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Chrisprattalpharaptr

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Chrisprattalpharaptr


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mixed you up with Oracle, but so am I. I left as an adult.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't think it's evil so much as a combination of 'having seen a lot of dragged-out deaths' and sincerely wanting to be compassionate, plus eventually the stresses over "look, get Grampa out of that bed he's blocking" encourage them towards "let nature take its course".




Isn't that fairly reasonable, then? It's possible that your doctors have seen a hundred, or a thousand patients similar to your father and they suffered greatly in some large majority of cases. And, while nobody is perfect, the medical system (at least in North America, I can only imagine that it's much worse in the EU) already bends over backwards to the point of massive dysfunction to accommodate consent and the wishes of the patients.


I mean, I'm not wishing you had let your dad die, but it's not clear to me that having most of the public following the advice of doctors around euthanasia is a bad thing.




The really evil ones are the medical ethicists.




Again, why do you think this? And do you know many of them? I've probably met somewhere between 5-10 in my life and they're largely focused on arcane minutiae that you will almost certainly never hear or think about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In my experience, Canadians felt like that before Trump ran. It's less often expressed when a Democrat is president, but my impression is that Canadians feel like that all the time about Americans.




I can't speak for every Canadian, but I feel confident I've met probably an order of magnitude or two more than you. Most of the people I know would vacation in America (snowbirds, cape cod, skiing) and have been for decades. They've nearly all boycotted America since ~mid-2025. Seems to be borne out by the data.


I don't think they have any delusions about meaningfully hurting the US, but they're pissed and don't want to spend their money here.




Canadians will never be blamed if Iran gets a nuclear weapon and starts blasting everyone.




Nor will Americans. Arguably, the withdrawal from the JCPOA (supported by Europe) led to another war.




If Saddam actually had WMDs and detonated them, I dunno, in Europe.




Yeah, except he didn't, and America lied about it to justify a war.




We can sit pretty and always condemn "war" or "agression" or those silly Americans that put so much of their budget on their military instead of universal healthcare or whatever else we feel better than them about that day, safe in the knowledge that no one actually expects us to bear any responsability for the state of the world. The day Canadians will actually matter, then their complains about "warmongering" on the part of Americans will actually be deserving of more than a spit in the face.




I agree with this to some extent, but that isn't carte blanche for America to (as the realpolitikers are fond of saying) do as it wills while the rest of the world suffers as it must. And it isn't an actual rebuttal of their claims. Would an America with the same resources and economy coupled with the foreign policy of Canada be better or worse for the world on net?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I used to think you guys were friendly enough, but in recent years I've had several Canadians tell me in no uncertain terms that they disdain me and other Americans.




Perhaps the repeated jokes from the POTUS about Canada being the 51st state and the tariffs had something to do with that. This isn't exactly an unprovoked response, so I'm a bit confused as to why you're surprised?




I don't think you guys conceive yourselves as world powers so hopefully I'm not bursting any bubbles when I say you're not. What does being "internationally respected" mean to you? What would it mean if you weren't internationally respected?




Canadians take pride in things like peacekeeping missions (see Rwanda), international aid/charity and supporting the UN/international order. Have a good reputation abroad may be a better way to put it than being respected. America might be respected abroad, but after the last 25 years of warmongering, there's a lot of people who dislike them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We the family smiled and muttered under our breaths "yeah you guys wanted to kill him off, we stopped you".




Why are doctors as a whole so evil, I wonder? Aside from the fact that they skew liberal and are probably less Catholic than the general population. Do you know many of them?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sorry to be pedantic




No worries.




It's a well paid field, but it's only paid slightly higher than the median SWE. Pretending that the LLM-ML Engineers pay is anything more than the top .1% of the field would be fallacious.




In my field, the 'data scientists' and ML engineers are a different breed and in much higher demand than the people who just write code. But thanks for the correction.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I actually do know more about my own life than you, and didn't cite every possible hypothetical explainer for the sake of brevity and anonymity.




And I know more about my own life than you, but I don't share your absolute confidence in making flawless apples-to-apples comparisons between my parents economics situation 35 years ago to my experiences today. I believe that you know the dollar amount your dad made and the number on your paycheck. I don't believe your interpretation of the meaning of those data, and the broader implications.




