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I linked this blog post in a reply at the bottom of a long comment chain, but it occurs to me that it is probably worth discussing in it's own right.
According to all known laws of physics and aviation there is no way that a bumble bee ought to be able to fly. The bee, of course knows nothing of this and insists on flying anyways.
Wikipedia has an entry dedicated to the phrase “Thank God for Mississippi” because for the last 100 years or so, no matter how bad off your state may be in a particular way, you could typically take solace in the idea that Mississippi had it worse. "Yes, our health outcomes suck..." the the people in Wyoming and Alaska may tell themselves "...but at least we aren't Mississippi".
In my experiance shitting on the South Eastern US as an embarassing, degenerate, cultural backwater, is not only tolerated in blue and grey tribe spaces but venerated and encouraged. Of course the south sucks, that's where Mississippi is. If you are from that region and you are persuing a degree at a school like Stanford or Cal-Tech you quickly learn to hide your accent and claim to be from somewhere else if you want to be taken seriously and graded honestly by your professors.
According to all known laws of of demographics, economics, and reason Mississippi shoud not have good schools and yet...
The "Missisippi Miracle"
In 2002 the second Bush administration signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law. Educational standards and reform had been had been a big part of his 2000 campaign platform, his wife Laura being a grade-school teacher, and one of the provisions of this act was a a mandate that "Public" (that is tax-payer-funded) schools would participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) originally established by the Johnson administration in 1964. As a result we now have standarized test data for almost every state and municpiple school district in the country going back over two decades.
For those outside the US, US school system is typically broken into 3 4 year long blocks. Kindergarten/Elementry School, Middle/Secondary School, and then High School. Specific names and implimentations vary from state to state but as a general rule the idea is that a child will enter the public school system at the age of 5 or 6 and graduate at the age of 18. The NAEP tests students for reading and mathematical proficiency at grades 4 and 8, IE upon entering and exiting Secondary/Middle School.
In 2003 Missisippi 4th graders where ranked near to last in the nation for reading comprehension, with an unadjusted average of 203. Only DC and Puerto Rico ranked lower. As of 2024 thier score is 219, representing a lttle over a standard deviation of improvement and placing them just shy of the top 10. This on it's own would represent admirable progress, but where things start to become unhinged is when you look at the "adjusted" figures. NAEP and various outside NGOs apply various adgustments to the raw scores in an attempt to control for things like demographics, socio-economic status, and spending per-student. When these "adjustments" are applied, Mississippi schools are not just performing better than they were 20 years ago, they are performing better than any other state school sytem in the nation. This is the alleged "Miracle".
Now a number of liberal commentators ranging from Friedliche DeBoer (of the South African Boers perhaps?) and Kevin Drum to Steve Sailer and the LA Times have all tried to debunk the so-called "Mississippi Miracle". The arguments generally fall into three broad categories. The first is that the mainstream media, academia, and establishment politicians are all prejudiced against liberal coastal blue-coded states like New York, Massachusetts, California, and Oregon, in favor of southern states like Mississippi. I find this claim laughable on it's face for reasons stated in the opening of this post. The second is the significantly more defensible claim that the NEAP's "adjusted" scores do not accurately reflect ground level truth. I believe that this is a fair critique, but the people making this critique often explicitly refuse to acknowledge that the unadjusted scores also saw an marked improvement (casts side-eye at Sailer and DeBoer) and that even when comparing like to like, the average Black student in Mississippi reads at a level about 1.5 grade levels higher than the average Black student in democratic strongholds like Illinois or Wisconsin.
Finally there is the claim that Mississippi is effectively "gaming the system". In 2013 the Mississippi State Legislature enacted the Literacy Based Promotion Act (LBPA) which required kids to pass a reading test to be promoted from elementary to middle school or else be held back or forced to repeat a year. The argument as it is, is that 4th graders in Mississippi are actually 5th or 6th graders by any other state's reckoning. If that were true one would expect to see a substantial age difference in the class cohorts, however that is not what we see, the average age of a 4th grader in Mississippi is only 0.01 years (or just under 4 days) above the national average.
