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Primaprimaprima

US government confirms the existence of aliens in 2026: 100%

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joined 2022 September 05 01:29:15 UTC

"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."


				
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Primaprimaprima


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
US government confirms the existence of aliens in 2026: 100%

				
				
				

				

					5 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 01:29:15 UTC
				


				
					

					
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Trump pauses aid to Ukraine after fiery meeting with Zelenskyy:




The Trump administration is pausing all aid to Ukraine, including weapons in transit or in Poland.






The pause comes days after a contentious meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump in the White House.




I guess that settles the question of his authority over this matter!


One analysis I've heard is that everything -- both the reduction in US aid and the increase in European defense spending -- is part of an elaborate pre-constructed kayfabe to facilitate the transfer of US military resources from Europe to the Pacific.  These types of "actually everything is under control, it's just nation-states acting in their own rational self-interest" stories always strike me as just a bit too convenient.  Certainly many would like to believe that the adults actually have everything under control at all times -- but that doesn't make it reality.  I have no trouble believing that this was a genuinely impulsive decision on Trump's part, and that he's not following any particular ideological roadmap.  I mean, he might be.  But he also might not be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Potential articles of impeachment outlined during the hearing include abuse of power for arranging a quid pro quo with the president of Ukraine, obstruction of Congress for hindering the House's investigation, and obstruction of justice for attempting to dismiss Robert Mueller during his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.




As is frequently the case with these sorts of things, the coverup was worse than the crime.  He was charged for attempting to establish a quid pro quo with Zelensky, but there's no indication that the mere act of withholding the aid itself was an impeachable offense.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
According to this, the funding for Ukraine is drawn from multiple sources, and at least some of those sources are under the direct control of the President/DoD:




Pursuant to a delegation by the President, we have used the emergency Presidential Drawdown Authority on 55 occasions since August 2021 to provide Ukraine military assistance totaling approximately $31.7 billion from DoD stockpiles.






On September 26, 2024, the Department notified Congress of the intent to direct the drawdown of up to approximately $5.55 billion in defense articles and services from DoD stocks for military assistance to Ukraine under Presidential Drawdown Authority.




Would be a bit odd if the President couldn't simply decline to exercise the Presidential Drawdown Authority.  It wouldn't be much of an Authority in that case.


So, there are some funding sources that couldn't be canceled without getting into legally murky area, but Trump could choose to cancel a significant portion of it right away.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If Trump has no power to withhold ongoing support from Zelensky




Well he certainly seems to think he does:




Donald Trump is expected to discuss cancelling military aid to Ukraine when he meets with key advisors later today.






The president will speak with senior advisers, including Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, to consider a range of options, including cancelling aid that was approved and paid for by the Biden administration, the New York Times reported.




I confess to being ignorant of the mechanics of how all this works, and a cursory Google search didn't turn up much, so if someone with more expertise wants to chime in please do.  But the news articles coming out today seem to indicate that the President and his national security team have essentially unilateral power to withhold aid from Ukraine if they choose to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I draw the line at the borders of the United States and countries we have pre-existing security agreements with.


I don’t advocate for pulling out of NATO.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ll just come out and say it: I don’t see a good reason for why Ukraine shouldn’t simply be annexed by Russia (or at least, brought into the Russian sphere of influence with a pro-Russian government).


Zelensky is right. Without security guarantees from the US, there’s a high chance that Russia will keep coming back every 5-10 years and taking another bite out of the country until they’ve either taken the whole thing or installed a proxy government. I don’t think it’s in the US’s best interests to provide security guarantees to Ukraine (and it seems that multiple US administrations have agreed with me, otherwise Obama would have sent in troops in 2014 and Biden would have sent in troops in 2022). So why don’t we simply get it over with and let Russia have it? That’s the long-term stable equilibrium.


I imagine that’s the position that the “it’s for their own good” camp is gesturing towards but doesn’t articulate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There’s an obvious objection to homosexuality being mostly genetic, and that’s that we should expect at least some selection against it.




You could make the same argument about Down's Syndrome and cystic fibrosis.  But they still keep happening.  (Note that I also pointed out that "biological basis" is not equivalent to "simple heritable Mendelian trait" -- one hypothesis is that the level of testosterone that a fetus is exposed to in the womb has an impact on sexual orientation, for example.)


I'm saying that homosexuality should be thought of as an illness, a disorder of the reproductive system.  Congenital defects that impact the reproductive system are well-documented (e.g. various types of intersex conditions).  Disadvantageous traits are selected against, sure, but evolution can't insulate us from all possible illness.  Things still break down and go wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


No, they probably are not.




What is your position on HBD in general, and the genetic basis of IQ in particular?


From the study that was linked in the article you linked:




In aggregate, all tested genetic variants accounted for 8 to 25% of variation in male and female same-sex sexual behavior [...] Same-sex sexual behavior is influenced by not one or a few genes but many.




