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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 January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Still talking about white collar work, but pretty much any corporate or government job faced some of the same pressures.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Noticing that tendency is pretty much why I'm not in any kind of corporate work today. Because I figured there was a quota system in place and I didn't much want to find myself participating in it at the wrong moment. Today, of course, it could just as well be the opposite, but I don't want to be at the mercy of the wheel.


But this very much didn't stop me from achieving the goal of making a decent living.


Most advice that revolves around either women or men just losing the weight or just putting in more work or just settling for what they can get falls into the fundamental problem that everyone has never just and they won't do it tomorrow either.


I just don't like seeing my people blackpill.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Man I've met Shapiro and I can't bring myself to read these obligatory political memoirs. There's something downright bizarre about an Irish lass playing Real Housewives with them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If it's not a business that makes money, it's a hobby, according to the IRS. I guess maybe you could classify it conceptually (though not legally) as a charity?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Which were tiny hobby websites, largely free riding on government and university research investments.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is an individualistic argument, but isn't the more compelling case for removing ads one from social good?




There's no point arguing about the social good of advertising in the abstract, without reference to the content that advertising supports and makes available. It's the kind of woolly-headed socialism that college students love to talk when tuition comes up.


The proposition being argued here is "People should not be allowed to consume content unless they have paid for it."


Well, ok, that's too harsh. Probably more like:


"People should not be allowed to choose to consume unwanted content in exchange for consuming content that they want."


Without advertising, Youtube and Twitter are only available on a subscription basis, OTA TV and Radio are limited to government or charities, and newspapers would fail completely.


Once you are talking about narrower restrictions on particular kinds of advertising, there's probably logic there. But capital-A Advertising can't be isolated from the empire built upon it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They are not technical people and don't understand this well.




When I block an annoying ad on twitter for Israeli hostage funding or something, it tells me that I can remove all ads by subscribing to premium. People don't get that?




They don't trust the company to be honest with them when they claim "this will get rid of the ads". The company can take it back at any time.




...And then I don't pay them the next month.




The company probably won't price the ad-free version in a way proportional to the difference in value. If they make 10 cents from you on ads, the price of the ad-free version may still be 20 dollars more, because they also like to do market segmentation and overcharge less price sensitive people.




What socialist powderpuff world do we live in where the profit a corporation makes has to be proportional to their costs rather than proportional to the value the customer puts on the service?




Of course this is a catch-22--if the customers don't buy the ad-free version you will claim the customers don't mind ads, but if they do buy it you will say that the market is obviously working and therefore there is no need to get rid of ads.




What catch-22? This is good price discrimination, every customer gets what they want at a price they can afford.




That's the newspaper industry breaking down, not the advertising model specifically.




"That's not the industry breaking down, just its entire revenue model. Surely the industry won't be impacted by the loss of the majority of its revenue!


In the 1950s the New York Times made 70-80% of its revenue from advertising, today it is just 20%. You think that has nothing to do with the decline of newspaper journalism?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How else does one model evidence based on consumer choice than by pointing to two options, understanding the tradeoffs between them, and charting what choices people make to see how highly people value those tradeoffs?


If consumers had no choice and could only consume content with ads, that would only tell us that they like the content more than they dislike the ads. NFL OTA broadcasts would fall in this category, viewers are making a decision based on ads. Add choices and we can narrow it down. We can say that Youtube users dislike ads at a value less than $14/month or whatever it is for premium. And we can say that the degree to which most people like having content from ad-supported platforms more than they like getting content from their local library > their degree of dislike of ads.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The big problems being


A) Trump is uniquely talented, so talented a politicians that he can force the tide to recede for a brief period.


B) Trump is selfish and paranoid, rightly so given the number and mendacity of his enemies, and is loathe to name or groom a successor that could turf him out.


Though I'm still surprised we haven't seen one of the kids set up as clear successor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hobby.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Honestly, I've never seen a library funding proposal I didn't think should be higher. It's literally price discrimination executed to perfection.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't really think the math works out the way either my good buddy @faceh has it or the way I do, chatgpt and grok estimates are garbage, my purpose in the example was using the same tools to show contrary results.


