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DuplexFields

Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

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DuplexFields


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

				
				
				

				

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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 31, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wake up, babe, new scissor statement just dropped on March 32.


“Cleaning the dryer lint after you dry your clothes is the socially responsible thing to do.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
WHY is there a culture war?


A proximal cause is "fellow travelers" being more able to find each other and create echo chambers where they don't have to spend time becoming exhausted by arguing their viewpoints for their neighbors (by chance or fate) with different views. This doesn't just happen online; since people who trust governments more than private citizens tend to congregate in cities and live in apartments and condos, cities become progressive and the rural and suburban areas become conservative. The busybodies and meddlers in each group who can't stand being told what to do by "those people" try to push laws and regulations and ordinances and speech codes to interfere with "those people" getting their way, even if they themselves would never consent to being ruled in such a manner. Thus, the cold culture war.


I do offer an ultimate cause, however, and I hope it'll blow a few minds.


My sensemaking journey began with a simple pair of concepts: The physical world and the world of logic operate on separate sets of attributes and rules, and emotions are a third and equally separate realm like unto the others.


    

  1. The physical: temperature, color, proximity, size, weight, direction, and so on - The What
    2. 

  2. The logical: axioms, premises, hypotheses, conclusions, categories, if-then-else, and so on - The How
    3. 

  3. The emotional: desires, needs, relationships, identities both singular and plural, attribution and transference, and so on - The Why
    4. 



Upon first making a list like this, I realized that the physical essence is masculine, the emotional essence is feminine, and the logical essence is neither. ("Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" and geeks are from Vulcan.) I've called this worldview Triessentialism.


More recently, I observed that physically intuitive people tend to be red tribe/conservative while emotionally intuitive people tend to be blue-tribe/progressive, and logically intuitive people tend to be grey tribe/libertarian. In animal metaphors, the red tribe acts like a pack, the blue like a herd, and the grey like a hive; asymmetric but equivalent. Since coming to these conclusions, I've rarely been surprised when it comes to politics, which tells me my beliefs pay out in prediction.


I could go on and on about these mindsets, and I could even point to Jon Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory as a root cause as to why these mindsets tend to be the three fundamentals. I'd love to talk with him about looking at his data and suggesting three, not two, moral foundation mindsets, with the third being somewhat rare. But for me, I've sensemade enough to consider my theory substantiated.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 3, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Arthur C. Clarke was too autistic to write good three-dimensional characters. You know what he did? Got a co-author.




Written primarily by [Gentry] Lee, Rama II has a distinctly different writing style than the original, with a more character-driven narrative and a closer-to-contemporary mindset, ambience and human relations than the first novel's more futuristic tones.




Fantastic ideas require fantastic execution, but most comic books have separate writers and artists. Many of them have separate pencillers, inkers, and colorists.


I myself can write a good scene with decent characterization, but I can count on one hand the number of completed stories I’ve written.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Theory of Natural Selection is a tautology.
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To make explicit the mechanism.


It’s like saying “every red car absorbs most wavelengths of light, but reflects light wavelengths around 620 to 750 nm. When the reflected waves hit our retinas, exciting the red-absorbing cones and transmitting a sensation into our brains we identify as vision of a red thing.”


This explication of a system furnishes us with utility: if a given person cannot differentiate a red thing from a black thing (as a colorblind friend once told me), we can now troubleshoot and find which piece of the mechanism is faulty and the  devise a way to adjust it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t see why a verbal referral, possibly made sarcastically to a “squeaky wheel”, would have been recorded.


This is one of the reasons American conservatives don’t trust a large, central, bureaucratic government: “The part of the government which oversees the government states they couldn’t find anything in the files of the part of the government which works with citizens who served the government in fighting another government to indicate there was a referral to the part of the government which kills its own citizens to prevent them using excess government resources which could be used for more productive citizens.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Finder by Carla Speed McNeil is a distant-future graphic novel series. It features
gorgeous black and white line art, transhumanism, and cultural commentary on a possible future of race, gender, and wealth. It has a focus on personal relationships within a society, and comes at anything political from oblique angles. The character art would make Walt Disney swoon with McNeil’s action lines and liveliness.


