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MadMonzer

Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
38k is for a family of three. There aren't 200 million of those in America.


This is a bizarre blindspot of UBI proponents. The groups who need a UBI most are children and seniors (who effectively already have one), because we don't expect them to work. Various UBI-for-kids schemes are easy to imagine (in the US, the most obvious is the fully-refundable child tax credit) but only Matt Breunig and about three other pro-natalist Berniebros seem to be strongly in favour of them. But the culture that produces Anglosphere wonks (including left, pro-establishment right, and libertarian wonks) sees children as consumption goods and not human beings, so it keeps coming up with adults-only UBI, or thinking in ways which assume a single-parent family of three should get the same UBI as a single childless adult.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The war of 1812 felt existential at the time (once it became clear to the Americans that the British would actually fight back - something Madison had assumed they wouldn't), even if modern historians with access to British archives think it wasn't.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Americans" are not a homogenous group with uniform preferences about urban living - some like it, others don't. A lot more Americans want to live in places that resemble European or first-world Asian cities than are currently able to - we know this because such places (or even simulacra of them like New Urbanist suburbs) carry a price premium.


Americans living in suburbia is not a revealed preference because urbanism is mostly illegal - both in the sense that it is literally illegal to build at density in most of the US, and also in the sense that the system will not allow you to do the things you need to police somewhere built at urban densities - and I think we all agree that crime is a good and sufficient reason why nobody with options will live in the typical American inner city. If you ask Americans on this board why they don't like cities, most (not all - people who genuinely prefer more rural-like lifestyles exist) of the responses are about crime.


Empirically, where the system is able to put up low-diversity low-crime urbanism the way America puts up Pulte Homes tackyboxes with two-car garages (parts of Spain, South Korea, Japan), everywhere else depopulates. Even high-diversity medium-crime urbanism (NYC, London, Paris) is a build-it-and-they-will-come phenomenon.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Does this show the weakness of UBI or weakness of American administrative capacity? California can't do HSR but HSR is still possible. In many countries public transport is perfectly usable, respectable, junkie-free...




I don't think there is any well-run city where the transit system as a whole covers 100% of operating costs at the farebox. Hong Kong covers 100% of operating costs using a combination of farebox revenue and station-adjacent retail, and I think Tokyo does as well. There are definitely routes which do, and there are a few cities where the metro/light rail/equivalent as a whole has a farebox operating surplus (the London Underground is an example) which subsidises low-ridership bus routes and paratransit. But every city runs lifeline services to auto-oriented outer suburbs that lose money hand-over-fist, and almost every city runs paratransit that loses even more money.


This isn't particularly surprising - some of the benefit of collectively-provided transport flows to riders (and can be captured through fares) but some is captured by landlords near the route (and has to be captured through property taxes). This logic applies to roads for cars too, which is why local streets are paid for out of property taxes and not gas taxes in almost every city in America. The exceptions (HK and Tokyo) are where the transit network is the landlord.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Old Scranton Joe was more generous with the aid to Ukraine than the Don, but he was being a lot more miserly than Europe and the American deep state wanted. He was a bit out to lunch, but his one real red-line policy position that he was cogent of and involved about was no American ground troops in Ukraine.




The Biden administration's limits went a lot further than that - as a matter of vibes it was "nothing that could be considered as a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia because of the risk of nuclear armageddon" and more specifically it included


    

  • No US troops in Ukraine
    • 

  • No NATO troops in Ukraine without plausible deniability
    • 

  • No NATO flights over Ukraine and no missiles launched into Ukraine from NATO countries
    • 

  • No direct deliveries of US-made warplanes to Ukraine
    • 

  • No use of NATO-provided materiel for strikes inside the internationally recognised borders of Russia (it was the Biden administration who blocked the use of British-made Storm Shadow to strike Russia, not the British).
    • 

  • Target-by-target approval of strikes in Crimea with NATO-provided materiel
    • 



The restrictions on Ukraine using British kit to attack into Crimea or Russia proper were relaxed by the lame-duck Biden administration, and never reimposed by Trump.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
em dash with no spaces is the traditional US standard for serious typography, now adopted by LLMs. en dash with spaces is the British standard. A dash which separates two thoughts and a parenthetic dash are set in the same way.


