site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24174 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 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
Bottom New Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Following up on an earlier post of mine, the Democratic National Convention has released their long-awaited "autopsy" report. Critics of the party will get some immediate schadenfreude upon opening the document: the default font, the hastily-added red addenda by a higher power, the missing sections and absent formatting. The sick pleasure continues upon the realization that neither Biden's senility nor the Israel-Gaza conflict (nor the associated hysteria) ever appear in the 100+ pages.

Digging deeper, CNN reports that the autopsy was compiled by "Democratic consultant Paul Rivera," a veteran of the Clinton administration and friend of DNC chair Ken Martin. Rivera's minuscule effort and misguided conclusions result in a paper with few citations, ignorant assessments, and a half-assed attempt at shielding the DNC from the worst of it.

Well, that's certainly backfired now. The DNC hasn't looked this incompetent at its highest levels of power since the scandals of 2016 (say, was anyone ever held accountable there?) and the oft-panicked-about "competence crisis" appears to have reached a high point.

I'll try to salvage this "boo outgroup" post.

I know just a little bit about hardcore career politicos from spending some time in D.C. and doing some contracting work. The group I'm speaking about are staffer types who usually did some sort of internship while still in undergrad. Usually, in Congress or one of the big think tanks. Sometimes in their state for the Governor. State legislators, I believe, don't usually have the time/money to hire even free staff, although I could be wrong about that.

For the ones that stay in politics after their undergrad, the majority will find something else to do within 5 - 10 years mostly because they don't make enough to really have a "normal" life. Often time this is lobbying, sure. Or government affairs at a big corporation.

But then you have the group that stays in .... forever. They don't run for office and they don't do the lobbying revolving door. They do staffer work for a candidate or campaign / party work (like at the DNC). These people are very, very strange because they have an entire career in an industry that doesn't function like any other industry out there. In a for profit corporation, if the organization is fucked up enough, you got out of business. That's a feedback loop. Even for lobbyists, if you can't actually help get your clients in front of lawmakers, you go out of business. Feedback loop. Even non-profits -- if you can't raise funds (however shadily you may do that) from donors, you go out of business. Feedback loop.

But for a party apparatchik, your organization doesn't really ever go out of business so long as the American two party system remains as it has been since the end of WW2 and, probably, since the end of the Civil War. So your feedback loop is broken. Mostly, what's required is a kind of zealot level commitment to "the cause" -- even if the cause is constantly changing and hard to define.

On an operational level, the people that have been around the longest - though not necessarily the leadership, which can be difficult to manage for long periods of time - are the very people who have never even seen what a "feedback loop" organization looks like. So, reports like this are what you get -- half compiled, shoddy presentation, basic errors in professionalism. At a corporation, you'd get fired for this when you were 23. Here, however, a lot of the "deep" actors don't even know what basic professionalism is (again, their ideologues) and so no one stops to say "hey, this report looks like dogshit, let's fix it" right up until the public pressure to release it is so high that you have to put out the roughest of rough drafts.

By the way this applies equally to both major parties, imho.

In a very real way, the people who built their careers within the DNC/RNC and perhaps gubenatorial or congressional offices, with only a few exceptions, never really developed a full set of basic professional skills. I think many of them realize this if they get married to someone outside of the bubble and the realization that they pretty much can't transfer out to corporate america (or another professional style line of work) hits them like a ton of bricks. It has to be a radically frustrating existence.

Very interesting perspective, thanks.

I have some perspective into professional advocacy orgs and it seems like a very different, much more put together situation there. However that's an area where I would expect competition to be much fiercer (for donor money).

Anything with a feedback loop and open competition is going to produce effective organizations.

This is also the problem with government services in general. The IRS /DMV etc. have no competition (by law) and so there's no pressure to perform. Throw in public sector unions (which is a truly wacky concept) and you have all of the incentives to do nothing, avoid all risk, and fall back on process, procedure, and policy.

There needs to be an autopsy on the autopsy report. I am 100% serious. Figuring out all the things that went wrong to allow this to happen would solve half of the party's problems. Reinterview witnesses. Reconstruct lines of thought and inquiry. Find the points of failure and conduct root-cause analysis.

The report is poorly written, unprofessional, and incomplete yes, but above all it is vapid. It doesn't even ask the questions that matter. The overwhelming majority of effort is focused on ad targeting and campaign spending.

"The pollsters were involved in discussions around the Trump attack ads – in particular the attack ad focused on the Vice President’s prior statements on transgendered Americans. They all recognized the attack as very effective, and felt the campaign was boxed – the ad was a video of her saying what she said, and it was framed as an attack on her economic priorities.

If the Vice President would not change her position – and she did not – then there was nothing which would have worked as a response. The pollsters generally concurred with the opinions shared by campaign leadership - given the stakes and timing, the focus needed to be on attacking Trump."

Okay, what was the mistake then? What should be done differently next time around? Should the Vice President have changed her position or not? In fact, there is almost no discussion of issues in the report at all. A model of why anyone would want to vote for one party or the other is conspicuously absent.

I listened to the Pod Save America episode in which a few Harris campaign staffers were interviewed. They said that they tried to counter that ad, but the counter ads polled poorly with test groups. They were better off with generic ads about the economy.

Supposedly the "she's for they/them, Donald Trump is for you" ad is the mightiest ad in modern history. Around a 2% shift in voter sentiment; arguably election flipping if somehow that was very well targeted to likely voters in swing states.

I think an accurate autopsy would say to not stake out the most extreme and unpopular positions on culture war issues on camera. But they can't plainly state that so we get this report instead.

Being unable to articulate the most anodyne obvious solution means no lessons will ever be learnt. Those who know the deep histories will be forgotten to the sand of time and the textual history will just say "oh no wow the republicans were really mean to transgendered people!" without ever acknowledging the culpable role of tying oneself to such an insane position had in making such an attack land in the first place.

Most of the actual solutions are pretty well heresy for the left. There’s no backing down from the position of “support trans rights and the transition of anyone of any age who wants it” because this is the orthodox left liberal position. This is why that Trump ad was such a coup — the general public is not on board with the radical position of transgendering of children and only the most left-liberal people want transgender to be normalized in society. Trump or his team was able to win with the ad. She couldn’t respond in any way that undercut the effectiveness of the ad, as the far-left would reject her for anything other than full on support for trans rights. So the ad says “she’s into trans rights over the wants of regular people”, and she could only either keep silent or agree.

only the most left-liberal people want transgender to be normalized in society

Sometimes I wonder if there's a cultural disconnect here. When I go into big blue cities and encounter transgender people, they're usually just awkward people trying to live their lives. When I encounter them out in the sticks, they're frequently weirdos who seem hellbent on making me a non-consensual participant in their fetish.

Is it possible the "transgender intolerance" of the right is a self reinforcing feedback loop? The sane transgender people move to the cities where they're more accepted, which makes them look better to the people there, but leaves the bad actors out in the country where they get off on making other people uncomfortable? Which in turn makes the people out in the country less tolerant?

Is it possible the "transgender intolerance" of the right is a self reinforcing feedback loop?

Nope. Portraying the trans issue as being primarily about who gets to go to which bathroom, or some visceral "ick" factor, is at least 10 years out of date. The reaction to the trans issues comes from progressives seeing the provision of irreversible medical procedures to minors as an inalienable human right, that justifies nearly everything, including public school teachers transing children behind their parents' backs.

It also really doesn't help that trannies in particular are either clearly awkward women who needed better socializing early in their lives or creepy men who needed to be bullied early in their lives. The great win for gay marriage was that most gays really are just normal people and the chemsex degens are really an outlier, but for trans people the more people are exposed to them the less sympathetic they become. Progressives might as well have allied themselves with NAMBLA in this case, at least a decent south park episode came out that acronym

It sounds like you're disagreeing with his argument. I don't really have on opinion on the proportion of autists to AGPs, I'm saying he might be perfectly right about their prevalence in either locality, but it's irrelevant to how acceptable I find trans activism.

More comments

they're frequently weirdos who seem hellbent on making me a non-consensual participant in their fetish

That's the problem, and it's not easy to solve. If the activist groups would agree that "Okay, that is just a guy with a fetish and not really transgender", then most of the opposition would be cut off at the knees. But they can't say that, because (a) they don't want to be seen as throwing anyone under the bus (and I can sympathise there, it'd be nice if only the most acceptable people could be the poster children for the cause, but the awkward barely-passing types are valid too) and (b) the ideology has gone beyond "born in the wrong body" and on the extremes has spiralled into "smash the notion of gender completely" and "if you say you're a transfemme masc-presenting non-binary agender queer folx then only you can judge what you are" so the weirdoes and grifters happily take advantage of that.

Their only defence, when any individual case goes beyond the beyond, is "well that person was only faking being transgender" which is no good when they're simultaneously demanding "trans women don't owe you femininity" and self-identification with fifty labels slapped on is the only measure to go by. "This person with a beard and a penis wearing sparkly eyeshadow and stilettoes is a real trans woman, that person with a beard and a penis wearing sparkly eyeshadow and stilettoes is only faking it".

That's the problem, and it's not easy to solve. If the activist groups would agree that "Okay, that is just a guy with a fetish and not really transgender", then most of the opposition would be cut off at the knees. But they can't say that

I think there's a third reason you didn't mention: they (for obvious reasons) don't want to allow it to be the sort of thing that can be a judgement call, or just "good faith" or "common sense". It makes it far too easy for opponents -- especially the most extreme -- to apply forbidding judgement to even the best-case scenarios.

It makes it far too easy for opponents -- especially the most extreme -- to apply forbidding judgement to even the best-case scenarios.

That's a sensible position. Except for the online activist groups actively supporting prisoners who decided that they really were women so move me to women's jail and give me all the special accommodations and no, I don't talk like a woman, look like a woman, dress like a woman, take hormones or medications or want surgery, and I'm attracted to women not men so why when I only try to be friendly do the other female prisoners call the guards on me, but I'm really a woman.

Tell me "guy who is facing accusations of raping female inmates when he was put in female prison" is a 'best-case scenario' who cannot be condemned because that would be so forbiddingly judgemental, go ahead, I dare you. The ACLU took a case including this particular guy as well as other trans prisoners to argue that they totally are so indeed real women, so it's not just "oh but that's only a few crazy college kids!" at work.

"Guy who makes not even the token effort of changing his name to pass as a woman" is not one of the "it's so complicated, it's difficult to say" edge cases that need to be carefully pondered before going "nope, this is a scam".

Trans as a category is muddled beyond belief. Progs keep asking if normies wouldn't wanna fuck whatever heavily made up chiselled Jailey Bay fuckdoll gets plastered over the interwebs but in reality most trannies are awkward failed women or obnoxious Jessica Yaniv nonpassers. Blue city trans people are more likely just experimenting with labels and haven't gotten masectomies. Lets be real the big issue is men pretending to be women without having gone through the chop because male access to female spaces is rightfully suspect. A girl who wants to check out of the female presentation rat race can use "trans" or NB as convenient acceptable cover until she decides to abandon or commit. To pretend Angel Buck or Bailey Jay are representative of the trans community as a whole is pure definitional fuckery and every prog should be forced to watch the top of all time selection of reddits nonbinary subreddits selfies and really honestly say that they're all equally valid in whatever presentation they choose. Attach a motion sensor to their dick for proof.

You're a bit harsh, but I'd agree with the likes of restaurant guy being a clear scammer who is only looking for opportunities to be offended. The stock phrase about being misgendered as "a knife in the heart" and the performances picking on people clearly not native English speakers and demanding to see the manager demonstrate that. Doing it for social media clicks (and possibly hoping they can take a discrimination case against some restaurant or café to rake in some easy money).

That is someone who should be compelled to undergo mandatory sex reassignment surgery to become the woman they really are. Put up or shut up!

You've unlocked the secret to democrat revival of fortunes. Obligate trans maximalism. Dude says he wanrs to be trans? Government sponsored dick cutting. Get the fetishists at the eunuch archive to run it, they'll do it for free. No trans without surgery. Backing off? Sorry, then you're not trans. Make every tranny wannabe read Andrea Long Chus works as a primer and force them to go watch sissy hypno Zoolander style till they want to get their dicks cut off if they're on the fence. Domestic allies can't bitch about it because its trans maximalist, repubs are fine with perverts getting eunuched and off the streers. If its a kid then the parents should be celebrated, fucking opeds in the town newsletter about how this stunning and brave parent cut off their childs genitals in the name of progressivism. Pedal to the metal lets see who fucking commits.

I think you are running into an Activist vs Lay-folk difference. I'll grant that the Trans-movement as a disproportionate number of activists. The awkward people trying to live their lives are the lay-folk, the hellbent weirdos are the activists. What you are noticing is my theory that activists are essentially always "on" there is always a war to be fought, every space needs to be "decolonized from cis-heteronormative oppression". And when you are out in the sticks, to them this is the battlefield, sticks are generally more conservative, more "heteronormative". So like guerilla warriors they raid the commons. Trans-folk in big blue cities aren't behind enemy lines.

This is all from personal anecdotes because I used to live in a big blue city and now I live in a small purple city surrounded by red-sticksvilles. So sometime I encounter trans-activists, sometimes I encounter trans-folk. The activists are almost always from sticksvilles any they can't turn it off. It makes them very unpleasant to be around.

The sane transgender people

Strictly speaking, that's an oxymoron. These are people suffering from a mental disconnect from biological reality. They should live their lives as best they can, but they should never expect anyone else to buy into their dysmorphia, let alone demand that others pretend not to notice it. That will always be a problem.

That some transgender people seem less crazy than others might be a factor, but that probably reflects more on the city-dwellers' capacity for virtue-signalling via indulgence.

The only openly trans person I have ever encountered IRL was a Cracker Barrel host(ess) in small-town Louisiana.

Most of the actual solutions are pretty well heresy for the left.

The solution to this seems simple to me. As a leftist who grew up in a leftist enclave, me and my leftist-liberal millennial peers were taught that heresy was awesome and something worth celebrating all the time. So if something heretical is needed to accomplish our goals, it seems obvious to me that we should embrace it and celebrate it and push our movement/party/etc. towards that heresy.

Unfortunately, the past almost 1.5 decades has shown me that that doesn't work, so I'm out of ideas.

What enclaves tend to mean by “be a heretic” is “agree with us, but take it farther.” Right-liberals Don generally want you to be a heretic by being socially liberal, they want you to go farther, and thus Moldbug is their kind of heretic where Siskind is not because he’s probably less conservative than most right-liberals. Left liberals want their heretics to go further left, so Luigi shooting the CEO is a heretic, but their kind of heretic, zemdani is a heretic they like proposing state owned grocery stores, but they hate Fetterman because he isn’t heretical in a more left leaning way.

Im mostly Politically homeless. I get my ideas from Moldbug and Confucius and other weird places, so I don’t really fit modern politics.

As a leftist who grew up in a leftist enclave, me and my leftist-liberal millennial peers were taught that heresy was awesome and something worth celebrating all the time.

Heresy against one's opponents is celebrated. If the other team is in power, heresy against the dominant force is righteous rebellion! If your team is in power, heresy against the dominant force is treason.

They said that they tried to counter that ad, but the counter ads polled poorly with test groups.

Not much you can do to counter "Did she say that?" "It's more complicated than that!" "Yeah, but did she say what they claim she said?" "Well, yes, but - " "Okay, thanks" when you have the footage of her on camera saying exactly that.

I mean, somehow Trump always seemed to manage it.

It helps when the footage actually refutes the allegation.

There needs to be an autopsy on the autopsy report. I am 100% serious. Figuring out all the things that went wrong to allow this to happen would solve half of the party's problems. Reinterview witnesses. Reconstruct lines of thought and inquiry. Find the points of failure and conduct root-cause analysis.

