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Chrisprattalpharaptr

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Chrisprattalpharaptr


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I may not be as "Blackpilled" as FacelessCraven




Is that what Fc stands for? Is FacelessCraven a phone autocorrect or a boo light?




"the mass unrest after Trump was elected in 2016". "Boston marathon bomber", and "The Congressional Baseball shooting" would seem to support their position rather than refute it.




Their model of the world is that the left and the right have irreconcilable differences, liberalism and tolerance is a failure, and American society is disintegrating as partisanship increases and everyone's goal becomes to hurt the outgroup as much as possible. He started beating this drum especially hard during the Floyd riots, and hasn't stopped beating it as the violence has subsided and in fact argues that violence has increased since then.


My model of the world is that there has always been a basal level of violence and unrest in American society, and that the modern period is not particularly unremarkable. My position is that things are largely good, liberalism is not a failure and the majority of people are not partisan hacks or outgroup harmers. There has been unrest and discontent with spikes here and there more or less from the early 2000s to today. And partisanship and unrest have decreased from the pandemic through today.




I will set aside the bit where you implied that the mere existence of the Tea-Party and MAGA are affronts to civilization of similar moral weight to a mass shooting.




You shouldn't. You should look at where FC groups DSA members running competitive primaries with political violence. This fails to support his thesis in two ways - firstly, that strain of leftism struggling against the centrist core has been there at least since 2008 and is not indicative of violence increasing in 2026, and secondly that it perfectly mirrors populist movements on the right like the Tea-Party and MAGA trying to primary the establishment from the extremes. Presenting this as some new, dangerous phenomenon is ludicrous.




I have argued previously that it wasn't the caning of Charles Sumpter that set the United States on the path to civil war but rather the reaction to it, and I see something like that happening here. The threat to the union is not that in a country of 350 million people he have a handful of mentally ill whack-jobs. The true threat to the union is that there seems to be a sizeable portion of those 350 million people who want the whack-jobs to succeed.




And I would argue that if the Floyd riots and clashes in the streets between leftist and rightist agitators didn't trigger a civil war, if the Charlie Kirk assassination didn't trigger a civil war, what do you think would? I wouldn't have wanted to see the reaction on the right to Trump being assassinated on live TV in Butler, but I still believe the backlash would have been the left facing a 2008-tier election loss rather than a shooting war in the streets. When the whack-jobs get their way, the center is repulsed and the pendulum swings the other way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have not, nor has anyone else to my knowledge. But I also know very little about them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I would also point to the popular reaction to the murder of Kirk and the attempts to murder Trump within Blue Tribe, and how these reactions compare to Blue Tribe's previous positions on how speech should be policed. I'll point to the endemic calls for the assassination of Musk, the organized vandalism and arson campaigns against Tesla dealerships and even (IIRC) individuals' personally-owned vehicles, and how major national politicians winked and nodded along rather than taking a stand against their mob. I'll point to Mangione's killing of the United Health CEO, and the obscene public reaction to the killing from grassroots Blues generally. I'll point to the continued Anti-ICE rioting and intimidation campaign, culminating in the shooting deaths of Good and Pretti, and how the discourse rolled out of those two shootings.




And I'll point to the mass unrest after Trump was elected in 2016, I'll point to the dozens of harebrained plots to assassinate Obama, I'll point to Sandy Hook and Columbine and Parkland and the Boston marathon bomber and mass protests around Occupy Wall Street and Gabby Giffords and Congressional baseball shooting and Bernie Bro socialists and Tree of life shooting and Arbery shooting and Charleston church shooting and a hundred other shootings and the Malheur ranch and Lavoy Finicum and the Tea Party and MAGA and and and...


The people celebrating the violence were always there. You just have a weaponized social media feed designed to shove outrage porn down your throat 24/7. You should know better! Listen to Mr. Rogers, not twitter.




I would point to the Kamloops graves scam and the subsequent rash of church arsons.




