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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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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I gotta say, this Platner guy is proving his enlisted status more every day.




Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,

Damned from here to Eternity,

God ha' mercy on such as we,

Baa! Yah! Bah!


[Kipling, 1892]


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm not sure what you mean by the word "grift." To me, if a group of allied people work in informal concert to grab resources, it's still potentially what I would call a "grift."




I would say an activist movement is a grift if the primary goal is to transfer other people's money to the activists and their immediate social network, but not a grift if the goal is to transfer money to the group the activists claim to be speaking for. The organised BLM movement, for example, turns out to be a grift on this definition - they raised a lot of donations and mostly kept the money. The traditional Black urban political machines are not pure grifts on this model - although they take a lot off the top, they spend more taxpayer money on their constituents than they do on themselves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Political lore is that this was SOP in statewide elections in Illinois, with the Daley machine in greater Chicago and the Republican machine in the rural south trying to delay releasing results until they knew how many votes they needed to steal. But that doesn't describe how the most famous rigged election in Illinois history (the 1960 Presidential election) went down - Kennedy was ahead of Nixon throughout the "count", and Cook County on average reported faster than the rest of the state.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm saying that competence and riggedness are orthogonal. You can rig elections competently or incompetently, you can count honest elections competently or incompetently. An incompetently run election is more vulnerable to external fraud, but the claim OP is making about California is about insider fraud.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And this isn't one of them. The terms of the market were:




This market will resolve to "Yes" if MicroStrategy sells any of its Bitcoin by 11:59 PM ET on the date specified in the title. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
The primary resolution source for this market will be information from MSTR and on-chain data, however a consensus of credible reporting will also be used.




This is unambiguously a statement that the sale will occur before 1159, not that the publicly available information confirming it will appear before 1159. MicroStrategy sold Bitcoin before the deadline, and this was confirmed by "information from MSTR" in the ordinary course of business, on the timetable you would expect for a sale shortly before the deadline.


This makes the LIBOR bros look honest.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes - gayness is a modern western construct. The old school way has manly men who did the dicking and a mix of women, transwomen, effeminate men who like it up the butt, teenage boys, and weak men who can't say no who took it.


AFAIK Leviticus is the first time an authority unequivocally condemns dicking another guy. But the Biblical framework condemns the top and the bottom separately, it doesn't lump them together as "gay".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(1) more goodies (money, power, status, etc.) for women;




Stop saying "women" when you mean "feminists". (Incidentally, advice which most people should think about most of the time.) Feminism isn't a pure grift - individual feminists genuinely want other feminists to get more gibmedats and not just themselves - but the point isn't to uplift women as a whole, it's to subsidise a particular female life script (see Obama's notorious Life of Julia ad, but the critical point is that women who seek to have children in actually-committed relationships with men are SOL) with the goal of changing female behaviour such that a large enough pool of able women pursue meritocratic competition that they can achieve a 50-50 power elite by affirmative action without promoting obvious numpties.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


According to research, globally, sex workers have a 45% to 75% chance of experiencing sexual violence on the job




Even if we take this figure seriously, what fraction of retail workers experience economic violence on the job at some point? "Sexual violence" is defined broadly - if we defined "economic violence" equally broadly then it wouldn't need to be a robbery - a shoplifter pushing past a security guard would qualify.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there any reason why people think slow first counts are Bayesian evidence of fraud rather than incompetence? Countries with actually-rigged elections like PRI Mexico or Chavez' Venezuela count their elections overnight just as fast as countries with free and fair elections.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The timeline of Mirpuris in the UK is roughly:


1947-1961 - After Pakistani independence, the UK still allows free immigration of Commonwealth citizens. For reasons that are not obvious, working-class Pakistanis moving to the UK are mostly Mirpuri. Some low-wage industries like textiles are actively seeking to hire Pakistani immigrants because they are cheaper than white Britons.

1961-68 - the Mangla Dam is built, displacing about 110k Mirpuris. About 5k moved to the UK and joined the existing Mirpuri community in the UK before the doors closed.

1962 - The Commonwealth Immigrants Act ends free immigration for Commonwealth citizens. At this point there are about 25k ethnic Pakistanis in the UK, mostly Mirpuri.

