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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I feel like that meetup is probably worth a separate post

Please do!

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Yeah, I probably should have included "and six-foundationers were winding up raised Marxist and/or hippie liberal and tried to extend these to fill in the missing foundations".

Friday Fun Thread for October 10, 2025

I watched this one recently, too. A vibe indeed.

Good: Long, forlorn shots. Set design which may or may not consist of just finding shit lying around. Haunting use of silence and background noise. Getting the viewer to question the reality presented on screen. Surreality. This is a film where almost every frame is mundane, and yet you are certain that something else is at play.

Bad: incredibly long, forlorn shots. I can’t judge how much of each was actually necessary to achieve the good points. But my God, they just keep going. Much like the character monologues, some of which land, some of which don’t. The delivery is great, at least to my English-speaking ears. The actual writing is much less consistent. There are a couple bits of sound design that fall into this category, too, but I’m willing to forgive them.

Ugly: Anything resembling action. There’s not much of it, which is for the best, because it absolutely deflates the tension. The gate guards? The bomb dismantling? Honorable mention to the scene ten minutes in where the stalker’s wife writhes around on the floor.

I don’t know that I can call it good, but I recommend it.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I don't think that metaphor really applies. The last time I read about Jewish life in Islam-controlled nations it was about the Golden Age of the Jews, which took place in Islamic Spain (the abuse actually happened afterwards when the Catholics came and massacred them). I'm sure it wasn't all peachy all the time, but it can't have been that bad when they consider a portion of the time spent under Islamic rule a golden age.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I think that you and mister throwaway are being far too negative towards this subset of the population

You misunderstand.

We know that they misuse these tools/words/concepts that could have (and perhaps were originally intended to) helped us, in an intentionally destructive way. It's not Complete Asshole Disease Cluster B disorder, it's My Anxiety (and everything else I've Munchausen'd my way into today).

The article very clearly describes us, who are describing actual problems (and I can attest that the statements made in the article are indeed very accurate), and not just using them as a license to be selfish pricks.

It's difficult for the normies to tell the difference and depending on the situation sometimes there legitimately isn't one. They just have to trust us. And that is difficult, even for others like us.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Not quite. There's a sub-set of the right that's very, very much into hating Russia.

The left just glosses that over in place of the right who are sick and tired of involvement in foreign wars and go 'not my problem' and take that as endorsement.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Whatever the talk there is about it being redundant, it's not being consolidated with something else, and its function will go unfulfilled.

Depends on whether or not they are actually duplicative. The proposal does not say that its function will go unfufilled; it says it should rest with other agencies with rulemaking authority.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I'd honestly love to be proven wrong and learn that the Hind Rajab and Mohamaed Bhar stories were just a bad dream

The fact that individual civilians were killed in a conflict does not prove that said conflict was a genocide. Even the fact that individual soldiers committed war crimes during a conflict doesn't prove that said conflict was a genocide. Pro-Palestine activists think they're helping their case by claiming that every civilian death is evidence of genocidal intent on Israel's part. But because civilian deaths are a feature of every war (especially wars in densely populated urban centres; especially especially wars in densely populated urban centres in which belligerents deliberately hide among the civilian populace), all you're doing is collapsing the distinction between "genocide" and "urban conflict" by carelessly conflating the two. Twenty years ago, the word "racist" was a potent one indeed and people would react to the accusation with indignation: after a generation of woke people abusing it to refer to any behaviour they don't like (no matter how innocuous), there are now plenty of people who react to the word "racist" as if you'd called them a meany doo-doo head. Do you really think it's a sensible idea to do the same thing to the word "genocide"? Because that's the way it's headed. Do you want more genocide? Because that's how you get more genocide.