The eponymous Finder is a young man named Jaeger, of a lower caste ethnicity whose tribe has become involved with a lower upper-class household in one of the domed cities. He has a talent for finding what’s needed, but whether that’s a gift or a curse is left grey.


Cerebus the Aardvark by Dave Sim was a monumental undertaking, one of the first independent comics to hit 300 issues, contemporary in the 80’s with the TMNT and The Tick. It features insanely amazing black and white crosshatched backgrounds by Gerhard, and the character work by Sim is top notch with a caricaturist’s eye. His comic lettering is a phenomenon.


Cerebus himself starts as a funny-animal parody of Conan the Barbarian in the lost civilizations of ancient Europe, but things shift into a high gear when Cerebus gets involved with a mayor who looks a lot like Groucho Marx. It evolves into a poignant and piercing examination of second-wave feminism, the effects of church on society and vice versa, the nature of civilization, the ephemerality of sober and drugged spiritual experiences, alcoholism, masculinity, rapey incels before we had a name for it, being bros, and failed dreams. By the end we’ve met caricatures of dozens of twentieth-century celebrities and parodies of superheroes and sword-and-sorcery fantasy heroes, each one shaping how Cerebus is (or plays) the hero. Skip the text sections from issues 200-300 if you find them weird or boring, the author has something to say in them but most people won’t grok it.


In many ways, these series are diametric opposites, and visions of the future and the past respectively which will haunt you. To see if you want to read the whole series, read volume 3 of each: Finder, King of the Cats, and Cerebus, Church and State.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and just about everyone on here is a statist of some sort.




I’m an Objectivism-adjacent minarchist Christian, so you’re one of the few here to the freeward side of me. (As opposed to left or right.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What if I believe it was deliberately made structurally unfair going into the election, and that it was, in the end, stolen? Can I argue against the injury as well as the insult?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 24, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What have you heard about codependency in popular culture or your circles, what have you heard about Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, and do you know why I’m asking about both together?


I’ll post more on this after church this morning, whether this gets any replies or not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If the definition of discrimination hadn’t shifted from “treating people as members of a race” to “treating people as if they’re not members of a race”, we’d be there for 90%+ of red tribe.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Microsoft changed it, now it sucks


I need to document this somewhere quickly, and this is where I can do it without having to create a new account or review subreddit rules. I’ll repost on someplace more visible later.


In the latest feature update (service pack), Windows 11 23H2, Microsoft has changed a piece of syntax in how batch files work in the venerable old Windows NT command line interpreter, CMD.EXE, successor to MS-DOS’ COMMAND.COM and my custom batch files are breaking.


Setup:


    

  1. In Program Files, in a certain folder, is a batch file designed by someone else. It works pretty darn well, so I’ve never had to ever debug, refactor, or otherwise fiddle with it. It’s not at all involved with the issue I’m having, I just mention it for documentation completeness.
    2. 

  2. In that same folder are several custom batch files I’ve used for ten years as wrappers for that batch file, to pass it specific arguments. Once I figured out how to call the main batch file correctly in Windows 7’s CMD.EXE from a wrapper batch, I’ve never had a problem no matter which Windows computer I’ve copied it onto.
    3. 

  3. In the shell:sendto folder which holds right-click-menu shortcuts, I’ve got a shortcut to each of the wrapper batch files. They “start in” the Program Files folder where the main batch and my wrapper batches exist.
    4. 



I’ve documented TWO new bugs I’ve never seen happen! I used the batch files last week on this computer without any issues, upgraded today due to a forced update, and ran into this problem.


    

  1. The %~f argument has different output. It has always returned the full path of the specified file without the file extension. Now it returns it with the file extension! This messes up my string manipulation for naming the resulting converted/altered file. EDIT: actually, it's always been like this. Whew.
    2. 

