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big-city-gay


				

				

				

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joined 2022 November 01 02:55:17 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
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big-city-gay


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 01 02:55:17 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yawn, sorry, who are we talking about? That dude who used to be the president or something? Didn't he go to jail or…something…hey look a squirrel!


They're letting him back on because we've already moved on. Trump was super fun to beat on when he was in the news, but that's in the past now, and we are bored with that. He didn't get any juice from announcing his campaign, we've got some hot new conservatives and liberals to fight over, Trump is boring, hey look a squirrel!


Culture has no attention span. He is back on because nobody gives a shit—and the social media zeitgeist is now all about TiTok, and none of this tired old Boomer bullshit plays on there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The actual order of Musk’s tweets implies that he thinks withdrawing advertising dollars is suppressing free speech, which is a perverse concept of “free speech”, wherein a private company is compelled to put their ad dollars towards another company. And let’s put aside it could be something to do with Musk firing a huge percentage of the ad sales and marketing teams, and Apple doesn’t want to throw money into some black hole where they aren’t getting analytics back.


https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597285572699074560


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Perhaps this is a sign of really good public speaking that he can be aggressive in one venue and come off compassionate in a different venue.




Or perhaps it's the sign of a grifter who views the circus of the Republican primary as a nice platform to set up himself up for a cushy consulting and lobbying gig, and he flip-flopped because it's good marketing to the base.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I wonder why most people don’t seem to care about thee drops?




Most people do not care even in the very very very slightest about the government maybe kind of pushing a private company to prevent conservative trolls from shitposting 280 characters at a time.


And they have absolutely zero patience, none, none at all for this being dribbled out slowly like this. It’s boring.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
On the one hand…yeah, this is endless horse race nonsense. Gotta churn up page views and eyeballs, let’s make up some Trump vs. DeSantis drama.


On the other hand…a lot of Florida lawmakers endorsed Trump. Which is part of a growing drumbeat of stories that DeSantis is really quite the unlikeable asshole. A very loud drumbeat. A very, very loud drum beat with lots and lots of anecdotes that DeSantis has terrible people skills, and with very few stories of how he’s a swell guy.


I don’t know. Everyone seemed to like DeSantis when they knew his policies…but now that he’s more in the public eye and people can actually hear his voice and see how he interacts with people…dude doesn’t have a lot of charm, and Trump, god help me for praising Trump, but Trump does have a certain rakish charisma.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hell of a reach to say the President can micro-manage admissions at private colleges.


While almost all universities receive public funding in some fashion…Harvard, Yale, MIT, those are private institutions with great big investment funds. They aren’t government schools—the executive can't just unilaterally say that private colleges have to consider your Presidential Fitness Test scores.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So you’re proposing recreating the mid-century Chicago political machine, but on a national level.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine


There…are a few issues with that concept.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have no idea what the strategy on Musk’s part here as to the rollout of these files.


Not the rollout to “alternative” journalists—he is probably right that the “mainstream” media would not cover this. (Emphasis on probably, because the Times absolutely loves to hate on big tech, and if they had any scoop on this shit going down inside of Facebook/Meta, they’d be on it like flies.)


I mean, why is this getting dribbed and drabbed out during one of the lowest media engagement weeks of the year in messy Twitter threads? This is not actively ongoing suppression. There is no upcoming election or policy debate that is immediately impacted by this. Nobody outside the extremely motivated and extremely online and extremely right is going to give even the slightest notice to this, as it’s presented in such a slapdash way during the peak of holiday season.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ugh, you try to finish while rolling. Good luck.


I have definitely had “a complete sex act” while on MDMA with no orgasm for either person. (Persons, honestly.) If you go at it for a long while, but you never, uh, seal the deal, but you still have that connection and intimacy, I consider that a sex act.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Oh please that was the lowest…but barely.


