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desolation

You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart

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joined 2022 September 12 12:41:49 UTC 

				
User ID: 1157


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
desolation


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 12 12:41:49 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1157


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's not exactly the rewriting that generates the resentment, it's the constant failure. And the goal-post shifting, accusations of nutpicking when you're referring to godforsaken New York Times bestsellers and columnists... It's the exhaustion that generates resentment, not the trying. It's




wouldn't do the same in reverse.




that, giving what you will never get back, over and over and over. I don't know how you do it, but I'm glad you keep on trying.


Anyways. Thank you for the food for thought.




I've been here and back when we were on Reddit for years, and I don't think I have ever even picked up a mod warning let alone a ban.




My only ban in a Mottespace was a boo outgroup joke back when we were still SSC, which was understandable but irritating because much worse went unmoderated, but my last ban elsewhere was for calling someone a bigot for making grossly bigoted statements about Appalachia. I don't regret that, and it rather made me dislike the moderation of that space, who was supposedly inspired by The Motte's rules.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There is no Emperor Of Medicine that can credibly make that kind of commitment.




For a few years Fauci was as close as anyone has ever been to being such a singular figure of The Medical Establishment, but he clearly had no interest in acknowledging the failures and making any sort of credible apology.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Portugal had some promising early results and we saw signs of harm that the war on drugs was causing.




Singapore has excellent results on controlling drug usage by beating or executing people, but we didn't try that route.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We are all unusual here in one way or another.




Well, yes, we're also more-or-less a closed ecosystem at this point.




"writing as if everyone else is reading and we want them to be included."




I think that mission statement is good, it's the reasoning that irked me in the moment.


99.9% of the time, they don't want to be included, and  writing in such a way to appeal to them is debasing yourself for nothing exhausting and thankless. No amount of hedging and rephrasing and begging can overcome those gulfs, and it serves as fuel for resentment. I'm not trying to deny that goal, just shift the angle on it slightly.


We should write in ways that do not feed the wolf of anger, as the old parable goes. We should write such that others are not explicitly excluded. But there's no way to avoid all the possible tripwires.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They aren't thinking first and foremost how do I write this in a way a progressive gay librarian (for example!) would want to engage with.




Several years experience and the fact we're on our... third? fourth? retreat location is indicative that there are, in fact, absolutely zero ways to write complaints in a way a progressive gay librarian would want to engage with. The door is shut, the conversation is closed, the person who objects to the librarian's choices has been locked in the cultural closet.


This is of course not to suggest that violent, vehement vichyssoise of verbiage is a valid or vigorous variant. Verily, we must vanquish such venal vexations, those vestiges of vanity!


And yet! You can't make them listen, and out here in this hive of scum and villainy there's so many invisible dog fences that they won't even enter the same state, much less zip code or conversation. There is no degree of openness or obsequiousness so extreme that would invite their consideration.


Avoiding expressions of hatred for the sake of some impossible imaginary reader is a fool's errand and a waste of energy. Most people trying that will burn out and find themselves worse off than before. Doing so for the sake of not corrupting your own heart, now there's an idea worth considering.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A comment that I haven't seen brought up much anywhere is that the Snow White remake is a musical. Most Disney movies have lots of songs, but I wouldn't call, say, Aladdin a musical in the way the new Snow White is. It feels like the screen version of decent, not great, stage adaptation of the story.


Also tonally inconsistent, the writers couldn't come to terms with what degree they were playing it straight, comedic, deconstructing, etc. "Princess Problems" reminded me of something like Galavant that was intended as both send-up of tropes and an appreciative homage to the genre, but that tone wasn't consistent. The closing clap and stomp felt out of date but maybe that's my own tiredness with Mumford being in the past.


The queen's death? They just did that in Wish! Enough with the people getting sucked into magic mirrors.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I assumed it was discussed here but maybe not! @Alabasata


Mungo Maniac on twitter has written a lot about it, and here's a brief Spectator article on the topic. His namesake, Mungo Man, seems to have been reburied back in 2022, but last week another 100+ fossils many of which were around 40K years old were reburied at an undisclosed location in the outback, in deference to Aboriginal control of the fossils and so that they couldn't be studied.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't actually know what you do




Neither do I, anymore. Well, I do know, it's just boring and I'm grouchy about it. My career isn't research involved these days, and given everything the stability of sticking around is preferable to the risk of finding something more satisfying. I do miss those days and Perplexity would've been a godsend back in the day, I'm sure. Might look into it just for fun and to scratch the old itch of wanting to learn more again. That skill has grown stagnant and contributed to other issues.




then I was blown away when it instructed me to go take a picture of both sides of my crank/cassette so it could be certain what we were ordering would fit.




