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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

I do occasionally wonder if you could get to a decent place via:

  1. Get rid of Medicaid. It maybe made sense at one point, but it's current incarnation is, as far as I can tell, such a disgusting mess for all involved parties that it's better to just kill it with fire.
  2. People who would be on Medicaid can now get insurance via the ACA exchanges - they'll get a 94% CSR plan for 2% of their income. There's some annoyance around how they will enter their income, but much less paperwork than it takes to interface with Medicaid. There would need to be a small legislative tweak to allow this to happen (let <138% FPL income people get subsidies), but in practice they should trade a bunch of annoying documentation and everything is free for a functional network (ie a blues plan) and everything is very cheap + 2% of their income.
  3. Expand Medicare to more disease categories other than just ESRD. In practice I think you want to try to capture an additional several million of the sickest people. Hemophiliacs, organ transplant, some cancers, some rare genetic disease perhaps, that sort of thing. This will dramatically lower premiums in the ACA. However power-law distributed you think healthcare costs are, the reality is they are likely more power law distributed than you think.

That's going to create some winners and losers, providers will be upset that people are on Medicare, but shifting people from Medicaid to commercial reimbursement rates should help out with that. The amount of bureaucratic nonsense saved by getting rid of Medicaid should be huge.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

This hits on an idea I was thinking about recently. In order to genuinely enjoy any sort of fiction, you have to be able to suspend disbelief. Almost all fiction has fantastic, or at least slightly unbelievable elements. While sometimes these are the crux of the work, other times they serve more mundane functions like the simplification of an overly complex plot.

What I've been noticing as I get older is that I'm able to do this less and less. When you consume new media while young, you are able to gloss over inconsistencies with ease. As you age, these become more jarring, eventually making consumption of new plot lines kind of difficult.

In light of this, I find myself wondering if a lot of new shows are as bad as they seem, or if I'm simply unable to overlook their flaws (or inadvertently comparing them to the best-in-genera alternatives)

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Going to be a top 3 scene of the year.

I thought the movie was mostly pretty ok - but that scene was incredible.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

I've no intention of watching the film, but I'd recommend this clip of the big bad singing 'Rocky Road to Dublin'. Who knew Irish folk music and vampires would work so well together?

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

Hence the recent proliferation of militarist neocon feminist girlboss politicians all around the EU, for example

which ones? nothing obvious comes to my mind. Sanna Marin and Kaja Kallas were mentioned in other post - any more? Or is it all

It never turns out great.

Yes, underestimating enemy is idiotic (for latest local example see invasion of Ukraine, where it repeated multiple times in various fashion, starting from attempt to have a quick victorious invasion)

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

I watched Sinners last night.

It’s a flick about 1930’s vampires set in the American bayou. It’s a black flick. It’s about blackness, being black, black music, black stuff. Very black.

I love black cinema. From Life with Eddie Murphy to exploitation like Sweet Sweetback’s to Don’t Be a Menace to Friday I dunno whatever, even Scary Movie maybe. I’ve seen several dozen of them. They’re all ‘ black ‘ and pretty watchable for anyone. Plus anyone with even a hint of social awareness can watch them just fine.

The movie I’d most compare this to (it’s where my mind went for some reason) is Idlewild - basically OutKast (the musical group) in Atlanta in the 30’s … also very black. I love this movie.

The black characters in all these films are … black. They seem like normal people, just black. Rich black. Poor black. Dumb black. Smart black. Teacher black. Funny black.

I was born in Poland so I e always watched (not enough) a bunch of Polish cinema. Same idea. The Polish characters are Polish characters in a myriad of ways and if you’re Polish then you get it, and if you’re not, you can still be entertained and understand.

Well with Sinners - and even before really over the last few years … it just seems like the blackness is performative. It’s not that I don’t believe Michael B Jordan isn’t black, or that the writer or director don’t know about being black, it’s that I think now they’re starting to act as a fictional black narrative.

Being a 1930’s black man is no longer believable on screen. It was believable in Idlewild. Friday is believable - it’s caricature of course, but believable! I believed Dr Dre … I don’t believe Kendrick Lamar. I believed The Wire … I don’t believe (basically any ‘ black ‘ show I’ve tried to get into lately). I haven’t watched the show Atlanta but I’ve heard good things but mostly from white people, and mostly the writer and actor falls into this land of unbelievability as well.

I think there’s this black (black American) malaise that I can’t describe or catch onto over the last decade or so that makes black entertainers over perform their blackness in a subtle way.

I’ve always felt black Americans are Americans, just black. More recently I feel like they’re trying to be in some way more so.

If I were a pessimist I would say this is part of the ‘ we were kings ‘ meme that has been overloaded into the cultural psyche - if I were an optimist, I’d say it’s a culture trying to find itself and strive for a cohesive core to begin to become something other than ‘ black Americans ‘.

I’m usually optimistic in all respects but I have a lot of negativity towards, in respect to this post, black entertainment. Or at black entertainment that attempts to be mainstream.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 6, 2025

I encounter a very specific problem in the messaging stage where I'll ask someone out, they'll say yes, then ghost the day of the date.

A few years ago, they'd cancel and reschedule repeatedly until I got the hint and stopped bothering them.

Speaking of, a few years ago, I actually got matches and occasionally received likes from women who were attractive enough. Now I live in an empty soul-crushing hell, despite having lost weight and gained muscle since then.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 6, 2025

There's a lot of good advice in here, but I feel like misrepresenting your politics would cause more problems than it solves. If a girl is so hyper-liberal she will reject anyone who has the faintest whiff of being conservative (even to the point she will reject people who say they are moderate!), I think she's going to leave you as soon as she finds out you aren't the liberal you claimed you were. Maybe not if you're Chad Thundercock and she just can't bring herself to give up the good D, but I also doubt that such a Chad needs advice in the first place because he's swimming in women.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 6, 2025

It's been a while since I've been on the dating market (10 years, yikes), but +1 to women love pets. My first profile pic on okcupid back in the day was a photo of me and my puppy the day I got her. It definitely helped me drum up interest that I don't think I would've gotten otherwise.