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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10008 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Most of my work has been in blue locations but I'd wager that even red ones aren't great about this, I'd love to hear anecdotes or data to the contrary though.

You'd be shocked at how soft the legal system can be, even in red areas. You see this in stalking and DV cases - threats and implications are often not enough to do anything useful and things end up being too late.

The key word that twigged me there was "subway". Are there any places with both subways and Republican mayors? That actually seems like a good question for an LLM.

The Bing default search AI summary completely shit the bed:

The last five Republican mayors of American cities with subways are: Richard Riordan (Los Angeles, 1993-2001). Jean Stothert (Pittsburgh, 2013-2021). Corey O’Connor (Pittsburgh, 2021). Mike Mergner Bloomfield (Bloomfield, New Jersey, 2024). David Bronson (Anchorage, Alaska, 2024).

Richard Riordan is real, but Pittsburg has not had a Republican mayor since 1934. Mike Mergner Bloomfield seems to have been entirely hallucinated (hilariously so - "Yeah, the last Republican mayor was old Johnny CityName). Jean Stothert was the Republican mayor of Omaha, Nebraska. Corey O'Connor is the mayor of Pittsburgh, but he took office last week, not 2021, and is a Democrat. David Bronson is real. 3/5 fake answers.

Copilot did better, listing

  1. Michael Bloomberg - NYC
  2. Ralph Perk - Cleveland (1971-1977)
  3. Bernard Samuel - Philadelphia (1941-1952)
  4. William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson — Chicago (1915–1923, 1927–1931)
  5. Malcolm Nichols — Boston (1926–1930)

All of whom seem to be real.

Michael Bloomberg is real but a Republican in name only; he switched to the Democratic party partway through his mayorship and his most distinguishing feature was that he was all-in on government paternalism. Bloomfield, NJ is also real but lacks a subway, unless you mean the fast food chain, and has had only Democratic mayors in recent years.

This was an interesting exercise, actually kinda blows my mind.

You see this in stalking and DV cases - threats and implications are often not enough to do anything useful and things end up being too late.

True but you think those'd have more inherent grey areas than the litany of 'moderately violent homeless person is brought in 50 times until finally actually murdering somebody' if it's a defective relationship between two societally-functional people versus a person who is clearly just not beneficial whatsoever.

It's how our individual rights based system works. I'm usually okay with it but the problem is that many people have bought the progressive frame and never transition to actually managing the issue.

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