The fact that the DNC's attempt at making sense of and learn from their dumpster fire of a failure became a dumpster fire of a failure in itself is just all too fitting. I have to laugh, because otherwise I'd cry. It's just nearly perfect as a costly signal that the party really does believe what it says about blaming everyone else for things going poorly.

Isn’t it just grift? Guy got paid. I also wouldn’t put honest self-reflection on paper. It’s better done behind closed doors.

Ken Martin insisted on Pod Save America that no money was spent on the autopsy. That is the only claim from him that was believable.

It also shouldn't be self-reflection necessarily. They should have brought in NTSB and USCSB alumni to do an deep-dive independent investigation the way you'd analyze a plane crash or plant explosion. Toes will be stepped on. It will be embarrasing. If you really thought that, "Democracy was on the ballot", and then Democracy lost, then none of that stuff matters.

If they really wanted to do an autopsy then they could just interview me. But then when I tell them all their ideas suck it’s not like their going to come out and say yes you are correct we will change.

There needs to be an autopsy on the autopsy report.

I don't think it could be done. The problem is self-reinforcing: The DNC is beholden to certain groups in order to maintain its self-image as the party that caters to suffering minority groups. A frank autopsy would have to say out loud that some of its flagship constituents must be thrown overboard. They might be able to say that in private, but can never say it in public. True introspection would be an even bigger disaster than living in denial.

transgendered Americans

What really was the killer point was that it was not about "transgendered Americans" alone, it was about "people who are not American citizens, who are here illegally, and/or who committed crimes serious enough to be put in jail, and then decide that now he is she so you, American taxpayer, have to pay for a criminal non-citizen to get elective cosmetic surgery".

Kamala wanted to prove her progressive chops back in 2019? Fine, talk about the struggles of transgender Americans. Do not be dumb enough to run your head into the noose of "so some guy is sentenced to prison, decides that now he's really a woman, and wants the State to pay for his operation(s). Yes or no?" and go "Absolutely! 100%! And if they're an illegal alien on top of that, better again!"

Of course, that gentle persecuted woman in the linked case has done nothing at all to even pretend to be female, but shush. She is a real woman because she says so!

As far as outwardly identifying as anything, I never felt the need. To this day I don’t. My gender identity is mine and mine alone. I’m a natural born athlete. I played sports when I was young. I’m 6 feet, I’m 220 pounds, I am who I am. I never felt the need to wear lipstick or wear tight clothing or try to change my voice or any of the things that people who are trying to put me in a box have done. Because generally if you express that you are a woman or that you identify as a woman in men’s prison, everything is sexualized. And it’s sexualized in a fashion that suggests what your sexuality should be. So simply because I identify as a woman, 99.9 percent of the people would assume I’m interested in men. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, ever. Not in life, not in men’s prison, not now, not never.

Gender dysphoria and gender identity are in my medical and mental health records. My psychologist before I came to CCWF, he understood. He gave me all the information that I didn’t have about SB 132. If I want CDCR to address me correctly and house me correctly, then I have to tell them what my identity is, but I don’t have to tell them what my sexuality is, and they don’t have a right to know. These issues get tied together here though, due to stereotypes and misconceptions.

...When my doctor told me about SB 132, I asked for a transfer, and we had to get the court order changed to send me here.

Of course, I imagined all type of safety, I imagined all type of freedom. Where I was at, my gender identity and who I am as a person was only my business. I had to live my life a certain way for my safety. And coming here, I imagined being able to just be myself without having to worry about being attacked, being put in a box, assumptions being made about anything about me. But from my very first day, when I got to R&R, the warden had a whole cavalry there for me. The warden, associate warden, ISU (investigative services unit), they was all there to talk to me. They said, we don’t think you should be here. But the law is the law so you’re here. It really felt like they wanted to intimidate me.

I saw the highlights of this over on rDrama and yikes. One table about political funding and spending couldn't even add up the numbers correctly (I checked and yes they were wrong, p. 127 here). If this really is what the report is like, and not some out-takes or edited parody version, God above. If this was produced by a 16 year old Transition Year student on work experience where I work, it'd be scrapped and (kindly) pointed out what was wrong with it.

If this was some sort of preliminary draft sent out by mistake, that would be embarrassing but understandable. If this is the finished (or as finished as it gets) production, may the Lord have mercy on the Democrats because they need miracles. The DNC chair seems to be saying it's real, but now I really need to know who produced this. He doesn't say who did, just who he didn't get, and looking at this mess maybe he should have gone for the slick professional consultants:

How, we all asked, could Democrats have lost to Donald Trump again? How did we blow through billions of dollars? And where do we go from here?

When I commissioned a comprehensive review of the 2024 election, I started a process to answer those questions while interrogating where our party has systemically and historically fallen short. I didn’t want that process led by anybody directly tied to the 2024 cycle – either the campaign or the consultants involved – and I did not want to put my own thumb on the scale for what might be produced. What I did ask for were actionable takeaways for the future. I wanted real, in-depth, specific recommendations to improve our allocation of resources, tech, data, organizing, media strategy, and more. I chose someone who I thought could produce this type of report.

"I chose someone who I thought could produce this type of report". Please, please, please let it be a useless nephew of his wife or other family member who was given the opportunity out of pity in order to throw him a few bob out of party coffers in the guise of "working" at a "job". I would rather the explanation be nepotism and slush funds. Because if Mr. Martin picked someone he genuinely thought would do a bang-up job, then once again, may the Good Lord Above take pity on the Democrats and this is why you guys lost in 2024, Ken.

EDIT: I see above that the author was one Paul Rivera "a veteran of the Clinton administration and friend of DNC chair Ken Martin". If this is a veteran Dem insider, they really are in trouble. How on earth did he manage to let this slip through? Did he indeed hand it over to some intern to work on? Did he start it but then decide not to go any further because nobody would care by the time the midterms came round and they (hope to be) winning all round them, then he had to scramble to throw something out to Ken because he said "No, I really do want it"?

EDIT EDIT: The more I read, the worse it gets:

Martin entrusted a top priority to a friend, Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, who volunteered to work on it part-time and waited several months to contact key officials with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaigns. Many top decision-makers in the campaigns were ultimately never interviewed, and Harris herself has expressed frustration privately that questions about the document have gone on.

How did they get themselves into this state, and how will they get out of it? Remember, this is the party trying to run on competence, technocratic solutions, and being smarter, richer, saner, and more compassionate than Orange Man Bad. If this is an example of "we've got the wealthy, well-educated, better informed people" then may the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast.

Ok, thé Clinton admin had a lot of basic competence at politics- but it was also 30 years ago. This guy could easily be experiencing age related decline, which coupled with the democrat party’s political correctness demands makes a ‘good’ report harder to come by.

The median voter does not know about this. You would have to ELI 5 it to them, but it's pointless- the median voter already thinks the DNC is out of touch, them apparently not thinking Biden's senility is relevant doesn't actually change that. People who know what this is aren't going to have their opinions changed.

My thoughts exactly, although you're a little more hopeful than I am that the median voter has opinions about Biden's senility.

What did cheer me up about this report is that it suggests that DNC leadership is still refusing to learn lessons. How indicative it is, I can't guess, but it points that way.

Median Voter doesn’t read it, but the GOP complaint I believe is a legitimate issue with the modern Democratic Party. Doing it thru some white paper is kind of dumb but there are issues leadership needs to figure out. They can not find candidates to run at the national level. Top candidates tend to come from white men who do not feel welcomed within the Dem Party. ADOS has too few 99% wordcells to go thru a national campaign. Barack obviously was not ADOS and half white. DEI basically excludes the few white men in the party from climbing now. Biden made it because he was Obamas VP. A 25 year old Biden would never even enter that side of the aisle now.

Jewish men still exists in the Party. Shapiro could do it. Ossof being in Georgia would have a chance. But since the Israel-Palestine thing I am not sure that a Jew could make it thru a primary. The best Dem politicians do tend to come from red states. That leaves them looking for a Thatcher with the current party gender imbalance. Kamala Harris type pipelines are probably going to have issues on the national stage due to IQ. AOC I think is perfectly fine in congress, but my gut says she is IQ limited for the top office.

I don’t want to do a full debate on HBD but it does seem like the extreme right tail on most traits are dominated by white men. At the national level of politics when you are on tv a lot more the competence ability is much more noticeable. So hitting DEI quoatas makes national level politics very hard. Besides the electoral college and gerrymandering favoring team red I also think they have a structural talent issue for the top spot.

What could change? Indians have a lot of far right tail talent so that’s a possibility. The top law schools are extremely left so perhaps in a generation that produces candidates.

I guess it’s my opinion but at the very top of the parties I think team right has structurally better talent. Vance may be a little weird and may limit him later but I do think he’s quite smart. Same thing with Rubio or Cruz. I think if you list the top 5 most likely candidates on each side that the GOP guy is likely 1 standard deviation higher in intelligence.

I think Newsome said he had like a 960 IQ. I don’t believe that so perhaps he’s actually much smarter and just pretends to be stupid like Bush.

I think Newsome said he had like a 960 IQ.

960 SAT. FWIW, he says that while excusing it as the result of dyslexia, but I've never seen anything that made me think he was better than actual average, which is much lower than what the average sequestered shape rotator monks here think is average.

The circles he runs in would indicate he’s well above average. Smart rich people just don’t talk to average people. Looks like his wife graduated from Stanford. Those types never marry average intelligence guy.

The circles he runs in would indicate he’s well above average.

Eh, he got into those circles via his father (and is now writing memoirs about how he had a hardscrabble childhood with his divorced mom working three jobs and he had to deliver newspapers as a kid and his dyslexia meant he had trouble at school) and basically, from what I can gather, sucking up as hard as he could to the Gettys and hanging on to that association with an iron grip:

Newsom and a group of investors created the company PlumpJack Associates L.P. on May 14, 1991. The group started the PlumpJack Winery in 1992 with the financial help of his family friend Gordon Getty. PlumpJack was the name of an opera written by Getty, who invested in 10 of Newsom's 11 businesses. Getty told the San Francisco Chronicle that he treated Newsom like a son and invested in his first business venture because of that relationship. According to Getty, later business investments were because of "the success of the first".

I'm not saying he's dumb, but he didn't work his way up from nowhere to mingle with the rich nor was he exactly born into those circles.

I just disagree he could be truly average. Even with connections from birth you can flunk out. He’s got to be at a minimum a midtwit so something like 1200-1300 real SAT score intelligence. Top 10%.

People who think Newsom's IQ is sub 1000 SAT equivalent just have not interacted much at all with that actual level of intelligence. No one would confuse him for bright, but he's well above average.

Yeah, I'd put him in 110-115 IQ range. Smart, but not super-duper smart. And the Gettys are living on family money created back when the patriarch J. Paul Getty founded their fortunes, so they may well be stewarding the estate but they're not out there creating new wealth opportunities. Smart may go along with rich, but rich need not go along with smart, so the fact that he's the lapdog client of a billionaire (who doesn't even make the Top Hundred Wealthiest Americans) means little in relation to "how smart is he?".

I would him around there. Maybe even a little higher. His wife based on schools she attended indicates she’s likely 135. So I would assume she’s not marrying down more than 1 standard deviation. Other hot Stanford MBAs landed guys like Jobs.

They don’t ‘anymore’. That was the whole thesis of Charles Murray’s original work that most everybody missed.

Smart rich people just don’t talk to average people. Looks like his wife graduated from Stanford.

There are people who excel at school but are otherwise vapid. My sister scored very high on her SATs but hasn't had an original thought in her entire life. Two of the dumbest people I know have law degrees and are working attorneys. Arguably, universities aren't that interested in turning out high-functioning free-thinking geniuses these days, but are rather content to produce an assembly line of ideologically compliant middle managers, the best-looking of whom might turn out to be leaders with nothing interesting to say.

I think Newsome said he had like a 960 IQ. I don’t believe that so perhaps he’s actually much smarter and just pretends to be stupid like Bush.

That's some extreme humble-bragging.

Uh, I hope he meant that was his SAT score… Dude, if you had a 960 IQ, you’d be like 50+ standard deviations above the mean if that were possible. Einstein would be a complete retard standing next to you if that’s the case. That’s one of the dumbest and funniest things I’ve ever heard of if he really said that.

Still doesn't hold a candle to Alakazam's 5,000 IQ.

Yet, despite a 5,000 IQ and being fully evolved, anime-Alakazam was bossed around by a little girl and went 0-2 against an unevolved yellow mouse and an unevolved crustacean.

Hello, Officer Jenny? Yes, I’d like to report a fraud.

Nope, just proof a genius-level IQ can coexist with a spine of limp cardboard. Many such cases.

Oh yeah? Well I would have you know my IQ is 20/20, 😤.

Recently one of the Pod Save America hosts interviewed DNC chair Ken Martin about this report.

It's quite the train wreck. Ken kept asserting that the report was free and the host kept cutting in to question how that's possible. I guess this is how. Your incompetent buddy does it for free. Not literally free since people supposedly traveled to every state to interview voters and the effort took more than a year. But free-ish compared to actually paying for a well made report.

Hold on did they seriously just open with "I was so happy to see you at the grindr party the other night!" and "I wish they hadn't run out of alcohol before I arrived".

...what? Grindr like the gay hookup app? What the fuck are these people talking about? Is the one guy making fun of the other guy for being gay? It sounds like he's talking about meeting him at a gay hookup party, and the other person is lamenting that they ran out of booze before he got there so he didn't get to get as drunk as he had hoped.

Yes: Grindr the gay hookup app hosted a private White House Correspondents' Association party in DC attended by the head of the DNC and some (or all?) Pod Save America hosts. He means this in the most literal sense. I just googled this and confirmed.

Presumably this was a Grindr hosted political event rather than a literal gay orgy. News articles don't specifically state the level of drunkenness or gay sex.

Presumably this was a Grindr hosted political event rather than a literal gay orgy.

Porque no los dos? Even the CPAC confererence has a reputation for being a depraved pit of debauchery, what chance does a liberal event organized by Grindr have?

And of course there was the Hotties For Harris event, and the Planned Parenthood mobile clinic offering free vasectomies at the same time as the 2024 DNC conference.

Kindly note in the background to this, posters about the fearful monstrosity of what was contained in Project 2025 such as "families should ideally be a husband, wife and kids". The horrors of the male-female dyad!

Not really struggling with the image of being a den of debauchery, lads! For the low, low price of much less than whatever Martin slipped his pal Rivera, I can advise you on how to appeal to rural, working-class, religious in some form, non-college educated voters and Number One Recommendation will be, as even the autopsy had to point out, "Do not sound like you're trying to get on the Satanic Temple's Holiday Gift List" (especially since those frickin' eejits have no idea what Hallwoe'en is about).

I was being tongue-in-cheek there, but yeah. Grindr now respectable? Or just that journalists will attend anything provided the lure of free drink is dangled before them?

Grindr is just gay Tinder (or rather, the other way around), and Tinder is just online dating, and online dating is respectable now, and gay things are equally as respectable as straight things (or perhaps more equal, but never less), so Grindr is now respectable and has been for a while, QED.

I just googled this and confirmed.

I thought you were doing a bit lol

Yeah, I had to rub my eyes at that part in the CNN story.

The Dems attending a party sponsored by Grindr, the gay hook-up/casual sex/promiscuity app. Well, definitely avoiding all the stereotypes assigned to you by your political rivals there!

Meanwhile, with public demands to see the autopsy growing, Martin booked himself onto “Pod Save America” to defend his decision not to release it, in an interview that immediately went viral.

Sapping faith in him even further among Democratic operatives inside and outside party headquarters: The interview only happened because he agreed to it after confronting the hosts at a Grindr-sponsored party the night before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, annoyed they were giving him too hard of a time over the autopsy.