What is your point?




Concisely:


    

  1. I disagree with the premise that '2026 burritos are unaffordable.' I'm not convinced that it's not true, but I don't believe that you (or the dozen vibecession posts when Biden was president) have conclusively made the point. Many others also seem to disagree with this premise.
    2. 

  2. But granting this premise, or ignoring it if you prefer, I don't believe that you or anyone else has a pithy answer on improving affordability across the board. Railing at our politicians (and I'm sympathetic to both Trump and Biden here, modulo obvious self-owns) for not pressing the affordability button elides all the complexity of both the problem and potential solutions.
    3. 

  3. Again granting this premise, where do you think the wealth has gone and why do you think things have gotten worse? Boomers? China? Socialism, immigrants, demographics? Lazy millennials? Or do you not have answers to these questions and your goal was just to start a discussion to see what people think?
    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Just because an 85 IQ citizen decides they want to invite another random person from anywhere in the world into my country, their descendants get to be citizens forever and they can leech off the state for the rest of their lives consequence free (any thresholds for sponsorship are laughably low)? Seems dumb.




A rounding error compared to the 55 million Americans with IQs 85 or below who pump out babies year after year. Any policy that wants to restrict immigration due to IQ concerns without first sterilizing those individuals is pointless. Hell, in most states literal retards are allowed to have as many children as they want.


In parallel, a lack of policies that force high IQ women such as yourself to have at least four children with a high IQ partner is far more detrimental than immigration. IQmaxxers focused on immigration rather than pre-existing low human capital are either misguided or deficient emotional decouplers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Actually, no I know what my father did in the 90s and how much he made. He was working at IBM through a period of massive layoffs. But again. All these comments quibbling the complaint are just making my point and the point of the folks responding to the responses.




Yes, you can't be wrong, regardless of what people reply it just proves that you're more right. Disagreeing with you is pointless, only productive conversation can be had if we first agree with your premise.




Every response that tries to justify the current state as not real, is avoiding the actual discussion of political policy goals or visions of the good. Kamala LOST in part because 'inflation isn't real ackshully' was a losing message.




The point is not to justify the current state, the point is that, have you considered the tiny, infinitesimally small chance that maybe you're wrong in evaluating the current state? A lot to ask, I know. And much like Kamala, suggesting someone on the internet adopt humility is ever the losing message.


But anyways, setting all that aside and having a discussion on the level you want to discuss, I agree there's no reason we shouldn't push for making things more affordable. What's your populist plan for doing that? And what's your answer to the question I posed at the end of my post? I'll read whatever you write with an open mind, convince me that you actually understand why things have gotten worse, and what the fix would be. I don't believe that the MAGAs or the Bernie bros or whatever flavor of populist you identify as have the answers to those questions, nor do I believe that you'd actually improve things given power.




There is a populist movement that wants specific political goals, and one party is saying "yes! socialism", and the other is saying "no you suck! you're not allowed to have that. You can have high gas prices instead."




Perhaps next time they'll be able to elect the populist politician running on the 'Push the 10$ burrito button' platform, and then he'll actually push it instead of the retards in office now who just admire it on their way to the office every morning.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't have an answer to your question and I confess to finding both the enshittification and 'life is better now, actually' arguments to be convincing on different days and depending who's making the argument, but consider:




In the 90s my parents moved us into a new construction. Today, I live in smaller a house, on a smaller lot built in the mid-70s. In realtive terms, I live in a house that is not only smaller, but nearly 50 years older than the one my father did.




In the 90s software dev was probably a more rarefied and in-demand skillset than in 2026 where we pump out over 100,000 CS degrees a year. On top of that, the barrier to entry for literally everything has plummeted as the internet disseminates information so efficiently. Used to be you had to actually go out and learn things from people or hunt them down in library stacks, whereas now I can instantly pull up dozens of videos on youtube teaching me to do literally anything known to man or ask an AI and get an expert-level answer in seconds. Relatedly, software dev has been outsourced to lower-income countries - my friend's (somewhat famous enterprise software) company does almost all their programming in the middle east or eastern Europe.


