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VoxelVexillologist

Multidimensional Radical Centrist

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joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
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VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
True, but I have about as much faith that Tony Hinchcliffe was joking about a legitimate solid waste management problem (which is, at best, only really only funny to an audience familiar with its existence) as I do in the administration's apostrophe in the Biden transcript.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Griner could trivially avoid interaction with the hostile foreign government by not going to their territory and breaking their laws.




I haven't been following this case terribly closely, but is it completely clear that she did break the law?  The Russian state doesn't (currently or even historically) have a particular reputation for honesty.  As such, I have do wonder (without evidence) that the case may have been staged to garner a political prisoner as a potential future bargaining chip.  Or that she actually did bring in the contraband, but was subjected to additional scrutiny in the hopes of finding a charge.  But I'll concede that it's perfectly possible the charges are actually above board.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


if you're the product of a mixed family, are roughly the same color as Taylor Lautner and have the surname "Lopez" are you hispanic or white?




There have been a number of shifts in the common definition of "white" (which has occasionally gone by other terms like "WASP") that generally get swept under the rug by partisans.  In the late 1800s, it didn't include Italians.  Catholics more broadly were probably excluded until maybe the JFK administration.


I sometimes wonder if we'd all get along better if we actively tried to culturally expand that definition to include all Americans, rather than focusing on divisive "hyphenated Americans" (a term which dates back to the late 1800s).  But it seems an unpopular idea in political activist circles.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Like if someone makes a comment implying the police are racist or something,




Honestly, it's not too hard to acknowledge that this does happen more often than it would in an ideal world (never, presumably).    I don't think I know anyone who thinks police racism is a good thing.  Maybe someone wants to argue that Bayes makes it worthwhile, but I don't find that terribly compelling.


That humans are fallible is unsurprising, but how to design systems that work despite human failings is the core of civil political discourse.  The extreme points of repressive jackboots and Mad Max anarchy are both pretty obviously undesirable to most: How do we choose balance personal freedom and public safety? Who watches the watchmen? These seem like less charged directions you can steer such a conversation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"I deserve this territory because our leader founded the cities"




Ah, I see we have a new contender: "All cities named Alexandria rightfully belong to Greece except maybe the one in Virginia." Maybe the US should have handed Afghanistan and Iraq over to them.


ETA: Sarcasm, if unclear.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Iraq?




I sometimes consider the hypothetical world in which the 2003 invasion was skipped.  It's obviously hard to predict such outcomes, but I think it's not implausible a continued Hussein regime might not be better for the average Iraqi.  It's not like they had a particularly good human rights record.


Sure, there was a lot of destruction from the war (which I'd generally agree was poorly-conceived), but how would Iraq have faced the Arab Spring?  It seems plausible that could have ended less like ISIS and more like the still-ongoing Syrian Civil War, likely complete with Russia intentionally bombing civilian targets and waves of refugees fleeing to Europe.


For all it's faults in the invasion, the country now could be much worse than it is today.  Which is distinctly not an endorsement of the operation, merely a pause for consideration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a non-lawyer, it's fairly well known that lying on the ATF Form 4473 basically never results in charges (as of the 2018 GAO report, at least -- they claim they're trying to increase those numbers).  In FY 2017, 8.6M reported transactions led to 112k denials, 12.7k investigations, and 12 prosecutions.  Presumably every one of those denials lied about eligibility on that form, barring questionable corner cases like "I forgot I have a felony conviction."


Note that Form 4473 here is the one that asks "Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?" and notes in bold that lying on the form is itself a felony.  I most often see this referenced by people in gun circles complaining that the law as-written is not enforced.


As much as I wish we'd actually, like, enforce laws in this country, starting to enforce previously-mostly-ignored laws specifically with people close to politicians is a bit of a bad look.  OTOH, I'd really like to see us hold those in positions of power to a higher standard, rather than a lower one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is one of the places where I find the current left/right divide to be incongruous: the left here sees a strong need to protect people from themselves, but only in certain instances.  Your argument is a general one for banning the sale of potentially dangerous objects to prevent self-harm.   But at the same time we're told that the addicts shooting up heroin on the streets are Living Their Best Lives and we couldn't possibly try to take away substances that demonstrably cause harm to individuals and society as a whole, because Individual Freedoms, although we can try to ban large soft drinks.  This largely holds in reverse for the right.


