@DuplexFields's banner p

DuplexFields

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

0 followers   follows 1 user  
joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
Bronze Recruiter 

				
User ID: 460


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
DuplexFields


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


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

				
				
				

				

					0 followers  

					follows 1 user  

					joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 460


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
							
								Bronze Recruiter
							
						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					Month
					Year
					
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Bottom New Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Right before New Atheism turned into Woke New Atheism, a man came into our church on a Sunday morning, wearing a Flying Spaghetti Monster T-shirt, pretending to be a seeker Just Asking Questions.


I made sure to try to make friends with him right away, because I was familiar with the FSM. Well, after a week or two of attendance, he started trying to debate Sunday school teachers, and even the pastor, during classes and services. The pastor asked him to leave the building, and he said, “Why are you asking me to leave? I’m just asking questions. You should be able to give me answers, or your faith and scholarship mean nothing.” He left under threat of being charged with trespass.


I asked him if he wanted to meet after church somewhere. We chose a nearby café and had a fascinating conversation. He had been a Christian, or rather, he had been raised as a Christian. At one point, he took the “atheist challenge,” which was to not pray or think about God for six months. After that, he was an atheist. (


He started meeting one on one with members of our congregation, trying to convince them individually that God does not exist, Jesus does not save, and the Holy Spirit cannot move you to acts of kindness and generosity. His goal was memocide, to strip away our congregants’ faith.


Our pastor had to do some research and consult our lawyer in order to find a way to not only bar him from the premises, but to keep him from meeting with congregants off-premises. That was when we had to institute a an actual membership roll, so everyone who considers themselves a member of our church could be listed, and referred to as a body legally. During their legal research, that was also when we found out he is the head of the largest atheist activist group in this part of New Mexico.


There’s a difference between trying to convince people they are wrong because you love them and want the best for them, and trying to convince people they are wrong because you want to break their relationship with someone or some group who has hurt you. The first is kindness, the second is literally what Satan did to Eve.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Albuquerque is a 20 minute city. That is, by a mix of residential roads, boulevards, Interstates, and state highways, you can drive from almost any spot in Albuquerque to another in twenty minutes or less. It is a sprawling 470 sq km, or 180 square miles, roughly a circle 15 miles wide.


Each square half-mile (four of them in a square mile, for clarity) is bounded by a boulevard zoned for business, and in-filled with residential developments of 1-2 stories. It is a suburb of nowhere, a vast and legible city of car drivers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But let’s not kid ourselves here




… A statement which is rarely followed by good faith characterizations or steelman arguments.


Here’s who I’ve seen in my right-wing spaces


    

  1. 

    Some “might makes right” folks cheering their outgroup being silenced and anticipating helicopter rides.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Some “stand on principles of liberty” people asking, confused, why someone in their free-speech principles ingroup would apparently go against his stated principles, then seeing the suspended lefty journos posted links to Elon’s family’s locations in realtime followed by someone in black bloc getting on the hood of his kid’s car, and saying, “well that explains it.”
    

    3. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The trick isn’t saying a European country should look like one, the trick is implying the cleanness of the country is due to the whiteness of its residents.


Arguments on The Motte shouldn’t be bundled to the point where coherent discussion of the OP of a thread requires agreement with smuggled premises. That way lies the chaos and LARPing of 4chan/pol/.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Counterpoint:


The shift to women creators and LGBTQ+ lead actors might be coinciding with a dismaying shift from GenX to Millennial entertainment production. My favorite hobby-horse, MLPFiM, was created by a woman several years my senior, Lauren Faust, and it has a GenX worldview behind it, contrasted with the Millennial storytelling of its biggest contemporaries, Adventure Time and Steven Universe. Those are shows which delight in subverting the Hero’s Journey, and also pioneered the wide acceptance of the “bean-mouth” rubber-hose stylized animation trend.


Consider also the Cobra Kai series which leaped from YouTube to Netflix. It has been a tremendous accomplishment because it takes its farce seriously and yet doesn’t skimp on powerful character development. Film schools should be studying this phenomenon for the next decade. The creators were born in 1977 and 1978.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
War was painted as glorious and honorable so that men would actually be willing to pay with their lives. The moment the cameras and journalists get onto the battlefield, the less glamorous and noble it all seems.