Dang! The paid version, I assume? Starting to wonder if it'll be worth the cost just to help with some minor repairs around the house.




it just regurgitates reviews I could read myself or tells me every garbage idea I have is phenomenal.




Yeah, I've definitely picked up the chat function not being particularly creative and being obsequious unless you run into one of the walls. I've tried refining some creative writing ideas with it a couple months ago but wasn't impressed. As fast as things move it might be worth another shot.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Have you commented anywhere around here on the refugee and resistance goings-on in Ireland? Seeing ladies getting run roughshod by the police is a bit strange to this American.


Not meant to be a gotcha of any sort, just asking since your commentary on the UK tends to be thoughtful and much more charitable than I'll see anywhere else. Not around as much as I used to be and figured I'd missed it if it's come up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Even if anthropology is 99% leftist, well, the institutions belong to those who show up, so right wingers just need to get in there and fix it themselves




A darkly amusing choice of subject considering the destruction of all (?) known ancient hominid fossils in Australia over the past couple weeks. His point isn't wrong, exactly, but I continue to think he underestimates the "long march" aspect and just how long showing up will take. Spending 30 years to get back into the institutions is not a plan for saving fossils that will be gone in a few months or a year at most.


As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, and the second best is now. We should be planting trees now, but (to extend the metaphor) stopping people from salting the ground is also useful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Being a bit of a cheapskate, and a bit illiquid at the moment anyways, I haven't played around much with AI until the free tiers started getting good enough. Hot dang have I been having fun, and I have been cracking up at the edge cases of what they'll refuse or eventually create, sometimes in weird and roundabout ways, especially Gemini.


Overall, Gemini 2.0 produces more accurate images than Grok 3.0, but refuses way more often. Going back and forth to generate prompts in Grok then images in Gemini probably worked the best. It doesn't seem to like generating couples posing for a portrait, though I could generate more people (Gemini likes harems, can't decide if I'm surprised or not) and sometimes talk it into removing the extras. Families are difficult. I thought the problem was a reluctance to generate kids, but it's the same issue as couples- seems the content restrictions make it reluctant to one-shot (am I using that right?) a man and woman together. Generate a mother and child then add the dad back later, works. DALL-E 3 is... good at what it does, which seems to be only slightly related to the prompt but highly detailed. Ask for [detailed description of an adventurer and a witch about to enter an ancient forest], get back an old wizard with ridiculously ornate robes instead. Might try 4o next month or whenever the new image gen trickles down to us freeloaders.


Playing around with them for writing has been interesting and rather less convoluted. Someone on twitter mentioned Grok is especially good at "human prompting" and I agree, it's better with its own little suggested questions at the end. Feels a little less 'magic' than the image generation, though. Turning a thousand words into a picture in a few seconds is more affecting than turning a thousand words into... more words.


So! I'm sure I could dig through archives here but I'm lazy. Are there good, not-too-hyped resources for learning more about how these dang things work and how to wield them properly? Assume basically no programming experience, and my knowledge of how computers function is somewhere around "electric demons in magic sand" metaphor level. I've missed the boat on learning all that much but I'd still like to round out my knowledge a bit.


Are any of you using LLMs for fun projects? I've heard Claude makes a decent life-coach substitute but I haven't tried that out yet.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I feel like that’s what the average trans debate demands: condemning my friends wholesale on the basis of the craziest nut someone can pick.




Our friends are rarely the problem. I've known some good, sweet, well-meaning trans people, and while it would be a weird topic to bring up directly, I always feel bad for them that the public faces of the movement and associated policymakers are so frequently horrible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


On the other hand, how did she set trigger ICE in the first place?




"Canada sent you back, did we miss something?" seems like a straightforward trigger for additional scrutiny.


