable to the Crown regardless of the victim's wishes, arrived riding on the Pipe Rolls.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also the focus of the tender embraces of its richest native son. One could also chart the rise of right-populism in Eastern Europe as a metric of the advances of a hostile postmodernity to which they're reacting.