British Columbia, the 51st state?




much less a 1,000 year Christian Reich




From your triumphalism in the wake of Trump taking power and passing a barrage of laws:




I disagree that it's foolish; I think Blue Tribe's dominance was largely built on propaganda, and I think the decay of the propaganda apparatus is why Blue Tribe dominance is now collapsing. This has been my thesis for near-on to a decade now. I think my side will win because, to put it as succinctly as possible, we are sufficiently closer to base reality that we need propaganda a lot less, and our lack of the Progress narrative means we have less need to rule people and can ask less from those we do need to rule.






Christianity is regaining a great deal of the cultural respect it lost over the last generation. It's regaining this respect not by playing "political hardball", but by having its predictions validated by subsequent events, and by maintaining its principles in contrast to the example of its opposition. Sexual continence and self-control were a hard sell in the 90s; now we have OnlyFans and online dating and a generation of intense porn consumption and cratering relationship rates to do the argumentative heavy-lifting for us, to give an example on one of the relevant axes. We believe we genuinely have a better way of living, and it requires only our willful action and communal cooperation, not federal law or corporate funding. The further the cultural consensus moved away from us, the more obvious and undeniable the benefits our faith offers become, even by the materialist metrics of the World. We have stable marriages, children, even, amusingly enough, higher sexual satisfaction. We can forgive and turn the other cheek; we can offer a hand up to a defeated foe, we can restrain ourselves in the heat of the moment. We have a basis for charity, in all senses of the word, to the point that the pagan Right routinely mocks us for our pacifism, for doing nothing, for being cucked. And yet, we can also fight fiercely, when that seems necessary and prudent.




Deus vult!


Meanwhile, and I hope you can set aside the partisanship and appreciate the delicious irony in this, your president decided to launch another war in the Middle East. After you swore up and down that Bush was a uniparty Democrat, actually, and Trump was the first genuine Republican. Undoubtedly your arguments around the base reality of low inflation, killer economic growth and glorious victory over pathetic Iranians will resonate with the electorate.


I can also see the seeds of your doomposting for the 2028-2032 cycle in the complaints about the DSA, as if they're somehow a discontinuous break from Bernie Sanders and the Squad.




I have predicted that the violence is going to get worse, and it seems to me that it is getting worse.




You're the Shepard scale of predicting worsening violence. When measurable violence (homicides, rioting, general unrest, school shootings) decrease, you turn to cherry-picked singular incidents and say actually they're worse than anything that happened in 2022, which was worse than anything that came before it, which was worse than anything since the 70s. On the contrary, I see a continuous trendline of violence in America that has always been there. Maybe the 90s truly were some magical time as the nation basked in the glory of triumphing over the Soviets; I suppose I wouldn't know. But at least for my experience, it's been more or less the same.




And when that happens, what will you say when Blues here discuss how grassroots political extremism and popular support for murder as a political solution is a problem, actually, and I reply exclusively with @magicalkittycat quotes?




By all means, feel free. Fight on, brave culture warrior.




We can forgive and turn the other cheek; we can offer a hand up to a defeated foe, we can restrain ourselves in the heat of the moment. We have a basis for charity, in all senses of the word, to the point that the pagan Right routinely mocks us for our pacifism, for doing nothing, for being cucked. And yet, we can also fight fiercely, when that seems necessary and prudent.




Deus vult!




The Democratic party is now entering its own political civil war between a corrupt relatively-centrist establishment and grassroots ideological extremists




Hmm. We had Bernie Sanders v. Clinton and Sanders and Warren v. Biden, we've had a 'civil war' (such drama!) between the extreme and the center in both parties for the last 14 years, and you're trying to rile yourself up into pretending that the DSAs are some new unique communist threat to the Republic to rationalize a vote for jay dee. While I lack most of the virtues of a good Christian, I'll avoid talking about the 'corruption' (an utterly meaningless word at this point, along with communist and fascist) of the current admin.




I do not think that this will result in an increased likelihood of peace and prosperity for all, but I'm ready to stand corrected.




You aren't, though.


Your bar for being corrected is that a country of 350 million people have no mentally ill whackjobs for the next 4 years. Someone's going to shoot up a school, someone's going to do something stupid like zerg rush the white house security gates or fly a drone grenade into Trump's ballroom or shoot Kamala if it looks like she's going to win. Then you'll crow that violence is getting worse, the country is going to the dogs and liberalism is a failure.