I suppose it’s a bit cherry-picking to point out the lowest p-value, but all of the subjective observations were in that teeny tiny range.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				I'm a "gun guy", AMA
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is a somewhat obscure bit of the gun control debate I’d welcome a legitimate steelman for: concealed carry on mass transit.


I live in a US city that is rather notorious for high crime rates, and grew up in a family that was…dad and grandpa were hunters held in very high regard, which is a long story, but I grew up familiar with guns. When there was a debate about concealed carry on the mass transit systems here, notably the trains, my instinct was to sneer, because superficially it seemed like bravado. But then past that, it seemed totally unworkable to me, because I just can’t picture myself getting a good solid bead on an attacker in one of those swaying clanking metal tubes.


Put another way, besides “feeling” that guns on trains are a bad idea, it also seems like concealed carry in those situations would end up with more friendly fire accidents than dead muggers. (Note: I’m a big-city liberal but also have absolutely no inherent problems mowing down criminals, especially after a robbery nearby where some bastard fatally shot the victim’s dog while out walking.) As someone who has had proper training, and not just flushing quail: any thoughts?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Compared to DeSantis? Yeah.


Trump is an omega-level asshole…but he can schmooze. He can work a crowd, and he can do interviews. I have seen no evidence yet DeSantis can do that. Have you actually heard him speak? He has zero charisma—none. Trump has a toxic, used car salesman charisma, but at least he has it, whereas DeSantis is an awkward blank.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ha, I knew I was risking that comment…but I am about to turn 40, and I don’t remember Chernobyl, so I think it’s right up there with dancing the Charleston now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Or at least a bifurcation of the salt of the earth EA types away from the navel gazing longtermists.




Then what, exactly, is novel about EA once you get past the navel-gazers? I still do not understand what is new or interesting about EA.


Pledging to donate part of your income up front? Well, tithing is a well-known concept, and automatic paycheck withdrawals to your retirement account is a pretty well-established and useful concept.


Having metrics and quality control in regards to charities? It’s debatable when exactly effective altruism cohered as a concept, but critiquing donations to red tape-burdened inefficient charities is certainly not a new concept.


Like…once you strip out the funding for battling paperclip-optimizing super AIs, which still seems a silly concept given we can barely build a good Roomba to vacuum up my dog hair, let alone grey goo that will reshape physical reality…what is EA besides common sense? We don’t need Scottish philosophers to construct an elaborate taxonomy and praxis for automatic savings accounts and spending a solid 5 minutes to ponder that we are in fact quite well-aware of breast cancer by this point, and don’t need a month of NFL games to remind us.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, the Taylor Swift thing is superficially silly—of course basic white girls aren’t entitled to socialized ticket prices.


But Ticketmaster/Live Nation is the vertically integrated nightmare monopoly that haunts anti-trust’s dreams. While it profoundly doesn’t matter, because it’s just concerts, having a conglomerate that controls ticket sales and owns the concert venues and manages the artists that play at those venues is really kind of a textbook example of an evil monopoly. It is really quite difficult to establish a fair market price and have competition when one company owns so much of the live music scene. They are also just shockingly incompetent, speaking from personal experience—I live near and attend events at 2 Live Nation venues, and their apps and websites are failure-prone pieces of shit that fall down on the very basics of keeping you logged in and showing available tickets. I just don’t know how such a large company has such a bad UX/UI experience…oh right, monopoly power, gotcha.


-


Now on the Nvidia front…yeah, that’s just whining. These cards cost so much at launch because they cost so much to make. These are fabricated on TSMC’s absolute latest process, and it’s thought the masks alone cost $100 million to fabricate. The EUV systems to make these require huge amounts of power and have very low throughput, especially for GPUs, which are just big honkin’ slices of silicon, and require lots and lots of patterning passes. And there’s a whole mess of supply issues for all semiconductors right now…including obscure problems like a global shortage of neon, because something like 70% of the world’s neon is captured in Ukraine, for odd reasons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I was musing as I walked through a fairly rich neighbourhood of Toronto today




Canada has a huge Ukrainian population. It’s rather centered in Prairies, and not the GTA, but it’s possible that they actually might have real ties to Ukrainians?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Canadians


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Except for that bit in the Sermon On the Mount.




