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MaiqTheTrue

Renrijra Krin

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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Renrijra Krin

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not sure that it’s possible to have a democracy and have rules about what parties can exist.  Nor do I think democracies can survive when millions of people vote for parties of an authoritarian nature.  I don’t see any way out of that conflict though.  I’m almost to the point where you can have a stable democracy if you have the kinds of centralized media that used to exist, or you can have modern decentralized media and let democracy die of whatever populist movement that ultimately ends it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think in order to get Haute Couture in any type of art you need a civilization that still buys its own narrative and one that expects the future to be as least as good as the past.  The people building cathedrals imagined that their descendents would be burning incense before the host at the altar a thousand years in the future.  They imagined themselves at the beginning of a grand future that would see their descendants living lives they could only fantasize about.  If we legitimately believed that our civilization would eventually build a future like our science fiction utopias, and that our civilization was basically right about how to get there, we’d have no problem producing great buildings and great art and great stories.  China can produce great works.  The bird nest dome at the Olympics was pretty cool I think.  We are getting the Olympics, and im mostly expecting them to mostly push the homeless people out of the main venues for two weeks.  But we don’t really believe our own mythology anymore, we don’t really think our great great grandchildren will explore the universe in a starship easy chair.  We don’t really take our religion seriously anymore (the fundamentalists do, but they’re not a large segment of the population).  Why would a civilization that is disillusioned and thinks it’s best days are in the past bother to build or create?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Congress is more and more of a rump every term.  The regulatory agencies and the president are doing most of the work that Congress used to do.  It’s one reason I don’t exactly hate that Trump is ignoring the process.  Congress is as useless as the old Roman Senate which became a glorified debate society long before Caesar showed up.  Ours is basically there, and so I expect nothing less, if Trump isn’t the founder of the Empire, the founder is coming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think most blocs are cultural in at least some sense.  It’s just like anything else.  Rural Americans have been conservative for a long time now.  Evangelicals in many churches would consider a vote for a democrat to be sinful.  Is that a sober analysis of political positions?  It’s part of the culture.


As to the ridiculous division of power in the country, honestly I think our current system is too flawed to work.  It really seems to solidify the ideas of some blocks over others.  Yes the individual voter in a large state is disempowered in the senate, but he’s also overpowered in the House and the presidential elections.  California has 54 electoral votes.  Pennsylvania has 20+.  Those states have outsized influence over national politics.  If you lose all of the big population states, you lose.  Heck, if you lose the northwest corridor you have an uphill battle, especially if you’re a Republican who won’t have the 54 electoral votes CA brings.


Electorally I think it’s past time to allow each congressional and senatorial district to issue its own electors.  State by state winner takes all overpowers the large states too much in national policy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Minority grievances are the point in my mind, and in fact fostering grievances is a big part of the project of liberal democracy.  If I can convince you that you are being wronged by those guys over there, you’re mine for life.  You won’t go anywhere else especially to those guys over there who you believe are oppressing you in some fashion.  And fixing those things would mean the grievances go away.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve long suspected this, most especially because it explains the very large disconnection between what the liberal elite think about as important issues for minorities and other countries and cultures and what those people who are minorities think and want.  It’s very obvious that in very few cases that anyone in the elite actually knows any minorities.  Like, no working class minority has ever cared or ever will care about appropriation, or past oppression.  They want access to education, they want to live in low crime neighborhoods, they want good jobs.  Liberals don’t care about most of that.  They have zero interest in fixing local majority minority schools.  They don’t care about whether or not those majority minority neighborhoods are safe.  They could give a shit less whether the median black man can get a decent job.  Moving middle class and upper middle class blacks into slightly better jobs doesn’t fix anything that working class minorities care about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This guy is potentially anyone.  You just need to lose them into echo chambers in which they spend hours hearing that their out-group is evil and that the future of the country hangs in the balance — and time is running out.