Guys, maybe if you want to reach out to the Latino/rural voters, you should try having stories about you read more like "Chair Marty Martin was interviewed after leaving the Rosary cenacle/Bible study group late Thursday evening" and not "why yes we met at the gay orgy party"?

Your incompetent buddy does it for free.

Hard to know if it was incompetence or if Martin kept a leash on him. Probably "¿Por qué no los dos?" The only sense I can make of this débacle is that Martin had a fair idea an autopsy of how they done fudged up in 2024 would lead to an entire battery hens farm worth of egg on face for the party, including Big Senior Figures, and he tried stalling and throttling it as much as he could:

Martin called for an autopsy only after former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley made an issue of it in his own long-shot race for DNC chair. Once he did, Martin locked in, even ripping in private conversations former chair Tom Perez’s decision to withhold an autopsy of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss.

He asked Rivera, a longtime but low-profile Democratic hand based now in Texas, to be in charge. They were close, which helped, but Martin also liked that Rivera hadn’t been involved with the DNC or the Harris campaign, so he could be independent.

The problem, others involved argued then and now, is that Rivera hadn’t worked on any presidential bid since an inglorious turn on John Kerry’s campaign in 2004. Many who know Rivera describe him as having a savvy yet unconventional point of view, but say he also comes into conversations with a preset viewpoint.

Though he’d set the autopsy as a priority, Martin decided to have Rivera in charge as a part-time volunteer while juggling other clients. Rivera would sometimes say he was available to conduct interviews only before 9 a.m., after 7 p.m. or on weekends. Martin kept him so siloed that the most senior staff could do was occasionally chip in with suggestions of people he should consider contacting.

...Not until September, several months into his review, did Rivera try to reach out to key Harris campaign aides. He has told people since that he always meant for the Harris team to be his last stop since he wanted to gather other information first. But holding out that long made campaign aides suspicious.

Rivera ultimately blew past several deadlines last year in finishing the autopsy, according to people familiar with the matter. It wasn’t until after Thanksgiving that Martin got a document that multiple people say was at best unfinished.

Who Rivera reached out to, and who he didn’t, tells part of the story of what he was producing. While the DNC has said Rivera and others conducted “hundreds of interviews” with “sources from all 50 states,” he didn’t start to talk to the people who ran the Biden and Harris campaigns until September, according to multiple people involved.

Among those not included in interviews: Biden, Harris or Walz. Top strategists, including Biden aides Mike Donilon, Anita Dunn, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, and top Harris decision-makers like Jen O’Malley Dillon, Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe, weren’t interviewed either. Neither were close Harris aides Sheila Nix, Kirsten Allen, Erin Wilson, Brian Fallon and Jalisa Washington-Price, or Sam Cornale, the Walz traveling chief of staff who had also been executive director of the DNC.

...Some say underlying research, including notes and transcripts of interviews, was deleted from DNC servers. But a DNC source familiar with the process told CNN that Rivera didn’t provide even a list of names of people he spoke to, notes or recordings. Nor, the source said, did he provide some of the data that he was given to him by senior campaign leadership.

...“The notion that any of this was nefarious or by design…” sighed one former DNC official. “It’s much more Keystone Kops than that.”

"Keystone Kops" is not reassuring for a party asking the nation "put the fate of the economy, your jobs, oil prices, peace or war, and dealing with the rollout and regulation (or not) of AI in our competent, assured, well-qualified hands!"

Seems to me that if the DNC were to do a real autopsy of their performance in 2024, the last thing they'd do is make it public. This is BS of some sort.

Since you've evidently blocked me for some reason, you won't see this, but your framing of the matter is rather boo-outgroup. Nonetheless, I don't think this is going to have much of an effect on anything. There's literally nothing this report could have contained that would have stopped critics of the party cold, so everyone sees what they want to see. Critics of the party were certain that it said bad things about Biden's senility and Kamala's incompetence and that they didn't want the report to get out because it would be too devastating. Instead it turns out that the report wasn't released because it was so poorly done the guy who wrote it got fired. It will make Ken Martin look bad to both people who know who Ken Martin is for about 2 days until Trump audibly farts on camera and the nation's attention moves elsewhere. By the time people start announcing their candidacies it will have about as much relevance as that time Amy Klobuchar allegedly threw a salad at an aide.

You gotta love that the page headed "Leadership Message" is otherwise blank!

I enjoy that the DNC can't even agree on what the outcome of the 2024 election was. From page 17:

Democrats netted two seats in the House, flipping ten seats from the Republicans while losing eight.

[Red box: Data appears to be inaccurate and contradicts public reporting.]

The Wikipedia article "2024 United States House of Representatives elections" is also confused about these numbers in a few places (e.g. the values in the "By state" results table don't actually add up to the stated totals), I think maybe because it's not sure how to handle the fact that George Santos had been replaced by a Democrat in a special election earlier that year, but even it doesn't actually say that Democrats flipped 10 seats. (The generally accepted narrative seems to be that they only flipped 9 seats, for a net gain of 1.)

For what it's worth, Martin's tweet concerning the "autopsy" is pretty much a complete disavowal. Depending on "why" he needed to release it as-is may have implications in the Culture War, or it may just be regular political skullduggery, I couldn't say.

What is the point of DNC when Trump is doing more and better work than them for putting Democrats into power?

The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives

there was not sufficient negative messaging about how horrible Trump was (and still is) for and to most Americans.

Or, was it because Democrats never helped these voters remember and reflect on Trump’s failures as president?

The Trump campaign and supportive Super PACs went full throttle against Vice President Harris, but there was not sufficient or similar negative firepower directed at Trump by Democrats.

the inability to properly frame Trump to be as terrible as he has quickly proven to be was a massive missed opportunity given what was a necessity for the campaign.

I realize the report also says the Harris campaign needed to present a more positive case for her, not just anti-Trumpism, so that's something... but I can not fathom what makes them think the problem was not being anti-Trump enough.

I’m with Rov_Scam. Down to the part where you’ve blocked me, even!

This makes for a nice comparison with the UAP disclosures, where a promise of juicy tell-all journalism proves much more exciting than the reality.

I'm also blocked

We should start a run group

Your Quarterly Ukraine War check-in

Three and a half months ago, we checked in on the war in Ukraine. That post was itself a check in to follow up on dire predictions from the pro-Russia posters in fall of 2025 that the loss of Pokrovsk was heralding the collapse of Ukrainian front lines and encirclement of Ukrainian troops. Amusingly, @No_one went back and deleted all of their posts after the last check in, so I can only leave you with this:

Going by the aphorism 'If you're reading this, it's for you', it looks like the American press is preparing the public for a closing act of the majestic capeshit arc that started with the Maidan massacre. Ukrainians are generally eager to negotiate, nobody believes in winning anymore

I expected the Iran war to be a major tailwind for Russia (oil prices, sanctions relief, US distraction) but on the contrary, the western information space seems to argue that things will remain stalemated for the foreseeable future. Ukraine seems to be pumping out drones (is this all that matters now?), and has started hitting Russian oil refineries. People have been hyping up what seems to be a mostly symbolic bombing of Moscow. The map hasn't moved, supposedly Russian recruitment is down. The Russian spring offensive has been underway for several weeks and made no progress:

Russian forces have so far failed to make meaningful gains in their ongoing spring-summer 2026 offensive, Ukrainian forces have contested the tactical initiative in several areas of the frontline, and Russian forces have failed to defend the Russian deep rear against increasingly devastating Ukrainian strikes.[8]

On the flip side, people write articles about how bad the Russian economy is, and then drop this line near the end:

Russia’s national debt is low at around 17% of GDP, the banking system is stable, employment rates are high, and wages are still creeping up.

I'd be interested to hear whether anyone has insight into the rhetoric on the Russian side or the pro-Russian perspective at the moment.

So - any new/modified predictions? We had @ABigGuy4U saying collapse in July-August (still a few months to go), @Lizzardspawn saying to look at the frequency of blackouts in Kiev (still unchanged at 6-8 hours a day afaict).

If we're doing a retrospective, it feels worth noting that around about now was about the time that predictions from years ago were estimating that the early-war Russian advantages in various pre-war stockpiles and early-war industrial mobilization would be petering out. The technological adaptations of drones shaped how it would work out in practice, and the north korean armories selling their shells changed the fighting season math, but the general trajectory of Russia's military-industrial expansion facing diminishing returns as western economic mobilization caught up was projected years ago.

The two big developments of the last year and a half have been the manpower and American dynamics.

Manpower was supposed to be Russia's trump card, and many people- both sincere supports and concern-trolling- argued that Ukraine needed to make major politically costly decisions to expand intake and fill out the trench lines. The spoiling factor was that drones have gotten so ubiquitous and slow that fully-manned front lines have been liability compared to partially manned lines supported by drones. Worse, or better, this coincided/enabled/exploited the Russian discovery/adaptation of their manpower-intensive infiltration tactics. Massed offenses were less effective than sending infiltrators between lines and trying to build up forces behind a Ukrainian line. This was manpower intensive due to how many would get caught, but pushed the line on the map more.

The net result, though, has been that it diminished the criticality of the very-real Ukrainian manpower issues (which were more restricted on infantry than drone users), while pushing the Russian manpower issue into its weakest dynamic, the replacement costs. The all-volunteer contract model required and requires ever-increasing amounts of money, money the central government tried to push off onto the provinces which had their own limits. Well, economic challenges are real, and there are reports that Russia has been trying to put in the mechanics for various degrees of drafting to supplement numbers. Except a draft for Ukraine has been an incredibly sensitive issue for the Kremlin since the first mobilization sparked an exodus, which is why the nominal numeric superiority to overwhelm the Ukrainians has been far less overwhelming than anticipated. Manpower political costs is one of Putin's signature issues as a strategic procrastinator, and will continue to drastically limit Russia's ability to utilize it's nominal trump card.

Which leads to the industrial dynamics. Even if there was a conscription wave now, it would be less useful than it would have been a year or two ago, as a lot of the relevant cold war kit has already been mobilized.

Conscript waves in repurposed civilian vehicles and other makeshifts are not as useful as conscript waves might have been in reactivated soviet-era armor before there were as many or as good drones. As the war has progressed, a lot of the soviet inheritance of vehicle parks have been depleted, and those reactivations were what fueled the core of Russia's claims of massively expanded industrial capacity. Part of the proof that sanctions weren't working was that Russia was able to produce tanks regardless, but as the stock of refurbishable vehicle types closes, those reactivations aren't being replaced by 'new' system production. There are certainly many vehicles left to go, but per the logic of prioritizing reactivating your highest payoff systems first, it's diminishing returns.

Industrial news hasn't all been in Ukraine's favor, which is where the American issue comes in. The American Trump administration cut down aid to Ukraine, carrying out pre-existing deals but not seeking to expend political capital on major aid packages. Worse from a Ukrainian perspective, the Iran War has expended many of the air-defense assets they would have preferred to receive themselves, and even put them in a bidding war against the oil-rich gulf states for the foreign military sales that remain. Russia's constraints don't mean a Russian collapse.

But even this front has a few more-than-slightly silver linings for the Ukrainians. While the Americans stopped donating to Ukraine, this was because the Trump administration transitioned to selling to the Europeans who would donate to Ukraine. Rather than the total cut-off the pro-Russian thought leaders fantasized in, this has resulted in a far more stable 'floor' for American enablers to Ukraine, since Donald Trump likes making money and the aid-skeptic camp was split from the aid-opposition camp once it was no longer a matter of charity. Ukraine itself is getting in on this air defense spending surge as a major prospective exporter of license agreements and training, even as the Iranians are like the Americans going to be rebuilding their drone and missile inventories rather than selling as many to Russia for Ukraine.

And while the Europeans are paying the fiscal costs for transferring American arms to Ukraine, this has led to both rationalization of purchases ('what has best cost-benefit' rather than 'Americans, spend more') and coincided with the EUropean rearmament programs. Both the US and European states are well into efforts to expand their defense industrial basis, and while the current and near term means 'less free stuff for Ukraine,' it can expand the longer-term support chains. This is an area where Ukraine has some real value to trade, since it's own indigenous development programs offer it knowledge / capacity to trade for European and American support and investments elsewhere, making other forms of aid more politically palatable as 'trade' or 'investments' rather than 'charity.' Which itself has just gotten more resilient, as the Hungary election as seen Putin's primary proxy in EUropean politics fall, with Hungary no longer blocking the sort of financial aid packages that keep Ukriane afloat on a fiscal level.

Overall, where 2025 was a giant ambiguous ? that Russia was putting its hopes on for getting the US out of the Ukraine coalition, the last year and change have been both volatile but also measured in aggregate. American support has been curtailed, but remains significant and has probably established a reliable 'floor' which it ebb above depending on context and interest. Ukraine successfully navigated the changes in its political soft-power position in the US and in the 2025 ceasefire negotiations in a way that neither compelled it to give up defensive territory or saw the Trump administration blame it for the failure, both of which were Russian failures consistent with Putin's strategic procrastinator tendencies. And finally, Europe has more or less (willingly and unwillingly) shouldered many of the costs to continue support to Ukraine fiscally and with longer-term material support.

I wouldn't say it's a 'good' position to be in- major industrial war is never good- but Ukraine certainly seems in far more stable a position than it was a year ago.

Is there any reason to believe the stalemate won't just continue for the foreseeable future? Russia is nowhere near backing down and still has troops and equipment to spare while making progress at a pace slower than a snail's movement.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is unlikely to surrender without security guarantees and can expect increased European support now that Hungary will no longer be vetoing the aid packages. However, every Ukrainian victory seems short lived, as every time they come up with a new innovation, the Russians are sure to adapt in short order.

So my prediction is that the stalemate will continue for the rest of 2026. It seems to me that neither side has the decisive advantage needed to win, nor is Russia willing to negotiate any peace short of an unconditional Ukranian surrender. And so the only option left is for the Drone Wars to continue.

I do hope that once this is eventually over, Ukraine will teach the countries who helped them how to wage drone warfare from their specialists.

Lavrov has said in his statements that they have no intention of leaving Ukraine in a state of frozen conflict. If you look at their activities some months ago in Mariupol, they were determined to rebuild much of the damaged infrastructure there and reassert renewed political control of the territories they now occupy. I’m confident they probably have a policy of doing much the same elsewhere, going forward. Neither side wants to give up being able to impose the framework of discussion on the other, but Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of bargain with.

He would say that, given that the Russian goal is to win. The Ukrainians also do not intend to stay in a state of frozen conflict. They want to kick out the Russians and take back their territory.

But right now, it looks like neither side has the resources to turn their intentions into reality. The best they can do is keep fighting, which in practice prolongs the stalemate.

I don’t think Ukraine can hold out forever. They don’t have enough people to maintain both the infrastructure and fight the war. Their ability to continue to send drones and shoot artillery is dependent on the support of Western Europe. That support is dependent on the political will of those countries to continue sending weapons and money to Ukraine, probably less now with oil prices going up. Eventually without enough people, weapons, or money, Ukraine will have to take whatever deal it can get, and that at minimum means Donbas goes to Russia and they get minimal military support if any.

At the very least, there seems to be enough funding for 2026. If funding dries up next year, then I agree that looks bad for Ukraine. But that seems pretty far from guaranteed. With Orban no longer in power, the European will to support the war seems greater than ever. Support may diminish due to the Iran war, but that hinges on the Iran war continuing in the first place. And keep in mind that Russia is also suffering from attrition, that they have other neighbors beside Ukraine that they may want to defend themselves from, and that they have a lot less to lose here than the Ukrainians.

I genuinely think this could go either way in the coming years.

