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Friday Fun Thread for July 18, 2025

@fmac thinks that you (plural) would be interested in the following summary of the several mods that I've written for Victoria 3. I am inclined to think that this comment is both too narcissistic and too niche to be interesting, but whatever. Maybe I'm a bad judge and you'll find this comment more interesting than this week's court-opinion summary, which seems to have fallen rather flat.

In an effort to make this comment less narcissistic, I will emphasize that you do not need to be a 1337 h@xx0r to mod this game. It's just editing plaintext files, not compiling code like some other games.

Premise: In the vanilla game, slaves are created from poor people in countries with the Debt Slavery law, and thence are exported to countries with the Slave Trade law.

Problem: It makes no sense that countries with Slave Trade do not enslave their own low-acceptance (i. e., discriminated-against) people.

Solution: In a mod that I have written, a country with Slave Trade now will enslave its own low-acceptance people (using the same logic that the vanilla game uses to re-enslave recently-freed people when slavery is abolished and then reinstated).

Premise: In the vanilla game, a colonizing AI country will spread its focus across up to five different colonies, depending on how much population it has. Colony growth also is capped, so focusing on a single colony is detrimental.

Problem: I don't see any reason for these mechanics. Splitting focus between multiple colonies only increases the chance that multiple countries will split a colonial state, which I dislike. And what's wrong with rushing a single colony?

Solution: In a mod that I have written, a colonizing AI country now will focus on only a single colony, and the cap on colony growth is removed.

Premise: In the vanilla game, the AI will never incorporate a state that contains fewer than 100,000 people.

Problem: I'm not really a big fan of this limitation. Yes, the sparsely-populated territories of northern Canada and northern Australia are legally "unincorporated" even in year 2025. But Rhode Island barely had reached a population of 100,000 in the time period of Victoria 3. Am I really supposed to believe that Rhode Island should not have been incorporated until after year 1830?

Solution: In a mod that I have written, the minimum population for incorporating a state is set to 1—i. e., effectively removed.

Premise: In the vanilla game, several different fonts are used—Garamond, Open Sans, Noto Serif, a custom font called Paradox Victorian, et cetera.

Problem: I dislike seeing a zillion different random fonts.

Solution: In a mod that I have written, the game uses only Open Sans.

Premise: In the vanilla game, in order to avoid losing its "civilized" status (as opposed to "uncivilized", like China and Egypt), the Ottoman Empire must complete four of seven available missions. One of those missions, "Tanzimat: Urbanization", requires that 75 percent of the Ottoman Empire's states be both incorporated and urbanized.

Problem: This doesn't make much sense to me. What's wrong with having unincorporated states?

Solution: In a mod that I have written, "Tanzimat: Urbanization" requires that 75 percent of the Ottoman Empire's incorporated states be urbanized.

Premise: In the vanilla game, an AI country will incorporate a state if a culture that calls that state region a homeland shares a trait (whether a heritage trait indicating race or a cultural trait indicating a non-race characteristic) with a primary culture of that country.

Problem: Under this criterion, both a fascist Britain with the Ethnostate law and an open-minded Britain with the Multiculturalism law will incorporate all European states and all Anglophone states (including the black ones in the Caribbean), with no regard for whether the cultures living there are actually accepted. That doesn't make any sense.

Solution: In a mod that I have written: The AI incorporation logic is disabled. Instead, a country (whether AI or human) will automatically incorporate a state if a culture that calls that state a homeland is accepted under that country's current laws, and will automatically disincorporate a state if no culture that calls that state a homeland is accepted under that country's current laws.

Premise: In the vanilla game, most countries start with all or nearly all of their states incorporated. It is generally expected that a country will have most of its states incorporated.

Premise: In the vanilla game, once a civilized country has acquired a bunch of land in Africa, it can organize that land into a "colonial administration" country, which is created with all its states incorporated.

Problem: These two mechanics are completely contrary to the AI incorporation logic (whether vanilla or modded) that I described in the previous section! It makes absolutely ZERO sense that the British and Dutch East India Companies have incorporated all of their states at the start of the campaign, despite having NOTHING in common with the Indian and Indonesian cultures. Also, when the mod that I described in the previous section is enabled, the complete absence of incorporated states in the two aforementioned countries causes some problems.