And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tutanota, an encrypted email service…


https://tutanota.com/faq


…that I use for buying steroids er, I mean conducting hard-hitting journalism, which is definitely what these email services are for, and they are definitely not for drug dealing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


CNN is rumored to be suffering serious financial issues




I don't know if that's a "rumor". Well, I suppose the specifics of how CNN itself is doing is slightly a rumor.


But the stitched-together shambling corpse that is Warner Bros. Discovery is objectively in terrible shape.


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/06/david-zaslav-warner-bros-discovery-cash-flow-debt.html


NYTimes has done some fantastic reporting on the gamma ray burst of stupid that caused all this nonsense with Warner, but, paywall.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/business/media/att-time-warner-deal.html


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I had to do some looking here. I figured the fixation on not killing insects was an allegory for empathy for humans outside your tribe.


Nope. Dude has spent a lot of time really fixated on insect suffering. But not just suffering caused by humans. Oh no: he is seriously considering how to intervene in nature to reduce predation in all contexts. As in, he is torn up about spiders killing flies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What's there to read? The federal budget is dominated by stuff that is pretty much untouchable.


    

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    Social Security, 21%, can't touch that, old people vote.
    

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    Medicare/Medicaid, 25%, good lucking touching that, because again, old people vote, and poor people are a cross-party voting block.
    

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    Defense, 13%, haha, by all means touch that live wire, why do you hate America and freedom?
    

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    Interest on the debt, 7%, sure can't touch that.
    

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    Benefits for government employees and veterans, 7%, have fun touching that, it's great PR to screw with veterans.
    

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And then past that, it's really, really popular programs like SNAP until you get down to the 1% range, where the vaunted “waste, fraud, and abuse and funding Piss Christ” programs live, and messing with those bends the cost curve not even a teeny, tiny bit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because that post posits an extremely unlikely scenario where people can actually vote for RFK.


You briefly, very briefly, mention ballot access. As if that isn’t the whole shebang right there. Even if he has some groundswell of support, what’s the plausible plan to find those voters, get signatures, get signatures in a way that comply with the arcane bits of local election law, and then defend against the DNC’s very experienced legal teams that know exactly how to stifle ballot access?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd like to drop a link this thoroughly researched and footnoted article about metabolic adaptation.


https://www.strongerbyscience.com/metabolic-adaptation/


This doesn't immediately support or refute the 300 calorie a day delta here…but it's within the realm of plausibility that when an obese person loses a lot of weight, their system down-regulates non-exercise activity thermogenesis by somewhere in that range.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For consumer-facing banking stuff:


Machine learning for detection of credit card fraud. Which is hard to notice, as you just don’t tend to think to yourself “oh huzzah I didn’t get my identity stolen today”. But the banks put a lot of effort into this, because they sure don’t want to be on the hook for a stolen card number.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I honestly thing the Ansari Incident was a turning point for Me Too—as in, that’s when it jumped the shark. For the briefest of recaps:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aziz_Ansari#Allegation_of_sexual_misconduct


I am woke. I am rather sensitive to lack of consent. But…girl, “Grace”, if you think that a date like that is the “worst night of my life”, then oh sweet summer child. That is nothing. He was a tad too forceful about wanting sex, and he chose a wine you don’t prefer. If you think that’s awful, if you think that’s misconduct by a man, oh my, we have such sights to show you.


Such vapid, trivializing stories like that made Me Too look like a tempest in a teapot, or a flake in a snow globe. That is the most comically candy-ass incident, that is nothing, nothing compared to what lurks out there in the dark, and what preys on truly disadvantaged women.