But all that's almost beside the point. I don't think you looked at the facts on the ground of the current conflict and dispassionately concluded that Israel is conducting a genocide. I strongly suspect that if I'd asked you the same question on October 6th 2023, I would've got much the same answer. You're citing examples of Israel killing civilians in the current conflict, not because they support your argument, but simply because of the availability heuristic. Israel was being accused of "genocide" from the morning of October 8th, 2023, before the war had even begun in earnest; a bunch of Hollywood celebrities signed an open letter condemning Israel's military action in Gaza as genocide in 2014; I'm sure I can go back to the 2000s, the 1990s, even further and see the same accusation lobbed against them time and time again. (The first sentence of the Wikipedia article on the topic bluntly states that Israel has faced this accusation without reprieve literally from the day of its founding.) You explicitly compared Israel to the Nazis and demanded the state be "denazified", but the difference is that the Holocaust actually saw a meaningful (and steep) decline in the global Jewish populace. Strange, isn't it, how the Israelis have been accused of genociding the Palestinians for the better part of a century (and probably much longer), and yet the Palestinian population only ever increases over time? It's the Shepard tone of genocides - which is to say, not a genocide at all. How many genocides can you name in which the genocidaires agreed to a ceasefire as soon as the people they were genociding agreed to release hostages?

You apparently expect me to simultaneously believe that the vastly technologically superior, limitlessly bloodthirsty and nuke-equipped Israel isn't pulling its punches and is in fact doing everything in its power to exterminate every last Palestinian from the face of the earth - and yet are somehow so incompetent that they've failed to wipe out a technologically inferior opponent who almost entirely reside right on its doorstep? I'm sorry, but I cannot believe both of these things. It is beyond me.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Alright I've repeatedly tried to be a bit soft here but to be blunt this is absolutely horseshit that seems to not match genetic studies, general research, or the gross consensus of individuals working in the field.

Some additional examples:

Gifted people have good life outcomes and contra to expectations are more attractive than average.

The "major psychiatric diagnosis" is just not true by any stretch of the imagination. It does not capture definitions of serious mental illness, inpatient populations, or most the most likely diagnosis (anxiety disorders are more common).

EDS has several known genetic markers and the one that all of the psych patients has is mysteriously the one that doesn't have genetic markers. Also women are more flexible than men and many women who are normal will claim they have EDS.

Additionally googling this person appears to show all the usual signs of questionableness and medical inaccuracy.

You are falling for pure ascientific bullshit quackery.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

When people say “just kill fascists”, is the latter one what they mean?

Absolutely yes, based on my experience living with people who say things like this and along with people who are on the border of saying things like this. From my observation, the people who actually believe in fighting fascist in ways that involve specifically targeting individuals with power but are against blanket condemnation of wide swaths of people tend to not to be the ones who jump on to slogans like that one. The ones who are willing to carelessly embrace extreme or extreme-sounding slogans like that almost always mean it in the most extreme way it can be interpreted (usually more extreme).

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I love you too my dude, even if you love Jesus more :(

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Explosives factories can sometimes explode, you’re tinfoil hatting, and this kind of random terrorism on US soil would be an escalation for Russia.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals

If you don't want your hospitals and civilian infrastructure blown up, don't use them as weapons caches in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. I really don't see what's so complicated about this.

You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back.

When did I say that?

But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.

How do you think Israel ought to have prosecuted a war against a combatant like Hamas? What would you have done differently?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

That's the thing; they're not just an extension of OSHA. Their primary focus isn't labor safety, or environmental quality, or industry standards, it's process safety, which touches all of those. Their role is inherently cross-functional, as you can see from the variety of organizations they make recommendations to.

Anyway, it's not being moved, it's just being destroyed. Whatever the talk there is about it being redundant, it's not being consolidated with something else, and its function will go unfulfilled.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Merits are merits; descent is descent.

Of course, you notice that the SJ position is the exact same as tradition but with the labels swapped. This makes perfect sense, because reversed stupidity is intelligence (or revenge, if you prefer).

What you have labelled as the Marxist position is just the classical liberal position, but with a class angle grafted on.

This is an obvious pattern to me- traditionalists and progressives have a... significant amount of inertia in their political philosophies, and while liberals might actually be able to accomplish the tasks at hand, they're also generally outnumbered so unless you have philosopher-kings in charge like the US did after WW2, you're stuck with either traditional stupidity or modern ytidiputs.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

"Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."