Or maybe the border agent had just read that story about the UN judge getting convicted of slavery in the UK and was exceptionally paranoid about what "chores" might mean.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've read this article a couple times trying to figure it out, and the answer is "somewhere between 10% and 95%." I'm only sort of joking; part of the problem is that the government doesn't report attendance, it reports completions:




“The government … does not report immigrants’ appearance rate,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel for the American Immigration Council, wrote in a July 2019 Wall Street Journal opinion piece. “Instead it reports a related figure called the ‘in absentia rate’ — the percentage of ‘completed’ cases closed each year because the person missed court. Because the penalty for missing court is an automatic deportation order, these cases are completed rapidly. As a result, that figure overemphasizes rapid deportations for missing court and leaves out the much larger number of cases that remain pending as the immigrant diligently appears for every hearing.”






He used the following example to illustrate his point: “To simplify, imagine 10 people are scheduled to appear in court one day and nine show up. The judge issues a deportation order for the person who missed court, then deals with the remaining cases, finishing one and ordering the other eight to return for another hearing. The appearance rate for that day is 90%. The in absentia rate is a mere 50% — one deportation order divided by two completed cases.”




But also the numbers overall seem bizarre and don't really explain much. Like for 2023, 30K approvals, 30K denials, and 130K "Other"? Which a footnote says "Other" was deactivated in 2019, so why is still so common? Lots of missing information here.


Edit: formatting


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


being discriminatory towards religion wasn't in the progressive handbook.




I don't like using humor as a reference, but it was a common enough thing to be treated as a joke on Silicon Valley that coming out as Christian would be disastrous for one's business associations.


One should be cautious of gerrymandering definitions to the point of uselessness, or buying into the propaganda. In my experience progressives claim to hate racism, but for some reason that only applies when it targets certain races. Always another layer of rationalization for why that is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Obviously Scardina




Being a troll (and using Satanist imagery as part of trolling) does not seem particularly compatible with




Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.




I've met a lot of Christians that fail to live up to those things! Myself included, for all have sinned and fall short. But by goodness I find it a tough pill to swallow that you've met so many progressives who aren't impatient, hateful, envious, boastful, prideful, self-seeking, angered at the slightest whim of disagreement, who don't seek to get people fired and depersoned for decades-old offenses, and who don't treat the truth as little more than a tool to be disposed of when it's not in their favor.




Scardina called on Phillips to be truthful when he said he would serve LGBT customers, and Phillip was caught in his lie, which is also un-Christian.




Should artists be required to paint anything that someone asks in commission?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The ending made me roll my eyes so hard I was tempted to regret reading it, but the worldbuilding was too fun for that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Right! I'll give Worth the Candle a shot next.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Will do!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
LOL gotta say not something I expected, but that makes it more fun! I've been enjoying some isekai anime so it would be a good change of pace to read some instead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yep, definitely a good one! Enjoyable take. Worked better than his Ra, imo, which had a few stumbles (or maybe references that went over my head).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fiction Recommendation Request! And then a related question.


As I recall internet serials and similar megafiction were pretty popular around here, and I'm looking for new recommendations.


To help triangulate: Not a fan of Worm, Twig had really interesting worldbuilding but stumbled hard towards the end for me with the increasingly unreliable narrator arc. I've enjoyed The Wandering Inn, really like the fantasy elements and the interweaving of various mythologies, but probably won't keep going with it once the current arc finally wraps up. Mother of Learning was enjoyable but not truly catching in the same way. Millennial Mage is pleasantly 'cozy' but not the best prose. Just started This Used To Be About Dungeons.


For more traditional or classic fiction, I will always love the works of Ray Bradbury, John Bellairs, and Diane Duane. If there's anybody new with a voice like Bradbury's, let me know!


Now, the question- in TWI, Practical Guide to Evil, and Millennial Mage, gnomes come up. Not really as characters except in limited circumstances, but they're described as outrageously powerful and skilled as technologists. I don't recall that being any past myth regarding gnomes, so is that a D&D thing or derived from elsewhere?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If we get the pro wrestling scene involved, Trump might endorse it.




Sell tickets! Auction off spots to fight! We'll balance that budget by the end of the year. It's about time Zuck v. Musk happened.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd go for any examples that aren't from hard sciences.