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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 July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You're right, I misread OP. I'm downvoting myself.


Mrs. FiveHour was once deeply embarrassed when the courthouse security took my leatherman off me at the metal detector when she asked me to come in and hang a picture for her.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A multitool. These are commonly carried, but I don't know if I would use most of the functions or not. Many people swear by them, though.




The funny thing is, you have to start carrying it to find uses for all the tools. Lots of things you used to do the hard way, or not do at all, are suddenly easy, you find reasons to use it. Tightening a screw that you saw was loose might ordinarily be a task of running and getting a screwdriver, and you might just figure it'll be fine, now you just do it. Pliers make all kinds of things easier. You become Leatherman Guy by carrying the Leatherman.


But then, when it comes to EDC I'm also a fanny pack guy, so maybe take me with a grain of salt.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think "social occasion" is doing more definitional work than "knife" here. "Concert" is very different from "barbecue." If a bunch of my buddies came to my house to grab a beer I wouldn't be surprised or shocked if one had a knife, if we went to a concert and one of them had a knife I might find it odd.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can't hold any ideology other than Rationalism if you believe only opinions that are justified by rationality. To hold any other ideology you must be willing to hold stupid, irrational opinions that might actively hurt you. Only an irrational opinion can be a costly signal that you hold the ideology, and being willing to look irrational is a relatively low cost symbol.


To be an Argentine Patriot one doesn't worry about the Steelman of the Malvinas, the Malvinas are Argentine because to be an Argentine Patriot is to believe the Malvinas are Argentine.


Otherwise one would run into the situation where another Argentine claims the Malvinas and you are there saying, well rationally according to international law it's a nuanced issue. Which isn't very patriotic of you.


The Argentine claim further functions as a signal that they, as Argentines, are allowed to make the claim even if they have no intention of following up on it. No one can stop them from saying it. This is a petty form of pride, but a valuable one. What kind of cuck refuses to insult his opponent because it is "irrational?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The whole concept of "honor" has been so lost that even those who profess to defend it are constantly in the act of denigrating it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fidel Castro did it twice.


Though those were under a quite different American regime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Merz famously voted against criminalizing marital rape in 1997.




This always strikes me as such an odd left-wing shibboleth to throw out. The actual concept of prosecuting marital rape under the law seems like a really nuanced and difficult idea, not one that is easily simplified to "well duh you fucking troglodyte of course this can only go one way."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


However fiercely the ethnic nationalists would protest, something you do not see in any large number are claims that this is all some harebrained DEI scheme. People by and large acknowledge that the makeup of these teams is not decided by politics, but for the most part trying to field the best squad possible. Take the blood-and-soil types and ask them to pick a starting XI for their national football team and they’d probably return something not much different than what it is already. People still want their country to win, and the reality is there is no ethnically pure replacement for Mbappé or Lamal or Bellingham.




I'm going to take the complete opposite devil's advocate position here, and say that the racial makeup of national sports teams is clearly the result of racism in the United States, at least. I'll do the always dangerous thing of advocating for my ideological opponents to do something that I think would be in their best interest:


Ibram X Kendi et al. Should Be Advocating for More White Representation in Sports


If we're starting, ad argumentum, from Kendi-ism's basic postulates:


All racial differences in representation are the result of discrimination stemming from racism


The only way to fight current discrimination and cure those differences in representation is with discrimination in the other direction


It's obvious that there can be no other reason why the number of YTs in the NBA doesn't reflect their overall population share. Done and dusted.


But even if we start from the empirical observations of international tournaments and the assumptions of HBD, we still find that YTs are vastly underrepresented in American athletics. The American Olympic basketball team, based on merit and even cheating significantly by bringing along marginal players like Joel Embiid, went to the fourth quarter against Serbia. Serbia was the only country in the Olympics with an all-white team, and they won Bronze. The United States had no white players on their team, despite having a white population multiple times that of Serbia. Argentina is fielding a World Cup team with no players of notable African descent, and they are in the semifinals. This despite having a similarly sized white population to France and England. This would suggest to us that the disparity is not based on innate talent differences.


So, sure, this particular day today there might not be a white player who could replace a superior black players on the national team, but that is all downstream of twenty-odd years of culture. There's a reason why the representation looks the way that it does, and it isn't some sacred natural phenomenon handed down from Mt. Sinai.