All that to say, you and your father could be equally talented and if he were working today he'd also be managing a team of 25. Or maybe he'd be an ML engineer and still easily affording his new construction house and herd of children, taking the kids out for 200$ worth of burritos every Sunday night.


The other angle of this argument is typically that our wealth was sent to China to enrich the elites. But if you look at everyday Chinese, their lives may be better than their parents generation but they definitely aren't good. The successful ones work crazy hours and there's a much larger precariat than here without a social safety net. If your father's generation was so much better off, where did the money go? Or did we just globally become less productive?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Boba tea. Women love it, I'm perplexed by the appeal.




Try Taro flavor, with white-people levels of sugar. It's like a mild, creamy slushy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@The_Nybbler last week.




Birthright citizenship is obviously supported by both Constitution and statute, but I imagine there's a lot of wrangling over the wording of the opinion of the court (which may be unanimous, maybe 8-1 if Alito is as much of a hack as one ex-poster claims).




Looks like your departed poster (darwin?) didn't go far enough and there's three partisan hacks on the court.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And, of course, it's censored; I haven't been able to get a single bit of erotica out of it. All I wanted was for Fable to write me a lemon where Asuka and Shinji are smallfolk in Westeros and Lord Targaryen gets to bless their union by taking Asuka into his bed on her wedding night; is that too much to ask?




Claude was undoubtedly dismayed by the glaring omission of Kaworu, and the fact that the Targaryen male line has been full of crazies or pussies since the blackfyre rebellion. 'Lord Targaryen' over Bobby B? Really? I'd even rather read about Ned Stark pontificating about honor and duty while he fucked Asuka than some Targaryen complaining that she wasn't his sister.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for June 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Apparently we've moved on to the Spit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Detroit, China: A personal account of a small slice of urban decay in China
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting. I've been curious about the lives of people on the ground in China for a long time and recently stumbled across this youtube channel. It's...honestly been some of the most depressing videos I've ever watched. The grandfather who smokes two packs a day and hides his daily handle of baijiu from his family while watching the kids, truckers working the apps for 16 hours and living in their cabs, the gaokao grind for children, small business owners who never take a day off. Maybe amusingly to the crowd here, the only happy people I saw was the DINK couple working part-timeish with a dog and a parrot. Are these accurate? Is it a working class phenomenon, is the guy running the channel nutpicking, is the entire country just miserable?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


College is 4 years to party, chill, smoke weed, play video games and do nothing (delete as appropriate) at the government’s immediate expense.




Am I the only person who actually worked/learned something useful in college? Most of what I did then is more or less useful for me on a daily basis as a foundation. I didn't go to a great school, although I was (un)fortunate enough that there was no obligation to take a minimum of humanities classes and I managed to take >95% STEM classes. I don't, for example, use what I learned in phys chem all the time but every now and then Michaelis-Menten kinetics or Gibbs free energy pops up and it was useful to have taken that class.


Don't the engineers and other STEMlords have to work, and don't they learn things that are useful for their careers? Is it just Americans that are lazy and credentialist?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Unfortunately it seems his disappearance has more to do with getting modded by Amadan and deleting his posts out of spite or not wanting anyone to follow him to wherever he goes next or whatever.




I see, I missed that. In that case I apologize for the insinuation.




Amadan does a lot of uncontroversially decent modding, but also blatantly violates at least the spirit of the rules often himself, especially that "be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary" bit.




A few sharp words is a small price to pay for someone voluntarily spending hundreds of hours of their life arguing with the trolls. Not to mention it's usually in response to another antagonist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Your Quarterly Ukraine War check-in


Three and a half months ago, we checked in on the war in Ukraine. That post was itself a check in to follow up on dire predictions from the pro-Russia posters in fall of 2025 that the loss of Pokrovsk was heralding the collapse of Ukrainian front lines and encirclement of Ukrainian troops. Amusingly, @No_one went back and deleted all of their posts  after the last check in, so I can only leave you with this:




Going by the aphorism 'If you're reading this, it's for you', it looks like the American press is preparing the public for a closing act of the majestic capeshit arc that started with the Maidan massacre. Ukrainians are generally eager to negotiate, nobody believes in winning anymore




