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ThisIsSin

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ThisIsSin


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Personal corporatehood

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 05:37:32 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 822


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Revenge of the previous "gun guy" AMA
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Army could be hiding this information because it's embarrassing... or that could be SOP




Well, there's no actual upside to publicizing what they actually have.  Either it does, and now the enemy knows it does and will beef up their armor that last little bit in response so now their competitive advantage is gone... or it won't, and the enemy knows it doesn't (and that would indeed be embarrassing).


However, I will point out that if a military organization has any brains, they've already tested this.  A standard .270WSM rifle with a proper AP projectile will (even at performance levels currently public) outperform 6.8x51 with that same projectile, so if that can't penetrate Level IV armor 6.8x51 almost certainly can't either.




I take it to mean that the other systems just didn't work very well.




There are also a couple of other considerations.  The Army tends to be quite conservative in procurement, and the SIG rifle is the closest thing to the M16 (everything else was completely alien in terms of manual of arms, and on top of that the Textron one had a completely different operating mechanism since ejection on that has to be push-through).  So, a platform based on the M4 has a massive leg up- they really don't want to retrain everyone, and "the new rifle is an M16, but bigger and with some additional niceties" accomplishes that goal.


On the other side of the coin, the GD rifle would require substantial retraining.  It was probably much cheaper to make (given it's 100% extruded aluminum and plastic with very little secondary machining required) in bulk but would have taken a lot of work and bullpups slightly compromise the range of things you can do with the rifle (it's better on a static range when you're not taking weird positions on the ground, but there are some things you really can't do as well, like changing magazines while prone).


Also, the TrueVelocity/GD/Beretta system didn't really measure up in terms of performance- the ammunition wasn't loaded nearly as hot (despite its advanced construction, they could have changed the case material to normal brass with no loss in ballistic performance) and as such needed a longer barrel to compete with SIG's rifle.  It was also slightly more complex mechanically and I suspect had a fundamentally-unsolvable heat issue after multiple magazines of fully-automatic fire, much like the Bushmaster M17s (with its all-aluminum construction) does.  Yes, the polymer case solves heat at the chamber, but doesn't reduce it at the gas block, and because the gas block is under the handguard it's going to heat that area- this is why the British L85's handguard is made of plastic.


(Aside: I'm aware that there's very little actually documented about how their rifle actually works- I choose to interpret what's written as it being a standard AR-18-derived design, but the entire bolt/barrel assembly is housed within a carriage that moves back and forth so the recoil impulse is less.  At least one of SIG's prototypes had a similar system, if I recall correctly.)




I think they also had an auto cannon design that used the Trounds to achieve some ungodly fire rate.




Yeah, the rotating drum "revolver" cannon was honestly pretty cool.  I would never have though Plexiglas could be a suitable material for that job, but then again I also didn't think that of MDPE/HDPE (the material the early Trounds were made of- Celanese Fortiflex- isn't special or exotic in any way).


I still believe there is a valid place for Trounds, though.  If armor's so good now that it requires multiple hits in the same place in rapid succession to defeat (and ceramic armor is still defeated by normal 6.8x51 in this way)... well, a high speed small caliber burst could conceivably be the solution, and the Wankel Dardick action is known for extremely high RPM with very little complication (unlike the G11 where the solution to malfunctions is "throw the internal mechanism away and get a new one").


As such, I think the answer is a rifle with the rotary action that Trounds enable as well as a helical magazine, with the action and magazine riding on G11-style rails such that any recoil impulse isn't transmitted until the end of the burst.  It'll have a lot in common aesthetically with the M1216 shotgun, with a magazine capacity close to 90 rounds, firing a burst of slightly beefed-up 5.56 equivalent at a rate sufficient to put every round into the same ceramic square of the enemy's armor.  In this way, you still have 30 trigger pulls before reloading (though this would make magazines quite a bit longer) without fundamentally disrupting the hangup the US in particular has embedded in its culture of "one shot one kill single well-placed shot" marksmanship.  Recoil's going to be heavy, but 6.8x51 already has that problem anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


At the same time, it's apparently totally acceptable to run around this forum screeching DEMOCRATS ARE GROOMERS




You... do know this is primarily a reactionary forum and is consequentially going to have a right-wing skew (thus be a bit more concerned about traditional purity, per Haidt's Moral Foundations) to it no matter the actual leaning of the participants, right?


The problem is that "anyone interested in teaching sex stuff to the under[age] demographic implies they're [at least not dis-interested in or concerned with] potentially increasing the number of under-[age]s having sex in the world" is... well, it's more trivial than it really should be to find edge cases where this is actually true.


