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Esperanza


				

				

				

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Esperanza


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2023 January 20 01:02:14 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Alternatively, an actress who refuses the casting couch does not really want the role, and will be trouble on set.  The casting couch is a quick and reliable way to see if actresses are biddable.  Can you think of a better test to see if an actress is willing to do what the director asks her to?


I wonder what the corresponding task you should set a man is?  Perhaps very similar.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Those terms are meta-exclusionary.  They only exclude people who try to exclude others.  This is reminiscent of Popper's intolerance of intolerance.


I expect you can come up with new examples that are not meta in this way, but of course, offhand, I cannot.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This makes me question claims that homosexuality was widespread in ancient Greece and Rome.




I question it too, but the evidence seems pretty strong.  In Rome, it was definitely socially normal to have penetrative gay sex with young boys.  That suggests that their society was very different from ours and perhaps suggests that we have a lot further we could go in that direction.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You can't conclude much about unwillingness to do other things, which includes simulating sex, based on unwillingness to sleep her way into the job.




Girls who are willing to sleep with people for roles are usually willing to simulate sex on screen.  At least, that is what I am told.  To be honest, I find the idea that there would be a strong correlation between the two things plausible.  They both involve sex.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Weinstein was the co-owner (with his brother) and founder of Miramax, the production company that made  Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Pulp Fiction, Heavenly Creatures, Flirting with Disaster, and Shakespeare in Love. It was his money on the line.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


One problem with suburbs is that they don't generate that much economic/tax revenue to support their infrastructure




That can be solved by raising property taxes.  In California, prop 13 makes this difficult, as the old rich people are grandfathered in (or whatever the new term is supposed to be).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is a difference between the Waters Of The United States and the navigable waters.  The navigable ones are the ones that can be used for interstate commerce, and the ones connected are the WOTUS.  "a relatively permanent body of water connected to traditional interstate navigable waters);"


The court did not claim that wetlands were navigable, just that the clean water act applied to them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Let's say the ultra-elite in the US is something like 10,000 families. That's accounting for the roughly 700 billionaires, a larger number of 9-digit millionaires, some political elites, some cultural elites, and a few odds and ends. If 1/4 of those have a kid in college at any given time, that's say roughly 2500 ultra-elite students in college at any moment.




3% of Harvard are from the 0.1 percentile.  That is 50 kids per grade. The threshold to get into the top 0.1% by income is supposedly $1.6M.  These people are not rich or elite in a meaningful way.  The top 0.01% have a threshold income of $7.5M, and these are comfortably well off.  There are about 16k of these families. One thing worth remembering is that almost all very rich people are very, very old, so their grandkids are the ones going to college, not their kids. If there are 50 kids from the 0.1% then there are perhaps 5 to 10 from the 0.01 percentile, the people you would consider elite.


From personal experience, there are about that many actually rich American kids at these colleges, and perhaps the same number, or more, of rich foreign kids.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Also casual sex tends to be a mediocre experience for women




How do you compare the experience of the two sexes.  Tiresias at least experienced both conditions and voted conclusively for being a women, though it cost him his sight. "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only."


I wonder which trans people prefer.  Are there cases where transwomen feel that they have lost out in switching teams?  Similarly, do trans men feel they are on to a good thing?  My guess is that this effect is swamped by other issues.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Producers are the usual people to run a casting couch, and they normally own a large part of the production company.


The casting couch was more common under the studio system, but I do not know if the movie moguls were the ones on top at the time: They were Louis B. Mayer at MGM, Jack L. Warner at Warner Bros., Adolph Zukor at Paramount, William Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck (at 20th Century Fox from 1935), Carl Laemmle at Universal, and Harry Cohn at Columbia.


If someone has to have sex with the new young starlets, I imagine the job, like most difficult things, is past off to the guy in charge. If you want something done, ask a busy person.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


a professional from the pornographic industry




Why is Weinstein not a professional at this? Allegedly he has been doing it for years.  He is like the Robert Parker of actresses.  Parker's big advantage in wine tasting was that he had tasted all these allegedly fabulous vintages that are no longer available.  Who but Weinstein could compare the charms of actresses across the decades.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Since the casting couch is by its nature implicit rather than explicit, there's never any guarantee that satisfying the guy's demands will get the desired outcome.




It is common to pay people for attempts rather than for successes, as the former is more under their control.  I can't see why it is wrong to pay an agent money to promote your book, even if the agent might not get you a book deal.  I don't think you can claim book agents and Harvey Weinstein are wrong for the same reason.  The same applies to most agents, sports included.




"Must perform sex acts on producer"




The requirement is that the actress must be able to plausibly fake being interested in having sex with Weinstein et al.  That requires real talent and is an actual test of acting.  Allegedly, most Hollywood actresses meet this bar.




