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faceh


				

				

				

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faceh


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

					8 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 05 04:13:17 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It seems to be standard corporate operating procedure. Do the thing, if there's enough blowback then walk it back/undo it, but depend on the apathy/laziness of the consumer to let you get away with 4/5 of what you want to do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm just saying. If Gabe ever sells, we're seeing $100-$120 games being standard, DRM out the wazoo, and a complete lockdown on the user review system. Just to start.


Hence why I would like Steam to add a little button at checkout to let you donate to Gaben's immortality fund.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There's something nice about having one canon,




Agreed, but then we end up having to watch said canon crash and burn when someone without any love for the IP grabs hold of it and inserts their own vision, and then mocks the people who are suddenly alienated because har har I peed all over your stuff now I own it. A fandom should, in such cases, be able to organize and just pay some other person to continue from where things left off and go on their merry way. This could happen in the current era, but in practice, coordination problems mean you can't outbid Corporations for the rights.


I think books in particular are amenable to a 'flexible' canon. Most long-running series have entries that fans would rather forget/ignore. Oh, and many where the endings rather suck. So if another author wants to come in and rewrite, say book 6 of a series, or just change a single character arc or 'fix' an ending, well, let them publish it, stick it on the shelf next to the originals, and let people choose.


I ALSO support the idea of authors going back over their own works and adjusting things based on their increased experience and feedback... so long as they're very transparent about doing so and keep the previous versions available.


This doesn't always play out well (Kirkman is making some changes from the Invincible comic to the TV show that I find baffling) but I think it is healthy.


This also opens them up to being bullied into making changes that are genuinely horrible, but hey.


Yes there's absolutely an 'artistic integrity' argument to be made.


I think the apotheosis of this would be a wikipedia-like site that tracks all versions of a given canon and charts the different paths readers/viewers can take and lets people provide feedback on individual tracks so future readers/viewers can pick the one they expect to like.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the overall result, though, is not a proliferation of independent creators protected from corporate overreach, its just an inevitable centralization of all the media to the eternal corporate entities, who then shut down anyone else who might want to spin off the works in question... including the original creator.


The ONLY reason Calvin and Hobbes hasn't burned up its Dragon's hoard of goodwill is because the creator has simply refused to be bought and has become a recluse, the sole holdout of his generation of artists.


But it is certain that once he dies, it too will be sucked up into the corporate vaults and exploited to the max.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do recall that but... I'm not TOO mad about letting my data get hoovered up to help summon the Silicon demon.


I actually WANT the machine God to have a piece of my personal data in there. I tailor my behavior online to make it easy for the thing to figure out my preferences.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Either bite the bullet and accept the out of pocket cost or take it to the cloud.




Its me, the bullet muncher.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Valve is the single guardrail keeping the entire industry from tumbling head over heels down the slippery slope.


Their ability to sort of 'impose' pro-consumer rules for those who want to use their marketplace is like the one and only place where the incentives are finally aligned towards gamer's preferences.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Amazingly, Dropbox has never betrayed me over the course of 15 years. But the only reason I tolerated it in the first place is because it syncs with a local folder on my own computer so it was added convenience with no additional risk.


Then Microsoft tries to force that same crap on me and I get mad because they're trying to dictate what I keep on my computer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I assume natural crowd-following instincts (you want to be part of what everyone else is doing, not go off on some random tangent where nobody else cares), backed by the aforementioned IP regime that makes it very sketchy to put too much effort into a product you can't distribute.


But yeah, its like the one Tyler the Creator tweet about cyberbullying. "How the hell is corporate canon real? Just read the fanfiction, don't watch the theatrical releases, and believe whatever you want."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I dream of an era where the "canon" for a given series isn't dictated by the primary IP holder, but instead can be forked off by people where-ever they want, and fans can just form organic consensuses as to what particular canon is 'best,' and pick and choose precisely which parts of it they want to incorporate into their particular experience.


I would absolutely prefer the version of Star Wars where the Darth Jar-Jar theory was true and he turned out to be the evil behind Snoke in the new trilogy. Let me have my canon, and you can have... whatever The Rise of Skywalker was.


Force these massive companies to compete on something resembling quality, rather than Neener neener I own the IP, you have to go through me if you want more content.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Its why I continue to maintain a physical, offline music collection even though it feels increasingly pointless. I've still got a bunch of my old CDs in a box in my closet as a last resort.


I pay 8 bucks and I can stream 95% of the music I want anywhere I am, which is a fair deal. The problem is they've trained me to expect betrayal and removal of songs I enjoy for reasons beyond their control, so archives/backups feel like a necessary step. Music files are small, storage is cheap.