We can get into the weeds over what exactly "8 to 25% of variation" means -- how many recalcitrant homosexuals should we expect to find in a given population, how easy is it to change one's sexual orientation or set someone on a different path of development via environmental factors -- but nonetheless, the paper states plainly that there is a genetic component.  (The introduction to the paper also makes no mention of epigenetic factors or the pre-natal uterine environment, both of which could conceivably contribute to someone being "born that way" despite not being part of the genome proper.)


The article you directly linked states:




The scientists behind the study do not mince words regarding this conclusion. The study’s first author, Andrea Ganna, stated to the New York Times, “it will be basically impossible to predict one’s sexual activity or orientation just from genetics.”




but this is just a caricature of the hereditarian position.  There's a genetic component to IQ too, but no one thinks that you can predict someone's IQ just from genetics either (environmental factors can easily lower it).


I'm always surprised at the number of people who take a staunchly "realist" position on the biological reality of sex and race differences, but who stubbornly refuse to believe that homosexuality is anything but a matter of political propaganda and personal choice.  I think there's a clear ideological motivation at work, stemming from the hope that we could eradicate homosexuality if we simply got the LGBT propaganda out of schools (much like how leftists think we could close the black-white achievement gap if we simply devised the proper education program; both projects are futile).


Look at it this way: there's a stunningly diverse range of maladies that the human body and brain can be afflicted with.  People can be born without eyes and limbs, they can be born sterile, they can be born with profound mental retardation; is it that much of a stretch to think that a male could be born liking other males too?  A healthy, properly functioning human is heterosexual; but there's always a possibility that an organism can simply go wrong and start functioning improperly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I could understand this all better if it was just Trump doing it alone. Sort of a lower class rebellion against the educated class. But what really has me confused is the fact that it’s being spearheaded by Musk and “tech” people.




There's a strong anti-academia sentiment even among highly educated tech professionals.  We have youtube to serve the needs of undergraduate education.  And as for research, they assume that 99% of it is bullshit, and the 1% of it that isn't bullshit can be carried out under the auspices of private corporations.


I've always been a staunch defender of academia, so I'm sympathetic to your position.  But after enduring decades of the total ideological capture of the academy by the left, I can't say that I'm disappointed or surprised that the right is pushing back and taking action.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm referring to 1:20 in this clip when Zelensky said "can I ask you...?"


Vance's preceding comment did not demand a response.  It was already complete and self-contained.  Zelensky could have simply smiled and said nothing and none of this would have happened.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The whole thing was planned




Planned by whom?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I can't tell what Trump (or Vance) is actually mad about besides Zelensky not being sufficiently obsequious.




Zelensky, essentially unprompted, heavily implied that diplomacy with Putin would be ineffective without concrete security guarantees (i.e. a promise of boots on the ground, if not now then at least in the future).  Trump and Vance didn't think it was the right time to be discussing that.  It spiraled out from there.


You can argue that it should have been handled better, but I don't think you can say that the exchange was irrational, or that it was solely based on an abstract notion of "disrespect".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Speechcraft and Pithiness: Give your tips here
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Brevity thing is the most important piece of advice about writing or speech.




Absolutely not!  Good heavens.


As with many questions of this type, the answer to "how long should it be?" is always "as long as it should be".  Sometimes that will be quite short, and other times it will be quite long.  Context and purpose matter.  When I'm looking up technical documentation at work, I usually do want it to give me the answer I'm looking for as fast as possible with little ado.  But thankfully, people can write things other than technical documentation.


In general, if someone is a good writer, then we would prefer him to write more rather than less.  More of a good thing is good!  Saying that you prefer writing to always be as short as possible is a bit like saying that the best sandwich is the one with the least meat on it.  We would have to assume that such a person is not much of a meat eater to begin with.


Not everyone is a lover of words, and that's fine.  There are plenty of things I don't care about either.  I have little taste for music, for example, beyond the most superficial enjoyment.  Which is why I make no attempt to generalize my musical preferences into universally applicable strictures.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Speechcraft and Pithiness: Give your tips here
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Brevity is the soul of wit" - Hamlet




You'd believe that lunatic?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I am flabbergasted by people, including the person who came up with the Chinese Room thought experiment, Searle, not seeing what seems to me to be the obvious conclusion:






The room speaks Chinese.




Searle literally addressed this objection in his very first paper on the Chinese Room.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Starting to understand Putin's complaints about how US foreign policy seems to swerve wildly depending on who's in office.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				My argument for why the mound should be moved back
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Super Smash Bros Ultimate: The Meta has converged on Steve and Sonic, objectively the two best characters, who both have extremely boring (albeit very different) play styles. Steve is an ultra-camper, Sonic just runs away until sudden death.




Funny that you bring this up, because I play/watch a ton of fighting games.