This would massively benefit the Antiracism(tm) industry, in that it would prove for a change that they were seeking equality, rather than ethnic grievance. Giving up useless, but symbolic cultural privileges in high profile entertainment industries may not be a fair trade for affirmative action demands, but it would at least be something that the woke are looking to give up.


That instead the "Snowtime Lakers" are being criticized by the woke press should tell us something about the goals of the movement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The WBC doesn't even require you to have the passport.




Citizenship: They hold a valid passport or are a citizen of the country they want to represent.






Heritage: They have at least one parent who was born in or is/was a citizen of that country.






Future Eligibility: They can provide documents proving they would be legally granted citizenship or a passport for that country if they were to apply.






Residency: They are a permanent legal resident of the country or territory.






Birthplace: They were born in that country or territory.






Prior Participation: They previously appeared on a final tournament or qualifier roster for that country's team




So it's not just that you have the passport, it's that you probably would get the passport if they applied for one, and if participation has been allowed in a past match it can't be revoked because of the prior participation rule.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm convinced that it is a major factor in WoW's long term success, the existence of injustice and unfairness increases the loot-box nature of progression, and makes socialization a natural factor of the game. A more sophisticated loot system would undermine the degree to which you rely on your teammates. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a naturally attractive state of affairs for humans. If there were no cooperation-competition aspect to the game, then it could be "solved" in a way that it can't currently be solved.


Because the surprising thing is that it works the vast majority of the time. You see more people pass on an upgrade because it's a bigger upgrade to someone else, than you see people ninja-loot something they shouldn't. Even though there's no real motivation to do so beyond being pro-social, maybe that the player remembers you fondly, or returns the favor at some point, which are both so tenuous that pure altruism is the best explanation.


And guild-raid distribution is a totally different animal with its own rules, which overlap and confuse the situation in other situations.


The human element makes a game infinitely repeatable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also, I love the WBC rules for nationality! If you have any claim to being from "country," you're from "country" and that's all there is to it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Does WoW not have wikis with guides that cover literally everything?




It does, but largely they're oriented around end game content, and I'm more interested in leveling content. WoW is really at least two, and maybe as many as five or six, separate games packaged as one, leveling is a mostly solo game with occasional group content, PvE end game is entirely group content and involves very specific stat combinations on very specific pieces. So when I look up "Fury warrior stat priority" I'll get answers appropriate for level 70 raiding prep like make sure you have enough hit rating, which you don't even start to get hit rating until level 50 or so, and I'm only at level 30, it isn't that useful for me.


Now, the standard and objectively correct answer to precise stat priority while leveling is something like "don't worry about it too much you're level 30, you'll replace it in like four or five hours." Which, yes that's true, but I like sweating the details just a little, it's fun to me, I'm a gearslut. If I get an axe that's .5dps better but the sword I have is a slower swing speed and has +3str and +5agi over the axe, I want to know which one is precisely better even if it isn't really that big a deal, not knowing bugs me.


There are also, as of this writing, at least four or five different live versions of WoW online and four or five more dead ones, so advice can vary across which expansion you are playing. There's probably a guide somewhere out there for exactly what I want, but I didn't find it. This is something I'd try to find on Reddit, but I didn't find it there either easily.




Also interested in the deepseek simulations, do you have examples and/or prompts?




Since getting back into WoW I have found PUG looting culture fascinating as both a functional and ethical question. There's a whole 'nother thesis to be written about loot distribution in guild raids, where you have the same regular people trying to progress as a team over months and years and there are a number of systems and methods used to balance progressing the group with rewarding high contributors with making sure that everyone has enough buy in that they stay motivated. But I'm playing casually and so entirely dealing with Pick Up Groups (PUGs) in 5 man dungeons. These are a group of 5 players getting together to team up and work on an objective they could not otherwise reach by themselves, typically an instanced dungeons with bosses that drop higher level loot.


If you've never played, the basic mechanic used for loot distribution is that when a good item drops during a group run, you can roll either Need or Greed on it, or Pass on it altogether. Everyone who rolls Need rolls 1-100 against each other highest takes it, if no one rolls Need then everyone who rolled Greed rolls 1-100. There's no situation where a Greed roll beats a Need roll, and Pass never gets it. There are rare scenarios where everyone passes and then it can just be freely looted by anyone who clicks on the corpse, but those are so marginal they don't really matter.


