@MaiqTheTrue's banner p

MaiqTheTrue

Renrijra Krin

1 follower   follows 0 users  
joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC 

				
User ID: 1783


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Renrijra Krin

				
				
				

				

					1 follower  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 1783


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					Month
					Year
					All
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, but on the other hand, making it easier means opening up security holes that will be exploited.  If I just take a woman’s word for that her name had changed, then obviously, people can use that to register multiple times, or register when they should not be allowed to.  Allowing people to register in locations that are not set up as voter registration sites, means that potentially people slip by because the person working the counter doesn’t do due diligence.  Online registration is absolutely easy to commit fraud with because if I have your name, a picture of a driver’s license issued to you, and your DOB and SSN, I am you to most online registration systems.  That’s why identity theft is so common.  It relies on the obscurity of data in a world where data is easy to come by.  And without a physical appearance by the person, Theres zero chance of noting that the picture on the photo ID is of a white male, and the person in front of me is black.  Online, doesn’t matter, heck if im good with VPNs, I don’t even need to be in the country to become you to most online systems.


I think the difficulties created by the requirements of securing the registration system can be solved by simply expanding infrastructure in a controlled and secure way.  Opening a new registration center is probably not nearly as costly as it’s made out to be.  Johnny Brockscan set up hundreds of Halloween stores in October every year.  Having the government rent out an empty retail space for two months in rural areas is probably not that hard.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Europeans generally (except for Britain), doesn’t really have a useable military capability.  They have a nominal military, maybe 5% of GDP, and one that hasn’t been used for any serious war since WWII.  Of course they aren’t going to go into Iran over a few missiles aimed at their ships, they simply can’t do so.  They don’t have the capability, the training, or the stomach to fight a hot war against an enemy with a real military.  That’s why the European strategy to most confrontations is appeasement.  That’s all they have, and they have to pretend that it’s the moral high ground to simply ignore the enemies and their growing power.


I agree on JCPOA.  Allowing a country that wants nukes to stockpile enriched uranium is allowing them a nuke.  They have to agree, basically, to stop juuust short of the kind of enrichment that would create weapons grade uranium, while totally pinkie swear that they would never enrich further.  Of course, the nominal inspections were meant to prevent the final step, while ignoring that uranium is easy to hide, and final enrichment isn’t that hard.  It was intended to fail, as it could not possibly work, and quite often it would mean that they can create the weapons while giving their rivals the false sense of security that they couldn’t be developing a weapon because they’re being inspected (in ways designed to miss weapons development).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Exactly, but it also means that the people getting these degrees not only waste 4 years of their productivity being IQ tested, but because they start out upwards of 200K in debt, which delays all kinds of things that would be useful for the economy.  Crazy things like, buying a house, taking vacations, having children and thus needing the kinds of things you need to feed and clothe a child.  These things, in 1950, generally happened in your twenties, and now most people are forced to delay their home and family starting activities into their thirties which reduces the likelihood of having lots of children and thus raising children.  This has by now created a situation in which the population is shrinking and thus unless we import workers, there’s no way to keep the systems running.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Im trying to find a better term for what I mean.  What I mean by technical is a program that is skill based and related fairly closely to actual career paths that a person might do in the future.  So an engineering degree that’s math, physics and engineering skills taught with the aim of working in engineering is technical, but so is a business based degree that teaches the kinds of skills that would be typically used in an office setting doing business work — things like marketing, finance, accounting, business management, etc.


