TitaniumButterfly

Rivers in the wasteland

1 follower follows 5 users joined 2024 January 18 23:49:16 UTC

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User ID: 2854

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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 9hr ago

It is entirely possible I misread the graph.

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Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 6, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 11hr ago

I liked the slow burn, but the later portions definitely get more exciting and I thought the climax was very good.

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Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 6, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 11hr ago · Edited 11hr ago

Well, capricorns are the worst.

I'll just throw it out there that while I've looked into the actual data on astrology, which consistently seems to show no significant correlation with personality etc., I can't help but wonder if the right questions aren't being asked. At the very least I'd expect natal sunlight exposure, outdoor activity, etc. to correlate with something.

Then there's my personal experience which is that actually most people do behave as I'd expect based on their star signs. Confirmation bias? Very likely. Still uncanny though.

Oh yeah and then there was the time I happened to encounter an actual professional astrologer in a public place (let's say we were waiting in line for coffee) and struck up a conversation. After a few minutes of chatting I couldn't help but ask what she thought my sign was. She responded accurately and without hesitation, as though she'd made up her mind well before I asked and was sort of remembering it as an afterthought.

Epistemic status: Man, I don't know anything anymore.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 11hr ago

To me the key point here is that AfD support correlates with youth. The younger the German, the more likely he is to support AfD. This is linear and substantial.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 17hr ago · Edited 16hr ago

No I think most societies had stopped routine exposure of infants the time of colonization.

I'm not just talking about exposure of infants, and either way I disagree. The New World was absolutely rife with ritual child murder. Exposure was also very common in East Asia and India at time of European contact, especially for girls. Sub-Saharan Africa was ofc its own special hell. So, I'm categorically rejecting this one.

But honor killings are not just applied to teens. Check this case out.

There are dozens of independent moral codes that have come up with these rules

I don't think so; and to the degree that this might technically be true it doesn't matter unless those moral codes were influential enough to stop the practices at scale, which they clearly were not. Where they did exist, they generally applied only to the ingroup. When it comes to rape, well, a lot gets lost in cultural understanding of what that means. But the Christian insistence that the woman must consent to a marriage is probably worth thinking about. And even if, hypothetically, several of these systems could have worked, we may observe that only one actually did.

I don't think we needed Christianity to end the practice given that o one does it anymore expect maybe some far out hunter gatherers

I think we do. I think even in the West it's becoming a lot more popular without Christianity. Why would I expect non-Westerners to not do it when apparently even we can't manage that?

This isn't just some line to feed Westerners. It's not like the Gulf Monarchs are pro-Jihad they try to get their own population to by it and work with the CIA to crush Islamists everywhere.

Because they are personally dependent upon their relationship with the West, yes, obviously. Do you think that rhetoric will hold longer than the very instant it is once again advantageous for them to rile their people up to take territory from the kafir? Has it ever, historically?

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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 1d ago · Edited 1d ago

The ones that got totally curbstomped by Christian societies intent on enforcing Christian values, and who desperately recast themselves to be more palatable to Christian superpowers?

Yeah, I think if that pressure goes away, so too does the change in behavior. There's some inertia, sure, but there's no such thing as obvious universal human morality that includes such oddities as "don't kill your children" or "rape is wrong" or "everyone should be treated with basic dignity."

Also, plenty of Islamic societies absolutely do allow child murder, especially in cases of e.g. honor killings. Smart governments talk a lot about putting such things behind them, but that's playing to what they perceive as Western sensibilities. You know, like when they say "Jihad just means personal internal struggle, lol" or "These aren't slaves, they're guest workers benefiting from economic opportunity!"

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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 1d ago

This argument seems extremely silly to me. You might as well claim that the end game of people fighting over the thermostat in an office either want to go to 10000K or 1K, and that giving them a single degree will inevitably lead to a slippery slope where all life will perish.

Well, no. This is a terrible analogy on the face of it, but that aside, we can observe that parents murdering their children has been totally normal (and legal) in any number of human societies historically. This at least should suggest that it's very possibly going to happen again once the impetus which put a stop to such behavior (Christianity) ceases to motivate people.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 1d ago

I feel quite sure that if I took some bad drugs and killed three kids I'd be held accountable.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 2d ago

Are you drinking? Go to sleep.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 3d ago

I'm thinking we'll probably see a lot more of that after all the attention this is getting.

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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 4d ago

I'll say in favor of The Sopranos that's it's a fairly meta treatment of the genre. It's not The Godfather or Wise Guys; it's people living in (1999) modern era who (explicitly) grew up watching that stuff but find themselves in a very different world where the old ways aren't working any more. A major thread is the main-character mob boss going to his therapist. Much more interesting.

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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 4d ago

I'm just not going to immerse myself in that.

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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026

TitaniumButterfly Rivers in the wasteland 5d ago

The Wire's aesthetics are too repellent for me to countenance; I think I tried Deadwood but it wasn't right for me at the time. May try again. IIRC I found the swearing excessive to the point of obnoxiousness, but maybe that was some other show.

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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026