That's the whole of the game mechanics. The rest is cultural interaction. There's no restriction on who can click Need and who can click Greed, you can click Need on something you can't equip or wouldn't benefit from. The only mechanic for punishing someone who needs on something they shouldn't is for the group leader to kick them out of the group, or if the group leader refuses to do that (or the ninja-looter is the group leader) for any offended party members to quit. In most cases, this means ending the run altogether. For the last boss in an instance, the group would break up anyway, so there's no mechanic for punishing them whatsoever. Historically, it was at least a repeated-game situation on smaller servers because you ran into the same people over and over and didn't want to get a bad reputation, but in the classic-revival era the servers are so large and leveling is sped up so that reputation barely matters, I rarely remember running into the same people twice anyway.


It's a basic prisoner's dilemma setup where it always benefits the player to hit Need/Betray if everyone else is hitting Greed/Cooperate, but in order for the group to work everyone has to cooperate most of the time. The rules aren't even really written down anywhere or part of an in-game tutorial tip, they're just transmitted orally from player to player. Amazingly enough for the internet, it actually works, 95%+ of the time it goes off without a hitch and no one does anything weird and there's no arguments and it's fun. I would actually say I see outsize acts of altruism where players pass on a small upgrade for themselves because they think it's a bigger upgrade for another player more often than I see problems, but you do see problems crop up. Because there's no formal rules that anyone wrote or everyone agreed to, just a set of informal heuristics everyone picks up from each other about what is "fair" over the course of years of playing.


The obvious situations are simple and everyone agrees on them: the Mage doesn't get the big battle axe he can't equip, the Warrior does, problem solved. If a Mage needs on an axe, he gets kicked, because he's either a ninja-looter who is just going to sell the item for a minor amount of gold or he's r-slurred and has no idea what he's doing and either way you don't want him in the group. But there are a million variations of gray areas. Warriors and Hunters can both equip bows, but a Hunter benefits orders of magnitude more from a good bow upgrade than the Warrior does, can the Warrior roll against the Hunter for the bow when it drops? An Enhancement (melee) Shaman benefits hugely from an axe upgrade, but a Restoration (healing) Shaman doesn't benefit from it at all for healing but might use it when leveling solo, is it a crime when a Shaman rolls on an axe against a Warrior if they're currently healing? What if they mainly play Enh melee but they went off spec to heal to get the group going? What if it's an item where it's off-spec for both players, but maybe more off-spec for one than the other? What about super minor upgrades for one character versus huge upgrades for another? What if one litigant is a higher level toon carrying the group through lower level content and contributing more to the win, or if one litigant is a lower level toon that barely contributed anything to the group? Those all start to get different answers from different people. So partly just because I find it interesting, and partly out of a sense that I want to act ethically deciding to roll on a sword when I'm healing on my Paladin, I set up a debate on an LLM.


Keep in mind this is buried within the context of pages of random questions about WoW, so there might be some context missing if you tried the same prompt yourself. As I got into playing with it I'd post the same prompt into ChatGPT, Grok, and DeepSeek. Generally it comes from me thinking about a problem I ran into in the game, and thinking what other people would say about it if they were discussing it in the same autistic overthinking mode I do. Generally I use a prompt like:




Simulate a debate on /r/wowclassictbc. Assume everyone finds this worth discussing, high engagement and lots of comments, high interest from all parties and sides. Omit any comments like "why are we talking about this" or "you're putting too much effort into this" because I know I'd get those but they're not interesting. Simulate all likely sides and views of the debate, both those agreeing and disagreeing with OP, and try to give me a consensus view.






