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FiveHourMarathon

Wawa Nationalist

17 followers   follows 6 users  
joined 2022 September 04 22:02:26 UTC

And every gimmick hungry yob

Digging gold from rock n roll

Grabs the mic to tell us

he'll die before he's sold

But I believe in this

And it's been tested by research

He who fucks nuns

Will later join the church


				
User ID: 195


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
FiveHourMarathon


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Wawa Nationalist

				
				
				

				

					17 followers  

					follows 6 users  

					joined 2022 September 04 22:02:26 UTC
				


				
					

					
And every gimmick hungry yob


Digging gold from rock n roll


Grabs the mic to tell us


he'll die before he's sold


But I believe in this


And it's been tested by research


He who fucks nuns


Will later join the church



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 195


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There was an aphorism, I think from George Burns, that went something like: "There is almost no person who, if the details of their sex life were made public, wouldn't inspire public shock and revulsion."


I think the same applies to posting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Both association football and rugby come from an attempt to write down the rules of the folk "football" games, which were played by boys and young men of all classes,




All the forms of football (Association, Rugby, Gridiron) were originally called "football" because they were played on foot rather than because you kick the ball. ((Hence the stupidity of the "handegg" sneer))


Prior to the emergence and dominance of the various Footballs, when we talked about sport and sportsmanship, we were largely talking about aristocratic pastimes: horses, hunting, hunting on horses. Football was played on foot, as opposed to the Sport of Kings, Polo. Horse sports require both a lot of money, for the horses, and access to a lot of land. They're unavailable to the urban professional class.


The urban professional classes had a rising sense of their own importance and wanted to demonstrate their athleticism, but they didn't have horse-and-land money, they needed something accessible. This shows us the contrast that they were part of building: the upper class students at British boarding schools or American colleges were upper class, but not Aristocrats, they weren't as capable of participating in the existing cultures of sportsmanship at the time, which were oriented around horsemanship and hunting. So they elevated these townsfolk games, codified them, and made them into something socially valuable in which they could participate.


For Soccer in America, the same dynamic actually recurs in the 90s, when Soccer emerges in America as an athletic alternative to the dominance of football and basketball. The "Soccer-mom" term of the 90s didn't just refer to a mom, it referred to a suburban upper-middle class white mom. Why did her kid play soccer and not football or basketball? Football was too violent, basketball too "urban," (I mean everyone knows white men can't jump). Soccer emerged as a youth sports alternative that was less violent, classier, more European, but most importantly it was just a sport that poor kids and black kids didn't play. This is reflected in the fan dynamic, being a fan of European soccer leagues has long been a blue-tribe coded kind of sports fandom, a sports hipsterdom that allowed not just the players but the fans could sneer at American sports. This dynamic is how we wound up with the "pay-to-play" model that everyone involved with American Soccer has been kvetching about since the World Cup, but people don't understand how it came to be.


Marathon running, long distance running, jogging, are all popular in America primarily as and because they are upper-middle class pastimes. It's got huge advantages as a status-class marker: no contact, solo, primarily about discipline and determination rather than talent, historically finishing is the primary status symbol rather than winning. No large law firm or investment bank lacks a Marathon-Guy since the jogging craze of the 80s; while historically few law firms have a powerlifter or a wrestler (though Crossfit and BJJ might have changed this by now). You can't walk through an office in Boston leading up to April and not hear about someone training for the Marathon, I've never walked through a law firm in Boston and heard about partners training for the Mass state USAPL. You can see this dynamic in long distance running continue as the popular distances have extended, ultramarathons are the new marathons, because the ultras are still competitive for upper-class white boys with discipline and character, rather than the province of professional Kenyans. Finishing an ultra is still worth more than comparing times because so few people run them at all. Sport exists, is popularized by upper-middle class whites, comes to be dominated by other groups as the prestige of the event grows, upper-middle class whites move on to a new sport to enjoy as a pastime.