What im making a distinction against is the kinds of humanities degrees that are based on learning things that are not based on any kind of useful skills.  At best provided that the school cared enough to require professors to do so, you might end up with marginal writing and research skills. Even then most of those skills would be more easily taught in the technical degrees.  They’re mostly useless, and I can’t imagine that anyone would look at a guy with a history or literature degree and choose them over a person with a degree in some more “technical” degree focused on useful skills that can be immediately applied to my actual business.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t mean aspirational in the sense that people choose it because it’s seen as a good idea, but because they’ve managed to make support for liberal causes seem smart and elite.  It’s a mark of sophistication to be a liberal, and they have the smart people (scientists and scholars) and cool people (entertainers) on side.  It’s given the moral status of being “right and good”.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The expansion of credentials has been a disaster.  Most credentials are useless, and in fact most outside of highly technical degrees are almost an anti-intellectual signal.  The degrees do not, generally, require any serious rigor, no real achievement, and therefore are mostly ways for the schools to admit more dummies to study things that don’t matter in an environment where failure is almost impossible.  Comedy should not be a stand alone area of concentration in a college.  Very few humanities programs have serious rigor, and even those that do serve no useful purpose.


People who want to work in writing or comedy or art or music would be much better served to major in business to manage their career and do the work of learning the craft on their own in places where they get meaningful feedback from the future audience for their work.  It’s not useful to become a good comedian to study it in a classroom and read theory.  You need to get out in front of a crowd in a bar and fail until you learn how to read the crowd and tell jokes that land.  Or play music in seedy bars until you learn to put on a good show.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think gambling can, like most other potentially addictive activities or consumables have large negatives for those who tend to get addicted, and as such you should ideally be careful about removing too much friction around those things.


Making people gamble only in person at carefully selected places is less likely to be a severe problem than a gambling app in your pocket.  Having to go to a casino to gamble means that it’s going to require a series of choices and behaviors that pulling out your phone and opening an app doesn’t.  You have to put on pants and shoes, get into your car, drive for 10-15 minutes to a casino, walk in the front door, walk to the sport betting room, wait in line, and place your bets.  To do the same on a sports betting app, you pull up the app, click three times, and it’s on.  And you can potentially be betting before your frontal cortex catches on that you just bet $100 on a baseball game while momentarily bored in line at the grocery store.  There’s also the issue of other people catching on.  If your spouse drives to the casino every day to bet on baseball, you’ll eventually find out, because a daily hour long trip to a casino is … kinda hard to hide.  Other people can see your car parked at the casino as well, so even if you have a clueless spouse, it only takes one nosey neighbor to mention seeing you at the casino and everyone will know it.  Apps lack any potential embarrassment, because they are private.  Remove all of that friction and I think it’s a bigger problem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the situation is part of the moral dilemmas in creating carve outs.  Any way you try to do it, you will end up with the same outcome which is people who want to do the illegal but lucrative thing end up simply skirting whatever the definition is so they are getting the thing but have just enough cover that they’re not technically breaking the law.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean until recently the left was much better at branding.  They have an image of themselves as aspirational, as the party of the cool people, the people who are knowledgeable and have the right ideas.  And they’ve built an image especially in the last two decades of themselves as the arbiters of moral values to the point that most left leaning people see even listening to a heretic let alone agreeing with them on anything as evil.  The right is now synonymous with the worst elements of humanity in the twentieth century.


The right has no similar branding.  There’s certainly potential.  The right could seek to be seen as counterculture, the cool kids who just don’t care what anyone thinks.  The ones unafraid to stick a thumb into the eye of power, the ones who challenge the substitute teacher.  The class clown or the punk.  Instead, they mostly come off as angry boomers.  They come off as paranoid school marms afraid of the world.


The groups that I find attractive are exactly what I’m describing.  I find the ones that say “you know what, I am tired of pretending that I agree with these common conventions and im not going to go along anymore.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


With early voting opening up soon for many states, what are the chances Iran has an October surprise in store for Trump? Trump has stated that the U.S. will not resume military strikes on Iran before the November 3, 2026 (midterm election). The U.S. military is deploying roughly 9,000 to 10,000 additional troops to the Middle East, including the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group, which departed San Diego on October 4–5, 2026. This surge brings the total U.S. military presence in the region to over 60,000 personnel and establishes three aircraft carrier strike groups in the theater for the first time since April 2026




I think it’s about zero.  The people, for the most part, who oppose the war are already against Trump.  They would have voted against Trump even before the war started.  Democrats refusing to vote Republican is not the October surprise.


