site banner
Hour Week Month Year All
Hot Bump Top New Old Controversial Comments
Advanced search parameters (with examples): "author:quadnarca", "domain:reddit.com", "over18:true"

Showing 25 of 319 results for

domain:astralcodexten.substack.com

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Obviously the market is distorted by access to illegal labor, as much as a market would be distorted if people were allowed to own slaves.

This reminds me of the "libertarian" on Twitter who thought "the government opening the border" was "statism."

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

You're broadly correct here: the anti-immigrant right (or "racialist Right") definitely don't regularly push back against claims that legal Americans would be willing to do those types of jobs. If they did, it would undercut their position that we should do mass deportations, so they either ignore it (like Catturd and friends) or they say legal Americans would do it if the price is right. The people claiming you're strawmanning Republicans in this specific post are hard to take seriously.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Sewing bras is more conducive to wellbeing than stacking them on a shelf.

Then buy yourself a sewing machine. We shouldn't make national policy choices based on psychological theories like that.

In what world would “picking fruit” be pathetic? I think you are having trouble dissociating the image you have of these things now, with what they would look like if employers didn’t have a semi-slave class. There’s a farm near me where people — college-educated, white, smart — sign up to plant and reap for free. Because in return they get free room and board, and most importantly a social environment filled with other young white people. They work quite hard, then they drink in the evenings and dance and fuck and make music and so on. This is exactly what agricultural work was for nearly all of history.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

This part:

This is exactly why we have the rule,

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible.

Is ridiculously selectively applied, e.g. basically any time people use "the establishment" as a foil they're guilty of this, but they don't get modhatted. As it stands, the rule is merely another cudgel to use against people making left-leaning arguments, although in this case I don't think an unbiased application of this rule would be particularly good either. It just makes it clunky to talk about subsets of a group that believe in specific ideas that might not be shared among the whole group.

Though I do agree the "I expect that RandomRanger will withdraw his claim" is fairly presumptuous here.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Why do you think it makes sense to say that the views of some random politician are emblematic of the "online racialist Right"?

She's a member of the United States Cabinet!

Lotta people have gotten used to being out of power. Now that Trump is President they're forced to either defend the administration they supported and voted for or criticize their own side, and they don't want to do either.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

AlexanderTurok, You claim that you are "anti third-worldism", but if that is true, why have you consistently aligning yourself with those who are trying to make the US more like a third-world country against those who want to make it great?

It wasn't MAGA that turned San Francisco into a fecese-strewn open-air drug market. It wasn't MAGA that worked behind the scenes to put a dementia patient in the Whitehouse. And it is not MAGA that has been marching in solidarity with HAMAS, shooting at federal officers, or trying to put a Communist in Gracie Mansion.

Good thing I haven't aligned with any of that.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

So you want a serf/slave class of the "inferior" brown people because such jobs are below the dignity of the "superior" white people (never mind that white people all over the world used to, and still do, such jobs). We needn't be afraid that the browns will do anything, because we should (as the superiors) ensure they have no rights apart from being cheap disposable labour until robots can do the job and hence they will be debarred from polluting our culture due to not being able to influence it, and we shouldn't encourage white people to pick up the slack by doing these low-class jobs because such jobs are only fit for low-class people and we don't want low-class white trash, that reflects poorly on our superiority.

I don't agree with "no rights apart from being cheap disposable labour." All their negative rights should be respected, though not "rights" to collect welfare or anything like that. The issue is not specifically racial. I don't think anyone should aspire to those kinds of occupations, nor romanticize or fetishize them.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

So your answer to the question of how White Americans can compete with semi-slave illegal workers is

Why in God's name would you want to?

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

If AOC says something and isn't broadly getting a lot of pushback from her party, that would be quite indicative that at least a major fraction of the left believed something, or at least doesn't disagree with her. This is not weakmanning.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

I don’t know what the flippered mutants are referring to, but it can’t possibly compare to the reduction of infant mortality from 50% to 0.5% in the west (4.3% globally).

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

This thread is full of people saying that tattoos aren't attractive.

Not quite.

Its more that they're correlated with low social status in the larger scheme. This doesn't mean they isn't a local maxima where they make someone more attractive than they would otherwise be, even if it also makes them vastly less attractive to a certain segment of the population.

In fact, I've said it straight up that the 'cheat code' to getting more women interested in you is get tattoos, get subversive piercings and buy a motorcycle. This can lead to other negative effects, but the tradeoffs may be worth it! At least in the short term.

There's a dearth of people who hold positions of true wealth power who have tattoos, though. Thus, they remain a reliable class signifier.