Fundamentally, society is a coordination problem, and those are hard and seem to lack generalized solutions.  Different scales have different optima: I unironically run my household as a socialist collective (from each, to each...) but wouldn't vote for such policies in even small town government.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Presumably whatever incentives the mediators have available to them and care to use: adding or removing sanctions and further military aid to their counterparty.  "Come to the table, or we will make this more painful than your regime can bear" is a threat that I had assumed was implicitly levelled.  Whether it is or not seems less clear at the moment, but Ukraine-flagged warships (torpedo boats, as is tradition) harassing Russian shipping or naval assets outside the Black Sea with some degree of plausibly-deniable allied assistance.  Or actually biting sanctions on Russian energy exports.


These haven't happened yet, and may not be on the table, but it at least strikes me that they could be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Price deflation is still pretty bad because it shifts gains towards capital and away from workers.




While economists seem pretty convinced that modest inflation is preferable to modest deflation, I'm personally unconvinced that for modest, predictable rates (which plausibly excludes Gold or Bitcoin) it matters much either direction.  There are examples of specific commodities deflating (specifically, "for the same price in dollars next year I can get more/better product": computers, flat-panel TVs, cell phones, even cars) and none of the promised miserly spending habits have really appeared that I can tell.  Apple didn't become a trillion dollar company because everyone is patiently waiting to get a better iPhone next year rather than this year.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the Russians did not establish Nazi-style concentration camps for industrialized slaughter




I think it's worth noting that while the camps are the most well-publicized part of the Holocaust, a decent fraction of the deaths, especially early in the war were attributable to death squads with guns rounding up "undesirables."


There have definitely been recorded mass graves in places like Bucha that at least seem to resemble this sort of policy of wanton death.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I went to a smaller school that often had take-home essays and even exams (up to the professors, more common in smaller honors classes).  While cheating might have happened somewhat, it is possible IMO to instill a culture that expects people to follow the rules even when they aren't being watched closely.  But it was occasionally enforced by expelling violators.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I had to look it up a while back, but my (urban) school district required Hep A/B (and it was at least generally recommended at the time) and I recall many universities required meningitis vaccination when I was applying.  Both of those may have been fairly recent at the time.  I think you're right about PCV.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I seem to recall reading that US and South Korean border guards are selected to be particularly tall specifically for, er, diplomatic reasons.  But I don't have a citation on-hand.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In the USA-vs-Russia proxy war that's happening right now the west is being dramatically outcompeted in terms of ammunition supply/manufacturing, and on top of that there's a technological gap between the US and Russia - the US still hasn't bridged the hypersonic weapons gap.




The West isn't falling completely behind there: the Army opened a new artillery shell plant in May, and within the last month the US announced operational deployment of long-range air-launched SM-6 missiles and Lockheed announced a hypersonic missile (I haven't seen any claims of deployments, though).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Whoops, I knew it was supposed to be "commuted" but must have been in too much of a hurry when typing the original comment to notice.  Thanks for correcting that!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In Defense of The Boring Company
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I long assumed that Twitter's character limit was maintained due to a database schema somewhere: a fixed-size Tweet structure probably makes a lot of sense, although if you're reserving 10kB for each post here I bet that would add up quick.  Although with compression perhaps that's less of an issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Destruction of the Rafah Ghetto




Why is the obvious World War II comparison of Rafah to the Warsaw Ghetto?  I can think of a number of other plausible comparisons that are probably worth considering.  This is, admittedly, a rather hot take, but why not compare Rafah to Berlin in 1945?  After the Third Reich invaded most of Eastern Europe, including rampant raping and pillaging across the countryside, and that entire campaign of deliberate ethnic cleansing and genocide, nobody looks at the Allied decision to demand complete, unconditional surrender as unreasonable, or that they kept fighting all the way to Berlin.  Nobody argues that Stalin was deliberately unprepared at the start of the war to justify flattening Germany and running parts of it as a puppet state for Soviet gain.  Nobody of import says "countless German civilians died because Roosevelt and Stalin were unwilling to enact a unilateral ceasefire at the Rhine and the Oder."  Nobody serious mourns the Volkssturm civilians (frequently children) that were handed primitive weapons for futile resistance, without also recognizing the broader context of the tragedy of the entire war.  And I'm not even going to even try to deny that the Red Army was infamous for its war crimes against civilians in the East, or the decades of subsequent political repression the Soviets brought to Eastern Europe during the Cold War.


