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VoxelVexillologist

Multidimensional Radical Centrist

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joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
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VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the prequel trilogy proved that Lucas wasn't the single voice behind the writing for Star Wars: he had to bring in new editors (including his then-wife) to redo the first movie, and then shared writing credits on Empire and Jedi with Lawrence Kasdan.  When in charge of everything, the writing quality got noticeably worse, although maybe I'm still too salty about the "Special Editions".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yes, if you want to run the world on solar cells and batteries, you need two ramp industrial capacity, hard, for at least the next decade.




Does this account for shifting heating loads in northern climates from combustion to electric heat pump?  I think what you're talking about works for the Sun Belt, but I am not convinced that, for example, Sweden, can ever keep its citizens from freezing in winter (when it's dark most of the time, the sun is low, and frequently cloudy) without like 3-4 more orders of magnitude battery storage than currently exist.  Current storage is on the order of what, grid-minutes?  It's not going to adequately transfer energy from summer to winter, and I honestly don't see a viable non-carbon approach there without (1) superconductors solving the transmission problem, (2) evacuating northern latitudes (lol), or (3) nuclear and maybe wind picking up the tab all winter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Ain't nobody ever made a movie where every single shot in the entire movie is a panning shot.




Has Ken Burns ever made a "feature" documentary?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To take a common example, the United States imports a lot of the goods used in our defense industry. Particularly computer chips and the parts used in their production.




In theory, defense supply chains aren't supposed to do this.  In practice, counterfeit components do sneak in unexpectedly (and there are safeguards to reduce this risk), but I don't think Lockheed (or its subcontractors) are allowed to design in Chinese (or even Taiwanese) bolts and capacitors into an F-35 without a whole lot of paperwork, if at all.  There are domestic component manufacturers for those, but often they're not used for vanilla commercial products because they are pricey.  There is a reason "mil-spec" components are expensive: maybe part of it is grift, but part of it is supply chain management.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think "something that can float" helps much in raging floodwaters, unfortunately.  As an experienced (if a bit rusty) camper, you really want vertical above the river in this situation (maybe not the very top of the hill in a thunderstorm).  But it's much easier to say that academically than to expect a bunch of little girls to know they should seek high ground and actually charge out into the torrential rain.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If you can't afford chemo you sell everything you have until you run out of money to pay for it and die.




I believe the system as-designed has you sell everything until you qualify for Medicaid, at which point the state/feds should pay for almost all of the treatment.  Now, Medicaid-accepting providers have a bit of a reputation for being, well, worse than other doctors (true also for Medicare, but less so because it pays out a bit more, IIRC), so the quality of care might drop.  But it isn't supposed to be a death sentence there (in practice, I'm sure it happens).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


At the moment, most people openly advocating for racial segregation are Neo-Nazis




Maybe?  There are also "affinity housing" programs at a number of universities that haven't gotten the Bob Jones treatment that I would personally consider "racial segregation," but seem to be supported by leftists.


But I otherwise mostly agree with your conclusions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Basically every other western nation manages to spend equivalent or less amounts of healthcare than the USA, and has equivalent or better outcomes.




Observably, this statement is (still arguably, but commonly presented as) true if you replace "healthcare" with "education".  But the typical solutions presented by the left are in the opposite direction there: few are suggesting we adopt European (or more extreme, Korean or Japanese) norms in education and cut funding.  Is education different, or is this just a case of "conveniently, this evidence supports the action I already wanted taken"?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IMO we've seen a big shift on Holocaust narratives in the last decade partially because the set of vocal Holocaust survivors willing and able to speak out from a position of moral authority has shrunk substantially.  I wouldn't be surprised if the narrative of the Civil Rights Era changes in the next decade or two for similar reasons: the youngest people to march with MLK are in what, their late 70s?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Alarm fatigue is a real thing.  I know lots of people that have mentioned disabling alerts like this because they're tired of Amber Alerts (missing kids, often custody disputes) or Blue Alerts (for police getting fired at) from hundreds of miles away, or to be honest, even lots of NWS alerts, which IMO seem to have started appearing more often for less severe weather.  I feel like I get weather alerts that are well meaning, but not surprising: "severe heat warning" for most of the South in summer isn't wrong, but I didn't need a klaxon to tell me that (uncertain if I've gotten one exactly like that, but not too far from it).


There is a tier of unblockable alerts, but we've only tested that once.  I think we need to better-align the alerts with the people that need to see them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Conceptually, I think the choice of "grifting" has a fairly limited cap on median outcomes.  Limited cases might exist, but it's hard to sell indefinite affirmative action or reparations for a minority doing better than the median.  I can't see democratic will supporting that for long, and it's unpopular even when isolated exceptions come up: Elizabeth Warren, or affirmative action for Obama's kids applying to college.


Chinese-Americans seem to have taken the "work hard and naturally do better than the median" option, which I think sounds better if it's available.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it is the natural geopolitical state of Judea to be in the Persian orbit.




This is a very particular view of history that completely discounts the centuries the territory of Judea was held by Greece, Rome, or Babylon (probably missing a few).  If anything, it is the natural state of Judea to be fought over by adjacent great powers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think smartphones/TikTok/AI are making us lose our attention, our ability to analyze and to think, and they don't offer anything in return




I would posit that the smartphone has observably reduced the need to store specific data because it's much easier than it used to be to load it (I'm old enough to "search the Internet", the kids these days "ask AI") on the fly when necessary.  Lots of encyclopedia facts are useful to know on rare day-to-day occasions ("Which rivers empty into the Aral Sea?"), but I think in practice things are "better" (for some definition of "better") where I can pull up that fact at hand, which maybe a generation ago sometimes required referencing my shelf of encyclopedias or a trip to the library.  And maybe I can use that mental space that was previously holding the population of Iran or the specifics of red-black trees for something that is more useful to me today [1].


