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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 May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Wait is Chili's not considered a full-service restaurant?




Chili's was the first restaurant I encountered that replaced ordering with a tablet at the table, and that was back in... 2012ish? There was still waitstaff to deliver the food and drinks, but they didn't do the ordering process and there was less attention overall.


It's closer to full service than Chipotle or Five Guys, but I wouldn't call it full-service in the old way either. Chili's is also directly competing with McDonald's now so that's interesting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It hoovers up people self-selected for being ambitious and hardworking from other countries, thereby strengthening our nation




Largely untrue for recent and particular groups to Denmark and The Netherlands.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ehh, I kinda get it, Episcopalians don't want to talk about anything icky and theological like "sin," that might imply they actually believe in something numinous, but almost anything would be better than, to paraphrase, saying that in the interest of racial justice they'd rather shut down than help refugees who happen to be white.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


by doing the only thing that they can do to hurt this administration: talk about it




The Episcopal ministry is doing a really good of looking incredibly racist, which helps the administration.


CWS's response strikes the right balance of protesting while not sounding like caricatures of racist progressives.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This belief is a grave sin, and we refuse to be complicit in it.




Then why don't they say that? Instead, they say that in the interests of "racial justice," they refuse to help white Afrikaners. An old story about logs and cinders comes to mind.


The problem with steelmanning is that it so often involves replacing the real but stupid or evil with a fictional synthetic. Imagining a good argument for one's opponent is useful practice! Unfortunately, it does not mean that "the opponent" is actually the noble soul one imagines them to be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Maybe you'd argue they should give monogamy the old college try so they can make an informed decision on which suits them better




Given the predominant cultural messaging, it can be safely assumed that even among the Bay Areans they did give monogamy the old college try.




Scott, by his account, has a good marriage, a tightly knit community and a pair of twins. He still finds poly a net-positive to his life.




Difficult to separate? He has all of those because of poly, and being extremely high status (within a limited scale) he's going to have way above average success for a poly male (if he so desires). Not exactly someone I'm going to turn to as a replicable example.


@TheDag as well- Eons ago I commented on the phenomenon of a non-zero number of poly EAs claiming also to be asexual, and I continue to wonder the extent to which this is the Bay Arean egregore poisoning a population for a phenomenon that would otherwise be known as "having close friends," since for some noticeable fraction the addition of sex to the calculation does not play a major role.


I blame social media as well for putting the final nail in the meaning of "friend," but like marriage it was already down the slope of not meaning much.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Scots are going to say that their whisky industry was thrown under the bus.




Just looked it up, I've been on a Scotch kick lately and I'm not eager about more price increases- there's a 25% tariff Trump instated his first term, but was suspended for five years in 2021. Supposedly the industry lost 600 million pounds during the time they were in effect.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


did he just pull out the phone to put Hendrix on blast?




While I haven't likely accounted for all reasons this would be a bad idea, I'd be pretty well in support of a strong self-defense statue that includes reacting against, and destroying the phone of, anyone that does this kind of thing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


especially fanfiction spaces.




Oof, how could I forget! I would think slash fiction is much bigger in the West.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fujoshi is an example but I rather doubt that it applies to Western hardcore stuff. The manga usually isn't (very) explicit; it's more about observing the emotional reactions you would want between two people you also find attractive, rather than self-inserting as the female in the fiction.


My understanding is that (until quite recently, maybe?) most straight women find bi guys a turnoff, so I wouldn't think they'd want to watch gay men either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It seems lately that within the rationalist / post-rationalist diaspora on twitter and elsewhere, polyamory is starting to come into the crosshairs




Always has been, this happens every few years. Was Kat's post the origin post for this round, or was she prompted by something else? It's been over a year since poly did the New Yorker/NPR/etc circuit.




issues arose that reminded people why these ideas were fringe in the first place.




There's a few issues around it. One of which is the typical-minding by the WEIRDest people around, and outside of a small, hyper-selected group influenced by the Berkeley egregore, such experimentation has a much higher failure rate. There's also the "what is the rationalist community for" question that was asked and left largely-unresolved several years ago, by Sarah Constantin and Zvi part one, Zvi part two that explicitly says polyamory is bad. Zvi's post always struck me as so idealistic it crosses well into arrogance, but I get that was also the atmosphere at the time- changing the world in wild ways and encouraging adoption of poorly-tested social technologies that may not generalize is something to be incredibly careful with, and broadly, they're not.




For those not steeped in rationalist lore, there have been many 'cult-like' groups that have hurt people arising in the rationalist and especially EA space.




Didn't Sam Altman suggest that in Yudkowsky's efforts to inoculate against paperclipping AI he basically hyperstitioned the field into existence? The anti-human branches of AI researchers are almost certainly a rationalist-descended cult-like phenomenon.


It's never really been clear the degree to which rationalist/EA spaces are prone to certain kinds of sex pest, or just unusually public at writing blog posts about them rather than quietly jettisoning them.




Looking at the people on the conservative side, the loudest champions of a traditional moral order seem to be grifters, or at least hypocrites where they say one thing, and do another in their personal lives.




