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Mantergeistmann


				

				

				

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joined 2022 September 05 00:52:03 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
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Mantergeistmann


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 00:52:03 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Getting fat on rice flavored with butter and salt sounds difficult.




I'm not fat, and I'm willing to put that down to genetics & metabolism rather than any personal virtue, but I can absolutely house a very large amount of rice with butter & salt. Or noodles with butter & salt. Or bread, with salted butter so thick you can see tooth marks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean, Idiots of GMod was always mad.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I remember early experiments with that, but it wasn't simulated so much as tracked. Threw off the puck balance or something?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Same as seeing an "old person's" listed age in an anime/Final Fantasy. But I tend to mentally age up everyone in those sorts of media by default, so...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Perhaps the best use I can imagine is playing a single-player game and getting a multi-player experience, against players who are at my skill level and have good etiquette. But can LLMs do that?




Not if their training data includes chat from real multiplayer humans, no.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We're not talking about the gucci mres given to our warfighters that include coffee, skittles, and pizza




I remember SteveMRE opening an Italian one that came with Cognac.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Isn't it also that when you've got a ton of different kingdoms and principalities and duchies and fiefs and city-states, that it's a lot easier to find someone willing to take a chance on a new technology (and then once adopted, it'll spread) than convincing a single strong ruler choosing to adopt and spread a new and potentially destabilizing technology?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You don't want your artillery man to have a warrior ethos. You want him to be a mix of gym bro, accountant, and auto mechanic




You also need him to be willing to man his gun even when outgunned, to keep fighting when those around him are being blown to bits. Now, maybe the soldier mentality and sense of discipline will be enough, like for  AD Wintle:




On his first night a shell burst near him, splashing over him the entrails of his sergeant (to whom he had just been introduced). Wintle later admitted to being petrified. As the bombardment continued, he dealt with his fear by standing at attention and saluting. As he later wrote, "Within thirty seconds I was able to become again an Englishman of action and to carry out calmly the duties I had been trained to perform".




Sure, I'd much rather that sort of "soldier" than a warrior! But you're not necessarily going to get that sort of person in the US Army, and certainly not easily and in large numbers. You're much more likely to be able to get guys who'll want to fight for the sake of fighting, even when they're losing.


There's a follow-up here on cameraderie, and where that comes into play, but it's been ages since I've read McPherson, so I'm not the guy to get into it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Herbert also deliberately makes the case that "hostile environments create the best fighting men" via his comparisons of Arrakis and Salusa Secondis. Unless we're meant to assume that everyone in-universe who comes to that conclusion is barking up the wrong tree.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's one of life's great mysteries isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a God watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don't know, man, but it keeps me up at night.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Two minutes isn't even enough time to figure out why one of my production chains is borked in Anno 1800.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean, it's easy when people are throwing jars of blood on things.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it tickled my imagination as a city of insane-sounding joyless motherfuckers which I could scarcely believe had ever existed outside of a cartoon.




I think that's also how it's portrayed in Asterix The Gaul, and if there's one IP I trust to use stereotypes in a way that's 100% accurate to real life...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The biggest factor is the bubbles. In the old days, radicalism was harder to create and maintain because you had to essentially remove the person you wanted to radicalize from sanity checks that happen from non-radicalized people around the person. This is why old religious cults often encouraged members to cut off old relationships and only cult members remained for social connections. You also want to make the person’s thought process as much as possible about the thing you’re radicalizing the person on. So with a religious cult, you’d see this radicalized person seeing almost everything through the lens of the religion in question.






The problem we have at the moment is that the tools to do this are in everyone’s pocket and available all the time. A person who is in a liberal social media bubble often has very few people online that are not liberals (the same is likely true of hard right conservatives as well). They often block anyone who disagrees, stop listening to media that doesn’t support their biases, and spend hours watching videos about conservatives saying or doing something that looks evil to them.