I AM certainly willing to pay to see live performances, the value add there is clear, but digitization of everything has made me very unwilling to hand over money for an ephemeral digital file that I'm technically not allowed to copy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yep.


I think the regular threat of release to the 'public domain' or open-sourcing, as you say, would be a positive incentive for companies to maintain games and eventually 'allow' the community to gain some ownership of them if the community wishes to maintain their game past its intended lifespan.


They should be able to figure out a price point which balances out all these concerns if there's some hard limits in the law.


Personally, I think that if you are going to withhold access to a given product entirely, making it unavailable for purchase or even rental to the 'general public,' that's akin to waiving the protections against others copying and distributing said IP. But I might even go a step further and say some information is 'inherently' of value to the public and thus should be kept accessible on general principle, so I generally support the Sci-hub mission.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Another example that I personally believe is stupid: when music from games is removed because the songs are licensed for a fixed duration




This is a peeve of mine. I fully understand the legal and practical idea that a 'license', in terms of IP, is revocable pursuant to its own terms, and thus enforcing that revocation is... fine.


But in the era of physical media, if you bought a CD, there was no mechanism for deleting the songs off of it once you had it. In theory they could send a cop to your house to confiscate it, but that was never worth it. They just priced everything into the purchase.


Same with Vidya. I can boot up any of my old gamecube games and the licensed music will still play, since the GC isn't natively online.


Silly, silly me, I figured that the addition of always-on internet connectivity would mean you could have infinite musical variety on in-game radios thanks to seamless integration of streaming services.


But once again we manage to land in this weird place where the licensed music built into the game goes away after a while, and its all but impossible to import your own music or just hook a streaming account in and have an unlimited supply of music directly in the game. Unless you're capable enough with mods, that is.


Not that anyone can currently stop you from playing music yourself while gaming, but what really is the point of using the medium of Vidya if you're gimping the advantages it has over more static forms of entertainment. And of course, I'm also old fashioned enough to think that I should be able to boot up the game and have a functionally identical experience to the one I had the first time around, and I'll get cranky if things were changed arbitrarily.


I'm admittedly an Intellectual property skeptic, in that I think the current legal setup is far enough from optimal because of stuff like this, where it always gets leveraged to a clearly anti-consumer end and doesn't generate any noticeable benefit, other than upholding the current IP regime. I'm sure 99% of the time nobody really notices because a game that is 10+ years old has to be TRUE classic for people to keep playing it that long.


The last factor here is that it also prevents much cross-collaboration of game assets. The issue with music can apply to literally ANY OTHER artistic element of the game. In game models, textures, hell even textual elements could be licensed in such a way that they have to get pulled out down the line, leaving you with an entirely nonfunctional game.


So the larger regime probably makes it less feasible for certain games to get made due to the need to produce all the assets in-house if they want to maintain IP control over the longer term. Vidya are one of the only media this would apply to because of its integration of so many different types of assets into a singular product.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In Lilo and Stitch the only reason they can't gas the whole planet to get at Stitch is because they consider Mosquitos an endangered species.


It'd be absolutely MASSIVE irony IRL if we manage to genocide mosquitos and in turn this gives aliens the clearance to finally genocide us.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's like saying I'd have lost money betting on electric cars because most of them have been massive failures.


But if you put $10,000 in Tesla stock at its high in 2016, it'd be worth (approximately) $250,000 today. Not bad ten year turnaround, and probably a big enough win to make up for a dozen other losses.


Granted, a lot of that is due to Quantitative easing pumping ALL stocks like crazy in that time.


One of the biggest 'regrets' I carry is NOT putting at least a few thousand dollars worth of excess student loan money into Tesla circa 2013, actually.


My point is that as soon as it became clear that AI was now becoming a serious field with possible industrial application, I should have started looking at companies that would stand to be lead players.


But lo, I tried being financially responsible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The night Trump won his election is indelibly engraved in my head. Driving home from work expecting to wake up in Hillary land, then suddenly driving over to my buddy's house to drink and laugh at the intrinsic ridiculousness of what we were observing. The moment he won Florida was when it kicked in as "wow this is real."


This video encompasses the feeling well.


The night he won it a second time is also burned in there but not quite as deeply.


I don't even remember what I was doing the night Biden 'won.'


Now President Trump is just a facet of reality. I can't imagine the timeline without him.


Wild ride indeed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The idea of "otherwise unremarkable thing that we'd have no reason to consider anomalous was actually vitally important to the sanctity of our entire planet" is always a funny trope to me when it surfaces in fiction.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Harambe is definitely a real 'canon event' for a certain generation of people.


All major events after that point have felt very 'unreal' and usually gets twisted to someone's agenda right away.