When something is largely a lower-class phenomenon, just like enjoying MMA or light beer, the fact that a few upper class folks indulge doesn't really prove otherwise.

yet every cop and every Navy SEAL and every BJJ champ and every boxer I know has at least one tattoo visible in short sleeves.

Yes, which might explain why people who AREN'T tough want to mimic a signal that makes them seem tough, whether they are or are not. That's common enough in nature.

And if they do so, that degrades the strength of the signal. And makes counter-signalling more viable. If all the cops, SEALs and BJJ guys have tattoos, what might you surmise about the ones that have resisted the trend and don't have any?

I dunno, it reads like a social trend like any other. I lived through the era of tramp stamps, and those faded from popularity. I've seen dozens of fashion trends come and go. The only trick with tattoos is they're more costly to alter or remove.

Also, add in that there is researching indicating they can lead to health issues.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

The truth is "American don't want to do those jobs for those wages" and that is what this is (and has always been) about, wages.The Plantation owners don't want to pay the help, and once again the Democrats (who have always been the Party of the Plantation Owners) are once again threating civil war if they are not allowed to continue importing and exploiting thier non-citizen underclass.

Whenever committed ideological conservatives* hear about a minimum wage worker complaining about his low wage, they talk about productivity and demand curves and all that jazz. But mention that the worker is an illegal immigrant and all that logic goes out the window and he starts sounding like Bernie Sanders saying that the employer has infinite resources (to pay an American, not the illegal) and that only malevolence and greed stops the lowest-paid workers from getting 65$ an hour.

And even if the government could arbitrarily order wages to increase, why not order wages to increase for the better and cushier jobs Americans are more likely to do? Seems to me like it's a weird fantasy where Americans are supposed to work Bangladesh-level jobs (crop picking, textile sewing, etc) but get American wages for it because I guess the Bengali government is too stupid to just order wages to increase.

Also, most farmers vote Republican and the CSA constitution forbade the international slave trade.

*Not to be confused with normie GOP voters

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

if you are as racist as you claim, then surely you would prefer to live in a place where all jobs were done by white people, if only because it would mean that you would only have to interact with white people. But instead your position is that for abstract reasons, it offends you to allow white people to do manual labor, so its better to import brown people to do it, even though it means that you and your friends and family have to interact with brown people all the time?

Without anti-discrimination law people would be able to choose whether or how much they want to interact with brown people.

And you now risk brown people becoming a meaningful voting block in your society that can never be expunged.

A reasonable concern. But it's worth looking at the impact on America so far. In Florida and Texas, the majority of Hispanics voted for Trump. Hispanics nationally still voted slightly more often for Democrats, but if you account for the fact that Hispanics are more likely to support centrist than far-left Dems, (just look at the melanin content of a pride rally or a DSA meeting) it doesn't seem like they're moving America to the left at all.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

I don't get your point about "the establishment" in this particular context. Why does it matter if they have power (real or perceived) in regards to whether it's a specific or general group. Most people, even politicians, don't see themselves as "establishment". For some people, Trump as POTUS is the epitome of "establishment". For others, calling him that word is utterly ludicrous. Note that I personally think it's fine for people to attack "the establishment" -- I'm opposed to this rule in general.

And I'm not defending his post wholesale -- I agree the last bit is presumptuous and I'm fine with him being given a warning for something like that. I don't think throwing the gauntlet to someone like this is really that bad, but maybe I'm in the minority on that. I think personal attacks are far worse for productive conversations, which happen regularly and don't get punished (or even become AAQCs!) as long as it's someone with a right-wing opinion attacking someone with a left-wing opinion.

I also have some reservations with how it seems like a final warning from stuff like his previous post which didn't deserve a mod action at all.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

All you have done is clearly demonstrate that you have already made up your mind and no matter what hoops people jump through will not be sufficient.

first you lie

you would not bother to engage with and would dismiss it all out of hand

All you have done is make me update towards you also being a net-negative.

Yeesh, no thanks.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Can you trust the Soviet investigators who "investigated" Auschwitz?

More than the Nazis who built the place I'd say. But notice that nowhere did I cite Soviet-only information as far as I can tell.

The authors of the Soviet investigation of the Katyn massacre, which falsely blamed the Germans for a crime that they had actually committed,

Funny, that episode is I believe a major reason why the Nazis wanted to burn evidence.

Can you trust the confession of someone that was extracted through physical torture, under duress with no access to legal representation and no access to documentary evidence?

Frequently, yes actually. Especially if corroborated with other forms of evidence. Especially given what Hoss wrote after his interrogations. He never admitted guilt, only following orders.

It's not about trust, it's about weighing the quality of the evidence against the nature of the claims being made.

