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BurdensomeCount

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The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.


				
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BurdensomeCount


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Pointwise vs Uniform "badness"


Note: This post assumes the axiom that some people are better than others, and that we can to some degree of accuracy say whether someone is a net contributor to the world or not.


Often when it is pointed out that people who are in group X are a net negative to society (e.g. low paid cleaners who consume a lot more in benefits and general wear and tear on public goods like roads than they put in) others are quick to point out that actually these people are the lifeblood of the country and if they suddenly disappeared the country would collapse within a week (e.g. truck drivers refuse to work, thereby causing collapse as food doesn't get to where it needs to be etc.). This is then followed by the conclusion that therefore these people are not bad for society but rather good for it, and so we shouldn't complain about them at all.


I am completely convinced that they are correct that the country would indeed collapse in short order if truck drivers went on strike, cleaners stopped working etc. However this fact is a statement about the group as a whole, instead of individual members of it. For example: If a factory needs 5 people to work the machines but union regulations require them to hire 25 people instead of 5 then yes, each and every single member of the group of "workers" is a parasite sucking on the teat of the group of people who are "factory owners", even though the "factory owners" need the group "workers". In this case it is not the individuals who are indispensable to society, but rather the group as a whole, and the example above shows, it's possible for the group to be a net positive while every single individual in it is a net negative.


Of course not all groups of people are like this. The group of people who are criminals is a net negative to society full stop (restrict criminals to those who commit non-state sanctioned violence+thieves if your worried about how exactly criminal is defined). The individual members of this group are a net negative to society and the whole group is a net negative too. This is probably why "criminals bad" is a much less controversial statement compared to "street cleaners bad" even though someone who earns enough to be a net contributor plus does some light burglary on the side is probably much less of a drain on public welfare.


To be clear here: the people who are members of a net positive category but themselves are net negative are still those who society would be better off without on the margins. And since all economic decisions are made on the margin it is perfectly valid to say that ceteris paribus the world as a whole would be better off without them in expectation.


I think it makes sense to distinguish these two types of a group being bad for society. Firstly we have pointwise badness as an individual which we define as a person who is on their own a net negative to society ceteris paribus holding everything else the same (i.e. we remove them and just them from society and ask if the result if better or worse in expectation). From this we can define pointwise badness for groups where a group is given this label if most of its members are pointwise bad as individuals (note: here we depart from the mathematical definition, every group has it's saints, I'm sure there are some net positive criminals so we don't require every single member of the group to be a net negative).


As examples the group of Criminals are pointwise bad for society, equally street cleaners are pointwise bad for society because they are easily replaceable and consume more than they output.


Then you have uniform badness, which is when the group as a whole is a negative influence on the world and if we could somehow Thanos snap every single member of it away the rest of society would be better off. Criminals are uniformly bad for the world, while street cleaners, truck drivers and steel mill workers are not. Note that uniform badness sort of implies pointwise badness in the real world (not exactly: a group with 10 good people but 1 Literally Hitler is uniformly bad for the world, while it wouldn't be pointwise bad, the Literally Hitler is pointwise bad as an individual, but none of the others are) much more than pointwise badness implies uniform badness.


There are lots of pointwise bad groups but much much fewer uniformly bad groups. Generally when people are talking about how members of a group are bad, especially when they want something to be done they're talking about pointwise badness rather than uniform badness.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No it is not. It is completely degenerate and not a suitable thing to discuss with others. Bodily functions are generally something we keep to ourselves, no different to how we don't announce whether we're going to do a Number 1 or a Number 2 every time we excuse ourselves to visit the toilet. I'd lose respect for someone who brought such a topic up even in private.


Your society is oversexed to an extreme degree, but because a lot of the overt sexuality agrees with the standard hetero paradigm Westerners (even conservative ones) are content to let it pass. However when you get displays of Queer sexuality that are if anything less intense than the Hetero ones seen as completely unremarkable there is an outrage by the conservatives about societal decay.


Physician, heal thyself!


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Given the way Trump thinks of himself as King and everything, there really isn't any fundamental difference between the man and his white house administration.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


le based Elon turned out not to be very based™️ after all,




We clearly have very different definitions of Based. Displaying traits of Elite Human capital is based in my book, and Elon not wavering despite the wailing and gnashing of millions of Low Human Capital to me demonstrates a level of resolve few have.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Quick reminder to everyone that Islam exists and does not suffer from this ... problem ...


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Intelligence, creativity, humour, how good they look after age 30, you name it etc. etc.


True creativity comes through working with constraints imposed like China (be it sanctions or cost pressure or whatever). Unconstrained problems are often underdetermined which means every midwit can find their own "unique" solution which then lets them pretend they are special.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One can have multiple reasons for wanting something, e.g. I might want to take a walk to the shopping centres because 1) I want to get groceries and 2) I want to get fresh air. I could do 1) on its own by just ordering online or 2) on its own by just going to the park, but there is a certain beauty in achieving multiple goals with as few actions as possible (not to mention efficiency). All the best mathematical theories are beautiful, and there is a reason why beauty and truth are so often put together.