Solution: In a mod that I have written, if a subject country has zero incorporated states, then it is automatically annexed by its overlord. In a different mod that I have written, the colonial-administration mechanic is disabled.

Premise: In the vanilla game, up to five autosaves will be retained, and any older autosaves will be deleted.

Problem: A campaign of Victoria 3 lasts for a hundred years! If you've set your autosave interval to six months, you will not be able to look back even one decade to see how the world has evolved.

Solution: In a mod that I have written, the autosave limit is set to 99999—i. e., effectively removed.

Premise: In the vanilla game, if a state region is split between multiple states that belong to different countries, a state will receive the unmodified name of the state region (e. g., "Guyana") if it includes a majority of the state region's provinces, and will receive a modified name ("British Guyana") otherwise.

Problem: If one country owns almost all of of a state region and another country owns just one or two provinces (such as a treaty port) in the same state region, it can be difficult to realize that the state is split, because the first state will have an unmodified name and the second state will be very small and unobtrusive.

Solution: In a mod that I have written, the threshold for a state to have an unmodified name is increased from 50 percent to 99.9 percent—i. e., effectively never.

Premise: Several different factors affect an AI country's enthusiasm about the prosecution of a war. In the vanilla game, one of these factors is time. An AI country becomes more interested in ending a war as time passes: −100 when the war starts, increasing quickly to +0 at 10 months, and then increasing gradually to +100 at 110 months.

Problem: The quick increase in peace desire before the 10-month mark (before the battle fronts and the participants' economies have had a chance to get settled) makes sense, but the gradual increase in peace desire after the 10-month mark does not make sense (is duplicative of the factors for angry population, war-ravaged land, and high debt; often causes an AI country to make a white peace when it is on the precipice of victory).

Solution: In a mod that I have written, the gradual increase in peace desire after the 10-month mark is eliminated.

Premise: The USA starts the game with the Legacy Slavery law. In the vanilla game: If the USA experiences a civil war caused by the anti-slavery movement, then the other side becomes the FSA (Free States of America) and enacts Slavery Banned immediately (without going through the normal law-change process); and, if the USA experiences a civil war caused by the pro-slavery movement, then the other side becomes the CSA (Confederate States of America) and enacts Slave Trade immediately.

Problem: These forced law changes are unnecessarily heavy-handed. If the CSA wants to enact Slave Trade or the FSA wants to enact Slavery Banned, then let it; if it doesn't, don't force it.

Solution: In a mod that I have written, the aforementioned forced law changes are eliminated.

Premise: In the vanilla game, some important countries are formed through the "major unification" mechanic. Most prominently, in order to form Germany, Prussia normally declares a "Unification War", which automatically (1) annexes all German members of its sphere of influence and (2) declares war on any non-sphered, non-former-unification-candidate countries that hold German states (i. e., France, but not Austria-Hungary).

Problem: This is disgustingly ahistorical. Historically, Prussia did not attack France for Alsace-Lorraine. Rather, Bismarck tricked France into attacking despite being weak!

Solution: In a mod that I have written, all major unifications are eliminated and must be formed the normal way (by acquiring the required states through means other than a unification war).

Premise: In the vanilla game, different still-uncolonized states in the North American frontier are claimed by different countries, and therefore are not colonizable by other countries. The USA claims Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kansas; Mexico claims Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas; and the Republic of Texas claims New Mexico and Texas; while Nevada, Colorado, and Oklahoma are claimed by no one.

Problem: Historically, Nevada was claimed by Mexico, Colorado was claimed half by the USA and half by Mexico and Texas, Oklahoma was claimed by the USA, and only half of New Mexico was claimed by Texas.

Solution: In a mod that I have written, Nevada is claimed by Mexico, Colorado is split into two state regions of which one is claimed by the USA and the other is claimed by Mexico and Texas, New Mexico is split into two state regions of which one is claimed by Texas and both are claimed by Mexico, and Oklahoma <del>is claimed by the USA</del><ins>is not claimed by the USA (because that causes problems with premature annexation of the Indian Territory, due to the game's limited mechanics), but instead the state region of Texas is extended through the Oklahoma panhandle (as it historically was prior to 1850) and the Indian Territory is expanded to eliminate all uncolonized land in Oklahoma</ins>.

