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quiet_NaN


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 22:19:43 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks, this worked for me (even without logging into google).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ok, I will grant you that she was very likely trying to obstruct immigration enforcement and they had probable cause to detain her.


I would still argue that standing in the way of her car was a bad call to make.


There are certainly cases when I would want cops to risk their own lives and the lives of a suspect rather than letting them escape, for example if they are dealing with a mass shooter, where any failure to detain them will likely lead to more people being killed.


However, the driver of this car does not seem to be such a case. They had her license plate, they had her on bodycam footage, there is no reason to suspect that she was planning any terror attacks. "If she panics and drives away, we will just charge her with reckless driving and refusal to comply with a lawful order on top of the obstruction charge, it is not like she will escape to Argentina to escape justice."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That situation is different, because if you stand in the way of a car while unloading groceries, your intend is clearly not to force the driver to either stay put or escalate to deadly force. Also, it is very rare for bananas to trigger a flight response, while being faced with police arrest will trigger such a response in a small fraction of the population (and possibly a larger faction of the part of the population likely to be arrested) where suspects will risk their lives trying to escape even if they are not currently wanted for a capital crime. It is stupid, but people are predictably stupid in that way.


I would argue that intent matters. Consider the opposite situation. A police vehicle tries to pursue a suspect, but it hampered (1) by an innocent bystander crossing the road who does not realize what is going on or (2) by an activist who is placing themselves in harms way to coerce the cops to stop the pursuit. While I would want the police to try to avoid killing the person in their way in either case, I would cut them a lot more slack for grazing the activist. Placing yourself (and others) in mortal danger to coerce a behavior from others seems straightforward bad. If the coercion was also unlawful (e.g. the activist doing the blocking), I won't cry to much if they break their leg in the process.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But there is often a limit to the ability to claim self-defense when you deliberately engineered a situation for the purpose of being forced to resort to self-defense. Standing in front of a suspect's vehicle seems to fit the bill just fine. You are not physically impeding them from driving away.


If you give legal privileges to a conduct, you will see more of it. Standing in front of the car of a suspect to prevent them from escaping is reckless and will often lead to someone getting harmed. So it is logical to set the incentives so that cops will employ safer conduct instead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There was a longer video I saw that showed a few minutes beforehand. There were dozens of people on foot "observing" the ICE agents, where "observing" is some dishonest libtard euphemism for "screaming insults and hostility like psychotic banshees in a way that absolutely and obviously made the situation more tense, stressful and dangerous for everyone involved."




Frankly, I do not give a fuck. Civilians on the sidewalk being assholes is normal even for regular police ops. The ICE people earn a 100k$/year of taxpayer money, the 'libtards' on the sidewalk do not. You will forgive me for holding the people with the government paychecks and badges to higher standards than the others.




The protestors should all be tried as accessories.




Are you suggesting that they were committing a felony, so that they are guilty of felony murder?


Hm, MN seems to have a rather broad felony murder law](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.19):




Subd. 2. Unintentional murders. Whoever does either of the following is guilty of unintentional murder in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 40 years:
(1) causes the death of a human being, without intent to effect the death of any person, while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense other than criminal sexual conduct in the first or second degree with force or violence or a drive-by shooting; or




With felony being very broadly defined:




Subd. 2. Felony. "Felony" means a crime for which a sentence of imprisonment for one year or more may be imposed.




The trade-off is that you only get 2nd degree murder, which does not have a minimum mandatory sentence. So what felony do you think the people yelling at ICE from the sidewalk might be found guilty off?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do not think that this is at all incompatible with Gillitrut's point.


Unprovoked escalation by any side is bad. If a cop has the option to either park a stroller in front of a suspects car or place his own car there for the purpose of impeding an escape, then it seems reasonable to require them to use their car, which will mean that the suspect will be less likely to escalate to deadly violence if they try to escape. (If it is fine to use a suspects unwillingness to endanger innocents to detain them, then SWAT forces should be wearing babies instead of kevlar vests.)


