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Bartender_Venator


				

				

				

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joined 2023 April 20 03:54:53 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
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Bartender_Venator


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2023 April 20 03:54:53 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 2349


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, I think it's one part a reaction to American Main Character Energy, and one part that Europe is starting to feel the hard edges of objective decline and is figuring out how to respond psychologically to that. This is truer of the UK and Germany than of France, and not true of the former Eastern Bloc, but national decline is a very painful thing and people come up with a lot of different copes for it (I always liked James Burnham's argument that much of progressive liberalism is one big cope for the loss of the West's global hegemony). The Yookay is a sad place these days, so getting excitable about a good war is a lovely distraction for media and political classes there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can actually check https://ismetroburning.com/ to see if it's currently on fire. Looks like no fires today!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for January 21, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is why I find the term "genocide" pointless outside of very central cases (basically the Holocaust and anything that looks a lot like it), because any discussion is literal rules-lawyering. Genocide needs to be intentional to be genocide, there's a whole Genocide Convention which says that. We can say that the Spanish were highly murderous without using the G-word (though I would assume there were cases where the Spanish intentionally slaughtered entire tribes, which one could reasonably call small genocides).




No True European Culture, amirite?




Let me bring back your initial statement: "Not controversial among whom? Europeans had been fine with genocide as "kill them all" until about 19th century when the "white man's burden" took over". I think it's fair to say that the Spanish actions being controversial at the time, chastised by the Church, the subject of heated debates in the metropole, and motivating policy actions from the Crown meant to put a leash on them means that they were at least "controversial" at the time and not a case of everybody being "fine with genocide".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's just a joke about how a) for historical reasons, European political parties often have unusual names that don't tell an outsider all that much about their politics and b) European political systems often lead to unstable governing coalitions with strange bedfellows involved.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for January 21, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ah, Las Casas, the Genocide Studies Program at Yale, abuses of the encomienda system, and it turns out it actually wasn't smallpox. The greatest hits. I don't consider the Wikipedia page probative at all (the ESL involved is amusing but also suspicious: "However, descendants of the Taíno continue to live and their disappearance from records was part of a fictional story created by the Spanish Empire with the intention of erasing them from history.") The Black Legend runs deep, even if it's passed from Anglo-Dutch propagandists to anti-colonial academics.


I think it's entirely possible that, between diseases, resource exploitation, and the Malthusian conditions of the New World, the Spanish wiped out entire populations of natives, including many cultures smaller than the Taino. But "genocide" is the intentional destruction of a people based on their identity. If aliens landed their starship and crushed Switzerland, that would not be the Swiss Genocide.


I'll make two further points: first, I would hold up Las Casas as evidence that this sort of thing was not sanctioned by European culture of the time. The Church and Crown consistently attempted to reign in the frontier warlords and planters. Secondly, I have no basis to claim this and have looked up zero evidence, but I would bet that if we were to look at genetic evidence from Taino graves and at modern Dominicans, we would find a nontrivial fraction of Taino genes in the Dominican Republic (Haiti, obviously, is a monoethnic state founded on actual genocide, but the DR is a more representative sample).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's a Noah Smith quote, you should assume he's making up the history (and most of the other factoids) as he goes along.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Do Canadians have a cultural identity as strong as the Vietnamese, other than being Americans that also have Canadian passports?




It's mostly that Canadians are poisonous, rather than venomous. The Son of Heaven could reasonably want the Vietnamese as his subjects, but nobody outside of DNC electoral strategists could actually want Canadians to become Americans, not without some way of restricting their franchise, their rights to speech and association, some kind of punitive regime around deodorant, and possibly executing Margaret Atwood. Alberta and Quebec are alright, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it cuts both ways, as someone with a foot in both continents. Americans will pay very little attention to anything that doesn't push their personal, parochial buttons, but Europeans will instantly go to DEFCON: CHIMP over anything that mentions them as relevant to global discourse. There aren't that many discussions to be had in the inbetween space in the immediate time, because the likelihood is that this will be a nothingburger. It'll move some invisible ratchets in some directions that we can speculate about, but Trump is already announcing a big, beautiful deal that will likely end with all this passing out of the news cycle as smoothly as it entered.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Euros are about as good at understanding how and why Americans see them through the prism of US partisan politics as Americans are at understanding the nuances of why the Christian-Socialist-Democratic-Party/Liberal-Unionist-Secession-Party/Green coalition in [Euro country] is breaking down over the question of whether state pensions should cover ceiling fans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for January 21, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, Europeans weren't fine with genocide before that. If nothing else, the concept of "genocide" (as "kill them all" as opposed to "please stop being like that, here is a school") didn't exist before industrial states. The closest thing in the European world would be the sack of cities or the expulsion of defeated enemies like various Indian tribes, but that was always justified as some kind of defensive fair play. The idea of systematically exterminating a helpless population, who had committed no crime to warrant a temporary state of exception, was anathema to European Christian culture. In the colonial cases where pre-modern Europeans took tiny baby steps towards "genocide", it was condemned by clerics (and, usually, by bean-counters pointing out that it was a waste of perfectly good human resources). Even when Caesar commits genocide the Roman sources treat it as "damn you didn't have to do 'em like that, but I guess that's how larger-than-life you are".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for January 21, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is fun. My only tension was:


Statements 24 and 3: How much must I protect the environment? 61% of the people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs. You agreed that: The environment should not be damaged unnecessarily in the pursuit of human ends. But disagreed that: People should not journey by car if they can walk, cycle or take a train instead. As walking, cycling and taking the train are all less environmentally damaging than driving a car for the same journey, if you choose to drive when you could have used another mode of transport, you are guilty of unnecessarily damaging the environment. The problem here is the word 'unnecessary'. Very few things are necessary, if by necessary it is meant essential to survival. But you might want to argue that much of your use of cars or aeroplanes is necessary, not for survival, but for a certain quality of life. The difficulty is that the consequence of this response is that it then becomes hard to be critical of others, for it seems that 'necessary' simply means what one judges to be important for oneself. A single plane journey may add more pollutants to the atmosphere than a year's use of a high-emission vehicle. Who is guilty of causing unnecessary environmental harm here?


My disagreement is that just because you can walk, cycle, or use transit, that doesn't mean that your ends are fully met in doing so. "I want to get there faster" or "I want to get there in peace and quiet" are legitimate desires which are generally worth the harm. I read "necessary" as meaning "necessary to the end sought", not "necessary to survival" (which would be a very silly position unless you're properly Tedpilled). They address this in their explanation, but fail to convince me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks, much appreciate having the specific verses.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Would you happen to have a citation/link on Confucius's doctrine of shame/virtue? Would be very interesting for me to compare to the Greeks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
True, but escalation dominance in football is basically "will this make the guy mad enough to flatten me on the next tackle." This is why you don't see a lot of the street-football tricks to really style on your opponent - sometimes you see it in peripheral leagues in South America and Africa. Penalty kick stuff is kind of apart from that. I recall one game in the South African league where a player on the dominant team tried doing keepie-uppies and such to get round his defender, and then it got ugly from there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm sorry, I simply disagree that it's poor sportsmanship. If you can fake out the keeper - through skill in misleading him, as Panenka did - it's a good play, if you can't, it's a bad play (if anything, a Panenka is usually having too much confidence in one's skill). That's like calling dummying a pass or nutmegging a defender bad sportsmanship.


Agree with you on the Scotland example, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Damn that's annoying. I'll tell Zorba.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's an art to baiting the keeper into diving, I'd call it a power move if it works. But it rarely works with modern keepers and is generally a silly thing to do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think spoiler tags are just broken with multiple paragraphs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, absolutely, though there are more central cases than education. This is why boomers schizo out over "paid protestors", because they can't realize that it's one level of abstraction up for that: many of the people protesting have jobs, but NGO or whatever jobs which pay them for make-work while demanding they hold the type of politics which would get them out protesting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Aristotle talks about this in the Politics. He argues that, when it comes to paying citizens to take part in politics, the worst outcome is when the state pays for participation in such a way that those without productive work to do or assets to supervise have unlimited time to engage in politics, but the productive citizens are distracted from politics by their private concerns. This seems to me an obvious failure mode of UBI, even if most recipients just become consoomer-addicts.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Anybody watch the AFCON final? What a game. Spent 90 minutes as the sort of high-energy 0-0 football Americans love to hate, lots of missed chances, very physical, literal blood on the pitch. Then, in the last minutes of the game, well, I'll give some background, first - I was in Morocco for a couple games, and a common sentiment among fans of black African teams was that "the Arabs" have bribed the refs to favour North African teams, particularly Egypt and the hosts Morocco. Any bad call was met with mutterings about "the Arabs" and their nefarious plans. To be fair, Morocco are just really a very good team, causing much better teams a hell of a lot of trouble at the most recent World Cup.


So first, second minute of extra time, Senegal score a quality goal from a corner, which is ruled out by the ref a second later. A Senegal player and a Morocco player were running at each other in the box, both with their arms up (Morocco player raised his first), the Moroccan falls over, a very soft foul. Ref had been easy-going up until this point. The ball goes up the other end, probably the last play of extra time, comes into the Senegal box, and as the players are jockeying to jump for it a Senegal player puts his hand on an attacker's shoulder and the guy goes down like Bambi on ice. A clear dive to me, no attempt to stay on his feet, but just enough of a tug that the ref could call a penalty kick (for reference, about 75% of penalty kicks are scored. This is likely a death sentence for Senegal). 