Meanwhile, by your own admission, you and your family live good lives. Me and my family live good lives. Hundreds of millions of people live in peace and prosperity, and they would live in happiness too if they could lay off the outrage porn and touch grass.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


My predictions were logged long ago that I think violence is going to increase. When it does, I intend to quote this post and the context it references back to you, to the letter.




Your predictions have been logged long enough to have been proven wrong. Violence has decreased broadly since the pandemic. I imagine you'll point towards the two attempted Trump assassinations and Charlie Kirk, but I'm unconvinced this is out of the ordinary for a particularly controversial political figure.


Are you willing to make any actual falsifiable predictions on any kind of timeline? You all predicted riots and burning and political violence after the Roe V. Wade repeal, after the 2024 elections, after pretty much every red tribe victory. And just like your predictions about the coming 1,000 year Christian Nationalist Reich in the wake of the 2024 election, you've been categorically wrong. What is it you all like to say? The demand for political violence outstrips supply?


I first read you predicting catastrophic political violence and the disintegration of American society 6 years ago on reddit, and I'm still here in 2026 reading it after none of these things have come to pass.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Likewise the European foil to Zionism is not {British Nationalism, Irish Nationalism, French Nationalism, German Nationalism} it's pan-European Nationalism.




Does this mean you are pro-EU, or at least support the concept of the EU even if you dislike the current iteration?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You're baiting me, aren't you?




No, you're both focusing too much on 'topics.' If @FtttG wants Facebook (and presumably themotte) to be treated like a utility, there's no justification for you cracking down on 'single-issue posters' any more than they can shut off my power for obnoxiously blasting music that bothers my neighbors. If themotte were run like a utility, the sidebar would basically say 'don't post illegal shit.' The fundamental point is that if you did treat social media like a utility, it would rapidly be unusable to the vast majority of society who don't enjoy 4chan.


Everyone wants to censor, everyone likes their echo chambers. It's just a matter of degree.




Once, many years ago on the old subreddit, before my time, the mods put a temporary moratorium on HBD posting because it was close to turning into open calls for race war.




I didn't realize that was the rationale, I thought people were just sick of the same old recycled talking points. But then, who are we to censor people just because it might spark a little race war?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Does it? Certainly mods have handed down bans to posters who talk about these topics, but generally because they violated other rules in the process of doing so, not for the mere act of bringing the topics up in the first place. I'm not aware of someone being banned simply for bringing up Holocaust denial or HBD.




I'm old enough to remember the moratorium on all HBD posts on reddit, which I think never officially ended? It just sputtered out sometime in the last 6 or 7 years as virtually all the anti-HBD people left and the problem solved itself.


As for holocaust denial and Jew skepticism in general, you can ask @SecureSignals if he has more he could say on the topic or if he's been muzzled by the mods.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But I genuinely feel that some people (most likely including the person who created the petition) simply lack the imaginative capacity to generalise a hypothetical solution outside the narrow confines of the problem that prompted its proposal. During the 2010s, when conservatives were getting banned from social media left and right, a common smug refrain I heard from progressives was "Facebook is a private company, they can do what they want". I continually pleaded with these people to understand: it's in everyone's best interests for rules to be written in an ideologically neutral fashion. You really do not want to set a precedent that social media companies can ban anyone they disagree with and they have no recourse. Every company undergoes ideological drift, whether slowly or all at once: the fact that Facebook moderators share your worldview now is no guarantee that they will a year from now. "They're a private company, they can do what they want" will come back to bite you in the ass when some billionaire who doesn't share the progressive worldview buys a social media network and moulds it in his own image.






And then a billionaire who didn't share the progressive worldview bought a social media network and moulded it in his own image. There was much gnashing of teeth and rending of hair. What could I say other than "I told you so"?




As someone with high imaginative capacity, what's your vision for blocking 'private companies from doing what they want?' How do you thread the needle between not banning/algorithmically deprioritizing people for supporting Trump (sounds good), QAnon, holocaust denial (uh...), kiddie porn? I grant that it's probably feasible to separate out kiddie porn, actual terrorists and criminals from the rest, but you're left with a broad spectrum of shit that most normies just don't want to deal with.


