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MaiqTheTrue

Renrijra Krin

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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Renrijra Krin

				
				
				

				

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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think Americans are less “real” in part because of history.  America was born in the newspaper age, came of age in the radio age, matured in the TV age, and now the internet age.  If you compare that to places like Britain or Germany or India or China or Japan, the reason seems pretty clear.  The idea of being a Brit or a German or Indian includes lots of history and culture and folkways that existed hundreds or even thousands of years before printing presses to say nothing of the internet.  Brits go to pubs and get drunk because that’s just what they do, they have for centuries.  Japanese have their culture going back thousands of years.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think Lumps are a new problem.  It’s just that in the modern era most places to dump them no longer exist at sufficient scale to absorb the lumps.  Most people, for most of human history didn’t need to go through decades of schooling to train for a skilled career.  Up until the 1990s is was perfectly okay to not be motivated in school because most people were destined for one of several jobs with low expectations for the workers:  farmers, skilled tradesmen, factory workers, maybe low level office drones.


I tend to see the problem from the other side.  The problem isn’t the Lumps.  They’ve always been around, and probably always will be.  The problem is that average isn’t good enough anymore.  It’s no longer even good enough to graduate college, you need to have good grades, internships, the right extracurricular activities, the right work experience.  You can’t just slide.  And so if you’re not elite human capital, whether because you are not motivated enough to scrum hard enough, or you don’t have the intellect or the ability to win, there’s no real place for you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean gun to head I’d point to several things:


    

  1. 

    Scientific hubris abroad in much of Western Europe at the time which assumed that humans in their infinite wisdom had the ability and thus the duty to reshape humanity and human genetics to create better humans.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Nationalistic fervor that resulted from the loss in WWI and the desire to reassert Germany as a major power in Europe.
    

    3. 

  3. 

    Reparations demanded added to the global economic crisis of the Great Depression meant that the median population was experiencing hyperinflation and unemployment and so on.  This lead to people being willing to look for anything and anyone who had some sort of plan to make things better before bread cost 2 wheelbarrows of marks instead of one.
    

    4. 

  4. 

    Jews were pretty easy pickings at the time.  Many were immigrants who had fled Eastern Europe during the Russian revolution, they were isolated, they did weird things in their religion.  They were already seen as enemies because of blood libels based on Christian beliefs from earlier centuries.  They didn’t have a lot of political power.  They were “those weirdos over there who dress funny and nod while they pray.”  Getting people to not like them isn’t hard.
    

    5. 

  5. 

    Moral relativism that meant that people were no longer beholden to ideas of Good and Evil.
    

    6. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
They were in my view, about half right.  Enlightenment thinking does have flaws, especially in moral reasoning.  It’s almost impossible to find any evil that one cannot find some justification for if given just the right set of circumstances.  I can justify the murder of millions if my reason is “good enough”.  The relativism and utilitarian principles given by the enlightenment put everything, up to and including genocide, on the table.  Marxism doesn’t work any better as it is a product of the enlightenment. It’s not really an alternative source of moral inspiration, it’s just a different flavor.  What is needed in my view is an outside, definitive and authoritative source of the ideal of Good, and a framework that imagines that the most important thing is to live by the ideals of The Good and thus you cannot change the ideals just because you have a good excuse.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The main reason I don’t want LLM based content is that I come to fora to read the thoughts of humans in their own words.  I think having everything run through LLMs would degrade the original content that would otherwise be produced.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t mind so long as the original texts are made available to the public once scanned.  I agree that rotting books sitting unread are doing no good, however the loss of human creativity and wisdom is tragic to my mind.  Those 6 lost poems are of some value even just for historical interest, and I count it a loss — even if it’s an accidental one — that they no longer exist.  I don’t insist on scrolls, a pdf is just fine actually.  The same of old buildings— we should preserve something of the past, even if only in pictures and videos.  To lose those things means losing not only history, but potential other ideas and arts that we can draw from creatively.  I find the world views of ancient cultures to be utterly fascinating because they provide other ways of seeing the world and thus potentially new ways of seeing and solving our own problems.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My feeling is anyone who would split with a church over a plain reading of the Bible isn’t really Christian enough to be worth catering to.  In short, they place their own opinions above all else and would likely leave over some other issue anyway.  So I’d say ignore them and teach what the bible says, and the traditions as they existed.  If it makes people uncomfortable good, they needed to hear it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Im not talking about politics, but culture, the way you think about the actual humans living near you — your family, your friends, your neighbors, etc.  communists generally take a sort of dim view of communalism in the sense of people actually showing up in their life to help people who need it.  A Christian community will give to charity quite often, they’ll run ministries to help people, they’ll show up to clean up after storms, and so on.  In their personal lives, Christians tend to prioritize or at least consider how things that they want to do or want to avoid doing affects other people.  A Christian woman will often choose to stay home with the kids.  Not necessarily because her hedonistic desires really lean in the direction of “I an intelligent woman who can outwork a lot of men somehow pine after the life of changing diapers and cooking and keeping house”, I don’t think that’s true.  They do so out of the sense that being a housewife is good, and good for the rest of the family and especially the kids.