In reality men and women don't filter by these nice lists of attributes. "Don't ask fish how to catch them" and all that jazz.  Men for the most part aren't really looking for chaste, demure, young, uneducated virgins to marry in two months; the few that are often have little trouble finding them at church or in high school.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Which lifestyle was achieved with zero government involvement, outside of the taxes paid to the public library!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ad block is an easy price-discrimination tool, but it's not as comprehensive as the ban desires it to be, and ad block presents significant free-rider and tragedy of the commons problems on a societal basis, an argument I didn't want to get into again here.


But yeah, ad block solves at least half of the problem for anyone who cares enough to do it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah I can sit and puzzle it out, but when I'm writing quickly I stall thinking about it and then just use a different word entirely to keep momentum going.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I thought about that, but I too felt like it was a bit of a reach!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is it just me or is this scale a bit tilted?




There seems to be a slippery equivalence being drawn between a market being tilted, and it theoretically being easier to do abc than to do xyz. Strictly speaking, these things are unrelated. We have had this discussion before


To summarize:


@faceh contended that there were about one million American women who met the criteria he considered marriageable: Single and looking (of course). Cishet, and thus not LGBT identified. Not ‘obese.’ Not a mother already. No ‘acute’ mental illness. No STI. Less than $50,000 in student loan debt. 5 or fewer sex partners (‘bodies’). Under age 30. Therefore there aren't enough good women for all the men.


I countered that there were approximately 617,000 American men under 40 meet all these specified criteria: Single, Earning at least $65,000 annually, No felony convictions, Exercise at least once a week, Attend religious services at least once a month, Have not used drugs other than marijuana in the past year, Not classified as alcohol dependent. Therefore, there aren't nearly enough good men for even that small number of women.


I picked 65k because it's about what you could make as a Cop/Teacher, or a forklift operator at a local warehouse that's always putting up billboards for workers if you pick up a little overtime. Quite simply, I have trouble caring about the sexual outcomes of men who fall below the standard where they could reasonably become a cop, teacher, or forklift operator. Those are people who are always, throughout history, going to have to accept substandard outcomes.


Now you can look at it in terms of ease of doing ABC vs XYZ, and say that women don't have to do anything to achieve most of their standards. The female standards Faceh set were mostly of the negative variety. Don't sleep with anyone, don't eat too much, don't get into debt, don't get too old before you find a man. While the male standards I set were mostly active and positive: go to church, workout, get a decent full time job. So it is reasonable to argue that women have it easier in a sense. But frankly, I find it easier to lift weights than I find it not to eat Oreos. And I would find it infinitely easier to get a job at the local PD than I would to be "agreeable and submissive" to some of you chuckleheads.


Regardless of the overall market, it's not actually hard for an individual man to tilt the market in his favor. The vast majority of people might be unfuckable, but you don't have to fuck them. If you get your life together as a young man, you will be fine in the dating market, it will very quickly be tilted in your favor and not hers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is a terrible, infantile idea.




The idea feels like sci-fi because you're so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.




This is so blatantly untrue that it's hard to take the rest of the essay seriously. Advertising appears with the newspaper. The first paid newspaper advertisement in American history was in 1704 in Boston, it is literally older than the United States of America. Zero research was done going into this, just a whiny infant complaining about advertising that could be easily avoided.




Why do I want this? ... The obvious reasons: ads are annoying and obnoxious and degrade the general experience of the web.




There's not going to BE any general experience of the web you stupid slut.


The entire general experience of the web is built around advertising. An entirely paid model of web usage is not something we've ever really seen. Note that I don't include a model that is built primarily around free-riding on government/university research dollars, like the early internet. Nor a model that is built around the millennial lifestyle subsidy like current Substack or ChatGPT, where the free infrastructure is funded by VC money with the expectation of later exploitation. All that's left after you remove those are hobbies or charity, like TheMotte or Wikipedia, which probably can't exist without the infrastructure built by the advertising-funded products anyway.