I do think Europe needs punishment, and I also think the third worlders should have a better living standard than they do at the moment as they are just as human as you or I (doesn't mean they are equal though), and I also think we need to destroy progressive modernity and that its adherents have reached a level of delusion where it has to fail on its own terms. "Flood Europe with immigrants" is a 3 for 1 that achieves all of these goals in one fell swoop. It's beautiful in its simplicity, don't you think?


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, this foreign policy just seems straight up retarded. Actually the more I read about Vivek the less I seem to like him in terms of whether he will be good for the world. I still prefer him over most of the Republican field for symbolic status reasons of putting white racists in the "uncomfortable" position of having to vote either for a Democrat or a non white person in the general election. Same reason why I wouldn't mind Nikki Haley either, but it's a lot more on the nose with Vivek.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well done! The very last paragraph is a patische from 5 different times I asked it to make a closing paragraph. Not even once did the actual output sound natural so I picked and chose different sentences until I got something that seemed better but yeah, each and every single word there came from an LLM. However I will say that just as Collage Art is considered Art by the Artist even though none of the pieces might be created by them, that last paragraph is still human because I did the curation and structuring.


Honestly I was hoping nobody would notice and then I'd spring it onto the unsuspecting populace of The Motte 3 days down the line...


The rest of the post is completely human generated by yours truly (artisanal tokens, so they say). If you think it's by Gemini 2.5 Pro I consider that to be a compliment as it's genuinely a better writer than I am. Failure to notice and remove the em dash is completely on me, ma faute.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How is it fair that 1950s whites who had their country built at least partially on the backs of exploited Black labour (both slave and later, free) get to have their grandchildren benefit at the advantage of the descendants of those who were made to suffer as western Dalits just by dint of their skin colour?


If we're going by your rules rather than merit whites should be disbarred from prestige institutions entirely.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Completely agreed. American tech workers are seriously overpaid relative to other developed countries. It should be made clear to them that either they compete for jobs on a fair footing with the best from all over the world or else they'll be the immigrants applying for the job because now it's based in London.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


As noted in the 2018 EIR, this is not actually a shellmound or burial ground, but the Ohlone believe that it is, and everyone here is respecting their beliefs. (This is not noted in the article. I've requested a correction.) I remember, but cannot find, some initiative to use "indigenous ways of knowing" or the like in public policy. This is what this looks like in practice.




LMAO. These people are pathetic (not the native Indians, the whites who fold as easily as a deckchair). Separating them from their money would be a net positive for humanity were it not for the fact that they are playing with public money and will just tax everyone more if you took if from their hands.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I suppose it allows for higher class POC with posh accents to distinguish themselves.




I have been told multiple times that I speak exactly like an English person, said in such a way as to be a complement. I always feel like correcting this with "No, I speak English better than an Englishman" for, to borrow a quote from Pygmalion itself, "The English do not know how to speak their own language, Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it, speak it well" but I always think better of it and just accept the complement.


Also amusing are the times when I interact with locals say they only speak one Language, English, since that is all they ever need (with a hint of their language being so superior that they don't need to know anything else, these people by and large tend to be lower class and less educated too) and I always have a very snarky urge to butt in and correct them with "Actually, you speak precisely zero languages, the doggerel that comes out of your mouth can not, in good conscience, be called English", but again here I always think better of it and move on.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Civilizational collapse doesn't seem good for anyone, or do you not expect it will get that far?




Oh I don't expect civilisational collapse, I expect things to become more like they are in the third world, which is to say, not that bad if you're near the top of society on one of a multitude of different axes (e.g. you have social elites, political elites, entrepreneurial elites, professional elites, academic elites, military elites, all you need to live a comfortable life is be one of these or close to being one of these or be the family of one of these), however it will be in such a state that the modern welfare state white elephant collapses under its own weight and has to be abolished, alongside all the other currently "fashionable" social theories which all Good Right-thinking People believe.


Indonesia seems like a good goal to me, and nobody would say it is undergoing civilizational collapse, Jakarta is a modern highly technologically advanced city, no reason humanity can't thrive in such a society.


(But yes, getting to go "I told you so" will be very nice too, extremely cathartic after all the shit and excessive taxation I've had to endure).


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I am not sure that Republicans are ready to elect an Indian no matter how qualified he is, though.




Then they will be rightfully punished for it, choosing people based on just their skin colour instead of their abilities is textbook racism and deserving of correction. Lets see if 4 more years of the Democrats knocks some sense into their mind.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I hope Harvard stands firm and puts the admin in its place. It's one thing to be against Affirmative Action but a completely different one to oppose academic independence say you want MAGA leaning professors in the physics department.


Fight Fiercely Harvard!