This is also why the grievances feel so vague.  Most of the accusations are vague because they’re designed to create a vibe of being the resistance.  It’s meant to drive engagement, to keep the person angry and afraid so they’ll keep reading and watching and scrolling.  Specifics don’t work well for this, as the spell can be broken by a falsified claim.  If the claim was that Trump was going to cancel the election, an election would be a chance to break the spell, so you don’t want to do that.  Claim he might or that he’s a “wannabe dictator” or something, and you get the same effect, but without the potential of being proved wrong.


The only solution, at least if you have young people in your life (or even just yourself) is to absolutely put strict limitations on the political content you consume, and avoid it on social media.  For me, I restrict myself to hard news from AP or a five minute news update from NPR.  I don’t listen to political commentary at all.  Most, if not all of it is designed to be viral in the attention/addiction economy, and thus to inflame rather than inform.  There’s nothing of value there.  And the potential of a kid to become radicalized from constantly listening to or watching to political rhetoric designed to get attention and inflame people is much too great.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the habit of going out to places with other people helps the process indirectly by creating the opportunity for one member of that group to introduce some members of the opposite sex.  They might have a sibling, or a platonic relationship with a man or woman they’ll introduce to members of the group.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the tech isn’t helping, both because it’s ubiquitous and easy to access (including being portable) but also because it’s free and frictionless.  When every home has an arcade and a movie theater, it’s a harder sell to get people to go do things outside of that.  Add in the money and set up time of planning a meetup and a lot of people are just going to binge Netflix at home or scroll.


One thing that I’d love to see tried is to essentially force kids in schools to join a club.  So you’d have an hour of time set aside during the school day, you’d have an hour in which you would be forced to join a club and do club based activities.  It could be a sport, art, robotics, anime, movies, science fiction, whatever.  But you have to pick one, and you have to participate.  I think this would get kids a bit more social and hopefully push them to form bonds that would last outside of school.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think most of your suggestions are spot on, however, one that im concerned about is the lack of incentive and ability for young adults to meet other young adults in person.  The decline of cheap or free activities specifically for young adults to meet other young adults is a huge problem.  Even something as simple as meeting for a meal often requires a minimum of $50 and add $10 each if you’re having wine or a mixed drink.  Movies are not cheap, but also not great for getting to know the person you’re dating.  Most places that people used to meet other young adults before college became the default are gone.  Dances no longer happen except for in junior high.  Parks are hard to get to without a car.  Clubs are expensive.  So then where do people end up hanging out?


Add in that people are spending more time online and more time alone at home, and it’s just hard to get the ball rolling toward family formation.  If you’re isolated in your home and mostly gaming, watching TV or doomscrolling there, it’s not very likely that you’ll meet someone you want to have children with.  Especially given that everyone is working and doin* chores after work.  It’s like, you don’t do things with people in the real world outside of work, you don’t meet the opposite sex, not love, no marriage, no babies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But the argument falls apart if you don’t use spree shooting simply because it then brings up the question of who’s doing the shooting (and it isn’t white midwesterners carrying in the grocery store).  They literally cannot make the argument where it would actually make sense because they lose.  Once they say handguns, they NRA’s best play is to simply point out that the vast majority of handgun shooters are gang members in the urban core most of whom have miles and miles of rap sheet and were out on parole at the time of the shootings.  Easy to make the uncomfortable connection and to ask “why won’t the liberal DAs put those guys in jail and actually keep them there.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It doesn’t shock me.  Most of the effects happen decades or centuries from now, given that the cost of preventing the damage is also heavy — but is incurred immediately— the whole thing likely breaks even over that decade.  You can spend $1000 today to prevent $1000 dollars of loss twenty years from now.  I mean depending on the industry, the current cost is likely more of an issue that the future cost.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As opposed to the traditional way to start a war which is to talk about the war for months to “build consensus” and give your enemies months to harden their targets and plan a defense.  I get that you don’t want to leak your very specific war plans (date, time and location) but most wars are not that surprising to anyone with access to American cable news.  I think there’s either a reasonable compromise here, or that a lot of people should be in jail for leaking info in previous wars.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think other than legal issues age is a good qualifier of adulthood.  The reason is pretty simple:  what actually matures a human brain is that it’s forced to be responsible.  You can find all sorts of examples in history of people the modern world would consider too young to be allowed to hold a job at McDonald’s.  Alexander Hamilton was born in 1755, and by 1771, the age of 16 which is when our kids get baby’s first fast food job, our boy Alexander was mature enough to run a port for 5 months.