The pause is weird, because it betrays a lack of confidence in the war.  If you think you can win, why wait?  Why give Iran weeks to harden targets, plan counterattacks, coordinate with allies and move assets into position?  If he’d never stopped, honestly Iran would be over by now because toe to toe, they cannot hope to defeat the USA militarily as we have the biggest military on the planet and well trained military forces using top military equipment.  All Iran can do is mobilize terrorist militants and close the straits.  Which is what will happen after the war resumes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean the government of most modern Democratic countries is whatever the collective electorate has decided at the present time.  It by definition cannot be a singular principle other then vox populi suprema lex esto “the will of the people is the supreme law”.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My interest in watching is zero, but I don’t have much of a problem with the concept of public execution or public punishments.  The current version of execution does little to deter crime, but I think this is more because of how we do them.  It’s private, it takes decades to actually kill (or attempt to kill) the condemned, and we do so in a manner that looks like any surgery done in the United States (except that the condemned usually never wakes up).  Of freaking course an execution that takes 25 years, is private, and looks like a surgery in almost every way won’t scare anyone straight or give people confidence in the system.  Add in a recent fuckup in Tennessee and the current method is exactly the worst possible way to execute someone.  You get none of the deterrent effects, you get all of the stupid legal wrangling, you get potential fuckups, and thus it benefits nobody.


In the old days like the old west when you’d hang a guy from a tall tree because he stole a horse, it had an immediate effects on local thieves.  They know the guy and know he took a horse last week, and know that the state is deadly serious about protecting property.  They know how much it sucks to be hung.  And so they’re less likely to do it.  For the public, Justice gets served and served quickly.  They thus know that their local government is protecting them and their property from being destroyed or taken.


As far as Hassan getting what he wanted, im not sure.  The Middle East is not stranger to public punishment.  Public floggings and beheadings and so on happen in that region.  They’re not squeamish like modern westerners who never see that stuff.  If you think that is going to encourage more terrorists, I don’t see it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Healthy Communities Post-"Closure of the Internet"
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That’s true too.  But they’re hiding the conservative exodus by allowing more bots, allowing multiple accounts and so on.  People seem to think it’s hard to get rid of bots, but I think it’s probably easy if you’re sufficiently motivated to do so.  It’s just often not in the best interest of the bottom line that they appear to have lots of activity on their site.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My gestalt in any story where there’s supposedly a non consensual event is to look carefully at the behavior of the accusers in the immediate aftermath of the event.  If they’re not acting like something negative happened, then there’s a problem.  The story likely is at best exaggerated and at worst fictional.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t see why I should take prognosticators seriously unless they have enough skin in the game to worry about being wrong.  I don’t see that with most polling data, and thus nothing derived from that data is at least partly suspect.  Especially if the pundits in question can get it wrong and face no serious consequences for failure.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Healthy Communities Post-"Closure of the Internet"
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Reddit likely doesn’t care about bots because its business model depends on impressions it can sell to advertisers.  The bots are impressions, active users, even if they don’t react to ads.  If they purge the bots, I suspect Reddit is probably much smaller than they appear.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m going to somewhat disagree.  There are a lot of affordability issues, especially for young adults.  That’s a bit harder to pick up on because when you aggregate everyone in the workforce, you capture the big raises that go to some sectors of the economy and not the stagnation in others.  You also capture a COL that can miss that some things have gone up massively while others have not.


If you’re in your twenties, the things that have gone up in cost (for example homes) are things that matter a lot to you, and that take up a bigger chunk of your potential budget.  In the case of homes, you also don’t have a home to sell to raise money for that home.  If im trading a house for a bigger house, I only need to come up with the money to afford the increase, I already have a house to sell.  If you move on to groceries, an increase of ten percent is going to be huge if groceries are 15% of the budget.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not sure how seriously I take polymarket, polls and Nate Silver. Not that they’re certainly wrong, but there’s always the issue of motivated reasoning.  Elections are something that almost everyone cares about the outcome of, and this  is going to come out in what people predict.  A lot of people really really want a blue wave, just like a lot of people wanted Trump to lose.  This shows up in polling data and predictions because they’re all made by humans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Conservatives on X are crowing about how this shows that USAID was propping up leftist governments in Latin America. But... I just don't see the mechanism. The money spent was too small. The programs too ineffectual.






