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KingOfTheBailey


				

				

				

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joined 2022 September 10 01:37:00 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
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KingOfTheBailey


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 10 01:37:00 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1089


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To provide a contrary data point, I find that building you linked utterly repulsive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


At this point almost all women whose technical blogs I follow are Trans. So, this makes me wonder, are Cis women Software Engineers just not interested in Open Source or writing blogs?




Not surprising to me, given the coincidence of autism spectrum disorders with (at least) MtF transgenderism. This makes it easier to deep-dive on things worth blogging about, and possibly makes blogging easier also. After you consider the terminally-online environment, the fact that there seems to be at least some kind of memetic propagation of trans identities (e.g., "cracking someone's egg"), the high base M:F ratio in tech, and the long history of visible transpeople in tech compared to other fields, it seems pretty likely to me that there will be enough men transitioning to easily outnumber the women in this sphere.




This very much looks like something progressives should be up in the arms about since Identarian politics and equality of outcome is very much their thing. But you only have strategic silence.




I'm completely unsurprised, because progressives generally believe TWAW. In addition, a male transitioning is a two-point swing towards the goal (currently stated at 50:50, but I expect those goalposts to move); a woman joining and becoming publicly visible in the same way is only a one-point swing.




I don't think my CS domain interests are too niche.




IMHO, the fact that they're CS interests at all makes them niche. You might have "mainstream" interests within the niche, but that just means they're not niche² interests. Consider the stereotype of a C++ programmer vs. a web designer. Pretty much all technical women I know ended up favoring webbish stuff, because it's an environment where you can make cool-looking stuff happen right away and evolve it interactively.




When taken to its logical conclusion, average expendable (male) Software Engineers like me will be left hanging out to dry unlike average or below average women.




This seems like a correct inference, assuming you're a disfavored individual in a space with heavy affirmative action.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It is unfortunate that so much of the debate is driven by bad actors, and not by reasonable people like (I assume) yourself who just want to live your lives and be left in peace. But the fact that even the reasonable people will generally refuse to even acknowledge the possibility of bad actors means that ...




I could have said this, word for word, re: Islam during my Internet Atheist years. And the fact that this epistemic rigor was not observed by the people I argued with really opened a lot of cracks in my old, blue-tribe worldview. (Charlie Hebdo and the reactions to it opened those cracks into fissures, and from there it's been rabbit holes all the way down.)


I don't really have a point here, but I found the historical resonance startling.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm just a horrified atheist in the style of @Tophattingson, but I believe the religious traditions' answer to that is "God". God has a plan for you, and you don't get to duck out of that plan just because you're feeling wretched. Or if you prefer sci-fi, I remember being moved by Col. Graff's line in Ender's Game: "Human beings are free except when humanity needs them."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well, I buy into it, but then again, I would.




That's the thing, isn't it? When the author equates Briseis with (waves hands) everything: the economy, housing unaffordability (including BlackRock namedrop), the degeneration of The American Woman, the lack of respect from all of society including the command hierarchy, it'll either resonate with a reader as a summary of all the wrongs that have happened lately, or be an unconvincing gish-gallop of vibes. It's not clear to me how much traction articles like this one will gain outside of the online twitter right. Is there any way to know?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I wonder if doing a synchronized launch Oppen Barbie Style was an attempt to repeat the Animal Crossing/Doom Eternal launch date crossover stuff, where two extremely different properties had simultaneous and successful launches.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Your example is a wholesale, cohesive reimagining of a setting. That's really common with Shakespeare's stuff, as opposed to WotC using a dartboard to decide what characters to swap.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ursula's character is also deliberately modeled on a drag queen and very interested in corrupting young Ariel. I am surprised that I haven't seen anti-groomer culture warriors run with this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Rotten Tomatoes turned off reviewing unreleased movies just before Captain Marvel came out, but claim that they "definitely" didn't change the site to protect Captain Marvel. Given how much fudging of everything has happened in the world since then, I wouldn't be surprised if they are now willing to make up review scores to protect favored films.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I stumbled upon some parodies of CEO Morgan from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and you lot are the only people I can share 'em with. Nobody else I know is both sufficiently unhinged and has enough appreciation for the classics:



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It turned out that gender woo was way more memetically contagious than (it appeared|its advocates thought|its advocates were willing to say). I think poly will prove to be as contagious or worse; we just haven't seen the floodgates from legal recognition yet so it's still "a weird SF/alt-lifestyle thing". Poly requires new people to be poly with, once the people you were seeing have moved on, and that means evangelizing to normies. And if you believe that most people are not capable of practicing poly without causing xkcd#592, this boils down to going up to people and saying, "hey, have you tried this sweet new infohazard?"


I was once briefly involved with an attractive ENM girl who only wanted something casual, and while that might sound the start of a salacious story that'll makes the reader say "tfw", it was the most stifling period in my dating life. Anyone else I wanted to see, I would have to have the "poly conversation" with, and I couldn't bring myself to do that. It just felt too much like peddling bad memes to decent women, and after I missed out on a couple of relationships with decent girls that way, I decided it was better to be single than help worsen the modern dating world.