OP: So I'm playing Ret Paladin and running Maraudon, and the tank is a warrior. A 1h mace drops earlier in the instance, and nobody else wants so the warrior says he is going to roll need on it, saying he could use it for dual wielding dps if no one else wants it. Then we get to the Princess and she drops the 2h mace, I figure I'm good because he already said he was dual wielding not a 2h guy. Then the prick rolls need on the 2h mace too! He wins the roll and when I say wtf he says well actually I mainly play 2h slam, I just grabbed the 1h because no one else could use it at all so I thought I might try DW, but if I can upgrade my 2h I'd rather do that. I say no you already got a weapon you have to give the next weapon to the rest of the group. The argument got so heated that we didn't finish the run and kill the Gator, which sucks because it might have dropped an axe I could use instead. AITA? My loot rules are main spec > off spec so the tank shouldn't roll on dps gear over a dps, and if you get one weapon you can't get another weapon even if it would be an upgrade over the one you got earlier.




In addition to Loot Court, I've tried to simulate philosophical debates like "Is the tank-shortage a result of the decline of masculinity?" or "Which class is the dumbest?" or "Which faction is more Red Tribe versus more Blue Tribe?" Deep Seek has become my favorite for all CW questions. Grok is an edgy yes-man, always taking what it thinks is my side, always ready to say "hell yeah man based take way to Notice;" Chatgpt is hard PC guardrailed and won't touch a question about masculine vs feminine values without saying "that's not how it works man;" Deepseek will actually discuss the issue and try to make an interesting conversation out of it.


P.S: If I were an academic working in behavioral econ, I'd want to get Microsoft or a private server for WoW to simulate luck as it impacts life outcomes. There's so much opportunity for study! Does early in-game luck, say winning a roll for a good weapon in an early dungeon, impact later level-outcomes for the same toon? Are warriors who win the roll for Corpsemaker at 28 or Ravager at 35 more likely to reach level 70, or hit a higher gear score when they get there? I could see it having an impact because good gear makes leveling easier and more fun, and might make you more attached to the tune; while bad gear luck makes leveling a slog and might make you more likely to abandon a toon and reroll. Or it might have no impact. Or maybe it even has a reverse impact, because when the game gets hard again you give up. I think it could tell us a lot about people's behavior.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Kendrick Lamar: For years, the top-rated album on online review site RateYourMusic was Radiohead's OK Computer, which made sense because it appealed to music snobs but was mainstream enough that the general public would have heard of it. It was such a perfect selection for #1 that it was surprising when To Pimp a Butterfly overtook it a few years back. I'm not the biggest fan of Lamar, but he's a much better selection for this list than Young Thug, and I'll voice my approval just to show I'm not entirely out of touch.




Kendrick is an interesting cultural figure to me, in the he's a black man who self-consciously makes music for and about black people, but I associate him primarily with white fans who love his (in their view) sophisticated view of black culture. There's a weird tension there, as Immortal Technique put it:




They say underground fans are all the color of talcum, But who the fuck you think buy 50 and Jay albums?, Who the fuck you think made Snoop and Dre platinum?, Call up any major record label and ask 'em.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You know, I've also gone back to Reddit a bit recently, and find that even beyond the normal "Redditor complains about Redditors" complaints, AI chatbots have basically killed it for me as a concept


I started playing World of Warcraft Classic recently, which is more videogaming than I've done since, well, I raided on World of Warcraft fifteen years ago. And starting up again, I had a lot of questions about things that I needed answered. Both mechanical questions, like "What stats should I prioritize for a leveling fury warrior, what's a good rule of thumb for comparing the dps from dual wielding 2 1h weapons versus using a single 2h weapon as I level?" and more social questions like "What's good loot etiquette in a leveling PUG 5 man group for needing stuff for a main spec if I'm playing an off-spec for the group?"


These are questions that Reddit is naturally great at answering, but they're also questions that in the late stages of a twenty year old game, nobody wants to answer on Reddit, and Reddit's search function remains intentionally trash for the purpose of avoiding questions being easily answered. If you ask the question, you might get a couple dismissive non-detailed answers ("Just use the standard arms build moron") ("It's a twenty year old game don't you know this already!"), you might get a recurring argument among powerusers that doesn't really answer your question, you most probably get low engagement and nothing at all. Chatbots aren't good at answering these questions on their own, they tend to get lost and make so many mistakes that you would get kicked out of any group if you made mistakes like that ("A lot of Rogues need on Corpsemaker because they want to try out 2h axes for a while!"), and hallucinate things that don't exist ("Hunters should farm Herod in Scarlet Monastery for the Scarlet Rifle rare drop gun").