Jogging craze among yuppies => NYC and Boston Marathons become prestige events => Kenyans come to dominate the major marathons because prestige means monetary reward => yuppies start talking about ultramarathons.


White kids at old Ivy League schools invent modern football(s) as an interscholastic pastime => football becomes a national professional sport with teams at every high school and a path to riches => poor kids dominate the sport because they see it as a path to scholarships and money => white kids at old ivy league schools discover Soccer, Lacrosse, etc and develop those into interscholastic pastimes


This is too long already, so I'll just cede that the Marquess of Queensbury was a slightly different dynamic and I'm a little wrong on that one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Put this post in the Louvre, for the perfect satire of missing the point and proving it at the same time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sure, I can put on the dog-and-pony show for mothers everywhere. But I'd have a hard time explaining the private hobby where I argue on the internet with pedofascists and incels and holocaust-deniers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
People watched Cops and now watch body cam footage online because it's one of the few ways we have left to sneer at lower class people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I know, I know: "'Get a load of this weeaboo,' says man also attending anime screening". "Local man who posts on Mongolian basket weaving forum every day has the audacity to call others nerds".




There's something really funny to me about us mottizens, weirdoes on the internet who argue about weird shit with our resident weirdoes, objecting that anime won't make the kids weird and in fact it is the lamestream that is weird.


Yeah, it's us guys. She doesn't want her kids to be like us.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's not that upper class kids are, on an individual basis, bad at sports, that's neither necessary nor sufficient for the argument.


It's that people recognize, implicitly, the various advantages from playing sports, but individual kids aren't all good enough to play at a high level. Playing sports in an academic setting is good, has numerous social and physical and credentialist benefits. It's good for your body, your mind, your ego, your social life. But if you can't make the team in high school or college, you often don't even get to play, and even if you do play casually you're strictly inferior to the players on the varsity squad.


College quidditch (and rock climbing and historically lacrosse and ultimate frisbee etc...) is the lindy form of college athletics: a bunch of students forming a club and creating rules to hang out and play sports, and eventually organizing games against other schools until it builds enough to be a real tournament sport.


It's finding an outlet to express your athleticism when the ordinary forms of athletics that already exist are closed to you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes but the inanity is what keeps athletic kids who can play a different sport out of it. It's similar to the comment I've seen that Juggalo culture is one of the last real subcultures remaining because it is so off-putting that it is difficult for the Sociopaths to push out the Geeks and the MOPs aren't interested.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
College Quidditch teams are just the latest in a long line of "upper class white kids invent a new sport because they like playing sports but aren't very good at the existing ones." This is essentially the entire history of most modern organized sport, actually. Soccer, college football, marquess of quensbury boxing rules, BJJ, Rugby, marathon running. All originate in their modern form in the search by upper class white kids for an athletic outlet that isn't already dominated by the lower classes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think most of what you are saying applies to our friend @faceh, but I do recognize the pattern you're talking about.


There seems to be an odd epidemic of people who are upset that other people don't believe their lies. Epistemically similar to a flaming homo who comes out and everyone says "oh good we already knew" and he gets mad about it.


I recall a conversation with a friend of mine where she was talking about how a friend of her husband's, his wife hates her. And then later in the conversation it turns out that the husband has always had a thing for her and tried to proposition her multiple times. But the wife "had no reason to hate me, she didn't know about any of that!" Ok, but you can't hate a bitch for being right. She was right to be suspicious of you, even if you think she had no reason to know about it, so you have to assume she had some subconscious information at least.


Similarly, a certain type of man seems to be flummoxed that women he hate don't like him. "Why don't the normies fall for my lies to them about who I am and what I think of them?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The only other team sport where you see this is volleyball, which nobody cares about, so it's fine if it caters to a small group.




Volleyball even innovated the Libero to provide a jobs program for shorter players.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is the reason Quiddich in Harry Potter is a stupid idea from someone who probably doesn't understand sports as a concept.