Moreover, on the web or not, you are asking for every ad you are ever shown, other than billboards I guess. Libraries exist! Physical media can be borrowed from them, and you would have more media than you would ever be able to consume in fifteen lifetimes, and never see a single ad beyond a flier for the knitting circle. Yet nobody who complains about advertising does that. If ads on youtube offended people, they could pay for youtube premium, but they mostly don't. If ads on twitter offended people, they could pay for whatever it is Elon is calling it now. They mostly don't. Why not? The ad-supported Kindle is $20 cheaper than the ad free one, the ad-supported model outsells the ad-free version. And, of course, physical media exists, you could purchase movies on DVD and books at bookstores and you would have more than enough content for the rest of your life, but people don't do that. Because people are more than willing to accept the cost of advertising to get free-to-them, or even just reduced price, content. There is no circumstance in which you are forced to watch ads, in every case you are choosing to consume content that would not be available without advertising to support it, or you are choosing to consume it through a medium that is supported by ads. The revealed preference is that people don't care about ads.


The only real exception that occurs to me is sports, which are impossible to watch without seeing ads. American sports like the NFL and MLB are shown with ads in the broadcast, while racecars and MMA fighters and soccer teams give no option to skip ads as they are on the competitors themselves! But, of course, without those ads we wouldn't have those competitions at those levels. Without advertising, I wouldn't be able to get the game on the radio or OTA TV, I'd have to go PPV, which I would not do. Without sponsor dollars, MMA fighters wouldn't be able to train to the level that they have pushed the sport. The ecosystem would be impossible. The same, of course, applies to things like local radio news: no traffic on the twos without Chevy dealers BLOWING OUT THEIR INVENTORY. Well, I guess we'd still have NPR, that bastion of politically neutral fact-finding...


Which is the real point, advertising in media is a good thing because it supports neutral media motivated purely by capitalism. When we mourn the decline of the politically-neutral American local newspaper, we are too stupid to realize what we are mourning is mostly the decline of newspaper advertising. Time was, you needed the newspaper to find out basic facts about the world. Movie times, church schedules, the weather. Every responsible American needed access to a newspaper, which drove mass subscriptions, which made advertising in the newspaper profitable, which funded investigative journalism and reporting. And because the goal was to sell ads, newspapers wanted the broadest reach possible, Republicans buy sneakers too. Once the advertising model breaks down, you get the modern newspaper industry. Local papers lack any but the most rudimentary reporting, while national papers like the New York Times cater to subscriber biases and lose even the pretense of neutrality. Substack, again, suffers from this: while an occasional gem might appear in the muck, almost every substack author becomes captured by his audience, forced to cater to their whims. So many interesting bloggers or writers become increasingly less interesting as they cater to their audiences' whims. In a world without advertising, we are at the mercy of subscribers and their biases.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I question the degree to which Trump has the ability to bequeath his support to a chosen successor. He's had mixed success as an endorser of candidates. Especially if he is himself diminished in any way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The two flavors of senility: fading into the background, and using anger to cover up not really understanding what's going on. Avoid saying anything coherent so nobody can tell that you couldn't hear what anyone said, or insist angrily that you are correct and force everyone around you to accommodate because it's awkward to tell grandpa he's wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
With most rules of sportsmanship or unwritten rules, the question is who has escalation dominance on the field. People rarely ask this question well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Embarrassing is embarrassing for me to spell.


This effects? affects? effects? IMPACTS my willingness to use the word in writing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Just seems like my desire to put away money for 35 years from now versus making memories with family and friends now has started to decline.




I think to answer this question would require significantly more information regarding what the concrete choices you are thinking about are.


My life is set up in such a way that there is very little that I would spend significantly more money on were I spending freely or if I came into a windfall. Like Hercule Poirot, I have enough money for both my needs and my caprices. I don't particularly want anything I can't afford, the odd luxury goods that I theoretically could purchase vaguely disgust me as too extravagant anyway. I have trouble identifying a marginal "live for today" spend I would make if I valued today higher than 30 years from now. If anything I could imagine putting in less time on earning money, but I like my work and wouldn't reduce it given the option.


So like, what are we talking about here? Flying out to visit family more? Going on a vacation? Buying a boat? I don't think the decision is meaningful in the abstract, only in concrete details.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The devil is in the enforcement, as ever.


If there's a huge problem with outsourcing illegal-intensive labor to Dodgy Contractor Inc, it's making things fairly simple: target all the dodgy staffing agencies. In theory like 99% of the work is already done to make it impossible to earn an income in this country without the government being aware of it. And that's what frustrates a lot of people about illegal immigration, even those who are pro-immigration: that the government doesn't use the information and powers that it has to enforce the laws that are on the books.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The contractor. This isn't a hard question.