But combine the two and you have a stew going! Ask ChatGPT or Grok or Deepseek to simulate a /r/classicwowtbc discussion on a scenario like "I was tanking RFK and Corpsemaker dropped, I needed on it because that was the only item I was running for, I won the roll but the Ret Paladin ragequit and tried to wipe the group by pulling adds, was I wrong to do that?" and tell it to simulate it as though there was a lot of engagement, and it will do a good enough job simulating all the replies from different angles and help me understand how players view the question. It's actually a lot of fun, it lets me simulate Reddit if everyone on Reddit cared about what I cared about.


The problem is that whenever I go on Reddit now, DeepSeek does such a good job simulating Reddit comments, that reading Reddit comments, I feel like I'm just reading Deepseek. Even when I write a comment, I feel like I'm just writing Deepseek simulations. What's the point? We're all just going through the motions so predictably, why even bother?


This does present obvious future ecological problems, what are the bots going to simulate if everyone stops going on Reddit because it's too easy to simulate? But that's not really my concern when I'm asking "What are good guidelines for which dungeons to run as a leveling priest?"


You need really weird nonsense to make a forum non-predictable and immune to simulation. Which this place sometimes achieves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was actually thinking of Whitney Houston when she died like fifteen years ago, and I remember going to an Abercrombie and Fitch and hearing an A&F techno-dance remix of I Will Always Love You in the dressing room trying on a pair of chinos, and thinking to myself: Jeez suddenly she's everywhere. And joking about with my gf, now Mrs. FiveHour, that you just can't get away from her since her death while I hadn't thought about her at all beforehand, and neither had anyone else in an Abercrombie, teenage customers or teenage staff.


Which is probably a good example of the dynamic in that, on reading her wikipedia, my assessment of Whitney was kinda incorrect, she was a Big Deal when she was big. It just happens that she wasn't big for me, and as such the whole situation struck me as humorous and over-cooked, even though it made perfect sense to the people doing it. For me at 19, it seemed like they were way overdoing their tribute to a mid-tier diva, to boomers who knew her from her peak, it seemed just and fair for The Voice to be so honored. And both things can be true for each of us in our own perspective.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for July 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


because being a war POTUS would fundamentally change why we voted for him.




How have you been recovering from the coma you've been in since March?


I would have to think Trump would do something because while he doesn't always have great foreign policy instincts, he understands viscerally that you can't get cucked like that and let Russia kill your friend.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You certainly seem quite muddled, so I clearly didn't communicate clearly!


OP seems mainly concerned about the public, rather than the media, with specific call outs to social media and to real life. A public made up of people who just watched as Joe Biden fell apart publicly after years of being told he was fine.


I think we can play some motte and bailey games if we want to define what exactly is ok for the government to keep secret and what isn't, but I think we can all agree that the government has repeatedly been on the wrong side of that line. I don't think anyone can dispute in good faith that the American political class has routinely lied to the American public, in ways that were easily and publicly proven to be lies quickly enough for people to notice, and that people notice this. It matters that Trump tweets out extremely clear things that he later backs off on. People learn not to trust their government.


"People Think Lying Liars Might be Lying" is kind of a non-headline.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait. The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World. The process and formation will begin immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP




So...yeah.


I don't even know what to say at this point. Are we just doing memes? Are we trying to make a deal work by making the mullah's demand for $1mm/ship look reasonable by comparison?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To pick one example, men secularised first and fastest over the 20th century.




I think the argument here would be that religious men are mostly pretty similar to secular men, while religious women behave very differently from secular women. It's higher impact on women than it is on men.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The second cliche I reach for when discussing war (the first obviously being Clausewitz) is the old saw: "Athens recovered quickly from its defeat in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta was destroyed by its victory."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The frustrating thing to me is that this is all so tied up in American electoral politics.




It's also tied up in narrow legalism. The Trump admin claimed they had legal authority to wage war for 60 days without talking to Congress about it. The ceasefire leading to the MOU came at 60 days. Now they're claiming that war was concluded and this is a brand new war. Expect a similar result if we make it another 60 days.


What's frustrating to me is the failure to think about the world that is reflected in so much of the analysis of the war.