But it's trivial to argue the opposite from a purity standpoint- average age of virginity loss is at all-time highs and Gen Z/A are on average more sexually conservative than their Gen X/Y teachers.  So the progressive argument that more sex ed is having a cooling effect on under[age] sex is actually valid, but you actually have to make that argument in the first place, and it's confounded by the rise in transgenderism (though you could just point out the increased emphasis on it in schools lags its rise).


Of course, that's still not going to be enough to justify the abuse of State power to abduct children from families, but in fairness nobody tried to justify that one.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I wonder if polygamists have fewer children because they aren’t very likeable?




Well, there's poly for the right reasons ("because I actually am a high-decoupler and am unironically capable of treating sex as a toy or tool"), and then there's poly for the wrong reasons ("because I'm not attracted to -> don't want to primarily pair-bond with my husband or wife, I just want to be able to have my cake and eat it too, and my partner doesn't have enough self-respect to call me out for doing it").


I think there are significantly more people who are poly for the wrong reasons- and people who are just trying to get out of doing the work they're supposed to be doing tend to be substandard partners.  As for the people who are poly for the right reasons, their standards for a partner are going to be higher than normal, so they're going to pair up -> have kids less.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's not a huge difference, especially at the price point




True, but that's kind of the thing: unless you can get to a 3080, I'd argue upgrading to anything else (other than a bargain bin 10/20 series if your card is somehow even older than that) is pointless outside of those specific niches.  The 3060 and 4060 are so hideously awful from a price/performance standpoint compared to everything else that I'm amazed they even exist at all, but I guess it's just a tax on people who really aren't paying attention to the reviews and/or don't trust buying used hardware.


Seriously- it's twice the price for a 20% gain (between used 1080 and new 3060/4060), but for 3-4x the price the gain is 100% (between used 1080 and used 3080).  Something something Boots Theory; the high-performance cards really are that good, and that's the entire problem with them (and the reason reviewers bitch and complain about every new release that isn't the card everyone actually wants to buy, which is "a 3080 for 400USD").  Unfortunately for them, I figure next-gen consoles are probably going to stick with 4060-tier performance (like they've done for the past 10 years with their respective GPU generations) since that's the only way they'll meet their 500-dollar target price point, so the prices on the highest end cards are probably going to stay high for a long time (inb4 the 5090 is another doubling in performance over the 4090, but this time for 3500USD).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And its not really clear that there is any line between gays and MAPS that is principled as they all appear to have an interest in lowering every standard.




Who's "they all"?  The LGBT movement is primarily by and for the edification of straight white women (I don't think the view that gays are driving the current movement makes any sense whatsoever, Threeper claims notwithstanding); so it makes sense that occupations (like 'public school teacher') that are overwhelmingly female would be all in.


Once you understand that, everything else kind of falls into place.  It's now possible to understand the attitude that these things aren't harmful, because to a modern straight white woman, they aren't- stripteases are what X (usually a woman) does to seduce Y (usually a man), and in that light, claiming this somehow damages or degrades the Y doesn't make sense (and why the operative word to condemn this is a comparatively pithy "sexualization").  BDSM parades (being a larger version of this) are viewed with a similar attitude- why would seeing weird-but-ultimately-non-threatening (you know, because gay men definitely want sex with straight women) displays of sexuality degrade or harm the viewer?


(Which is kind of why the dynamic around this conversation is "but it harms the viewer by sexualizing them", which is an argument from aesthetics with scant factual backing, typically conflated with an argument on religious grounds because that's the group most known for operating as if it does have factual backing.)


As far as "secret conversations about sexuality"... if the median woman derives joy from being a social token with an underlying oppression narrative/excuse, well, it's natural for them to assume that everyone works like that, and being transgender is the tokenist token to token today.


Plus, it's a way for these women to vicariously experience being an (adoptive) mother and validate this version of the "me against the world" narrative; bonus points if you can blame it on big bad Dad.


This isn't a particularly imaginative take, but I think it's the most straightforward examination of why the claims of "this movement is intended so that strange men can fuck your son or daughter" (which is what pedo means in the mind of the general public) just haven't been resonating with the general public.


The critics can occasionally get a workable angle in painting these sorts of behaviors as molestation (and if you reverse the genders above, they would be instantly recognized as such).  "Sexualization" is a first pass, "brainwashing" a slight refinement, and "they're protecting teen boys who molest your daughter and arrest you if you protest" is enough to propel an anti-molestation candidate into office in Virginia.