I feel like there's a full-length article to be written on this, at some point...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ha. One of these days, I might do a full-on effortpost ("Office Space: Confidential Edition! All the jokes you've heard about government contracting are at worst imprecise and at most significant understatements"), especially if I leave, but TL;DR: we're the only lab in the country that performs a high-priority task for the government (and, in some ways, has a deadman's switch: things will not be great if we vanish, although they'll be far less bad than your average MoP would assume). We're not federal employees, and so not subject to cuts there, but are a permanent fixture, and the only reason people get fired or let go are for violations of actual policy like "flushing a cell phone down the toilet instead of reporting it to security, and then lying about it when given a chance to come clean", or "falsifying time cards". As I said, we're a top priority, so even if the government cuts back everywhere else, we'll at worst be in a hiring/salary freeze. And its combination of "classified information systems", "work that if done wrong causes major disaster potential" and "deliberate tradition and founding of being more focused on details, safety, and human responsibility than NASA even before NASA existed" makes it impossible for us to be replaced with AI on any reasonable timeframe, based on what I've seen of internal rollouts and hinderances. I think last time a formal submission with any amount of GPT content went up the chain, the response from on-high was... rather scathing, even by their standards.


As for what I do, I'm a bog-standard technical project manager, but everyone there is about as immune to the future as I am.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What's the value of a sinecure?


I'm not entirely happy with my job (mostly the location, and there's no way it could ever go full remote rather than hybrid), so I've been pursuing leads elsewhere, but it's... safe. Doesn't pay as much as I'd like, but it's a solid salary, and it's safe. Even if every single prediction about AI takes off, even if the US government has a partial crashout, even if I become more of a drooling imbecile than I already am, even if there's a Great Depression style jobs crash... it's safe.


How much importance should I (primary breadwinner, no kids) be placing on that, and staying where I am, vs. finding something more lucrative/with remote potential?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


which quotes him saying things he did not say. He says, this is the result of LLM usage by the Ars Technica journalists.




If true,  this is the funniest news turnabout I've seen since a paper had to issue a correction in its hit of Gary Johnson asking about Aleppo.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Weren't a lot of the civil disobedience cases (or at least the high-profile ones) directly related to their goals, rather than interfering with federal officers? e.g. staging a sit-in at a restaurant counter, where they absolutely would (theoretically) purchase and eat a meal like anyone else should the proprietor serve them, rather than by (say) forming a cordon and blocking anyone from eating there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Honeycrisp is overrated and overadvertised, but Pink Lady and Snapdragon are worth the hype.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tacky, yes, but I'll not blame them for trying to be a bit trendy and get sales/numbers/interest up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What was happening to gaming and online nerd spaces (like Reddit itself) was essentially a form of gentrification. You had a "marginalized" community (nerds) that had made something interesting in their ghettoized spaces (videogaming, online forums like Reddit, open source software, tabletop games). The mainstream that had previously stigmatized them decided they wanted to move in, force out the original communities and sanitize them for mainstream consumption. The same process that happened to Reddit is what leftists complain about when it happens to some neighborhood in Queens.




Status 451's Social Gentrification post is an absolute must-read, if you haven't already.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I've made my peace, and I'm going to do what I can to escape the (potential) permanent underclass.




Presumably via investments?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's an episode of Lark Rise to Candleford where an elderly lady's bobbin lace is no longer needed by the local dressmakers, due to the new machine lace. Also a bit of other industrial commentary in other episodes, but that one always hits me the hardest.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't know how my coworkers are using it, but I've been having great results with replacing "google an excel function and hope somebody else had the same problem and got it solved".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Furthermore, I acknowledge and condemn the abuse of on-duty ICE agents. Are you suggesting those incidents justify the fear of harassment, stalking, doxxing, and violence against off-duty officers?




How many shootings have there been at ICE facilities? More or less than at drug enforcement agency facilities, who often wear masks (and not just in the US either, there's plenty of drug bust photo ops with masked agents in Europe, too)? Enough that it seems reasonable there might be shootings of off-duty agents were their identities more common knowledge?


Also, we do know that people were willing to harass an off-duty ICE officer when they learned what church he preached at. Hell, they didn't even make sure he was actually there before harassing everyone else in the building just for being associated with him.