Even themotte has to crack down on holocaust denial, HBD and other topics from time to time. And you're catering to a fairly niche and homogenous population that hasn't managed to muster significant disagreement on a culture war issue outside of the Russo-Ukraine/Iran wars in the last 5 years.


If you want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine on steroids for social media I'm on board, but I doubt most of the people complaining in the 2010s want to see their Fox News talk shows or facebook slop nuked by the FCC of a democratic admin.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mixed you up with Oracle, but so am I. I left as an adult.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't think it's evil so much as a combination of 'having seen a lot of dragged-out deaths' and sincerely wanting to be compassionate, plus eventually the stresses over "look, get Grampa out of that bed he's blocking" encourage them towards "let nature take its course".




Isn't that fairly reasonable, then? It's possible that your doctors have seen a hundred, or a thousand patients similar to your father and they suffered greatly in some large majority of cases. And, while nobody is perfect, the medical system (at least in North America, I can only imagine that it's much worse in the EU) already bends over backwards to the point of massive dysfunction to accommodate consent and the wishes of the patients.


I mean, I'm not wishing you had let your dad die, but it's not clear to me that having most of the public following the advice of doctors around euthanasia is a bad thing.




The really evil ones are the medical ethicists.




Again, why do you think this? And do you know many of them? I've probably met somewhere between 5-10 in my life and they're largely focused on arcane minutiae that you will almost certainly never hear or think about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In my experience, Canadians felt like that before Trump ran. It's less often expressed when a Democrat is president, but my impression is that Canadians feel like that all the time about Americans.




I can't speak for every Canadian, but I feel confident I've met probably an order of magnitude or two more than you. Most of the people I know would vacation in America (snowbirds, cape cod, skiing) and have been for decades. They've nearly all boycotted America since ~mid-2025. Seems to be borne out by the data.


I don't think they have any delusions about meaningfully hurting the US, but they're pissed and don't want to spend their money here.




Canadians will never be blamed if Iran gets a nuclear weapon and starts blasting everyone.




Nor will Americans. Arguably, the withdrawal from the JCPOA (supported by Europe) led to another war.




If Saddam actually had WMDs and detonated them, I dunno, in Europe.




Yeah, except he didn't, and America lied about it to justify a war.




We can sit pretty and always condemn "war" or "agression" or those silly Americans that put so much of their budget on their military instead of universal healthcare or whatever else we feel better than them about that day, safe in the knowledge that no one actually expects us to bear any responsability for the state of the world. The day Canadians will actually matter, then their complains about "warmongering" on the part of Americans will actually be deserving of more than a spit in the face.




I agree with this to some extent, but that isn't carte blanche for America to (as the realpolitikers are fond of saying) do as it wills while the rest of the world suffers as it must. And it isn't an actual rebuttal of their claims. Would an America with the same resources and economy coupled with the foreign policy of Canada be better or worse for the world on net?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I used to think you guys were friendly enough, but in recent years I've had several Canadians tell me in no uncertain terms that they disdain me and other Americans.




Perhaps the repeated jokes from the POTUS about Canada being the 51st state and the tariffs had something to do with that. This isn't exactly an unprovoked response, so I'm a bit confused as to why you're surprised?




I don't think you guys conceive yourselves as world powers so hopefully I'm not bursting any bubbles when I say you're not. What does being "internationally respected" mean to you? What would it mean if you weren't internationally respected?




Canadians take pride in things like peacekeeping missions (see Rwanda), international aid/charity and supporting the UN/international order. Have a good reputation abroad may be a better way to put it than being respected. America might be respected abroad, but after the last 25 years of warmongering, there's a lot of people who dislike them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We the family smiled and muttered under our breaths "yeah you guys wanted to kill him off, we stopped you".




Why are doctors as a whole so evil, I wonder? Aside from the fact that they skew liberal and are probably less Catholic than the general population. Do you know many of them?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sorry to be pedantic




No worries.