In summary, I'm at a complete loss for why a movement by and for straight, white, misandrist women want to increase the amount of exploitative sex men have with their daughters, and I think everyone else is too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is Christianity fascism now?




Isn't everything to the right of the far-left fascism (in the rhetorical eyes of the far-left)?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Top billionaire elites could have easily pooled their money together to buy it.




No.  Only Musk could do it.


Most billionaires aren't actually that rich.  They wouldn't be able to come up with enough money.


And of the ones that are, most of them aren't American (and the US would absolutely not let a foreign buyer get their hands on the Voice of America Twitter- Musk is US citizen enough for the government to offload its space program onto his company).


And of the ones that are, most of them work for technology companies that directly compete with Twitter (anti-trust law in the US is a dead letter these days, but if anything could get them to wake up it would be that- Musk isn't that kind of tech billionaire).


The thing that bothers me is that Musk is the only citizen in the US to whom its Constitution meaningfully applies, and has it in ways people meme about.  There is a reason it was supposed to be for all citizens and this is it.


He purchased the First Amendment (he owns Twitter).


He purchased the Second Amendment (he owns a private fleet of ICBMs).


He purchased the Fourth Amendment (he owns a functionally-unjammable communications network).


If the country melts down sufficiently to allow a Caesar there's a very good argument to be made that these powers are sufficient to give him a crown.


If that happens, the furries (that also happen to be a good chunk of his staff, though not necessarily intentionally) will have been responsible for putting the Musk dynasty in charge of the entire world and the flag of the future will be a pawprint softly caressing a human face forever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Villain League leaders (Russia, China, Iran etc.) reveal their lack of vision, or complicity, in not throwing their weight behind it.




It's worth noting that Bitcoin isn't compatible with any temporarily disgraced hegemonies, either; China (in particular) needs to crack down on it because the first thing people do with it is use it to make their assets immune from seizure by the ruling party, and that means their so-far successful attempts at devaluing their currency stop being so successful.  The only country that can make it work is one more freedom-minded than the US... and no such countries exist (or are allowed to exist).




If the realization of having been made into such a child is not terrifying, I don't know what is.




The bans on raising children to be functional adults that were totally implemented by the end of the 1980s was always going to have terrible consequences.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is there any reason why this might not be true?




QC.  A lot of German-designed stuff is pretty convoluted and is banking on higher-than-normal precision in manufacturing to work properly; you tend to find that out pretty quickly when you buy their cars.


That's not to say that China can't do that, but just like salaries for [competent] software developers in India, it's going to cost you just as much for China to make high-performance parts as it is for you to source them locally (and the way to make those parts isn't going to suddenly walk off, and counterfeits aren't as easily going to make it into your parts stream)- turns out globalization works both ways.  So getting them to do it instead is neutral at best.


And there are indications that the Chinese in fact cannot reproduce the most specialized parts because its manpower surplus meant people who could focus on that were out-competed (this is why polities that [can] depend on slave labor generally don't industrialize, and a manpower surplus is not meaningfully distinguishable from slave labor simply because the individual wages are so low).  Which is why, despite Chinese expertise in industrial espionage, their attempts to actually build from the plans they steal generally don't end well, which makes them cost even more than it does Westerners.  And when you realize how much Westerners spend developing these things...


Now, that isn't to say that advanced manufacturing will always redeem an overcomplicated shitty design that barely works in the first place  (something the Germans have been historically, and are still to this day, guilty of), but it's arguably better than the alternative.


Though really, all the Western nations have to do to save their automotive sectors is to ditch the "we're banning the good cars by 203x" mandates.  Which is part of why Tesla is mostly focused on, surprise surprise, using their engineering and advanced manufacturing expertise to widen their already-high profit margins even more by doing things like die-casting the entire car (something that will pay off, and another technology that can be licensed for other things, even if governments ditch the mandates).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In other words, this is what happens when you have parenting advice intended for people who don't need it, implemented by those who aren't capable or self-aware enough to pull it off.  Which is probably the best argument for censorship of ideas about relationships that are actively bad for people not capable of implementing them for whatever reason; too bad that always ends badly for other reasons.




but perhaps it’s a little scary and destabilizing to believe that, at 12, you know better than the people with power over your life.




The high-capability children are already well-aware they know better than the people with power over their lives and are thus fine to discuss this with; the problem is every parent thinking their child is high-capability when they aren't (because what mother doesn't think that about her kid?).