Even when it does happen, there's rarely any explicit demand for sex;




Do you know this?  My sources claim that people are very explicit about expectations.  Actresses have agents who set these meetings up, and they explain in great detail, what is expected.  For every John, there is a pimp.


Luckily all this will be made moot by AI.  No-one, and I mean no-one, is going to ask the AI developer for sex, (except the sexbot that AI developer him(or her)self made).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The oppression was done by loyalists, but the specific atrocities, Balymurphy and Bloody Sunday, were done by the British Army and the Parachute Regiment in particular.  Operation Demetrius, when 2000 men were interned, was a British Army operation, so is definitely the fault of Westminster.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


did someone try breeding taller zebras, and failed even at that?




You can buy zebra semen, and the seller suggests that the stallion has qualities that are worth passing on:




Rarity is my 2004 Grant Zebra Stallion.  Rarity has perfect big bold striping and very correct conformation.  Rarity has a very rare temperament for a zebra stallion and is quiet with a sweet disposition.  These are great qualities to pass onto his foals, making him the perfect stud for hybrid crossing.




They also control who gets to be bred:




Anyone who is interested in breeding both owner and mare must be approved first.  I do NOT let just anyone breed to him.




They claim the stallion is particularly tame and that his temperament is hereditary.




This is the reason why we decided to breed with him, to create foals that also have his outstanding temperament. All our mares/jennies that we use for breeding to him have all been carefully chosen. They all have good temperaments and trainable minds.




All the people involved in horses are amazingly focused on the lineage of horses. This passes to zebra breeding, and people really care about which animal breeds with which, as they all believe fervently in selecting for traits.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The recent huge increase in the percentage of people who are LGBT suggests that at least bisexuality is a choice for 1 in 5 women.  The number of gays is up 4x, and lesbians 11x since the silent generation.


The new narrative is that orientation is a spectrum.  Perhaps this is true.  Male homosexual acts were commonplace in Ancient Greece and Rome and I think this suggests that at least 50% of men would engage in homosexual acts if it were fully normalized.  This seems very high bit I can't explain the ancient world without people being quite flexible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Black and white are broad groupings of different peoples and histories.




In general, this is the case, and Black people, encompassing San, Pygmies, Bushmen, Ethiopians and West Africans are extremely genetically diverse.  Two bushmen are further apart genetically than the average Asian is from a European.  That said, when people talk about Black people in this context they generally mean the descendants of West African slaves which are a fairly homogenous group.


White people generally mean Anglo Germans, which again are a fairly tight group.  When people point to a difference, they mean the difference between these two groups.


There is very little discussion of HBD here anymore, and I paid little attention when there was discussion.  What I  did take away from it was that the people involved had extensive theories, and had put in a lot of work.


I do not particularly believe in HBD, mostly because I live in an environment that is very selected so every one of every race seems very similar.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If post-op trans women prefer sex as a woman rather than a man, then I would consider this strong evidence that the woman's role is more enjoyable.


I agree that the sexual experience is probably very different, but my sense is that it would be better for natal women than trans women.


Similarly, if post-op trans men enjoy sex more as men, then that would be evidence the other way.  Here are a bunch of transmen talking about sex.   They seem hornier and more comfortable, but none claim that the sex is better.  In contrast, a plurality of transwomen seem to enjoy sex post-op more.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


real book agents do not charge you money to promote your book.




I would like to think this was true, and I am sure that reputable agents do not charge money, but I imagine there are a lot of disreputable agents out there.


In a similar vein, never give equity (or god forbid, cash) to someone who claims they will help you fundraise.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Parkinson suggested the following test to reduce the number of candidates for an attractive position:




Let us suppose that the qualities deemed essential are (i) Energy, (2) Courage, (3) Patriotism, (4) Experience, (5 )Popularity, and (6) Eloquence. Now, it will be observed that all these are general-qualities which all possible applicants would believe themselves to possess. The field could readily, of course, be narrowed by stipulating (4) Experience of lion-taming, or (6) Eloquence in Mandarin. But that is not the way in which we want to narrow the field. We do not want to stipulate aquality in a special form; rather, each quality in an exceptional degree. In other words, the successful candidate must be the most energetic,courageous, patriotic, experienced, popular, and eloquent man in thecountry. Only one man can answer to that description and his is the only application we want. The terms of the appointment must thus be phrased so as to exclude everyone else. We should therefore word the advertisement in some such way as follows:






Wanted– Prime Minister of Ruritania. Hours of work: 4 A.M. to 11.59 P.M. Candidates must be prepared to fight three rounds with the current heavyweight champion (regulation gloves to be worn). Candidates will die for their country, by painless means, on reaching the age of retirement (65). They will have to pass an examination in parliamentary procedure and will be liquidated should they fail to obtain 95% marks. They will also be liquidated if they fail to gain 75% votes in a popularity poll held under the Gallup Rules. They will finally be invited to try their eloquence on a Baptist Congress, the object being to induce those present to rock and roll. Those who fail will be liquidated. All candidates should present themselves at the Sporting Club (side entrance) at 11.15 A.M. on the morning of September 19. Gloves will be provided, but they should bring their own rubber-soled shoes, singlet, and shorts.