My prediction is that the focus of attention is going to move to the EU. It's funding Ukraine, its factories are producing the materiel that Ukraine's using, its intelligence services are supplying Ukraine with information. Russia finds itself in the same situation the US was in the Vietnam War: fighting Viet Cong in South Vietnam, but not allowed to touch its power base in North Vietnam.

That's why I am afraid Russia sees only one way out of the stalemate: it needs the EU to take its threats seriously, to realize that further escalation is possible. That's what the highjacked Ukrainian drones over the Baltics are about. It's a probe that threatens to salami slice the countries into an armed conflict. And I hope the discussions about picking an EU representative are the sign that the message has been received.

Russia isn't going to directly bring the EU in for the same reason the US didn't invade North Vietnam. They fear they'll lose of they bring a major power into the war.

The US bombed Laos and mined the Gulf of Tonkin. With the EU deciding to rearm, it's better to provoke them now, when they have missile shortages and very limited anti-drone capabilities than in 2030. And letting them supply Ukraine with practically everything except manpower is still a loss.

But didn't invade. Starting a war with dozens of first world militaries would be a horrible idea for Russia they can't even handle Ukraine. The modern fighters in the EU alone would doom Russia's Ukrainian adventure. Not to mention the EU's almost two million active duty soldiers.

Does the EU have the stomach for an actual war using their own soldiers though?

Something like 90% of young Germans recently responded that they have no interest in fighting for their country.

Germany != EU

For a significant portion of Northern and Eastern EU Russia is an existential threat. That a bunch of German youth are mindkilled by pacifist propaganda does not mean that the EU (which has 26 other countries in addition to Germany) is not willing to go to actual war in such situation.

Germany != EU

There almost should be a feature to automatically remind people of this extremely salient point every time EU comes up for discussion.

Also, of course, it wouldn't be the EU Russians would be fighting but the NATO - even if US bows out there would still be Turkey to deal with, for instance.

We need another reminder whenever free speech comes up that UK and Germany are very much not the norm for Europe.

More comments

I wonder if german youth fatalism also is influenced by knowing if they die Von de Leyen has a million migrants ready to import to keep the population high. The notion of dying so that you can be easily replaced by foreigners, and lets be real the foreigner here isn't Pierre or Johnny its Ahmed or Rajiv Von de Leyen wants to bring in, must surely make one fatalistic about your states concern for you.

That's possible. How I understand what you seem to be getting at is: if you fight and die for your country now, it will not remain the country of yours and your kin's country in the next generation, so you die in vain, or even for the benefit of people who are not aligned with you and your preferred future?

Pretty much. Stripped down to its studs every fucking normie can see that the new MENA refugee arrivals prized by their governments are leeches that prey on soft institutions, not preservers of traditions that made the country what it is to begin with. A whole decade of being told these refugees were doctors and engineers that would boost the economy and contribute to german society, only to be met with rapist's and welfare exploiters. Why should a young man die for a society that rewards his sacrifice with a slide towards barbarism and his sisters meat for nonacretive migrants

edited for tone

If Russia attacked them sure. And I doubt those 90% are in the Army now and even so when the first Russian missile hits Berlin that number will change real quick.

No mention of this?

Seems like Putin floating the trial balloon for negotiated settlement to me.

Interestingly there has also been a reported leak of the internal messaging Russia was planning on using to sell a climb down from their maximalist war goals to their population and supporters in the west. It seems plausible as a document, and has a few interesting elements.

First - their expected terms of peace:

Format. A framework peace agreement. Likely US–Russia and US–Ukraine.

Territories. All of the DPR and LPR transfer to Russia. Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts split along the line of contact. Russian forces withdraw from Sumy and Kharkiv.

Demilitarization. Neutral status. A buffer zone.

Denazification. Symbolic, limited.

Sanctions. The US lifts theirs. European sanctions stay in place.

Money. Part of the frozen assets goes to rebuilding war-affected territories — both in Ukraine and in Russia.

We also have some good quotes on how they will message, including:

The peace Putin achieved is a huge victory. Putin made the West bend. We thwarted the West’s plans to expand and prolong the conflict.

Victory over whom? Over international imperialism and globalism. Not Ukrainian nationalism — a far stronger, more skilled, more powerful enemy: the united West.

The whole world has now seen who is right and who is wrong. We showed that we are tougher, taller, better, more humane. The Ukrainian Nazis showed they really are Nazis, sadists, and moral degenerates. The Ukrainian elites had a full coming-out.

Know when to stop. Going too far is defeat. Continuing the SMO would be a Pyrrhic victory.

Promoting the right behavioral track for SMO veterans — public-service ads, blogs, news, artistic formats. On the model: “NN became a respected member of the community / bought a Russian car / rebuilt his house / started his own manufacturing or service company / hotel / got into a prestigious university. His fellow soldier, meanwhile, drank away everything he earned / killed himself / wound up in prison.” Promote the norm, not the extremes; push new heroes and opinion leaders to the front.

Lowering the temperature on radicalism and bellicosity. Limiting the media presence of the “nuclear-option” turbo-radicals. Reorienting or marginalizing the most uncompromising of them.

An amnesty in honor of victory. A tradition and a marker. Russia has practiced this since the end of the Crimean War. Above all for those who spoke out in support of peace. Rehabilitation (decriminalization) of the word “peace” and of the concept itself. A peace-loving disposition is part of our character and our traditions — we have always strived for peace and continue to do so. Emphasis on Russia’s peacemaking acts throughout history — historical excursions.

I'll leave it to the audience here to decide if those peace terms seem realistic (*edit - realistically acceptable to the Ukrainians and likely to end the war if proposed) - they don't for me, however this does seem to suggest that Russia is hurting enough to consider actually negotiating rather than just pretending to in order to keep Trump on side.

Meanwhile, following the very serious drone developments this year where Ukraine is now killing more Russians than are mobilized/replaced and stalling out their attacks, we have pro Russian military channels like notes_veterans saying

The situation on the Ukrainian front today is such that this fall there will either be a mobilization or a move towards signing a peace treaty. There simply can't be a third option.

The situation is still very serious for Ukraine, and the timeline seems to be that the war will last at least into late this year, but Russia seems to be on the horns of a real dilemma here - take peace negotiations seriously, and accept that they are negotiating with Ukraine and not Trump, meaning they will need to make that deal sweet enough that Ukraine actually wants it. Or, option two, mass mobilize and try to break the Ukrainians somehow before that shakes apart the social contract.

Or, do a classic Putin procrastination, and end up in the same dilemma but a weaker position this time in the autumn/fall. I honestly think that might be what happens until something on one side or the other finally snaps.

There is no way Ukraine accepts any deal that does not include security guarantees. The risk of Russia regrouping and attacking again in the near future is just too high.

I am not sure what these mythical security guarantees should be. They can be anything including ineffective guarantees for South Vietnam ("respond with full force" by Nixon) which broke within months of enacting them. Or as in case of Afghanistan, where USA simply withdrew the guarantees and just asked Taliban to behave for 14 months needed to abandon their security partner.

I am not sure why either of those scenarios cannot happen at any time. Especially if there will be multiple countries doing that - e.g. USA, France, Germany and UK being the security partner. I can imagine a new US administration asking Ukraine for mineral resources rights in exchange of guarantees in 2029 and when denied, they will just say they are withdrawing them in 2 years or some such leaving everything up to France and UK and other countries who may do their traditional Munich Agreement solution to unwanted security guarantees.

Anything that would credibly deter Russia from attacking again. UN troops at the boarder, membership into NATO, or even nuclear missiles could do it.

Alternatively Russia could give back the land they conquered and pull back. That I imagine the Ukrainians would accept even without guarantees. Russia is never going to let that happen though.

UN troops at the border

You mean like in Lebanon? Didn't help them much.

I personally think NATO membership is the best option. Ukraine would get guaranteed military backing from other powerful nations, while NATO gets access to the best drone operators in the world. Whether this is possible with Trump as the American president is the big question though.

It seems realistic to me, which of course is different from stating that it's true.

Apologies, I meant that I don't think they'll realistically be the final terms Ukraine accepts absent a big change in the battlefield situation (and the lack of that is why we're here) or a loss of European support. Terms like that have a lot of Russian hopium baked in - especially seeing as that's pretty much the list Russia put forwards when they were stalling negotiations by being way too optimistic. I do however think it's realistic that that's a list of things Russia would like and could possibly sell internally if accepted.

Yeah, there's no way of getting reliable information anymore, so it's all going to be seen in retrospect.

Or he's just saying that because it makes Trump happy. A happy Trump is a Trump more willing to provide sanction relief.

Maybe, or maybe because the negotiations have an end in sight and the battlefield doesn't. Hard to say, we know nothing of the diplomacy and due to misinformation, less than nothing about the military state of things.

One of the best reddit accounts covering the war is /u/Duncan-M (who also has a substack). He has little bias and thus gets shit from the pro-UA and pro-RU cheerleaders in about equal measure.

Anyways the recent updates are that SpaceX disabled Starlink for the Russians, which they somehow were dependent on, thus heavily disrupting their comms system, enabling Ukrainian advances. The war is more drone heavy than ever, and fast unjammable comms are a must have to coordinate attacks.

In addition, previously Ukrainian recon drones were limited to about 10km past the FLOT (forward line of own troops) due to counter-drone AD, but have been able to penetrate past this, enabling reconnaissance and deep strikes into the Russian logistical rear.

This is not to imply that the Ukrainian manpower crisis has subsided, because it hasn't, especially since General 200 is busy plugging away with "Assault Forces" (ie Meat) as per Soviet doctrine. But it's less relevant than ever. In conclusion:

The shortage of infantry is being counteracted by advances in drone warfare. The Ukrainian capabilities have never been better, and Russian capabilities dropped at least a bit since February when they lost access to Starlink, which it comes to find out they had become dangerously reliant on through 2025.

So right now, considering the way both sides fight this war, unless Russia dramatically changes its operational planning and stops giving any shits about territory and focuses purely on increasing Ukrainian casualties, then Ukraine's infantry manpower shortage probably won't cause any sort of collapse.

What about an an autonomous AI advantage? Ukraine getting some western tech that's allowing independent identification and targeting of designated targets?

I think that every success of Ukraine so far is just the fallout of Musk cutting off starlink for Russia. Which was made worse by their crackdown on telegram. And their own constellations not being online. Momentum is a fickle bitch.

I don't know, these reports seemed suspicious to me. How would the Russians have gotten their hands on a sufficient number of those terminals that it would have made a difference to their operations? Throughout the war, we kept hearing that Ukraine had been holding off the numerically superior Russians thanks to their ingenuous quick iteration on top of the superior Western startup technology that is Starlink, and then suddenly, in one package, the story changes to "but actually, the Russians had Starlink too, but now they don't have it anymore, and so Ukraine will win for sure"; meanwhile, in reality, after a small jitter in favour of Ukraine that this story was timed to coincide with, we are already back to the same neverending stalemate we had before. The one OSINT-visible thing Ukrainians were doing that was definitively dependent on Starlink (drone boats operating in open water with real time remote control) was seemingly never replicated by Russia, even though other than Starlink no particularly unusual tech goes into it.

In the end, the more likely explanation to me is that the "Russia in shambles because Starlink was cut off" story was a successful plant from Elon's PR department, which was picked up by the usual pro-Ukraine social media channels to build hype for the random swing of momentum in their favour at the time.

Realistically, all the hot zones on the line are going to be jammed to hell anyway, and drones would have to be fiber-optic.

The most "bleak sci-fi" thing I've seen in a while was images of the absolute spiderwebs of spent drone fiberoptic cables covering forests and fields and towns.

The unexploded ordnance is probably worse.

Oh, that's almost certainly worse, but as far as bleak images go, an unexploded rocket just doesn't compare.

More bleak might be the reason we're no longer seeing that. It stopped being cost effective as fiber optic demand ballooned with the data center buildup.

Will make for some great cinematography in the movies that are sure to come. I'm sure.

images of the absolute spiderwebs of spent drone fiberoptic cables covering forests and fields and towns

Are those bare fibers plastic or glass? Given the optimization for weight, I assume they're not that strong as fibers go, but I guess I don't have a good sense of how either would break down over time given the odd shape.

There's talk of Ukraine being ahead in machine vision as well, thanks to Thiel-adjacent companies letting them test-drive their targeting systems. This gives Ukraine drones that can operate far beyond what fiber optics cables can support and that can independently identify and attack suitable targets even when jammed.

I feel like you are borderline nutpicking the "pro-Russian" side here, but then the nuts may be disproportionately visible because for the more realistic people on it there is nothing to be excited about. Therefore, let me just put down a prediction of "once again, nothing much will happen" for the upcoming quarter here. Maybe the Russians will finally grind their way through the rest of the ruins of Konstantinovka or Kupyansk (though the 90% confidence interval for that is more like 1 year from now), and maybe the Ukrainians will start yet another "successful" counteroffensive that will gain some 200-400km² to then be slowly rolled back over the course of the next 1-2 years at a great cost in life and treasure to Russia, Ukraine and the European taxpayer.

It is more likely that there will be some additional unpublicised backdoor decisions that will influence the longer-term trajectory of the war, such as the addition of further "gentlemen's agreements" about what sort of facilities may not be targeted by long-range bombings. From a purely military standpoint, I expect these to be detrimental to Russia (because from a purely military standpoint, I think the winning play for Russia more and more obviously amounts to escalation, now that NATO and Europe is further strained by Iran - blow up NPPs and make sure that any city in Ukraine that still can support a civilian drone workshop becomes uninhabitable for civilians, send your own leadership to the bunkers, and absorb the retaliation in kind with your superior bulk), but I do not have anything resembling a complete picture of how thin a thread the Russian economy and internal control system is hanging by, and if any greater mobilisation or damage to their own civilian infrastructure would actually result in them collapsing (in which case they maybe have no better option than to sit and wait out their gradual decline and hope for some deus ex machina).

blow up NPPs and make sure that any city in Ukraine that still can support a civilian drone workshop becomes uninhabitable for civilians

We've had evidence since WW2 and right now we see Iran and Gaza and Lebanon all being 'terror bombed', with civillian infrastructure destroyed. That shit never fucking works. People adapt and would rather eat dirt than surrender to someone far away. Until you've got a boot on the ground, and often not even that, populations can hold out. You need full governmental capitulation on top of military defeat to force the issue, and the Russians simply don't have the mass to actually move in. Their theory of victory seems... absent? Thats the kindest way I can put it.

On the other hand, WWII "terror bombing" is generally accepted to have been useful. I don't get the impression that Iran actually has been anything near "terror bombed"; Gaza for sure and Lebanon maybe, but I'm not convinced those could be compared to a hypothetical similar bombing of Ukraine because the baseline living standard in Ukraine is much higher and both surrender to Russia and emigration to Europe would be a significant carrot that is simply not available to Middle Easterners, whose neighbours can't be assed to help them and whose conquerors want to exterminate them.

Even then, I didn't mean to suggest that the optimal strategy involves terror bombing followed by a complete occupation; instead, what they could realistically hope for is terror bombing enabling occupation of some more adjacent parts (Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Sumy and the rest of Donbass are probably an upper bound on what they could achieve with a conventional terror bombing campaign against the whole country + final push without significant conscription) and the rest being so weakened and ruined that it will not be a net threat to them even if they can not extract any negotiated conditions. (EU and NATO could then repair and rearm what is left of Ukraine, but if that much population and resources are gone then doing so might wind up costing so much that it would actually weaken the bloc.)

Then there is the pour encourager les autres element: at this point there is a distinct sense that the Baltics are actively flirting with the idea of baiting the Russians into attacking them, because they figure that fighting against Russia does not actually look so bad away from the frontline and if they can secure NATO or EU support early on the frontline doesn't have to be on their territory (and Estonia's feelings about Narva getting the Vovchansk treatment probably amount to "don't threaten me with a good time" anyway). Building a reputation for indiscriminate/vindictive bombing would probably dampen that enthusiasm.

