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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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Eh, not too interesting. There was a reservation 30 minutes from my hometown, they only had a K-8 school so several kids from the rez went to high school with me, and my summer job before my first year of college was doing construction on houses in the reservation. I've visited several others over the years while travelling, or as part of service projects, etc.

For the ghetto stuff, I went to USC for football games and other events several times, and despite USC being a ridiculously wealthy school it's smack in the middle of the hood. Also my brother lived in Koreatown for several years but that was more of a Hispanic ghetto than a black ghetto (the Koreans mostly left after 1992). For Oakland, most of my extended family lives in the SF bay area and I have a cousin who lives in Oakland proper for some incomprehensible reason (I'd assume cost of housing but he's also a weird leftist hippie type so I think it's related to that too lol). For Baltimore, I had issues with my visa when going on my (LDS/Mormon) mission to the Czech Republic so they stuck me in the Baltimore mission until my visa was approved. First lesson the other missionaries gave me when I arrived was "Don't trip and fall or you'll get AIDS" after which one of them proceeded to show me dozens of photos he had taken of random needles on the sidewalk etc. all around Baltimore.

For the Czech Republic that was just part of my missionary service as well. We taught a good amount of Gypsies, we had limited success with them though.

Oh also I walked through some bad parts of Seattle at 3 AM once because I missed the last connecting bus at Ranier Beach station on my way home from the airport. Fortunately I was wearing milsurp clothes and had a hobo beard so no one bothered me.