To all appearances, and against the most ardent protestations of our resident Boer it would seem that having standards and enforcing them may actually matter.
How is this possible
I have a cynical answer that I expect to get me in trouble with the moderators, because I am about to take a stand in defense of Bulverism. Ad Hominem may be a formal fallacy, but in the real world it provides real value. Whether or not someone has an ulterior agenda is absolutely something you should be thinking about when you are trying to decide whether or not you are going to believe them.
I expect to be accused of "lacking charity" but the words are going to be theirs not mine. At some point all the experts in the blue and gray tribes seem to have decided that teaching kids to read was too much trouble and that not teaching them to read would be just as effective at promoting literacy as not doing so because demographics matter more than basic competency or engagement. Why would they do that even as they admitted that “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,”. The answer is in the following line "And we hated it."
By claiming that standards matter i am effectively take taking a shit on the foundational beliefs of Steve Sailer, Friedliche DeBoer, and a number of users here including at least one moderator.
Mississippi accepts your hate and Volleys it back. Ideocracy may be coming for America, but its coming for you, the blue tribe, not for MAGA country. We will teach our children Shakespeare Kipling and Twain, and you will not, and in 20 years we will see who has come out on top.
Not for this, but for unmasking yourself. Someone else finally pointed out the obvious, and I am kicking myself for not seeing it.
Hlynka, I have told you this before, but I am hugely disappointed that rather than taking your ban like a man, or asking us to reinstate you, you keep creating alts. Good job that you managed to run this one for months and being actually rather flamingly obvious about it in retrospect and not getting tagged, but you're done now. We don't exert much effort to catch alts and some people think they are clever, clever little people bragging about how easy it is to recycle an alt every time you get banned, but it just shows you have no integrity and place no value on your word or reputation. You're there to troll, to shit up the place, to giggle and get your digs in before the mods swat you and you reboot. Hoorah, a winner is you. Yes, it's easy to do this. Eventually, however, everyone regresses to their mean.
ETA: In case anyone doubted my judgment, he confirmed it in modmail.
Both @Belisarius and I speculated four months ago that @TequilaMockingbird may be the return of Hlynka, but my confidence was fairly low then and remains a bit shaky even now. The “Steve Sailer is actually a liberal” thing is so inexplicable a delusion that it’s tough to believe two people could arrive at it independently, but I guess it’s plausible, given a certain set of intellectual priors (and generalized mistrust of urban Californians) which Hlynka and TequilaMockingbird might just happen to share.
I support the ban because anyone who peppers their post full of “dude I’m totally gonna get banned for this one, the mods are gonna be soooo pissed” ban-baiting deserves to get what they’re asking for. This can be true even if he’s not truly a ban evader.
Can you explain why? Similar to you, I also thought that it was Hlynka four months ago, but with much higher confidence. What convinces me then as now is the last point from my post: TequilaMockingbird talked in the way someone deeply familiar with this forum, its history and connection to Scott Alexander would.
There plausibly are many other people with beliefs similar to Hlynka, so TequilaMockingbird having exactly the same views (and rhetoric! seriously, the Steve Sailer thing isn't the first time he's let his old ticks shine through) on every single issue as him isn't dispositive. The fact that an account with such beliefs is created three months after Hlynka's ban and immediately participates in discourse as an old regular would, even calling out specific users' post histories and ideologies, is though, especially when no other well known long-time poster was missing/banned at the time. It was very, very obvious that he was Hlynka from the start.
This forum has a ton of lurkers and users who at some point switch from only posting sporadically to suddenly becoming more active. It’s very plausible that TequilaMockingbird is one such user, and that seeing Hlynka banned inspired him to “take up the mantle” of defending the cultural/ideological corner that Hlynka had previously occupied. There has always been a contingent of users here who (bizarrely) found Hlynka’s posts profoundly insightful and important, and who thought he was fighting the good fight against the (imagined) “Blue Tribe” consensus of the community.