Then there is the pour encourager les autres element: at this point there is a distinct sense that the Baltics are actively flirting with the idea of baiting the Russians into attacking them, because they figure that fighting against Russia does not actually look so bad away from the frontline and if they can secure NATO or EU support early on the frontline doesn't have to be on their territory (and Estonia's feelings about Narva getting the Vovchansk treatment probably amount to "don't threaten me with a good time" anyway).

"Baltics are just on the verge of baiting a general NATO-Russia war because they are INSANE RABID DOGS" has been a vatnik theme for the entire duration of the war and doesn't seem any closer to actually happening than previously.

Hm. After reviewing the situation, I have to withdraw my implication that the Baltics have gotten particularly more bold since the start of the conflict; I was assuming that the recent Ukrainian drone attacks on St Petersburg used their airspace for transit with their explicit approval, but apparently they themselves still dispute it (and the "EW misdirecting drones there from Russia" story seems no less plausible). There's a steady drumbeat of rather more belligerent rhetoric than the European average and attempts to up the tensions around Kaliningrad from them, but I guess this has been constant since the beginning of the conflict. Sorry.

I often think thats what Russians actually really want to happen. Losing to Ukraine, even NATO supported, is embarrassing. Losing against NATO gives cover for cessation of hostilities. "NATO aggressors were checked at the border by our forces pulled from Ukraine but to preserve life like all Russians do we shall talk like gentlemen". Need to have a small victory (destroying a few finnish lakeside banyas should do the trick) and then rapid escalation of kinetic response to justify rapid retreat across the borders. "If mother russia mobilizes the loyal baltic subjects will surely rise up and rejoin the motherland but that is exactly what perfidious albion wants so we shall deny them their war and settle like gentlemen". Easy out, makes all the previous failures in Ukraine secondary to standing up to NATO.

I don't think that's what Putin - basically an unimaginative relative centrist authoritarian operating within the limits of a demented/apathetic political culture - wants or is ready for.

Eh I'm thinking less putins will and more shoigu having an excuse to present to putin for why a hard pivot from the ukraine meatgrinder is necessary. "NATO! ITS NATO! ITS REALLY NATO I SWEAR!!!"

The maximal case of WW2 mass bombing is the case you raised as a means to move the needle that Russia should employ to win, and my point is such terror bombing didn't work in either destroying civillian morale/resilience (adaptation is quite rapid we can go back to eating roots and huddling around smoking dry wood piles) or meaningfully degrading operational momentum independent of frontline pressure. And thats with saturation bombing actually destroying entire districts, not just the fear of bombs dropping onto a building at a time which characterizes semiprecision (or rather rate-limited) warfare.

Gaza lebanon Iran are raised as examples because they are contemporary and visible and categorized as such, but if such examples are dismissed, which I personally do as well, it introduces new definitional problems. What is this terror bombing the russians should do to effect the needle moving you state can be done? Full constant bombardments of thousands of drones every day to blow a city to smithreeens? The volume of munitions needed to level a city fully with terror bombing exceeds what Russia can generate a year. Tokyo required 2000 tonnes of firebombs to inflame wooden cities, Dresden needed something like 8000 tonnes. Russia doesn't have the airframes or depth to lob that volume, and that's even assuming every package goes through. Even targets within tube artillery range can't get saturated to death because counterbattery and better targrts exist. Severidonetsk and Adviika held out forever despite being in tube artillery range until meat could actually grind through. Citing Kharkiv Sumy or Zaporozhye is insane when the donbass prize of Slovyanks still holds and that was the target since 2014. Fuck, even Kupiansk isnt Russian anymore.

If the Russians could terror bomb Ukraines frontline cities into submission they'd have fucking done so. Its not a lack of will, since Russians gleefully document their atrocities for updoots and donations on VK and telegram, they can't terror bomb because it doesn't fucking work and they don't have the means to do so. Frankly the shahed striking stinks of trying to do something with an available asset, not a true cogent action. Maybe Poland opening all its doors to Ukraine would make people move but really everyone still left in those targets you identify are the stupid and the stubborn (this latter being a particularly slavic trait). They'll die in their soil just like their ancestors before and curse you for trying to drive them out.

You are conflating different levels of city functioning here. You need a far greater level of destruction to get a city in "fortress mode" that is being defended by a military garrison which is being supplied from the outside, than you need to degrade a city in functioning civilian economy mode to the point where its ability to operate military production facilities is significantly degraded. Severodonetsk, Avdiivka etc. were examples of the former: I doubt that, while they were under siege, a significant number of drones, military uniforms or even food ration packs were assembled in either of them. Instead, those workshops are in cities like Kiev, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Vinnitsa, where I gather civilians still can go to the supermarket to buy groceries, go to a 9-5 job in a factory (producing drones, or producing something that will be used by someone else producing drones), and stop by a restaurant for dinner after. However, would the frontline cities you listed held out for so long if the backline cities had stopped supplying them, or even if the volume of supplies had to be cut by half? This seems doubtful to me.

How much bombing does it take to significantly degrade, say, Dnepropetrovsk's civilian economy relative to its current state? I doubt it is actually all that much. We hear reports of facilities in the city being hit all the time, but usually it is repeat hits on hardened Soviet-era factories like Yuzhmash, which evidently don't have a lot of long-lasting effects (and anyhow Yuzhmash's output at this point may not be as important as that of some random drone workshop in a basement somewhere). What if everything being directed at them were instead sent to randomly chosen coordinates in the city's residential areas? Surely this would result in normal civilian life in the city becoming much more dangerous, regular businesses shutting down, and people leaving, making life harder for those who stay behind, and accordingly reducing productivity. Even having to go from "get it from the corner electronics shop" to "put in an order with the military" if your drone assembly shop is missing some widget would entail significant loss of time.

Sorry, real life isn't a command and conquer game where you can 'destroy military production' and 'destroy civillian revenue generation' to stop the frontline. Again, its not like Russia hasn't been trying to degrade Kyiv with mid hundred quantities of missiles and drones. The sheer amount of destruction you need to inflict is, again, in the order of thousands of tonnes of actually on site munitions, not the low hundred if even high ten tonnes that actually make it to the backline. Russia is * already * sending bombs to random buildings both because of poor target knowledge and also because they're just incompetent dickbags. Human adaptability is really high, the history of adaptation to constant bombing has history since the blitz. Fuck, even when Berlin was actually being bombed to oblivion they didn't break, and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't kill the desire of the IJA to make a heroic last stand. Unless you've got boots pressing the ground, terror bombing doesn't work, much less at the tiny quantities Russia brags about sending but strategically are not needle movers.

Do command and conquer games model a civilian economy...? I thought they were a classical RTS, where you just have military production buildings and maybe resource extraction and upgrade research. Even if that were the case, "it's like this in a game" is not an argument that something is not the case in real life. You have to actually articulate what you believe is different. I gave concrete examples of ways in which I believe an indiscriminate bombing campaign would lower military productivity; do you have an argument against that that is not just waving your hands about adaptation and heroism? If not having public transport and shops actually had no adverse impact on military production, why does Ukraine not shut down its public transport and shops and have the people run them produce more drones instead?

You readily, even enthusiastically concede that Russia is being incompetent. Do you think that this incompetence does not extend to their choice of targets and risk assessment, so individual decisions like e.g. throwing a dud Oreshnik at Yuzhmash instead of aiming it at the Khmelnytskyi NPP or downtown Dnipro was a competent decision? In fact, can you state your theory of why they have been bombing conventional power plants but leaving nuclear ones alone? It seems to me that you would have to go through extreme argumentative contortions to fit it with this "whatever targets Russia hasn't hit would make no difference or they are incapable of hitting them" narrative.

What is the civillian economy and backline drone production you advocate for destruction jf not resource generation RTS style. As for conventional versus nuclear its because Russia is attacking power distribution substations, and Russia alreafy controls the largest nuclear power plant but still keeps it running because wars a funny bitch. And Zaphorizia NPP wasnt bombed into inoperation it was seized kinetically and held. Also, Nuclear Power Plants are actually really really really hard to destroy. https://youtube.com/shorts/xESkLydLt3Y Reinforced concrete really is magic, which explains alot about my downstream points.

My argument for the lack of effectiveness of indiscriminate bombing is literally the entirety of military history and the reality we can see right at this moment. Russia is engaging in indiscriminate volume bombing, otherwise what the fuck would you characterize the bi weekly multi hundred shahed and kalibr launches as. They are rate limited by launch platform count, this is literally the best they can do. My argument is that even literally going full out balls to the wall like they did in the beginning of 2022 and didn''t manage to actually destroy the "colocated production facilities" you say exist.

Again I read your argument and I think you seriously just overestimate both the quantity of launch platforms Russia has available to engage in this "terror bombing" you so advocate and the sheer quantity of munitions required to move the needle. I gave concrete info about how much munitions are needed to level a city in true terror bombing terms, and thats for brickwork, not reinforced concrete or soil dampened underground structures. Either Russian terror bombing needs the mass to saturate and truly annihilate a city entirly in a single alpha strike, or they need precision fires to destroy the "production hub" that would effect a military advantage which in the reality of modern warfare simply isn't how things work with distributed logistics and sustainment nodes.

I call Russians stupid because their attack decisions are downstream of incapability, launching Shaheds and Kalibr at backlines because theres a surplus of this easy to launch munition and a shortage of actually good targets combined with insufficiency to actually truly destroy the backline. You're the one just throwing magic 'terror bombing' numbers, I gave the stat of Tokyo reuqiring 1700 tonnes of explosives. The Russian long range bombing package is about 300-700 weapons (usually lower end), with a usually 70% minimum being Shahed style to distract from higher payload Kalibr/Kinzhals. At the uppermost thats 210 Kinzhals and lets generously call it 500kg of pure explosive focused poser in each. Thats not even 55 tonnes of munitions including the 30kg of explosive per Shahed. Even if you x10 that you're not getting a Tokyo firebomb which needed incindearies to create an inferno on flammable wooden buildings.

Amusingly, @No_one went back and deleted all of their posts

Well that is indeed amusing! I was looking forward to Mr. "Majestic Capeshit Arc" having to come up with excuses when his theories almost certainly failed to pan out. Unfortunately it seems his disappearance has more to do with getting modded by Amadan and deleting his posts out of spite or not wanting anyone to follow him to wherever he goes next or whatever. Amadan does a lot of uncontroversially decent modding, but also blatantly violates at least the spirit of the rules often himself, especially that "be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary" bit. I've been more than a little skeptical of at least some of his modding decisions, so it's unfortunate to see No_one who should be here eating humble pie instead get taken out by something unrelated. Alas...

Ukraine is seeing a bit of a PR boom going their way right now, and as someone who's pro-Western I've been enjoying that a bit. But as anyone who's followed this war for long knows, that type of thing tends to happen in cycles. We're in a good cycle for Ukraine right now, but I wouldn't herald it as anything more than a temporary upswing. As always, Perun has probably the best take in that there's indeed some reasons for genuine optimism, but it's simultaneously not worth getting ahead of ourselves.

Unfortunately it seems his disappearance has more to do with getting modded by Amadan and deleting his posts out of spite or not wanting anyone to follow him to wherever he goes next or whatever.

I see, I missed that. In that case I apologize for the insinuation.

Amadan does a lot of uncontroversially decent modding, but also blatantly violates at least the spirit of the rules often himself, especially that "be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary" bit.

A few sharp words is a small price to pay for someone voluntarily spending hundreds of hours of their life arguing with the trolls. Not to mention it's usually in response to another antagonist.

People say Amadan breaks the rules, but I haven't seen it? He seems to be pretty measured to me. Do you have examples?

I'm always sad to lose colorful posters here though. Sucks how few of the prolific folks seem to be able to regulate the heat in their posting.

This is the comment I keep coming back to as pretty clearly violating at least the spirit of "be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary". He includes several personal attacks including the following:

Sometimes I think you just read posts, decide who's expressing the "conservative" (bad) position, and reflexively argue the opposite. a lot of people think you are and always have been a bad faith borderline troll

you are either being astoundingly clueless or just flat out disingenuous.

You have actually spouted a ton of bullshit

Transparent straw man. Stop this kind of disingenuous whining.

If stuff like this isn't against the rules, it should be.

Or when he's warned me of posting short comments. In this case he's justified since it's hard to tell if something is sarcasm on the internet. In my case it wasn't but it could be read as such, so I was fine with the warning. But then he does his own "ok bud" sneer comments which pretty clearly are sarcastic, and it's hard to read the situation as anything other than "rules for thee but not for me".

You can just read through some of his comments and it's not hard to find him being very aggressive like in this conversation:

You will not like getting into an IQ dick-measuring contest with me.

Are you aware that that there are numbers between 0 and 1? And other numbers besides?

Your hypothetical … is ridiculous and, of course, dishonest.

The problem with your farcical debate tactics is...

Do you actually know anything about Palestinians and Muslim culture besides what you have gleaned from the Internet about dogs and ‘honor culture’? No, you do not.

This was just one I found after scrolling on the front page of his profile. He's constantly getting into these hostile back-and-forths, so when I see No_one's profile has this banner: "Amadan is a power-tripping delusional idiot." It makes me think there might be an issue with how he was modded, although all his posts were deleted so I can't check.

I respond with great restraint to people with grudges taking swings at me. You are allowed to have a subjective opinion that is different from my subjective opinion, and I am allowed to assign the value I think is appropriate to your opinion. You are also allowed to message other mods if you want to discuss me or any other mod matters with them. I say this a lot, and I'm serious about it, but no one does this. Maybe because they think it won't do any good, and if the outcome they are hoping for is to see me removed as mod, they are probably correct that they aren't going to get what they want, but we mods really do have internal discussions about members, about reactions to moderation, and about our reactions to members. We do tell each other "Hey, I think you were out of line there" or "I need to back off where this person is concerned" or "If you are getting too worked up about this, maybe you should take a break."

As for No_one, he had one of the longest mod logs on the site. A string of abusive, sneering antagonistic comments with warning after warning and ban after ban, until we told him he was looking at a permaban. I was indeed the one who dropped the final permaban on him, but he was warned or banned by multiple mods at one time or another.

Yes, it is a shame that "interesting" posters flame out and get banned. When we tell them that if they keep doing something they will be banned, they should consider not doing that.

My issue with you isn't your actions as a moderator, it's your response style when you're acting as a normal user. I looked through a few pages of your comments here and all of your moderator actions were taken against posts that either clearly deserved, or were at least reasonably defensible. I'm pretty sure I've never gotten what felt like an unreasonable mod action from you either, even as I've gotten a few from other mods that were a bit iffy. I don't doubt that No_one probably got what he deserved.

But then I get warned for this while you're doing something very similar here and it feels like the traffic cops are speeding.

That's a small example and we could chalk it up to a one-off. My main issue is how often you devolve into making personal attacks when you're having a regular discussion with other people. I've seen you ban other people when they start swearing at each other -- which you should! But then you consistently get right up to that line with some of your posts doing so in practically every other paragraph (accusations of dishonesty, insults, mockery, sarcasm, etc). I'm sure you get a lot of unnecessary flak as a moderator and that can make you want to lash out, but as a moderator you should be held to a somewhat higher standard and not use that as an excuse.

Yes. I understand that you think what you think and you feel what you feel. Does it surprise you that I disagree on every particular? So be it.

I don't see the problem in the first comment. If you've been around online discourse long enough (let alone moderating), the writing mechanics of ideologically charged users become apparent to you, pointing that out a meta level pattern recognition is not a personal attack. And it's Darwin, that guy knew how to press your buttons, and just left after that comment. His last comment on his reddit account, as of me posting this was just 6 hours ago, so the man's peachy but still taking his sweet time getting to his queue.