One problem with the culture war is that the “soldiers” look back from the battlefield and, instead of seeing the opera houses of Vienna or the palaces of Versailles, they instead see the hovels and ghettos and wonder why exactly they are fighting in the first place.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s the Matrix 3 effect, in my opinion. Matrix 1 was a modernist film about postmodernism, which is why it won big. Matrix 2 was a deconstruction of Matrix 1, and upped the ante on ideas, spectacle, and CGI, but focused on deglamorizing the lives of revolutionaries. Matrix 3 went full postmodern, with a “who do we root for?” ending which was barely explained despite its double big sacrifice.


Matrix 1 and Last Crusade are both practically perfect movies, Matrix 2 and Crystal Skull are both CG heavy cash-ins, and I believe I’ll feel the same way after watching Dial of Destiny the way I felt after Matrix 3.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think it's more of a stretch to claim there's no norm against calling for a foreign entity to help you win the election.




That was a joke. That was always an obvious joke. Vox even had an article saying it was only a joke in poor taste, and not a serious request, which was memory-holed two or three years later when the first impeachment began.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why not put your diversity where it won't hurt your bottom line?




That would be tokenism, by their calculus. Tokenism is meant to get the first foot in the door in anticipation of forcing their way in, not to be permanently wedged in the door.


Most of Disney’s “first ever canon gays” have been designed explicitly to be able to be cut from foreign editions where theaters risk violence for showing homosexuality. That’s now as offensive as no representation at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It is not Hitler who benefits; he earned his own death ten million times over, and delivered it with his own hand.


The benefit of forgiveness is to the person who still hates, and thus is ever watchful for a similar fight. Living hatred of the dead makes “conflict theory” inevitable, and peace impossible.


Think of Magneto in X-Men: First Class. He hunts Nazis as a righteous path of vengeance, but once the actual Nazis are gone, he looks for those with a Nazi spirit of ethnic hatred, and he ethnic-hates them right back. Meanwhile Professor X seeks to make peace with all who are still willing to talk, while fighting only those who refuse to.


Or think of the Jedi. The way of the Jedi is misunderstood by a lot of fans, because they don’t know the deeper Buddhist philosophy it is based on. It is not the things which come into our life which bind us, but our attachments, those things we refuse to let go of.




A man asked the market’s monkey-seller how he caught all those monkeys. The monkey-seller said the monkeys catch themselves. All he had to do was put a monkey snack in a jar tightly tied to a tree. The monkey smells the snack and reaches into the jar, grasps the snack, and tries to pull it out. But the neck of the jar, while big enough for a monkey’s hand, is smaller than its fist. He can walk up and collar the monkey without chasing it.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Waffle House fight was memeable because of the almost magical, eye-bending way the employee deflected the thrown chair.




When the entire network works together to suppress facts, they generally succeed. But twitter can change that.




That entire network has an immune system. Twitter gets derided as a Nazi clubhouse because they’re the only big, famous public square outside of 4chan allowing reporting on ethnic crimes against whites.


The more it happens, the worse it’ll get, until subcontractors like Cloudflare or Visa decide they’ve had enough and cancel Twitter. 44 billion dollars, and Elon has disabled one organ of state news control, entrenched the others, and allowed Twitter to become 4chan-lite in public perception.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Here’s a history of the economics of the first Thanksgiving, by the late, great Rush Limbaugh. The original commune contract collapsed, and they chose an ownership economy, which prospered. But this was not a part of the mainstream American mythos of Thanksgiving Boomers and GenX grew up with, so it wasn’t one of the reasons left-aligned Americans grew to despise it.


The first time I remember Thanksgiving publicly mocked was the Addams Family Values camp scene. It’s the classic Blue Tribe borrowing the virtue of the victimized far group and insisting their outgroup, the WASPs at the time, are forever stained by the blood of genocide, so let’s mock the ignorant WASPs in the most transgressive and shocking way possible. That’s probably the most lasting public depiction of critical theory’s revision of American mythos, because it’s a hell of a meme. It was my first glimpse of the culture war. (I might even call it an act of memetic ethnogenesis, given how different the signifiers of the two tribes were back then.)


My grandmother traced our family history back to four of the Pilgrims, and also one of their white indentured servants. This is my family’s holiday. I invite you all to enjoy the bounty and come together as a community to celebrate with turkey and maize, with potatoes and ham, with apple or pumpkin or cranberry pie and be thankful for making it through this past decade of chaos alive and able to appreciate providence, natural and/or divine.