Communists and the far left tend to believe that people need to be forced to do good things.  I suspect they lack personal experience with communities that are more communal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One thing I point out about religious people in general is that they’re much less into hyper-individualism and hedonism than modern secular society.  They view themselves as part of a much larger whole.  A religious Jew sees himself as part of a group a tribe and a nation.  A religious Christian sees himself as part of the Body of Christ.  A secular progressive especially as you get into the far left end of things is much more an individualistic person concerned mostly about their own interests and lifestyle.


Babies are actually a pretty big lifestyle change.  You cannot doa lot of things that single people or DINKs do.  No staying out late, no spontaneous trips, no getting drunk every weekend or partying.   You have to prioritize the baby and its needs.  You have to make sure you have a good enough job to provide.  You can’t just quit because you want to because you are responsible for the baby.  This isn’t something that would be appealing to a hedonist.  It’s not as much fun as partying and traveling and drinking and so on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It depends.  Usually in the Christian form of charity, there was an expectation of the person joining and becoming a Christian, and often The priest would require that the recipient generally improve their behaviors if they are the cause of the problem.  If they had no job they were expected to do at least some work.  It wasn’t a modern free check where a person could demand gibs despite not being a member of the community or contributing in any way whatsoever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for June 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think part of the problem is that modern technology and lifestyles have sort of enabled this.  When you have entire generations of people who have only minimal contact with reality, they Don’t really believe in the necessity of teaching kids to survive in the world.  When the default is “if he fails then there are all of these systems that mean he will do okay.”  That could just be the assumption of the time when mom and dad were in school and there were enough “good enough” jobs for college graduates that a kid who flounders for a couple of years will be okay, so there’s no urgency in making sure that your kid is employable and can present himself well.  For the lower class it’s much the same.  Kids don’t need to worry about learning in school and learning a trade or going to college because welfare will feed them.  And without hard edges, without having to worry about whether the children are being raised into sensible adults, they tend to go with the idea of letting kids do whatever they want.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean if you insist on the very narrow definition of chechov’s gun.  On the other hand there are lots of TV shows or movies that would be ruined by forms of the gun.  One huge one is the abilities of characters and technology in science fiction and fantasy.  Once I establish that Spock can do the mind meld and read a guy’s mind, the audience tends to question why that isn’t happening when this would be the obvious solution to the need to find out something that the characters need to know and the bad guy does know.


I think the rule is better stated as “don’t bring up a potential solution to the problem and then ignore it.”  I tend to like Sanderson framing of the issue which is that ideally, your characters should try everything that the audience would think would work and have it fail.  The gun would ignore that rule, because you have characters fighting and the gun is right there so the audience is thinking “why not just shoot the guy with the gun that’s sitting right there”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for June 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The languages thing makes a lot of sense as most people if they have more than one language usually have at least one of them as English.  Thus if there’s no official translation of UN content in your language, you’d default to English as the language of choice.  Arabic and Chinese really don’t spread beyond their initial cultures and Spanish is largely confined to Spain and Latin America.  Russian used to be bigger in Eastern Europe, but I don’t think it’s as popular there now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for June 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think a lot of the divide comes down to how we raise kids.  The major difference between now and the past is that most parents are now so divorced from the idea that there should be any authority figures that they not only cannot raise their kids into adulthood properly, but often stand in the way of anyone who would demand a kid do anything they don’t want to.  That often means that the child lacks the ability to act professionally or talk professionally.  They don’t understand that going to a job interview is not the same as hanging out with the kid down the street.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for June 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe it is George Takei.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean how common do these incidents need to be before anyone is allowed to point to the pattern?  How blatant do the cops need to be before anybody is allowed to say “this isn’t just incompetent?”  A man was arrested for being stabbed by a brown Sikh guy while the cops calmly chatted and searched his phone and then his father’s phone for “racism”.  A man who, had he received prompt treatment, might well have survived.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean that honestly intent actually matters and nobody im aware of in this crowd had a substantial criminal record, nor at the time that they entered the Capitol did they intend to go around beating up cops.  There is evidence of this, the most famous and obvious being the rather famous images of these same people respecting the ropes around the rotunda in the Capitol.  But also the number of people who showed up in cosplay outfits and so on.


Had the cops simply used normal techniques of crowd control, I don’t think the people who would not cross a rope barrier are suddenly going to beat up cops.  They started beating up cops once the cops broke out the mace.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The checkov’s gun thing is still a part of storytelling.  The general idea is to avoid telling people about things in a story that seem important but actually are completely irrelevant to the story.  So I can’t tell you that “oh, by the way, Batman has a Time Machine,” then never ever mention it again.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for May 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t see apex in this, simply because so much of what trans women seem to think the interior life experiences of women are the things that the media tells people that women are like.  It would be like me taking men’s media portrayals as what men are like.  If I say I’m a man and I act like the media portrayals of male action heroes maybe like John Wick or something, you’d find the effect rather weird because this isn’t what any men are like.  I don’t think John Wick in the wild is super high status, but he’s the character people think of when they think about maleness.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for May 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean yes.  The whole thing seems like a man looks at media presentations of “what a woman is like” and wears it as a persona.  It’s not based on the way the majority of women spend the majority of their time.  It’s honestly somewhat sexist to me as a woman to watch some of these trans women LARP as women and revive a lot of stereotypes about what women are like.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think most of the prosecutions were over the top.  If you have cops threatening you, it’s not unusual for you to fight back.  It was a completely chaotic situation where people who had never been in a situation where the cops are trying to stop them and wielding batons.  Most of the protestors were older Americans who had up to that point only gotten a couple of speeding tickets.  They were not hardened criminals who went in trying to beat up cops for no reason.  They went in believing they were protesting the election of 2020 being stolen, they perhaps intended to chant in the halls of congress or something.  Trying to treat such people as if they went in intending to beat up cops and harm members of Congress ignores the reasons they had and the character of those people.


I’m not completely on board with a fund, but these were not hardened criminals and talking about this as if the fifty year old small business owner was exactly like a gang member looking to shoot a cop is ridiculous.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean near term, the most important thing for anyone to remember is that if he can’t see your hands empty in a situation, he assumes that you have a weapon.  If you make a move with your hands into a place where he won’t be able to watch what you are doing with your hands he assumes you are reaching for a weapon.


The most important thing to do when dealing with police is keep your hands where he can see them, Do not have anything in your hands, and do not move your hands to any place that your hands would be hidden from view. So if you’re at a traffic stop, you put your hands either straight up or on the steering wheel, and do not move until the cop is there and can see your hands.  Do not reach for your license, your insurance information, your proof of ownership or anything else until the cop can see you and has directly told you to do that.  If you need to reach into your glove box, a bad or a purse ask him if it’s okay, or hand over the bag.


The main thing here is that cops are trained from day one with one fact in mind:  if you miss the guy going for a weapon, you’re probably going to get seriously injured.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean, sometimes the race/gender flipped version never actually happening is a part of the reason people are pissed off.  There is not, nor will there ever be, a story in which a white male attacks a bunch of brown people in Germany and the cops defend the white guy while arresting the brown guy who tries to stop the mass stabbing.  That is part of the story which is the quiet part out loud:  the cops are so concerned about looking racist that they will assume the white guy is guilty before even bothering to realize that the brown guy is actually the perpetrator.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s usually the reverse.  The kids starts it, then they start making money and the parents push the kid to continue even if they don’t want to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My advice would be to start out doing short stories.  They have a couple of advantages.


First, they have a quicker turnaround.  You can get a first draft done in a week or less.  This means that you have more time on the back end to rework what you have into something that works.  A lot of good writing that you see in books is actually rewritten, and often several times.  If you have a story that’s ten to fifteen pages, you can easily rewrite the bad prose, or fix the plotting or see where the characters are doing weird things.


Second, the level of detail you need to get started is a bit less.  You don’t have the space for a long detailed plot, or fifteen pages worth of world building information.  You don’t have the space in the story to worry about what happened to your main character in the fifth grade and all the trauma it caused him.  In all of that, you have time to hit the highlights and move on.  This removes the temptation to follow Tolkien in the sense of spending large amounts of time building an entire universe and not writing the story.


Third, they’re easy to put out into the world.  You can just put it on a blog, or a website.  You can submit to short story contests, you can print them at kinkos and hand them out on street corners.  Thus the need to worry about gatekeepers is less.


As far as characters, I personally use the type descriptions from personality tests (MBTI or Socionics or Enneagram) simply to get a sense of how the character might think.  That helps me because if I don’t make a point of giving each character a different personality, they all end up sounding like me.


I’ll also recommend looking up the Brandon Sanderson lectures on either podcast or YouTube.  He’s dealing with a more advanced level of writer, but it’s helpful.  You can also find podcasts about the technical skills of writing like characters and descriptions and so on.