Ok, sure. Let's agree on that.

Himmler's denial is relevant because Himmler's explanation for the conditions on the Eastern Front aligns with an enormous body of documentary evidence

By default, one expects a criminal to deny the accusation. By default, one expects a clever criminal to tell a lie that is plausible. By default, one expects a coverup if the circumstances allow it.

whereas the documentary evidence for gas chambers disguised as shower rooms performing executions of millions of people is completely nonexistent.

So you just don't understand how coverups work and deny the numerous witness accounts and artifacts? There were public accounts of the Holocaust in like 1942, Allied intelligence collected indications of it (which was not used at Nuremburg), and quite a bit of physical evidence for the whole shebang, including soil readings finding the relevant chemicals.

He also claimed there were gas chambers at Dachau and Mauthausen, which is known not to be true.

Is that known? https://www.ushmm.org/search/results/?q=dachau+gas+chamber+door

Best I can tell, there was a gas chamber at Dachau, but it was not used for extermination. The crematoriums did seem like they got some use though.

https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/en/historical-site/virtual-tour/crematorium-area/

Seems the mainstream disagrees with you about Mauthausen, too: https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/News/Concerning-Doubts-about-the-Existence-of-a-Gas-Chamber-at-the-Mauthausen-Concentration-Camp

You've demonstrated to me that I cannot trust anything you say about even the simplest of facts, including representing the "mainstream," so you'll excuse me for wanting you to at least make an attempt prove your assertions by default when you say things like "which is known."

According to mainstream historiography, there were no gassings at all, ever, in Treblinka I, which was a penal/labor camp.

Oh, so you do know what Treblinka I was? That's nice. You know, it is entirely possible one account gets any given detail wrong. As someone with some background in the interrogation business, I definitely agree that's an issue. But here it seems like you're trying to pull a stunt of "well if he got some things wrong the entire testimony is out" as if there isn't evidence the Nazis were using gas chambers for one thing or another since like 1939. Or other confessions. Or other material evidence. The general history seems to be that in the summer of 1941, mass killings started by the SS and they decided to switch to gas instead of bullets. More efficient that way. Cleaner. Thereafter, they built out the extermination program for the Jews in 1942.

We'll never know, but it's entirely possible Hoss witnessed some experimental gassings at Treblinka I. Or his mind was addled and he mixed up the sites (there were three in Operation Reinhard: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka). Or, actually, his statement need not be read as his visit taking place in June 1941 either. Given the rest of his statements about the extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews at Treblinka II, that aligns with July of 1942. Of course, that seems to conflict a little bit with Hoss also saying that his subordinate Fritzsch came up with the whole Zyklon B idea in August 1941. Hoss also says that at Treblinka the victims knew it was coming, whereas Auschwitz fooled 'em, which conflicts with at least later accounts of Treblinka also trying to fool victims. (But what did happen to all those hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto?)

Here's a historical analysis of Hoss's memoirs: https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/hoess-memoirs/

That's an impressive level of corroboration from multiple other accounts for a conspiracy this large, and over some decades too. I love that Hoss got the estimate of the exterminated at Auschwitz down to merely 1.1 million later on. Weird way to be a coerced witness. "Yeah it was mass murder, but less massive."

There's no documentary record or physical evidence to corroborate the claims of millions of people gassed in secret extermination facilities.

How, on earth, can you say this if you're even remotely aware of the mainstream evidence on the matter? It's all made up? Multiple nations, thousands of witnesses? Hoss is just a total liar, as are the other confessors telling similar stories? The showers with airtight doors are just an outcome of German over-engineering and commitment to hygiene?

Where did all the Jews in those Jewish communities in Europe end up then? Spirited to Heaven? What were these trains doing? https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau7292

Your view is something like:

The real conspiracy isn't that the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews, it's that the Allies and Jews created the appearance of the Nazis trying to exterminate the Jews. Which was believable, given how much Hitler and the Nazis seemed to have it in for the Jews. Yeah, sure, the Nazis really didn't like Jews. But the "Final Solution" didn't involve mass murder, let alone with gas chambers and ovens. Just some forced labor. Deaths from disease. Actually, it's better to trust the Nazis denials over any confessions, or eyewitnesses--Jewish or otherwise--or intelligence reports, or aerial photography, or soil samples. Instead, this was all a massive concoction to ...

... to do what exactly? The Nazis had lost the war. No one needed to execute them just for fun.

Reminds me of my favorite antisemitic sentiment (common in the Middle East) is: "Obviously the Holocaust is a Jewish myth; sure would be cooler if it wasn't though."