An en dash without spaces is used for ranges and sports scores in both the UK and the US, e.g. 3-6 months or a 2-0 defeat.


ASCII does not distinguish between hyphens, dashes, and minus signs, meaning that a hyphen with spaces became the online standard for dashes in the era when plain ASCII was what the internet ran on - hence the em dash becoming an LLM marker


LaTeX sets hyphens, en dashes, em dashes, minus sings representing negation, and minus signs representing subtraction as five different characters.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The list of countries that had tariffs on the US was a lie, Trump didn't write Art of the Deal, and the tactics he usually uses on tariffs isn't door in the face as described in e.g. the linked article.


The last point needs some more explanation. "Door in the face" as understood by people who write about negotiation tactics, involves making an outrageous first ask which functions as a psychological anchor to make the real ask look more reasonable. The announcement of the Greenland tariffs is potentially a good example - if you assume the demand for sovereignty is a DITF which can then be negotiated down to some other concession that Denmark wouldn't normally be willing to make. But Trump's normal approach (see the early Mexico/Canada tariffs, or the Liberation Day tariffs) is to make an outrageous threat without an actionable ask attached, and then invite the threatened party to make an offer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


ragebait trump-bad-ally greenland stories are pushed every day,




Trump is the one pushing them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The poor people who subsidise the free flights in the non-retarded version of the meme aren't the people carrying a balance and paying interest - they are the people paying cash at prices which have been pushed upwards by the cost of credit card interchange.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Small business owners who employ illegals are the corest of the core constituency of the Republican party. Exploiting illegal labour requires entrepreneurial spirit, mild evil, and to be working in a sector that is already Republican-dominated (mostly farming or construction).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't disagree with you - I just don't think the British youth is going to riot over this.


Quite apart from views on the issues, France just has a stronger rioting culture than the UK does. Historically, the kind of British youth who would be a serial rioter in France would have become a football hooligan instead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think France is the only European country where young people will riot in defence of benefits for the elderly. And, just like everywhere else, the bit of European welfare states that needs to shrink is the welfare state for the old, not the welfare state for the poor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You mean everything my Swedish and Danish friends said about uptight Finns is wrong? I am shocked, shocked.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think most Anglosphere jurisdictions now limit the discretion of local judges with some form of sentencing code produced by a body like the US Sentencing Commission (for federal crimes) or the English Sentencing Council.* Political supervision of the organisations that issue the code is possible, and would be a good idea. (Although the likely outcome of more political involvement in sentencing in today's degraded democratic culture is populists noisily passing longer sentences without spending the money to build the necessary prisons).


The real problem is that even judges have a limited say in sentencing if most cases are plea-bargained. Having sentencing decisions de facto made by prosecutors is good for democratic accountability in a system with elected DA's, but bad for the rule of law.


* I support mandatory tarring and feathering for everyone who registers a government domain on a .org, .org.uk or similar domain name, including the registrar. The government should be honest about what it is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The takeover of the American conservative movement by people who hate America and Americans is fairly recent.




The takeover of the American conservative movement by people who find the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South fundamentally sympathetic (not all of whom are white supremacists or white nationalists themselves - Buckley probably was but Goldwater and Reagan definitely weren't) never happened because the modern American conservative movement was founded by people who found the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South fundamentally sympathetic. (The American conservative movement is not the same thing as the GOP).