Some jurisdiction have a concept of self-defense being limited if the actor specifically provoked the self-defense situation. Placing a human in front of a car, or handcuffing yourself to the car for that matter, will do very little to impede the movement of the car. It is purely meant to create a situation where you will be able to claim self-defense or file additional charges.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The purpose of ICE is to enforce immigration law. While it could be the case that detaining a citizen in a car was required to enforce immigration law, this is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Angle 2




Apparently, Elon thinks that video might be to disturbing to watch without an account, and I don't really want to ask grok to turn all the participants into nude 13yo's.


Does someone have another link to a different source which is less nanny-state than X?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Many will pretend not to understand, or pretend that it is implausible, hence making discourse impossible. I am not going to argue with them. Instead, we are simply going to call on the Trump administration and red states to protect this officer from Minnesota's deranged courts.




Are you sure the motte is the correct site for you, then? You might have a better chance to reach the Trump administration on X or Truth Social, I think.


Also, I am not sure what standing Trump has to interfere with state law being applied. Are you suggesting that he sends the Delta force to extradite the shooter?


If you visit a jurisdiction, you are placing yourself in the tender cares of its justice system, however biased it might be. This is one reason why I would avoid visiting Iran -- Sharia law is not really my kink.


Juries have their own regional biases. I would assume that in the 1950s South, a white guy killing a black guy would have a higher probability of being acquitted for reasons of self defense, all things being equal, than vice versa. My advice to a black guy in the 50s would be to not be in the South and try his best to keep his nose clean if he has to be there. This is not a great solution, but what is the alternative? Not letting Texas hold murder trials until 1980?


Sympathies vary vastly between groups. Violence which is seen as self-defense nine times out of ten when enacted by a cop might be seen as a felony nine times out of ten when enacted against a cop (try "I thought the cop was going to run me over, so obviously I shot him").


Unluckily for the shooter, ICE is about as popular in blue areas as a black guy accused of murdering a white man in the '50s South. To be fair, he knew that when he signed on. The reason that Trump pays ICE high salaries and a big signing bonus is that it is common knowledge that half of the country considers them his brownshirts. If he gets convicted for a shooting for which a jury would have ruled self-defense when committed by a local cop, that is just an occupational hazard.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is a value to letting previous decisions stand. For example, if Congress impeached the president every time his popularity sank below 50% of the voters, that would badly affect the stability of the political system.


There is a difference between saying "given today's policies, we would not let you publish that article" and actually retracting an article. The central example of an article being retracted would be due to fraud or plagiarism: someone having deliberately deceived the reviewers about their results or originality is enough to overturn the status quo.


Now, if it appears that he had broken explicit rules of conduct which existed at the time he published, e.g. not appointing a reviewer despite protocol calling for a reviewer, that would be grounds for retraction.


Unfortunately, we do not know that.




A notice has now been added to the online article stating: “Elsevier’s research integrity and publishing ethics team, with guidance from an impartial field expert, acting in the role of an independent publishing ethics advisor, conducted an investigation and determined that the article should be retracted.




Given that we do not get the report of that team, that parses to me as "secret evidence was enough to convince the star chamber of his guilt".


I think it would be ok to keep their report secret if at the end both parties agreed on the retraction, not every piece of dirty laundry needs to be aired in public. But given that the validity of the retraction is under dispute, it hardly seems like Lucey could object if they published everything.


In general, one could debate how much power the owner of a journal should have to enforce retractions of articles. Suppose a political activist billionaire bought Elsevier, and proceeded to retract articles matching some pattern (perhaps articles without minority co-authors, or articles authored by Jews, or which argued for/against anthropogenic climate change). Or perhaps ether theory proponents could buy Wiley-VCH and retract Einstein's Annalen der Physik papers on relativity.


Of course, this would not change the scientific consensus about Einstein one bit. After all, the power of a retraction comes from the fact that scientists and appointment committees treat them as real, but they do that because most retractions are solid, not because they are sworn to do so.


