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FiveHourMarathon

Wawa Nationalist

17 followers   follows 6 users  
joined 2022 September 04 22:02:26 UTC

And every gimmick hungry yob

Digging gold from rock n roll

Grabs the mic to tell us

he'll die before he's sold

But I believe in this

And it's been tested by research

He who fucks nuns

Will later join the church


				
User ID: 195


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
FiveHourMarathon


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Wawa Nationalist

				
				
				

				

					17 followers  

					follows 6 users  

					joined 2022 September 04 22:02:26 UTC
				


				
					

					
And every gimmick hungry yob


Digging gold from rock n roll


Grabs the mic to tell us


he'll die before he's sold


But I believe in this


And it's been tested by research


He who fucks nuns


Will later join the church



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 195


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This isn't exactly the answer to your question, but in high school our family business did a large renovation job at a local university, and afterward there was a fairly simple maintenance job that required periodic observation for 10 hours a day seven days a week but only a few hours of actual activity. Because it was a university job, it was "prevailing wage" meaning laborers were paid full union wages, which iirc at the time was $32/hr for this field, including overtime it was a few grand a week for this low-work low-skill job.


So because my dad didn't want to pay a real employee that much money for no real work, I spent most of the summer hanging out on campus, making absurd money (some of which I was even actually paid!), and in between morning and afternoon and evening rounds that took up about half the day, I wandered around the academic libraries and just took books off shelves and read all day. If anyone wondered who I was they never asked, I was just a sort of sixteen year old academic hermit in work boots. I worked a lot of hours but I spend all of it reading, and it didn't matter that I had no weekends because I just spent all night running around with my friends anyway.


I often say if I could have kept that weird little job forever, I never would have even gone to a real college. I got everything I wanted out of life right there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Do you have derogatory songs for your rival team?




If we ever do a Philly motte meetup, you can recognize me by the T-Shirt.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hence the ever more extreme distances of Yuppie office worker distance running. The same awe that used to attach to the Marathoner is now reserved for the Ultramarathoner. Soon it will be for the Barkley marathons, I suppose.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A lot of people age out of playing their ball sport of choice as a function of being rejected to continue progressing up the ranks




Absolutely, this is a good insight. I stopped playing baseball and basketball when I missed the high school teams. Continuing to play at 16 while not being on the high school team would have been unbearably lame to me, but taking up boxing had no similar feeling of being obviously worse than the guys in my school who were on the basketball team.


The American ball sports also suffer particularly from the physical differentiation in positions, the implications change when the talent pool gets bigger. In 4th grade I was a center, in 7th I was a power forward, by high school I was the right size to play small forward, if I had been good enough to make it to college ball I would be too short to be an undersized point guard.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


they are just less legible and it is a problem because the most popular American sports are focused on the score.




The score is the point. Keeping score is what separates a sporting event from a dance. To quote one of my favorite philosophical quotes about Soccer from Sampaoli:




One night, I went to a bar, I was with a woman. We talked all night. We laughed, we flirted, I paid for several drinks of hers. At around 5am, a guy came in, grabbed her by the arm and took her to the bathroom. He made love to her and she left with him. That doesn't matter, because I had most of the possession on that night.




All the stuff that isn't scoring fundamentally doesn't matter to the outcome of the game. Those actions that don't lead to scoring could have mattered, the omission of them might have mattered, but ultimately they didn't matter. They might matter inasmuch as they are part of a longer process which leads to actual scoring, but if they don't lead to anything then it didn't matter.




I think Baseball is most instructive - it is also often a very low scoring game like Soccer.




This is kinda silly. The average baseball scoreline is 4.5-4.5 basically forever, the average scoreline in the Big 5 UEFA leagues is 1.4-1.4. So baseball features three times the scoring of top flight soccer.


But anyway, my point isn't that soccer is boring, I quite like it, I intend to get quite drunk at the local brewery for as many of the USMNT games as possible. I want to cheer on our boy from Herhsey and a bunch of the most accidental Americans imaginable.


It's just that I think Soccer fans who talk shit on American sports are stupid and ignorant.


It's the same bullshit when soccer fans complain about commercial breaks in American sports, while buying soccer jerseys that are walking advertisements.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I am not sure if I would go to a NBA game if I were offered floor seats for free.