They believe it’s important to explain their reasoning to their kids. Not all of them do this with the paternal grace of Atticus Finch.




The problem with velvet-glove-in-iron-fist-style parenting (of which I am personally a fan) is that it doesn't work if the iron fist isn't consistently there.  (Alternately: the most successful parents, as all effective rulers, are all obeying Machiavellian principles.)




When their 15 year old comes back from vacation in a country where the drinking age is 16, they ask her, “Did you go out? Did you have a beer?” When she says no, they tease her.




This is more a problem inherent to "doing drugs with your boss is generally a bad idea", adjacent to "dating them is also a bad idea".  This becomes a better idea if you're once or twice removed from the authority relationship and have cultivated a reputation of generally being safe, but less kids means fewer chances you'll get to be the cool aunt (and you need to know parents that trust you enough), so...




They don’t enforce basic civic norms, like standing for the national anthem.




People who fail the shopping cart test are unfit to live in civilized society; this trait is inherently overrepresented by those in any moral majority.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Opposition to pedophilia will become a right-wing boogeyman, mostly disinformation, and, in any case, even if it is real, we will soon learn why it's actually a good thing.




Become?  It's already a right-wing boogeyman depending on the skin color distribution of the average perpetrator in England- bonus points for actually being the motte definition of, and what most people mean when they say, "pedophilia" (exclusively 'old man, young girl').




This movie presents an incredible opportunity for actual pedophiles




I'm not as convinced; I think this is also a bit Blue-on-Blue (or rather, Blue-on-Redder-Blue) given [for the former] who the traffickers tend to be (favored skin colors tend to be guilty of it more often due to vanishingly few white men in the places the women come from) and [for the latter] that it's a righteous cause that both the people whose moral foundation is "man bad -> man wants prostitution -> prostitution bad" and the people whose moral foundation is "prostitution bad" get a lot of policy mileage out of.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


when I go to a classical concert or a ballet or an opera, it’s very obvious who is keeping these traditions alive, and it sure as hell isn’t Trump voters




I'm not as convinced- their version of theater is wildly popular.  They don't outright call it that (partially for reactionary reasons), but the term "kayfabe" comes from the way its performers act.


Yes, it's a bit more formulaic since it has to fit within its primary conceit of a sports match, but I really don't see much difference between Shakespeare and WWE- it's just that we consider one high art and the other something else, probably because Shakespeare was 400 years ago and nobody fully understands its memes any more.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


simply using UBlock, or Brave, or any one of the dozens of other ways to block Youtube ads is a really easy way to upgrade your quality of life to a surprising degree.




iOS has no on-device ability to block ads.  Yes, you can do it if you set up a custom VPN, but that's work and added expense.


Android has several, including NewPipe and the fact that Firefox actually runs natively there (and as such uBlock works), but their devices are twice as expensive, get vanishingly few updates, and their top-end processors are 4 years behind what is available in an iPhone for half the price.


So you're stuck with an expensive boat-anchor or a nice device with ads; I don't begrudge the latter their choice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The mandatory masking for children in schools and daycare -- while adults were free to go to work and bars maskless -- was a major black-pill on how society is treating children.




Children, and especially teenagers, are the most discriminated-against group in society today; a utilitarian approach to anti-racism would start with them.


If we believe that parents want to give their children the same kinds of opportunities they grew up with, and literally every parent says this, the generation who needs to decide whether they're having kids right now (1980/1990s-born) grew up after the point where child rights were completely and utterly decimated.  No wonder nobody wants to have them!  If you have to have them on a leash, and they'll never mature under your watch beyond obeying simple commands... well, you're describing a dog, and dogs are cheaper.  And better, because they're physically incapable of saying "no" and even more disposable than even kids in the 1930s were: can't afford them, drop them off at the shelter, and if they were still there you could pick them back up afterwards.


It's literally 2010s-era "I'm not having children because I'm saving the climate" except this time it's "I'm not having children because they'd have to suffer through 25 years of modern society".  Same thing in Asian countries (it will eventually become a thing in India for the same reasons)- sure, you can have a kid, but if you do that you've signed your future human being up for 15 years of slavery your neighbors have cargo-culted their way into for no socioeconomic benefit whatsoever.  It's honestly surprising to me that reproduction in Japan even exists; I don't think it's a coincidence that a culture with an absolute hellscape with respect to healthy family life also produces the highest-quality pornography in the world.