I expected the Iran war to be a major tailwind for Russia (oil prices, sanctions relief, US distraction) but on the contrary, the western information space seems to argue that things will remain stalemated for the foreseeable future. Ukraine seems to be pumping out drones (is this all that matters now?), and has started hitting Russian oil refineries. People have been hyping up what seems to be a mostly symbolic bombing of Moscow. The map hasn't moved, supposedly Russian recruitment is down. The Russian spring offensive has been underway for several weeks and made no progress:




Russian forces have so far failed to make meaningful gains in their ongoing spring-summer 2026 offensive, Ukrainian forces have contested the tactical initiative in several areas of the frontline, and Russian forces have failed to defend the Russian deep rear against increasingly devastating Ukrainian strikes.[8]




On the flip side, people write articles about how bad the Russian economy is, and then drop this line near the end:




Russia’s national debt is low at around 17% of GDP, the banking system is stable, employment rates are high, and wages are still creeping up.




I'd be interested to hear whether anyone has insight into the rhetoric on the Russian side or the pro-Russian perspective at the moment.


So - any new/modified predictions? We had @ABigGuy4U saying collapse in July-August (still a few months to go), @Lizzardspawn saying to look at the frequency of blackouts in Kiev (still unchanged at 6-8 hours a day afaict).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But that just takes us right back to the big obvious question. If India has so many great engineers, doctors, scientist, etc, why can't they achieve great things in India? Why do they need to come here with all the externalities they bring with them?




25 years ago we were saying this about China and laughing at their shitty plastic exported toys. It's entirely possible that 30 years from now, your children will be sitting in your chair bitching about our industries being hollowed out by Indian companies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Intel granny, is that you?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's possible that the internet joke is, uh, false.






Having had and trained dogs before, my suspicion is that male dog on human bestiality cases involve adolescent dogs and that adult males require the stimulation of an ovulating female canine- a quick google search shows that introducing one is de rigeur for canine artificial insemination.




If you spend 10 minutes looking on the internet in earnest, it's trivial to find amateur pornography videos disproving this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The location is decent because there's nothing there currently. It's a big ugly gaping hole




In that case, why don't we just put it in [insert hated state here].


The problem is that most tourists come to the mall around federal triangle or judiciary square. Assuming you want to see the Washington monument and Lincoln memorial, you'll have to choose between walking around the tidal basin to the Jefferson memorial and crossing the bridge to see the arch/Arlington cemetery. Or taking one of those shitty bus tours. Would be much better if they could get it somewhere with higher foot traffic around the mall, but again I assume the building regulations around DC screwed them...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Have you seen the plans for the triumphal arch?. On the one hand, I'm excited to have a giant arch with eagles and lady liberty in DC. On the other hand, the location sucks (I assume because of all the building restrictions in DC) and a large part of the appeal of the Arc de Triomphe is the history and era in which it was built. Just as building an imitation of an antique with modern methods is viewed as tacky and tasteless, we might end up with the Trump Taj Mahal 2.0 in our capital rather than the Arc de Triomphe.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Lowered birth rates sound awful at first, but we've already made significant advantages into artificial wombs for preemies and the idea that this tech could eventually extend to the very beginning of a pregnancy until birth doesn't seem unreasonable anymore.




It doesn't? Pumping oxygenated air into an existing umbilical cord is different from growing one de novo along with a placenta. The best people have done to oxygenate/feed a blastocyst is mechanical rollers (I assume this is the paper you're referring to). IVF followed by gestation is still an entire other, much more difficult, level.


Don't believe anything you hear until it's in clinical trials, unless you're a biotech investor/entrepreneur. Otherwise, it may as well not exist for the public.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If nothing else, I admire your contrarianism. Most 'contrarians' come here to have other 'contrarians' affirm their views and agree with them. At least the graph of tankers flocking to America this week was a point in your favor.




The Iranian government has very little ability left to project force in the region anymore, what little they have left is rapidly dwindling.




In that case...haven't we won already? Why do we need to stay? Couldn't we just leave and Iran won't be able to project power in the strait, or bomb Israel, or whatever else? Can you make concrete predictions about when the US military can pull out given that we've destroyed their military, their leaders and their ability to project power?