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FirmWeird

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joined 2022 September 05 23:38:51 UTC 

				
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FirmWeird


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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					joined 2022 September 05 23:38:51 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you aren't going to put in any effort, just don't bother. When I looked at this comment chain I saw you making provably false claims (i.e. none of the people involved in the planning of the Iraq war/PNAC were jewish) that don't even rise to the level of refuting the point you're trying to argue against (jewish influence played a part in the invasion of Iraq). Then, when questioned, you say that the debate isn't worth your time.


If I was an antisemitic troll trying to convince reasonable people to adopt my prejudices, I could not have crafted a better comment than yours if I was trying. Look, I can understand not wanting to get into endless interminable arguments about jews with internet losers who have nothing better to do - but you're better off just not engaging with the topic at all than trying to score cheap shots then fucking off and claiming the debate is beneath you when it turns out you didn't bring enough intellectual firepower to actually make a point. It makes your position look worse and their position look better, and I'm going to hazard a guess that you aren't actually an antisemite, nor do you want to lend their arguments additional credibility.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Without having to put their own forces on the line, and at the cost of a fairly moderate chunk of the US military budget, the US is getting to incapacitate one of their major geopolitical threats.




I keep seeing this take in a lot of social media and I really don't think that it has any relation to reality. It isn't a "fairly moderate chunk of the US military budget" but a massive economic imposition and cost upon the rest of the west. Aside from the direct costs of sending money and arms to one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, the indirect costs from rising energy prices, economic disruption, inflation, sanctions, refugees and the like have made this entire affair incredibly expensive. If the de-dollarisation that the sanctions regime has spurred continues it could ultimately prove to be one of the most expensive mistakes in US history.


Even then, the cost in materiel matters as well. Western supply chains and reserves have been tapped out to funnel that equipment to Ukraine, and those stocks have been considerably depleted (at least among EU member state militaries). While that's bad by itself, it becomes even worse when you remember who Russia's biggest ally is - China. The Chinese government is, presumably, sitting back and rubbing their hands together with glee as they watch the west burn vast amounts of military equipment on a pyre. Every bit of kit that gets blown up in the Ukraine or sold onto the black market by some unscrupulous oligarch is a piece of kit that is not going to be used in any prospective defence of Taiwan - if the US is getting a pretty great deal, you're gonna run out of superlatives when you try to describe the one China is getting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Scary? What exactly is scary about that? I'm not trying to get an own here, I'm legitimately curious because the only thing that comes to mind is that you're scared of changing your own mind after a period of internal struggle. Changing your mind over a serious or contentious issue as a result of a period of internal struggle is generally regarded as a positive development by most people, and they use terms like "personal growth" to describe it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Communism might be responsible for more deaths than the Holocaust but all historical forms of racism put together are probably responsible for more deaths than communism.




I've been reliably informed by modern day whiteness studies scholars that racism cannot take place without white people, and "white people" were only invented as a concept in the 17th century. As such, the brutal and in many cases explicitly ethnically based conflicts of the past don't actually have anything to do with racism per se, so I don't think racism would actually have that high of a bodycount.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


help me




Sounds like the news of the death of god has finally reached you - I'd recommend giving Nietzsche a read if you're looking for a solution to that kind of problem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Even if I took all of your post as sincere and true




For the record, I am being entirely sincere - and, to the best of my knowledge, true.




I'd still be running into confusion as to why the environmental movement has caused nuclear to 10x in price, inflation adjusted. The confusion isn't, "why does this particular person dislike shale?"




