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MaiqTheTrue

Renrijra Krin

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joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC 

				
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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Renrijra Krin

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1783


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				The Deadweight Loss of Entertainment
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean I think the assumption that the phone and couch are actually more fun than anything one could do is a bit suspect.  My belief is that screens are a sort of hyperstimulous— that the version of whatever you happen to be doing on that screen is more immediately stimulating than the same version of that activity off the screen.  But I don’t think that’s fun.  I don’t think that the average person derives more entertainment and value from those versions than they would from the screenless version.  They wouldn’t necessarily choose freely to sit on the couch and socialize on X over going out with friends for a coffee or something.  They wouldn’t necessarily find playing some basketball game on Xbox over going to the gym with a couple of friends and a ball better and more entertaining.  Instead, the screen is something that provides the high points of the experience without the things that make it less accessible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not sure that proves anything other than his use of informal language.  He’s not writing a properly cited thesis here, he’s saying “Im going to shoot this guy in the face and this is why I did it.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not convinced being “good looking” is enough to set a person apart from a crowd enough to have someone not only recognize him, but be sure enough of that recognition to call the police.  If there’d been something truly unique about him — say a scar on his right cheek, bright orange hair, green eyes, a limp, etc. sure I get that.  Luigi has dark hair, brown eyes, maybe a bit tall and his hair is curly, but on the scale of human appearance, he’s within the median human appearance.  Usher is unique— very dark skin, a prominent scar, unusual voice.  Those things people will notice because of how unusual they are for the median American.  Being “dreamy” isn’t necessarily being weird enough to stand out.  There are plenty of tall men who have dark, curly hair and brown eyes who could be described as good looking.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
China has a lot of the makings of a superpower.  They’re going to win a manufacturing simply because that’s where the factories are for the most part.  We still have some factories, but nothing near what China has.  Secondly, China (and most of East Asia in general) have prioritized education and particularly science, mathematics, engineering, and related subjects.  And they are oriented towards getting the best and brightest the best education they possibly can.  Americans make little mouth-noises about education and STEM, but really, they don’t care about education that much.  We are much more concerned about leaving behind a kid who doesn’t or can’t read or write or do math because we prioritize his feelings (actually more than likely his mother’s feelings) than we do about getting the rest of the kids to read and write and do math to the best of their abilities.  Culturally, we don’t care about education much either.  We want our kids to attend college and get a diploma, but no parents ever care much about whether or not they’re getting a real education.  In fact Theres a lot of ADA based cheating in schools where kids get diagnosed with various things so they can get grades they don’t deserve because they have extra time, or help with reading the test, or whatever else.  Kids go to college needing remedial education and increasingly having never read a single full book either fiction or nonfiction.


If I’m betting, im choosing the civilization that graduates millions of engineers and scientists and mathematicians every year ready to build the future over a civilization that graduates millions of people with literature, psychology, marketing, and law degrees.  I’m betting on the one who teaches kids to study hard and learn the material without coddling them over the civilization that cheats kids through to prevent hard feelings and teaches kids to slack off.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It doesn’t surprise me.  There always a kind of push-pull effect for political figures that you want to support but doing so would make you look less virtuous to other people.  The Reddit community wants to support the destruction of capitalism and the death or at least confronting of CEOs.  They’re also self-aware enough to understand that open support of Luigi is going to make them look like terrible people who support the things he did.  It’s much easier to hide behind claims that Luigi was framed, that he couldn’t have really done those things, that the state is bad for arresting him and so on.  You can still support the man, but now it’s not because he did something you support, but because it’s an obvious miscarriage of justice that all of this happened.


The only part of the story that I doubt is that he was apparently noticed and reported by McDonald’s staff during lunch rush.  I doubt anyone at McDonald’s would have had time to notice him (he’s actually fairly normal looking), or had time to call the police, or would have bothered.  But that can be explained as a way to hide drones or other surveillance that the cops don’t want public.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The ADA which created the mess by making “mental illness” ( which is by definition hard to detect and verify unless it’s really bad) something that public places are required to accept and accommodate.  It’s not just a problem for schools, but workplaces as well.  Psychiatric disorders are pretty much a get out of jail free card and being diagnosed with one has more to do with access to psychiatric care than anything going on in the brain of the patient.  A rich family with high end medical insurance can find a doctor to fill in the forms and diagnose their underperforming child with a bevy of developmental issues and mental health problems that require teachers to give those accommodations.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the first important thing that absolutely has to happen is that you have to be willing to take the parents out of the loop.  If the kid is flunking, then either he improves such that he learns the material or he fails and repeats the material until he can do the work.  No more requests to make it easier, no cheats from ADA-diagnosed fake disability, no retests, no open book/note, no extra credit or participation points (all of which are just dressing up the urge to remove rigor so your kids pass).  Either Johnny reads at grade level and learns his math to grade level or he doesn’t pass.