  2. Windows’ Send To right-click command passed the selected arguments to the wrapper batch file without full path names, resulting in the batch files using the arguments as if they were in the directory of the batch files, and not in my documents’ actual location!
    3. 



Oddly, the second bug has vanished after I documented it in a two separate tests. The first bug, however, persists.


EDIT: Well, that's embarrassing. After checking my deleted files on a Windows 10 computer, it turns out I was wrong about "bug" 1: it's always been that way, I've just grown so used to it over the past ten years that I forgot how it works. But bug 2 did indeed happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for March 13, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That oft-reviled individualist, Ayn Rand, said that creating something great by your own standards of greatness is the only way to generate happiness.


There was a time about three years ago when I was struck by an inexplicable urge to build a new shed out of cinderblocks. I did not, for various reasons including the fear of hassles, but I believe it would have resulted in a satisfaction and happiness I have not felt since recreating a particular Macintosh AfterDark screensaver in Turbo Pascal on a 486 in 1996.


If you’re looking for a purpose toward which to put the work of your hands or mind, my suggestion is journaling your honest reactions while reading the book of Ecclesiastes, at least three reactions per chapter. Here’s a poignant translation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Oh, is it time for Time Travel Jesus discussion now? Awesome!


TLDR on the Lewis quote: God is omnipresent, and He is also omnichronal. Time is the specific arena within which we make our real choices with real consequences, even though from outside of time it looks like fate.


The Word, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity became a mortal chronal being. Does that mean that, in the thirty-two years He was Jesus of Nazareth who had not yet died, there was no Logos in Heaven? That seems absurd to me; one can no more separate the Persons of the Trinity than you can remove your shape from your body.


In my theological thought experiments, I model the Word as the perfectly accurate truth about God the Father, an infinitely complete and divine description, the only possible counterexample against Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. So the Son experiences time as one of Adam’s children for a time to bring the message that God is not an ineffable immaterial entity external to spacetime and abstracted from our merely human concerns; He walks with us and guides us in love, in concern for the poor and abused, because their suffering matters.


And then there’s the timeless sacrifice of the Jews’ Messiah for the sins of all mankind, the zero-point of history. It ripples back into the past as the sacrifice of countless animals by Iron Age and Bronze Age Hebrews, Shemites, and Noahics. It ripples into the future with the assurance that the debt is paid even though we haven’t yet committed the sin and earned its wages, entropy and death.


This is the Good News, as CS Lewis fictionalized it: “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Stone Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.” And if instead we consider time not a true dimension but rather a description of the order now present permanently winding down as potential energy becomes waste heat, He is the opposite of entropy, making all things new starting with His own corpse revived, rebuilt, and perfected.


Time Travel Jesus loved you from the foundation of the Earth.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Calvinist predestination (which is the only truly contentious point out of the five in Calvinism) is basically Schrödinger's cat: the only way to know where one is predestined is to die, and there is a single truth value in the future which cannot be directly known from the past.


However true it may be, though, it is also possibly the single stupidest way to approach Christianity, faith, free will, and eternity.


Jesus has guaranteed that whoever turns from wickedness and asks Him for forgiveness will have eternal life in the presence of overwhelming love; the kind of love which cares for all victims of others’ misdeeds, and seeks that none should be wicked. If you ask, then, what God finds wicked, He asks you what you find wicked when others do it and asks you to shun it from your choices, now and forever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for March 13, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my personal experience, depression is part biological and part psychological. What’s worse, depressed thoughts make the brain release depression chemicals, which causes a negative feedback loop.


Also in my personal experience, both the hardware and the software can be reconfigured. But not in the way society generally thinks they can.


First, biological depression. Before trying prescription drugs (assuming you aren’t already on them), have a physician check your blood for levels of vitamin D and zinc. Odds are you’re deficient in at least one.


Vitamin D definitely impacts my mood for the better when I take it within a half-hour of waking up, and I don’t presume to be a neurochemically distinct anomaly. The 10,000 IU pills are fantastic to get levels up, and 5k IU should be enough to maintain.