You should, if you get the chance. I've had floor seats from a friend for some truly awful Sixers' teams, and it was still a fantastic experience to see them that close.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Oh it was great. It probably helped that I smuggled in a bottle to pass around, but we were all good friends by the final whistle.


But my philly friends were picturing the way that opposing fans get treated at the Linc. One year my dad gave his season tickets at the Vet to a friend who was a Cowboys fan early in the season who went in Cowboys gear, the rest of the year when we went to the games people threw stuff at US because they thought WE were Cowboys fans, even though we were cheering for the Birds.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


That said, the NBA is still about winning.




Winning a Championship, and nothing else matters. Which leads to a bad regular season product, because the regular season isn't set up to really reward winning in the regular season with better odds to win the championship.




Height matters but not to the same extent. Big men are only valuable if they can also hit a three. Mr. Process himself is not a bad three point shot, and Wemby at 7-4 shoots threes like he is Reggie Miller.




I think it's just obvious that it's easier to shoot 3s when you're taller. There's no other way to make sense of Joel Embiid being a good three point shooter.




Basketball as a sport is great. Pickup games can be fun even with a range of talent. It doesn't take an entire field like soccer or football. Half-court games mean 20 players can simultaneously play on a single court.




It's probably the best sport that can be played at any number of people. 1 on 1, 2 on 2, 3 on 3 all work. Though to be honest, as a kid we came up with indoor 1v1 baseball rules. It's just a matter of creativity and determination.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It was meant to be addressed to




Knicks fans say[ing] that Taylor Swift doing a little dance on the sideline is performative...




I apologize if that was unclear. I take no position on your personal fandom, just on the question of whether it is legitimate to complain about celebrities sitting on celebrity row.


For what it's worth, the Knicks themselves seem to have no problem with Timmy and were chanting Lisan Al Ghaib at him while spraying him with champagne after the game.




I am not a NBA fan. I watched 3 games all year which were these finals despite still playing basketball a few times a week.




That is for the most part what NBA fandom is. The regular season is increasingly pointless and ignored, the playoffs make up a whole second season, and there are just too many games to pay attention to. I probably watched the end of a dozen Sixers games this season after my wife went to bed, and most of their playoff games. Compare: I watch essentially every Eagles game, I watch or listen to dozens of Yankees and Phillies games during the season.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think it's weird or unusual. Unathletic adult men gathering for sports is like 95% of my social life. But as upper middle class white folks, we have to invent new sports in order to be any good at them, because if we go down to the Y to play pickup basketball we're getting mogged by the inner city. Hence my lifetime devotion to crossfit, rowing, rock climbing, Brazilian jiu jitsu, and other dumb and obscure pastimes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The debate is impossible.


Soccer fans claim the sport has more action because the ball is constantly in play. Non-soccer fans claim it is boring because there is little danger of anyone doing anything important for the vast majority of that time.


Soccer fans claim that baseball is boring because the ball is in play very little. Baseball fans feel it is exciting because every single pitch can result in a score.


Hockey and fight sports probably have the best balance of constant action with meaningful scoring at any second, but both are somewhat niche and require some degree of specialist knowledge to properly understand.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is the strangest statement I've ever heard. Screaming and booing and chanting at games is white culture.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm going to double reverse uno you here. NBA "hardcore" fandom is itself performative fandom, the guys getting upset over Celebrity Row at MSG and Taylor Swift are pretending to some kind of fandom that doesn't fundamentally exist in the NBA.


Identity Disclaimer: I am a lifelong Sixers fan, which probably predisposes me to think that basketball is stupid.


Hardcore NBA fans don't really exist. I'm the kind of American kid that grew up catching morning Sportscenter before the bus and has a half dozen podcasts from The Athletic and The Ringer on my phone today. When I think of sports fan groups in America, I can name a dozen groups and chants and traditions off the top of my head easily across every sport, except NBA basketball: the Bleacher Creatures, Roll Tide, The Black Hole, Rock Chalk (Algeria), Skol!, Chiefs Nation, the Cheeseheads, Go Birds, the Seven Line Army, the Green Monster, Citizen's Bank South.


I can't think of a single such tradition in the NBA that I've ever heard of. The equivalent famous moments in NBA fan history are themselves celebrity driven, things like Spike Lee miming the choke at Reggie Miller, or Jack Nicholson courtside in LA.


