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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

					3 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Ethanol" in a school chemistry lab is probably meths - the duty on drinkable pure alcohol is pretty high, even if not marketed for drinking. Adding 5-10% methanol makes the alcohol too toxic to drink and therefore unattractive to drinkers. We were all warned about this in no uncertain terms before doing an experiment with the stuff.


In the UK, they don't add anything additional to meths to make it unpalatable, so ocasionally tramps and suchlike posion themselves by drinking it. Meths sold to the general public as a fuel/cleaning product is died purple to discourage accidental drinking. But a school science lab is going to be using "industrial methylated spirits" - i.e. an ethanol/methanol mix with nothing else added to it that could affect the chemistry. (Of all the chemicals in my school lab, this was oddly the only one they needed a licence to buy).


I'm not sure about the situation in the US.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
With the increasing dominance of expresso-based coffee (paradoxically partly driven by Starbucks), Starbucks is actually one of the best places to get decent drip coffee. At least in London, any of the other major chains will just serve you an Americano without warning you, and the good independents will check you are okay with Americano before serving it.


Paris used to have a culture of decent drip coffee, but I'm not sure if they still do. The last few times I was there I was with kids in a way not conducive to serious coffee exploration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I always thought it was a rather bloody American Civil War battle.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sweden is 10th in the world in tax revenue as % of GDP, behind the UK, Norway and Denmark. Sweden is high tax!




Quibble, but the World Bank figures on the left-hand-side of that table are worthless, because they exclude state and local taxes, and taxes labelled as "social security contributions" or similar. Using the more accurate UN figures on the right-hand-side (which still look too low when eyeballed), Sweden is 4th, and the UK at 20th is in the middle of the pack of first-world countries. The Nordic countries and France have very high taxes, even by Euroleftie standards. I'm not sure what is going on with New Zealand.


The UK shows up as very high tax on the World Bank table because essentially 100% of our taxes are collected by central government.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Grandpa Joe was malingering while his daughter-in-law was working herself to the bone trying to stretch one income to feed seven people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Trayvon Martin wasn't someone you would want marrying your daughter, but he was well within the range where the non-idiotarian left would consider him salvagable and want to spend political capital on him - particularly because of the unusual fact pattern with no hard evidence that Martin was criming at the time he was shot. Nobody knows who started the fight that ended up with Martin smashing Zimmerman's head against the curve and Zimmerman shooting Martin, both participants were dumb and hot-headed enough that them could plausibly have done so, and if Zimmerman had died Martin would have had a self-defence claim sufficiently plausible that he should have been acquitted under Florida law for the same reasons Zimmerman was.


Breonna Taylor was an obviously innocent victim (she was shot by mistake while police were executing a no-knock warrant at her address but targetted at her ex who no longer lived there) and got the full BLM left-wing martyrdom operation.


The whole left-wing martyrdom apparatus was hauled out and ready to go in the Ahmad Arbury case - they only reason why it wasn't deployed (as per @07mk's Toxoplasma point below) is that the McMichaels' behaviour was sufficiently outrageous that the mainstream right wasn't willing to defend it.


So I think it is more "genuinely innocent victims of police violence are rare so BLM don't normally have the chance to take up those cases" than "BLM preferentially defends the worst of the worst".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this is kind of key. Pre-Minneapolis, ICE was going for the aesthetic of "This is a kinetic military operation against Blue jurisdictions who shelter illegals" and they have mostly shifted towards an aesthetic of "This is a paramilitary force but one taking a fundamentally law enforcement approach to arresting and deporting illegals".  This generates fewer banger memes for right-wing social media, but probably more deportations, and definitely a better chance of co-operation from Democratic state and local administrations in purple states.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tasing someone and then shooting them on the ground is never acceptable professional policing. The video isn't playing for me in the UK, but from @ToaKraka's description this was not a level of threat where immediate lethal force (i.e. shoot for the centre of mass and keep shooting until the threat has visibly ceased) was appropriate. I wouldn't normally try to second-guess a cop being threatened with a knife on this point, but the cop who pulled out a Taser clearly agrees with me here. And "Dangerous clown with knife but not actively attacking anyone" is precisely the sort of situation that less-lethal weapons were developed for.


Criminal prosecutions of cops in close cases (and "shot a perp brandishing a knife" is close enough for me) creates bad incentives, so I wouldn't. But the guy who pulled the trigger should never work in law enforcement again, and if a better video reveals that the threat level was high enough to justify lethal force then the guy with the Taser should probably be kicked off the force for dangerous incompetence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Rape charges (and this is rape, not statutory rape - she was 16 in a state where 16 is legal) are dropped more often than they are pressed to trial. You need a victim-witness who is able and willing to stand up to cross-examination, and rapists tend to target the kind of woman who isn't. This is the whole reason why feminists want to replace criminal justice for rape with kangaroo courts (at least for favoured groups of women like undergraduates living on campus) and criminalise even consensual sex in situations which are high-risk for rape - rape is a very hard crime to prosecute unless you have one of the rare fact patterns that make it easy like "man jumps stranger in the street and rapes her"


"Victim doesn't want to go to trial" and "victim is so messed-up she can't keep her story straight on the stand" are the most likely stories here, as in every other such case.


