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naraburns  nihil supernum  2d ago (text post)   Edited 2d ago   2682 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for August 2026

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@birb_cromble:

@Tanista:

@Muninn:

@self_made_human:

@DiscourseMagnus:

@gattsuru:

Contributions for the week of August 3, 2026

@Shakes:

@FtttG:

@quiet_NaN:

@iprayiam3:

@georgioz:

@birb_cromble:

@Tretiak:

@100ProofTollBooth:

@YoungAchamian:

@Aapje58:

Contributions for the week of August 10, 2026

@gattsuru:

@GBRK:

@Thoroughlygruntled:

@FtttG:

@zoink:

@georgioz:

@JeSuisCharlie:

Contributions for the week of August 17, 2026

@faceh:

@Shakes:

@ratherblather:

@Shirayuki3:

Contributions for the week of August 24, 2026

@hanikrummihundursvin:

@faceh:

@Shakes:

@RandomRanger:

@netstack:

@FtttG:

Contributions for the week of August 31, 2026

@thejdizzler:

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probably impossible

gives a bunch of successful assimilation examples

What am I missing here? Like, I disagree with a lot of your examples, but even if I accepted them at face value, what you’re saying doesn’t follow. If immigrants could assimilate at some point in the past, they can do it again. If they did it when American culture was less dominant and less accomplished, they can do it now.

doesn’t stop at the neck down.

Usually this expression goes the other way.

ability to be a calculator [does not preclude] significant personality differences.

No argument here. Personality variance is crazy high even if you ignore societal effects.

the Japanese seem to be very pro-social in a lot of ways

Sure, I guess. What makes that genetic and not, well, social? I think society is usually the more mutable.

I think it’s also dumb to lump all Asians together. Look at this study on rice vs. wheat. It was conducted entirely between different regions of China!

Americans are not this.

Again: sure. Pioneer spirit, etc. etc. How do you know it’s not societal? How do you distinguish between selection on genes and on memes?

wanderlust gene

I can’t say I’m familiar with the literature, and what I could find was largely woo for globetrotters. Are you saying there’s a gene which provides this huge selection opportunity? And that it varied enough within ethnicities to dominate factors like poverty or religion?

If culture has a hereditary basis then cultural assimilation isn’t going to happen.

But why not? You have all these examples of groups who supposedly had crazy-strong hereditary culture. They’ve all more or less assimilated. Doesn’t this suggest the exact opposite?

I’m sorry but what groups did I claim successfully assimilated into America? I see I claimed a few Indians became American. S Africans I’m claiming were Americans before they came to America - both culturally and genetically. And actually more American than post Ellis Island Americans. Their Englishmen who left England. Musks/Thiel are ethnically Anglos. They are both more Heritage American than my Ellis Island Wave Heritage.

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