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Renrijra Krin

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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Renrijra Krin

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The revealed preferences of everything eventually goes to hedonistic thinking.  That’s how we get people who’d rather get welfare than a job, obesity, partying, overspending, and so on.  I think society as a whole quite often needs to enforce cultural norms and values that counteract the tendency to choose the hedonistic option or the one that requires the least sacrifice.  The revealed preference of most men is not to work dirty and dangerous jobs.  They do so if necessary because society will deem an able bodied man with no job as a loser.  Even things that are liked by men who don’t want to work gets stigmatized heavily.  The same thing should be in play for women in this instance.  A woman who doesn’t want children is a loser as much as a man sitting home playing COD instead of going to work.  And I’d say the same of obesity.  Shaming people who overeat and don’t exercise is a good thing.  Shaming kids who would rather play than study is good as well.  Shaming and shunning enforces social norms against various forms of hedonism.  Within limits, hedonism is okay, but it’s still much better for everyone if people are shamed for not doing their duties.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How?  I just don’t see why putting barbed wire and guard dogs around a certain fact makes people better off.


First of all, it tends to elevate one event and one set of victims above all others.  There are lots of genocides in history.  I’ll recommend reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.  Our policy in the USA denied native Americans rights, forced them onto reservations and underfed them.  Armenian genocide was a very deliberate decision.  The Cathars were slaughtered with the explicit approval of the Pope.  Even African slavery in the new world was pretty bad.  But there’s only one genocide that we must not question and must never belittle.  Which puts that people above in some sense.  I can call the Trail of Tears an exaggeration all day long.  I can say slavery wasn’t that bad.  But touch the Grand Mythos and I’m a bad person.


Second, I believe, as I said earlier, that such a cartoon version of history with a cartoon villain making comically evil angry sounding speeches, crowd shouting slogans, Hugo Boss uniforms and red and black flags give people a very skewed idea of what authoritarian regimes look like.  It’s become a visual shortcut for evil and if you want to make a bad guy regime for your movies, tapping into the aesthetic of Nazi Germany is the way to do it.  But if someone else comes along and wants to use the state to silence and arrest enemies, as long as they can avoid looking like those people and don’t talk like the Nazis talked, and don’t want to go after that one ethnic group, it’s fine.


Third, I think it undercut any sober analysis of whether or not our own democratic system works.  Neoliberalism has faults as well, but it’s hard to get people to think about it because of the free world propaganda which the Grand Mythos and the idea the human rights are the best way to secure human flourishing.  It’s actually been used quite effectively to justify going to war with our political enemies.  All that needs to be said is that a country is violating human rights and we are ready to bomb those countries, destroy their infrastructure, kill people, or maybe if they’re lucky we’ll just kill their economy with sanctions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Honestly, even as someone who believes what you’re calling the mythos (with some rather minor caveats) I still find “The Mythos” rather annoying mostly from the point of what it’s actually done to conversations around fascism and authoritarian regimes of various forms.  Which is to say that Nazi Germany has become a stand in for Satan in political form.  And because everything about it is Pure Evil and the regime is imagined as constant parades, angry speeches, and crowd yelling “Sig Heil” all the time.  This is honestly a cartoon version of history that creates a lot of false senses of security about whether fascism or other forms of authoritarian government could arise elsewhere.  When your idea of fascism is Hitler yelling into a microphone, goose stepping soldiers, new flags, and Hugo Boss uniforms, anything short of that seems to be something else.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think honestly all wars are like this.  Nobody giving a neutral account thinks any of the allies were specifically going to war for human rights in any strip.  Russia notoriously did not like Jews all that much.  Our empire is fairly civilized as empires go, and I’m not at all disappointed that a genocide was stopped or that France was liberated.


And I think any fair analysis of history has to take into account the perspectives of everyone involved if it’s to avoid being simply propaganda for whichever side happens to be telling the story.  The Germans had an opinion of the allies, talking about what that perspective was isn’t apologetic, it’s simply telling the truth — they didn’t like us because we were bombing the crap out of them.  And while I think most of the deaths in the camps were absolutely deliberate, I think it’s reasonable to suggest a small role for logistical failures simply because again, we are bombing their supply lines and factories and so on, and yes, they undoubtedly prioritize their own people over prisoners they consider less than human.  All of this can be absolutely true, the holocaust still happened, we might have made it worse.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean college kids especially from upper class homes are often able to leverage social networking to get themselves in good positions to eventually get hired.  Even if you’re a fuckup, having played dozens of games of beer pong with the son of a business owner is going to get you a leg up.  That isn’t because playing beer pong is less hedonistic, but because frat life introduces you to your social peers who will eventually put in a good word for you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not education, but delayed adult responsibilities.  In college, outside of occasional study and attending classes, the students don’t have any responsibilities that a junior high kid living at home doesn’t have.  The dorm is paid by his parents, as is his meal plan and so on.  She can do whatever she wants with time not spent studying.  The lifestyle is pure hedonism with very little to force the students to mature.


And what makes people mature is not age, but having to depend on oneself and having other people depend on them.  This is the value of sports and other activities— you’re dependent on yourself being committed to the task at hand if you want to keep playing that sport.  Your team depends on you to show up and perform.  If you can’t live up to that, at best you’ll be benched and in more competitive leagues you might well be cut.  So you learn to be that dependable person, you go to practice, you run and weight train and throw a ball around because your team needs you and you want to be on that team.  Alternately, you can look to rural farm kids involved in 4H.  They’re much more mature than others their age.  They are capable of getting things done, they have a longer time preference, and they aren’t nearly as driven by emotion as kids who live in suburban neighborhoods and don’t work or play sports.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the bigger factor is women in the workplace.  Education might well be a correlation, but the rates of childbirth didn’t fall nearly so dramatically until women began to enter the workplace in substantial numbers.  If mom is working, the external cost of a child go up dramatically, and the benefits (mostly spending time bonding with the child, and in some cultures prestige) are a lot lower.  Tbf, the upshot is that we as a society need to choose either women work or they have babies.  Very few women do both, and those who try have fewer kids.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think he’s fundamentally wrong.  Like many things, it’s not about equality (which has increasingly been used to deny outcomes people don’t like) but about the physics of bicycles.  Very few cyclists could hope to maintain a constant speed much above 25 mph, and to do that you’d need to be in pretty good shape.  That’s about the minimum speed a car can possibly do without constantly braking.  Add in the visibility issue (a small bicycle is pretty hard to spot, especially if the rider isn’t wearing hi-visibility clothing — which rarely happens) and the extreme vulnerability of the cyclist (F=MA, you’re in for a serious injury if a car hits you), and anyone looking at this from a pure safety perspective would absolutely not want cyclists “sharing the road” because it’s not possible for a small human-powered vehicle and a 2000 pound vehicle doing 45mph to “share” safely.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think pointing out that most people won’t work and will help out tremendously.  Most people have personal experience with freeloading and if their hard work is not rewarded or worse taken and given to others who did nothing, they deeply resent those freeloading people.  Explained that way, communist ideas lose quite a bit of luster.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m absolutely convinced they are.  The entire thing sounds like a parent desperately trying to get a kid to behave by making threats that they’ll punish them in some vaguely unspecified way.  “Behave or else” only really works when there’s an actual “or else” and the other party has reason to believe that you have the will and power to actually do that.  Biden has neither, and I don’t think anyone actually believes he does.  He doesn’t have control of congress and would thus have a lot of trouble getting any policy changes to happen.  Congress isn’t going to agree to withhold weapons.  They’re going to Scream bloody murder if he even suggests sanctions.  Even supporting the ICC thing is a non starter.  We know this, Biden knows this, Netanyahu knows this. And so not only is there no reason to stop, but if he wants to prove he’s not beholden to American dictates, he’d be wise to double down and do more of what he’s been doing.  Why would he agree to stop?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My question to Biden is “or what?”  What exactly is the USA going to do if Netanyahu decides to say “no”.  There’s not really even a threat to not sell bombs, let alone set out economic sanctions or bomb them or something.  This, for that reason feels less like a statement to Netanyahu and much more about trying to shore up support for Kamala among the Pro Palestine  crowd.  There’s just no credible threat here for the Jews in Israel to fear.  There’s not even a hinted at consequence.  It’s just “stop the war in Gaza or I’ll huff and puff some more.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think I was a bit unclear.  But the criticism of the west that always stuck with me was Xi Diengpeng saying that we are an unserious people.  To be honest, he’s absolutely right about our leadership.  And I think Moldbug is right in his diagnosis of the problem even if I think absolute monarchy is probably not a solution.  If you read about how statesmen of the past thought about governance, it’s not anything like what we talk about in governance.  You can read the Republic and the Laws and Cicero is talking about laws being aimed at the common good.  Confucius talks about rulers and ministers having a duty to study and understand the issues.  It was seen as an art and a science of making the state prosperous and powerful.  I just don’t see those kinds of serious pragmatic leaders coming forward.


Some of this is just incentives.  The person who can win the election is the one who can pander best.  The ones who can promise what sounds good on TV as a sound bite of less than 10 seconds.  If you are drawn to solving problems and fixing things, then I can’t imagine the need to go on TV and give interviews where you do your best to give non answers for an hour.  You’d probably rather build a business or financial empire or rocket ships or something.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
See this is exactly why I don’t like environmentalists as a group.  I can understand the need to protect a species, and I’m generally in favor of protecting the environment where possible.  But there’s a point where you have to be pragmatic about these things.  We need roads, power plants and wires.  Planning around a major habitat I get.  But if you oppose everything people want to do even when it’s 95% of what you want, then I see no reason to take them seriously when they suggest we need to retool our infrastructure to protect the environment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The times I’ve seen it it’s used to at least imply that the person involved is hoping a white man would be put in his place.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The idea wasn’t that the King would literally know how to do everything.  The idea was that the king would have full control over the state and thus could set a vision or set of visions for what success looks like.  And while the King might not know all the details, they’d have their entire youth up until taking the throne to learn how to actually run a state.  But having full control, knowing the basics of how things work, and having a vision of what he wants the state to look like by the end of his reign gives him a leg up to actually getting those things done.  It’s a lot easier to get the administrative system to approve more nuclear plants if the king knows that nuclear is fairly safe, provides a lot of energy, etc.  and with a vision of better energy independence and efficiency and a plan to get there, chances are you’ll get there.


Modern democracy encourages people to learn how to run for office with very little knowledge of how to run things once they actually get there.  I think democracy does work most of the time, I just think good statecraft is much more important to a functioning state than the details of how the decisions are made.  We lack this in both parties.  It’s a campaign of clowns with no serious ideas about how the United States should move into the twenty first century.  Our foreign policy is based mostly on vibes.  Our plan for education is basically to bandage over the failures of universities and do nothing to improve K-12.  Our infrastructure plan appears to be “fix potholes”.  Health care is still a mess.  And general health is terrible as Americans are pretty much obese at this point.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m in the Midwest actually.  And I drive on one of these “bike routes” daily. The speed limit is 35 MPH, cars regularly hit 40-45 because the speed isn’t enforced.  Not only is there no shoulder on the road, but there’s a revine right at the edge of the road.  But yes, after the mayor hit a biker, they painted the bike path symbols on the road and stuck up a few signs.  But they did get a grant from DC for having bike lanes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To be fair, honestly most of us are in grimdark phase right now anyway because so much of our real world society is falling apart.  You’ve undoubtedly been reading the descriptions of Philadelphia here.  Or if not you’ve seen the ruins of most major cities with bars on the windows, trash in the streets, drug use and homeless people everywhere one looks.  Where taking public transportation is an exercise in risk management during the day and unsafe at night.  Where kids no longer expect to live as well as their parents even as they must work ever harder to not fall into poverty from the cost of living and debts and lack of real opportunities even though those kids worked extremely hard to get where they are.  It is not exactly surprising that the grandkids of people who watched the original show resent that their grandparents believed in a hopeful optimistic future where there’s no poverty and people can live a life they want when the promise is not only no closer to being delivered, we’re actually farther away from many of them than we were in the 1960s.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Most of the country lacks “real infrastructure” for bikes.  At best the state will paint a few lines on existing roads and call the rightmost lane a bike lane with no real barriers against traffic.  At worst, they paint a bicycle lane symbol on a road with a 35mph speed limit and stick up a “share the road” sign or two.  It gives the state prestige “we’re supporting green infrastructure!” And cash from the Feds.  But it’s not a safe way to ride.


And exercise is pretty easy to get if you do a little while watching TV in the evening.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s not a stupid hobby, however it’s stupid to think that you can ride a vehicle that goes 15 mph on public roads without being at risk.  At least with a sidewalk or a separate path, you’re not blocking cars.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my area, bike lanes are a joke.  Regularly on the single lane of a two lane road, no shoulder to speak of, and where traffic speed is set (for cars obviously) at 35-40 mph and in some cases curvy roads at that.  You’d have to have a death wish to even think about using “bike lanes” like that.  And to be honest, I think bike lanes and traffic don’t mix simply because of the speed differential involved.  A fast biker can ride at 10-15 mph.  A slow car riding the breaks goes 20-25.  There’s just no way you can have a roadway set up for both without a physical Barrier to protect bikers from traffic.  If we were taking about building bike lanes away from cars — dedicated lanes where there’s no roads connected to it, I think the perception would be better.  As it stands, from the POV of car drivers, bikers are basically a road hazard to them — they have to brake hard suddenly with cars behind them going 40 mph putting them at substantial risk of being in a wreck themselves for trying to not hit a biker in the road.  It simply doesn’t work from a design standpoint to try to fit a vehicle that moves less than 20 mph into a space where other vehicles are going anywhere from 30-60 mph.


And the barriers don’t seem to happen mostly from a money standpoint.  The barriers cost money, then you need more money to redesign intersections to accommodate your barriers and bike lanes, you need better traffic control.  None of that is cheap.  To do bike paths alongside the actual road with protective barriers, updated traffic control, signage and parking costs millions and the majority of road users will never get use from it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, misspoke, sorry.  But the point being that unless a woman is basically a semi-pro athlete (let’s say that she’d be competitive in a small school college sports program) her chances of successfully defending herself against a minimally athletic male in a one on one situation is fairly small.  It’s why I basically laugh at the “learn self defense for women” programs.  Unless you’re seriously training and competing in combat sports you aren’t going to have enough skill to win out against a male with enough extra muscle mass to manhandle her.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Everything will matter by job and major.  If you are in a highly competitive market, the credentials will matter a lot.  If not, you’ll be able to get by with lesser schools or in some cases no school at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Define “real”.  I mean a militia group did manage to blow up a federal building in the late 1990s.


But I think when asking whether a social movement is “real” I tend to think in terms of organizational effectiveness. Can they actually do any effective disruptive force type things?  Can they project actual force beyond their home territory?  Hell, can they effectively defend their home territory?  And in that sense, while these groups exist and are armed, the most that these grouhave done in the last 10 years is marching around in business casual clothes and shouting into bullhorns.  I’d suggest with sufficient time and pressure these militias could become more effective.  It’s rather anecdotal, but the online portion of these groups on YouTube seem to be concerned with professionalizing the movement, incorporating the types of training that the actual military uses and trying to purge the ranks of beer drinking larpers.  Whether this is actually happening, I don’t know because I’m not in a militia.  But this is now at least being talked about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Honestly, I would hope and expect that the parties themselves would deal with those who are clearly and obviously calling for violence, and I would expect them to defend their own members from false accusations.  I’m not sure, outside of the public refusing to support people and groups calling for violence, there’s much the general public can actually do.


As it stands, the bar for what constitutes “calling for political violence” seems pretty low.  If you use a flamethrower on empty bio es labeled with the agenda of the other party, that’s now political violence.  Even though no humans are in the images.  With such a broad definition, almost any ad that gets attention could be accused of violence in some way.  To me, if we’re going to stop “encouraging spree killings”, I think it should be done in cases where the call is real and unambiguous.  You can’t curtail free speech by calling every symbolic reference to a gun violence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the case of gender, I would argue that it’s at least in part about safety.  Men are orders of magnitude stronger than women, and given that most instances of stranger rape occur in private spaces, keeping natal males out of women’s restrooms, changing rooms, and sleeping areas is simply the best way to prevent rapes in those spaces.


Height and weight are more about proof of identity in general.  If you match 5/5 of the identifying characteristics listed on your ID, it’s pretty clear it’s your ID.