The NBA has always been a celebrity driven, star focused, front-runner sport. There's no real fan tradition because the team's are fundamentally too malleable and too protean to be the focus of tradition, and nobody cares about the regular season (despite there being numerous obvious fixes for it). This is the result of fundamental aspects of the sport: the ten foot tall hoop means it's so much easier if you're tall, and the five men on the field mean individual players are so much more important than in any other sport. Team building in the NBA is about chasing outliers who happen to be a little athletic while also being freakishly tall. There are never enough of these to go around, so the haves are so far above the have-nots that the have-nots just chase the outlier that will turn them into a have. There's no amount of team tradition, values, or coaching that will bridge the gap.


Most NBA fans have more opinions about the current star players and franchises than they do about their own team. There's not the same degree of bond between the youngster and the backup catcher on his favorite team. There's not the same possibility that your sixth round pick turns into a star, and thus the lack of obsession with those minor players.


So when Knicks fans say that Taylor Swift doing a little dance on the sideline is performative...




Some reason this has been living in my head for a few days as a feeling that’s not how real fans celebrate. Perhaps theatre kids it’s so natural to perform that it’s how they celebrate. Where it’s more an internal joy. Something just doesn’t feel natural to me here.




She's doing it FOR YOU. This is what you like, that's why you're an NBA fan and not a fan of a superior sport. That's why anybody has cared about the Knicks for most of the past thirty years. For the celebrity culture of it. Because it's the sport that most mixes into modern hip-hop oriented celebrity culture, and has since the 90s. It's easiest to produce celebrities, every all-NBA player is famous in a way that every ace pitcher or quarterback fails to be.


Both the performative fandom of the sideline celebrity, and the performative fandom of the "real" Knicks fan who has some weird bullshit about their attachment to a mediocre celebrity driven sports team, are trying to flex their status now that the Knicks lucked into the smarter strategy of bringing in a bunch of guys from Villanova to curry favor with the Bishop of Rome.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I wore Kelly green and my Randall Cunningham hat, got top-ten drunkest I've ever been, and sang the whole fight song stomping on the bleachers to keep time after every score. The Lambeau fans couldn't have been nicer, there was the exact right amount of booing to make it worth it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


*exception - Philadelphia




When I went to Green Bay last year for a game, my friends and family who were used to Eagles games at the Vet and the Linc kept warning me not to  wear my Eagles gear at Lambeau, because I might be in physical danger.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


BRING BACK DUELING.




I think it should be legal to punch someone who is filming you without your consent. It's a similar violation of bodily integrity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Motte infidelity survey
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm now very excited for you to post the results.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sure if you had an infinite budget and ability to recruit, you could counterfeit Aella.


But I think the (5) on your list that is being underemphasized in most discussions of prostitution is: Able to mentally and physically endure and survive the ordeal of sex work while maintaining (2) and (3). Most strippers, porn stars, prostitutes flame out on drugs or alcohol or other self destructive behaviors; both because that kind of impulsivity is what lead them to the trade, and because of the pressures and traumas thereof. They have a short shelf life because of that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think it's moddable, but I do think that mottizens should avoid using the "we" word, unless we're talking about weirdoes who frequent internet discussion boards.


FWIW I think the average normie laborer would find the idea of $10k/night hooker more intelligible than the idea of a $1000/hr lawyer or a $1,000,000,000 CEO or a $200k/yr HR director.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think acting is a good example of what I'm talking about, where from an audience perspective utility is produced by marketing efforts. Wine and other Veblen goods function similarly.


Tom Cruise's fame and value is not produced purely or even primarily by Tom Cruise's talent, but by the combined effort of an industry, by agents and publicists and studios, and by Tom Cruise's own decisions to manage his image and fame to produce his stardom. He is a product of that system. ((Though Cruise is also a really good actor, in a lot of great films)) That used to be more true in old Hollywood than it is today, Tab Hunter is a good example, there's a great documentary on his career; Tab was made famous by the studio system that both made him big and protected him from the public consequences of his homosexuality, realized that the studio was making a lot of money off of him and tried to break out of the studio system, and his career immediately tanked because he no longer had the studio to make him big.


The audience watching Tom Cruise in a mediocre movie, say Jack Reacher, gets more utils out of watching the movie than they would watching the same movie with a no-name actor, because they like Tom Cruise. The person drinking a fancy rare bottle of wine from a fancy French vineyard is experiencing more utils in that moment than I get drinking two buck chuck, because of the marketing that convinces them that this is a great and rare bottle of wine. That kind of marketing genius is the talent and the labor and commitment that produces the utility for the customer.


