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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   24289 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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If I extrapolate. I play basketball behind the mall in Brickell. It’s a very mixed group. Probably about 30% English speaking, 40% bilingual, 30% Spanish only. 3 Venezualians. 1 Bilingual. 2 Spanish only. My Spanish is bad.

We have twice in the last year had city issues. The first was they were not turning the lights on until 7:15 which meant 6:50 to 7:15 it was dark. We have a group chat on WhatsApp so it was an issue for about 3-4 weeks on talking about how to mitigate. I had the brilliant idea of why don’t we just call the city to turn the lights on earlier instead of talking about how to mitigate the issue and play around it. Turns out a 30s phone call solved the issue.

A half year later I was traveling around Argentina. The WhatsApp group was blowing up every day about whether the court was open. The city repainted the court and had locked it. It was locked for like three weeks. People just bitching the court is locked everyday. I get back in town and I reply on WhatsApp has anyone tried calling the city. I call next day and it’s open in a day.

I guess what I am getting at is Maduro could have just called Exxon and a 30 second phone call they would have been like ya we can just start drilling. But for whatever reason Latam sometimes just doesn’t make that phone call.

So for geopolitics if the white guy just says he’s in charge now the Latin Americans kind of just accept it. And sometimes it’s literally really easy.

My gut says Trump is in that situation. Only has to make a short phone call to Exxon and everyone is happy.

I may be wrong. But my gut is that the no casualty coup means it was just accepted US is in charge.

Your examples aren't "white guy fixed it" - they are either "Local government is responsive to the kind of thing a basically functioning local government is responsive to if the requestor is a white English-speaker, but not if it is a brown Spanish-speaker" (unlikely in my view) or "Local government is basically functioning for everyone but recent immigrants from dysfunctional countries aren't aware that responsive local government is a thing" (seems like a racing certainty).

I don't see how expecting local government to be basically functional is a superpower that works in Venezuela. It wouldn't work in California either.

But given the demographics of blue-collar workers in metro Miami, I suspect the guy who actually fixed it on behalf of the relevant local government was Hispanic.

I guess what I am getting at is Maduro could have just called Exxon and a 30 second phone call they would have been like ya we can just start drilling.

Venezuela was being sanctioned by America six ways from Sunday, so Exxon would have to say "no can do".

Latino-tilted WhatsApp groups tend to have a high noise-to-signal ratio.

Perhaps we'll hoop together one day, or perhaps we may have mutual hoopers by acquaintance.

Hablo Espanol?

If you need to ask you probably don't.

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