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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think this has also hurt the John Wick films. By the third, we know he's going to be pull his suit up to cover his head and will never take a serious wound during an action sequence.




Zvi Mowshowitz had a post about the legal systems of John Wick in which he says that the "legal"/political background of the films (and therefore the types of story that get told) is what changes from episode to episode. [Basically, from an "honorable" criminal organisation where the morality is Lawful Evil, the Continental Hotel is sacrosanct, and markers are honoured, to outlaw life as opponents of a lawless shadowy conspiracy which controls the High Table and includes the man who finds Wick in the desert, to something vaguely reminiscent of feudalism by the fourth film].


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


formation of a government in Iran with a few extra steps -- a period of occupation,




The whole point I was making is that the US (and on this point, exceptionally, the US is united) has no interest in occupying Iran. All important factions in the US would prefer leaving the status quo in place to a US occupation. We can argue about whether the US is making a mistake here, but this is closer to "the utility function isn't up for debate" than "let's get a bunch of experts in post-mullahocracy occupation and reconstruction to discuss how likely it is to produce a good outcome" - not least because the relevant body of expertise doesn't exist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There are the Kurds (although more assimilated and pacified, even compared to their neighbors)




The Kurds are no more pacified that the rest of the population - i.e. they won't stay pacified if the regime collapses, unless the new regime incorporates or crushes them. As with Syria, any likely failed state scenario includes either a Kurdish statelet (de facto independent, not internationally recognised, but probably west-friendly in practice) or Turkish military intervention to prevent one forming, or both (as happened in Syria). Israel appears to be explicitly encouraging Kurdish separatists to take up arms against the weakened regime.


In terms of Iranian domestic politics, Iranian Kurds are a key part of the Khatami/Rouhani reform faction in the mullahocracy. They don't get on with the hardliners (because of religious differences) or with the Pahlavite resistance (because of Persian nationalism).




There is a small Sunni minority.




(Mostly the same people as the Kurds, who are much more religiously diverse than ethnic-Persian Iranians)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


unconditionally surrender




An unconditional surrender by the Iranians isn't a US victory, given the (quite correct and bipartisan) US preference for the status quo over the typical result of an unconditional surrender, which would be the US occupying Iran.


The win condition for the US is the formation of a government in Iran


    

  • Which can control the territory without US help
    • 

  • Which the US can do business with
    • 



Something which is notoriously hard to do with punitive bombing alone.


I think Netanyahu would consider a failed state in Iran a win for Israel. But it doesn't look like a win for the US or the US's local allies - failed states are bad neighbours and their oil and gas industry is uninvestable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"How robust are our publicly-available models against deliberate misuse?" is a valid question for both real safety and fake wokesafety. A model which can be jailbroken into using a racial slur its developers didn't want it to use can probably be jailbroken into providing a plausible DNA sequence for extensively drug-resistant Y pestis.


If you think Yudkowskian paperclipping is the only AI doom scenario that matters, then worrying about deliberate misuse of the model by humans is a distraction. But it is an obvious real risk.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(well, if this also happened would not surprise me overall)




Jeffrey was into under-aged girls. Very, very different to corrupt Vatican officials.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Good answer, although De Gaulle turned against Israel in the 1960s in a way which would be considered anti-Semitic by 21st century American standards.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Britain has a constitution, it just isn't codified in one place. Most of it is even written down, although in one famous case only in an anonymous letter to the editor of the Times.


(Nor is the US constitution codified in one place - just most of it. The most obvious example is that the President is elected is generally seen by Americans as one of the most important parts of the American constitution, but it isn't in the Constitution).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think it would have done much damage if Patel didn't already have a reputation for junketing. In a world where he already has such a reputation, it turns an insider gossip story into something that is legible to normies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A majority of men will find that a rule that excludes all women from voting, governing and performing on jury based on some objective measure of competence will also exclude them. This is usually considered a bad thing by those who support universal male suffrage.




In the Anglosphere, very much this. No Anglosphere country had universal male suffrage. (The UK gave women the vote at the same time as non-landowning men in rural constituencies, the US and the Dominions all gave women the vote before men from disfavoured racial groups). The principle that there is a right to vote implies that the right extends to women.


In countries whose democratic tradition stems from the French revolution, universal male suffrage explicitly tied to universal male conscription was the default.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well it's a mixture. Women's tennis often has more varied and exciting rallies because it's less serve dominated, for example, and see 07mk's view on ultimate frisbee.




That was definitely true during my youth, but I don't think it was true during the Big 3.5 era. The last classic serve-volley player was Tim Henman (who is only considered good because of the total dearth of British tennis talent before he started making semi-finals) and the last classic serve-volley player who actually won things was Sampras. I would say the last great male player whose main weapon was his serve was Roddick.


They made the grass at Wimbledon slower in 2001 to produce a less serve-dominated game, and it worked.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But Christians worship a Jew as the son of God? There's a certain kind of esoteric 'And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green' Christianity but in terms of base elements, Christianity is pretty Jewish.




A Jew who the Pharisees conspired with Pilate to have crucified because they considered him a false prophet. And modern rabbinic Judaism looks like the intellectual descendant of the Pharisees, not whatever kind of Judaism the historical Jesus practiced. "God the Father sent the Son to the Jews as the Messiah in fulfilment of the old covenant, but the Jews rejected him and then suffered divine punishment and exile in much the same way as when they rejected God on previous occasions" is the simple, obvious interpretation of the Gospel story.


But that is about history and tradition, not religious practice. And lex orandi, lex credendi. At the level of day-to-day religious practice, Christianity is focussed on right belief to the near-total exclusion of ritual purity, whereas Orthodox Judaism is the modern religion that is most focussed on ritual purity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Antisemitism was just an idiosyncrasy of Hitler, not a law of history.




