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TheDag  Per Aspera ad Astra  11mo ago (text post)   2752 thread views

Calling all Lurkers: Share your Dreams of Effortposting

It’s been pointed out recently that the topics discussed in the Culture War thread have gotten a bit repetitive. While I do think the Motte has a good spread on intellectual discussion, I’m always pushing for a wider range (dare I say diversity?) of viewpoints and topics in the CW thread.

I was a lurker for years, and I know that the barrier between having a thought and writing a top level comment in the CW thread can loom large indeed. Luckily I’m fresh out of inspiration, and would love to hear thoughts from folks about effortposts they want to write but haven’t gotten around to.

This of course applies to regulars who post frequently as well - share any and all topics you wish were discussed in the CW thread!

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I would like to see an effortpost about the ARM/ASML/TSMC axis of chip design and manufacture and how Silicon Valley stopped making silicon. Given time, I could write a first version and see what came up in the comments.

Closer to the core culture war topics that get overdone, I think two sub-topics I would be interested in effortposts on are:

  • The nature and origins of Universal Culture/globohomo/Blue Tribe/Davos Man - is it Anglo, Jewish, both or neither? Is it the same culture as the Anglo-Chinese culture of Hong Kong and Singapore?

  • Just how unusual are "gayness" and "transness" as understood in Western culture? Male-male sex and people playing a gender role that doesn't match their anatomical sex are found in almost all cultures, but I think there is a standard pattern which is very different from Western gayness and transness.

For further reading on your gay question I'd recommend Beachy's "Gay Berlin" and Foucault's "The History of Sexuality." From these texts I came away with the impression that "gayness" and "transness" are a sort of modern western invention. I wrote a bit more about it in this thread.

I love the idea of looking into semiconductor manufacturing- very much a crucial piece of the modern supply chain. Perhaps the central piece as AI becomes more relevant.

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