Have a happy Thanksgiving!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Part of the problem is that the mods are commentators, people who desperately, really, truly want to get into the depths of discussion, but also have to run the joint as fairly as possible.


I don’t have time during the day to do moderation. I suspect that’s true of a lot of people here. so, maybe, we need to locate more even-minded people and get them a janitor suit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Since time immemorial, humans have lived in family groups based on ancestry, and the governance of children has been left to their parents and relatives, and peripheral adults authorized by those family members.


One could say that the household has been the smallest recognizable unit of government. I certainly see it this way. I also think any attempt to shift from this ancient, traditional, instinctual, natural form of governance will yield moral horrors beyond belief.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Psychology is overrated.
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’d put it as “alchemy”: we’ve learned a lot, but it’s all mixed in with all the things we think we’ve learned.


And then there are the CIA, major corporation marketing departments, and freemium game developers, which really do have things figured out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, from a steelman perspective, murderous ghouls like Kermit Gosnell who actively seek to kill children are few and far between. Most abortionists, along with the institutions and politicians who enable them and the mothers-not-to-be who avail themselves of their services, honestly don’t think they’re killing people. They’re simply being consistent when they legally categorize the tiny bodies as “medical waste” instead of “corpses” and threat them as a commodity.


Obviously, anyone who does believe fetuses are people look at Big Abortion with some mix of shock, horror, disgust, and righteous anger. The 65-year-old GOP supporter who OP met is fighting a cultural monolith on multiple fronts and she feels overwhelmed, and she probably has no experience fighting The Man.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve seen it. The first half felt, I kid you not, just like watching the local college women’s basketball team.


My family loves the Lobos of the University of New Mexico. I’ve gone to many games at The Pit, our basketball arena, and watched both men and women play. With the men, it’s about the almost martial precision as they dribble, shoot, pass, and execute plays. With the women, it’s about watching them put in the effort and the emotion, feeling their drama as they play.


The Marvels is a superheroine movie, a different beast than its spear counterparts. The emotions are more important than the scenarios; issues of identity, status, duty, wants and fears are what matter. Kamala is a teenager worried about her family, Carol is an unaging guilt-ridden mess, and Monica is an orphaned grownup working through her grief. Their punches and zaps don’t hit as hard, though that may be the directors’ fault. They want to convince, not to fight, but their appeals aren’t to logic, they’re pleas of emotion.


They’re, quite simply, beta Avengers in a made-for-TV movie trying to be postmodern and flailing back into modernity for money shots.


It’s worth sitting through the first half to get to the second half. Ironically, it’s when they get to the Bollywood planet that things come together. Once that fight finishes, however, the movie seems to delight in swapping them into other scenarios where their swift action is necessary, making the point that women’s lives are all about multitasking. Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury stuck in Earth orbit but available by ear comms makes the whole thing Charlie’s Avengers.


(Culture war angle: the villain looks uncannily like VP Kamala Harris.)


All in all, I watched it for the Marvel continuity, and enjoyed it, but I was moved more by the movie I watched directly afterward: Five Nights At Freddy’s.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Problem of The Problem Of Susan
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can if, like in dream experiences, the magic in play means you can lead an entirely different life and yet return in an instant to the body and brain you left. Her middle-schooler’s brain was literally not developed enough to retain all that it had absorbed and adapted to in the other realm. The forgetting would have started nearly immediately as the nerves unbranched.


In addition, they’d lived decades there and practically forgotten the England they’d come from! They were fully assimilated into Narnian life. But in the text, they dropped it all in an instant, remembering about the houseguests touring the Professor’s estate. From the final two pages of LWW:




Then said King Edmund,


“I know not how it is, but this lamp on the post worketh upon me strangely. It runs in my mind that I have seen the like before; as it were in a dream, or in the dream of a dream.”


“Sir,” answered they all, “it is even so with us also.”


“And more,” said Queen Lucy, “for it will not go out of my mind that if we pass this post and lantern either we shall find strange adventures or else some great change of our fortunes.”


“Madam,” said King Edmund, “the like foreboding stirreth in my heart also.”


“And in mine, fair brother,” said King Peter.