I think your thesis about games in general converging on "boring" strategies is basically correct (I might phrase it as something like, "gravity pulls you towards defense rather than offense").  But it's still possible to design games where even the maximally boring viable strategy is quite proactive.  Smash Ultimate is an anomaly among fighting games in how much it rewards defensive/passive play.  If you look at any of the other current popular fighting games (Street Fighter 6, Tekken, Guilty Gear) they're much more aggressive, partially because the stages are much smaller and you can't really run away for any length of time.  So the choices made by the designers do make a difference.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What we learned from the last 40 years is that proprietary wins.


Consumers migrated from closed source Windows desktops to closed source iOS phones.


Yes, a surprisingly large percentage of the world's infrastructure runs on Linux and other open source platforms, and that open source infrastructure is used to run... proprietary, closed source, walled garden web apps (I don't think it's an accident that the most successful open source projects are mainly infrastructure scaffolding and tools for other software developers, rather than products for non-technical users).


Much like how the credentialed expert will usually beat the autodidact, a group of highly organized professionals who are motivated by a big paycheck will usually beat a group of loosely organized volunteers who are motivated by passion for the project.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Right, a lot of people latch onto pronouns, honorifics, politeness levels, etc when talking about how exotic the language is.  And those are legitimate differences that are prone to getting lost in translation.  But I don't think those things are what makes Japanese difficult to translate.


It has a lot of grammatical constructions (topic/subject markers, verb forms to indicate oddly specific things like an action being done as a favor for someone else, an action being done in preparation for something else, etc) that simply don't exist in English, and thus get flattened out in any translation (this goes both ways of course -- Japanese lacks a future tense, and it lacks articles as well).


It's elliptical to the point that the translator often has to add multiple new words just to get a grammatically correct English sentence, and different translators won't always agree on these hidden context-dependent words.


It's funny that you mention the "punchiness" of Japanese prose, because I think it's actually a rather un-punchy language.  The number of words and phrases that Japanese speakers use on a regular basis is simply more restricted than what we have in English, and a perfectly literal translation of Japanese text can come off as subdued, repetitive, and stilted to English ears; translators often feel it necessary to "spice up" the text a bit in order to reach the level of variety that's culturally expected in English writing.


None of this is to say that Japanese is "hard" per se, only that it is legitimately quite different from European languages and the text requires some massaging before you get something that reads naturally in English.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s hard (for me, in my limited experience) to imagine a language that translates worse to European languages than Japanese. Similar to what you said about Chinese, it’s heavily context-dependent and relies on a dense web of Japanese cultural associations to express meaning. And yet Japanese media is enthusiastically enjoyed in translation by westerners and people around the world (sometimes with appreciable liberties taken by translators; although I do think it’s basically always possible to find an acceptable translation that respects the original intent of the work).


I know almost nothing about Chinese, so if you’ve studied both Chinese and Japanese and you think Chinese translates even worse to English, I’d be very interested in hearing your perspective.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It appears to me that the death of "classical liberalism" has been greatly exaggerated.


It was legal to own slaves in the US up until the 1860s.  Has the US been a classically liberal society since its inception?  If no, then we have to establish the start and end dates we have in mind for "classical liberalism".  If yes, then classical liberalism is compatible with slavery -- and if it's compatible with slavery, then it's surely compatible with SJWs and Trump and whatever else people are worried about now.


Let's also not forget that up until the early 20th century, many western nations took a much dimmer view of homosexuality, blasphemy, obscenity, etc. -- freedoms that would now be considered hallmarks of any "liberal" society.


I'm just really not sure what people are afraid of, or what they think has "ended".  Do people think we're headed for another civil war?  We already had one, and yet it's typical to say that the US was a "classically liberal" society both before and after.  Do people think Trump is going to establish a dictatorship / one party rule?  That's not going to happen, but even if he did, it's not clear to me that even that would be incompatible with classical liberalism, given how nebulous the term is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
None of the points you listed strike me as particularly momentous. It all just seems like another flavor of business as usual (“ICE deportation raids” in particular could be rephrased as “enforcing existing laws”).


My position that “nothing ever happens” is falsifiable. If Trump were to, say:


    

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    cancel the midterms or the next presidential election and declare that he (or his appointed successor) would stay in power indefinitely,
    

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    or immediately halt all legal immigration to the US,
    

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    or even just implement any of the more hardline social policies from Project 2025, like making pornography illegal,
    

    • 



then I would say that yes, things are happening and maybe things really will be different this time. But nothing Trump has done so far meets that threshold for me. His gestures seem largely performative at this point.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I feel like I must be living under a rock here.


Were there any concrete developments that precipitated this post besides the tweet?


Outside of what DOGE has been up to, how are "things moving very fast"?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Gayness is a white construct




On the contrary, it’s a colorless reality!




subculture of black men who usually identify as heterosexual




Much the same as how men can’t “identify” as women, your capacity to alter reality through self-identification is quite limited!


In the overwhelming majority of cases, a man who continually seeks out sexual contact with other men is doing so because man ass/dick turns him on. We have a word for such men, and that word is “gay” (or, occasionally, “bisexual”).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why do you believe men feel the need to use it as a cope




Because they are gay, and they would rather not be.