It is very hard to find a test that will distinguish the people who want the job from the people who really, really want the job.  For an actress, the major issues that come up are a willingness to get naked on camera and pretending to engage in quite atypical actions (for some reason, this seems to be the sticking point for most actresses.  They object to nude scenes, but not to killing people, defacing works of art, or jaywalking). How can you test if an actress is willing to do this?  Some things come to mind but are significantly weirder than the casting couch.


Feminists will doubtless suggest that movies should not have gratuitous nudity.  That raises the question as to whether the nudity is gratuitous or not.  My guess is that Gwyneth Palthow's performance in Shakespeare in Love would have been received differently if she had worn more clothing, and thus Weinstein got the job done.  Julia Roberts, who was supposed to get the role had a policy of keeping her top on. I could be completely wrong about this, but there certainly is a trend for more female nudity after a lull.  We are now back to 70s-era levels of nudity in films, and especially in cable channels (or whatever they are called now), and possibly beyond that.  Hollywood could be wrong, and perhaps more people would watch movies if there was less nudity, but "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."  The same perhaps applies to morals.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Did they do everything but have sex, the Mormon way, or were they actually chaste?




Oral sex was practiced by those in the know, perhaps less than 5%, but the complete lack of sex education meant that most people learned about the mechanics of sex from farmers' kids.  Farmers understand a lot about breeding but are focussed almost entirely on cattle in Ireland, and the insights do not transfer quite as easily as you might think.


I would guess that most girls did not understand the basic physics of sex when they graduated high school.  I have witnessed people explaining to young grooms what was expected on their wedding night.  It is possible that boys were even less adroit, but they at least knew about erections.


The girls were chaste for the most part out of fear.  The guys were chaste out of a complete lack of options and strangely, religious reasons.  John B. Keane has a play, the Chastitute, written in 1981, that captured the zeitgeist well:




'A Chastitute is a person without holy orders who has never lain down with a woman . . . rustic celibate by force of circumstance.' John Bosco, who 'hasn't the makings of a dacent sin in him', is a chastitute, a bachelor farmer and all he is searching for is a plain decent woman to share his life. He nearly got there a thousand times but nearly never bulled a cow'. This play tells of his many endeavours to find a mate and the end result.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But her legal point rests on an empirical claim, which is that almost everyone would consider the actions of the hypothetical babysitter to be unreasonable. And that empirical claim is called into question by the survey mentioned in the article.




I think her legal point is that there are circumstances where actions are unreasonable.  The fact that her example is one that people disagree on does not establish that the argument generally fails.


Consider the following:  My son asks if he can use my credit card to go to a ball game.  I say yes.  He asks can be by someone a drink if he meets someone special. I say yes.  He buys not just everyone in the stadium a drink, but everyone in every baseball stadium, and sets up a system whereby all future drinks are paid for on my dime, indefinitely.  I think this is unreasonable, and I doubt that more than 15% of people would consider his actions reasonable. Ok, maybe 20% of people would be ok with this.


Is this example more analogous to paying off everyone's student loan debt?  I don't know, but I do know that there are unreasonable uses of permission.


I think the best metric is possibly that spending an order of magnitude (or possibly two orders, and definitely three) higher than intended is probably suspect.  A babysitter who chartered a plane to Disneyland is probably unreasonable. One that hires Justin Bieber to sing the kids to sleep is even more unreasonable (I actually know someone who had Bieber sing their kids to sleep. Beiber did it for free as a favor.)  The point of the example is that there are expenditures that are so much larger than the expected amounts that they require explicit permission.


I am not sure what the intended amount of loan forgiveness was in the bill in question.  If the permission was expected to be applied on an individual case basis, then blanket forgiveness is perhaps 10 million times more expensive than was intended.  This is close to buying everyone in every stadium a beer.


If the bill was intended to allow the forgiveness of 100k people (all active duty servicemen), then stretching it to less than 1 million is probably not objectively unreasonable, as it is within an order of magnitude.  This is analogous to my son meeting up to ten girls and buying them drinks.  This is excessive but not unreasonably so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Perhaps I could have phrased this a little better.  The point is that people who earn $2M a year are by no means "the elite."  By the time you are in the 0.01% you are probably at least on first-name terms with a lot of actually elite people.