The likelier truth about USAID is, like most government programs, it was essentially useless. The biggest political effect is that it allowed leftists a sinecure with good pay and benefits. And cutting it was worth it for that reason alone. But did cutting USAID kill people in Africa or bring down communists in Latin America? Press D to doubt.




I don’t think it’s as simple as either side says.  I don’t think USA was specifically trying to prop of Leftist governments in Latin America.  But having said that, avoiding the problems that come from leftist policies does prop up leftist governments.  It’s like anything else, removing the consequences of bad ideas simply enables people to continue making those bad decisions.  So in that sense, because those leftist governments could rely on Americans and (American tax dollars) to bail them out, they suddenly face the political consequences of the results of leftist policies.  They can’t hide from it, because if the government owned power plants can’t keep the lights on, they can’t hide that, and the public will demand better.  This is why homeschooling and private schools are popular in the USA, the failures of public schools are too obvious to hide and changes are demanded.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because it has a lot of alcohol, drugs, and sexy women in various states of inebriation.  Where else can you find that?  The library?  The computer lab?  Maybe the chemistry lab?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Im going to push back on Asian education being a sacrifice, I’d say it’s more like tryouts.  You have limited slots of good-enough jobs for a huge population, so you need to sort the population so that if there are maybe a million really good jobs, 5 million decent jobs, another 10 million good-enough jobs, and a population of 50 million, the population has to be sorted, and the education system is probably the best place to do th3 sorting.  Given that the results will be life long, people push educational systems to their logical limit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think JBP is actually all that radical for a guy of his age and religious views.  He’s all but come out as a conservative Christian of some stripe, he’s basically a 1980s conservative, which might be radical in current year, but in the era when he was growing up, things like “you cannot force me to affirm your pronouns” or “clean your room before you reform society” or whatever.  Listening to the things he talks about on his channel don’t read as radical for a guy who’s at least 60, and in many cases is pretty progressive for his cohort.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the context of going to a frat party, yes, it’s a reasonable expectation that getting blackout drunk and wearing very little clothing is probably going to end in rape.  Not that all men are rapists, but the kind of PMC men who are are very likely to go to drinking parties at frat houses.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it might go full USSR or Yugoslavia.  Identity is a hell of a drug, especially when combined with set asides.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I see most of the modern west as currupt and morally bankrupt as most of it really has no reason to exist other than nothing has replaced it yet.  European civilization doesn’t serve much of a purpose, it doesn’t see itself as anything worth protecting or with any missions worth accomplishing.  It’s just a political system that exists to manage whoever happens to be there while not protecting its natives from harm.  If Europeans still believed in their own civilization or values, or saw themselves as something worth protecting, there’d be hope for the EU.  Americans still see themselves as a people and a civilization worth working for.  They have residual Christian faith (most are at least nominal) and residual belief in their system even if the government they live under barely resembles the government the Constitution describes or the founders intended.


NATO doesn’t really have even a pretend reason to exist.  It’s supposed to protect Europe from Soviet communism.  But given how much of European society has embraced most of the tenets of socialism, they wouldn’t have much to fear from communists.  And the Soviets haven’t existed since the early 1990s.  It’s basically an institution that has no real reason to continue, and other than the US, no serious military to speak of.  Nobody is afraid of European military intervention, German tanks or British aircraft are not the enemy that would make anyone tremble.  Only the USA has a military worthy of the name.  Increasingly, however, we are afraid to use it, especially afraid of putting boots on the ground to occupy territory and destroy the enemy.