I recall that JKR intended the snitch as a satire of this exact problem with penalties in Soccer, which have such outsize impacts on the game that you can play the entire game and have it all be irrelevant because of a single play.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You're right, I misread OP. I'm downvoting myself.


Mrs. FiveHour was once deeply embarrassed when the courthouse security took my leatherman off me at the metal detector when she asked me to come in and hang a picture for her.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A multitool. These are commonly carried, but I don't know if I would use most of the functions or not. Many people swear by them, though.




The funny thing is, you have to start carrying it to find uses for all the tools. Lots of things you used to do the hard way, or not do at all, are suddenly easy, you find reasons to use it. Tightening a screw that you saw was loose might ordinarily be a task of running and getting a screwdriver, and you might just figure it'll be fine, now you just do it. Pliers make all kinds of things easier. You become Leatherman Guy by carrying the Leatherman.


But then, when it comes to EDC I'm also a fanny pack guy, so maybe take me with a grain of salt.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think "social occasion" is doing more definitional work than "knife" here. "Concert" is very different from "barbecue." If a bunch of my buddies came to my house to grab a beer I wouldn't be surprised or shocked if one had a knife, if we went to a concert and one of them had a knife I might find it odd.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can't hold any ideology other than Rationalism if you believe only opinions that are justified by rationality. To hold any other ideology you must be willing to hold stupid, irrational opinions that might actively hurt you. Only an irrational opinion can be a costly signal that you hold the ideology, and being willing to look irrational is a relatively low cost symbol.


To be an Argentine Patriot one doesn't worry about the Steelman of the Malvinas, the Malvinas are Argentine because to be an Argentine Patriot is to believe the Malvinas are Argentine.


Otherwise one would run into the situation where another Argentine claims the Malvinas and you are there saying, well rationally according to international law it's a nuanced issue. Which isn't very patriotic of you.


The Argentine claim further functions as a signal that they, as Argentines, are allowed to make the claim even if they have no intention of following up on it. No one can stop them from saying it. This is a petty form of pride, but a valuable one. What kind of cuck refuses to insult his opponent because it is "irrational?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The whole concept of "honor" has been so lost that even those who profess to defend it are constantly in the act of denigrating it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fidel Castro did it twice.


Though those were under a quite different American regime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Merz famously voted against criminalizing marital rape in 1997.




This always strikes me as such an odd left-wing shibboleth to throw out. The actual concept of prosecuting marital rape under the law seems like a really nuanced and difficult idea, not one that is easily simplified to "well duh you fucking troglodyte of course this can only go one way."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


However fiercely the ethnic nationalists would protest, something you do not see in any large number are claims that this is all some harebrained DEI scheme. People by and large acknowledge that the makeup of these teams is not decided by politics, but for the most part trying to field the best squad possible. Take the blood-and-soil types and ask them to pick a starting XI for their national football team and they’d probably return something not much different than what it is already. People still want their country to win, and the reality is there is no ethnically pure replacement for Mbappé or Lamal or Bellingham.




I'm going to take the complete opposite devil's advocate position here, and say that the racial makeup of national sports teams is clearly the result of racism in the United States, at least. I'll do the always dangerous thing of advocating for my ideological opponents to do something that I think would be in their best interest:


Ibram X Kendi et al. Should Be Advocating for More White Representation in Sports


If we're starting, ad argumentum, from Kendi-ism's basic postulates:


All racial differences in representation are the result of discrimination stemming from racism


The only way to fight current discrimination and cure those differences in representation is with discrimination in the other direction


It's obvious that there can be no other reason why the number of YTs in the NBA doesn't reflect their overall population share. Done and dusted.