No_One would never have eaten humble pie. The reason I started posting on this forum was seeing No_ones post about stealth and radars that is cribbed straight from anti-US pro-russian slop about how X band radar reflecting off mountains or clouds can defeat frontal stealth and how IRST proves US stealth is inferior so Russia wins automatically. His responses involved special pleading of "you and i aren't privy to the inner workings of UAC AS the technology is secret so thats how we know it works" type of wishful thinking. Its pure cope straight out of ArmchariWarlord or BigSerge except without the tells of self-insert heroism or dour prose that makes those idiots at least amusing to read. No_ones takes were pure regurgitations of the lowest effort leavings of NCD without the courtesy of logical follow through supposedly the standard of this board or at least being amusingly wrong which is the standard of the internet.

As for the Ukraine war itself, the slow grind out past Pokrovsk just shows the incapability of the Russians to keep goals realistic. They were supposed to break out and lay siege to Kramatorsk after fucking Popasna 3 years ago, and since then its been a steady stream of small towns taken and then slowly meatgrinding forward. Theres alot of Russian meat but also alot of Ukrainian land, with Kramatorsk having multiple clear resupply from the west easily unlike the smaller satellites towns which had a single viable resupply line that if cut off resulted in withdrawal.

Sometime around 2024 the Ukraine war reached the trough of grinding where individual town blocks and 150 person villages were treated as magnificent gains by the Russians. Every fucking Z(slur) acted like this was finally the moment of their ascension and then moved the goalposts when Nothing Ever Happened. Its two old stupid soviet armies slogging each other past the tenth round and neither really understands a strategy to unfuck themselves but also can't take time to figure out how to unfuck themselves. Ukraine 2026 PR boosting is as much an artifact of real successes as much as the Russians reaching effective exhaustion due to lacking any viable doctrine for exploitation.

No_One would never have eaten humble pie. The reason I started posting on this forum was seeing No_ones post about stealth and radars that is cribbed straight from anti-US pro-russian slop about how X band radar reflecting off mountains or clouds can defeat frontal stealth and how IRST proves US stealth is inferior so Russia wins automatically. His responses involved special pleading of "you and i aren't privy to the inner workings of UAC AS the technology is secret so thats how we know it works" type of wishful thinking. Its pure cope straight out of ArmchariWarlord or BigSerge except without the tells of self-insert heroism or dour prose that makes those idiots at least amusing to read. No_ones takes were pure regurgitations of the lowest effort leavings of NCD without the courtesy of logical follow through supposedly the standard of this board or at least being amusingly wrong which is the standard of the internet.

I will almost miss his favorite conspiracy theory about Euromaidan, which hinged on false-flag protestors shooting into the crowd to turn the crowd against the police, which was coupled with his most adamant refusal that there was no way the Ukrainian security state opposed to the protestors would ever be the ones managing those false-flag attacks in order to provide the police a pretext for the crackdown the security state had been lobbying for (because no nationalist would ever do such a thing, donchaknow).

Its just tired pro-Z bullshit that insists the west is the big bad conspirator funding colour revolutions and that actually everyone would be happy to live under any autocrats thumb so long as the west is opposed. What always amusing is that the vatnik brigades are WORDS WORDS WORDS with reams of photos and pointing arrows and histories and obscure engineering diagrams that all sound authoritative until a reader notices something doesn't add up and then a mild review shows literally every assumption rests on an insane assumption. The single phone call of Nuland saying Yushenko was "our guy" as if he was a deliberate CIA plant as opposed to simply a guy that made the calculus on his own recognizance that the Russian puppet brigade was doing a terrible job and he himself wouldn't have had access to that circle so to the other guy we go. Yet a single leak was taken as proof of western perfidy, a narrative repeated TILL NOW in vatnik circles that Ukraine actually really wants to join the motherland and the Azov NAFO fascists are suppressing the will of the people.

I get the anti USA animus can manifest in many ways and the totalizing presence of the USA means every axis is a pair of dynamics to flagplant on but like have an original thought please. Textdumping pages of conspiratard shit is for the heyday of tumblr and at least there was interesting porn adjacent to the weirdo walls of crazy.

WORDS WORDS WORDS with reams of photos and pointing arrows and histories and obscure engineering diagrams

twenty-seven 8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one…

Destroying this one rail junction will cripple Ukraines backline logistics. To understand why here is a brief 10 page history of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth...

Its just tired pro-Z bullshit that insists the west is the big bad conspirator funding colour revolutions and that actually everyone would be happy to live under any autocrats thumb so long as the west is opposed.

I'm surprised by how popular this view is here on The Motte, either as-is or as a lite version where it's not directly stated but heavily implied. I could understand Russians saying that but seeing people who are clearly Americans based on their other comments embrace it is just so weird.

Its all downstream of culture war. The west, especially USA, is a totalizing and omnipresent factor that will always be available as a common referent. Within the USA there exist multitudes too so people anywhere can pick and choose what they like or dislike (usually dislike) about the west to hold an antipode against as contrast. Race mixing sexual degeneracy offends you? Heres good old orthodox slavic cultural conservatism to hold up. Evangelical eschatology stinks? Heres balinese spiritualism as the counter. Techbro oligarchy ruining your economy? Heres chinese state capitalism for you. Media now filled with ugly trannies drawing attention to themselves? Korean goonerslop to the rescue.

This forum is entirely founded due to culture war issues being unignorable so it seems obvious the russia ukraine war just like any war has a culture war colouring to it. Except because it has real kinetic implications and falsifiability the culture war claims can get tested far quickly, and the smarter ones know better than to tie their brain cells to the sinking ship that is Russian military capability.

I suppose it makes some sort of perverted sense if you think everyone except America, Russia and China are just NPC pawn pieces that cannot have their own motivations or act independently.

Truly the second worst part of it was how mind-numbingly boring it could be. You can be a vatnik or a joo poster or whatever else all you want as long as you can mind your manners, but at least be an interesting about it. Interesting people can be interesting when invested in their hobby horses. They shouldn't make people's eyes glaze over predictable and predicted repetitions.

Yeah give me some real red meat for the conspiracy, not just the rehashed stuff. Nuland phone call... Russian language law... Donbass crucifixion...Boris Johnson tearing up peace process... Odessa hotel fire... thats all settled shit that immediately signals someone is holding out like Hiroo Oonada. Give me Zalushnii-Truss love affair, Budanov Azov, Pringles secret army good shit. Something that at least makes it seem the person trying to understand the situation did some novel work instead of just finding the first hits of vatnik wiki and then treated it as truth.

No_One would never have eaten humble pie.

I mean, obviously not. There would have always been another cope, another reason to show why Ukraine's doom was imminent, but for real this time when in reality they'd probably be able to just muddle through again.

I had a vague inkling that he was shoveling Russian propaganda but had never perused that information space so I only had a hunch. Reading your post was interesting (and quite cathartic) for me.

2022 we saw a massive Ukrainian counter offensive in Kharkiv and Kherson. retaking a decently sized city, multiple towns and a sizeable piece of land.

2023 there was the infamous summer offensive but it was large scale and a powerful attack.

2024 Ukraine launched a major offensive into Kursk pressing 24 km into Russia proper.

2026 Ukraine has recaptured some positions that have recently been captured by Russia and were poorly consolidated. Despite Ukraine heavily prioritizing its offensive units when it comes to manpower and equipment they have managed to achieve their most lacklustre counter-attack in the war. Looking at the Russian numbers they are taking roughly as much territory as they were last year. The difference is that the net gain is lower due to a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Meanwhile Ukrainian losses are high while Russian confirmed losses are unusually low.

Russian confirmed losses are unusually low.

Where are you getting that from? I just read today that Russia lost more personnel than they recruited for the fifth straight month. Those are Ukraine's estimates but they're far from 'unusually low'.

Ukraine's equiptment losses are far higher

Ukraine has an enormous number of desertions that are difficult to explain in any other way than soldiers wandering into the steel storm and not returning. Russia is pounding Ukraine with 8000 airstrikes a month. That is one airstrike every 125 meters of frontline every month. These airstrikes aren't random but guided and aimed at Ukrainian positions. One bomb is enough to level an apartment building.

Hey an actual pro Russian, we're low on those since @No_one left, and @ABigGuy4U is more ironic as far as I can tell and mostly thinks that smaller countries shouldn't mess with their local superpower. If Russia is revealed to be a poorly performing regional power rather than super, he might not be on your team anymore, but that's up to him of course.

Do you have a source for that table? It doesn't seem to match much else, but it could be accurate. Stranger things have happened, I just can't remember when.

Certainly the equipment losses gap has closed, but that appears to be because Russia is critically low on much of its kit and now sends handfuls of men on foot to infiltrate and try to take ground, anything bigger died or is being held back from Ukraine's kill zone. However, I think the table might just be wrong.

Could I check, why do you think that the rate of Russia's advance has collapsed this year? Do you think Ukraine hitting the refineries and rear logistics lines with new drones are a concern? Do you think the pro Russia military bloggers who are saying the situation has deteriorated to the point that either mobilization must occur or peace be signed by fall are deluded?

Powerpoint slides with no attribution or methodology breakdown shared on reddit aren't considered authoritative sources? Especially for the hundreds of civillian vehicles blown up counted as military vehicles which is kinda rich coming from russians doing the kherson safari. Russian telegram calls ukrainian children 'maggots' as well and revel in pictures of dead ukrainians (they don't condone rape fantasies so that makes them better than arabic telegram), so maybe civillian apartment blocks are considered barracks too.

Russian rate of advance collapsing is obviously because Russia is consolidating and carefully cultivating resources in the background while putting pressure on the khokhols, so once the Ukrainians are sufficiently exhausted they'd be wiped out easily like the vermin they always were compared to glorious Russia. Anytime now, the mighty rush will be sprung. Aaaaaany day now. Aaaaaaaaaaaany day....

I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s ironic. I would say that I think the war was foolish and probably avoidable. And that Ukraine could have easily ended up like Turkey, balancing NATO and Russian interests and getting rich in the process. I also think that Russia will win, barring some major black swan like NATO overtly entering the war with ground troops, nuclear weapons, Russian economic collapse, etc.

Russia is critically low on much of its kit and now sends handfuls of men on foot to infiltrate and try to take ground

That’s not necessarily because they’re low on gear, that’s just the meta in the age of drones and cheap cruise missiles. This is how Ukraine fights now too after their larger scale tactics failed. Ironically, it’s a hell of a lot like what everyone in the 1950s predicted the nuclear age battlefield would like: everything done with small units because big assaults would get zotted with tactical devices. Ukraine and Russia are actually adapting a lot of their old Soviet nuclear land battle strategies for the Ukraine war.

Russia's advance has collapsed this year?

I really don’t think this is true. Russia has made major advances in the south, and around Kramantorsk, and some new fronts in the North. Ukraine has done a genuinely good job of reducing the Kupyansk cauldron these past few months, which is a good example of what they could have achieved more of if they hadn’t wasted three years and a trillion dollars trying to LARP the Fulda Gap.

Well, I guess we'll have to wait and see for the next quarterly update then, or another couple, to resolve much of our differences.

Has anything recently made you update in favor of Ukraine? You were making very strong predictions that they were on the ropes, and they should be collapsing around now right? Pokrovsk fell, they lost their key logistics hub by your analysis, but Russia is literally stuck there. Anything at all updating you away from your maximalist Russia will take Lviv pitch? Russia seems to be seeking terms well below that, and are messaging internally to that effect, maybe they know something you do not?

And, I can reply to all you posted above if you care, but on a specific point you must know it's pure distilled cope that Russia's doctrine now of tiny foot infiltration is anything other than desperation and a lack of any other choice? Like, you posted:

Ironically, it’s a hell of a lot like what everyone in the 1950s predicted the nuclear age battlefield would like: everything done with small units because big assaults would get zotted with tactical devices. Ukraine and Russia are actually adapting a lot of their old Soviet nuclear land battle strategies for the Ukraine war.

That's not even close to Soviet nuclear doctrine, which was deeply mechanized (the BMP was designed for their conception of a nuclear battlefield, famously) and focused on rapid maneuver of units at least at battalion strength, though moving at greater dispersion prior to contact and concentrating again before the attack. I know that, others reading know that, and you must know that. Why bother posting it?

On a lighter note, any predictions for the next Dune movie, after the trailer dropped? I really liked part 1 as a Dune fan, agreed with you that part 2 massacred the character of Chani, and now they have to be back in love? Would have worked better having her be a true believer for sure. Plus, Messiah is a brutal book to adapt, seeing it's mostly politics, monologues and inner thoughts. I do love me some Dennis though, maybe he can cook up something still.

Has anything recently made you update in favor of Ukraine?

On the actual line of contact? No, not really. There are some positive developments. Zelensky seems to have gotten his house in order; and realized he’s the President of Ukraine, not Joe Biden’s press secretary. Ukraine’s deep strike capability seems to have developed from a cosmetic show of force into an actual problem for Russia, although I don’t know if it’s a big enough problem to help. And the fact that they haven’t spectacularly collapsed yet implies some level of durability.

The problem here is that the war has bad fundamentals for Ukraine, and the fundamentals haven’t changed. Every day burns through limited manpower. Every day the line collapses a little more—and if you actually watch the map on a daily basis you’ll see that the advances are slow but pretty steady.

Pokrovsk fell, they lost their key logistics hub by your analysis, but Russia is literally stuck there.

Pokrovsk fell, and then now the two major fortress cities it supplied (Huiliapole and Sloviansk-Kramantorsk line) are falling as well.

On a lighter note, any predictions for the next Dune movie, after the trailer dropped?

This is a transparent attempt to get me banned. The moderation staff has enjoined me from speaking on this topic. I don’t care. I will not be silenced. The whole spirit of the Dune books to show what the spirit of humanity is capable of, unrestrained by the machine and the xenos. To them take that story and cast an ayylmao actress in the lead role crosses the line from mere species-mixing propaganda to intention humiliation. And Disclosure Day is releasing at the exact same time! Why couldn’t they have just cast her in that??

Messiah is a brutal book to adapt, seeing it's mostly politics, monologues and inner thoughts.

I think that’s why they re-tooled the jihad to be more of an actual war and less of a slow-rolling political purge. It injects some action. It’s probably more realistic too, the ugly stuff tends to happen when the Revolution is genuinely under threat.

Meanwhile Ukrainian losses are high while Russian confirmed losses are unusually low.

It seems like you snuck this in so you can compare unconfirmed Ukrainian losses against confirmed Russian losses?

It doesn't seem "snuck" to me; he did specify it overtly. But sure, it's a questionable point to make.

The Cat in the Hat Comes to Court

WSJ Article on cultural and political strife in jury rooms

(Note: I tried to archive(dot)is the link, but it kept failing. If one of you internet wizards could post a non-paywalled link, I'd move to dismiss all charges appreciate it).

The article does the best that journalism can do today; it begins with a pretty fucking cringe anecdote (more on that below), then generalizes, then backs up the generalization with some "stats" on jury surveys. In weaves in the beginning anecdote throughout the piece to keep the reader engaged. It isn't deliberately misleading or negligently undereported, it's just sort of ... meatless.

The TLDR is that the post-COVID cultural / political situation is making it difficult for juries to come to agreements when, ostensibly, the should be or previously were able. The plural of "anecdote" isn't data and, thanks to the many law-pilled Mottizens, it's plain to see how, if one wants to, it's easy to cherry pick cases (and jury conduct, I would presume) that are absolutely wild. Does that mean it's a real trend? Perhaps, perhaps not. Some of the "experts" quoted kind of gesture in that direction, but the article fails to make a definitive case.