“And in mine too,” said Queen Susan. “Wherefore by my counsel we shall lightly return to our horses and follow this White Stag no further.” “Madam,” said King Peter, “therein I pray thee to have me excused. For never since we four were Kings and Queens in Narnia have we set our hands to any high matter, as battles, quests, feats of arms, acts of justice, and the like, and then given over; but always what we have


taken in hand, the same we have achieved.”


“Sister,” said Queen Lucy, “my royal brother speaks rightly. And it


seems to me we should be shamed if for any fearing or foreboding we turned back from following so noble a beast as now we have in chase.”


“And so say I,” said King Edmund. “And I have such desire to find the signification of this thing that I would not by my good will turn back for the richest jewel in all Narnia and all the islands.”


“Then in the name of Aslan,” said Queen Susan, “if ye will all have it so, let us go on and take the adventure that shall fall to us.”


So these Kings and Queens entered the thicket, and before they had gone a score of paces they all remembered that the thing they had seen was called a lamppost, and before they had gone twenty more they noticed that they were. making their way not through branches but through coats. And next moment they all came tumbling out of a wardrobe door into the empty room, and They were no longer Kings and Queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in their old clothes. It was the same day and the same hour of the day on which they had all gone into the wardrobe to hide. Mrs Macready and the visitors were still talking in the passage; but luckily they never came into the empty room and so the children weren’t caught.


And that would have been the very end of the story if it hadn’t been that they felt they really must explain to the Professor why four of the coats out of his wardrobe were missing. And the Professor, who was a very remarkable man, didn’t tell them not to be silly or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Bailey Podcast E031: We Say Gay
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A fascinating episode, and worth listening to. It taught me much. Thank you all for your honesty; I understand my dead uncle, a bisexual creative more at home in bustling New York than in quaint Albuquerque, a lot better now. (He died of AIDS in the 80’s.)


Regarding the ideas surrounding “conversion therapy” and “born this way” in general, not specifically gayness or sexuality:


I’ve successfully used the Fourth Step (of the famous Twelve Step recovery method) to process and resolve a great number of my hurts, habits, and hang-ups. It is the only successful method I’ve found for editing my own subconscious, and it has allowed me to eliminate many of my self-destructive and otherwise unwanted behaviors in my pursuit of being a better me.


Having seen how malleable my own psyche is, and how changeable my understanding of myself is from epiphany to epiphany, I find myself frustrated at people who don’t even try to resolve their own shit before it hurts other people. I believe “born this way” in general is a lie our emotions tell us to cope with not having a theory of mind which can describe where emotions come from or how they function.


Emotions are the least consistent part of man, and the most removed from reality of all man’s components. All emotions (pathological or not, positive or not) insist they are eternal and uncreated, true and perfectly valid, up until the very moment they’re resolved and burst like a bubble, with little left to show they were ever there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for January 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Whale, the most important men’s health movie you haven’t seen yet


The Whale is a 2022 drama film written by Samuel D. Hunter, based on his play of the same title, and directed by Darren Aronofsky. The story follows Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a reclusive writing teacher attempting to reconnect with his daughter Ellie.


I bought a ticket to The Whale last night because I want Fraser’s career to flourish. He had some rough years there because of sexual assault by a powerful man in Hollywood. He’s doing better emotionally, and has starred in a three-season remake of Six Days of the Condor and four seasons of DC’s Doom Patrol.


This film is, quite simply, powerful. The characters are all fully fleshed out by the ending, the relationships are realistically dramatic and fraught, and the situations are terrifyingly common.


But why am I posting this here instead of the CW thread (for the missionary character) or the Friday Fun thread (for being a film recommendation)? It’s the best damn movie about codependency ever.


Fraser’s Charlie is a morbidly obese food addict awash with guilt, despair, and self-delusion. His life is one of the most pathetic ever put to film, chronicled in excruciatingly ugly detail. Everyone in his orbit is affected by his immobility and his sorrow for his lost lover. They are in his life because everyone in this film is codependent, unable to form relationships in which neither person is trying to save the other.


At first it feels exploitative, because you know people actually live like this: growing so fat they can never leave their home without assistance, compulsively eating, slowly dying of heart problems, while those who love them wish somehow something could be different but don’t know how to change anything. It becomes moving, but just when you get sympathy for one of the characters, they do something ugly.


