site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31684 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

His sentence structure, paragraphing and grammar is so awful, yet we're led to believe this is Elite Human Capital who legitimately earned billions in finance? This whole thing was deeply sus from the start and only gets more sus.

It’s countersignaling.

In industries such as finance that generally pride themselves on prestige, professionalism, and attention to detail, it’s a flex to write terse emails of varying proofreading quality, as if you’re just that busy or important. It’s long been memed that managing directors will write stuff like:

  • pls do
  • pls check
  • pls fix
  • eta?
  • thx

As entire emails to their more junior employees.

So far, all the biography is consistent with him being at least very good at sales. While intelligence helps, you don't have to be that smart (or good at writing) to be good at sales.

He didn't earn billions, Lex Wexner gave him power of attorney over his wealth for some reason (maybe a scam maybe because both worked for the same goals).

Eh, he could be really good at handling numbers and selling crap by the bushel when it came to speaking and verbal communication, but bad at words for written communication, especially if he was just transcribing 'stream of consciousness' thinking rather than constructing a polished argument. A lot of the tech-side people write dreadfully, and a lot of us humanities types still need to count on our fingers. Hence the eternal war between the two cultures.

Using Paul Fussell's nomenclature, there are two very different classes near the top.

The upper middle are the ones who generally use their brains to pay for their lifestyle. Professors, lawyers, doctors, engineers and so forth.

Above them is the upper class, which as a class does not value education (especially not education in things which allows you to earn a living, like some pleb).

It seems to me that Epstein was really successful at passing as upper class, and that this was how he made money. Some of the filthily rich trusted him with their money not because he was the most brilliant quant in New York, but because they perceived him as one of them.

It seems to me that Epstein was really successful at passing as upper class, and that this was how he made money. Some of the filthily rich trusted him with their money not because he was the most brilliant quant in New York, but because they perceived him as one of them.

FWIW, I think this is why Trump hated the guy. That upper crowd was willing to come to Trump parties and take his money, but they still laughed at him for being "a poor guy's idea of a rich guy". Epstein, OTOH, was some sleezy rando who basically fast talked his way into the club and then rode it on sheer momentum. Seems like the kind of thing that would set Trump off.

Absolutely common in medicine, finance, tech. Less so government but for some people, well look at Trump posting.

When you are at the top of the heap you don't need to angst about making sure you used good grammar and avoided typos, you just vomit out something for everyone else to translate.

Good managers understand their impact on the staff but most people aren't good managers, casual(ish) communication is a thing, and the absolute apex types aren't really interested in being good managers most of the time even if they can be.

It's a meme in medicine because of attendings vomiting out word salad instruction (especially for research) that students pour over like they need the Rosetta Stone.

I do this at work all the time. We have an hour marked for teaching? I'll slowly, calmly, and didactically teach you the pathophys associated with what we got up to today.

Send me an email at 11pm saying you won't be at the hospital tomorrow because of a curricular responsibility? I'm responding with "Sur" at 5am.

Good managers understand their impact on the staff but most people aren't good managers, casual(ish) communication is a thing, and the absolute apex types aren't really interested in being good managers most of the time even if they can be.

After all, that's what your secretary/administrative assistant is for 😁 I've worked jobs where I've been handed something by the boss along the lines of "this is my speech for the big do tomorrow night, turn it into readable and functional prose".

It's a meme in medicine because of attendings vomiting out word salad instruction (especially for research) that students pour over like they need the Rosetta Stone.

Proving your point, it's "pore" not "pour" (blame autocorrect?)

Proving your point, it's "pore" not "pour" (blame autocorrect?)

My grammar is ass. Any time it is not ass, know that I spent far too much time on writing it.

Am I capable of correct grammar? Possibly.

Do I want to? No.

Is this the perk of seniority (at least at work)? Yes.

Does this hopefully further my point given that I ideally have established myself as a reasonably educated and intelligent person in ten years posting here and at our predecessors? Dunno.

PhD Comics: Average Time Spent Composing One Email

OK, but in that case the professor is responding to simple yes/no questions or giving permission/orders. The student is writing a lot because he's nervous about offending his professor, not because he's putting a lot of thought into the ideas. The professor can still write long research papers though.

In this case, they're talking about fairly high-level stuff and giving opinions, but still writing as if they're a 3rd grader who needs ritalin. You can see he does put in effort when he wants to be polite ("I have decided to resign my position effective immediately with BG3 and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I have not come to this decision quickly or without a great deal of thought"). But then he writes shit like: "on a different note=C2 , you have encouraged me to look at data , no holds barred. =A0 mortgages. inequalities . opportunities" wtf is this supposed to mean? I mean I know what he's implying, but the way he writes this is just garbage brainrot. Yeah, "look at data," brilliant advice there, I'm sure no one else has ever tried that, glad he could spare his valuable time to write that out, but obviously his time is far too valuable to bother specifying which data or what he's supposed to make of it. That doesn't read to me like a brilliant guy who's pressed for time, it reads like a guy who's drugged out of his mind and barely able to write anything at all, while desparately trying to sound smarter than he really is.