I don't believe the environmental movement has caused nuclear to inflate in price to such an absurd degree, but the position I take on nuclear is simple: show me the money. If it was possible to actually generate nuclear power sustainably and profitably, why hasn't anyone done it yet? How has the western environmentalist movement managed to trick every single government on the planet, including ones who are manifestly and directly opposed to them and the horse they rode in on? Too-cheap-to-meter nuclear power has been just a few years in the future for the entirety of my life, and it would be such a geopolitical game-changer that there's no way even the US government would ignore it. Can you honestly and earnestly say that Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Ali Khamenei are all so terrified of the US environmental movement that they are turning down technology that would immediately and dramatically change the geopolitical balance of power in their favour and crush the petrodollar? The environmental movement cannot even get western governments to agree to slow down the rate of increase of fossil fuel consumption, but they have a total veto over this kind of technology across the entire world? I can't see any way to square this circle, when the answer "It just isn't economical" explains it perfectly.




It is, "why does the general movement of people who dislike shale also dislike nuclear?"




Pollution and environmental damage is the unifying concern for the "general movement" as far as I can tell. If you believe that those sources of energy are only profitable because of unaccounted-for externalities, making them more expensive via regulation et al is an extremely sensible goal, and actually optimal in the long term.




I like shale because it is an avenue that circumvents the anti-energy caucus for now. I am in favor of all cheap energy, hydro, coal, oil, shale, etc. As long as it foils the anti-energy people, and keeps us advancing towards a day where energy is actually sustainable, I am good.




This is an incredibly dangerous and short-sighted belief! How confident are you that those energy sources are not bridges to nowhere or have ultimate costs which leave us further behind? I'm extremely confident that shale in particular falls into this category - an illusion that looks worthwhile simply because the actual costs have been converted into externalities that aren't accounted for, on top of being in a financial system which distorts economic realities and conditions. I believe the rationalist community term for this concept is "deceptive local maxima" but I may have just imagined this.




So called "green" energy is already overinvested, and mostly rubbish.




Green energy is far from overinvested - hydro and geothermal in particular seem like fertile ground for future investment, but you're right that it is mostly rubbish. Renewable energy sources simply cannot provide the same amount of energy fossil fuels do, and the lifestyles they can sustainably and comfortably support are most definitely not the incredibly extravagant ones that people in first world societies currently live. But that doesn't mean they're overinvested when you view them in the proper context. To use a metaphor I've stolen from someone else, a parachute is a terrible investment. You lower the resale value the moment you get it out of the box, you're gonna have trouble using it more than once, and ultimately you're going to be losing money on the purchase. But if you're aware that you're going to be pushed out of a plane at high altitude tomorrow morning, the parachute looks like a much smarter purchase than some FAANG shares.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As someone who considers themselves a green activist, de-electrification isn't really the goal per se.


The problem is that the cut-off date for a smooth, clean and orderly transition away from using fossil fuels is the far-off future of...1974. De-electrification isn't a goal anymore than having a car stop when it runs out of gas is a goal. There's no energy source that can take the place of petroleum and fossil fuels - nothing has the massive amounts of existing infrastructure, body of knowledge, energy density and EROEI to take their place, and the costs of retrofitting our society with the technology required to maintain current living standards with the far lower energy budget that renewables provide are so massive that it would not be possible from within the constraints of the current society.


Shale in particular is a really bad idea, because it has incredibly high depletion rates, lower EROEI than regular crude and causes substantial environmental damage. Those costs might not show up on a fracking company's balance sheet, but those consequences will show up elsewhere in society, in the form of less usable farmland, medical issues, water-pollution, etc. The main reason that shale looks good at the moment is the combination of unaccounted externalities, incredibly low interest rates/money-printing and a paucity of conventional light, sweet crude. This isn't a case of the environmentalists just wanting less electricity usage because civilisation is bad, but more along the lines of pointing out that eating the seed corn is actually a bad idea rather than a brand new strategy that older people were too dumb to see the benefits of, even if you have a new accounting system which claims that there's nothing wrong with eating said seed corn.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And given the apparent racial overtones of the art, who’s to say that Peterson isn’t a rather extreme member of the Alt-Right, rather than a progressive leftist, and is trying to depict blacks as vicious barbarians that must either be evicted or destroyed?