There have been no excavations of any mass graves on the site. The ground radar has not "found evidence", or any more evidence than the same ground radar evidence at Kamloops Indian Reserve found evidence for the mass graves of children.

I was hoping you'd mentioned the Canadians.

So this is fabricated? https://www.livescience.com/44443-treblinka-archaeological-excavation.html

Last I checked the Canadians hadn't found anything or even pretended to. Also no corroborating evidence.

Frankly I trust the NSA and CIA on this analysis. Would be weird if they, decades after the fact, were still really committed to the bit using previously unpublicized information.

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305894?objectPanel=transcription https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-quarterly/sigint_and_the_holocaust.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-D-PURL-LPS92209/pdf/GOVPUB-D-PURL-LPS92209.pdf

You really gotta admire the competence of the international, multigenerational commitment to this fabrication across so many information sources.

Do you have any evidence there was intent and planning to construct such a false narrative?

Friday Fun Thread for July 11, 2025

I didn't expect a banana to give me trypophobia today. Out of a desire to upgrade my diet from becoming 100% junk food to merely 90%, I bought a bunch of them.

They arrived at a non-ideal level of ripeness, and then I let them sit for a few days. Now they're nice and yellow, but have a pattern of spots on them makes my skin crawl. Just about the only image on earth that otherwise does that is a photoshopped pic of someone's tits with holes added on, purportedly from worms.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Why do you think Epstein killed himself if he was hardly guilty of a crime and not wrapped up in any broader intelligence operation?

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

No, in fact, MAGA got upset when it seemed he might and Trump backed off.

I'm not sure. I think it was actually almost entirely Stephen Miller:

In White House meetings, Miller took the lead in dialing back the president from moving toward anything that could be branded an "amnesty" program.

One idea that was shot down: a "touchback" program under which laborers illegally in the U.S. would have go back to their nation of origin, get a U.S. work visa there and be able to return here.

"Stephen is so hardcore that the president almost jokes about it, saying that, 'You could have a person who has been here for 20 years and has a clean record and everyone loves them, and Stephen will say deport them,' " according to one person who heard Trump's remarks.

Were it not for Miller, we might have something like an amnesty, or at least the policy of not arresting farmworkers would have continued.

Look at the other issues. MAGA was almost entirely united against bombing Iran, and Trump did it anyway. MAGA had a meltdown over Epstein, and Trump dismissed it. I'm skeptical that Trump cares very much about what the Online Right portion of MAGA (which as you say, isn't really MAGA) thinks.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

If you polled a white person, maybe 50% white, 30% black, 20% everyone else.

If you polled a black person, maybe 80% white, 10% black, 10% everyone else.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

It's only obvious to you because you aren't blessed with the worldliness of a mushroom.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

I think it really just turns on what you consider "diversity". Obviously and famously past Americans considered Germans and Irish and such as contextually diverse in all four of those senses, while today we would probably not say the same of their descendants. I'm sure you could take a stab at some rough numbers about what it might have been over time if you used diversity "in context" for contemporaries, but that would probably be pretty difficult and subjective. Still, I like the instinct here, because it does always annoy me when we hear the similar idea about "division" being the worst it's ever been when the country literally fought a civil war before.

Linguistic and religious diversity might be exceptions, though. This article has a few stats for language that implies it was higher even (or especially) at the Founding, although also worth a side-note that the voting percentages would have been different to some extent. In terms of religious diversity that's also tricky - how do you count "religiously unaffiliated" and its various flavors? I don't really think a fair historical comparison is possible, and I guess you could try, but I won't.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

The QoL of agricultural grunt workers has, in every society in history, been pretty bad. Yes, you can entice some college kids to do a bit of it over the summer for unlimited booze and sex, but I am very skeptical they'll do enough of it to replace migrants. 'Picking crops' is just a job that always inherently sucks.

The cost advantage of illegals is also not the only reason that illegals are preferred by lower blue collar employers; I don't know if you've met native white and black trash but they're both just awful. Drugs, dysfunctional relationships, poor communication and attendance, legal issues, poor conflict-management, unreliability, theft and dishonesty, laziness, etc are way worse among our native underclass- and illegals are themselves not necessarily role models with that stuff. Lots of them are essentially unemployable because that's who's left over in a society like the US where huge majorities of functional and capable people 'make it' out of having to do shitty unskilled labor for a living.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

At this point tattoos signal nothing more than conformity or body dysmorphia.

Piercings are more serious, I'm not sure what they say except for 'lower social class' or maybe body dysmorphia.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Whether "woke right" exists or doesn't, "The Right" surely does, and this US administration does rather effectively speak for the Right in the American context.