The sort of people who find the Confederacy sympathetic have never been particularly fond of "America" the actually-existing political entity between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel, or its government, or its damnyankee ruling class, or its urban middle class with its dastardly (i.e. secular) booklarning. (Buckley, for instance, comes out against all of these things in the 1950s). What is fairly recent is that this has boiled over in a way which makes "hate" a plausible descriptor. Or, more correctly, boiled over again given the unfortunate incident in the 1860s.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Physical therapy is gated by a doctoral degree in the US, although it historically wasn't and almost certainly shouldn't be. In the UK physiotherapy (which Wikipedia says is the same thing) is a bachelor's degree, mostly offered by "new" universities (in American terminology, community colleges that were upgraded in the 1990s) or specialist healthcare colleges whose main programme is nursing. Less than 50% of British 18 year olds will complete a first degree, so getting a bachelor's at all strongly suggests IQ>100, and healthcare-related degrees tend to be the more rigorous degrees at low-end universities. A 100IQ physiotherapy student would be at the bottom of their class and would struggle to graduate.


In other words, if you think the average Westerner could do the job of a physiotherapist, I suspect you are living in a bubble and don't understand just how dumb most of the lower-middle classes are.


A lot of us found the Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong/Slatestarcodex comment sections because (metaphorically, I hope) we couldn't deal with our local Mensa chapters being full of involuntary retards, and then moved from those places to here to get away from voluntary retardation due to wokeness. Those retards in Mensa - they're still the 98th percentile of the bell curve.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think an Ikea soft toy on your desk would be acceptable in a bank, unless you are in a role where you regularly meet clients at your desk. I had a FIMO vampire squid called Lloyd on my desk for several years and it attracted 90% positive interest.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


shorts and band t-shirt




Shorts are sportswear or middle school uniform. (The rules are different in the tropics, but so are the shorts, hence "Bermuda shorts"). T-shirts are traditionally sportswear or underwear, although I agree this had already shifted by 2000. This isn't Sand Hill Road business casual we are talking about. When I started my career, T-shirts with obtrusive logos (including band T-shirts) were acceptable in approximately zero white-collar workplaces.


You are claiming that turning up at the office in the same clothes you would wear to the gym is not performative slobbery. If so, this is a very recent social change. It would have been considered performative slobbery well into the 21st century, and it absolutely was performative slobbery at the point programmers with well-paid corporate jobs started doing it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am not familiar with the investment industry in the US, but I don't think a financial advisor doing private client work with people with net worth in the single digits (the equivalent of a UK IFA) would have a CFA charter. (CFA stands for Chartered Financial Analyst, not Advisor).


The CFA is an extremely demanding exam-based qualification and is about as prestigious as it is possible for a qualification to be if anyone can get it by passing an exam. Most people who take it are already working as financial professionals and do it over 4-5 years of part-time study. The typical CFA holder is working in a mid to senior role in a bank or buy-side investment firm.


You can register as an investment advisor with a CFA, but most registered investment advisors got there by passing the much easier FINRA exams.


I agree with @JarJarJedi that none of these people are going to get involved in intra-family affairs, except that a good financial advisor will discuss options for transferring wealth to kids and grandkids, including questions like "when should they get access to the money", and an estate lawyer will go into such issues as far as is necessary to write a will.


Interestingly, at the high end part of what a true private banker (I'm talking about the kind of service you aren't in the market for unless the family net worth is well into double figures) is paid for is to understand the whole family and to offer financial advice that takes that into account. A private banker absolutely would, if asked, mediate in a money argument between family members in a way none of the other professionals on that list would.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Traditionally, the Left has been soft on Iran and the Right has been hawkish.




I don't think the pro-establishment left has been particularly soft on Iran - although I agree at the margin the pro-establishment right has been more hawkish recently (see for example the Obama era nuclear deal).




There's a strong anti-interventionist Right and Left




I agree here - I think "pro-establishment = hawkish, anti-establishment = dovish" is a better model than "left = dovish, right = hawkish". Trump personally is an exception because he is close to both Israel and Saudi Arabia in a way which the anti-establishment right would disapprove of in anyone else.