Premise: In the vanilla game, canals can be built in the state regions of Panama and Sinai, and nowhere else.

Problem: Historically, the USA actually picked Nicaragua for a canal, and switched to Panama only after getting a lower price for the assets of France's bankrupt Panama Canal Company.

Problem: Due to Victoria 3's focus on states rather than on provinces, if Colombia refuses to sell the Panama Canal Zone to a great power that wants to buy it, the great power then receives a claim, not just on the Canal Zone, but on the entire state region of Panama. The same applies to Sinai. This is absolutely nonsensical.

Premise: In the vanilla game, armies can march from Colombia proper to Panama.

Problem: Historically, this was impossible.

Solution: In the same mod (necessary due to limitations of map modding): Panama has been split into three state regions, western, central (Canal Zone), and eastern, and the eastern state is disconnected from Colombia proper in the invisible pathing system. Nicaragua has been split into two state regions, northern and southern (Lake Nicaragua), and the Panama Canal events have been copied-and-pasted for a Nicaragua Canal. [Sinai has been split into two state regions, eastern and western (Canal Zone).](not yet complete)

Premise: After the USA annexes northern Mexico, the annexed states become homelands of the USA's primary cultures. The Yankee culture gets California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, while the Dixie culture gets Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Problem: Historically, California could have been divided into a free north and a slave south. And I find it unfair that Dixie doesn't get a window to the Pacific.

Solution: In the same mod (necessary due to limitations of map modding), California is divided into two state regions, northern and southern, and the southern portion goes to Dixie rather than to Yankee after the Mexican–American War.

Premise: In the vanilla game, the Corsican culture has three traits: European, Francophone, and Italophone.

Problem: Francophone??

Solution: In a mod that I have written, the Francophone trait is removed from the Corsican culture.

The mods can be downloaded here, if anybody cares.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

And the extra frustrating thing is the series has dealing with increasing diversity built right in! If they could have just been patient the could have had a few really heavy handed episodes on it, and they would have made sense.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I haven't seen this show, but all the praise being lavished on it makes me go "Really? Do none of you remember the likes of St. Elsewhere, for example, which also trod this path of 'slice of life reality in a hospital serving lower economic area'?"

People don't watch old shows. They just empirically don't.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

Yugoslavia.. there was a fair bit of pitched combat there, no?

Pitched, yes, but would you consider those fighting "armies" — particularly if you contrast "insurgencies" as something distinct, as your comment applies.

In any event, you seem to have a pretty narrow and idiosyncratic definition of what constitutes "a real war"; one which, it seems to me, most people do not share.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

Yes, but I parse this as "the convention ought to be broken. separately, we should introduce a whole new convention about never making casting decisions that reduce the pool of roles available to POC actors".

This is a bad parse. The convention is not being broken for reasons separate from "woke" concerns. And it's not all about the well-being of the POC actors either; part of the point is to portray more POC characters.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

native underclass

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

"the convention ought to be broken but only in casting in the correct direction in the progressive stack"

Yes, but I parse this as "the convention ought to be broken. separately, we should introduce a whole new convention about never making casting decisions that reduce the pool of roles available to POC actors". The reason a white actor playing a historically black character would be lambasted is not that it would break the norm of physically-realistic casting; the outrage you would get in such a situation would very much be rooted in "how dare you take this part away from deserving black actors".

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

"Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument."

It's a good rule, whatever your political opinions are. If it is violated often enough, this place will just become another cesspit like Reddit or X, where most of the political discourse is just attention bait and emotional venting.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

So there is no distinction between fantasy and a straightforward historical drama for which factual depictions are expected?

Perhaps there historically has been (although people sure didn't use to shy away from casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan). I am simply saying that the pro-race-blind-casting position is to reject the expectation of realistic depiction; not to surrender historical accuracy itself. The smart pro-race-blind-casting argument isn't "you should be allowed to make a movie where Cleopatra is canonically Chinese" but "you should be allowed to make a movie where Cleopatra, a Greek woman in-universe, is played by a Chinese woman". i.e. you should look past the fact the actress in Chinese in the same way you look past the fact that she's speaking modern English instead of subtitled Ancient Greek.

