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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I dropped Latin before they started reading Catullus, but among his more notable works (all of which were pored over by my classicist friends) were:


    

  • A Latin translation of Sappho's Greek "lyric poetry" (this is what classicists call it in learned academic journals, but there is a reason why the old-fashioned term for lesbianism is "Sapphic love")
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  • His own erotic poetry about his sexual desire for teenagers of both sexes
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  • Invective against his political opponents including sexual innuendos. (The modern equivalent of calling your political opponent a pigfucker, but with more poetic description of the physical qualities of the pig).
    • 



Suetonius is the primary source for most of the modern stories about sexual perversion in Ancient Rome. The description of Tiberius' BDSM exploits (he was a sexual sadist to the point where I find him sick, and I'm not exactly innocent here) is the most explicit part - the discussion of Caligula and Nero is mostly a list of who he did and where.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would say El Salvador has done a lot more for the US right than Argentina has. But the "US right" shouldn't have any foreign allies at all (and in general nor should any other faction within a democratic country). Your allies are the enemies of your enemies, and the enemy of the US right is the US left. A foreign government who is supporting the US right against the US left is meddling in US domestic politics, which is something foreign governments shouldn't be doing, and something that all US factions who even pretend to be patriotic should be discouraging them from doing.


I think Israel is an ally of the US right, in the sense that Israel does meddle in US domestic politics in a way which is intended to help Republicans and DINOs, but turning support for Israel into a partisan issue doesn't seem to be moving either US public opinion or US policy in a pro-Israeli direction. I also don't think that Netanyahu's explicit, public, partisan-coded opposition to Obama over the JCPOA actually helped Republicans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


True though the Rowling case seems indicative that TERFs are more likely to die on that hill/be proactively purged even if generally aligned




In the US, the TERFs lost and you can no longer be a feminist in good standing unless your feminism includes men pretending to be women. In the UK the battle between trans-inclusive and womyn-born-womyn feminisms is ongoing, with the "TERFs" (they are by no means all radical feminists) having the better of it. Rowling's money may be part of it, but I think it is mostly driven by the different class composition of 2nd wave feminism in the two countries - the most prominent trans-exclusive feminists in the UK are all older women from working-class backgrounds.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the British version of the joke, the dog is the 0.4 of a child.


[The history is that "the average family consists of mum, dad and 2.4 children" became a comedy meme back when TFR was 2.4 for the country as a whole, but roughly 2 for the chattering classes]


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It is notoriously the main way the more trad British public schools motivate the boys to learn Latin. Something like Suetonius' account of Nero's vices can be read in a scholarly translation, but if you want to someone to let you read Catullus as a schoolboy you are probably reading in in the original Latin. Rated "C" for classical.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the case of Mediterranean boat people, nobody cares about the (relatively small number of) drownings except as a legal weapon. Under normal circumstances, it is a crime to put people who do not have permission to come to Italy on a boat and take them to Italy. But if the reason why you put them on the boat is that you were rescuing someone who was in peril at sea, then it isn't.


My understanding is that a lot of work goes into calibrating the number of Mediterranean migrant drownings to the bare minimum needed to keep the people running the migrant-trafficking NGOs out of prison.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Democrats actually, in fact, did a bunch of bad shit to win the 2020 election, and suffered zero consequences for doing so. As a starter, they used Federal security and legal agencies to harm the trump campaign and protect the Biden campaign.




I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, but "Who was the real Chief Executive in 2020?" (in this comment, referred to as they) is the most divisive issue in contemporary American politics. Both sides agree that the government was criminally awful, they just disagree whether the then-President of the United States can be blamed for the performance of the government.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nazi book-burning




The taboo against book burning is a lot older than that. In the West, it goes back to blame-placing after the burning of the Library of Alexandria. In the East, the Han were accusing their Qin predecessors of book-burning while the Library was still standing.


The taboo on book-burning is lindier than the taboos on male homosexuality and sister-shagging.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Non-intervention in the ME was not a possible political position pre-2010 unless you were also willing to accept a lower quality of life in the US. Back then we needed to keep the oil flowing.