Contra




I'm not going to dispute that Peterson is a leftist,




From here it looks like you were either purposely trying to deceive people here, or are so stupid and incompetent that you cannot be bothered to spend ten seconds looking at an artist's body of work before trying to write intelligently about the topic. I don't want either of those to be the case so I'd really like to hear a good explanation for why you think this is acceptable behaviour in a conversation (not trying to backseat mod or anything, but if somebody did this to me in a real conversation I'd be seriously offended and want to stop talking to them).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
They absolutely are, and a substantial amount of treasure is too. There have been American soldiers/mercenaries/people from Langley who died over there since the conflict began. The media isn't allowed to talk about them, but we aren't the media so we don't have to pretend that the US isn't involved or contributing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The reader will have guessed that, of course, Sam and Hilary are one and the same person, whose story is simply told from different points of view.




Actually, I did not - I took you at your word when you said that Hilary was "another" boy. If you're going to try and do something sneaky like that, you are at least obligated not to lie outright.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


By the way it is not dissimilar to some issues here an now: organic and ethical farms are less efficient compared to industrial agriculture and that is why we have the system that we have now.




Organic and ethical farms are actually dramatically more efficient at turning energy into food than industrial agriculture. Industrial farming lets you turn petroleum/oil into food, and despite being less efficient (and causing damage to the soil to boot) the sheer amount of energy contained within petroleum lets modern industrial agriculture outcompete organic and ethical farming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I disagree. I'm one of the people calling for a ceasefire, but at the same time I thought a "no fly zone" over Ukraine constituted suicidal imperial overreach and the start of WW3. I also don't believe that Israel has been seeking a ceasefire for about 20 years now - this claim just seems straightforwardly false to me. Have you heard the term "mowing the grass"?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In which I pine for a monastic escape from the sexual rat race
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/26/australia.marktran




Sheik Hilali was quoted as saying: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab [the headdress worn by some Muslim women], no problem would have occurred."




In case you thought he wasn't really representative of the broader culture...




Sheik Hilali, the top cleric at Sydney's largest mosque, is considered the most senior Islamic leader by many Muslims in Australia and New Zealand.






He has served as an adviser to the Australian government on Muslim issues, but has attracted controversy before. In 2004 he was criticised for saying, in a sermon in Lebanon, that the September 11 attacks were "God's work against the oppressors".




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


because when relaxed, the Palestinians use the opportunities granted to kill more Israelis.




Utterly meaningless aside that has shown up in several of your posts. If I punch you in the face and declare that I'm going to take your home from you by force of arms and then evict you with the help of a bunch of my well armed friends, do I then get to talk about how morally correct I was to do so because you keep trying to punch me in the face and take back your house? Your argument here only works because you remove those incidents from their historical context, and one can use the exact same technique to make all kinds of incorrect arguments (like my one above).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Because that’s not what marriage was until yesterday.




This is one of the reasons why I have trouble taking social conservatives seriously when they talk about protecting marriage by making sure gays can't get married - they lost the "protecting marriage" fight several decades ago and there's no meaningful reason to oppose gay marriage when you look at what marriage actually is now.


Personally my answer for them would be to create an explicitly opt-in secondary class of marriage that functioned like marriage did in the past. I don't know how long they'd be able to keep it up in the face of regular society, but I imagine it'd be popular enough with islamic immigrants that they'd be able to call any criticism of it racist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The point being made is that the Israelis are knowingly pursuing and accepting policies that lead to violent confrontations every few years. I am not interested in assigning moral blame to anybody here - I am trying to answer the question "Is Israel seeking a ceasefire", and the Israeli policy of mowing the lawn is a sign to me that they are not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think it is necessarily a serious level of intellectual dishonesty. There are a lot of statistics available on the survival rates of trans individuals, and  in terms of long-lasting consequences or death you're probably better off hearing that your child was just shot in the chest than hearing that they've just transitioned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm more than open to the possibility of this argument being true, but there's a single big sticking point which can't help but come to mind - the nature of migration to European states and how that changes the statistics. Are you able to provide statistics tracking these changes over the same population, and analysing migrants and their children separately? It seems like you'd very easily be able to cover up the increase in misery if the new migrants are are happy enough (and to my knowledge, a lot of them are substantially more happy in Europe than in their previous homes).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And Israel isn't going anywhere.