I sympathize with saying that this is a distracting burden to place on the audience. But people keep complaining "but Cleopatra wasn't Chinese. casting a Chinese Cleopatra would be inaccurate", and that is the position I am trying to defeat. "Cleopatra is canonically speaking Ancient Greek, but the audience doesn't understand it and the actress can't pronounce it properly anyway, so we'll depict the dialogue in (non-diegetic) modern English" -> "Cleopatra is canonically Greek, but Chinese actors need jobs and Hollywood doesn't make that many meaty historical dramas about Chinese history, so we'll cast a (non-diegetically) Chinese actress as Cleopatra".

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

You have chosen an especially poor example with Rings off Power, because it belies either an ignorance about the purpose behind Tolkien’s work, or else an intentional disregard for it. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles (…) To the extent that this matters to you, it should matter that the actors involved at least plausibly physically resemble somebody belonging to, or descending from, those peoples. It matters that they’re white in a way that it doesn’t matter if the actors in a Star Wars film are white.

No. You are still missing the point I was trying to make. By all means, perhaps it matters that the characters are white. My argument is that (the pro-race-blind-casting position is that) it shouldn't matter if a character who is theoretically white within the story is played by an actor who is visibly black. This is precisely what I meant about Hobbit genetics being neither here nor there to the debate: I am not denying that the Hobbits are meant to be white. I am saying that you can cast a bunch of black actors as white Hobbits.

If a director set out to make a Harriet Tubman biopic and chose to cast Saiorse Ronan in the title role, there is no amount of “she just really crushed the audition, and I’ve always wanted to work with her” that would suffice to excuse what would be (correctly) interpreted at a slap in the face to black Americans. They own Harriet Tubman’s legacy in a way that white people obviously don’t. She means something to them, it’s important for them to see themselves in her, and pretty much everybody understands that.

Well, yeah. Notably, however, this is a very different argument from it being wrong because Saiorse Ronan is physically too different from the historical Tubman and casting her would be unrealistic. The outrage would be rooted in the racial politics of denying a job from some other, black actress who rightfully "deserved" it more than a white actress ever could. If, say, a black actress with dwarfism were to be cast as Harriet Tubman, this would scarcely be more physically accurate than casting Saiorse Ronan, and yet I predict you'd see much fewer complaints.

(Also, in an ideal world, I, for one, believe a director who sincerely wanted to make that movie for the reasons you ascribe to him ought to be able to make it and not be branded a racist for having made it. That's neither here nor there because I'm trying to steelman the pro-race-blind-casting position as it actually exists, not mount my own argument, but I thought it would be worth clarifying so we know where we stand.)

I think you recognize that there is an explicitly redistributive aspect to modern race-swapped casting.

Indeed I do, and I've recognized it explicitly in this thread.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

An aside, but I still don’t understand this phenomenon either, how he came to be seen by so many people as the image of the “evil right” (as opposed to the “dumb or incompetent right”).

Well, it's in the paranthetical!

He seems like an actual smart guy and he's virile and articulate. That means that he's perceived as having the ability to implement right-wing policy without the dysfunction that follows Trump. Trump is considered a "gross old pig baby with cheeto spray-tan" -- that's how he's described in caricatures -- but Vance is a handsome guy with an Indian wife. He could win moderates, even some women, in a way that Trump struggles with.

But he also comes from the VC world, and there's a lot on the left that's incredibly skeptical of capital, seeing it as a spooky, hidden power base that influences the world without many checks or balances. So not only is he smart, but he's a capitalist, "striking from a hidden base" to influence the world. I'm guessing he prompts the same kind of "this guy is spooky" vibes that Republicans often feel about people like Soros, and Democrats have long felt about the Kochs.

Incidentally, my idiosyncratic-but-liberal fiancée actually likes Vance quite a bit, she sees him as flawed but sincerely wanting to help the country.

I have a friend who doesn't like Trump, I think she sees him as a pig who's not focused enough to solve problems without making a mess of things. Her guy in 2024 was DeSantis.

I do wonder if we'll see an increased vote total for the GOP among women after Trump's off the ballot, and particularly once he's passed off this mortal coil and doesn't wield influence over the GOP.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

Yes, the supermercado was bustling. Something tells me this isn’t a Hispanic neighborhood. The actually poor whites and blacks won’t eat rice and beans.