However, as they're lining up, a "security incident" is announced in the stands. No other information given on the TV feed, but the players are ordered off the pitch for safety. My experience was that the Moroccan organizers went in very hard on security (while fucking up every other aspect of the fan experience), understandable given the region and the threat of terrorism. Looking today, it seemed to be Senegal fans fighting with the cops. There's all kinds of pushing and shoving on the pitch, too, ref is giving yellow cards to Senegal left and right, but they storm off into the dressing room. A Senegal player posts on snapchat "Peace, we're getting robbed." Eventually they're told to come back, but either nobody's told the Senegalese team or they don't want to come out. Sadio Mane, Senegal legend, two-time and soon to be three-time African Player of the Year runs off the pitch, into the dressing room, and gathers his boys to face defeat with dignity.


The teams line up around the goal. Morocco gives the kick to Brahim Diaz, the tournament's top scorer. The hopes and pride of his nation ride on him, you can see it in his eyes and hear it in the crowd. Diaz steps up, Diaz kicks, and - well, let me tell you about the Panenka. Named for Czech player Antonin Panenka, it's a type of penalty kick where you fake out the goalkeeper so he dives to one side, and then bobble a light chipped ball right through the centre of the goal. It's a power move, the ultimate humiliation for a keeper if you pull it off. Diaz Pankenas. The Senegalese keeper, Mane, stands stock still. The ball sails gently into his hands. . The stadium roars, Sengal goes mad, you can see the light leave poor Diaz's eyes. Commentator on African TV shouts "This is not the time to play Panenka!"


Extra time (in knockout football tournaments, a draw often leads to an extra 30 minutes to break the tie). Just two minutes in, Mane gets the ball, Senegal plays it to Papa Gueye running up the left wing. Gueye runs with it to the edge of the box, one Moroccan player behind him and one positioning to block in front, but in a moment of space on the edge of the box he unleashes a gorgeous, gorgeous shot right into the top corner of the net. Rig that, "the Arabs." Madness erupts all round, including in our family living room. Senegal hold the lead, close out the match, victory. This is the magic of AFCON: it's not just that anything can happen. Anything will happen. If you have any interest in sports, internecine African rivalries, get bit by the "soccer" bug over this year's World Cup, or just like to see bizarre things happen on TV, I recommend catching AFCON summer 2027. Peace, we didn't get robbed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That makes a ton of sense to me. You didn't go through the memory-fixing process of creating the shot.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Best grunts: Geara Doga, GM Sniper II, SUMO


Best villains: The O, Sinanju(/Sazabi), Turn X


Best gundams: eh anything by Izubuchi I guess.


Generally Izubuchi is the best designer for anything 'classic gundam'. Clean, well-proportioned, just the right amount of perfectly-executed detail. Syd Mead's designs are as far away from 'gundam' as you can get, but he's clearly on another level artistically (which is funny, since his drawings of classic gundam designs look terrible).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Funny, I have the exact opposite outlook. Not that I'm a serious photographer (have taken my phone for granted and now rarely carry a camera - too heavy and awkward), but when I was taking lots of pictures, I found it immensely beneficial to step out of the flow of the moment, frame a good shot, and take a picture of the scene. The flow of life goes on and is forgotten; the act of stepping out - with the intention to frame a good photo - makes a moment tangible as something which cannot be taken for granted and is thus inscribed in memory. I suspect the biggest part of that is doing it with intention and as part of a practice, since I can get a somewhat similar effect these days by taking a deep breath and opening awareness in the manner of a meditation.


Agree entirely on the social media aspect, of course, would be 100% nodding with a post titled "Against Instagram Stories". I miss Facebook photo albums, a much more human version of photographic memory.


Wonder also if this is one of those memory and visualization differences people have. I have an extremely strong visual memory, particularly for places I found visually compelling. Can close my eyes and take a 3D walk through many of them, and when I look at old photos I can expand them into all sorts of associated memories. I see a photo on the Danube bridge of Regensburg and I can see myself in the backstreets on the cobblestones, my bauernschmaus by the cathedral, trudging back to the hostel at night, etc.. I don't think all those other memories would be as strong without the photo to hang them all on, it would just be somewhere I went and I might remember that the river was beautiful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From what I see, a lot of nukes get thrown around, and your nuke production rate strongly affects the pace of military operations, because you want to use them to blast through big troop concentrations or to smash up cities to deny enemy supply/reduce their war support. The tactical use of nukes is a lot more prominent in Europe when there's still major fighting going on there, more like Cold War NATO doctrine than the limited and political use of nukes in our WWII.