"Runaway mentally ill teen has what may have been consensual sex-for-housing and may have been kidnapping and rape" is an absolutely classic unprosecutable case.  It's probably rape, but the main piece of evidence you need to get to the "beyond reasonable doubt" threshold is the uncorroborated testimony of someone who will read (fairly or not) to the average juror as a mentally ill crack-whore.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
According to my Greek teacher, most other cultures with their own versions of the Cyclops legend had the trickster character claim to be called "Myself" so the Cyclops ended up screaming "Myself has hurt me" and getting just as little sympathy as if "Nobody has hurt me", and Homer changed it in translation because one form of the Greek word for "Nobody" rhymes with the word for "cunning" which Homer consistently uses to describe Odysseus.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The reason for this belief is particularly funny in hindsight. The Ancient Greeks had enough rudimentary archaeology to know that the civilisation whose ruins they were building in used bronze for metal tools and weapons by default. Now bronze is a lot more expensive than iron, so the Greeks naturally thought that a society that routinely used bronze must be richer than one which normally uses iron - rather than the truth, which is that they lacked iron smelting technology, and therefore had a lot less metal altogether because if they couldn't afford bronze they went without. So once you have established that you are living in the Iron Age, which is poorer than the lost Bronze Age, you assume that humanity is in decline and the Bronze Age was preceded by a Silver Age and a Golden Age when gods walked among us.


Whereas actually humanity was on the ascendent, and the Bronze Age was preceded by the Stone Age.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(itself only a fleeting return to pre-WWII fertility rates)




This is technically correct, but misleading. If you adjust fertility for infant mortality, you see that the Baby Boom had the highest "first birthdays per mother" since the introduction of reasonably reliable birth records. When TFR was 3.5 in the Baby Boom, it was normal for a mother of four to see all four of them survive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Racism based on beer preferences has the advantage that we can make Bud Light the n****r of beers and put normie Americans on the bottom of the racial hierarchy for once.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Modern football rules were finalized in mid-19th century. Rugby rules were finalized at the same time. Baseball became popular in US at the same time. There was no "first". Of course, all of those games had historical precursors reaching into the ancient times, but whatever criteria do you use, it is not possible to establish one was "first".




Cricket was formalised almost a century before any of the foot ball or base ball games, with the first printed law book appearing in 1755 and the MCC being founded in 1787. So it is clear which one was first, and it hasn't exactly won.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well, I think the Israeli case is somewhat complicated, because Israel understands itself as the state of 'the Jewish people', and that category is somewhat woolly. 'Jews' as a category includes lots of people who are usually considered white, and also lots of people who are clearly not white.




I wouldn't say Mizrahi Jews are "clearly not white". As with other MENA populations, the 19th century scientific racists, the US census bureau, and model HBD-aware biologists would all consider them a white subgroup.


Ashkenazi-on-Mizrahi racism is a live political issue in Israel, but western anti-racists, even ones looking for an excuse to bash Israel, don't see it as the local Israeli form of white-on-non-white racism. And I'm not seeing western pro-white voices who make the distinction - either they see all Jews as white and love Israel, or they see all Jews as <insert anti-Semitic stereotype> and think Israel is ripping us off. So I think Mizrahi Jews count as "politically white" outside Israel.


In fact, the only people I see claiming Mizrahi Jews as non-white are people trying to disprove the claim that Israel is an ethnostate of a white ethnicity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And this is the problem. Beating the snowflake out of people will usually work, but trying to beat a genuine physical or neurodevelopmental disability out of people will usually leave a wreck, and even worse is that beating the eccentric genius out of people will also work. There is a reason why the global capital of snowflakes and the global capital of zero-to-one founders are the same place.


The uncontroversial example of this is asthma in the military. The military (both US and UK) won't touch even suspected asthma with a bargepole, and the reason is obvious - drill sergeants/drill instructors/recruit instructors are not doctors, and trying to use standard tough love techniques to keep an asthmatic running through an attack is the easiest way to kill a recruit.


The scissor example is Full Metal Jacket. Gunny Hartman tries to fix Private Pyle using the standard tough love techniques, and gets fragged for it. Hegseth and his supporters see this is as obviously an obviously correct attempt to beat the fuckup out of Pyle that had an unfortunate result, and see Hartman as a role model. Snowflake-protectors see this as a justified rebellion against tyrannical authority, and see Hartman as the villain. Anyone with a brain thinks that Pyle should have been discharged on mental health grounds, and sees Hartman as culpably stupid for not considering that possibility. (Simple stupidity is not normally a capital offence, but natural law is not required to be just, and Hartman was 100% the author of his own demise).