Meat theft is definitely a thing, it’s easy for everyone and the social class a rung or two above the junkies that they have access to eats as much meat as they can afford.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

The point I wanted to make is just that "the convention ought to be broken" is the serious pro-race-blind-casting position

No, it isn't. It varies between "the convention ought to be broken but only in casting in the correct direction in the progressive stack" and "we aren't breaking the convention, there really were all these black people in Britain who were covered up by racist historians" (to be fair the latter was Dr. Who).

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

But complaining that black RAF pilots are "historically inaccurate" makes about as much sense as complaining that if Kermit is supposed to be a frog, he shouldn't look like he's made out of felt.

So there is no distinction between fantasy and a straightforward historical drama for which factual depictions are expected? You don't think an East Asian Cleopatra would be massively distracting and rightly so? Or that a morbidly obese Marilyn Monroe would be a non-starter?

James Bond and LOTR. Both are fantasy.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

and to make fewer snide comments about the apparent population genetics of the Ring of Powers Shire being implausible, which is, again, missing the point on a level with complaining that a Muppet doesn't look like a real barnyard animal.

You have chosen an especially poor example with Rings Of Power, because it belies either an ignorance about the purpose behind Tolkien’s work, or else an intentional disregard for it. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles; the various peoples and factions of the world are rough stand-ins or symbolic idealizations of the various ethnic groups and their myths which have coalesced into the modern (white) peoples of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. (And, by extension, the Celtic and North Germanic peoples of Continental Europe.) Gondor as a rough analogue for Roman-Celtic Britain, Rohan as the horse-obsessed Anglo-Saxons, Elves as the remnants of the pre-Aryan Neolithic peoples, etc. To the extent that this matters to you, it should matter that the actors involved at least plausibly physically resemble somebody belonging to, or descending from, those peoples. It matters that they’re white in a way that it doesn’t matter if the actors in a Star Wars film are white.

You dodged Nybbler’s pretty incisive point about a non-black actor playing a historically black individual. If a director set out to make a Harriet Tubman biopic and chose to cast Saiorse Ronan in the title role, there is no amount of “she just really crushed the audition, and I’ve always wanted to work with her” that would suffice to excuse what would be (correctly) interpreted at a slap in the face to black Americans. They own Harriet Tubman’s legacy in a way that white people obviously don’t. She means something to them, it’s important for them to see themselves in her, and pretty much everybody understands that.

So then the question is, are white people allowed to own any historical figures or stories of their own? Is it right and fair for white British people, a great many of whom are directly descended from RAF pilots, to expect that a casting director honor the reality of what those men looked like, sounded like, etc.? Is it fair for Brits to want to see themselves reflected accurately on screen? What about their fictional/mythical but still important figures? King Arthur? Sherlock Holmes? Jeeves and Wooster? Mr. Darcy?

I expect that your answer might be, “Sure, but that doesn’t mean any individual casting director has any obligation to care about that.” But I don’t think you actually believe that. I think you recognize that there is an explicitly redistributive aspect to modern race-swapped casting. A desire to make up for past wrongs and throw a bone to non-white actors who’ve had a relatively rougher go of it than their white companions. Isn’t that why you would “encourage” directors to keep doing it if you had the power to do so?

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

Wake me up when it's been independently verified that OpenAI didn't train on the test set again.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I think the MAGA base genuinely cares about seeing justice come to the children and young women victimized by this pedophile cabal. This sentiment runs deep among social conservatives.

I have a pretty hard time believing anyone with any real power cares about child sexual abuse qua child sexual abuse. And I don't mean this as a partisan claim. The Catholic Church of course had a big visible scandal, but left and right organizations alike prefer protecting power over protecting children. On a smaller scale, it's a common story (and I personally know examples, which, due to my social circle, likely all vote Democrat) for children to report their own parents covering up their abuse at the hands of an adult their parents apparently cared more about protecting than their own child. While reducing the abuse of children sounds like a great goal to, well, probably nearly everyone, in practice calls for it seem to only actually get used as a cudgel against the outgroup, and even then rarely to any significant effect.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

The 'urban poor' is a pretty broad stroke. Plenty of cultures have a solid foundation in frugal cooking (e.g. 'rice and beans'). I lived near a fairly poor urban neighborhood for my first job after college, and the supermercado was bustling.