15 years ago this would have triggered me, now on the other side? bhahaahahaha

Wow, don't need any more reinforcement for my low effort posting.

I sometimes work with people near the top of a trillion dollar company and they’re clearly bright but just make the minimal effort to communicate, like it’s better for me to burn time decrypting their ambiguity than for them to write clearly from the start.

I don’t know if it’s some kind of a power move, they really are too busy to communicate any better, or maybe they’re just operating on too little sleep.

I don’t think finance bros give a shit about grammar. But there is also a huge divide between private equity types and public market types. You need stronger soft skills if you interact with non-finance people and need to sell stuff and build out a business like in PE.

It does seem like Epstein was more of a tax guy and/or wealth management guy.

Yeah I've worked in jobs with direct exposure to UHNW guys in text channels. Most of what gets you to that level of financial heft is a combination of drive and going all-in a few times in a row, which means in my experience they can be all over the place in literacy and communication skills. As you leave the pack of the UMC increasingly actual competency/skillset matters less than having the right mix of risk tolerance, luck and stubborness to actually make it through the great filter to hyperrich levels.

Epstein wasn't a finance bro, he was a tax-dodge bro. His entire net worth came from buddying up to billionaires with strategies on how to tax-optimize their personal holdings. Requires a lot less intelligence when your opponent is the federal tax authorities rather than other razor sharp finance types.

Epstein wasn't a tax-dodge bro, he was an underage sex slave and blackmail supplier "bro". The reason he didn't need to spend any effort or time securing his work (see all the "had fun raping kids - jeff, sent from my ipad" emails) was because he knew that if he ever got picked up by the security organisations he'd just make a call to their boss and have the case called off - see Acosta giving him a sweetheart deal because he "belonged to intelligence".

I noticed this too. Maybe he used good grammar and spelling when writing formal documents to his finance associates and used bad grammar with his friends and cronies. Many people who met him described him as bright and charismatic even back in his younger years before he was famous, so I figure that these emails can't possibly capture the full extent of his communication skills.

Watching him write such incoherent slop to Chomsky and then reading his glazing replies is unbearable. Can't piss off the donor. Or turn down his offer to get a ride in his private jet.

Pinker was wrapped up in this too and I read his defense a few years ago and didn't really appreciate where he was coming from and thought he was just trying to distance himself.

The annoying irony is that I could never stand the guy [...]. Friends and colleagues described him to me as a quantitative genius and a scientific sophisticate, and they invited me to salons and coffee klatches at which he held court. But I found him to be a kibitzer and a dilettante — he would abruptly change the subject ADD style, dismiss an observation with an adolescent wisecrack, and privilege his own intuitions over systematic data. I think the dislike was mutual—according to a friend, he “voted me off the island,” presumably because he was sick of me trying to keep the conversation on track and correcting him when he shot off his mouth on topics he knew nothing about

Now that I'm much more familiar with Epsteinspew I completely get it.

I'm a Pinker enjoyer, but his saltiness here makes me chuckle. "Jeff didn't dump me, you know. I dumped him. It was a mutual dumping."

Virgin "systematic data" Pinker vs. Chad "intuitions" Epstein.

I think the dislike was mutual—according to a friend, he “voted me off the island”

I would have loved to see the expression on that friend's face when he delivered that line.

I'm not a Pinker admirer to any great degree, but yeah that reads like "Everyone else was dazzled by him, but not me. And because he knew I could see through his bullshit, he dropped me from the invites to the cool parties. Not that I'm bitter about that, or anything!"

His sentence structure, paragraphing and grammar is so awful, yet we're led to believe this is Elite Human Capital who legitimately earned billions in finance? This whole thing was deeply sus from the start and only gets more sus.

Uhhh, no? We are absolutely not supposed to believe that. Are there people who are still clinging on to that?

I’ve even seen people here obtusely sticking to that line against all evidence as recently as a few months ago.

Isn't the official story still that he's just this random finance billionaire who was also a sex trafficker and killed himself in prison... no, the footage cannot be found?

So far as I know the official story is not 'this guy is Mossad/CIA/Illuminati and that's how he has all this money despite being a complete weirdo and allergic to writing properly.'

They're STILL blotting out names on those emails too, it's not a good look.

My understanding is that he had some sort of weird possibly-homosexual relationship with a big NYC rich guy which he parlayed into control of his affairs and used that to accumulate the majority of the money?