I have no clue whether proper zinc levels impacted my depression, but they’ve kept my colds from being horrible by improving my immune system, so I mention it anyway.


As for psychological depression, my personal experience is that unburdening myself through a CBT hack has made a huge difference.


The Fourth Step “moral inventory” of AA, CoDA, Al-Anon, and other such groups is an invaluable CBT tool which most CBT practitioners don’t use because they didn’t invent it. By listing the meaning, the semantic weight, of the choices others have made which impacted my life negatively, I was able to get to the cruxes of many of my issues.


Being in a weekly peer talk support group (such as those I mentioned above) with journaling has also helped me to face my issues head on. Never underestimate the value of company in misery.


I’m autistic and introverted, but I still need people around me for my brain to generate the community chemical, oxytocin. I have several community-based hobbies and a “Third Place,” church in my case, to produce lasting friendships. I also watch My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, which was the first thing to really pierce my depression of nine years by that point. I think the show affects my brain like the “ecstasy” drug does for those who take it. I recommend starting with episode 4 of season one, watching to around episode 10, then watching episodes 1-3. It’s on Netflix and the official page. And don’t worry, it won’t turn you gay. (These are the jokes, folks.)


And when the mind isn’t as depressed, it relieves the brain, which relieves the mind. Relieve either one for a positive effect on both, and life will have more meaning.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you for rehashing this. Some of us were into politics eight years ago and recall most of this, but half a generation has entered the Culture War unaware of the old guard and their malfeasance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Stranger had polyamory too, was five years earlier, and (according to some accounts) kicked off the free-love Sixties as pop culture knows it.


https://old.reddit.com/r/polyamory/comments/23du3h/the_early_poly_movement_and_heinleins_stranger_in/


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I started taking 2000-10,000k IU at the start of the pandemic, and my lifelong subclinical depression has lifted. It’s the only consistent thing I can credit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Terminator: Dark Fate


(Disclaimer: I am ONLY discussing T1, T2, and DF here because it fits this trope.)


Sarah Connor fought Skynet’s Terminators, first for her own survival and then her son’s. She prevented Skynet from coming into being. She became a true action hero in T2, a mama bear, right up there with Rambo and Ripley.


But she tried to kill Miles Dyson so he wouldn’t invent the militaristic Singularity. Miles was Black, and he died helping her kill Skynet. Thus, she isn’t allowed a happy ending.


DF picks up after the Los Angeles adventure in T2. Sarah and John flee the country to the tropics. A Terminator, Arnold model, emerges from the water and slaughters John Connor, successful in his mission at last. She saved the world but lost her only son, her motivation for fighting.


Hollow and defeated, she lives her life as a fugitive from the law until one day she gets a message pinpointing where and when a Terminator will emerge from the future. She shows up, kills it. This keeps happening until she saves the life of a Hispanic girl, the newest target.


It turns out Sarah only killed the first militaristic Singularity, Skynet. They’re going to keep happening as long as humans try to make smart machines. This one will be called “Legion” and has time travel and Terminators too.


On the run, they commiserate about being the targets of Terminators and losing family. Sarah waxes angsty about how meaningless it is that this girl will spend her life just trying to keep her son safe. The androgynous augmented woman warrior from the future tells Sarah that no, this girl is herself the future savior of humanity, the future general who takes down Legion.


Sarah Connor, the white waitress-turned-warrior woman who defeated Skynet in a time war, is devastated. She lost her son after he was no longer vital to humanity, and she’s on the run for crimes she committed to keep him safe.


This Hispanic girl, meanwhile, will someday be hailed as conquering hero. If she doesn’t strangle Legion in its crib, she’ll at least put it down with extreme righteous violence. She’s Sarah and John Connor wrapped up in one person.


The cuckolding of old and wrinkled Los Angelina Sarah Connor is made complete when it turns out the T-800 who killed her son became a really chill dude and has been feeding her the coordinates of Legion’s Terminators all along. The cuckoldry is doubled by Arnold’s doofy ass having become stepfather to a gun-loving Texas family.