The controversial example is the massive increase in autism (and other mental health) diagnoses. How many of the marginally-diagnosed autistic people who currently struggle to present in normie-acceptable ways just need the schoolboy equivalent of a blanket party to straighten them out? How many can't "straighten out" with ordinary effort and will just end up being bullied until they shoot up the school? And how many can be useful members of society if we don't beat them up over some normie-friendly trivia? Many people are confidently wrong about this question. It is existential for my family so I have spent a lot of time looking, and as far as I can see nobody knows anything with the kind of confidence I would want before I beat my kids over it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This seems off. Both association football and rugby come from an attempt to write down the rules of the folk "football" games, which were played by boys and young men of all classes, to support organised inter-school play, and the  The Marquess of Queensbury is obviously trying to do the same thing for a different pre-existing sport.


Marathon running was invented by a French academic in order to provide an on-theme marquee event for the first modern Olympics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Count hails from one of the few British colonies where rugby never took off. (Canadian rugby evolved into a game which is more like American football). So I expect he is comparing it unfavourably to cricket and (field) hockey.


If he is advocating Rugby League as the superior game, I will be surprised as he appears to be neither a chippy northerner nor an antipodean. I do think League would be a better gateway drug for converting gridiron fans to following a real sport.


Interestingly, a lot of the spread of Rugby Union beyond the Commonwealth is driven by a great many cultures having a traditional sport involving trying to advance a held "ball" over the try line while the opposition try to physically take it from you, and World Rugby is good at finding them and saying "this is the international version of the sport you are already playing - why don't you adjust your tactics to our rules so you can compete internationally".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
HFCS didn't undercut cane sugar at world market prices until Chinese sugar demand picked up in the 21st century. HFCS replaced cane sugar in the US because massive sugar tariffs and subsidised corn created an artificial market. If that policy had involved crippling tariffs on the main export of a client state with a powerful lobby, it is not clear that the US would have done it.


If you remember the period when bringing back allegedly better-tasting Coca-Cola from Mexico was a thing, the reason for the difference was that Mexican coke used cane sugar and American coke used HFCS. In both cases, the Coca-Cola company unsurprisingly used the cheapest sweetener available.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would say that Paradox gaming (Stellaris and CK3 from your list) is a different hobby to the rest of PC gaming. I love it, but I don't have time for it.


Paradox write giant sandboxes trying to capture as much as possible of the feel of a particular strategic era. (Medieval dynastic politics for the Crusader Kings series, early modern politics dominated by incipient Westphalian states for the Europa Universalis series, the horror of industrial-age warfare in the Vicky series, the truly global scale of WW2 in the Hearts of Iron series.) The playtimes start from 30 hours and can go beyond 100 if you play a large empire from the earliest start date to the final end date.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Enforceability of covenants in property titles (which is what the power of an HOA is based on) would be a function of state land law. City codes have very little to do with it.


In both England and Scotland (separately), the process of transitioning from a regime where most land was owned by aristocratic families who would never dream of selling the freehold, and wanted to make contractual arrangements among family members and tenants which reflected that, to a regime where land was freely tradeable in both theory and practice involved a lot of statutory reform, with a lot of contentious debates about precisely which restrictions on land could be made legally enforceable. Scotland didn't abolish feudalism until 2000 because the only legally bulletproof way of creating a condo or HOA-like arrangement under traditional Scots law was to make the association the feudal overlord of the individual homeowners.


I don't know about the US equivalent, except that it varies a lot by state.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You also see this with like Cape Verde being able to draw powerhouse teams which shouldn’t happen in a better game.




If it were "too much luck in football compared to other sports" then they wouldn't be able to do it every damn game. Cape Verde fielded a good team, and their results reflect that.


Also, there just aren't sports where a single match selects the best team from two world-class teams with a reasonable degree of reliability. Pro baseball and basketball both use multi-game series in their playoffs, and the best-of-1 single-elimination format of the NCAA basketball playoffs produces so many upsets that you call it "March Madness".




All sports some how mimic war. Soccer has the least application to war of any sport.




You clearly haven't met European football fans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To be fair to the UnKoch my campus movement, if you are right then Cato-style libertarians* (or classical liberals, but I think that is a distinction without a difference) are 10x over-represented in certain academic disciplines compared to the general population. Some of that is because we are smarter than leftists or conservatives, but some of it is because Koch-funded groups spent a lot of money making it that way.


* As opposed to LvMI-style libertarians, who I don't count as libertarian because the only liberty they actually care about is the right of racists to be racist, and who have mostly gone full MAGA-authoritarian now anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Very strong agree with the top pick. Civ IV and SMAC are the best games in the Civ franchise, and Civ IV is a lot more accessible to new players. I am happy to defend this position if anyone wants to argue it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the Vatican is supremely uninterested in excommunicating them




Unauthorised consecrations are a latae sententiae excommunication, so failing to publish the excommunications doesn't mean that people are not excommunicated (and given that we are dealing with the most observant Catholics, this probably matters). That said, it is entirely plausible that the Church has secretly authorised these consecrations.