The only "freedom" these human beings have these days is to stay inside and play video games; forced to exist as 2 arms and a head is enough for a reasonable adult to seek death instead, and as such it's not a surprise that suicide is usually more deadly to the under-18 set than accidents.  Which should be the first indication that that demographic really isn't "living" so much as "existing", but that's OK because they haven't lived long enough to know better.


Your right to enjoyment of your own property is non-existent; with CPS being abused by concern trolls to the point where they'll arrest you if you so much dare to play in the front yard.  Freedom of movement doesn't exist either; god forbid you walk or bike to your friend's house or the corner store because the State can just show up and arrest you for no reason.  Want to go home for lunch?  Same deal.


[By contrast, elementary-aged children in the 1920s were more than capable of doing all of these things, in working conditions far worse than school, and far more dangerous than modern life in general, tends to impose.  The claim that they're not capable of getting from Point A to Point B just doesn't wash.]


Your right to bear arms is limited so hard that if you exercise it and are caught you'll never be able to do so legally again.  Kyle Rittenhouse was put on trial in part for, functionally, being subhuman (edit: temperature) while armed; the emphasis on "but 17, therefore he's not a human, and should be charged for daring to act as if he was" was everywhere.


[Contrast Boomers that grew up in rural areas, who have formative experiences hunting rabbits in the woods at 10 with a rifle, and teenagers with gun racks in their trucks to go hunting after school let out.  Sure, you had to store your guns in the office, but you can at least argue that's reasonable to reduce theft.]


Taxation without representation; income tax applies to them but voting doesn't.


I could go on.  The only justification for this shit is "it's fine, because they're subhuman" (who hold that pop-psych belief that you don't pass the paper-bag test until 25 specifically for that reason), and while we can certainly argue about to what we should take away from subhumans to the extent that we're right about their tendencies for violence, nonsense, and disorder, my argument against this is the Progressive one: offer these people reasons not to do these things and you'll see better results.  It's so bad that even the teenagers themselves will accept the rest of society's behavior as justified for this reason, though humorously you might argue that's just a logical consequence of subhumanity.


And I'm still not entirely sure where it came from.


    

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    Was it really the Satanic Panic, where Karen lost her mind because "muh D&D and pedos around every corner"?
    

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    State agencies adopting extreme aversion to risk allowing themselves to become weapons of the bored housewife concern troll?
    

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    Was it the cratering of the laber pool in the 1980s that solidified the segregation of the youth from the general public?
    

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    Was it the dramatic increase in crime because the CIA was selling crack on the streets?
    

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    The 24-hour news cycle and the Amber Alert (where 99.99% of its uses are custody disputes)?
    

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    Teenagers running amok killing their classmates because they correctly assessed that their life didn't matter to anyone and had no social buy-in (which is itself likely an emergent phenomenon; spree shooters in 1998 would have been born in 1980 and thus grew up post-enclosure)?
    

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    All of the above?
    

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Even better is that, because abolition and miscegenation are (at least popularly) linked for what should be obvious reasons, anyone who dares attempt improve the standards of the under-18 set in society is clearly doing it just because they secretly want to normalize sex with them or otherwise expose them to danger for selfish reasons rather than actually wanting this class of people to have a life worth living for once.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Vacuity of Climate Science
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


what makes you think their other fears are going to be rationally evaluated against climate change in order to solve climate change?




Or perhaps more generally, what makes you think they're even capable of rationally evaluating fears in the first place?




it is my opinion they are absolutely sincere in being worried about the climate




Well, that's the good-faith answer.  Yet, it concerns me that the things they appear to be genuinely afraid of also happen to be things that it is in their personal or class interest to be genuinely afraid of, and afraid in such a way that their opponents' good-faith efforts are never good enough for them.


If climate change sheds its master morality baggage and actually threatens to improve life for a change, maybe we'd start accomplishing those goals.  Tesla did it, look how successful they are.  (Of course, the most statistically worried about climate change also excuse themselves from buying a Tesla because they don't like what Elon says on the Internet- a good faith view of that is hyperconservative fear paralysis... which is why it's odd we consider progressives to be on the left when they're fundamentally an ultraconservative rightist movement specifically because fear dominates their reasoning.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Miranda




Ah yes, Reapers Miranda.  Putting the ass in Mass Effect since 2010.




Tali




Honestly I'm not too much in knots about Tali since ME2 isn't even the first game she's in.  Same thing with Liara, but maybe she doesn't count since you can't romance her in ME2 (not that you can do that with Ashley either, of course).  I think the least fleshed-out/one that makes the least sense is Samara, discounting the alternative option.