It's a well paid field, but it's only paid slightly higher than the median SWE. Pretending that the LLM-ML Engineers pay is anything more than the top .1% of the field would be fallacious.




In my field, the 'data scientists' and ML engineers are a different breed and in much higher demand than the people who just write code. But thanks for the correction.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I actually do know more about my own life than you, and didn't cite every possible hypothetical explainer for the sake of brevity and anonymity.




And I know more about my own life than you, but I don't share your absolute confidence in making flawless apples-to-apples comparisons between my parents economics situation 35 years ago to my experiences today. I believe that you know the dollar amount your dad made and the number on your paycheck. I don't believe your interpretation of the meaning of those data, and the broader implications.




What is your point?




Concisely:


    

  1. I disagree with the premise that '2026 burritos are unaffordable.' I'm not convinced that it's not true, but I don't believe that you (or the dozen vibecession posts when Biden was president) have conclusively made the point. Many others also seem to disagree with this premise.
    2. 

  2. But granting this premise, or ignoring it if you prefer, I don't believe that you or anyone else has a pithy answer on improving affordability across the board. Railing at our politicians (and I'm sympathetic to both Trump and Biden here, modulo obvious self-owns) for not pressing the affordability button elides all the complexity of both the problem and potential solutions.
    3. 

  3. Again granting this premise, where do you think the wealth has gone and why do you think things have gotten worse? Boomers? China? Socialism, immigrants, demographics? Lazy millennials? Or do you not have answers to these questions and your goal was just to start a discussion to see what people think?
    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Just because an 85 IQ citizen decides they want to invite another random person from anywhere in the world into my country, their descendants get to be citizens forever and they can leech off the state for the rest of their lives consequence free (any thresholds for sponsorship are laughably low)? Seems dumb.




A rounding error compared to the 55 million Americans with IQs 85 or below who pump out babies year after year. Any policy that wants to restrict immigration due to IQ concerns without first sterilizing those individuals is pointless. Hell, in most states literal retards are allowed to have as many children as they want.


In parallel, a lack of policies that force high IQ women such as yourself to have at least four children with a high IQ partner is far more detrimental than immigration. IQmaxxers focused on immigration rather than pre-existing low human capital are either misguided or deficient emotional decouplers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Actually, no I know what my father did in the 90s and how much he made. He was working at IBM through a period of massive layoffs. But again. All these comments quibbling the complaint are just making my point and the point of the folks responding to the responses.




Yes, you can't be wrong, regardless of what people reply it just proves that you're more right. Disagreeing with you is pointless, only productive conversation can be had if we first agree with your premise.




Every response that tries to justify the current state as not real, is avoiding the actual discussion of political policy goals or visions of the good. Kamala LOST in part because 'inflation isn't real ackshully' was a losing message.




The point is not to justify the current state, the point is that, have you considered the tiny, infinitesimally small chance that maybe you're wrong in evaluating the current state? A lot to ask, I know. And much like Kamala, suggesting someone on the internet adopt humility is ever the losing message.


But anyways, setting all that aside and having a discussion on the level you want to discuss, I agree there's no reason we shouldn't push for making things more affordable. What's your populist plan for doing that? And what's your answer to the question I posed at the end of my post? I'll read whatever you write with an open mind, convince me that you actually understand why things have gotten worse, and what the fix would be. I don't believe that the MAGAs or the Bernie bros or whatever flavor of populist you identify as have the answers to those questions, nor do I believe that you'd actually improve things given power.




There is a populist movement that wants specific political goals, and one party is saying "yes! socialism", and the other is saying "no you suck! you're not allowed to have that. You can have high gas prices instead."




Perhaps next time they'll be able to elect the populist politician running on the 'Push the 10$ burrito button' platform, and then he'll actually push it instead of the retards in office now who just admire it on their way to the office every morning.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't have an answer to your question and I confess to finding both the enshittification and 'life is better now, actually' arguments to be convincing on different days and depending who's making the argument, but consider:




In the 90s my parents moved us into a new construction. Today, I live in smaller a house, on a smaller lot built in the mid-70s. In realtive terms, I live in a house that is not only smaller, but nearly 50 years older than the one my father did.