There is also a model where the US factional politics of Iran is just the US factional politics of Israel. The pro-establishment left and right are pro-Israel and thus anti-Iran, the anti-establishment left is anti-Israel and thus pro-Iran, and the anti-establishment right is divided on Iran in ways which primarily reflect their attitudes to Israel and Jews.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm mostly thinking about the various trucker and farmer protests involving deliberately blocking roads in the UK and France. These are usually nominally about fuel tax, but are clearly right-coded. They get the kid gloves, because tax policy is the type of issue where the left considers occasional roadblocks to be free speech. The Canadian trucker convoy got the jackboot because the left doesn't consider COVID-19 to be an issue where free speech applies.


The largest right-populist-coded protest movement in Europe in recent years is the gilets jaunes in France, which didn't touch the hot buttons around race and immigration and got the kid gloves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Suppose a bunch of NYC car drivers decided to have an organized "block the bike lane" protest throughout Manhattan. Do you really think that the Left would defend this as valid free speech?




When right-wing protestors blocked streets to protest fuel taxes, speed limit enforcement etc. in various European countries, they got the same kid-glove treatment that left-wing protestors do.


The NYPD are notoriously reluctant to enforce laws protecting cyclists from drivers, including laws against parking in bike lanes - I can't comment on how a hypothetical protest situation would change that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Which is why the ICE death rate is critical to the argument - it shows that ICE are not detaining violent criminals in large numbers, unlike local police.


ICE are mostly detaining two groups of people who don't fight back:


    

  • Otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants (They sometimes accidentally arrest a criminal immigrant, but the whole point of Trump's immigration enforcement agenda is to stop prioritising criminals in order to increase the pressure on non-criminals to self-deport)
    • 

  • Peaceful protestors (and I don't mean "mostly peaceful" here - so far anti-ICE protests have caused zero non-protestor deaths and have not set any cities on fire).
    • 



That said, I agree with you that ICE are violence professionals and should be more dangerous than the average male American - this comparison was a standard suggested by @coffee_enjoyer, and I was doing the napkin math he suggested. What ICE are doing is not friendly and neither its supporters nor opponents have any delusions about this, but given who is being targetted the number of "combat" deaths is negligible - I suspect @coffee_enjoyer may be overestimating the normal level of violence in nonblack America, which is even more negligible. I think some of the confusion is deliberate, in that large parts of MAGA Twitter want to see ICE go full brownshirt against Blue cities, and Trump admin poasters are trying to provide social media kayfabe to meet this demand (and also to scare immigrants into self-deporting, and possibly to encourage brownshirt-wannabees to work for ICE), but ICE are not in fact, as of early 2026, doing that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think leftists actually believe that the ability to engage in annoying protest, particularly including blocking streets, is a form of free speech. It is a rare case where the tactic is tribally-coded, not just the target.


Right-wing protesters whose message the left considers within the bounds of free speech (like pro-foxhunting protestors in the UK, or pro-motorist protestors almost everywhere) get the same kid glove treatment from the leftist establishment viz-a-viz enforcement of public order laws that leftist protestors get. Anti-immigrant, anti-COVID-restrictions, and explicitly racist protests get the jackboot, but then those messages got the banhammer when expressed peacefully on social media.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Reform UK do marginally better among the 50-65 age group (mostly Gen X) than among the 65+ group (mostly Boomers), but the key point is that they do almost twice as well with the over 50's as they do with the under 50's.


Given the size of the Conservative vote among over 65's, I suspect the total right-populist vote (Reform voters + low information right-populist voters foolishly voting Conservative because they don't realise that Johnson's right-populism was fake) is strictly increasing with age.


My impression was that right populists in Australia also skew old.


The only Anglosphere country where right-populism is a youthful movement is Canada, and UK media coverage implies that is because right-populism in Canada is YIMBY in a way that it isn't in the US or UK.