But even if we start from the empirical observations of international tournaments and the assumptions of HBD, we still find that YTs are vastly underrepresented in American athletics. The American Olympic basketball team, based on merit and even cheating significantly by bringing along marginal players like Joel Embiid, went to the fourth quarter against Serbia. Serbia was the only country in the Olympics with an all-white team, and they won Bronze. The United States had no white players on their team, despite having a white population multiple times that of Serbia. Argentina is fielding a World Cup team with no players of notable African descent, and they are in the semifinals. This despite having a similarly sized white population to France and England. This would suggest to us that the disparity is not based on innate talent differences.


So, sure, this particular day today there might not be a white player who could replace a superior black players on the national team, but that is all downstream of twenty-odd years of culture. There's a reason why the representation looks the way that it does, and it isn't some sacred natural phenomenon handed down from Mt. Sinai.


This would massively benefit the Antiracism(tm) industry, in that it would prove for a change that they were seeking equality, rather than ethnic grievance. Giving up useless, but symbolic cultural privileges in high profile entertainment industries may not be a fair trade for affirmative action demands, but it would at least be something that the woke are looking to give up.


That instead the "Snowtime Lakers" are being criticized by the woke press should tell us something about the goals of the movement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The WBC doesn't even require you to have the passport.




Citizenship: They hold a valid passport or are a citizen of the country they want to represent.






Heritage: They have at least one parent who was born in or is/was a citizen of that country.






Future Eligibility: They can provide documents proving they would be legally granted citizenship or a passport for that country if they were to apply.






Residency: They are a permanent legal resident of the country or territory.






Birthplace: They were born in that country or territory.






Prior Participation: They previously appeared on a final tournament or qualifier roster for that country's team




So it's not just that you have the passport, it's that you probably would get the passport if they applied for one, and if participation has been allowed in a past match it can't be revoked because of the prior participation rule.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm convinced that it is a major factor in WoW's long term success, the existence of injustice and unfairness increases the loot-box nature of progression, and makes socialization a natural factor of the game. A more sophisticated loot system would undermine the degree to which you rely on your teammates. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a naturally attractive state of affairs for humans. If there were no cooperation-competition aspect to the game, then it could be "solved" in a way that it can't currently be solved.


Because the surprising thing is that it works the vast majority of the time. You see more people pass on an upgrade because it's a bigger upgrade to someone else, than you see people ninja-loot something they shouldn't. Even though there's no real motivation to do so beyond being pro-social, maybe that the player remembers you fondly, or returns the favor at some point, which are both so tenuous that pure altruism is the best explanation.


And guild-raid distribution is a totally different animal with its own rules, which overlap and confuse the situation in other situations.


The human element makes a game infinitely repeatable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also, I love the WBC rules for nationality! If you have any claim to being from "country," you're from "country" and that's all there is to it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Does WoW not have wikis with guides that cover literally everything?




It does, but largely they're oriented around end game content, and I'm more interested in leveling content. WoW is really at least two, and maybe as many as five or six, separate games packaged as one, leveling is a mostly solo game with occasional group content, PvE end game is entirely group content and involves very specific stat combinations on very specific pieces. So when I look up "Fury warrior stat priority" I'll get answers appropriate for level 70 raiding prep like make sure you have enough hit rating, which you don't even start to get hit rating until level 50 or so, and I'm only at level 30, it isn't that useful for me.


Now, the standard and objectively correct answer to precise stat priority while leveling is something like "don't worry about it too much you're level 30, you'll replace it in like four or five hours." Which, yes that's true, but I like sweating the details just a little, it's fun to me, I'm a gearslut. If I get an axe that's .5dps better but the sword I have is a slower swing speed and has +3str and +5agi over the axe, I want to know which one is precisely better even if it isn't really that big a deal, not knowing bugs me.


There are also, as of this writing, at least four or five different live versions of WoW online and four or five more dead ones, so advice can vary across which expansion you are playing. There's probably a guide somewhere out there for exactly what I want, but I didn't find it. This is something I'd try to find on Reddit, but I didn't find it there either easily.




Also interested in the deepseek simulations, do you have examples and/or prompts?




