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FirmWeird

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FirmWeird


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Forgiveness is a method of strength and leveraging the good traits of humanity.




I agree! But the concept is a lot more complicated than that and requires that the other person stop doing whatever it is you need to forgive them for. If I go to a concert and there's an active shooter murdering people in the crowd, preventing them from committing more murders is actually the moral course of action when compared to just forgiving them and letting them continue to shoot people.


That said in this specific case, while I think no cancelling would be ideal, I am not going to blame the people on the right for taking advantage of the new rules the left has set up until the left makes a serious effort to go back and dial down the temperature.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I mean, how would you even measure this? What would it take to say "okay the temperature is going in the right direction, thanks left", do you think you would be able to recognize it or is it purely a vibes check?




I legitimately haven't thought about this because I didn't actually think there was any way to stop it - I assumed it would just continue to get worse over time until there's an irreversible reduction in societal complexity (good luck cancelling someone whose job is stealing copper wiring from abandoned buildings). Any kind of positive steps in this direction would be extremely negative steps, personally, for anyone on the left who actually wanted to make them. Furthermore, it isn't actually like there's a central authority figure who could speak for the entire left and announce that the days of cancelling people are over - and even if there was, making that kind of announcement would doubtless cause them to lose all that influence and authority. Second, the trust required for such an announcement to be taken seriously or in good faith just isn't there, either. You'd have to come up with meaningful consequences for this kind of behaviour, along with a reliable and trustworthy enforcement body, because a system like this would absolutely get gamed the second it was implemented.


The only workable alternative that I can see would be legislation that mandates incredibly harsh penalties for the employers who actually fire people like this, but that has consequences and a lot of complications as well - a left-wing political group should absolutely be able to fire someone because they found out that he was actually a secret nazi doing his best to sabotage them from within.


Of course, my dream goal would be for the world to adopt my preferred political system (non-catholic environmentalist distributism), which would mean that cancellation can't really happen due to the altered structure of the economy. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon so it isn't really a realistic proposal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And I'm not sure why they abandoned them.




There is an extremely obvious answer that jumps out at me from reading the text - discrimination laws. Even if you just want to keep out the riff-raff and the poor, class-based policies like the one you're suggesting are going to be an absolute goldmine for any lawyer who knows what the phrase "disparate impact" means. A policy which keeps out members of the societal underclass is going to disproportionately impact black people, which means it is then going to have the business which upholds that policy wiped out in court if seriously challenged.




Today, we don't do that kind of screening. That's a level of trust that you see, that is manifest, and it is raised, rather than lowered.




I actually disagree - there is in fact less trust. What happened is that the spread of insurance and large corporations mean that the costs of accounting for those problems that you're talking about are simply spread out and distributed across the rest of society and the rest of that corporation. They aren't trusting you or their customers - structural changes mean that there's just not really anything you could do to seriously inconvenience them. If you go into an Apple store and just wreck the entire place, destroying/stealing every single piece of tech in there, the costs of your actions aren't going to be added to the bills of people who shop there - those customers are already paying for that risk and have been for years.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Dems lost the Twitter stronghold but if they can shill their narrative on TikTok and insta then they can get a momentum going.




Dems tried to shut TikTok down because of all the Gaza footage that was spreading on there, and Gaza is a toxic issue for the dems - their base hates what is going on but their donors and organisational leadership support everything that's happening. They're not going to have a good time on TikTok and I wouldn't be surprised if they try to go after it again.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think you need any sort of third shooter conspiracy style thinking to get to the real problem here. I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories and love exploring them, but the facts on the ground are damning enough on their own. The secret service rebuffing multiple requests for additional security, ignoring multiple reports of the shooter, ignoring the call from the shooter's parents warning them about him, letting him get through the metal detector with a rangefinder, having a sniper aiming at him before he actually took the shot, ignoring the multiple people who are recorded on camera pointing him out, ignoring the police officer who went onto the roof and saw he had a gun... and worst of all, letting Trump go onto stage for ten minutes when they knew there was somebody with a sniper rifle taking aim at the stage!