Back to the fuckery

The opening of the article details how a grown-ass jury forewoman decided to make halloween costumes for herself and other jurors and then, with the help of a Boomer Karen, hen-pecked everyone into showing up in red/black shirts and then posing for a group photo in the "costumes":

A Florida jury hearing an opioid-related case planned a group costume inspired by a pair of Dr. Seuss characters, Thing One and Thing Two. Juror No. 2, a graphic designer, made each panelist a “Thing” sign that matched that person’s juror number, and the group agreed to wear black or red shirts.

The triggering thing here, with those who have eyes to see, isn't some sort of pearl clutching around the "sanctity of being entrusted as jurors." It is that a cross-generational alliance of the worst kinds of women guilt-forced everyone else to perform a MANDATORY FUN TIME kafabe.

This is the same character as HR-led corporate initiatives like "dress up as your favorite supreme court justice! (Note: all costumes must be Ruth Bader-Ginsberg)" or "Office pajama day!" or, of course, the LGTBQ+ month. No, they don't actually force you to take part (unless, you know, they fucking do) but if you don't the passive-agressive, begging-the-question bullying becomes its own special torment. This is the infamous office space "pieces of flair" absurdity transformed into a political purity test.

When posters like @faceh directly and others (....me) indirectly assert that "women aren't the problem, but the problem is with women" this is what we mean. This is jury duty. These people are strangers to one another. That these two women would find no qualms in trying to enforce their own personal tastes and attitudes onto strangers is exactly the kind of hyper-entitlement, women-are-wonderful thinking that seems to be creating serious issues in societal competency and functioning.

I mean, it's silly but hard to get worked up over. Women are always trying to bully men into emasculating themselves, if you've reached adulthood without the ability to resist that.......I got nothin for you. This is kindergarten stuff.

If anyone is confused or autistic, try a warm smile and the word "no". It's the most beautiful word in the language. Let it roll off your tongue. Let it flow through you. "No". Do not explain. Do not apologize. Do not elaborate. Never adorn your "no" with anything further. Say it cheerfully, as if someone offered you a drink you don't like. "No". You aren't in school anymore. You are an adult, a free person. Tell them no. Choose, and communicate.

Don't whine that you didn't have the intestinal fortitude to resist the social pressure of a middle-aged woman. And certainly don't whine that culture and the government didn't tell you it was ok to resist the social pressure of a middle-aged woman. You don't need them, you've got me. Tell them no. It really is just that easy!

edit: By hilarious happenstance, I'm on jury duty this week, haven't been picked yet. We'll see how it goes, but I guaranfuckentee I won't be in a costume by the end.

If anyone is confused or autistic, try a warm smile and the word "no".

Nancy had it right: just say no. I hate MANDATORY FUN ("MANDATORY FUN could be here," he thought) and I simply say no to it. Once there is a sufficient number of women in an office, they will start coming up with mandatory fun, but their social pressure is helpless against a solid "no." They'll pout and stamp their little feet and then they'll get over it (or they won't; I don't care).

The jury story is especially amusing. A total stranger trying to apply that kind of social pressure? It would start with a polite no but rapidly escalate to a firm "go fuck yourself." I deal with far worse people than her on a daily basis trying to bully me--she doesn't stand a chance.

Consider for a moment that Jury's aren't random samplings. And these juries were probably specifically selected for being push overs and afraid to be "mean". Best way to get an acquittal is to put people on the jury utterly incapable of dealing out even just punishment if it hurts a feeling.

After two weeks of getting passed over, you may be right. Can you believe these scrubs don't want the venerable JTarrou to judge their cases? I bet they're intimidated by my intellect!

Consider for a moment that Jury's aren't random samplings.

They aren't completely random but they are essentially random off voter lists/licensed drivers/etc. Like yes there's some homeless guy without a car or other form of state ID that will never get called, but they're few and far between.

Both sides have a limited number of peremptory challenges to remove jurors they see as more subtly problematic. If they're too biased (in a way not reflective of the general population) then it's either just because of pure chance or because one side fucked up.

"'No.' is a complete sentence."

Or, you know, have some fun.

I’ve worked in retail my entire career, sometimes it’s fun to have a swim weekend and wear a bathing suit.

Sometimes it’s fun to wear a pink lay (pink is my favorite color).

It’s not about what you’re doing, it’s about how you carry yourself doing it.

If you don’t want to do it, don’t.

But if you don’t know if you want to do it, try it. Don’t be so negative (not you of course, the random make belief person we’re talking to here) - everyone knows retail is purgatory, it’s just ok to be goofy.

I’ve noticed men are literally afraid to do these things rather than not wanting to do them.

Tho I agree with what you’re saying, there’s just something off and jarring about it as well.

I do hate the whiny ‘ they made me do it ‘ - it is the worst possible make trait.

1: We're talking about juries here, not retail

2: No, your outfit isn't "fun".

3: Men are afraid to do what? Wear pink? My knee supports for BJJ are pink, cancer thing for one of our people. Choking a sweaty dude in spandex, now that's fun.

This is the same character as HR-led corporate initiatives like "dress up as your favorite supreme court justice! (Note: all costumes must be Ruth Bader-Ginsberg)"

Michael bursts in late, dramatically throwing open the door. He's wearing a full black robe, a terrible fake white mustache/eyebrows combo. He's gone full blackface as Clarence Thomas. He's even carrying a poorly made "originalist" gavel made out of a stapler and some electrical tape.Michael (proudly, to the camera crew): "See? This is how you do diversity! Not everyone has to be Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Some of us are brave enough to celebrate all the justices. Clarence Thomas, the man, the myth, the conservative icon who overcame adversity. I'm showing solidarity!"

https://archive.ph/dr885

Not surprised they avoided the entire topic of race-based jury nullification, which seems to have become more frequent post-BLM. Out of curiosity I tried digging up some stats on the prevalence of the phenomenon (eg. conviction rate of black defendants if they have a majority/plurality black jury) but everything seems to reference a single study from Florida, which of course claimed that white jurors are the only biased ones.

There is an extreme dearth of studies because (a) everybody knows what they’ll find - there was a major UK study about 20 years ago on juries that found the exact result you’d expect - and (b) even for the right it’s not worth the political fallout.

In the long term, jury trials are not viable in a multiracial society with additional sectarian tensions. Lee Kuan Yew knew this when he decided Singapore wouldn’t have jury trials despite its legal system based on common law. The Indians knew this when they decided to abolish jury trials in India, where the same was true. The Malaysians knew this when they abolished them after years of cases decided along racial lines in 1995, where again the same was and is true. Interestingly Hong Kong still has them, although that’s arguably because the population is relatively homogenous ~90% Cantonese speakers.

I think jury trials will be abolished in the UK before long. The left hates them in rape trials (and tried to abolish them for rape cases in Scotland recently) and the right increasingly dislike them because several juries in left wing British cities nullified verdicts in BLM and eco-warrior related vandalism cases even when the judge essentially instructed the jury to vote guilty. There was also a case where a leftist trade unionist called for slitting the throats of his political enemies and was cleared by a jury last year.

But in the US? I think the system is too ingrained. Maybe there will be attempts to alter jury composition, but I can’t see them being abolished.

The jury system de jure will not change. That would take constitutional amendment levels of effort over decades. Non-starter.

But de facto, I think you could see something like fewer and fewer cases going to trial because either (or both!) the defense and prosecution can see a very clear way in which a jury trial could break down and result either in a mistrial or a significant bias in one direction or another. Sure, if it's the latter, then whoever would benefit from it - defense or prosecution - might want to push for a trail. If jury (mis)conduct gets bad enough, however, that's grounds for a mistrial or appeal. So, there is risk-on-risk baked in.

Thus, more and more plea bargains in criminal proceedings and more and more settlements in the civil world (IANAL, but I believe civil litigation has seen this happen already as the costs of a full civil trial, especially for corporate issues, are simply almost never worth it unless the potential payouts are massive).

So, effectively, it's not a jury trial. It's an informed negotiation back and forth between counsel on both sides. For smarter lawyers who see that AI will, to some extent, reduce the value of their legal paperwork practice, they will double down on cultivating relational capital with colleagues and other actors within the judicial system. A "good lawyer", in the future, will be the same as it ever was -- a guy who knows lots of people down at the courthouse.

I think this is quite likely. Already, most indictments in cities end in plea bargains rather than trials. Prosecutors love winning and hate losing, so you can have a drift of behavior where you get more plea bargains without needing to change any laws on the books anywhere; just a stochastic shift in prosecutorial and defense strategy.

And where prosecutors don't go to trial, whatever "injustice" there is there gets socialized as a cost across society.

Picking where you live is important.

Out of curiosity I tried digging up some stats on the prevalence of the phenomenon

Didn't someone post/link to something related here a little while ago? I remember it specifically talking about the OJ Simpson trial, but that really doesn't help with a google search.

This is the one thing I hate about modern corporate culture. It’s downstream of a similar concept in modern culture— that acting your age is now seen as being stuffy or something. And everyone must join in the mandatory fun of cosplay and coordinating outfits, and acting like you’re 12 years old. Like, if I’m the defense attorney, im looking at stuff like this as grounds for a mistrial. If they’re not taking the process of being on a criminal jury seriously enough to act like adults in the courtroom, how can they possibly be assumed to be paying attention to the case and taking the instructions to not talk about the case seriously if they’re coordinating cosplay outfits?

I would hope the judge immediately postponed the trial for three hours while the jurors went home to change, after castigating them for not taking their responsibility seriously and promsing to hold anyone who violates court rules for professional attire in contempt

I wonder how much of this dynamic infects actual jury rulings. How many "unanimous" rulings have happened because one or two Karens made up their minds and then hen-pecked everyone else into agreeing with them using social tactics instead of logic and reason?

I often compare women's social power to men's physical power. Imagine if a couple of burly men had physically intimidated all of the women into dressing in bikinis or slutty cleavage suits. Would people think it was cute and quirky then? Would people believe that it was a fair and impartial jury behind closed doors?

How many "unanimous" rulings have happened because one or two Karens made up their minds and then hen-pecked everyone else into agreeing with them using social tactics instead of logic and reason?

Isn't this dynamic just the plot of Twelve Angry Men? It's not strictly bad in the context it's played in, nor is it necessarily gendered.

MathWizard's comment is correct. I first encountered the film in a logic class I took in middle school, as a way to contrast the emotional thinking of most of the jury against the logical, evidence-based thinking of the protagonist who wins more and more jurors over by forcing skeptical analysis of the evidence and witnesses and their statements.

As a complete aside, I've had thoughts at various points over the past decade+ that a modern remake of 12 Angry Men, featuring 12 women on a rape case with a fratty white male defendant would be appropriate. There's a lot of kinks, like how an all-woman jury doesn't make sense like an all-man jury does in the 1950s, and obviously evidence and witnesses to a rape would be quite different from the ones for murder. Maybe in a few years, I'll be able to have Claude generate a script, and in a few more years, have Grok generate a feature-length film of it.

As a complete aside, I've had thoughts at various points over the past decade+ that a modern remake of 12 Angry Men, featuring 12 women

They could then wear CUTE group costumes together and take CUTE photos together without Problematic killjoys like Mr. Puig ruining their FUN! Yayyy!

There's a lot of kinks

Kinks, eh? That’s one way to get people to watch your movie with a cast of twelve women.

A movie called 12 Angry Women would likely cause some online women to be… displeased… even if it’s because the title format was inherited from its predecessor. Whatever it’s called won’t stop Chuds from referring to it as “Hoes Mad (x12),” though.

rape case with a fratty white male defendant

Accuser could be a black stripper/prostitute to tee-up the parallels to Duke Lacrosse. After a difficult Not Guilty verdict, twist would be that the fratty white male was guilty all along, but got off due to him having the 1) privilege of hiring an expensive, amoral defense lawyer and 2) the just, goodhearted ladies of the jury, under the trickery and manipulations of the toxic defense lawyer, not wanting to risk sending an innocent man to prison. Fade to a black screen with factoids such as “one in four college women are raped every year” before rolling the credits.

Starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hatheway, Lupita Nyong’o, Florence Pugh, Rosamund Pike, Jennifer Lawrence, Zoe Saldana, Sandra Oh, Marisa Tomei, Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney, and Zendaya as the jurors. Jacob Elordi as the defendant and Robert Downey Junior as his lawyer. Cynthia Eviro as the accuser/victim.

Whatever it’s called won’t stop Chuds from referring to it as “Hoes Mad (x12),” though.

That's the porn parody, at least if this film turns out to be well-received enough to deserve one.

Another aside: there's a clip of Ken Jennings on Jeopardy that goes viral every once in a while, where he gets a "question" wrong, for the "answer" of something like "this word for a gardening tool can also refer to a sexually promiscuous person," and he gets it wrong for saying "what is a hoe?" Of course, the correct "question" was "what is a rake?" This confuses a lot of people right now, especially young people, who believe that both should be correct (and/or don't even know that "rake" would be correct). Back when that episode of Jeopardy was being recorded, the proper spelling of the slang term for "whore" was actually "ho," but it was almost immediately after that that "hoe" also became a correct spelling due to social media blowing up and people typing such words out much more often than before and naturally going for "hoe" as a familiar word (and possibly spellcheck). I'm just reminded of this anytime I see the term "hoe" these days, not referring to the gardening tool.

I feel like there's a Russell Conjugation to be had here: "I stand by my convictions in the name of justice, you are irritatingly stubborn, he is a bullying Karen subverting the justice process."

Although I will add that 12 Angry Men did indeed involve logic and reason as well as stubbornness and emotion, but I'd imagine very few people think of their own behavior or a verdict they agree with as ever not being logical.

The plot of Twelve angry men is almost entirely logic-based and not emotion based. They spend the entire movie logically dismantling, or at least calling into doubt, every piece of the prosecution's case. Jury members are supposed to attempt to convince the others of their view in order to establish a unanimous verdict, but this convincing should be based on the logic of the case. A battle guided by the beauty of our weapons. Charismatic and socially manipulative people are disproportionately convincing relative to the truthiness of their words. So are people who threaten others with their fists. In general, but doubly so in a jury, these tactics should be discouraged so that people will be persuaded by arguments proportional to their truthiness instead of the charisma of person speaking with random opinions.

Isn't this dynamic just the plot of Twelve Angry Men? It's not strictly bad in the context it's played in, nor is it necessarily gendered.

Yes, and it’s why that movie is dumb. The final recalcitrant juror is induced to change his mind not by the others successfully convincing him, but by the others socially ostracising and refusing to talk to him. Tell me your movie was written by a woman without telling me it was written by a woman…

(*Disclaimer: Twelve Angry Men was written not by a woman but by a communist nu-male)

The final recalcitrant juror is induced to change his mind not by the others successfully convincing him, but by the others socially ostracising and refusing to talk to him.

You are misremembering.

The racist juror is turned by social ostracism, but is not the last to be convinced. (Although I think you could make the case that he realized how ridiculous and unreasonable he was being as the evidence for the defendant's innocence was building up, and his strong priors for guilt based on the defendant's race prevented him from proper Bayesian updates until the ostracism.)

The final juror is convinced when he realizes he emotionally needed the defendant to be guilty, because he reminded him too much of his son or something.

The final recalcitrant juror is induced to change his mind not by the others successfully convincing him, but by the others socially ostracising and refusing to talk to him.

This is just reality. Argument rarely convinces anyone, unless you count the argument from authority and argument from force.

Huh? Doesn't the movie start with one dissenting "not guilty" and spend the next 90 or so minutes convincing everyone with arguments?

It does but the final thing is shaming the last guy for doing a hecking racism. From a legal POV the movie is absolute shlock.

The final guy wasn't shamed for racism. That was a different, old man. And the shaming and ostracism was in support of logic and evidence, because his rationale for finding the defendant guilty was just racism, in the face of the logic and evidence that they had gone over the movie up to that point. I also don't recall anyone shaming him for his guilty vote, in order to change it; it was his terrible logic they were shaming him for, since the defendant's race couldn't possibly have anything to do with his guilt.