Since getting back into WoW I have found PUG looting culture fascinating as both a functional and ethical question. There's a whole 'nother thesis to be written about loot distribution in guild raids, where you have the same regular people trying to progress as a team over months and years and there are a number of systems and methods used to balance progressing the group with rewarding high contributors with making sure that everyone has enough buy in that they stay motivated. But I'm playing casually and so entirely dealing with Pick Up Groups (PUGs) in 5 man dungeons. These are a group of 5 players getting together to team up and work on an objective they could not otherwise reach by themselves, typically an instanced dungeons with bosses that drop higher level loot.


If you've never played, the basic mechanic used for loot distribution is that when a good item drops during a group run, you can roll either Need or Greed on it, or Pass on it altogether. Everyone who rolls Need rolls 1-100 against each other highest takes it, if no one rolls Need then everyone who rolled Greed rolls 1-100. There's no situation where a Greed roll beats a Need roll, and Pass never gets it. There are rare scenarios where everyone passes and then it can just be freely looted by anyone who clicks on the corpse, but those are so marginal they don't really matter.


That's the whole of the game mechanics. The rest is cultural interaction. There's no restriction on who can click Need and who can click Greed, you can click Need on something you can't equip or wouldn't benefit from. The only mechanic for punishing someone who needs on something they shouldn't is for the group leader to kick them out of the group, or if the group leader refuses to do that (or the ninja-looter is the group leader) for any offended party members to quit. In most cases, this means ending the run altogether. For the last boss in an instance, the group would break up anyway, so there's no mechanic for punishing them whatsoever. Historically, it was at least a repeated-game situation on smaller servers because you ran into the same people over and over and didn't want to get a bad reputation, but in the classic-revival era the servers are so large and leveling is sped up so that reputation barely matters, I rarely remember running into the same people twice anyway.


It's a basic prisoner's dilemma setup where it always benefits the player to hit Need/Betray if everyone else is hitting Greed/Cooperate, but in order for the group to work everyone has to cooperate most of the time. The rules aren't even really written down anywhere or part of an in-game tutorial tip, they're just transmitted orally from player to player. Amazingly enough for the internet, it actually works, 95%+ of the time it goes off without a hitch and no one does anything weird and there's no arguments and it's fun. I would actually say I see outsize acts of altruism where players pass on a small upgrade for themselves because they think it's a bigger upgrade for another player more often than I see problems, but you do see problems crop up. Because there's no formal rules that anyone wrote or everyone agreed to, just a set of informal heuristics everyone picks up from each other about what is "fair" over the course of years of playing.


The obvious situations are simple and everyone agrees on them: the Mage doesn't get the big battle axe he can't equip, the Warrior does, problem solved. If a Mage needs on an axe, he gets kicked, because he's either a ninja-looter who is just going to sell the item for a minor amount of gold or he's r-slurred and has no idea what he's doing and either way you don't want him in the group. But there are a million variations of gray areas. Warriors and Hunters can both equip bows, but a Hunter benefits orders of magnitude more from a good bow upgrade than the Warrior does, can the Warrior roll against the Hunter for the bow when it drops? An Enhancement (melee) Shaman benefits hugely from an axe upgrade, but a Restoration (healing) Shaman doesn't benefit from it at all for healing but might use it when leveling solo, is it a crime when a Shaman rolls on an axe against a Warrior if they're currently healing? What if they mainly play Enh melee but they went off spec to heal to get the group going? What if it's an item where it's off-spec for both players, but maybe more off-spec for one than the other? What about super minor upgrades for one character versus huge upgrades for another? What if one litigant is a higher level toon carrying the group through lower level content and contributing more to the win, or if one litigant is a lower level toon that barely contributed anything to the group? Those all start to get different answers from different people. So partly just because I find it interesting, and partly out of a sense that I want to act ethically deciding to roll on a sword when I'm healing on my Paladin, I set up a debate on an LLM.