I do find that the male options in ME2 were better but that's just because I think Garrus and Thane are better characters (not that Jack isn't a good character herself).  Too bad they memed on Jacob in ME3; they didn't really flesh his character out at all in ME2 (maybe ME1 players blew up Carth more often so they didn't think it was worth the effort, lol).




resolves it's emotional catharsis by having her do stripper dances in your room




Doesn't that option become available to you before she gets kidnapped?  I do agree it would be more interesting if that option was locked out after that because of that, but I'm not sure they thought about it that hard.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Posts and comments aren't the same thing.  Posts are the submissions that appear on the front page; you'll get a blue notification when a user you're following makes one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 5, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To date, Valve has never meaningfully iterated on their hardware.


First the Steam Link and Steam Machines, until they lost interest in that.

Then the Index, until they (mostly) lost interest in that.

Now the Steam Deck.  It's only been out for a year and a bit and they replaced the screen- sure, faster than Nintendo did, but that's a really low bar.


Sure, the Switch 2 has absolutely sold a lot of units- far more than any other Valve hardware product has- but I can understand why a manufacturer wouldn't be interested in seriously developing the Gabe Gear with a track record of no repeat business- especially if they're now saying "there won't be a new one for a while", and when Valve says "a while"...


At least never releasing a second version of a thing prevents people from asking them when the third one's coming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


or making their husband's life hell until he files for one.




I don't think this works as well as the women think it does; men have memes about this (ball and chain) that aren't meaningfully replicated across the gender boundary.  Head-crushing (by men) and heel-striking (by women) behavior is the baseline for Biblical gender relations within the context of a marriage, after all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


because what the hell culture are you coming out of when you're young enough to think admitting to being a virgin at 12 is shameful?




For a boy?  All of them.

Literally all of them.


All of them are watching porn at this point (or at the very least, aware of why one would want to watch it), all of them are making sex jokes, and all of them are masturbating.  The ones who say they aren't are either intentionally resisting, usually for various religious reasons, or they're lying because they're embarrassed about it.


This is something most adults tend to forget about, for the exact same reasons- either they're intentionally forgetting, usually for various religious reasons, or they're embarrassed about it.  Or they're too close to the problem; after all, their generation invented sex, they had to wait a long time to get it, and it'll be a cold day in hell before those twerps lay their hands on it.




I do find it very difficult to think that 10-12 year old boys are having sex




Well, they are objectively the most unattractive cohort of, from a biological standpoint (puberty), grown men- no achievements, money, or other family-raising stability to their name.  It's like belonging to a network of premium clothing shops and some penniless unshowered vagrant walks in and asks for a price on the bag in the window- absolutely disgusting.


For reference, this is how the average man thinks about it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They went to the same schools, drank the same koolaid, attend the same parties and conferences, belong to the same socioeconomic strata.




And as such, are overwhelmingly to blame for the current situation in the first place.

Why anyone would trust their numbers, especially those that say "actually, we didn't fuck up, and you're just imagining it", is a mystery.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But I think you're right that even so the modern diet is way tastier than what was around 50 years ago.




The size of the average vegetable has become bigger and its cost has gone down, but the taste of the average vegetable has become much worse.  If you can make food barely taste like anything (so it doesn't really feel like you're eating anything at all), you now have to fix that problem with stuff that's a lot more calorically dense and/or load the dish up with salt.


Also, 50 years ago, with respect to dinner the average person would have been either cooking it themselves or married to someone who was.  Fast food was a lot more expensive, relatively speaking.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This just seems incoherent.




The Junior Anti-Sex League's position is fundamentally "straight men having sex bad"; I feel to see how their pro-eunuch stance (intentionally uglifying men and women alike isn't increasing the above, that's for sure) or their other attempts to problematize straight sex is inconsistent with that outlook.  The first clear modern example of this bloc gaining power is the imposition of an "age of consent" concept in the first place.




consensual




Newspeak; it's an attempt to conflate "non-coercive" with "doesn't offend the sensibilities/interests of the above group".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Needless to say that will never happen.




It was the norm from the early 1800s, but that norm started degrading in the 1920s, and was definitively over by 1970.


Not coincidentally, the rate of breaking new ground in terms of technological innovation ground to a screeching halt roughly 20 years after that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There was a comment pointing out a few weeks ago about French's gendered nouns being 'neutral' and 'feminine' so I feel obligated to point it out even though I can't find it at the moment.




English doesn't seem to gender its nouns anyways though?




It does when you want to use an indefinite article, but nobody calls it gender even though it serves the same linguistic purpose.