Second, I think we have to get back to basics here.  Reading and maths and science long before any other fluff.  Read real books, learn to do maths, learn how to do physics and chemistry.  Personally, im very much in favor of the classical model of education, but I wouldn’t oppose the modern system if the kids had managed to read adult level literature by the time they graduated high school and were able to do advanced algebra.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What anyone wants in a social system only becomes relevant when getting that without putting in the rest of the work becomes possible.  If you allow men access to women without them having to become worthy in some form, yes men want that.  If you allow women to get the benefits of being liberated without them having to contribute or even learn to be responsible for themselves or their families, they will do that.  The way any society functions is to restrain human appetites.  That way people do things that benefit society specifically to get the benefits.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And how do you verify that they are who the claim to be and harbor no jihadist sympathy?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe men shouldn’t be shamed every time they stick their head up to get involved.  There are all kinds of stories about men being assumed to be a pedophile for the crime of taking his own child to the park.  Men don’t dare to volunteer to work with kids because again, the meme of “any male showing interest in kids is dangerous” means that the male who gets involved in scouting is assumed to be grooming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The point is mostly verification.  It’s not even learning unless you believe that using grammarly and answering emails is something that can only be learned by university students.  So long as the degree obtained still requires the students to demonstrate proficiency in those kinds of things, it’s useful, and certainly better than self-teaching in that respect.  Self teaching doesn’t verify anything to people who don’t know you personally.  It’s like purchasing a black belt on Amazon, no one knows whether or not you did the work or got the skills you claim.


This probably doesn’t matter for degrees that cover fluff like history or literature.  No one actually cares if you’re good at reading history books.  But if you’re putting it on a resume, you need third party certification simply because the person reading the resume cannot verify that you did anything and probably isn’t willing to waste time testing people who are claiming to have learned something without verification.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Education matters in the modern era if (and only if) it verifies the existence of actual skill.  The issue with self-taught expertise is that it can be extremely hard to verify.  I can simply claim to have studied English Literature, but what I really did was skim Shakespeare, then read the Daily Mail.  You can’t really tell unless you’re willing to and able to test me for proof of skill.  If I have the degree from UCLA, you can look at the curriculum and my transcripts and know what kinds of work I did.


College has the same problem that traditional martial arts have.  You need the belts to determine where in the curriculum the student is, but it’s easy for the unscrupulous to simply allow people to buy their belts with little regard for whether or not anything is being learned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The thing is that those constraints often created and maintained an incentive structure that mitigated the negative effects of TV shows.


In the case of content, keeping the family limited to one screen in a public area means that you can’t just pump whatever you want into your show.  Mom and Dad can see what’s on the TV screen, and thus at worst bad ideas had to sneak in as subtext.  And because the screen was the only one in the house kids couldn’t use it for more than an hour or two before Mom wants her soaps or Dad wants his golf.  A TV show featuring women in combat would likely have been cancelled because no adult was going to let their kids watch it any more than moderns would allow kids to watch programs where the heroes smoke.  TVs still have an off switch, but because kids have their own TVs that adults can’t control (or don’t control) any script writer with an agenda can put that out without worry about losing ratings when the adults turn off the television and warn their kids not to “let them catch you watching that kind of garbage.”


Personally, I regard screens like I regard any other hyperstimulous— it should be a rare treat, not a staple part of your daily diet.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the problem is in part a lack of real-world pressure testing of our military.  We haven’t had a global conflict that fully engages the might of the military since the Second World War, and no major on the ground engagement with a military on the level of our own since view an (hard to count Iraq War I when the military surrendered to CNN news crews).


This leads directly to people thinking of the military less as a War-Machine and more of a low key jobs program.  Which then creates the problem that it’s increasingly difficult to say no to ideas that obviously reduce military capacity.  Women, gays, transgender people are now fully integrated into the military without a second thought as to whether or not this would affect the war-fighting capability of the military.  Putting women in those positions simply means they’re in danger without any military advantage to the country.  Putting gays in does the same (we go to war with Iran, what would they do with a captured American gay soldier?  They kill their own gay citizens).


