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Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.
Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).
What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?
P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?
I suppose being the change you want to see is the ultimate solution. So good on you for delivering on that other than just complaining about it.
I think the bare links repository (BLR) would help alleviate this. What some stupid teacher said to her stupid student in Stupid Small Town, in Stupid State in USA about boyss being girls and girls being boys; can just be posted about in the BLR.
All the raging hot CW topics that generate much albeit low quality discussion could be contained that way. Another hidden benefit of the BLR was that it added an element of transcience since the posting rate was so high that some stupid trans story wouldn't sit there and gather 500 comments it would get discussed a bit and eventually get burried by newer links.
I've been pestering the mods to reinstate the BLR for a while, but I obviously don't have much influence other than just being annoying. The mods cite their reasons for not doing so, but I ultimately see little value in just one more conversation about trans or race issues.
As it stands right now, if I see something I want to discuss about on the Motte but I am not well informed about it, I just have to ignore it, instead of just sharing the link which would have generated some conversation at least. The BLR adds diversity of topics.
You could also become informed on such an issue, then make a careful top-level. That seems like a win-win as far as inciting effortful responses for you to consume.
The BLR seems likely to encourage more trans- and race-outrage posts, even if an individual example is more transient. And I’m not sure that the latter would be true given memetic fitness, toxoplasma of rage, etc. I don’t want to lower the barrier to contributing in the thread because even users capable of producing decent top-levels will be incentivized to wage culture war through the BLR.
Maybe—maybe—we could benefit from a Bare Link BWednesday. I still think it would act as a giant witch magnet.
We had the BLR before. Did it act as a witch magnet?
Hard to say.
One one hand, that was when we had a larger sub, a better connection to other reddits, and (American) CW events that were drawing in a lot of posters anyway. On the other, those same CW events were apparently attracting enough witches that moderation thought the BLR would help.
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