I wouldn't be so sure. History actually has some good examples of nations in very similar circumstances - ever read up on the history of the Kingdoms of Outremer? So far I haven't seen a single bit of data that convinces me Israel isn't on the same historical trajectory.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Personally I think they shouldn't do that, but that question doesn't actually matter - we're not talking about morality here. The point being argued is whether or not Israel has been seeking a ceasefire - the "mowing the grass" term refers to them accepting a policy that requires going in and doing that every few years. That's not exactly what I'd call "seeking a ceasefire".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That 3 billion is far from the only support that Israel gets from the west. They benefit from the military activities of the USA, the countless remittances to Israel and Israeli support initiatives run by Israeli partisans in other societies around the world. Significant investments and factories were built there not because it made good economic sense for the companies involved, but because the people in those companies wanted to support Israel. Even in my country, I can't go shopping at a major shopping mall without having some portion of the money I spend go to Israel, because the owner of the company is (or was, I haven't checked in a while) a zealous supporter of Israel and the IDF.


I don't believe you're thinking seriously about the issue at all if you think that $3 billion figure is the be-all and end-all of Western support for Israel.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't care about elite social games when it comes to artistic taste or political opinion, and I don't care about elite social games when it comes to weight, either.




You're free to simply not care about your reputation, but this doesn't mean you get to ignore the consequences of it. Having a bad or low-status reputation has a direct and serious impact on your life in countless ways, and while I would agree that too much importance is placed on those social games, they remain both important and relevant at every level of society - the elite qualifier was placed there because if you're one of the obese people living in the trailer park you don't actually care that your neighbour is just as fat as you are.




The assumption that physical activity is necessary for a social activity I suspect is also a class and subculture signifier, though I recognize it's important to many people.




Subculture matters more than class here, in my opinion. But even then, obesity prevents you from participating in a huge range of extremely popular and rewarding activities of all kinds - social, leisure, commercial, artistic, religious etc. I personally do not want to be close friends with obese people because they are going to be unable to participate in huge numbers of social bonding activities that I regularly take part in and enjoy - I don't think going for a long walk to have a beautiful picnic under the stars in a national park is particularly class-related, but it absolutely is something you don't get to do if you're obese! At the same time, I don't want to have to make a decision between an activity me and my friends want to do, and a less satisfying compromise that we have to take because Cletus is just too fat to participate and we don't want to make him feel awkward.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that eugenics should be practiced in order to eliminate as many genetic disorders and conditions as are reasonably possible. Cystic fibrosis is absolutely a genetic destiny with a sharp and severe impact on quality of life and I don't see why we should just accept that some people are going to be born with horrible conditions when it is within our power to fix it totally within one or two generations.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Damn, that's unfortunate, because I actually read multiple refutations of your position on TruthSocial. Your arguments are not new and have been defeated comprehensively elsewhere - but I have no desire of typing 5000 words (sic), so you'll just have to take my word for it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
With regards to calling a girl a girl? Nothing, I explicitly said that the left is wrong they think that these concepts can be divorced from sex. They're right when they point out that a lot of our expectations regarding gender are created and reinforced culturally, and if you try to attack them on those grounds you are going to lose because they are right - that's not where the error is occurring. The problem arises when they expand the category of gender to include things that are really in the domain of sex, but that doesn't mean there isn't any use in being able to say that something is masculine due to an inherent property of human masculinity that transcends culture(sex) as opposed to something more local(gender).