That’s Les Wexner. There’s no evidence they were gay, but there’s evidence both were straight (the girls). Those who deny that Epstein worked for Israel can only hold up their hands in confusion as to why a billionaire financier set up Jefffrey Epstein with properties, powers of attorney, a jet and an infinite money glitch. But if you look at what Wexner was doing in the same year he employed Epstein, it was forming the MEGA Group, billionaires who would meet in secret that directed their funds and influence toward pro-Israel causes. Then of course, Ghislaine’s father was an agent of Israel (as per Victor Ostrovsky) whose funeral was attended by “the President, Prime Minister, and six serving and former heads of intelligence” of Israel, with Yitzhak Shamir eulogizing “he has done more for Israel than can today be said.” Epstein may have been working with other intel agencies at the same time, but I personally believe the Israel connection is the most satisfying explanation for his rise and reach.

Epstein wasn't gay, but Wexner could have been closeted*. His mother ran him, he married very late, and wasn't linked with a playboy lifestyle of arm candy before marriage. It wasn't an affair as such, but Epstein seems to have been genuinely charming and Wexner practically made him the majordomo of his wealth, and because Epstein seems to have managed that properly, he was able to use that backing to pretend to have (and really to have) more contacts and wealth of his own than he really did.

Epstein's genuine talent seems to have been in networking. He was able to make connections with the right people at the right time to get him into better and better positions where he was able to get closer to real money, and to make deals that (a) made him rich (not mega-rich, but rich) and (b) when those went sour, there was always somebody higher up and of greater status willing to be his backer and support to protect him.

*This article from 1985, when Wexner was 48, comes as close to flat-out saying it as it can, even though it comes with Wexner's own denial of being gay. There's mentions of girlfriends, but no specific names, and when the interviewer is touring one of Wexner's houses there is no mention at all of a 'lady of the manor' or any long-time companion. Interested in the arts, working in fashion, and the killer phrase "confirmed bachelor". Wexner was clearly more comfortable in the presence of men he trusted, and once Epstein managed to wangle that position of trust, he had it made:

And there is his widowed mother, Bella Wexner, the secretary of the company.

Bella doesn’t like her place and has her seat shifted next Morosky, closer to Les. She wears a white suit, and her black hair is pulled up tightly from high Slavic cheekbones into a bun. She holds herself in a careful way, like a taller Helena Rubinstein, with that instantly acquired czarina majesty some Jewish women take on with age and great fortunes. “This is a woman who was buying dresses 22 years ago and now has a personal net worth of over $100 million,” Wexner says, explaining his mother’s reluctance to talk. Les gave his mother 10 percent of the company. He also gave 10 percent to his younger unmarried sister and to his late father, whom he’d made chairman of the board.

“He was the son at all times,” says his friend Pete Halliday, “early, middle, and late. He always gave the floor to his father.”

…He is half in love with it, half in love with the other worlds that success has led him to. Not only finance, real estate (besides the Gurney house, he owns small chunks of New York), giant schemes, and takeovers, but art and philanthropy. He is on the boards of Sotheby’s and the Whitney, about to leave the American Ballet Theatre’s. However painful it may be for him, Leslie Wexner is inevitably emerging. He has had an apartment in New York for fifteen years, but suddenly he finds himself discovered, written about in “Suzy.” Ann Getty is on the phone before 8 a.m. He has lunch with Liz Rohatyn and her daughter, Nina Griscom. He is courted by women, for he is tender and gentle and a billionaire alone, and by charities, because he gives massively. He puts a trompe l'oeil mural of Fifth Avenue in his office in Columbus, but then he pulls back, flies out, disappears to the little dinners in the little city he says he prefers.

…And they crowd in on him, all the high-school kids from the suburb of Bexley who got the red cars on their sixteenth birthday when he, the only “tuition” student from outside the district, had to run for the streetcar; all the pretty girls who never noticed him but now stand very close and knot their fingers behind their back when they talk to him and look wham into his mournful eyes, trying hard while Bella Wexner watches her 47-year-old bachelor son; the friends from Ohio State; a few fashion V.P.’s shooting their white cuffs as the national business reporters and stock analysts run to the phones.

…It is why he goes to Vail for a single night to look out at the mountain and hold the woman he has had flown in in his arms. It is why he isn’t married, though after knowing him a year, one girlfriend converted to Judaism and actually changed her last name to Cohen (which Wexner insists was not because of him or because of what it would do to his mother if he married a Christian).

