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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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To be honest, though, everything is midwit if you’re an internet snob like you and me, Dean. Bellingcat? The ultimate midwit NAFO publication. The London/NY/Paris Review of Books? Catastrophically midwit zine read by aging socialists of the kind who use The Guardian’s dating platform and chuckle at another lame Trump nickname at dinner parties. The New Yorker? Vanity Fair? Magazines for parents of Juilliard students, nought more need be said. The popular substacks or newsletters (unaffiliated or affiliated) of erstwhile online political commentators (Iglesias, Sullivan, Klein)? Soothing balm for dull, aging millennial and GenX centrists upset at a world they no longer understand. More obscure commentator figures (Yarvin, Kriss)? Slightly more verbose Twitter bait dressed up for the audience of clapping chimps paying $5 a month to chuckle gently while pretending to do their email job and thinking themselves above the worker ant masses consuming their cyber slop.

In the end, the choice is between the last few good blogs (never read the comments), the intelligent but supremely annoying autists at HN and LW (but only on topics they know something about), prediction markets, a few good bank and third party research analysts if you can get access through your company, some columnists that agree with your personal biases at major publications and this place.

I love you and @BurdensomeCount's fun elitist views. Not elitist in a negative way, and you both seem to really mean it! It's quite enjoyable.

What are some of the last few good blogs?

Scholar's Stage though he mostly focuses on running a professional China centre these days.

NS Lyon? Apparently now discontinued.

Wyclif's Dust?

Thanks! Yeah already follow Lyons (he's Orthodox btw!) and the Wyclif guy looks interesting. Subbed to him.