@VoxelVexillologist's banner p

VoxelVexillologist

🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist

1 follower   follows 0 users  
joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
User ID: 64


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

					1 follower  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					
					Month
					Year
					All
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there an example of a state not being allowed to do as it pleased, up to the point where one or more other states disagreed (by kinetic or economic force), or its own people decided to reform it?  There's no World Police to arrest rogue states, and plenty of ongoing, if not universally agreed-upon, crimes against humanity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This would at least require a visa for longer stays, and it looks like permanent residency isn't impossible, but probably isn't affordable to "Americans generally".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm old enough to remember Europeans (online) 20+ years ago complaining that this was a human rights violation to track people like this.  Frankly, at the time I was even inclined to agree somewhat.


I'm curious what those particular folks think of this today.  My naive end-of-history libertarian streak is definitely a bit jaded with time, and it's not paranoia when some parties demonstrably are out to get you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Aren't we already far enough in the future that the JCPOA provisions limiting Iran's nuclear program would already be ending?  It looks like it was set to gradually sunset over years 10-15, and we've already hit the 10 year mark.


I'm not knowledgeable enough to claim a useful opinion on either keeping it or tearing it up, but at some point that discussion has to become moot because either way it wouldn't have applied anymore.  Maybe it's arguable that it could have been extended, but I suspect the sunset clause was a sticking point in reaching the agreement to begin with.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I suspect either case here spurs the construction of additional pipelines and routes traffic around Hormuz: even if it were to make sense short term to pay, it'd be foolish to leave that leverage on the table going forward.  Of course, not all the states involved have clear routes for doing that alone, so there may be some diplomatic reshuffling.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It was a different time, with fewer cameras around, but to quote Robert Caro's Master of the Senate:




Even at college, where sexual boastfulness is a staple of campus existence, Lyndon Johnson's boastfulness -- and exhibitionism about his sexual prowess -- had been striking to his fellows. Exhibiting his penis to his roommates, Johnson called it "Jumbo"; returning to his room after a date, he would say "Jumbo had a real workout tonight" ... If he was urinating in a bathroom of the House Office Building and a colleague came in, Johnson, finishing, would sometimes turn to him with his penis in his hand. Without putting it back in his pants, he would begin a conversation, still holding it, "and shaking it, as if he was showing off," said one man with whom he did this. He asked another man, "Have you ever seen anything as big as this?"




There are some further LBJ anecdotes in that book and others.  IMO that's at least a bit more uncouth than Trump's behavior in public office.  But only a bit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


worst case scenario, it wrecks women's sports




This is probably the least worst case scenario for progressive beliefs like this: it looks the other way while thousands of little girls are raped (Rotherham et al), spends hundreds of billions on public infrastructure that still doesn't go anywhere (CA HSR), lets loose violent criminals on their own recognizance to murder people on the train (sometimes Ukrainian asylum seekers), openly constructs race and gender-based spoils systems, and often-as-not in other countries (Venezuela, Cuba) refuses to even consider public opinion and starts ignoring elections.


Not going to say there aren't a similar number of equivalent failure modes on the right, either: civilization has always been a delicate dance to align incentives to avoid violence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From a Banksian perspective, aspirational Fully Automated Gay Space Communism says "yes", but still has to manage "real threats" (ideally non-kinetically, but not always).  I don't think we're there (yet?), so I wouldn't call that a fair expectation in 2026.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I never understood that one, because the only coverage I ever saw of it was "Republicans pounce on tan suit".  Despite having what I think is a fairly centrist media diet, I never saw any of the actual condemnation of the suit, but I saw tons of reactions to it.  Even looking at the Wikipedia page, I can only find two clear examples of actual comments on the suit by the Republican-aligned (Lou Dobbs on Fox Business, representative Peter King) and a couple of neutral "weird choice" but not particularly condemnatory fashion commentators, amid dozens of links deriding the "controversy".


It always felt very manufactured to me.  Honestly, the tan suit never bothered me, but it did feel like everyone focusing on it was distracting from what should have been real controversies of the time (mismanaging the Arab Spring and ISIS, ATF gunrunning, constructing a domestic panopticon).  Although in that vein, it does feel like Trump frequently intentionally causes outrage at minor things to distract from major ones.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Somewhere here is a good reaction meme joke about AI doomers having to cope with AGI dumbing itself down to maximize token usage ($$$), not paperclips.


Not saying it's happening, but it'd be ironic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm surprised (as a mostly non-user for now) at the complaints that engineering performance has degraded over months.  Is this rapidly-improving expectations?  Honeymoon phase wearing off? AI vendors cranking the screws to reduce costs and looking for pennies? I thought the models were difficult to train and largely static, so I didn't think that sort of scaling was trivially on the table.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It is assuming only 4 hours storage.




I've never seen an earnest accounting of solar with storage accounting for (1) seasonal variation and (2) a full transition to heat-pump heating.  Combined, they mean that peak energy usage north of the sunbelt is going to be in winter, where solar flux is at best a fraction of summer peaks.  This requires either (1) overbuilding solar to handle peak heating demand in mid-winter, (2) storage that handles months, not hours, (3) long-haul interconnects to sunnier climes, or (4) mass-migration toward temperate climates with low winter heating loads.


But I'm open to someone sharing data suggesting this is actually becoming feasible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do you have numbers on that?  The entropic (fuel) efficiency of modern plants is much better than their 18th century equivalents.  Are the emissions control costs really dominant here?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There are two ways to gain an edge in a prediction market. One is to just be exceptionally good at condensing the publicly available information into probabilities. The other way is to have insider information.




There's an implied third way of actively swaying the outcomes being bet upon.  In sports, this is uniformly against the rules (see federal charges against MLB players recently), but it's less clear how the rules work for other prediction markets: there's lots of discussion about whether "predicting" deaths is functionally an assassination market, but I'm not sure where I'd want the boundaries to be in the general case.  Futures markets look a lot like (some) prediction markets, but it's downright encouraged to look at long-term oil futures pricing to decide whether to invest in new drilling and exploration, and it's not "unfair" that futures market members raise production elsewhere and at least temper the futures pricing impact of Gulf shipping woes.


A bet on sunshine next week and the electric grid spot price are pretty related, but the ethics of engaging in (legal) cloud seeding to change it isn't a clear "wrong", IMHO.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And not only will normies think that people who bet against the US military don't like the US, that will actually be true because not only are the rulemakers and public normies




In the context of the existing, adjacent sports betting market, I suspect most betters are fans of a team betting on their guys, not crunching spreadsheets of game stats.  And it's probably a continuum: there are a few die-hard Jaguars fans convinced that this will be their season (with apologies to Jason Mendoza). So I'm not sure the connotation is unfair.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How far back are you considering "modern"?  Lincoln "churned through generals" until he found Grant, for example.