Also, anecdotally, meat theft can be a big problem. I know a junkie who used to shoplift steaks by the stack. It's relatively high value for resale, and cooking a steak is not that hard vs the payoff in deliciousness.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I expect this one to run until Rupert dies, and there is a strong possibility that Lachlan is close enough to his father that he will fill obliged to continue it.

Even worse, the company is now going to go to be split among his primarily progressive children, who are even more opposed to Trump than Lachlan is.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

"The products are the same but they charge more for the ones marketed toward women!" "So if the products are the same, buy the one marketed toward men." "...No I like the pink one better."

This is a complete misrepresentation of the claim. This is the equivalent to

"It's hard to unsubscribe. The link is hidden in small white-on-white text."
"Ah, so you admit there is an unsubscribe button! Why are you complaining?"

Misrepresenting your product to trick consumers into paying more or buying something worse for the same money is bad. The companies that do it should be at least shamed, if not addressed with legal action, even if savvy consumers can manage to spend extra time to work around those tricks.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I don't think your political enemies like references to the Floyd/Ferguson Effect regardless of what you call him. If anything derogatory partisan nicknames mean such references are less likely to be taken seriously by those they might otherwise be worried about you convincing.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I don’t see why 1997 would be the turning point. Mass immigration from Pakistan was relatively unrelated to the Blairwave (which actually began in the last year or two of Major’s premiership), the Mirpuri community was already large, well-settled and very fecund (much moreso than now) at that time and many of the perpetrators were second generation (this is sometimes hard to tell because the press today uses their current ages when discussing historic cases, but many if not most were 18-30 year old, born in Britain at the time of their offenses).

the police would not have gone soft on Pakistani sex offenders until well into the 1990's

I don’t think so. I suppose the prevailing narrative is that the British police may have been ‘institutionally racist’ until at least Stephen Lawrence (which if anything would make 1993 the turning point). I have my doubts about that, but in any case widespread overall racial prejudice among some white cops doesn’t mean that they would have been deliberately tough on Pakistani grooming gangs, whose victims were predominantly the (native) underclass for which most police officers would have had some degree of contempt given that they are the population they most frequently interact with (or would have interacted with, at least at that time).

Some of the articles he links to also feature local police in court saying or implying the issue was already widespread and a well known feature of local life.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I don’t think autodidact works all the time for all purposes. And I would never recommend autodidact for things that you’re going to do for a living. At the same time, I think that for a person of average intelligence, you can probably teach yourself more than you think you can. Resources beyond just the books exist, and because you’re able to go at your own pace, you can slow down when you get lost or stuck.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

So, an interesting part of this dynamic is that sometimes expanded capabilities spill over into seemingly less related areas more than you’d think. For example, you might naively think that limiting your model to English would make it better, smaller, and faster. It does make it smaller, but actually stripping away the foreign language capabilities degrades the pure English performance! It prevents overfitting, and there’s good reason to suspect that it also improves the more nebulous “reasoning” skills. So, it’s quite possible and maybe even probable that stripping away too much of one thing might degrade the whole model, rather than allowing it to “specialize”.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

you also have to justify making it work one way only

Well, that's where the usual affirmative-action argument comes in - "black actors deserve as many job opportunities and chances to shine as white actors, and they won't get them unless you go for race-blind casting and compromise on the convention of casting for physical resemblance". Notably, this argument works even without ascribing racist animus to any casting director - it's just an emergent consequence of e.g. most historical dramas being based on western history.

And you can certainly reject that argument if you want, for all sorts of reasons. I don't buy it all the way myself (I personally don't find race-blind casting distracting, and would encourage more productions to use it if it were up to me; but equally, if a director is really committed to a lifelike historical vision, I think that's their prerogative and it doesn't make them a racist, which is a hot take these days). The point I wanted to make is just that "the convention ought to be broken" is the serious pro-race-blind-casting position, which means the endless arguments about the plausibility of black WWII pilots or black Hobbits are a distraction. If they want to be taken seriously - and granted, that is an uphill battle to an unfair degree - retractors need to ask more questions like "Is it detrimental to a film's artistic worth for a white WWII pilot to be portrayed by a black actor?", and to make fewer snide comments about the apparent population genetics of the Ring of Powers Shire being implausible, which is, again, missing the point on a level with complaining that a Muppet doesn't look like a real barnyard animal.