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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30898 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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The gunman committed suicide, but left behind bullets with the phrase "ANTI ICE" written on them.

Clearly the man was a rightwinger who was pro-global warming. Who else could possibly have the means, motive, and media cultivation to hate ice?

I think its more of a statement against corporate exploitation of consumers through shrinkflation. He probably has a dead family member who was a habitual drinker of post-mix beverages and suffered from mass-exploitation over their lifetime.

No, ANTI ICE clearly indicates an anti-global warming leftist who wanted to protest internal combustion engines for producing so much CO2.

...or maybe he had some beef with German high-speed trains?

It's weird that I just read in a link roundup the controversy over man-made ice for beverages back from the early 1900s....

Heh, really? I remember reading about how ice generation was (alongside electricity) a prominent part of the 1893 World's Fair. Being able to produce ice is one of the most mundane-feeling yet miraculous things about modern technology. We've had the technology to raise temperature since around, oh, literally forever. But lowering temperature is a billion times harder.

A bit late, but https://newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-war-on-lab-grown-ice is the link for anyone interested.

(via Astral Codex Ten's link roundup)

Thank you! I couldn't remember if it was ACX, or Zvi's.

lowering temperature is a billion times harder

The kabbalistic implications are obvious.

Actually by power efficiency lowering temperature is easier.

No, it's not. You're just comparing unlike things (specifically, a pure heater to a refrigerator). A refrigerator always has QH/W = 1 + QL/W.

We've had the technology to raise temperature since around, oh, literally forever. But lowering temperature is a billion times harder.

This feels apropos applied to the Culture War, too.

Clearly trying to accelerate our national Cold Civil War into a Hot War.

Someone who really hates white rappers, I suppose it could still be a left-winger angry about cultural appropriation.

As a complete non-sequitur, as someone who was a child when Ice Ice Baby hit, I recall hearing from people older than me that his "word to your mother" was considered a legit controversial line at the time. Which I found confusing and silly. I also recall that Zinedine Zidane, one of the best French soccer players of his era, in his retirement game, got red carded for obviously intentionally head-butting an opposing player, and some of his fans defended him on the basis that the opposing player apparently made some insult about Zidane's mother. Finally, one of many things that I recall about the 1980 film The Terminator in terms of how the culture it depicts is different from the culture I'm familiar with was one of the detectives responding to a playful insult with a simple "yo mama" in a completely unironic way (others include the 80s hair and waiting on hold for 911).

Of course, mothers being sacred is a common trope in reality, but I found it curious just how seriously some people seemed to take it, to the extent that some off-hand insult directed at a generic "your" mother causes offense, or that it would justify headbutting someone during your send-off game after one of the best soccer careers anyone's ever had. It just seems strange when the syllables coming out of someone's mouth are clearly intentionally designed to upset you, the response is to be upset instead of ignoring.

Perhaps this isn't so much about mothers as it's about the talk about honor culture and all that that are happening elsewhere in this comment section. That there's a perception that it's not only justified but actually your duty to respond to someone obviously fitting themselves into the role of "intentional provoker" by fitting into the separate role of "the one who is provoked to shut them down," lest you sully your honor, instead of just saying "I have better things to do than LARP with you."

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