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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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The big story in North Carolina this morning is that power went out across Moore County last night and it appears it was due to intentional vandalism at several substations.

https://www.wral.com/sheriff-intentional-vandalism-at-substations-causes-power-outage-affecting-nearly-39k-moore-county-residents/20612201/

Speculation on the North Carolina subreddit is that it was motivated by outrage about a drag show scheduled to be performed in Southern Pines last night.

https://www.wral.com/drag-show-in-southern-pines-ramps-up-security-after-backlash/20596538/

So yes, nothing is known for sure as of this morning, but let's say they're right, that someone was so focused on making sure the drag show did not happen that they engaged in this intentional vandalism. It's really just an extreme form of no-platforming, isn't it? The same crap college students have been doing for years? The idea is that the featured content or entertainment is so harmful or damaging that it can't be allowed to exist and the community must be protected from it by any means necessary. In both cases I think it's idiotic. If you don't like it, no one's forcing you to go, but just let people do their thing. It's just as wrong to deplatform a drag show as it is to deplatform someone like Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson.

I'd love to hear what they did (assuming there was even a "they" to begin with), but it doesn't sound like they were too successful. Griefing vulnerable infrastructure in minecraft is an understudied tactic, and it's fascinating to notice the potential for it all around you in, uh, your local server.

Transformers seem like the big one due to the shortage and huge lead times, especially specialist ones. Some guys from the utility asked to make sure I was keeping my wood stove after installing a mini split, because the single HV transmission line that brings power to our whole area relies on transformers they don't have and possibly can't get replacements for; they did manage to call the supplier's old number a few years ago, but the lady on the phone didn't seem to speak much english and couldn't tell them if the company was still in business.

Also another example of "dimmer vs switch" violence (assuming any of it's true); leftists are a lot better at strategically applying violence to target enemies and bully bystanders into compliance. Rightists only know how to go straight from zero to death con 1. "Go Wolverines!"

It's not understudied at all, it's just that the venn diagram of people who use "doing X in Minecraft" as a euphemism for meat-space political violence and the sort of people who actually have schematics of their local water/power grid stashed on a thumb drive is two separate circles.

Fair. We'll leave it in your capable hands then, and good luck to you.