And once I broke things off, it turned out that even a relationship that casual couldn't go back to being a friendship. Either she was only keen to hang out as friends because of the possibility of adding a sexual element to the friendship, or breaking things off hurt too much to stay friends. Whichever was true, poly opened a branch of the decision tree which only had bad outcomes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We've been offered the false choice of "rehabilitation vs. punishment" for so long that it needed Bukele to break the spell and bring "containment" back into the Overton Window.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm guessing current_year+8 refers to 2016, where the election of Trump broke the brains of the American left. But I thought the eternal current_year began in 2014, when the culture war really started to take off in its current iteration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If it was that easy, the ideological capture would not have gone through literally everywhere and we would not have had the great awokening. Agreeing to say no, together, is a hard collective action problem, since saying no alone is a fast path to cancellation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Less about rationality concepts themselves and more about my perception of the community. A feeling like watching my intellectual heroes not just stumble, but faceplant: first, a sense of enthusiasm and a sort of pride that there were people (dare I say, "my people"?) looking to transcend their flaws and start looking seriously at the hardest, most important problem in history — how to align a superintelligence. HMPOR is one of the most engaging works I've ever read; despite EY's often odd prose and the weirdness of the characters, it rewards close reading and sets out both a vision and a warning. And with the sequences (not just EY's, but other writers as well), you get a pretty inspiring offer: learn all this stuff, it will teach you how to win, and then deploy that to win the most important problem in history. Then dismay and disappointment as I learned that even these hardened epistemic defenses were no match for Berkeley, that rationalists ended up more interested in polyamorous group houses than solving the most important problem in history, and only slightly less vulnerable to the woke mind virus than the average normie. @zackmdavis' writing on the trans question takes a long time to get to the point, but it's an important one: there is a reality, and even the most ingroup members of what's meant to be the most reality-connected community threw out all of their epistemic standards just to let their friends claim an alternate sex. This seems to me to mean that even if we succeed at AI-don't-kill-everyone, any AGIs/ASIs we do get will be unacceptably decoupled from reality on at least the woke and trans questions, and anything connected to those. Since if you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy, solving the "AI-don't-kill-everyone" problem becomes harder if you don't even allow yourself to see reality while you're solving it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Why Don't Normies Trust Cryptocurrency?
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cryptocurrencies marry the reliability and predictability of modern computing with your hard-earned cash. For normies especially, that means machines which mysteriously do different things from day to day, sometimes turn on with totally different user interfaces, sometimes disappear your work, fail with inscrutable error messages, and generally annoy the crap out of you at all times. It is no surprise to me that crypto is not adopted by normies unless they've lost total trust in fiat.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Incidentally, the west currently has a lot of adolescent girls seeking double mastectomies under the mistaken impression that it will benefit them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Scott edited out the fire in later revisions of that post, try this one: http://web.archive.org/web/20140801022058/http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 28, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Saw this link going around Twitter/X:


https://theccf.ca/emergencies-act-use-unconstitutional/




OTTAWA: The Canadian Constitution Foundation (the “CCF”) is thrilled that Justice Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada has accepted the CCF’s arguments that the invocation of the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protests was unreasonable and violated the Charter rights to expression and security against unreasonable searches and seizures.




The government has indicated that it will appeal, so this isn't final. Regardless: what are the actual effects of such a finding? Will the government have to pay any penalty? Can people whose bank accounts were frozen sue the government? Will it cause a significant loss of political capital for Trudeau and his government? Or is it just a slap on the wrist with no real consequences?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Then why has language had this turn towards terms like "birthing parent" and why do we have a "pregnant man" emoji? I'm not being flippant: enough people cared enough to try and change common language and/or shove a new pictograph onto everyone's touch keyboards.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Don't forget WotC's take on the Lord of the Rings, or Amazon's take on the Wheel of Time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I've barely seen a peep about it online




There were a few people in the non-GOP, non-Frog online Right talking about it a bit (Matthew Peterson, The American Mind), but it definitely doesn't look like it broke through into memery, so I don't think it will have a lot of enduring cultural impact. Definitely agree that it felt like a choose-your-own-enemy movie kit with some cool sequences and moments: lots of fun on the big screen but kinda hollow.


I did like Tom Cruise's "we made it for you" intro to the film, and it really did feel like it was them making something to entertain the viewers instead of sitting them down to Have A Conversation. I hope to see more of that sort of thing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Poor Miyazaki. I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone do Uncle Ted yet.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Funny, I just asked a similar thing. I think there is a vibe shift in progress but I hadn't considered the Twitter angle. I think you're right, it's important. There seems to be three main factors: it's (maybe) a Too Big To Fail platform, so a lot of people stayed on there due to network effects, Community Notes make it easy for dissenters to counter The Narrative right where normies can see it, and even pre-Elon there was a subculture of poasters who enjoyed messing with the establishment. So I can totally buy that it was highly effective for Elon to take and that it might have started a preference cascade, and I suspect that's why there's much news trying to make him look bad.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That gets you "nobody can see my vote", but you can still be coerced into showing your vote. There are clever algorithms using homomorphic encryption which allow votes to be tallied without revealing who voted for whom, and let you verify that your vote was counted without revealing what it was. But you still need someone to implement it in a system which selects lowest-bid contracts, and to convince the voting public that your magic math system cannot be cheated.


People need to understand a voting system to believe in it (see: 2020), and so I'd much rather a heavy clampdown on postal voting, and a return to hand-counting everywhere. Other first world nations can do this, so why can't we?