The military isn’t the only place where this happens.  But once you stop pressure testing any institution for its purpose, it tends to turn into a projection of whatever the laptop classes think will make them popular at dinner parties or get them promoted at work.  Making into a diversity group does both, and they don’t need that group to be at top performance, so why not?  Or you can use it to score points by following the latest trendy ideas in the field.  This actually happens a lot in education.  The old boring ideas of teaching kids mathematical concepts like addiction, subtraction, multiplication, and division— then making them practice it until they can do it right — has worked for centuries.  Teaching phonics has created strong readers in any language with an alphabet for millennia.  But you don’t get credit for that, instead you need a trendy new idea that makes you look with it and hip and forward thinking.  Who cares if it means kids don’t learn to read and write?  If the main criteria were the results— the kids can read on grade level, the military can win wars, the programmers can produce a working product on time, most of these issues solve themselves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The counter is that putting the stuff that can really mess up your computer behind multiple steps in hidden menus generally means that users who don’t understand the system won’t find and mess with them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this seems more of an explanation.  Americans are increasingly allergic to serious sustained effort toward a long term goal.  Some of it is the relatively instant gratification of our hyperstimulous laden society.  Some of it is because America has a difficult time admitting that differences in ability exist and matter.  Furthermore, academics is no longer valued.  I mean we want kids to go to college, but we aren’t concerned about much beyond simple graduation with decent grades (which leads to the need for employers to find work arounds for jobs with actual skills required to avoid hiring a kid who graduated but learned nothing useful).  Compared to Europe or East Asia, we are lazy in education.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Key word a vote.  No one is obligated to vote yes, they just have to hold a vote.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To be fair, outside of professional political science related fields finding someone able to have enough information to have a deep level conversation more than a sixth grade level of research.  Most people have other things they spend the majority of their time on and at best they read a few articles a week.


I’d be perfectly interested in creating a case for some liberal policies that I differ with you guys on.  But keep in mind that because I have a regular day job that im not really a wonk.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s not on a random walk, I think the issue is that the markets themselves are ahead of the news.  To be blunt, by the time a market-pushing force becomes general public news, it’s long since been priced in.  The people making a living from stocks are generally aware of what’s going on in the world from private sources— global intelligence agencies, government sources, knowing the players and the playbooks.  I’d watch the markets to time the end of the shutdown rather than the opposite.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for November 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the real secret sauce of most problems of this sort is adherence or frankly discipline.  The concepts behind the solutions are not difficult, they’re generally simple to the point of pre-school simple.  Most people are simply undisciplined and end up relying on motivation to get things done and it simply does not work.  If you want to reach a goal you have to work on it even when you’d rather do something else, when you’re craving something else.  You don’t want to be fat, you need to eat less even if it means feeling hungry, eat healthy food even when you want pizza and wings.  If you want to build muscle, getting into the gym is critical even (especially) when you’re not eager to do so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is just a personal observation.  If you’re constantly connected to the firehose of culture, especially political culture, you’re going to absorb a lot of the ideas of that culture without thinking about it.  I’ve found this post digital detox.  A lot of political and social stuff seems crazy when you’re not swimming around in it.  When your ideas come from your mind and your faith and your culture rather than whatever is current in the world.


And if Christianity is going to win the day in the political arena, it has to be real Christianity unique and different from the culture around it.  It cannot be “American culture, but stick a cross on the flag.”  It has to be Christianity, small o orthodox Christianity, and has to present itself as a zeitgeist wholly different from the rest of society.  That will attract people.  Christianity that says “this stuff is fine” and drinks from the same media and social media wells as the rest will just be American culture lite.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To be fair, everyone is in some sort of bubble, and as such you ignore the bubble at your own risk.  Most people are getting their view of the world through some sort of media, and unfortunately social media, so you can’t just throw your hands up and say “it’s just a social media propaganda bubble.”  The bubble has caused three assassination attempts.  It swings elections.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean it’s been 9 months.  Any policies that the markets are reacting to are either Trumps or policies he chose to continue.  I don’t think you can attribute much going on now to policies by Biden as he’s been out of office for nearly a year.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Honestly I see Benedict as more of a redoubt than a full retreat.  The idea is to make sure to protect the community and properly form believers so that they can actually engage the outside world without losing the basics of the faith.  The problem with winning the argument or taking the government are the same — it only works if the people are properly Christian and know not to go along with things contrary to the faith.  If you bring half-formed Christianity into contact with power, it’s likely to be co-opted and used as a veneer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree.  I think it should be basically a faux pas to bring up politics and for that matter religion in the workplace simply because it introduces friction into that workplace to no benefit.