The most straightforward conspiracy theory that is practically jumping out of the page and requires no mysterious phantom gunmen or bizarre codes of silence is that they wanted the shooter to succeed. They rebuffed Trump's requests for additional security and then allowed Crooks to take his shot before they did anything. This kind of conspiracy also doesn't require any extremely tortured codes of silence - nobody who isn't directly legally liable for what happened would know anything or need to keep their silence.


I can't see any argument against this other than incompetence, but claiming that this is incompetence not only beggars belief, it raises the immediate counterargument that every single person remotely involved needs to lose their job for gross misconduct. If they actually made all these mistakes earnestly I'm surprised they can put their shoes on in the morning and don't routinely shoot themselves in the head when looking down the barrel of their gun to make sure there's a bullet inside.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Apologies for the delay in replying - life can get busy sometimes.




I am saying the problems afflicting the rural working class and poor (as distinct from the suburban conservatives who make up much/most of Trump's base and who are generally doing more than fine) are not the product of the urban professional class, immigration, or free trade as Greer hints.




I disagree but neither of us have provided evidence here. I agree with Greer's position that choices about the costs of these changes were not equally distributed across society, and they were the inevitable consequences of the choices that were made.




US manufacturing dominance in the mid 20th century was a bubble of anomalous circumstances that was never going to be sustained.




Greer actually agrees with this and it is a large theme in his work - though he also throws in the energy factor, which I think is a significant element as well. The point actually being made is that the reaction to those changes and shifts involved making decisions that profited some sections of society at the expense of others. Neither me nor Greer are claiming that the managerial class/salary class just decided to fuck over the rural poors for no reason - but that the decisions made in response to crisis hurt those groups to advantage others. All of the factors you identified are real reasons as to why the US would not be able to maintain the success they did and neither me nor Greer would disagree (I think, at least).




I'm not going to say that nothing can be done about the US' relative position in global manufacturing, but it isn't what Trump is promising and it isn't what a bunch of 60 year old ex-factory workers from Ohio want. It probably means more immigration, not less, more international partnerships and less protectionism, more capital/automation-intensive facilities, and more federally directed industrially policy




I think that those policies and ideas, the same ones that have been put in place for the past several decades, will continue to have the same impact they have had for the past several decades. If you want to have that argument I would love to, but I don't think this moldy old conversational thread is the place.




A major distinction is that Trump haters don't say this, whereas many Trump supporters cite the arrogance, condescension, and judgment of 'coastal elites' as a reason for supporting him. They frame it more sympathetically than I do, but it's coming from their own mouths.




I actually think "arrogance, condescension and judgement" coming from someone is a valid reason to hate them and work against them - I know that if I act arrogantly and condescendingly to people while negatively judging their lifestyle it doesn't tend to lead to us becoming best of friends. But that's actually very different to the original claim, which was "Trump supporters have an inferiority complex and feel humiliated when college-educated liberals look down on them."




He was literally four in 1966. If he has any expertise on the socio-economic conditions of the 60s, it is purely incidental to his personal life.




And he also lived in Appalachia and other parts of the country hit by the economic conditions we spoke about later - he's been following these stories for quite some time. The reason I brought it up is that he ha actually lived through all the changes that he's describing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Trump has it, and part of the appeal is that he doesn't cross the aisle well at all. To his core supporter the problem is with the bureaucrats not listening to their sort of people and someone who's overly democrat-friendly can't very well be expected to fix that problem.




I agree with this and have made the same point before. One of the reasons for Trump's support is that he is so obviously not a member of the existing political class that people don't expect him to behave like other politicians and get subsumed into the blob the moment he takes office. Loudly advertising and broadcasting that he doesn't give a shit what these people want or respect is one of the ways he got the immense loyalty that he now commands.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is no threat that the US can make - there's no amount of funding the US can provide that would make up for the current situation. If they deploy force in the amount required to change the outcome of the Ukraine war, they would be unable to defend Israel and Taiwan... and there's a very decent chance that they would actually lose the conflict militarily to boot (assuming no nukes are used, because if they do get used the world just ends). As for removing sanctions, they're already moving to systems of trade and exchange that bypass the US' hold on the financial system because they don't trust it anymore (and can you blame them?) - they'd view it as nice, but they would presumably then just take all their money out and leave anyway.