… Wexner is what used to be known as a “confirmed bachelor.” He doesn’t feel alone. He doesn’t seem to want a child, and, despite what he says about the perfect woman—Ali MacGraw as she was in Love Story, someone who is “very, very pretty” and not aggressive—he seems to be waiting to achieve some mystical harmony and balance in himself first. “A lot of people think because I am not married I am asexual or homosexual, but I enjoy a relationship with a woman,” he says sometime later, hating to discuss this, known for keeping this part of his life very tucked away. Of course, like his social absence, this increases his mystery and allure. Only Alfred Taubman, among his friends, still constantly tells him to get married, but Wexner, whenever asked, says, “Me and the pope.”

Les insists on his own things in place—the Wexner possessions—and, if he is across the country and knows they are laying a carpet in one of his homes, it bothers him. It’s a deep fussiness—he gets a physical on every birthday, does cardiovascular exercises, puts snow tires on his cars. He has always had a sense of how things should look, from the time he decorated his first room, when he was a boy. “He would have been an interior decorator if he was not in this business. Fashion, fabrics, colors—this is what he likes,” says his friend Rabbi Herbert Friedman.

…“Most people can’t figure Les out,” says Professor Cullman. “He’s the enigmatic but energetic leader. He’s the product of a female-dominated childhood—his mother, assertive, effervescent, bright, and action-oriented. His dad was contemplative and rather shy, uncertain of himself. As a male in a female-dominated household, he became both shy and dominant at the same time. A very unusual combination.”

...Though now Bella Wexner is often in Florida, and they no longer go on buying trips to Europe together, her office in Columbus is right next to his, and she is a force. It was Bella he asked to make the motion at the board for the tender offer for Carter Hawley Hale. Ask Les what is new in his life and he will say, “Mother just gave $3 million to the children’s pediatric hospital in Columbus.” He has not forgotten how she used to come home at night and start all the housework after her day in the store, how everything in his house was always clean and right in its heart.

Paging Dr. Freud, indeed. "The woman he has had flown in" is one hell of an awkward phrase. Does that sound to anyone here more like a description of a girlfriend, or more that of a paid high-class escort who may be more of a geisha/hetaira there for company, conversation, entertainment and some intimacy but not necessarily sex? More to quiet those rumours of "is he gay?"?

The young Robert Maxwell procured weapons for the IDF from Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe during the Israeli War of Independence, and the details of precisely what he bought and how he bought it are still not public. That would be sufficient to explain Yitzhak Shamir's presence and remarks.

Athough I assume Robert Maxwell was talking to Mossad regularly, there isn't a good reason to think he was some kind of super-agent that would explain parts of the Epstein story. In addition, he would have been most useful to Mossad for his contacts in the Soviet Bloc, which didn't pass over to Ghislaine, and were a lot less valuable after 1989 anyway. John Major also hinted that Robert Maxwell had been useful to British intelligence during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Conspiracy theory shower thought - Maxwell jumps off the boat at almost exactly the time he ceases to be useful to British and Israeli intelligence.

The dates also fail to line up for a Robert Maxwell-Epstein connection. Ghislaine moves to New York shortly after Robert dies, and starts dating Epstein about two years later, after the Epstein-Wexner connection (which is the key to Epstein's wealth, and therefore to any sane conspiracy theory) is in place.

Robert Maxwell did know Epstein in the 1980's, but only in the vague sense that all elite coethnics know each other. Their business interests didn't overlap except for about 10 months in 1991 when Maxwell tried to expand in the US - Maxwell was active in the UK and Europe whereas Epstein was focussed on the US and the Gulf.

None of this means that Epstein wasn't Mossad, of course. Just that Mossad didn't use the Maxwell family to recruit him.

Mossad helped Maxwell buy newspapers, and Maxwell allowed Mossad to use his wealth to fund operations in Europe, according to Victor Ostrovsky’s book. In that sense he was a super agent, but it would be more correct to say he was a super saiyan, those individuals who inform Mossad about important details around the globe. And that sounds like a very good line of work for someone like Epstein with his suspicious sum of money and suspiciously intricate recording equipment in his home. According to a separate whistleblower, Ben-Menashe, Maxwell tipped off Mossad about Mordechai Vanunu

The young Robert Maxwell procured weapons for the IDF from Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe during the Israeli War of Independence, and the details of precisely what he bought and how he bought it are still not public.

Cool. I always wondered how they got enough hardware for an early war and how they were able to win. Where did you learn about this? Is there a good book on this man and/or the events?

One of my favorite stories is that Czechoslovakia was an early supporter of Israel and provided them with quite a few guns. Several of these guns were surplus German guns from WW2, so Israelis were literally fighting for their existence using guns emblazoned with swastikas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_shipments_from_Czechoslovakia_to_Israel

Not sure how that would have felt, holding that gun as a Jew. Hmm.

More comments

EDIT: Sorry - I made a wrong turn somewhere.

I think you might have replied to the wrong comment....

Oh, ffs. Thanks!

I think your comment ended up as a reply to something completely different.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats