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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

				
				
				

				

					4 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Eliezer never said he thought alignment was a solvable problem - he said that if we built AGI without solving it, we would die. He has always be clear that the possibilities include "this is not a solvable problem and we should ban high-end GPUs to buy ourselves a few more years before we get paperclipped"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To someone who just specifically listed "get rid of sixty percent of the text" as something that would improve most web fiction?




A lot less than 60% of Project Lawful needs to be cut. My guess is 40% of Eliezer's text and 10% of lintamande's. The graphic BDSM scenes are identified as skippable and worksafe summaries are provided. The existence of the BDSM scenes is genuinely justified by character development - they are not gratuitous. (Lintamande is a technically better writer than Eliezer, and the driving force of the second half of the saga is the contrast between the two authors' views of what rationalists winning actually means.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you interpret it as mildly misogynistic mockery of bad fiction by women (which it mostly is, because the vast majority of wannabe novelists are women and most of the errors it calls out are either directly female-coded or characteristic of female-coded genres) it is a lot more sufferable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Criticism, review and parody are fair use, so a version of How Not to Write a Novel which used real excerpts would almost certainly be legal even if the books being panned aren't public domain. But that "almost" is probably enough to make it unpublishable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also anything where the badness stems from the author being immersed in therapy culture and/or lefty politics without realising that the rest of the world isn't. Which is about a third of the book.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The three bound volumes that make up the "trilogy" (Foundation, Foundation & Empire, and Second Foundation) are a collection of novellas that were first published in magazines (plus an original short story about the trial of Hari Seldon on Trantor). The driving tension of the first novella is that the Foundation (at that point still an Imperial project that is supposed to be writing an encyclopedia) finds itself in hostile territory after the surrounding sectors successfully declare independence from the Empire.


I will avoid more detailed spoilers beyond the one implicit in the title Foundation and Empire, but two of the other novellas centre around (direct or proxy) conflicts between the rising Foundation and the dying Empire.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


All three of the major crises in this book are overcome through non-violent and rather clever means, which reeks a little bit of a revenge of the nerds fantasy, although it still makes a certain amount of sense.




This isn't something Asimov is committed to - by the time the Foundation meets the Mule in Foundation and Empire it is a major military power and the implication is that aggressive war is one of the ways its territory expands over time. The Foundation relies on soft power in Foundation because (from a Watsonian perspective) it is militarily weak at the start of its life, being nominally an academic world writing an encyclopedia or (from a Doylist perspective) because Asimov didn't want to write military SF.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The problem with that argument is that human relationships are not zero-sum. The fact that our coal miner could probably spend half of his payday check in the pub, then go home, beat up and rape his wife without anyone in his society having a problem with that gains him a lot less than it costs his spouse.




This was never socially acceptable in cisHajnal Europe (with the possible exception of the marital rape), and the man who did it was subject to the disgust and loathing of his community, and if his brothers-in-law were to beat him up then it is very unlikely that any of the people who watched and applauded would remember who did it when the cops showed up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think Firefly could be made in today's Hollywood - it is far too obviously the Lost Cause in space.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm old enough to remember watching the prequels in first run in cinemas, and the hatedom for the prequels at the time was worse than the  hatedom the sequels got. The prequels are less hated now because of the passage of time. It doesn't help that the prequels recovered from a truly atrocious start (The Phantom Menace remains in my view comfortably the worst of the nine) meaning that Revenge of the Sith not sucking was something people ignored at the time, whereas the sequels got worse and worse (The Farce Awakens is a perfectly OK remake of A New Hope).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In Protestant America, "Hail Mary" is more likely to be a gridiron-driven reference to an unlikely last-minute turnaround than it is to be a reference to the common Catholic prayer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think (3) is a bigger problem than it seems on the surface. Including a token black in a commercial is a way of demonstrating your fealty to the Church of Woke




I don't think it excuses violence against women. Finding a man hitting a woman funny is an unforgiveable sin, unless it is part of a kinky sex thing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There weren't country clubs when Austen or Dickens was writing - if you were rich enough to afford a country club then either you owned a rural estate, you had a relative who let you take trips to their estate, or you were saving up to buy an estate. I also don't think Austen was mocking the social norms of the English landed gentry except in the sense that the British sense of humour is incompatible with describing something in detail in an entirely unmocking way.


Wikipedia says that country clubs became a thing in the US around 1880. I don't think they are a thing in the UK - the term "country club" is more like an affectation used by some golf clubs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Palestine was a win?




Israel isn't and wasn't pro-USSR. Jordan (which got the West Bank) isn't and wasn't pro-USSR. Egypt (which got Gaza) wasn't pro-USSR until American-backed communists under Nasser couped the British-backed government. So a win by the criterion I stated.




Is your assessment of sub-Saharan Africa now, or at some prior point post independence?




My assessment of sub-Saharan Africa is that Ghana, Zambia and Zimbabwe were pro-USSR during the Cold War, which was a failure of British policy. I don't think the people making decisions in postwar Britain were thinking forward to a future where the USSR no longer existed, so I don't think we can assess their success on the basis of sub-Saharan Africa today.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think one of the problems here is that the US side isn't talking about the talks that broke down, and doesn't see why they might need to. In particular, nobody is pushing back on the claim by Carney that there was a last-minute bait-and-switch from the US side, with various media outlets (admittedly probably all relying on the same anonymous source) saying that this was because Commerce Secretary Lutnick took over the reins from USTR Greer.


Based on Trump's MO going back to his real estate days, I think we can assume that there was a bait-and-switch from the US side - it is less clear whether or not it was a planned dick move as part of "tough" negotiating tactics or whether it was unintentional chaos as a result of divisions within the administration. But all we have to go by in terms of what the bait-and-switch was about is Carney's talking points (which I assume are selective and biased, because politics) and various pro-Canadian poasters amplifying them. Trump could say (or could get his people to say) that of course the US doesn't have a problem with Quebec preserving its language and culture and try to play divide-and-rule with Quebec the way is (ineptly) trying to do with Alberta, but he didn't.


This round of talks began with a unilateral escalation by the US (the various proclamations of 20th July) and the only intelligible demand the US has made on substance is that Canada reverse the retaliatory measure they put in place after the previous unilateral escalation from the US side, including steel and aluminium tariffs which the US said were not negotiable and other tariffs which were announced as a threat to force Canada to address a non-existent fentanyl problem and then TACOed.


So the US does not have a public negotiating position here. And if the bait-and-switch theory is correct, they haven't communicated a stable non-public negotiating position to the Canadians either.* It might be the case that normalcy could be restored if the Canadians agreed to end the retaliatory measures and accept the steel and aluminium tariffs, but we don't know and Carney has now said that he doesn't either. As far as I can see based on Trump and his supporters' social media posts, the actual MAGA theory of the case is that the correct process is that Trump commands and Carney obeys, and that the real problem is Canadian insistence on LARPing as a sovereign state.


* The actual US negotiating position in this case needs to be non-public because the Trump administration is abusing emergency powers to impose the tariffs. Everyone on both sides of the border knows that the legally colourable US-law justifications for the tariffs in the official White House proclamations have little or nothing to do with the real reasons they are being imposed, but can't say so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why? Biden could become a President (indeed, beat Trump at a debate!) while in early stages of dementia




Pandemic era Biden didn't come across as demented. He came across of someone who was still compus mentis when fully awake, but who was too physically frail for the demands of executive leadership (or indeed running an in-person campaign, which he fortunately didn't need to do in 2020 because of the pandemic). This is consistent with what staffers have said about the administration, which is that Biden was lucid for 4-6 hours a day and able to use those hours to prevent a power vacuum appearing that could be filled by someone else.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Didn't the US identify bilingual-labelling laws as a non-tariff barrier that they wanted removed?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I do not think that the United States would ever attempt to take and hold ground within China




This is the original meaning of "Never get involved in a land war in Asia".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


inability of the Germans to break out into the Atlantic at Jutland set the stage for the conclusion of the war




What is particularly weird is that the surface navy theatre of WW1 (the U-boat war was separate) was decided by a single battle that was a tactical draw.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Great Game never worked out particularly well for the locals in Afghanistan, and wasn't supposed to. The Taliban, somehow, managed to flip the table and say that Afghanistan wasn't a gamepiece any more. The locals prefer this, and were therefore willing to fight for the Taliban but not for the Karzai government.


Taliban rule is a disaster for urban women (unfortunately) and religious minorities (who are, by definition, minorities). When western journalists and NGOs tried to get rural women to complain about Taliban rule, they basically got "We didn't actually have any more freedom under Pashtunwali but now at least our sons won't end up as bacha bazi boys and a warlord who rapes our daughters will be expected to marry them"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How are those Post-colonial Westminster constitutions in Africa going?




The political goal of post-WW2 British decolonialisation was to hand colonies that had become obviously unprofitable over to governments able and willing to prevent their territory being used by the USSR. I don't think we even pretended that the point was to set up durable democracies.


On that basis, decolonialisation in East Asia was a win (notoriously against serious opposition in Malaya), South Asia was a draw (India was more sympathetic to the USSR than the West, but took nonaligned status seriously), the Middle East was a win (apart from Egypt where we were beaten by American-backed communists who would go on to double-cross the US and side with the USSR), and sub-Saharan Africa was somewhere between a draw and a loss.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think we basically agree here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The "minelayers" in @Mantergeistmann's ONI report look like the sort of thing that is affordable to the average middle-class American (though not the average middle-class Europoor). Very unlikely to be worth more than the munition that sunk them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks - I would say that the only thing that could pass for a capital ship is the three Russian-made Kilo-class attack submarines.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was thinking about the scenario where the Republicans nominate a better candidate (i.e. DeSantis or Abbott against Harris) rather than the scenario where the Democrats run an even worse candidate (Trump vs zombie Biden). I don't think any of us doubt that either party can lose an election if they try hard enough. Vote for the uncouth, not the undead!


If the 2028 Presidential election is Don Jr vs AOC, Americans will deserve it.