Sarah gave it all, every ounce of strength and will and legal recourse, and her son besides, and the week she finds out she’s been the sidekick to her son’s slaughterer is also the week she finds out her son’s place in prophecy has been pre-empted by someone nonwhite, non-American, and non-male.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sound of Freedom beat the final Indiana Jones movie at the box office, albeit through a ticket multipurchase scheme, and the idea that Hollywood might lose its power is unthinkable to them. The "need" is to regain control of a public narrative of mainstream moral superiority over Christians, and nothing hurts Christians in the news like the "hypocrisy" of a single Christian falling like Samson to a woman's wiles.


That's the Culture Total War mentality: destroy all monuments and great works the other side might conceivably claim as theirs, and salt the earth, from football and beer all the way down to knitting forums.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my Triessentialism, I identify four sources of value, attributes about things which give them worth to humans and other mammals:


    

  1. Utility - can it bring me closer to a goal?
    2. 

  2. Experiences - can it make me feel something I want to feel?
    3. 

  3. Status - can it improve my esteem among those I want to impress?
    4. 

  4. Agency - can it make me feel like I can make a choice that matters?
    5. 



C++ had all four for me when I was in high school, and I don’t see that changing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
#”We’re coming for your children.”


The LGBTQ+ movement kicked out NAMBLA, genuine pederasts, in the 80’s in order to get sodomy laws aimed at consenting adults off the books. The American anti-pedophilia majority took a generation to accept this disavowal at face value.


The Pizzagate section of the Q or QAnon movement revived the bailey that gay people generally want to rape children to cultural relevance, and did so around the time the trans rights movement was pushing acceptance of transition. The motte version is that the gay community reproduces through social memetic contagion since they won’t reproduce sexually. One potent variation is the ironic and practically self-parodying “trans genocide” meme


The drag queen story hour program made the idea scarily realistic even to parents who didn’t subscribe to any of that conspiracy theory nonsense. And now there’s a new twist.


As chronicled by NBC News:




In the 21-second clip, circulated by a right-wing web streamer channel, dozens of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping.” But one voice that is louder than the crowd — it’s not clear whose, or whether the speaker was a member of the LGBTQ community — is heard saying at least twice, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”


To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is “grooming” children.


But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year.


Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like “Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing “God is a lesbian.”


“It’s all just words,” Griffin said. “It’s all presented to fulfill their worst stereotypes of us.”


The “coming for your children” chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping on a single video to weaponize an out-of-context remark to further stigmatize the queer community.


Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for LGBTQ rights as “groomers,” associating people who oppose laws that restrict drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles. The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context.


“It’s really scary to us,” said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who was at this year’s march and declined to give their real name because of safety concerns. “It doesn’t represent everybody — it represents that individual. I thought it was a dumb idea, and I started chanting on top of it with alternate verses.”




This seems to be equivalent to the Charlottesville “White Rights” event where “Jews will not replace us” was supposedly chanted. The outgroup only hears “WE ARE A THREAT TO EVERYONE YOU LOVE AND EVERYTHING YOU HOLD SACRED,” while the ingroup appreciates the nuance and gets a bit freaked out at the outgroup seeing only the surface level interpretation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nowadays, Trump could probably murder someone on live TV and a majority of the Republican voters would say he didn't do it.




If I saw that, my first thought would be that I’m watching an AI-generated deepfake that was put together ahead of time and the fact that it’s “live TV” was a lie.


My second would be, “Did that person deserve it?”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fixed.


I’m curious on that point. Would jail be mandatory if Clarence Thomas or Kamala Harris were subpoenaed, and refused on separation of powers grounds? If so, that’s a huge way for one branch to wreck another.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 24, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve given a basic outline in a reply to my OP. It’s the philosophy she believed western enlightenment thought was based on, before she discovered Kantianism had infected America like the USSR.