1962-1983 - The Mirpuri population in the UK doubles more than once a decade due to chain migration and natural increase.

1983 - The Thatcher government introduces the "Primary Purpose Rule", saying that marriage to a British citizen doesn't get you a visa unless you can demonstrate that the primary purpose of the marriage was not immigration-related. In effect, this means that you can no longer use obviously-arranged marriages for immigration purposes. The doubling time of the British Mirpuri population increases to about 15 years.

1997 - One of the first things the incoming Blair government does is to abolish the Primary Purpose Rule, which they consider racist. Chain migration increases, with arranged marriages to cousins becoming a problem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
WorldVision is an explicitly Christian aid organisation with a generally good reputation and which I haven't seen accused of being skinsuited by leftists. (Christian Aid and CAFOD in the UK have, I think, been thoroughly skinsuited)


Numerous religious denominations, some of them conservative-aligned, run overseas missions which combine proselytisation with aid work, although I am not familiar with specific examples.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Although the weapons are normally improvised, this general type of violent crime is endemic in the rougher parts of the UK and has been for decades, and predates mass immigration. (My wife had a student summer job typing up the indictments in an ethnically homogenous town in northern England).


"If you get lairy with random strangers in the streets around pub closing time, you will probably get beaten up, and might get stabbed" is something streetwise Brits are aware of. "If you get lairy with random armed strangers in the streets around pub closing time, you are a lot more likely to get stabbed" is a logical corollary. The sword is something of a furphy here - the incident looks like a conventional dumbass-on-dumbass post-pub fight until the police spectacularly screw up the response.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The video shows a violent confrontation initiated by the McMichaels. Their legal argument was that they were making a legal citizen's arrest, not that they were acting in self defence. Based on the video alone, the McMichaels were obviously guilty notwithstanding Arbery throwing the first punch - indeed if the case had somehow ended with the McMichaels dead, Arbery would have had a decent self-defence claim. The reason why they were not charged until the the case attracted media attention was that the local police in a Georgia small town thought that it was normal pro-social behaviour for a retired cop to round up a posse in hot pursuit of a jogger who trespassed on a construction site.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Violent crime by Indians is also rare in the UK.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This hit me so hard a few years ago when I met up with a few friends while I was in another country and they insisted that everywhere we eat was statusmaxxing or whatever, the type of place you could brag about going, even to the extent that they wanted to walk out of a place run by a sweet old man when they deemed the food subpar.




I think that comes from the quantification and gamification of a particular kind of status (having the time and money to afford Instagrammable experiences) on social media and the resulting intensification of competition.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
North of the Mason-Dixon line, see for example this Tanner Greer post about the culture of the Gilded Age WASP elite, or John Brooks' 1970 tour de force Once in Golconda about the culture of 1920's Wall Street and how it changed as a result of the Great Depression.


I always thought that the planter class in the South saw themselves as untitled nobility - they spent a lot of time banging on about how they preserved the traditional martial and chivalric virtues that the North had lost due to excessive commercialism. Although in another thread someone told me that elite draft dodging was widespread in the Confederacy, which would imply that the planter elite never actually felt the sense of noblesse oblige they claimed to.


Someone still thinks it is worth publishing the Social Register, which is what a nobiliary directory looks like in a country with no titled nobility.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think so. If I had to pick a point in time at which the American elite had ceased to have a culture of noblesse oblige, I would go for the Vietnam War and the vast majority of GI and Silent generation elites helping their Boomer sons dodge the draft.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


100% I've never had to translate a Russian accent over a shit quality phone line,




It's not much more comprehensible in a lecture theatre.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My read was that MLE was largely restricted to north-east London. In my bit of south-east London accents assimilate to Estuary, or occasionally to RP among upwardly-mobile privately-educated 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants. Old-school "sarf-east London" is going the same way as Cockney for the same reasons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Singlish is a relatively recent invention.




PMC Singaporeans can code-switch between Standard Singapore English (which is British English with a few Malay loanwords, and worryingly many uncles) and Singlish, and speak SSE with a broadly similar accent to other people whose first language is Mandarin. (The same is true of PMC Brits whose native tongue is one of the barely-comprehensible regional dialects like Geordie or Scouse).