Trump chose to start the war the way he did, with no warning and no lead up. This delivered certain advantages to the United States and Israel, allowing them to kill the former Ayatollah and replace him with his gay son, along with various other high level regime figures who were behaving normally and not under threat of assassination.


The cost of this was that there was no sale to the American people. No effort to convince the American people that the sacrifice was worth it. The assumption from the administration was that the US public was so used to being at war with some ragheads or other that people would just accept the war, like my wife getting a Poshmark package and assuming she must have bought something and forgotten about it. And for the most part they seem to be right, the American public will just accept that I guess we're in a war now and deal with the consequences. What they won't do is pay the bill.


Support for the war in public polling peaked at net -10 right at the start of the war, and currently sits at net -21. For comparison, approval of Iraq at this stage was flipped, with 56% in favor. What can we expect when the war was never justified publicly, when the aims have shifted constantly, when it's been over or won or subject to a ceasefire so many times already?


Foreign policy "Realism" is increasingly revealed as Idealism with the serial number sanded off, the realists idealize a world where "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must," and throw tantrums whenever real life gets in the way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The decline and fall of Joe Biden has essentially permanently broken any public trust that might have existed around the health of older politicians. Every news consumer and voter remembers when the entire establishment, including many Republicans, lied to us about the mental state of the president for years. There will be no charity for elderly politicians for some time.




The political hit from having been caught lying about this would be high (well for Republicans, anyway). The benefits on stalling are murky. The amount of family and other people you'd have to keep in the dark was high.




What makes you say that? What politician has actually faced consequences for lying to the public in the Trump era?  I guess Biden, but he mostly just aged out, and only a handful of his immediate Bidenworld cohort have been banished from public life. As Jung said Hitler was the incarnation of Wotan, Trump is the incarnation of Loki. We live under the reign of the trickster god and are surprised when people suspect dirty tricks. In the Iran discussion just one post away, we have Trump's defenders arguing that he was lying the whole time about his intentions and that the lies are what justify signing the MOU, which was just a dirty trick against Iran all along.


We live in a post-truth era. Why would any elderly politician have earned the benefit of the doubt?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Plenty of women will reject you, that doesn't matter. Nobody cares about efficiency metrics in picking-up-girls, least of all Mormons. Your true-shooting-percentage doesn't matter. Just the number of points you score.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Jay-Z and Nas are still alive. Kanye is still alive, if crazy. Rakim is still alive. Big Daddy Kane is still alive. When I glance at Billboard's Top 100 rappers I only count three or four dead in the top 30.


Like OK boomer bias is a big thing, but why is Taylor so high then?


I could equally point to an anti-country bias on the list, but that's a bit different and outside my current thoughts.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I get that. That's exactly how I felt at 17-18, then all of a sudden everything "clicked" with girls and I went from being dateless from roughly 2004-2010, to rotating through four different girls the summer of 2010 before going to college. For me, the inciting event wasn't actually going to college, but primarily when I got into a horrible car accident on my way to a college visit. T boned by an f350 at an intersection, essentially unconscious for a week, out of school for the better part of a month. I'd been texting with four different girls beforehand, all of them were likely to friendzone me later on based on history, but then I just disappeared. And that was the trick, reappearing weeks later with some scars ultimately closed the deal with all four of them. That was the sudden change of perspective that changed my luck.


For a lot of Americans that is college, because you're suddenly in a whole new social ecosystem and your old status isn't important anymore. I remember in high school we had one buddy, Jerry, who was kind of the butt monkey of the group. The dre of the group. We were friends, but we all kind of made fun of or denigrated him, he was a dork, a naif, a loser, nebbish, unable to seize the initiative in any situation. At the poker table, he was the fish. At basketball, he was bait despite being 6'2". He wasn't dumb, but he wasn't top of the class either.


Then we went to college and a year later he was a frat star. Because he made new friends who didn't treat him like shit, and met new girls who didn't see him get treated that way. There he was just a 6'2" blond beast of a man, and he asserted his rights like anyone else.


So, take heart, have hope, It Gets Better.


FWIW if we're doing male-lifetime-hotness, your absolute hotness will probably peak around 22-26, when you have a lot of potential but you won't be expected to have done too much yet, and your body is in its prime. Your relative hotness might peak later, but your true prime is right in front of you.