Sure, Trump would probably be able to negotiate a surrender, but what could the US actually do to change the situation beyond giving up? When you take into account other commitments like Taiwan and Israel there's no stick at all - Trump would just be negotiating the US exit and surrender. That said, my personal view is that the Ukraine war was a terrible idea, a massive waste of blood and treasure, so the sooner that happens the better.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Id disagree with that characterization of Israeli war efforts. They are being meek and timid from my POV.




The most recent story I've seen about the war is US doctors talking about how many Palestinian children have been shot in the head by sniper fire, and the parents of those children say they were shot when playing, outside or inside. The story before that was the killing of Mohammad Bhar, where an intellectually disabled man was attacked by an Israeli military dog before they kicked his family out and made sure he died without receiving medical treatment (which the family discovered when they were finally allowed back to their house to see his maggot-ridden corpse).


Most people I know in real life consider those stories and the countless others like them barbaric and disgusting - we think members of our own armed forces who do those things deserve to go to prison for the rest of their life and lose all their honours and awards in the process. If that's what qualifies as meek and timid from your POV, I'd hate to see what it would take for you to actually criticise them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There's some argument just how far USA procurement has gone to the expensive, precise, and hard-to-produce end of the scale.




What argument? US military procurement is full of corruption and various other concerns that have long since taken priority over actual combat effectiveness and efficiency. China has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the US and the US military supply chain is full of Chinese products - if there's an actual conflict between the USA and the Global South, the US would lose the ability to repair or even maintain their current fleet of ships, let alone manufacture new ones. In the USA-vs-Russia proxy war that's happening right now the west is being dramatically outcompeted in terms of ammunition supply/manufacturing, and on top of that there's a technological gap between the US and Russia - the US still hasn't bridged the hypersonic weapons gap.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


War is brutal. Israel has done many bad things, perhaps more than necessary, but that's how war goes.




This was in response to claims that the Israelis were being meek and timid - you can absolutely play the "people do bad things during war" card, but you also just wiped out the claim I was arguing against in the process.




If Native Americans started randomly suicide




That situation and history are so different as to make the comparison moot - and if this was an attempt at emotional appeal, I'm also not American.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is delusional. Obliterating the formal militaries of near peer competitors is the one thing the US military is utterly dominant at.




How exactly can the US deploy in sufficient force to defeat Russia without immediately creating gigantic openings in the Middle East and Asia Pacific that would be taken advantage of by their enemies? Russia is a dangerous, nuclear-equipped opponent that is actually ahead of the US in at least one category of weapon (hypersonics) and the stories I've seen coming out of Ukraine make the case that they have the edge in electronic/signals warfare as well (though stories coming out of an active warzone should be taken with a few grains of salt). They're a serious threat that would require significant investments of materiel and personnel to deal with - Russia and Iraq are not the same. Making a serious attempt at defeating them would involve pulling resources from the rest of the empire which in turn means that he moment this conflict starts the US would lose 90% of their existing military manufacturing capacity as they lost the ability to import semiconductors from a China who would be in the middle of invading Taiwan, safe and secure in the knowledge that the US military was busy elsewhere.


Of course that entire discussion is academic, because in order for that to even happen you need to find some way of turning off the nuclear option - Russia and the US going into direct conflict just means the world ends and the survivors get to experience Threads for themselves. Sure, the Russians don't actually win, but the US doesn't either. Serious military conflict between Russia and the US just means the end of the world, and unserious military conflict (like a proxy war) means the US is unable to bring enough force to bear to actually beat the Russians. If you disagree, I'd be more than happy to bet that Russia wins the war in Ukraine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Climate change" Is a big, hard to define, but very scary bad thing. It's mythical and functions almost like a curse. Furthermore, it is THE virtue signaling issue. People (think) they get all kinds of social credit for driving an EV or using paper straws etc. It has weird touchy-feely connections to "mother earth" pseudo-religious traditions. Women under 30 probably have a higher likelihood of going to festivals like burning man and so having a very personal connection to these "vibes."