The Axis powers entered the war in the late 1930s even though almost all modern historians consider their possibility of overall victory bleak.  Maybe they could have bargained for an advantageous quick peace, but even Yamamoto has (possibly-apocryphal) quotes about expecting to lose a longer war.  Hamas had even lower chances of winning in October.  I'm not convinced that this merits assuming that either power, as the "underdog," merits obvious sympathy, although that seems to be in vogue these days in certain circles.  Heck, if you look at ratios of civilian casualties -- as I've seen some argue makes Israel's actions unjustified -- America had almost none (generally counted as a few thousand if you include territories and civilian ship crews).  The British claim 70,000.  More civilians than that died in the Battle of Berlin alone, and Allied bombing campaigns killed hundreds of thousands.  Not to mention the nuclear weapons.


I have trouble embracing the progressive worldview on Gaza because those same principles, applied to WWII, would have me side with the Axis powers.  And I am quite certain that the world is a better place because the (Western) Allies won the day.  Not that they are perfect (ha!), but I'll certainly stan them over the major Axis players.


Not that I'd wholly endorse Israel to hit Rafah like Zhukov hit Berlin: I don't think the situation really warrants it, or that the situations are immediately similar.  Heck, I won't even try to argue that Israel hasn't committed atrocities in this situation.  But on the other, it seems about as reasonable as comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, and I'd be pretty amused to see some Tankies argue that the Red Army was in the wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We need to put aside our pride and end the war, saving the lives of real men, not lines on a map.




As much as I think this statement is true (continued meat grinder is bad), the last century has plenty of examples of it not working out this way.  A bunch of territorial concessions to Nazi Germany (Austria, Czechoslovakia) for "Peace in our Time" only saw the men and materiel of those nations conscripted into the larger war.  See the Czech conscripts depicted in Saving Private Ryan and similar.


I don't think a negotiated settlement for territory works without a much stronger "but never again" guarantee.  Something like EU or NATO tripwire peacekeeping forces would be a very strong form of this, but there are foreseeably other alternatives.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this makes some questionable assumptions about the "rightful" structure of the Soviet empire.  As far as I know, those were Soviet weapons, paid for and made by Soviet citizens, some of whom were Ukrainian, and the other SSRs.  That permanent control would belong to the (former!) capital unreasonably privileges it over the other fragmenting client states.


I don't think it would be reasonable, for example, for the British to have demanded back all their military assets from newly-independent nations as their empire fragmented.  "But those ships and guns belong to London!" seems an odd rallying cry for things in many cases the colonies themselves funded.


But in realpolitik terms, I suppose it did make sense at the time to limit the number of resulting nuclear states for proliferation reasons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"what is a woman?"




I will (weakly) defend her non-response on the basis that SCOTUS are the constitutional Platonic philosopher kings, to whom this sort of seems-trivial-but-actually-has-subtlety question like "is the ACA fine for not having insurance a tax?" (whether or not you agree on the depth of this particular question I think the category still stands), and that generally justices are discouraged from discussing potential cases during confirmation hearings.


That said, I quite likely disagree with her answer to the question regardless.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


As far as I can tell it's only her lawyer making the claim that the op-ed is the only reason she's being deported.




If I had a nickel for every time I saw "Client innocent, defense lawyer alleges" as a headline or article premise, I'd probably be able to retire.  Which is weird, because it's what lawyers on that side are paid to do, and seems the most dog-bites-man story available.  But it works great if you're a journalist trying to muckrake.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Most people on this board aren't vaccinated for a lot of the stuff in the US schedule these days.




Do you have specific examples?  The US schedule is mostly met with the standard childhood vaccines.  I got all the recommended ones when I was a child, and it looks at a quick glance that HPV and chickenpox are the only new additions there.  Beyond childhood, I think tetanus and the flu are the only ones recommended regularly.  I've had to get some fun bonus ones for international travel, too.  I'm pretty sure I'm up to date on most everything (except the COVID boosters), although I didn't ever really set out to get a bunch of shots for fun.  If I were much older (or made certain, um, "lifestyle choices") I'd be missing a few.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
On one hand, allowing countries to subvert foreign elections seems obviously bad [1].  On the other, throwing out election results based on foreign social media posts seems liable to create a valid threat of a denial of service for elections absent something like The Great Firewall (which is itself a potential threat to open society).


I see why both sides would presumably be frustrated by this, but I don't have a real Platonic ideal of an alternative to suggest.  Governance, at least good/fair/democratic governance, is hard.


    

  1. For some value of bad that is pretty nebulous.  For all the allegations in the US in 2016, the actual posts entered into evidence in followup investigations were IMO almost embarrassingly bad and not really shown to be effective.
    2. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Are you sure?  The phrase that comes to mind is "wine-dark sea".  I've seen academics suggest that the notion of blue is a surprisingly modern invention.