It is also one of the last times we had a major cultural event that virtually everyone, of every ideology, agreed on the valence of, and didn't turn political. Everyone agreed the death of the gorilla was tragic and likely unneeded, a result of human irresponsibility.


It didn't trigger a gender discourse (although the "dicks out for Harambe" meme got people some errant looks), it wasn't co-opted as a weapon against political opponents, there were no racial undertones, it was just half-sincere meming about a low-level tragedy. I can't off the top of my head think of any recent events like this which weren't immediately converted to culture war fodder.


I dunno if that gorilla was cosmically important, but as a marker of the boundary between one cultural era into another, it works extremely well.


The only other event I'd offer as a marker of passing from one epoch to the other, also from 2016, was Alphago beating Lee Sedol. That one actually DID portend a massive sea change, and if I had been a bit smarter/braver/wealthier around that time, I could have made a lot of money placing bets on future AI development.


By comparison, there is no way I know of anyone could have traded on the death of Harambe to make a real profit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How are most super-rich guys even meeting unattended barely-legal women and getting into a realistic trajectory to form a relationship?




As far as I understand it, they can literally just message them on Instagram.


Likewise, yacht girls are a thing.


Ironically, I think one reason Epstein fell out of favor was... his services became way less valuable as the internet made it way simpler to find young girls to date and predate.


Part of the value of such a guy was simply being the Schelling point before the internet created new ones.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
See,


last time I discussed this point, I mentioned that the data mostly relies on age gaps of MARRIED couples.


I made this point:


Bill Belichik is not married.


Leonardo Dicaprio is not married.


Nor Tobey Macguire.


Nor Anthony Keidis


Nor Scooter Braun, who gets to motorboat Sydney Sweeney.


Nicholas Cage is if we want a minor counterexample.


This is actually what I mean when I say the institution that expects everyone to be monogamous has been hollowed out.


There is zero impetus for a high status male to get married if he doesn't want to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's my take on it.


There are MANY, MANY things that someone who is top 1% in status (by whatever means they came into it) can just 'get away' with that is likely to wreck someone who attempts it while even slightly outside that top tier.


Bill Belichek can date a woman who could be his granddaughter (Hugh Hefner also got away with this). Elon can sire kids with multiple women he is not married to.


I mentioned a while back that there seem to be two main stable social norms around human mating.


Either everyone is held to monogamous standards (but we expect people to fail), or nobody is... but this means top tier guys collect a harem and lower tier guys duke it out over the remains.


We're in a very uncomfortable transitory period where both sort of exist simultaneously but the exceptions that have been carved out are causing the foundations of the former to crumble in a way that may take it out entirely. Maybe already has.


This can indeed apply to women too. Madonna gets a boy toy. Beyonce sings a ballad for single ladies the same year she got married to an extremely wealthy man herself.  Alex Cooper gets celebrity ladies to admit to ridiculous beliefs and behaviors that, were it a (lower status) male were saying it would sound almost psychopathic. Which, it turns out, is basically what the Fresh and Fit Podcast gets tarred with, rightly or wrongly.


Alex Cooper also gets her happy marriage regardless since she's attractive, wealthy, and now a celebrity in her own right.


This whole topic gets perilously close to my rant on elite accountability. Elites face few consequences for encouraging behaviors in the lower classes that lead to horrific outcomes, and use their status to achieve the outcomes they want regardless of their own misdeeds.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean, you just said it. "Peacetime may turn into war quite suddenly."


You don't know precisely when you might need your standing army. So the threat is also uncertain, but when it arrives, it is immediate.


I can't easily imagine a scenario where there's some clear and present need to start pumping out kids to deal with population shortfall. Its always going to be some abstract risk in the future... there's no enemy that can choose to attack at any time that you're hedging against.


Its specifically this factor that makes the problem pernicious.


Note, I'm not ethically in favor of conscription, either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And therein lies the rub.


We used to have semi-distributed reputation/surveillance networks that could monitor behavior and punish egregious instances of it. It was clearly less than perfect, yet whisper networks and informal ostracizing miscreants was able to police both genders' behavior without needing a central arbiter to make these determinations.


Phones took a lot of these things out of the public eye and then dating apps made it much simpler to pick up people outside your social network thus not subject to the reprisals for bad behavior.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, but take that argument to its logical conclusion, I'd say that the people who seek out matchmaker assistance are likely the most desperate and thus more susceptible to being manipulated.


Which is to say, they're a ripe target for scamming. So I suspect matchmakers are dependent on such folks for maintaining business.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes there's mandatory military service in a number of countries, some of whom haven't been to war in a long time.


But I note that "service during peacetime", BY DEFINITION, has far lower risk of death, so the costs/consequences are much less severe for the males involved anyway.