I watched this the very day I bought a YMCA gym membership, and it hasn’t been out of my mind for more than a few minutes.


I too have gained more weight than I wanted, because of what I can now call food addiction. I’ve been in recovery from codependency for ten years this March, and I’m grateful I can say I’m healthier than I’ve ever been emotionally. I’ve attended a couple of overeaters meetings and applied the lessons I learned from the codependency group; at this last one, something changed deeply, and I feel free, finally, of what drove me to food, in addition to what drove me to make bad friends.


The name codependency comes from a common pattern of behavior: when one person in a relationship is an addict, the other tries to rescue them, to save them from themselves. The addict is substance dependent; the partner is co-dependent.


Over the years, the definition has been expanded to include compulsive behavior and thought patterns of low self-esteem, control/manipulation, avoidance, denial of reality, and abnormal compliance. Co-Dependents Anonymous, a twelve-step goup, has compiled a four-page list of codependent tendencies and choices (PDF link) that everyone owes it to themselves to read at least once.


The lesson I get out of the film is that I can’t save anyone from themselves, I can’t save anyone who isn’t pulling their own weight in seeking help, and I can’t save people while getting something from the relationship.


And I can’t keep eating like I have or bad things will happen to me. Getting a genuine plan is my only sane option.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you for this very clear listing of recent political history most important to Millennials. I’ve nominated it as a high-quality contribution.


I perceive this as being written through the lens of the centrist/media worldview, and it is valuable to me in learning just how much history is written by those who’ve got power, and how culturally pervasive their opinions are.


As a “xennial cusper,” I came into political awareness in high school with the Rush Limbaugh TV show, the leader of the culture war for 35 years and the grandfather of the Trump movement. From the start, I was taught to keep my eyes peeled for fake news pushed by coastal liberals as fact, from the Clinton aspirin factory “wag the dog” to the Trump Russian kompromat dossier.


It would be a whole day’s work for me to list the alternate conservative/libertarian history of your post, but I don’t believe there’s a market here for such posts.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories are shaking things up again, this time regarding the blood supply. An alternate blood donation infrastructure is growing. (If you don’t want to read the vaccine-skeptical take from TGP, here’s the Vice article on SafeBlood Donation they were reporting on.)


This comes after the release of the Suddenly Died documentary blaming the vaccine for the surge in heart attacks, including really odd blood clots.


I have given blood for twenty years and do not plan to stop. I don’t give through the Red Cross but rather through Vitalent, formerly United Blood Services. I am not vaccinated for COVID-19, and will continue to vehemently, vociferously, and assiduously avoid those injections, on both medical and religious grounds (though my reasoning is different than one might expect). I don’t plan to switch my donations to SafeBlood unless they can assure me it won’t be wasted, by my definitions of wasted.


All of this may seem to be a fascinating new front in the Culture War, but it’s actually an attempt to recapture territory: the denial of organ transplants to COVID-vaccine refusers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What I don't get is why Reds aren't better at punishing blue dominated industries when they get power




The red public ethos is a grounded and comprehensive peace, not radicalism, extremism, punishment, or other forms of veiled civil war.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic is singlehoofedly responsible for:


    

  1. Reducing my depression to manageable levels which a support group managed to finish off
    2. 

  2. Giving me enough confidence to get my degree
    3. 

  3. Reigniting my passion for writing
    4. 

  4. Teaching me about healthy relationships in a theoretical and logical enough way to break through my autism and show me what everyone had claimed was so profound all my life which I couldn’t see before, to the point people are now generally shocked when I say I have autism and I mostly don’t feel I have it anymore
    5. 

  5. Showing me how journalism really works, and why never to trust a journalist
    6. 

  6. Rescuing a long-time family friendship I accidentally almost broke
    7. 

  7. Getting me the third best job I’ve ever had
    8. 

  8. Revealing a piece of theology which is sorely underserved, the true meaning of shalom
    9. 



I would be a completely different person today if I hadn’t seen the first episode I ever saw, S1E4, at that exact moment in my life.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
People who don’t believe in any religious cosmology want religions to have the legibility of apartments: each religion has identical features even if they’re decorated differently.


(To be fair, when I was growing up Christian, I heard all non-Abrahamic religions legibly classed as “pagan”.)