I've actually already posted and discussed this particular story on the motte with multiple people - my apologies for assuming that this was just commonly accepted knowledge.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israeli-soldiers-ptsd-suicide-intl

making it abundantly clear that the primary function of all this explosive ordnance was not the taking of human life for its own sake, but the destruction of Hamas's tunnel network.

Actually it doesn't make that clear at all - and if that's the case, then the IDF was actually just extremely incompetent, given that the tunnels are still there and they're making noises about how important it is that they be let in to clear out the tunnels. They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals, and there are more amputee children in Gaza than anywhere else in the world. If that was the goal then the IDF is incredibly incompetent - but they've demonstrated enough competence elsewhere that I just can't accept the claim that this was to destroy the tunnels.

I'm baffled as to how you expect me to be horrified by this metric.

Horrified? I'm not expecting that at all. You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back. But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Quite possibly this was not an attack but I don't think it's a post-hoc claim; the warning that Russia would strike our infrastructure has been registered in some corners well in advance of this happening. Jack Murphy reported in 2022 that the CIA was conducting a sabotage campaign inside Russian soil and I've been operating under the assumption that the Russians would retaliate in kind (if the claims were true, which seemed plausible) ever since.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Looks like they're only being targeted because they're "independent". Seems to me it would make sense to move them under the Department of Labor.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Having better weapons makes you the bad guy?

No, that's not the point being made.

Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.

Would you apply this argument to the jews of Nazi germany? Was it their fault for attacking the big meanie and then having a sook and cry about how badly it went for them? Why did they pick a fight they couldn't win?

I don't think that argument would convince you to support the nazis, and it isn't going to convince me to support the Israelis.

Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet!

If the Palestinians stop fighting they believe they will be wiped out, which is supported by a vast number of statements from members of the Israeli government. What alternative are you leaving besides a final solution?

You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.

My position, which I have stated on here, remains that there should be a single state solution which includes the Israelis and Palestinians both.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I feel like the whole debate completely misses the point entirely. Political violence can mean anything from violently resisting laws, assassinating politicians, to murdering random civilians with opposing views.

When people say “just kill fascists”, is the latter one what they mean? Would they have considered morally acceptable to open fire on a train of Mussolini voters during Fascist Italy? To kill a random grandma for supporting Il Duce, even if she was retired, had no influence whatsoever and just believed it because that’s what most people did?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

It would be really cool if the USCSB wasn't being shut down; if you haven't seen their investigation videos about industrial disasters, they really are wonderful.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

If the prosecutions go ahead and it is determined that the entire thing has been a misinformation campaign or other convincing evidence arises that it was all fake I'll absolutely drop it. But I've seen the videos and comments posted by IDF soldiers, and I've actually read some translated Israeli media - it'll take a vast amount of convincing evidence to make me change my mind, but if you've got it then please lay it on the table. I'd honestly love to be proven wrong and learn that the Hind Rajab and Mohamaed Bhar stories were just a bad dream, or that all those translated comments by Smotrich and Ben Gvir were lies - but I really don't think you actually have the evidence required.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Many people with this condition incorrectly label themselves with a bunch of other stuff that may or may not be real but generally doesn't apply to them.

Just chiming in to note that I've personally heard mental health professionals admit to incorrectly diagnosing borderlines as well, ostensibly so that they could receive mental health services that explicitly excluded borderlines from eligibility in their guidelines. I strongly suspect that several percentage points of bipolars are misdiagnosed borderlines.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I suppose it wouldn't be in YouTube's interest to add an AI auto summary to videos

Actually, YouTube nowadays is adding automatic AI summaries to many videos, though apparently not the one linked above.

Example

Confused by Magic: The Gathering zones? This video explains how cards move between the library, hand, stack, battlefield, graveyard, and exile. Learn how hidden and revealed cards interact with gameplay mechanics like flicker and mill, improving strategic understanding.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Because Russia can only lose. This will give Trump reason to throw way more assistance to Ukraine, where as right now he does the bare minimum of support to shut down the critics. Also - they are not that competent to pull off such kind of thing traceless. If they are going to risk the wrath of Trump it is going to be for something big.