US support for Israel is not and never was driven by oil. The oil is controlled by the Gulf Arabs, and the Gulf Arabs hated Israel as much as everyone else in the region until the 2010s when the Middle East became a giant proxy war between Iranian and Saudi-backed jihadi groups. The first oil shock in 1973 was engineered deliberately by the Gulf Arabs to punish America (and other western countries) for supporting Israel. The "realist" policy in the post Cold War era (as practiced, for example, by both Bushes) was to unofficially tie American pressure on Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians to commitments from the Fremen to keep the Spice flowing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm not sure what to say about #4 except that I haven't seen any of the Ferengi episodes, and I kind of doubt that very many of the people who come up with this stuff have either.




I would say 100% of the people involved in the Geek Feminism lamewar were aware of the Ferengi connection. I don't know how much of the wide conversation about calling women "females" has passed through that filter, although I first came across it in the Geek Feminism context.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


No? ‘Girl’ implies unmarried, but referring to a woman as a ‘girl’ would be uncontroversial and normal outside of liberal bubbles




I think calling an adult woman a "girl" is now restricted to dating and sex-related contexts (including sex work-adjacent jobs like Hooters "girls")


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Woman doctor" and "woman engineer" don't exactly roll off the tongue




In old fashioned British English, "lady doctor" was idiomatic. It fell out of use alongside all non-fossilised uses of "lady" (we still have ladies' toilets and begin formal speeches with "Ladies and Gentlemen") around the time it became acceptable to speak in Estuary English on BBC news bulletins. My experience is that if you talk about a "woman doctor" you will be accused of sexism regardless of the words you use - she's just a doctor after all. (There is the obvious exception if you are doing feminist activism. They use people-first language and talk about "women in medicine".)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"What is a woman?" is a question about the meaning of words, not about the world. And "We should, where possible, use words in a way which avoids hurting people" is a good (though in my view insufficient given that it makes it impossible to talk about sex-specific medical issues in non-technical language) rational argument for using the word "woman" in a trans-inclusive way - see any of the multiple Yud essays on this point, or Scott's "The Categories were made for Man"


There are a lot of insane transactivists who think that "What is a woman?" has an objective scientifically correct answer which includes transwomen, but you don't have to agree with them to avoid cancellation.


Given Hobson's choice on the issue, I would rather defend pro-Palestine in front of a hostile audience than TWAW*, but I would rather defend TWAW than a blatant lie like the MAGA position on the 2020 election.


* My actual position on this issue is that Israel is almost certainly the lesser evil, but I don't take sides in evil-vs-evil conflicts where I don't have a stake.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not to mention less accurate. The average Democratic office-holder lives in a woke bubble where "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman" is a correct description of the local usage of the word "woman". I do not think the GOP has a widespread alternative meaning of "stole" and "thieves" which would make @anti_dan's proposed response a true statement when parsed as conservatalk.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wouldn't that cause a problem in the lab by making the "alcohol" immiscible with water?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Ethanol" in a school chemistry lab is probably meths - the duty on drinkable pure alcohol is pretty high, even if not marketed for drinking. Adding 5-10% methanol makes the alcohol too toxic to drink and therefore unattractive to drinkers. We were all warned about this in no uncertain terms before doing an experiment with the stuff.


In the UK, they don't add anything additional to meths to make it unpalatable, so ocasionally tramps and suchlike posion themselves by drinking it. Meths sold to the general public as a fuel/cleaning product is died purple to discourage accidental drinking. But a school science lab is going to be using "industrial methylated spirits" - i.e. an ethanol/methanol mix with nothing else added to it that could affect the chemistry. (Of all the chemicals in my school lab, this was oddly the only one they needed a licence to buy).


I'm not sure about the situation in the US.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
With the increasing dominance of expresso-based coffee (paradoxically partly driven by Starbucks), Starbucks is actually one of the best places to get decent drip coffee. At least in London, any of the other major chains will just serve you an Americano without warning you, and the good independents will check you are okay with Americano before serving it.


Paris used to have a culture of decent drip coffee, but I'm not sure if they still do. The last few times I was there I was with kids in a way not conducive to serious coffee exploration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I always thought it was a rather bloody American Civil War battle.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sweden is 10th in the world in tax revenue as % of GDP, behind the UK, Norway and Denmark. Sweden is high tax!




Quibble, but the World Bank figures on the left-hand-side of that table are worthless, because they exclude state and local taxes, and taxes labelled as "social security contributions" or similar. Using the more accurate UN figures on the right-hand-side (which still look too low when eyeballed), Sweden is 4th, and the UK at 20th is in the middle of the pack of first-world countries. The Nordic countries and France have very high taxes, even by Euroleftie standards. I'm not sure what is going on with New Zealand.


