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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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You wouldn't finish a day in the sugar cane fields to come home and suggestively dance with your amor because you'd be too tired and, possibly, injured to do much more than eat and fall asleep

On the other hand, the Amish fuck like rabbits.

Farming in temperate climates is dramatically different from farming in the subtropics and tropics. When you don’t have winter, your growth cycles never really end. A well-run plantation would have fields constantly ready for harvest.

A temperate farm has busy spring planting, summer is mostly tending fields waiting for growth, then harvest. Fall to prep and winterize the fields. The Amish will have two months of twelve hour days per year, For most of the year, there would be a few hours per day on field work, some on livestock and various maintenance tasks, and Winter is basically off entirely.

The Amish also have a huge variety of tasks to work on. Animal husbandry, carpentry, forestry, etc. Even the field work varies based on time of year. If you are working a cane plantation, you probably have a few tasks that you do all day every day for most of your life. If the rigors of the manual labor don’t get you, the repetitive nature of the work will.

And, at the end of the day, being Amish is voluntary. Those who don’t enjoy the life leave. Historically, that wasn’t really an option for the workers on cane plantations, either due to outright slavery or the lack of financial means to leave the islands.

And, at the end of the day, being Amish is voluntary. Those who don’t enjoy the life leave

That's omitting a lot of details that make it difficult to leave. They have to leave behind all of their friends and family. Go out into a totally different society. Probably with very little savings, and no relevant skills or education. And there isn't, as far as I know, any support network to help them transition. If they wait too long, they'll probably end up married and with children, since the Amish encourage that in all young people. It's damn difficult to escape from that sort of upbringing.

This woman did it by making a dramatic escape, getting help from a prior outside friend, working a crappy job at Burger King, and then finding her way into working as a stripper. That's not an easy path to follow!

Farming in temperate climates is dramatically different from farming in the subtropics and tropics. When you don’t have winter, your growth cycles never really end. A well-run plantation would have fields constantly ready for harvest.

And yet the standard stereotype of climate effects on character is of hard-working Nordics and indolent tropicals. On any other board I could just say lol racism and it would end the conversation, but I actually think there is an interesting question here.

In hot climates you try to do outdoor labour in the morning and evening, with a long break in the middle of the day(la siesta). In cold climates you try to work straight through with a short lunchbreak.

Eh, having subtropical/tropical farmers in the family rather recently, theres definitely defined growing seasons and fallow fields. It’s just dictated by rainfall more than temperature. Sugar, rice, sweet potatoes and cotton grow at defined times of year and there’s still a busy and a slow season.

Would be interested if you have something unique regrading the halftime show to report from your greater Acadian networks, @hydroacetylene. If there's nothing there, no worries, but you often have perspective into a subculture that is somewhat opaque.

I didn't watch the halftime show, and nobody I know paid attention to it. Just countersignaling the idea that there's no seasonality in sugar farming.

Do they, or do they just never use contraception?

Having worked for some Amish families for a while, I'm going to say both.

You're not wrong. There was some subtext here.

The Amish, and anyone who's actually grown up in an agrarian society, are acclimated to that life. I was suggesting that the idea that your average western worker, who is used to air conditioning and seating, would, if forced to revert to agricultural work, face a horrific transition period.