--


I also think that undeclared conflicts of interest and quid pro quo understandings in scientific publishing are likely very common. Most scientific fields are rather narrow, there are perhaps a dozen professors in your niche, not tens of thousands. Editing a journal or reviewing articles is (generally unpaid) work taken up by academics, and while I am sure that some of them have the best interests of their field in mind, these are also good positions to gatekeep and increase your own standing. "That manuscript is okay except that it is missing a citation of an essential publication" seems like a fairly easy way to boost citations of your own articles, after all. When people say that science advances one funeral at a time, I think that gatekeepers refusing to publish anything which contradicts their own pet theory are a big part of that.


While it is clear that the dysfunctionality inherent in the system should not excuse any particular  dysfunctionality cultivated on top of that, I do not have a great solution to the underlying problem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think we can separate this into two different questions:


(1) Should prediction markets allow insider trading?


(2) Should people with secret military insider information disclose that information for profit?


The value a prediction market provides is in the odds, banning insider trading would defeat that purpose. In this case, the prediction market providing an accurate image is strongly negatively correlated with the US military achieving its objective.


Two parties having different alignments is not that unusual, it would be the same for journalism and the military, for example. If a reporter is publishing secret military information they learned, they are doing their job. If a soldier is leaking such information to reporters, they are breaking their oath.


The way I would spin this is "a person with insider knowledge was endangering an operation which cost north of 100M$ and the lives of US troops to make a measly half million for themselves". (I am not sure of the timeline there, it is plausible that the bet happened after the capture but before it was announced. Sadly, the BBC seems not to be aware of either the concepts of time zones or hyperlinks (e.g. to the relevant polymarket page).)


While I personally would have liked it if the US operation would have failed as miserably as Putin's attempt to capture the Ukraine government at the start of his special military operation, preferentially with dead and captured US troops (because that is the language the electorate understands, sadly), I imagine the PoV of the US military is different.


In a functioning state, finding the leak would be a top priority. Even if the bet was made after the capture, condoning it would lead to situations where different insiders are competing, which would eventually lead to leaking of military relevant information. I would also predict that the perp was not a career officer, but a political insider. As such, I imagine little will be attempted to find the source.


I am still holding a faint hope that the insider trading will happen again before Trump attacks Columbia, and will lead to my preferred outcome.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I strongly agree with your point of view. The point of science is to increase our understanding of the world, so it is not a zero sum competition to assign status.


Of course, there exists also what Feynman calls cargo cult science. People who occupy fields which make pretenses of scientific rigor but are actually just bullshitting may very well feel that all the application of statistics etc is just performative.


Being a scientist means leading mankind down the path towards truth, typically zero to one baby steps at a time. Falsifying data -- to decide that you would rather make larger steps than walk in the right direction -- is the ultimate defection from that mission. The professor who fucks his students or the doctor who experiments on PoWs may be worse human beings, but the falsifier of data is the worse scientist.


Nobody is forced to compete in a field which makes any pretenses of scientific rigor. If you don't like statistics, publish on art history. But if you use the language of science in your publications while falsifying your data, you should be expelled and disgraced and spend the rest of your days in some menial job where you can do no further harm.


A similar nonchalance is sometimes seen in defense of academics whose ghostwriters copy paste their thesis from other publications. After all, a lot of people did some cheating in school, and can't see what the big deal is. But to the (debatable) degree that an academic title means anything, it means that you sat down on your own ass and wrote your thesis. Take that away, and there is literally nothing left, and we might as well allow parents to christen their infants 'PhD' instead of 'Kevin' or 'Mary'.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Children are generally not very interesting before the age of ten. Maybe it's my Extreme Male Brain, but women can take care of em before then.




Personally, I would beg to differ. I will grant you that below an age of one, kids are effectively extremely needy pets without the brain power to set them apart from most other mammals. There are certainly people whose dream job it would be to take care of cute crying babies, but it would not be mine.


But I guess that at an age of two or three, kids far surpass other mammals in intelligence. I think a lot of people enjoy watching a human level intelligence in the making, just like some car enthusiasts would also enjoy toolgifs of cars being assembled, rather than going "ew, that thing is not even self-propelling yet, call me when it is ready for the autobahn".


For example, reading the (paywalled) posts by Scott Alexander on the development of his twins, it is apparent that he takes great joy from observing their development. Personally, I have two nephews (aged 7 and 5). I will confess that when they were very small, I was not interacting with them much -- holding a baby is not something which would bring me much joy, I would probably mostly be worrying about holding it wrong and injuring it or something. But from the point where I can communicate with them, I've had a lot of fun interacting with them, playing games and the like. Young kids have a whole world to discover, and I find their joy in discovering new things infectious.


For people aged 10 or 15, I guess the quality of the interactions would depend on shared interests. If there are shared interests (say math), then one can have a blast ("and this is how we know that sqrt(2) is not a fraction"). If there are no shared interests (e.g. "STEM is boring, I only care about rap music", given that I do not know anything about rap), then these interactions will probably be as painful as interactions between adults who do not share any interests.


But I will totally grant you that this is all very subjective.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So the mother of his kids is effectively a single parent then? If she knew what she signed up for beforehand, and decided that him bringing home a big paycheck is enough, then I do not see a victim. She should probably get the kids some male role models who are willing to spend any amount of time, but if we say it is not immoral for a single woman to conceive a child from a sperm donation, then I see no reason to call what they are doing immoral either.


Of course, it is not the kind of relationship I would wish for, personally. If the guy just wants offspring, he could become a sperm donor instead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


These military power-holders don't need to become a puppet of the US to get what they want, just to stop being an enemy of the US.




What exactly has VZ done to be called an enemy of the US? The nationalization of their oil industry (in 1973)? Having a socialist dictator in the Americas? Or are you referring to Trump's claims that Maduro is using fentanyl as a 'weapon of mass destruction' in the US?


Also, it seems to me that Trump's understanding of agreements is that there is always one party which gets fucked over by them, and therefore he only agrees to deals which fuck over the other party. I seriously doubt that he is going back to the 50-50 sharing of profits from before the nationalization.


And while I have no doubt that the military leaders in charge are corrupt as fuck and will do whatever benefits them personally, in my experience militaries also generally foster thoughts of nationalism and independence. If VZ bends over backwards the moment Trump sends in a few helicopters, their citizens might start to ask questions about the purpose of having a military.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Are they even making money on oil at all right now? Their cost of production is much higher than what it sells for, since all they have is heavy crude.




Well, Trump was seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker recently. Presumably you are wrong and they can extract crude oil for less than what they can get for it on the international market


Also, there are plenty of nations which could provide the machinery to extract oil in exchange for crude. It would not have to be a big investment in refining capabilities (which could then be nationalized), but just enough support to keep their oil rigs running for another six month or so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am skeptical this will work out. The VP will be in a much less stable position than Maduro.


For starters, she will not command the same loyalty of the various power holders -- this is just coup-proofing 101.


Becoming a puppet of the US (at least as far as oil is concerned) will not play well with the population, and in particular not play well with the people in the party.


Apparently, crude oil is 90% of Venezuela's exports. My guess is that Trump will take most of that revenue for the US. While parts of that revenue previously ended in slush funds, part of it also stabilized the regime, paying for stuff the population needs or likes.


Then you have an opposition that will almost certainly try to seize the day.


Given that Trump has already threatened other neighboring countries, some people have a vested interest in making sure that his gamble will not pay off. While the US can certainly occupy and defend the oil rigs, pipelines are much harder to defend without the cooperation of local security forces. Even if the VP gives out the order that the security of the oil infrastructure is priority one (because her life depends on it), I doubt that she will have the clot to actually enforce that priority. Local security forces might decide that taking a bribe to let a vehicle carrying a drone and some explosives through a checkpoint is a better deal for them than arresting the suspects.


Of course, putting Maduro into the tender cares of the US court system is a rookie mistake which GWB would not have made. (Albeit he needed that because officially, the DoD was just aiding the DoJ in apprehending a criminal, which would be even less plausible if the accused ended in gitmo outside of the DoJ's jurisdiction.) Perhaps he really has strong evidence tying Maduro to drug smuggling which will force the court system to lock him up until a president pardons him (as US presidents are wont to do, lately). Otherwise, the judiciary is certainly the part of the government Trump has the least control over, and they might not deliver the verdict he wants.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Are you hardcore no-fap? Not that I think the dissemination and whatever other social stuff around this is outstanding, but obtaining nudes of cute girls in your high school would have been considered a high accomplishment for high school boys as long as high school and photos have existed.




I am not, nor ever were, no-fap. I jerked off a lot in my school days. If high school boys today can't fap without having as a visual aid a picture of their classmate's tits, the microplastics situation must be much worse than I thought.


Any high schooler who feels the need to jerk off has plenty of options. He can just fantasize about having sex with a fictional woman. Or a celebrity. While I would not recommend fantasizing about people in your personal life, thoughts are free.


If he wants visual aid, there is this thing called the 'internet'. From the softest softcore to all kinds of kinks and depravities, the net provides enough so that they can jerk off continuously to their favorite genre until they literally die of old age.


Or he can try to use his phone and flirt with a classmate and get her to send them some nudes, nothing wrong with that (unless he shares the photos with his buddies).


But then again, I do not really get the bro culture. As a straight guy, I have never had much inclination to talk about my sexuality with other men. Turning sex into a pure status competition between buddies is utterly alien to me. Sexting with some girl purely so you can betray her and gain status with other guys when you share her pics feels somewhat sociopathic, but technically is some achievement which might impress some people, just like a school shooter making double digits.


Even then, feeding the picture of your victim into an AI undresser is utterly pathetic. I honestly can not even imagine what kind of people would be impressed by that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Just the generating user? The tool that does the generating?




I think 'tool' is not a good word in this context, because it covers many different things.


The classic way to create fake nudes would be non-AI Photoshop (or GIMP). It does not know anything about nudes, you will have to find a suitable body picture to paste the face onto yourself. This is analogous to a kitchen knife as a tool for violence.


AI image generation is a very different ballpark. Basically you can just upload a picture of your victim and click the undress button, I imagine. This is analogous to a squad of marines being a tool for violence.


I am under no illusion that we can rid the world of the undressing AIs. A smart kid can still download some deepfake software and create his nudes that way (or even fall back to Photoshop). But I am also sure that OpenAI, Anthrophic and Google will at least have tried to build in safeguards so that their image generation systems will not undress minors. By contrast, Grok's attitude seems to be 'it is fine unless you undress Elon Musk'.  I see no reason to allow them to do this.


Of course, I also have zero sympathy for kids trading nudes of their classmates. While I am generally skeptical of the concept of computer-generated CSAM (because hentai seems a victimless crime, whatever the bra size), I have no problem with treating undressing-AI images of real minors as CSAM. As I expect some kids will learn shortly, distribution of CSAM is generally a serious charge, and no of the mitigating circumstances for sexting kids sending consensual nudes apply. We have mostly managed to train 15yo boys to not violently rape girls (in part due to legal consequences), and I am hopeful that we can also train them not to pass deepfakes of their classmates as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This. A suit for libel can destroy your news organization. The bigger the org, the more you are gambling.


Also, it is next to impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that fraud is happening as an individual reporter.


    

  • "No, this is merely our office address, the actual daycare is elsewhere"
    • 

  • "No, we will not tell you where due to security concerns"
    • 

  • "No, you can not enroll your own kid, but I will gladly put you on the waiting list and call you if a spot opens up."
    • 



Basically, if you can not compel cooperation, you have no way of meeting that level of proof. Even if you knew that a given child was supposed to go to a daycare, observing their flat and confirming that it does not go to a daycare for a week will not prove a thing, because you see, that was just the one week where the daycare was closed, bad luck.


For a government official, things would look very different.


    

  • "I know from the documentation you submitted that this is supposed to be the site of the daycare"
    • 

  • "Oh, they went on a field trip today. Great for them, just give me their location. Keep in mind that I also know the home addresses of all the kids."
    • 

  • "Oh, all of the kids called in sick today? That is unfortunate. What are their symptoms? We will just have our official government doctors check in on the kids at home, free of charge."
    • 

  • "We just surveilled the entrance of your daycare center for a month and found that no kids ever entered. Have anything to say about that?"
    • 



But if the government is willing to sweep everything under the rug (because the truth would help the detested MAGA racists), then you are out of luck.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree with your sentiment.


The problem is that making treason stick is hard. Apparently, that charge was not even used against the IRA a lot, even though they were actively fighting the British military. Defecting from the UK to live in some Islamist paradise in Syria does not seem like a central example of treason.


Also, she was 15 when she defected, so you would have to argue in front of juvenile court. The defense would of course claim that she became a victim (at least once she set foot into Daesh-controlled territory) and any crimes she may have committed (if you even have proof of crimes) were simply her trying to survive. So even if you have ironclad evidence that she ratted out some adulteress who was subsequently stoned to death (to pick an entirely fictional example, afaik), that will not get her a decade behind bars, especially once the court takes into account her suffering in freedom and everything.


So politically, I can very well understand why the government tried to find a way around having to deal with her.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Punishing people for taking part in an armed conflict is a war crime.




Please try that defense for someone accused of being a getaway driver in a bank robbery sometime, see if it flies.


Seriously, Daesh was never a Party to the Geneva Conventions. At best, she would be entitled to the weaker protections of Protocol II, which places limits on judicial proceedings against such persons.


Or one could argue that the laws of war simply do not cover interactions between a government and its citizens, so if the Brits want to hang her for treason, they could have gone right ahead as far as Geneva is concerned.


Personally, I do not like how the Brits have dealt with her. "You have dual nationality, so we can strip you of your British passport without being in breach of the Convention against statelessness. Oh, the Bangladeshi government has announced the intent to execute you if you should ever set foot in your remaining homeland, well, sucks for you I guess." So de facto she is stateless, which seems bad.


A more principled approach would have been for the Brits to indicate a willingness to prosecute her for any and all crimes she may have committed for Daesh, while also allocating funds totaling zero pounds towards facilitating her safe return to the UK.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				So You Want to Win an AAQC This Year… (Or: 15 Tips For Writing Actually A Quality Contribution Post)
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So You Want to Win an AAQC This Year…




The most important thing is to hurry up, because 'This Year' is going to last only a few more hours. Luckily, most of the advice also works for 2026, though!


(Sorry, could not resist.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I like the government to fund some welfare services, and I generally dislike bureaucracy. I am also fine with some immigration.


Anyone who turns a blind eye to welfare fraud is effectively steering us towards an equilibrium with less welfare spending and more red tape. (And yes, red tape can very much prevent welfare from reaching the needy, because the needy often are not great at jumping through the hoops of bureaucracy.) If the perps are immigrants, it will also foster an anti-immigrant sentiment as surely as thunder follows lightning.


I wish I could blame some Ayn Rand fans who were working as moles to achieve that outcome, but in all likelihood the officials who turned a blind eye were probably SJ people who failed to think of the consequences. After all, Uncle Sam has plenty of money, and if the Somali skim a bit to keep their relatives from starvation, what is the harm?


Except that the taxpayers and voters feel very differently (I imagine). And sending money to a failed state through intransparent channels is not necessarily net positive.


In short, lawfulness is (at least) instrumentally useful. Even if you feel your cause is good, breaking laws to further it will generally generate a backslash. I imagine SBF did not donate a lot of money to EA in 2025.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


…Of course, we can still entertain the hypothesis that all of the above is some interesting ephemera and this final dash of the Chosen Nation towards AGI-powered Rapture and completion of history is the real story of the times. I won't completely discount it, we shall see.




IMO, this is still the operating assumption of the AI race. It is also the only thing which justifies the intensity of the efforts expended by various AI companies.


Normally, when a new field of tech is breached, there is no decisive first-mover advantage, where a technological lead of a year will translate into long-term dominance. History is full of cases (e.g. early home computers (e.g. Apple Macintosh), dot-com boom (e.g. myspace), photovoltaic (e.g. German companies), browser wars) where the forerunners became footnotes in history.


But what OpenAI investors buy is not so much future profits if OpenAI replaces most of the work force, but an investment-proportional solid angle of the light cone if Altman achieves aligned superintelligence (and remains aligned to his investors himself). The presumption is clearly that whoever finishes climbing the rope first will then cut the rope to prevent anyone else from following.