My understanding is that Singlish is what happens if you take 90-105 IQ Hokkien-speakers and educate them bilingually in English and Mandarin, neither of which their parents speak.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The analogy would be medical malpractice.




Medical malpractice is the area of civil law dealing with incompetence. Outside the medical context, culpable incompetence leading to the death of an innocent is the crime of manslaughter. Medics are de facto but not de jure immune to criminal prosecution for manslaughter, even if they fall so far below the standard of care that they might as well just be cutting people up at random. We do prosecute medics for murder where malicious intent is proved (the famous cases in the UK are Harold Shipman and Lucy Letby, and the controversy around the Letby case demonstrates how hard it is to draw the line between sufficiently severe incompetence and malice). The primary control on culpable incompetence in medics is professional discipline, up to and including withdrawing licenses to practice. When a junior doctor and a nurse were prosecuted for incompetence under conditions of overwork and inadequate supervision, the UK medical profession had a collective freakout that required the Health Secretary to promise never again.


One of the problems with US policing is that there is no licensing regime for cops, and qualified immunity and sovereign immunity are sufficiently broad that civil law is not an effective remedy for culpable incompetence by police. There is a huge and highly technical body of police malpractice law, but it only protects guilty criminals who can get off (due to the exclusionary rule) if the police made a legal mistake while building the case - thus giving the worst of both worlds, with no remedy for genuinely innocent victims and all the costs of overlawyering. So criminal prosecution of rogue cops is the only stick the system has, and it is too big a stick for the required detail work. Defensive policing is just as harmful as defensive medicine, and people (quite properly) go ultra-defensive in the face of possible jail time. (See also the unintended consequences of abortion bans with doctors preferring to let pregnant women die rather than risk relying on the medical-necessity exception - this issue can be resolved with sufficiently clear published guidance and Texas has done so, but badly-governed red states haven't bothered.)




(No, it does not suffice to go after the top guy, because then you end up in situations where the top guy kills himself in some bunkers and all his goons were blameless people merely following orders.)




If this is the covert Godwin's law violation it looks like, then letting the vast majority of the goons off worked out pretty well in the end that time. The worst thing you can do is to prosecute the goons while letting the boss hide behind plausible deniability - that destroys non-criminal organisations.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yes, I think the ‘bitter lesson’ is the other thing that came out of this, but AlphaGo’s intelligence didn’t generalise to simultaneously learning even a single other game.




The AlphaZero engine inspired by AlphaGo and released about two years later learned chess (better than Stockfish), go (better than AlphaGo) and shogi (better than the best human players or computer engines then existing) and a closely related engine reached grandmaster level in tournament Starcraft.


AlphaGo is also proof-of-concept for the "big dumb neural net" approach to artificial intelligence which had previously been in the doldrums, which I think was critical for the approaches that eventually worked for LLMs to be taken seriously and attract the funding they needed.


Both Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky correctly called AlphaZero as the "AI fire alarm" - i.e. the first hard evidence that smarter-than-human AI was something we needed to start worrying about as a realistic possibility rather than as a philosophical debate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I spend an ungodly amount of time in front of my computer playing games or browsing the internet. It's actually hurting my career and I am working on getting over that




Is there any Motteposter who doesn't feel like this? It's just that when you have a demanding upper-middle-class career and kids "ungodly" is 90 minutes a day, whereas when you are single in grad school it's 4+ hours a day.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
When Galton was writing, cisHajnal societies still had above-replacement birthrates. I don't see what he could say which would be relevant to the question "Can we RETVRN to a Victorian society where the most advanced countries all had well-above-replacement birthrates?" because the question didn't exist in his day - he had been dead for 50 years before the fertility collapse started, and 100 years before it became critical.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You can just have high IQ people who are historically normal in other ways, and these people will invent things and also have a TFR above 2 because they will get married young and have a lot of babies.




Assumes facts not in evidence. Empirically, the only group which can do this is Modern Orthodox Jews. I don't think they count as "historically normal in other ways" given the importance of the Diaspora and the Holocaust to their folk history. It's also the case that Modern Orthodoxy only develops the way it does because of extensive contact with cisHajnal societies.