In the 90s software dev was probably a more rarefied and in-demand skillset than in 2026 where we pump out over 100,000 CS degrees a year. On top of that, the barrier to entry for literally everything has plummeted as the internet disseminates information so efficiently. Used to be you had to actually go out and learn things from people or hunt them down in library stacks, whereas now I can instantly pull up dozens of videos on youtube teaching me to do literally anything known to man or ask an AI and get an expert-level answer in seconds. Relatedly, software dev has been outsourced to lower-income countries - my friend's (somewhat famous enterprise software) company does almost all their programming in the middle east or eastern Europe.


All that to say, you and your father could be equally talented and if he were working today he'd also be managing a team of 25. Or maybe he'd be an ML engineer and still easily affording his new construction house and herd of children, taking the kids out for 200$ worth of burritos every Sunday night.


The other angle of this argument is typically that our wealth was sent to China to enrich the elites. But if you look at everyday Chinese, their lives may be better than their parents generation but they definitely aren't good. The successful ones work crazy hours and there's a much larger precariat than here without a social safety net. If your father's generation was so much better off, where did the money go? Or did we just globally become less productive?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Boba tea. Women love it, I'm perplexed by the appeal.




Try Taro flavor, with white-people levels of sugar. It's like a mild, creamy slushy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@The_Nybbler last week.




Birthright citizenship is obviously supported by both Constitution and statute, but I imagine there's a lot of wrangling over the wording of the opinion of the court (which may be unanimous, maybe 8-1 if Alito is as much of a hack as one ex-poster claims).




Looks like your departed poster (darwin?) didn't go far enough and there's three partisan hacks on the court.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And, of course, it's censored; I haven't been able to get a single bit of erotica out of it. All I wanted was for Fable to write me a lemon where Asuka and Shinji are smallfolk in Westeros and Lord Targaryen gets to bless their union by taking Asuka into his bed on her wedding night; is that too much to ask?




Claude was undoubtedly dismayed by the glaring omission of Kaworu, and the fact that the Targaryen male line has been full of crazies or pussies since the blackfyre rebellion. 'Lord Targaryen' over Bobby B? Really? I'd even rather read about Ned Stark pontificating about honor and duty while he fucked Asuka than some Targaryen complaining that she wasn't his sister.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for June 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Apparently we've moved on to the Spit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Detroit, China: A personal account of a small slice of urban decay in China
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting. I've been curious about the lives of people on the ground in China for a long time and recently stumbled across this youtube channel. It's...honestly been some of the most depressing videos I've ever watched. The grandfather who smokes two packs a day and hides his daily handle of baijiu from his family while watching the kids, truckers working the apps for 16 hours and living in their cabs, the gaokao grind for children, small business owners who never take a day off. Maybe amusingly to the crowd here, the only happy people I saw was the DINK couple working part-timeish with a dog and a parrot. Are these accurate? Is it a working class phenomenon, is the guy running the channel nutpicking, is the entire country just miserable?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


College is 4 years to party, chill, smoke weed, play video games and do nothing (delete as appropriate) at the government’s immediate expense.




Am I the only person who actually worked/learned something useful in college? Most of what I did then is more or less useful for me on a daily basis as a foundation. I didn't go to a great school, although I was (un)fortunate enough that there was no obligation to take a minimum of humanities classes and I managed to take >95% STEM classes. I don't, for example, use what I learned in phys chem all the time but every now and then Michaelis-Menten kinetics or Gibbs free energy pops up and it was useful to have taken that class.


Don't the engineers and other STEMlords have to work, and don't they learn things that are useful for their careers? Is it just Americans that are lazy and credentialist?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Unfortunately it seems his disappearance has more to do with getting modded by Amadan and deleting his posts out of spite or not wanting anyone to follow him to wherever he goes next or whatever.




I see, I missed that. In that case I apologize for the insinuation.




Amadan does a lot of uncontroversially decent modding, but also blatantly violates at least the spirit of the rules often himself, especially that "be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary" bit.




A few sharp words is a small price to pay for someone voluntarily spending hundreds of hours of their life arguing with the trolls. Not to mention it's usually in response to another antagonist.