I recall hearing from a historian a while back that the most numerous book on US Navy ships in the 1980s was a dictionary: has ubiquitous spell checking (and sometimes-wrong autocorrect) lost us something of value other than the "character" built by having to thumb through the dictionary to spell right?  That one feels similar as a technology question, but I'd bet you have fewer takers for "the good ol' days" before spell check.


    

  1. I think whether that space has been efficiently re-purposed is a valid question, and I'm not convinced capacity hasn't declined somewhat.  But I think that's best addressed as a separate question.
    2. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it'll be hard to explain to the next generation, but the effects in The Matrix were absurdly groundbreaking.  But they also were groundbreaking enough that pretty much any movie with a VFX sequence will copy some of its visual language.  If you've seen a bunch of modern action movies, though, and then watch The Matrix, you're going to feel that a lot of it is just playing to standard visual tropes that have been done well, maybe even better, in lots of movies.  But the thing is, most of those were new in 1999, and you won't appreciate it unless you can compare it to the zeitgeist of 1998 cinema -- without a lot of effort, you really have to have been there.


I'd compare it to The Beatles: I wasn't around when the originals were published, and I find it hard to appreciate the novelty that my older friends and relatives attribute to them because very few features in their catalog haven't been done better (and with better recording and mastering) by other artists since.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The "leads to genocide" observation is hardly exclusive to white people, though.    See also: Japan/China in WWII, Rwanda, any number of sectarian feuds in the third world.  Realistically, it seems like it was largely the norm or at least not uncommon among almost any group with the power to do it until largely-European philosophy eventually decided it was a morally repugnant idea (to which I'd agree).


Sometimes it seems like "genocide" only applies if European-descended folks (er, Volks) are doing it, otherwise it's just "sparkling ethnic cleansing" or something.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The term antisemitism came into existence from Germans trying to justify that This Time it wasn't just dumb, bigoted Judenhass (literally "Jew-hatred"), and they had good (pseudo)scientific reasons to dislike them.  Bringing other semitic peoples into it implicitly validates Nazi race science like talking about related Aryans in India.


Although some seem to be trying the This Time approach again, using "anti-Zionist" as the new label.  Maybe in a century someone will claim it applies to Zionist Mormons in Utah.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And artillery shells being depleted is a real issue against China, the logistics here are sort of fungible, and spending a lot of resources resupplying Ukraine is going to demand we replace that (we have to be prepared to fight more than just China, a military's job isn't only to prepare for the most obvious threat), and the resources that go into replacing those assets, plus their losses, will eat up resources that could go into the Pacific.




This seems plausible, but there is a claim the opposite direction that the Ukraine conflict gives the US and its allies cover to invest heavily in war materiel production while still notionally in a time of peace without large domestic or foreign suspicion about warmongering or wasteful spending.  In 1941 the US benefited heavily from having already tooled up for lend-lease production and broadly expecting to get dragged into the conflict eventually.  Designs for aircraft and tanks that would only get fielded later in the war were in development, and Iowa's keel was laid before Pearl Harbor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the theory hides behind ... the science in order to try to gain legitimacy as a "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is"




Many such cases: this is a generic problem, IMO, with several branches of science, maybe even every branch with immediate political impact (also economics, epidemiology, climate science, [group] studies).  I don't think you're wrong that this even happens to HBD folks who are probably diametrically opposed to plenty of those other examples.


I don't know of a generic strategy to counteract this human failing: my first recommendation would be to reject claims that "the science is settled": the scientific process is never truly settled.  But if you go too far in the un-trusting direction, you'll start questioning the concept of childhood vaccinations or jet fuel melting steel beams.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think your idea here is plausible, but I have trouble seeing how you'd isolate nature from nurture here for these axes without some industrial-scale twin studies that seem implausible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Christianity is particularly attuned to women’s petty intrasexual concerns, with its emphasis on female promiscuity.




I think this is far more complicated a topic than a single sentence can do justice to, but the Christian tradition, as much as it would like to attribute everything to Jesus, wasn't written in stone at the Ascension or Pentecost.  Most of the "emphasis on female promiscuity" parts I can think of are from Paul, and were written a bit later.


I'd also point to the context of family matters in Rome at the time: Augustus rather famously enacted some policies that encouraged fidelity and "family values" before Jesus was born (and were continued on and off again with later emperors), and it's difficult to fully extract the existing Roman cultural context from the Christianity that took off there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but plenty of civilized countries like to play that game.




"So there I was in a pub in Belfast enjoying a lovely Imperial pint and watching the local match, when my accountant back in Boston called asking about retirement contributions.  I got lots of weird looks at the bar when I said 'I want to contribute as much as I can to the IRA', and you'd think the room went cold."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I went to a smaller school that often had take-home essays and even exams (up to the professors, more common in smaller honors classes).  While cheating might have happened somewhat, it is possible IMO to instill a culture that expects people to follow the rules even when they aren't being watched closely.  But it was occasionally enforced by expelling violators.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
PP seems to show up in lots of anecdotes about cross-sex hormone prescriptions, especially for trans minors with relatively few questions asked.  As far as I can tell (see SCOTUS thread) those are rather controversial.  But I can't say what fraction of their business that is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You could do far worse than Terry Pratchett, IMO.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


public high schools in the US average around $19k in per student spending, no correlation between spending and outcomes.




Is that true across public schools?  I've often wondered if the extra funding thrown at Title 1 schools that typically underperform actually makes the correlation negative, but I've never found an actual dataset.