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
At this point all I want is for IVPITER to do a South Korea and thunderbolt down every single last one of his enemies to smithereens. If the French populace decides to behave like animals the right thing to do is to treat them like animals instead of appeasing their every demand.


He has a good chance of putting his name alongside Napoleon as one of the greatest Frenchmen who ever lived if he can end the French Fifth Republic for good (which was specifically made for de Gaulle and lost all use after he was kicked out).


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am a finance professional as you guessed correctly. I make sure our markets stay functioning smoothly which has positive knock on effects elsewhere. Britain is a net importer, the common man benefits greatly from the pound being as strong as it is, if it were to collapse his energy bills would skyrocket to the levels of 2022, but permanently. Plus I pay huge taxes directly paying for the common man's lifestyle.




Indeed, the lesser sons of well-to-do families did a far better job running the financial system than the galaxy-brain quants and managers running it now.




If this is the case then how come they were all outcompeted by us? Those people can still try and enter the industry, it's just that when you have a 1v1 on a firm level where one has galaxy brain quants and the other has upper class art history majors the quants send the art history majors packing (side note: I'd probably say I know more art history
than your average art history graduate from a non top ranked university, so it's not even like they can hold their own on their chosen field; this isn't me bragging about how much art history I know, it's me dissing the quality of the average art history course).




All of the problems the elites are flailing and failing to manage are purely self-inflicted.




I agree all of those problems are caused by the actions of elites (mostly because I see elites as the actors while the proles are the acted upon). Lack of housebuilding in particular has been a very big issue. I blame the acceptance of left wing blank slatist ideology for this though instead of any desire to defect against society. The elites of the time genuinely believed what they were doing was best for society. Fortunately they are capable of learning and nowadays you'll easily find many examples of elite human capital speaking out against each of those past mistakes.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A genuine question I have for the people who don't like immigrants here: In your ideal world what would you have the immigrants who come to the west do when they get here?


I've heard people complain about immigrants drawing welfare when they don't work; I've noted all the complaints about immigrants driving down pay and making the job market more competitive when they work normal people jobs and I've sure as hell seen all the attacks launched upon them when they come and take over the very top of society to rule the natives beneath them.


So my question very simply is: given that immigrants aren't going to stop coming any time soon, what should they be doing that will make them acceptable in your eyes?


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Or even better, support open borders because the inconsistency means one of them will have to collapse, and since you're supporting open borders the welfare state will be the one that ends up shattered.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Back home we don't have the sorts of high paying jobs like the one I do here. These jobs do exist in places like Hong Kong and Singapore and the US but I have family reasons for not wanting to move too far away from the UK, at least not right now. Money is not the only thing that matters.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Doing a similar standard of job for 30% of the price, or even doing the same job to an 80% standard for 30% of the price for almost all jobs is a very valid component to the merits of an individual for a job. Microsoft choosing to recognise and reward this doesn't reflect badly on either them or the person doing the job for cheap, the only person to boo here is the person who wants to extract economic rents by artificially restricting competition.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You have to pay for driving lessons too with your own car and instructor and fuel, why should it be any different for guns?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even if he is having this problem (I doubt it), Hanania is classy enough to not throw a public tantrum.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Congestion pricing is clearly a good thing. Many of the same people who call for high minimum wages of $15+ an hour are complaining about needing to pay $9 for something that saves them 45 minutes of their time. Either they value their time less than minimum wage (because if you value it at $15 an hour paying $9 to save 45 minutes is a good deal) and are inveterate liars (shame!) in which case we should think less of them or they are not able to put two and two together, in which case we should also think less of them.




This is unfair because it prices out the working class people who drive into Manhattan.




This is the shittiest and most disingenuous argument of them all. 1) is at least superficially plausible, 3) is well, true because of the murderous lunatics on the subway and 4) is a statement of how far certain parts of the US have fallen rather than anything else. 2) though is just wrong because now that working class person if they leave their home at the same time each day are able to get to their workplace and start their time on the clock earlier/leave later at the end of the day to reach home at the same time and even if they're earning NYC minimum wage without overtime they still come out ahead.


We are surrounded by evidence that the common man is an inferior being but we willfully blind ourselves to it. If we could only stop shackling ourselves to the Great Lie that humans are equal we'd progress a lot faster as a species. I do it too to an extent. The paragraph above was limp faced justification for why the system won't really harm the working class, the true Chad answer is "so what if poors are less able to drive into and take up scarce space on Manhattan roads; their loss is more than made up for humanity as a whole by the minutes of time saved by elite human capital who no longer have to share the road with low tier people".




Will people cheat?




The solution for cheaters is simple: just copy what the UK does. London already has a congestion charge and it works well. If anything the amount is not high enough because there's still too much traffic. If you try and cheat you should be handed a $2,000 fine payable within 2 weeks the first time you are caught with your car getting summarily impounded on the spot for repeat offenders. All we now need is the iron to implement this system.