I mean it depends. Getting one or two of the same data points — knowing post history, or having a similar political profile, sure, I can see that as coincidence. Once you add in posting style, knowing the history of the forum, knowing the SA connection, etc. after you hit 4-5 unique features being tge same, im generally high confidence in believing that it’s the same person. Writing styles are especially important because they’re both hard to fake and hard to mask, especially in multiple writing samples over time.
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Was this when we were all nostalgic for Hlynka and he was joking that Hlynka might be JD Vance? Because I thought he basically came right out and said it lol. I thought everyone else had already figured it out and known for ages.
To be clear, I have never been nostalgic for Hlynka and have been glad he’s gone since the second he caught his ban.
K. I meant the royal we, there was a thread a while ago where
everyonemany people were reminiscing about Hlynka, in which I thought Tequila basically came right out and said 'yeah gang, it's me!' in different words. Andeveryonemany people reacted so nonchalantly that I thought it was already well known and I was just oblivious.Got a link handy? I must have missed all the drama, this ban came as a total surprise to me. Even in hindsight, the main commonality I recognize is atrociously bad takes on AI.
I found it - it's not so obvious now that I reread it, but after reading @Hoffmeister25's post about his suspicion, this post struck me as such classic hlynka in style and tone and proud sense of humour, plus the overt familiarity with the motte's inner workings, that it felt obvious.
Hah. I remember thinking at the time he was very sus, but for some reason he just didn't trigger my radar. Well played, I guess.
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Out of the loop: can someone give a short explanation who Hlynka is and why he is banned? (I am a long term regular, but I don’t often (almost never) give attention to user names.)
Hlynka was a mod from back on reddit who took care of troublemakers and had a bit of a chip on his shoulder from growing up poor (like most of us who grow up poor) that he used to fuel the zingers he would level at troublemakers. But being the enforcer made him bitter (like it does to everyone who assumes that role) so at some point he stopped being a mod, but his former mod status gave him leeway to continue making zingers. But people were less willing to tolerate it when he wasn't using it for the good of the community and people started to feel like he got special treatment (he did). But I think to him he just felt like he was being the same person he'd always been, and it just kind of made him angrier and eventually he flamed out.
Point of clarification, he didn't merely resign, the other mods removed him. I think that's unprecedented in all of Motte history.
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Eh, more like jaded.
He did get "special treatment" but we never hid that; we have always given more slack to people with a positive record. However, that slack is not infinite.
If I'm right and it's all above board then uh, why are you qualifying special treatment? I'm not trying to imply anything, just confused.
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He was a user who predated the Motte even on reddit. He stood for a particular kind of Ur-American conservatism and that made him stand out somewhat from all the Dissident Right people, but ultimately he was an evangelist here to save the lost sheep rather than a debater here to chew the fat. Like most of the evangelists we get here, he ended up eventually flaming out in fury that most people didn't want to buy what he was selling.
We should really let him back; we have a lot of libertarians and alt-right types but not so many God-'n-guns-but-not-George-III Red Tribers. He added color to the place.
I have no problem with his beliefs, though I don't also share them. The problem was that he was so totally certain of the rightness of his own beliefs and the wrongness of everyone else's that he had absolutely no interest in genuine discussion. He didn't bother trying to understand anybody else's objections to his arguments, and even asserted multiple times that he knew what his interlocutor thought better than they did. Any effort made trying to engage with him would never be returned and I stopped bothering. I think that attitude is more corrosive to the Motte than overt shitposting.
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The cuckservative kind mostly, boy did he blow his lid at the effective deployment of that term vs his chosen neoconish internationalist bullshit.
You know, your record is pretty awful too, and for exactly this kind of low-quality growling and contempt. The discussion was "Who was Hlynka and why was he banned?" not "Take free shots at Hlynka because he's banned."
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He was a former mod, greatly respected by many members and absolutely hated by many others. He was eventually removed as a mod for being too antagonistic towards people he despised, and then when he wouldn't amend his behavior, he was banned entirely.