The actual last guy had some personal trauma from his son disavowing him, and the defendant was on trial for the murder of his father. His sticking with the guilty vote due to this, too, was irrational, because his personal history couldn't possibly have anything to do with the unrelated defendant's guilt.

I wonder how much of this dynamic infects actual jury rulings.

Many of them, and it's understood to be just fine and part of the process. Jacobson v. Henderson, 765 F. 2d 12 (2nd.Cir 1985) on why post-trial juror statements aren't admissible to attack a verdict:

the court observed that although "articulate jurors may intimidate the inarticulate, [and] the aggressive may unduly influence the docile," "scarcely any verdict might remain unassailable, if ... statements [to impeach a jury's verdict] were admissible."

Anderson v. Miller, 346 F. 3d 315 (2nd.Cir 2003) is a fun read on how far such behavior can go and still not result in a reversal:

[JUROR No. 11]: The whole group; I felt threatened by them. One time a guy almost got in a fight. They was always yelling at me. I felt afraid; they wouldn't listen to my evidence, what I said. When I asked things to be listened to they said that they didn't want to listen to it; that it would just be for me. I have a letter right here, where I asked — I was gonna send it in to you to come home yesterday; they told me that I wasn't gonna leave, they weren't gonna allow me to leave and I was afraid.

[Juror 2]: I hope you gonna say guilty today because I'm tired of being here.... Everyone was yelling there opinions, and everytime [two (?) words illegible] mine everyone would scream again I was nervous and stressed out with everybody yelling so I first went along with everybody. But then I felt guilty for doing what I did because that was on my conscience. They pressured me to change my vote because we are not going anywhere. I change my vote because I was afraid and pressured, I'm only 20 yrs old and I've never been on a jury, and they were hollering and calling me names. I couldn't take the pressure I just wanted to get away.

There's a difference between something legal and something being good/moral/commendable/encouragement-worthy. The law can't place restrictions on jury-making procedures barring the most clear cut and unambiguous abuses (like actual violence) without slippery sloping itself into corruption and self-masturbatory feedback loops.

I am not the law. I can judge people for being bad and making bad decisions and suggest they are bad people who should be mocked and discouraged from behaving the way they behave. And discourage people from listening to them, because their power is anti-memetic. If obnoxious Karens are actually distorting the law in significant quantities, and people were made aware of this, then people could oppose it by being extra stubborn and stick to their principles when facing obnoxious Karens, with more confidence that their resistance is helping the law and not making them be the bad person the Karen says they are.

I don't think we should make Karen behavior illegal. The law isn't flexible or precise enough to diagnose it and curtail it without horrible overreach. I think we, as people, should call it out and shame it when we find it, across all of society.

I don't think we should make Karen behavior illegal. The law isn't flexible or precise enough to diagnose it and curtail it without horrible overreach. I think we, as people, should call it out and shame it when we find it, across all of society.

Unfortunately Karens, by definition, are the arbiters of shame.

Karens are a particular type of people with particular types of shaming tactics. Trying to shame people does not tautologically cause you to become a Karen. There are countering forces, they're just weaker due to things like having less free time or more libertarian attitudes on behavior and so devote less time and effort to shaming people who actually need it.

That's how juries are supposed to work.

The real question is why some 70 year old is working for the government - these boomers need to move on!

When Juror No. 5 showed up in a navy blazer, Laurey Trailer, who later became forewoman, got annoyed. The juror, Gerson Puig, begrudgingly put on his “Thing 5” sign—then took it off right after the picture. “I left it where it belonged, in the jury room,” said Puig, 54 years old, a self-employed restaurant consultant.

“I knew at that moment we would have a problem,” said Trailer, 70, an inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration.

This is why I don't fly.

The opening of the article details how a grown-ass jury forewoman decided to make halloween costumes for herself and other jurors and then, with the help of a Boomer Karen, hen-pecked everyone into showing up in red/black shirts and then posing for a group photo in the "costumes"

Not even trying to beat the meme-gender allegations. At least it's wholesome to see that the female penchant for regarding the world as a playground for being cute and doing cute, fun things isn't gate-kept by age.

I was also paywalled from the article, but perhaps I can remain blissfully ignorant in hoping that a mistrial was declared here. "The Court hereby finds a manifest necessity for a mistrial due to certain members of the jury being fucking retarded."

This is the same character as HR-led corporate initiatives like "dress up as your favorite supreme court justice! (Note: all costumes must be Ruth Bader-Ginsberg)"... No, they don't actually force you to take part (unless, you know, they fucking do) but if you don't the passive-agressive, begging-the-question bullying becomes its own special torment.

Tsk tsk, sounds like someone is lacking in team-player and #Ruthkanda Forever spirit.

That these two women would find no qualms in trying to enforce their own personal tastes and attitudes onto strangers

The natural eventuality of never having been told "no" all your life.

It is that a cross-generational alliance of the worst kinds of women guilt-forced everyone else to perform a MANDATORY FUN TIME kafabe.

Although I've generally liked my coworkers across various jobs/companies—as a soft act of rebellion over the years, I've increasingly abstained from work-related mandatory fun sessions, especially if they occur afterhours.

When I first started working I liked attending these for free food and drinks and to chat-up chicks I might not get to otherwise, but nowadays I'm way too its_all_so_tiresome.jpg'd out. I'm already tied up by a given company for 40+ hours a week, to have to further monkeydance and labor Emotionally for it in what would otherwise be my free time feels like a humiliation ritual. I can buy my own food and drinks and meet my own chicks in my free time.

but perhaps I can remain blissfully ignorant in hoping that a mistrial was declared here. "The Court hereby finds a manifest necessity for a mistrial due to certain members of the jury being fucking retarded."

It was a mistrial due to hung jury.

See also: the UK trying to eliminate juries ("in cases where a convicted defendant would be imprisoned for up to three years").

I'm generally in favor of the jury. It's "the worst system except for all others that have been tried": other than a few high-profile cases (like OJ Simpson), it seems most juries reach reasonable conclusions. A jury is harder to corrupt than a judge, since it's 12 people who are supposed to be ordinary citizens. They tend more lenient (and if the defendant is clearly innocent and the jury convicts them anyways, the judge can and will vacate their ruling), but I'm generally against convicting someone unless they're clearly guilty. Less efficiency isn't a big issue, because most trials are avoided via plea bargain or dropped prosecution.

I also think civil cases against corporations should only need a certain ratio of jurors, because a wrongful conviction is less severe. Criminal cases should be nearly or totally unanimous.

My understanding is that the judge is very powerful in the courtroom: if jurors are bickering or not acting serious, the judge can sanction or replace them, or order a retrial with an entirely new jury. For example, here the judge should've ordered "no costumes".

EDIT after actually reading the article:

In summary, the focused (costume incident) case is about hospitals suing opioid pharmacies. Two jurors wanted to acquit the pharmacies based on the law, the remaining six wanted to convict presumably based on morals. The verdict needed to be unanimous, but apparently the case can be retried (because the parties plan to do so).

Personally, I really wouldn't care either way how this case resolved. In a criminal case that requires unanimity, if jurors are deadlocked between law and feelings, the defendant can only be acquitted, which I generally support whether law or feeling are on their side. A civil case sometimes (in some jurisdictions) doesn't require unanimity.

I think the main issues here are jurors harassing others, violating court rules (using AI), and complaining about other jurors making them feel unsafe. The judge can and should handle these; it seems like they mostly did, and some jurors are just upset that the case didn't end how they wanted.

the UK trying to eliminate juries

More details

It's also not just the juries either that decide your fate. If you're clearly innocent you have the prosecutors who probably aren't going to charge you to begin with (most don't want to risk ruining their record and triage stronger cases), the grand jury (which while normally considered easy to get past, we've seen that success rates fall dramatically with explicit weaponization), then the jury and judge, and then the whole appeals process.

And even if that all goes wrong, you can appeal to the president/governor. And even if that goes wrong, you might still be able to appeal to public opinion and put enough pressure on the rest of the system that they drop your case.

If you can't win despite all that, it's probably because you're either truly guilty or because you got insanely unlucky and are practically indistinguishable from truly guilty.

I somewhat agree. But do governors routinely pardon normal cases that fail to get into the news cycle usually because there is a scissor statement involved?

Political cases which I would consider Chauvin the gold standard literally have different results depending on what state it occurs in. In Texas I would say with 80% probability he would not have been charged. Likely another 80% if he was charged he would win at trial. And probably a 100% chance the go vet or would pardon him. Obviously different results in Minnesota.

I believe I have much different views on the system of guilt/innocent 20 years ago than I would today. It very much depends on where you are charged.

OK- Texas, while politically conservative, is on the moderate or centrist end on race issues. Chauvin would have been charged here, would have been convicted, and the governor would not have overturned the conviction. Abbott wants to keep the black political machine as demobilized as possible and crucifying a single cop is more than worth it to him(this is probably why the Texas GOP changed the primary voting rules to suppress turnout in Jasmine Crockett's strongest county even though it meant Talarico would win).

There's this 'Russia effect' where because we're big and take vocal conservative stances on a few issues people tend to point to us as based ethnonationalist cryptofascist radical ideologues. We aren't. The Texas government is not going to protect a cop with that many previous use of force complaints in the face of the niggers rioting, even if the elites put it that way in private.

A GOP governor who didn’t pardon him IMO would likely get primaried. It would be worth it to me. Abbott pardoned a far more guilty guy in Daniel Perry. History seems to strongly point towards a pardon.

…You think Chauvin is popular among the GOP base?

Anything that is a scissor statement between parties becomes popular with the other party.

I love Chauvin. He’s the innocent guy the left hung because of their cultish ideology.

Chauvin is mostly seen as a bad cop who killed a person by normie republicans. This isn’t a scissor statement; approval of Derek chauvin is at columbine fanclub level lows.

More comments

I somewhat agree. But do governors routinely pardon normal cases that fail to get into the news cycle

Yeah, it's not too often but lots of pardons can happen this way. You don't have to get into the news cycle, you can literally file an application with the governors office/state clemency board/etc.

Now it might take a few years, they don't really prioritize that often (in part because most applications are bullshit and they are truly guilty and don't have a good case!) but it happens.

because there is a scissor statement involved?

Wouldn't controversy increase the chance of a news cycle?

Political cases which I would consider Chauvin the gold standard literally have different results depending on what state it occurs in. In Texas I would say with 80% probability he would not have been charged. Likely another 80% if he was charged he would win at trial. And probably a 100% chance the go vet or would pardon him. Obviously different results in Minnesota.

I'm not sure "my imaginary probabilities" is a good source for this sort of topic.

I 100% mean if their is a scissor statement it’s more likely to get pardoned if your in the correct state.

Do you seriously disagree that the results of Chauvins guilt/innocent would not be different in Texas or other red state (same evidence/same event/etc). I 100% think he’s completely innocent. Even if say it occurred in Austin and he got convicted Gov Abbot would have had a ton of pressure to pardon him.

You're in the minority view even among just republicans there.

Also consider that it's not just state charges, but also federal charges he was found guilty for. He went through two different juries and appeals processes (including the US supreme court with its 6-3 conservative majority denying the appeal), so your confidence that there's no basically no chance of him even being charged yet alone convicted in a red state seems inaccurate.

A huge amount of that is the framing of the case and how it was argued. If it happens in another state it's likely covered quite differently in the media and different evidence is admitted

A huge amount of that is the framing of the case and how it was argued. If it happens in another state it's likely covered quite differently in the media

Now whether or not the mechanisms to address media bias in jurors are effective can be worth a discussion, but there are plenty of mechanisms for this. Jurors are straight up not allowed to even read the news for instance. I'm sure some might anyway, but there's only so much you can prevent before going full authoritarian on the jury.

This is not some new problem that only occured with the Chauvin case. The possible effects of media on a jury, and how to mitigate it, have been discussed for centuries in common law systems.

and different evidence is admitted

Media bias would not change that one single bit.

45% of Republicans find him innocent. Which means he absolutely would be innocent in Texas. And it’s likely a much higher rate of not guilty in Republicans who watched the entire 30 minute police interaction who know he did things like saying he couldn’t breathe BEFORE any force was applied or who read the entire medical report and know he had a potentially fatal does of fentanyl in his system. It’s probably close to 95% or even 100% of Republicans who find him innocent.

Like your own study completely supports my position. The 45% of GOP who find him innocent are likely the far more online and active Republicans. The exact people that would heavily pressure a Republican governor to pardon him.

45% of Republicans find him innocent. Which means he absolutely would be innocent in Texas.

I don't know if there's a term for this sort of fallacy but I see it if often in discussions about blue states vs red states. Basically all states are purple states it's just the degree to which they are purple will differ a little.

In 2024, Texas was 56:42 Trump v Harris.

Minnesota was 47:51 Trump v Harris.

There is not that extreme of a demographic difference when you're selecting twelve jurors basically at random from the population who all have to agree on the guilt.

If you pull twelve balls out of a 47:51 red/blue ball bag, the most likely result is still 6 red and 6 blue balls, with a slight edge towards 7 blue 5 red

This is especially true when you consider that a significant amount of eligible voters also don't show up to vote to begin with! So the actual jury makeup is probably more like 4 red balls, 4 blue balls, and 4 normie balls who are just bored retirees or something. So the only difference between the states really is a slight likelihood nudge towards 3 red, 5 blue, 4 normie balls vs 5 red, 3 blue, 4 normie balls.

Unless the defense side is incredibly incompetent and doesn't use preemptory challenges properly, the makeup of a jury isn't going to just be Democrat sided or just Republican sided people. It's going to be a mix of different idealogies and beliefs, with a healthy bunch of normies and independents who all come to an agreement.

Republicans did judge Derek Chauvin. There were Republicans in both the state and federal jury. They looked at all the evidence in deep detail, listened to expert testimony presented by both sides, listened to the defense's best arguments, and found him guilty.

The 45% of GOP who find him innocent are likely the far more online and active Republicans. The exact people that would heavily pressure a Republican governor to pardon him.

Pardons do not imply any bit of legal innocence. Contrary to internet myth they also don't apply any acceptance of legal guilt, but he would still have been found guilty even if he later was pardoned.

More comments

45% of Republicans find him innocent. Which means he absolutely would be innocent in Texas. And it’s likely a much higher rate of not guilty in Republicans who watched the entire 30 minute police interaction who know he did things like saying he couldn’t breathe BEFORE any force was applied or who read the entire medical report and know he had a potentially fatal does of fentanyl in his system. It’s probably close to 95% or even 100% of Republicans who find him innocent.

Exactly. If the framing of the media presentation was adjusted the base facts in the perception of the public likely change. 55% of Republicans agreed with the ruling after an exhaustive full-court press from the entire media system to portray Chauvin as a murderer.

I have to echo another poster - where is the actual indication that the other jurors disliked the idea (yet were bullied into it)?

I'm told jurors are often a) ideologically aligned because they're drawn from the same environment and b) are often selected for their lack of ability to avoid jury duty rather than for their courtroom decorum. All this looks like sufficient explanation for "a bunch of people, including men, went along with wearing color-coordinated shirts".

The article literally quotes another juror who says he was not into it and only went along with it for the photo.

But, the bigger problem is that people consider playing dress-up in the function of jury duty to be permissible.

This isn't an argument about that specific case. I'm using that specific case to argue about the breakdown of contextual professional due to female cultural policing.

showing up in red/black shirts and then posing for a group photo in the "costumes":

The gendered tyranny of… spontaneously organized dress codes? Is that what is being alleged here, that jurors were pressured into wearing one of two colors of shirt?

What am I missing?


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