Exceedingly few "true conservatives" are able to win in the attention economy. This says something important about communication of conservative ideologies, though I'm not entirely sure what, and perhaps says even more about the terribleness of ideologies that are able to win within the attention economy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for April 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


at least in major cities, is no that the public finds public transport “inconvenient”.




Define "major." Living in the NC Triangle, I wouldn't be hanging around the main bus depots for safety/annoyance reasons, but primarily the bus system is kinda useless if you're not going on fairly limited routes or have hours to waste.


When I first moved here from a city with much better transit (SLC, also vastly more bikeable), I tried mapping it out- I could almost walk my commute as fast as the bus system was going to take.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Our educated and wealthy people are only human, and in my experience almost all of them can have their substantive thinking overwhelmed, at least on occasion and maybe more than that, by the need for social signalling. That is a different problem than being morons.




It's been proposed that there is a comforting impulse behind conspiratorial thinking, to think that even if the mysterious Powers That Be are evil, at least they're competent! I propose a parallel here, that thinking of the EHC as morons is more comforting than thinking of their particular brand of disastrous signaling as only human. Perhaps it is that I do not want to think so poorly of humanity in the abstract, and so I want to disconnect the concept of humanity from the cause of their issues.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Looking forward to someone trying to analyze in the future how much of the dropoff was due to Trump intimidation versus USAID cutting the NGO racket.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the Dem response to immigration afterwards sure made it seem like they knew they fucked up and had dropped a grenade at their feet that they never intended.




Major mens rea issue divining the difference between they incompetently wanted to undo anything Trump did versus they competently wanted (approximately) open borders but backtracked after the last minute once they finally realized it was it was such an electoral albatross.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I mean, my interpretation of your comment is that DEI is everything indefensible (from your perspective), and everything that's defensible is not DEI.




Wouldn't it make more sense and be more charitable to distinguish that the ADA predates DEI as an acronym by 20 years?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Would a White researcher come off as unbiased in race research in your opinion?




In the social climate of the past 30 or so years? Quite possibly, though if the researcher themselves capitalized white that would be a signal that increases the prediction of bias. That's part of how we ended up with Biden.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The term is overused but it's useful to have a shorthand for the particular effect Trump has on some people. It's worth distinguishing criticism of Trump from TDS. "Tariffs are mostly bad, or at least have been applied poorly" is a reasonable take, not TDS. Handmaid's Tale posters are TDS, always have been always will be, though useful to identify people who can be wholesale ignored.


Similarly someone should've coined ODS to distinguish "Obama is a good candidate" from the messianic wackadoo stuff.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Pride is a fun social event (while certainly a sort of political propaganda) doesn't transgress it except in the minds of folks who throw sex acts and the existence of LGBT people in the same mental bucket




Pride is a motte and bailey of events that was originally specifically to transgress. It is completely disingenuous to act like throwing Pride and sex acts together is some absurdity; that's what pride was for its first 40+ years, and that's still what it is in many areas.


Surely, surely some fraction of the LGBT community can act like normal gosh-darn people and admit that a line can be drawn between And Tango Makes Three or whatever the equivalent with human characters is versus Pride Puppy or Grandpa's Pride (Noticing a theme here). AND YET! This absurd books that are practically beyond parody keep getting pulled up in schools.


Gay people are normal, yeah. While it's been toned down since Raytheon started sponsoring, a significant fraction of Pride is not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Harvard letter was claimed to be sent before the final version was approved


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, not my best writing. I mean that being respectful without affirming has been a losing strategy- teachers that try alternative naming schemes or avoid pronouns  get fired (one example, though he did get a settlement), and it made the rounds recently that in 2022-2023 there was a toddler suspended from a UK daycare for an undisclosed "abuse against gender identity".


Personally I can't imagine a 3 year old being meaningfully bigoted to the point of suspension, though they are often rude. Out of the mouths of babes and all that. Got a kick out of my spawn of similar age asking her grandmother "why are you old?" last weekend.


AFAICT, from the progressive side, there is no such thing as respectful without affirmation. I understand why he as an advocate wants to present the possibility rather than declaring it impossible, but he is suggesting something that tends to result in negative consequences and long legal battles.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd tag along on the trip, would be quite Enlightening I'm sure.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, Colorado was so openly hateful they got to dodge the substantive ruling. Maybe they'll get there someday.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What is the difference between a sincere belief derived from a religious framework vs a sincere belief derived from a philosophical one and why is religion given more weight in this regard?




Because when the foundation of the relevant rules were written (ie, the Constitution), there was less of a distinction drawn between those categories and approximately everyone was religious. I'll even count Jefferson despite him being (probably? there's better historians than I around here to correct me) the least religious Founder.


There are times that they're given roughly equal weight, like conscientious objection, but even then having a religious framework makes your argument easier because it provides evidence beyond your own biases and desires.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


you don't need to affirm with them, but you do need to treat them with respect.




Not that he can say it out loud, but AFAICT there no acceptable way to do both of these, and up until quite recently trying to do so would get a teacher fired or a student suspended.