I can point to lots of my own family history where women were routinely getting married at 14 and having children by 15 or 16.  It wasn’t all that rare for kids in the 19th century.  It would not have been unusual for kids on farms to be doing things that we’d cringe at and probably charge people with neglect for allowing.  Kids of 9 could tame calves, sheer sheep, help with livestock, and so on.  Those kids were much more mature than their modern peers because much was expected of them at much younger ages.  Our kids not only don’t do mature work, but increasingly aren’t really expected to help out around the house or do homework (at least in some districts).


I do think a universally accepted age of adulthood makes sense from a legal perspective.  Having to individually decide on every milestone whether a person X years old can do it means a good deal of legal chaos.  If you had a universal standard (say 18) then it’s no longer necessary to say “is he able to be treated as an adult?”  If you’re 18, you can do everything any other adult can do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not sure.  Again the entire field is in its infancy.  You’re probably right that LLMs are not by themselves going to be AGI.  But creating a system with multiple systems run by an agent might be able to go farther in that direction than just LLM with agent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think point three works.


Asking social media platforms to detoxify and make their platforms less compulsive for users more or less is like asking a food company to make their food worse.  Their entire business model is “deliver attention-paying eyeballs to a platform where businesses can pay to make them watch ads.”  To the product of course they pretend to be about connecting people to things they like, but it’s really not the point.  TikTok doesn’t care about your enjoyment, they care about your engagement.  So asking a private company to just … stop doing your business model isn’t going to work.


Parental control is not that great either.  Unless you are skilled enough to IP block those sites at the router (which only works for a device using your Wi-Fi anyway) most controls are easily disabled.  It’s not something you could rely on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not convinced it’s a bubble.  It might be, but gaging that from random commentary on HN isn’t a good way to figure it out.  There are all kinds of reasons that sentiment might be going south, a lot of it being that people are expecting it to come much faster than it actually can.  Early LLMs fed this in my view because at the start minor changes were big improvements.  Going from an AI that could barely understand a simply question to one that can write an essay on a topic was quick, maybe 3-4 releases.  If it takes 6-10 to get AI to get you a publication worthy book on the topic of the query, I don’t think that’s a problem for AI — which will eventually get there — though it probably means a much harder time getting funding to work on the next projects.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean im not suggesting that the algo is the only thing that can cause terrorism, but it works quite well to spread it, and I would argue that it’s doing so in relatively good times when in ordinary circumstances before social media, it would take a good bit more to get people thinking in terroristic or politically radical ways.  You couldn’t easily curate your life to the degree necessary without upending it, you had to meet in person most of the time which imposes both cost and risk (as if anything happened you were a member of the group that did it and would be in danger of arrest.  Now you can get a good dose of radicalism in line at Walmart or between classes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s all counterproductive in the very real sense of the world, whether you double down or fall for peer pressure simply because a society full of opposing radical factions is going to quickly tear itself apart.  The society full of people cheering every ICE raid and with people convinced that ICE raids are (and I’ve seen this phrase used in the wild) the boxcar phase of the holocaust is going to come to blows rather quickly.


And the problem to me isn’t which side gets radicalized, tbh especially since my exit from a lot of online political discourse, both sides are pretty darn radical at this point, and it’s going to get worse as the algorithm rewards radical content and silos people into political tribes.  At the moment, because only one group of radicals is being monitored and warned against, it’s easier for the other side to push the envelope farther until we start seeing it acted out in very violent public ways.