The modal person with an income of $2M probably owns some car dealerships.  This might make him a big shot in his town, but it does not make him elite.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nationalism is a very specific concept: It is that every "nation" has a right to its own state.




This seems to be older than 150 years to me.  "A Nation Once Again", the Irish song, is 170 years old.  Parnell's "No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country—thus far shalt thou go and no further." refers to Ireland losing its parliament in 1800.  Was O'Connell a nationalist when he said "“No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation's heart and leaves to Ireland, not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream.”


After the war of independence in 1921, Ireland demanded "a self-governing Ireland with restitution of confiscated lands and churches, freedom of movement, and a strong Roman Catholic identity" exactly the same terms that O'Neill had asked for in November 1599.   Few doubt that De Valera was a Nationalist.  Why wasn't O'Neill one, given that he asked for identical terms?


Wikipedia writes:




Generally, Irish nationalism is regarded as having emerged following the Renaissance revival of the concept of the patria and the religious struggle between the ideology of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.




This seems late to me, and 1169 is a more natural date, if not 1014, or earlier.


In the Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib (The War of the Irish with the Foreigners), which described the Battle of Clontarf the Irish were described as: brave, valiant champions; soldierly, active, nimble, bold, full of courage, quick, doing great deeds, pompous, beautiful, aggressive, hot, strong, swelling, bright, fresh, never weary, terrible, valiant, victorious heroes and chieftains, and champions, and brave soldiers, the men of high deeds, and honour, and renown of Erinn.


The foreigners as: the shouting, hateful, powerful, wrestling, valiant, active, fierce-moving, dangerous, nimble, violent, furious, unscrupulous, untamable, inexorable, unsteady, cruel, barbarous, frightful, sharp, ready, huge, prepared, cunning, warlike, poisonous, murderous, hostile Danars; bold, hard-hearted Danmarkians, surly, piratical foreigners, blue-green, pagan; without reverence, without veneration, without honour, without mercy, for God or for man.


Little has changed, and the foreigners still have blue-green hair.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IQ is gender normed, but that does not mean there are no differences between men and women on specific subtasks.  I know it is illegal to have certain tests for jobs unless they are needed for the role, as otherwise, it is too easy to discriminate against women.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The officer, Nolan, who relayed the wrong order at the Charge of the Light Brigade, or at the very least, was unclear, was killed in the action, so escaped a court-martial.




The order was drafted by Brigadier Richard Airey and carried by Captain Louis Nolan. Nolan carried the further oral instruction that the cavalry was to attack immediately.[2] When Lucan asked what guns were referred to, Nolan is said to have indicated, with a wide sweep of his arm, the mass of Russian guns in a redoubt at the end of the valley, around a mile away.[3] His reasons for the misdirection are unknown because he was killed in the ensuing battle.




Similarly, at Salamis, Xerces's brother was killed in early action.




On the Greek left, the Persian admiral Ariabignes (a brother of Xerxes) was killed early in the battle; left disorganised and leaderless, the Phoenician squadrons appear to have been pushed back against the coast, many vessels running aground.




That did not stop Xerces from administering a little discipline.




Xerxes, sitting on Mount Aigaleo on his throne, witnessed the carnage. Some ship-wrecked Phoenician captains tried to blame the Ionians for cowardice before the end of the battle. Xerxes, in a foul mood, and having just witnessed an Ionian ship capture an Aeginetan ship, had the Phoenicians beheaded for slandering "more noble men". According to Diodorus, Xerxes "put to death those Phoenicians who were chiefly responsible for beginning the flight, and threatened to visit upon the rest the punishment they deserved", causing the Phoenicians to sail to Asia when night fell.




Burgoyne demanded a court martial to clear his name, but this was refused.




Following Saratoga, the indignation in Britain against Burgoyne was great. He returned at once, with the leave of the American general, to defend his conduct and demanded but never obtained a trial. He was deprived of his regiment and the governorship of Fort William in Scotland, which he had held since 1769.




This may have been done to protect the Secretary of State, George Germain.  North's administration was in trouble, and Germain was force to accept a peerage and step down.




Germain became a target for the opposition and was eventually persuaded to step down in exchange for a peerage, and in February 1782, he was made Baron Bolebrooke, in the County of Sussex, and Viscount Sackville, of Drayton in the County of Northampton. That was considered essential if the North government was to survive by bringing in factions of the opposition to which Germain was personally objectionable. He was replaced by Welbore Ellis. In spite of Germain's departure, the North government fell shortly afterwards in February 1782 and was followed by a period of political instability.