Can anyone point to a historical (right- or left-) populist movement in a culturally Christian country that didn't eventually turn anti-semitic? I suppose there is a colourable argument that Disraeli's OG One Nation Conservatism counts as right-populist, but it isn't a central example.


Jews really are over-represented (by somewhere around 10x, as you would expect given high-end estimates of Ashkenazi IQ if we do live in an IQ-meritocracy) in the allegedly-meritocratic elite, so if you think that the allegedly-meritocratic elite is a conspiracy, then it is a Jewish conspiracy.


There is a long history of homogeneous societies turning on Jews because domestic politics required a scapegoat. Admittedly it hasn't happened in an English-speaking Christian society since the late 18th century, and not in a murderous way since 1290.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Saudis (and pretty much all the Gulf sheikdoms except Qatar) have been collaborating with the international Jewish conspiracy (if it exists) or allied with Israel and the US against Iran based on shared interests (if it doesn't) since well before the Abraham Accords formalised the situation. In the world we live in, there is nothing at all odd about the Saudis investing on commercial terms in Hasbara Inc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Buying up news and media properties does seem to be the cool thing for billionaires to do these days. Musk bought twitter, Bezos bought the Washington Post, Rupert Murdoch was ahead of the curve owning Fox. Now Ellison gets some of the crappy leftovers.




Rupert Murdoch is a different animal to the others in that he made his money in newspapers, so buying other media companies is a commercially plausible decision to diversify rather than a vanity purchase (and he made a lot of money off Fox, whereas Musk probably lost money on Twitter and Bezos definitely lost money on Wapo).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As long as it doesn't have a point of the compass in the name, it's probably okay.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
True in western culture, but the wisdom from my internet is that in South-East Asia femme lesbians are supposed to perform femininity sufficiently that they can't be mistaken for butches.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting, because even back in the stone age (the early 90's) I was taught that all women above school age who were not personally known to you were "Madame" and that calling an undergraduate-age waitress "Madmoiselle" was hitting on her.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I understand the feminist objection to referring to women as "girls" regardless of age in dating-related contexts, but it is in fact standard English (both BrE and AmE) usage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah - I don't think that would move the needle either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If those, specifically, are the people you're talking about, they don't run Syria so your original post was wrong.




Not my OP - I don't think the US-backed Salafi-jihadi group that currently controls Damascus "is" Al-Qaeda, although it clearly includes people in senior roles who used to be involved with Al-Qaeda back when Al-Qaeda was a thing. On the other hand, I would make exactly the same statement with "Damascus" replaced by "Riyadh", and that regime is considered uncomplicatedly pro-American. Al-Qaeda the specific terrorist group led by Bin Laden is absolutely defeated (and had been defeated long before Bin Laden himself got taken out in Pakistan), but drone-strikes against large numbers of alleged number 2s were not sufficient to do so.




"If". The US had the ability to blockade with Maduro there, it wasn't sufficient.




Agreed - to the extent that US operations in Venezuela are succeeding, it is a combination of a blockade that made capitulation the sane thing to do and a black-bag op to remove someone not sane enough to capitulate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Wellesley icily replied that:






It is not the business of generals to shoot one another.




Note that Wellesley had three horses shot out from under him, presumably to bullets intended for the rider - and he was an infantry officer so he was only on horseback later in his career when he was in field-grade and general officer positions.


Sniping enemy officers as SOP appears to date back to the invention of effective sniper rifles, given when troops stopped saluting on the battlefield.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Asking a yes-no intention with the transparent intention to treat "yes" as an endorsement of the bailey and "no" as an attack on the motte is one of the oldest tricks in the motte-and-bailey arguers playbook.


I'm sure that Republicans will run on "Democrats are for illegal immigrants, we are for you" in the mid-terms, regardless of what Democrats say or do, and that the Democrats will respond with stories about Republicans deporting nurses, military spouses etc. The voters already know that the Democrats are insane on immigration, and that Trump in particular is borderline-insane in the other direction.


I am reasonably sure that the effectiveness of these lines does not depend on a specific audience-participation kafkatrap - if the Democrats actually had a credible immigration policy, then running tape of them not dancing like monkeys during SOTU would just be standard-issue negative campaigning of the type that doesn't move elections relative to the fundamentals.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The defeat of "Al Qaeda" (the professional terrorist organisation with global reach run out of a cave complex in Afghanistan that did 9-11) involved NATO and their local allies in the Northern Alliance conquering Afghanistan with boots on the ground. (The only reason "Al Qaeda" the meme which inspires Muslim immigrants to drive trucks into European Christmas markets isn't a problem for America is that you have fewer Muslim immigrants). I don't think you can defeat either the professional org or the meme by drone-striking enough "Al Qaeda number 2s".


If black-bagging Maduro out of Venezuela delivers on the Trump administration's goals it will be because (a) Delcy Rodriguez was already compromised and (b) the US can threaten a naval blockade to make sure she stays compromised. If they had done the black-bagging with no blockade the regime would be back in control by now (with Rodriguez either working with Maduro's people or replaced).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How do we know they aren't burning it? Given the current political situation, the principal target would be Trump personally. And given administration policy towards Iran, either Trump was totally lying about his foreign policy plans in the 2024 campaign (remember "No More Wars"?) or Israel and/or the Gulf Arabs have compromised him.


Dragging America into a forever war against Iran would, from an Israeli perspective, be more than sufficient to justify the whole Epstein operation.


[I don't actually think this is a particularly likely story - just the most likely conditional on Epstein working for Mossad].