And again, this is a problem that happens on all sides.  But until you can talk about the general process and incentives in the social media space that are creating radicalization, it’s hard to stop it.  The problem isn’t the teen doing a TikTok dance on hearing about the Kirk assassination.  The problem is the social media creating an environment that encourages and rewards radicalization and keeps people in radicalization silos.  Fixing that before we blow up Western civilization for likes is the challenge of our time.  At present, we only want to talk about the issue in terms of incels and “fascism” and “the manosphere” all of which, from the liberal perspective is “those weirdos over there”.  And as long as everyone is saying “it’s not us, it’s those people over there,” no one will solve the problem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think you are largely correct about the state of things, except that it’s not just women.  The rise of social media and thus social media politics is very radicalizing.  This works in both directions, to the point that I’d suggest that there is a correlation between time spent on political social media (and later activism) and radicalism.  It works by creating a tight feedback loop that rewards people for saying the most radical versions of what they believe, and for liking and sharing that content.  This is made worse by the filter bubbles that feed content that affirms the politics you hold and paints your out group as evil and stupid and possibly subhuman.


The problem with this is that only one set of these communities is seen as the problem.  Male and conservative communities are constantly being considered as radicalized communities of potentially dangerous individuals who are going to be violent or totalitarian.  The other side gets a complete pass.  Mainstreamish media can get away with referring to the right as fascist, and the current ideology as fascist, even referring to the current government as soft dictatorship.  They can talk about disruptive protests, and not even sit-ins, but directly interfering in ICE raids.  No one is handwringing about liberals being radicalized online.  No one is concerned about protecting women from toxic feminist or radical left ideologies.


This is bad from two angles.  First, focus on one group makes it almost impossible to talk about the actual phenomenon and the mechanisms that drive it.  Social media is perfectly designed to promote engagement and it turns out that the best way to do that is to radicalize everyone so they keep doomscrolling and hate posting.  Second, the large blind spot on the left makes it extremely likely that there will be political violence coming from the left where this is allowed to go on unhindered.  Bluesky is liberal twitter.  But while twitter is regularly called out as dangerous radicalization, blue sky gets a pass.  Liberals can get mainstream publication for a book called “On Tyranny” that pretty much calls Trump and MAGA fascist.  No one would have touched a similar book about Biden.  When that happens, it seems pretty likely that the group getting a pass for violent and dehumanizing speech is going to create radicals.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean I can go along with mere membership doesn’t prove much maybe the first or second time something happens.  If the pattern is revealing itself and you can find a half dozen people who all were part of one community and despite never meeting and not even sharing the same culture start doing the same thing over and over, it’s not reasonable to keep saying “anyone who sees this specific group of people doing this thing is just misrepresenting reality”.  Those people specifically keep doing that thing.  Despite being in different circles in separate countries and not having the same language.  If I found that most of the current crop of school spree shooters all liked speed skating, it would be worth talking about especially if the people shooting had few or no other points of connection.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean if they were emotionally healthy, connected to real people in the real world, had lots of hobbies and interests outside of anime, online forums, social media, and probably gaming they wouldn’t have thought they were the übermensch and probably wouldn’t have thought the solution to people disagreeing with them was found in shooting up the Turkish equivalent of a junior high school.  All of his beliefs are based to my mind in a profound separation from reality— his body, his identity, his overestimated view of his own superiority, his living in Anime to the point of name change is pretty much mentally unstable in itself.  This person’s identity was uncoupled by spending so much time online that he had no idea that the real world wasn’t like his fantasy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I just don’t understand this one.  The democrats have never cared about “blasphemy” in any form, in fact they quite often (especially with regard to Christianity) celebrate “transgressive” art that is often by it’s nature blasphemy against Christianity.  The democrats defended the film “Last Temptation of Christ” that depicted Christ as struggling with homosexuality, they defended an art display that was literally a crucifix in a jar of urine. This only makes sense if the people using this incident are doing a pretty classic KTO-KEGO.  If this were anyone other than Trump, no one would be talking about it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is that why they all sleep in the overpasses?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s actually very likely.  There aren’t any examples of people building “Disneyland” for people unrelated to them, particularly people who do nothing to benefit those paying for it.  Keep in mind that this scenario would entail the majority of the population, and those with the money to pay for it also have the power to murder the population in Disneyland who are a drain with no benefit.  They are essentially pets.  But no one will spend billions on the pets.  Elon Musk isn’t the insane cat lady who’s going to keep 500 bums in his mansion.