The UK shows up as very high tax on the World Bank table because essentially 100% of our taxes are collected by central government.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Grandpa Joe was malingering while his daughter-in-law was working herself to the bone trying to stretch one income to feed seven people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Trayvon Martin wasn't someone you would want marrying your daughter, but he was well within the range where the non-idiotarian left would consider him salvagable and want to spend political capital on him - particularly because of the unusual fact pattern with no hard evidence that Martin was criming at the time he was shot. Nobody knows who started the fight that ended up with Martin smashing Zimmerman's head against the curve and Zimmerman shooting Martin, both participants were dumb and hot-headed enough that them could plausibly have done so, and if Zimmerman had died Martin would have had a self-defence claim sufficiently plausible that he should have been acquitted under Florida law for the same reasons Zimmerman was.


Breonna Taylor was an obviously innocent victim (she was shot by mistake while police were executing a no-knock warrant at her address but targetted at her ex who no longer lived there) and got the full BLM left-wing martyrdom operation.


The whole left-wing martyrdom apparatus was hauled out and ready to go in the Ahmad Arbury case - they only reason why it wasn't deployed (as per @07mk's Toxoplasma point below) is that the McMichaels' behaviour was sufficiently outrageous that the mainstream right wasn't willing to defend it.


So I think it is more "genuinely innocent victims of police violence are rare so BLM don't normally have the chance to take up those cases" than "BLM preferentially defends the worst of the worst".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this is kind of key. Pre-Minneapolis, ICE was going for the aesthetic of "This is a kinetic military operation against Blue jurisdictions who shelter illegals" and they have mostly shifted towards an aesthetic of "This is a paramilitary force but one taking a fundamentally law enforcement approach to arresting and deporting illegals".  This generates fewer banger memes for right-wing social media, but probably more deportations, and definitely a better chance of co-operation from Democratic state and local administrations in purple states.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tasing someone and then shooting them on the ground is never acceptable professional policing. The video isn't playing for me in the UK, but from @ToaKraka's description this was not a level of threat where immediate lethal force (i.e. shoot for the centre of mass and keep shooting until the threat has visibly ceased) was appropriate. I wouldn't normally try to second-guess a cop being threatened with a knife on this point, but the cop who pulled out a Taser clearly agrees with me here. And "Dangerous clown with knife but not actively attacking anyone" is precisely the sort of situation that less-lethal weapons were developed for.


Criminal prosecutions of cops in close cases (and "shot a perp brandishing a knife" is close enough for me) creates bad incentives, so I wouldn't. But the guy who pulled the trigger should never work in law enforcement again, and if a better video reveals that the threat level was high enough to justify lethal force then the guy with the Taser should probably be kicked off the force for dangerous incompetence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Rape charges (and this is rape, not statutory rape - she was 16 in a state where 16 is legal) are dropped more often than they are pressed to trial. You need a victim-witness who is able and willing to stand up to cross-examination, and rapists tend to target the kind of woman who isn't. This is the whole reason why feminists want to replace criminal justice for rape with kangaroo courts (at least for favoured groups of women like undergraduates living on campus) and criminalise even consensual sex in situations which are high-risk for rape - rape is a very hard crime to prosecute unless you have one of the rare fact patterns that make it easy like "man jumps stranger in the street and rapes her"


"Victim doesn't want to go to trial" and "victim is so messed-up she can't keep her story straight on the stand" are the most likely stories here, as in every other such case.


"Runaway mentally ill teen has what may have been consensual sex-for-housing and may have been kidnapping and rape" is an absolutely classic unprosecutable case.  It's probably rape, but the main piece of evidence you need to get to the "beyond reasonable doubt" threshold is the uncorroborated testimony of someone who will read (fairly or not) to the average juror as a mentally ill crack-whore.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
According to my Greek teacher, most other cultures with their own versions of the Cyclops legend had the trickster character claim to be called "Myself" so the Cyclops ended up screaming "Myself has hurt me" and getting just as little sympathy as if "Nobody has hurt me", and Homer changed it in translation because one form of the Greek word for "Nobody" rhymes with the word for "cunning" which Homer consistently uses to describe Odysseus.