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Looking at that thread you linked, I am more leaning towards the theory that @hydroacetylene is KulakRevolt, based on politics, the particular style of deflection when they want to deflect, and most of all the curious dedication to the idea of frustrating stylometry/basilisks with artificial tics (Kulak's forwards-from-grandma punctuation, hydroacetylene's "French autocorrect").
Definitely not.
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I’m not offended, more genuinely curious- what makes you think my politics are similar to Kulak’s?
To elaborate, Kulak wants a violent overthrow of the existing system to be replaced by ‘?’. He doesn’t have any particularly consistent reasoning for this; he can be a white identitarian, an ancap, a fascist, ultra-mysogynistic, etc. The common thread is that he wants short term violent action. He’s also some kind of pagan but not in the sense that he, like, believes in literal gods(I believe in his gods more than he does- specifically, that they are demons who at one point convinced Northern Europeans to worship them as gods). There is a bunch of historical fan fiction that he uses to tie this in with his generic pro-terrorist vibe and AFAIK he is a Canadian who makes his money entirely through internet media- whether this is from people finding him interesting or genuine believers.
I am a rad trad Catholic in the sense of actually, literally believing in my own religion. And I believe that the existing system will collapse under the weight of its own degeneracy without the need for violent action; the important thing is to be building parallel societies which grow by functioning better, to enable a slow replacement of existing power structures with patriarchal, religious, virtuous ones. I expect this to proceed as existing power structures shred their human capital through things like low fertility rates and retarded equity pushes which force them to rely on functioning parallel societies more and more. I believe a set of conspiracy theories about apocalyptic prophecies which guarantee that this will actually take place so long as me and my tribe do our part; the cathedral likes indoor plumbing a lot more than it hates rum millet, even when that rum millet is slowly overtaking it. Violence is thus counterproductive.
Where did you come upon this idea of the pagan gods? I recently learned of it from the Lord of Spirits podcast, but it's the only place I've ever heard it before.
It’s in the Bible.
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No. Hydro has been around for a long time, and he and Kulak are entirely different people.
Did Kulak eat a ban? I must have missed that, I just thought he got really involved on X / Substack and drifted away.
He made a big post about how The Motte was pointless because the time for debate was over and it was time for violence. Got a 3 day ban and never came back.
Shame; I really liked him. His Rhodesian catgirl bit was funny, and he made some genuinely good points. I still follow him on Twitter and Substack.
this impotent whining for violence is hilarious
I wonder whether it is his actual belief, trolling or just grifting in niche they found. I would put my guess on trolling supported by financial extraction they managed.
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Had a look at the Substack link, tried reading what he believes as a pagan, and my impression is "cut-rate Gibbon". Too occupied with "and here is why it's the fault of Christianity that our empire is declining!" and not enough "as a pagan this is why I do things the way I do". I doubt he makes any offering to his picture of Athena, or to Wotan, or any of the rituals pagans would engage in. When he was going "and a real pagan of the past would never do this thing", I was going "Dude, that was exactly the thing they were doing".
He hates Christianity because Christianity places importance on concepts like "mercy" and "forgiveness" and not hating, which he despises. I don't think it's much more complicated than that, and certainly not theologically deeper.
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He didn't eat a perma-ban, but he did try to flounce IIRC.
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As I recall, Kulak had a flame out post where he basically said "if you guys are gonna be that way [I forget what his grievance was], then just ban me". I can't remember if he did get banned but he did get modded to some extent or other, and I haven't seen him back since.
His grievance was that we talk about things instead of planning to murder our enemies and burn it all to the ground.
He got a timeout for his screed, but he's not banned currently.
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I would find that extremely surprising, given my interactions with Kulak and my observations of his personal interactions with others. (There are places other than TheMotte where he dwells, and I’ve also been known to dwell in some of them.) Mostly I’d just be very surprised to learn that Kulak has a second, way less strident, persona. I’ve watched him have embarrassing and quite personally-vindictive crash-outs over relatively minor disagreements — something which I’ve never seen from @hydroacetylene.
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