Keep in mind this is buried within the context of pages of random questions about WoW, so there might be some context missing if you tried the same prompt yourself. As I got into playing with it I'd post the same prompt into ChatGPT, Grok, and DeepSeek. Generally it comes from me thinking about a problem I ran into in the game, and thinking what other people would say about it if they were discussing it in the same autistic overthinking mode I do. Generally I use a prompt like:




Simulate a debate on /r/wowclassictbc. Assume everyone finds this worth discussing, high engagement and lots of comments, high interest from all parties and sides. Omit any comments like "why are we talking about this" or "you're putting too much effort into this" because I know I'd get those but they're not interesting. Simulate all likely sides and views of the debate, both those agreeing and disagreeing with OP, and try to give me a consensus view.






OP: So I'm playing Ret Paladin and running Maraudon, and the tank is a warrior. A 1h mace drops earlier in the instance, and nobody else wants so the warrior says he is going to roll need on it, saying he could use it for dual wielding dps if no one else wants it. Then we get to the Princess and she drops the 2h mace, I figure I'm good because he already said he was dual wielding not a 2h guy. Then the prick rolls need on the 2h mace too! He wins the roll and when I say wtf he says well actually I mainly play 2h slam, I just grabbed the 1h because no one else could use it at all so I thought I might try DW, but if I can upgrade my 2h I'd rather do that. I say no you already got a weapon you have to give the next weapon to the rest of the group. The argument got so heated that we didn't finish the run and kill the Gator, which sucks because it might have dropped an axe I could use instead. AITA? My loot rules are main spec > off spec so the tank shouldn't roll on dps gear over a dps, and if you get one weapon you can't get another weapon even if it would be an upgrade over the one you got earlier.




In addition to Loot Court, I've tried to simulate philosophical debates like "Is the tank-shortage a result of the decline of masculinity?" or "Which class is the dumbest?" or "Which faction is more Red Tribe versus more Blue Tribe?" Deep Seek has become my favorite for all CW questions. Grok is an edgy yes-man, always taking what it thinks is my side, always ready to say "hell yeah man based take way to Notice;" Chatgpt is hard PC guardrailed and won't touch a question about masculine vs feminine values without saying "that's not how it works man;" Deepseek will actually discuss the issue and try to make an interesting conversation out of it.


P.S: If I were an academic working in behavioral econ, I'd want to get Microsoft or a private server for WoW to simulate luck as it impacts life outcomes. There's so much opportunity for study! Does early in-game luck, say winning a roll for a good weapon in an early dungeon, impact later level-outcomes for the same toon? Are warriors who win the roll for Corpsemaker at 28 or Ravager at 35 more likely to reach level 70, or hit a higher gear score when they get there? I could see it having an impact because good gear makes leveling easier and more fun, and might make you more attached to the tune; while bad gear luck makes leveling a slog and might make you more likely to abandon a toon and reroll. Or it might have no impact. Or maybe it even has a reverse impact, because when the game gets hard again you give up. I think it could tell us a lot about people's behavior.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Kendrick Lamar: For years, the top-rated album on online review site RateYourMusic was Radiohead's OK Computer, which made sense because it appealed to music snobs but was mainstream enough that the general public would have heard of it. It was such a perfect selection for #1 that it was surprising when To Pimp a Butterfly overtook it a few years back. I'm not the biggest fan of Lamar, but he's a much better selection for this list than Young Thug, and I'll voice my approval just to show I'm not entirely out of touch.




Kendrick is an interesting cultural figure to me, in the he's a black man who self-consciously makes music for and about black people, but I associate him primarily with white fans who love his (in their view) sophisticated view of black culture. There's a weird tension there, as Immortal Technique put it:




They say underground fans are all the color of talcum, But who the fuck you think buy 50 and Jay albums?, Who the fuck you think made Snoop and Dre platinum?, Call up any major record label and ask 'em.