Climate change isn't hard to define at all - human activity produces greenhouse gases which cause an increase in global temperatures and adverse weather events while the world shifts to a new climate. It isn't a matter of vibes but one of rigorous scientific evidence, and younger people are more concerned with the issue because they're the ones who are going to be paying the price for it. While I have no doubt that there are a lot of cynical grifters in the movement and plenty of people who operate based on vibes rather than evidence, climate change is a real and serious problem, and one that the people actually profiting from it won't be alive to see the consequences for.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'll have to take your word for it as it's all I have, but, like a certain New York City rental bike situation, I know that you and I see the world in different colors.




It would only be anecdotal evidence, but as someone who clicks on the volunteer button on a regular basis I think that Amadan's comments ring true, at least when it comes to reports. I see a lot of comments that I can tell got reported for reasons of "this person disagrees with me" rather than the actual quality of the post.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


People who call it the "war on drugs" seem to forget that in a war we mercilessly vaporize the enemy with thousands of tons of explosives.




I too support the complete and lethal destruction of all banks, hedge funds, government bodies and media outlets - those cocaine users need to be taught a lesson. The NYSE can get blown up for that matter as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The candidates in any election have done a lot of shitting and masturbating as well most probably, but it's better left unmentioned.




I think that the shitting and masturbating should be mentioned and brought up if the context around it is meaningful. I agree that "This politician sucked a dick" isn't really interesting at all by itself, but "This politician got a leg up in their career by sucking a dick" is meaningfully different.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Her prosecutorial record is astonishingly weak and it blows my mind that the Trump campaign hasn't started running huge numbers of ads showing what she did and said during that time. She was just beyond ghoulish in her decisions and I think that the sheen on her image will evaporate once that stuff gets more widely known - at the very least enthusiasm on the left will take a nosedive when they realise they're voting for the cop who wanted to keep innocent black men in jail for prison labour.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Security can and will see off any half-hearted and half-assed attempts that might occur.




Actually, the most recent instance of security didn't do anything to stop an incredibly half-hearted and half-assed attempt - it was sheer dumb luck that the target moved his head and the attempt failed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


disagreeing will get you a wall of downvotes and actual social censure.




I routinely and vociferously disagree with the elite consensus on these issues, but based on the number of downvotes it seems like there are more people opposed to criticism of nuclear power.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm amazed at just how banal "factchecking" has become.




Has become? It was always this bad! Hell, it was worse. Remember when Trump got called a liar for stating a correct figure but with implications the fact-checker didn't like?


I'd go looking for more examples but google is completely useless and can't even find my comments complaining about this exact phenomenon on the old subreddit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Maker's Monday
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm working on some creative projects myself but sadly I have nothing to share here just yet. I've got two major projects that I'm working on, both in the same setting, and I want to hold myself accountable - so I'm going to commit to either getting 5k words of pulp fiction written, or finish a bunch of code refactoring for the game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Birth rates are below replacement and falling (though thankfully not as much as in some other places), which if that were the only effect, would mean that demand for residential housing should be decreasing.




Demand for residential housing increasing is in part why the birthrate is collapsing. Demand for properties drives up the cost of family formation, so fewer families get formed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but pretty clearly to adults, which these are not.




The younger generations spend a massive amount of time on the internet and information spreads extremely quickly. "Incel ideology", if you broaden it to include general red-pill concepts, isn't just an accepted fact of life among the zoomers but such a noticeable piece of their vocabulary that terms like "Mewing", "Sigma" and "Alpha" are frequently thought of as zoomer slang.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The only successful way to perform market cornering to capture the producer surplus is by regulatory capture, not 'lose money until competitors all exit, then hike prices'.




I feel like pointing out that this("lose money until...") is the actual exact method used by Dollar stores to choke out competition. They open a bunch of stores in an area, sell at a loss until they can kill the competition, then consolidate their stores into one and raise the prices once they kill off their competition. Predatory pricing is actually a real thing that happens, and the effectiveness of it is great enough that people want the government to do something about it. Sure they don't have a true monopoly, but an effective local one is a decent substitute.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Did you know that the states with the lowest divorce rates tend to swing blue?




And those red states tend to have really high crime rates and welfare usage, despite supposed conservative advocacy for law, order and self-reliance! Do you think there could be any confounding factors being left out of your analysis?