A good example, more common to most experiences, is that fight fans get more out of watching the Heavyweight Championship of the world and pay more to watch it, than they do out of watching a smoker bout on the undercard of a local brawl, even if the latter is the more exciting fight. Most people get more out of watching the NBA finals than a great high school game. This is not the result of the players on the court, it is the result of the whole infrastructure of the league and the understanding that this is an important high level game. Donc...




Any vintner deciding to make fifty millions by just producing 100 bottles of a wine which is worth 500k$ a bottle will fail miserably, because the very fact that there are 100 bottles on the market will cap the price.




Any random vintner can't just decide to do that. They need to work through decades of building industry credibility, making contacts, getting good reviews, building audience goodwill, and building a story of exclusivity that makes people think the bottles are worth a lot of money. It's not just a decision to charge more, it's a conscious project that takes a great deal of time and effort and talent. Most who set off down that path fail.


We can say that the customer is being defrauded because the literal product is the same, but that is to decide that the vast majority of people and huge portion of the economy is fake, and we should have strong priors that when we decide that everyone is an idiot we're engaging in an act of arrogance.


If Aella was stupid and lacked the cunning to build herself up, she wouldn't be a usable byword on this website, Tommy would have brought her up in the OP and we would have collectively gone "who?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Not really. "We" here is a reference to the kind of blue-collar worker @Goodguy was talking about (i.e. someone who puts a lot of their identity into being the kind of person who works hard in a physically demanding job), a demographic which is underrepresented here. If @hydroacetylene's "we" is accurate and he is indeed a regular blue-collar guy, he is providing the Motte with useful information we wouldn't otherwise have access to.




I mean, I think the objection holds because speaking for a hundred million people, of whom my learned friend @hydroacetylene is an atypical example, is pretty rich.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Motte infidelity survey
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If they outright said they feel jealous that I do X with another woman (provided it wasn’t an overt demand as a way to control my behavior in general), then I would simply stop doing it to preserve their feelings; and likewise I would expect the same with them.




An exception big enough to park a Mack truck. The list of irrational and impossible demands a woman, or a man, can put on you because it makes them jealous rapidly limits your life in ways that are incompatible with modernity. The harem and the chador are stable equilibria, everything else requires that someone eat some jealousy on occasion.


My point isn't that polyamory is built on jealousy, it's that the polyamorous (and I include in this category those pursuing a lifestyle of serial monogamy) are trading off the possibility of feeling jealous for things that they want.


The executive's wife who accepts her philandering husband is trading off her jealousy against having a stable marriage, husband who provides for her, her kids having a father. The husband in an open relationship is trading off his jealousy of his wife for his own opportunity to sleep with other women.


And most men and women, post sexual revolution in an environment of serial monogamy, trade the jealousy of knowing that their partner had lovers before marriage, for the opportunity to take their own lovers before marriage. Premarital sex is exactly this kind of tradeoff, it's merely temporal separation rather than physical.


Where polyamorous relationships typically fail is that it's really hard for people to get enough out of them to balance against their jealousy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Death, Taxes, @HereAndGone2 hopping in to tell us that it's totally inexplicable that people value things she doesn't personally like. Said with all love and affection.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The funny thing about those bottles of wine is I believe there have been a few cases of counterfeiter just mixing cheap stuff and labeling it different.




In the actual case you're probably thinking of it was a fairly elaborate mixing operation, utilizing bottles of very good wine mixed with a variety of wines to match the flavor profile, and based on an experienced oenophile's knowledge of the expensive wines. Most of the cheap mixing wines were still wines I would consider very expensive to drink at my own table!


But regardless, marketing is part of the good from a supply and demand perspective, for both the wine and the gash. Sure, it all feels the same in the dark, but actually making the sale for that kind of money requires a sales effort. And if the kind of marketing in the pornography/escort space that Aella achieves were easy for many thousands of women in the pornography space to do, we wouldn't know who Aella was and be discussing and referencing her constantly on this website.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Those bottles of wine are in short supply. If you can't comprehend of being in the market for those bottles of wine or those escorts, then you probably just don't understand the market in question. "Weird things happen when people engage in bidding wars" isn't an explanation, why is there a bidding war if there is infinite supply?