Well, the site got dumped. I have a bad habit of hoarding tabs, and I've got two pages worth of posts still open, so I'm going to copy-paste them here in raw text so people can salvage what they can. Anyone else who still has pages open, feel free to join in.
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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 netstack U Texas is freedom land 2m ago You know what really throws me for a loop? Christian billboards. Take any stretch of interstate 20, 35, 44, or whichever. You’ll spot more than a few.
The standard is probably a straightforward reminder such as “Jesus Saves.” Quoting a succinct verse is also reasonably common. Less often, they’ll go for a specific policy position. I best remember “Pray for peace with Iran.” It’s hard not to see these as earnest affirmations of faith! There’s little to no coordination. They aren’t part of a reasoned strategy for converting viewers. I prefer to think of them as an insistence that Christ deserves attention, that He belongs in the public eye more than any material ad.
There’s another category which tries to be a little less obvious. I’m sure it has plenty of entries, but I’ll always remember it by the “Unfulfilled?” campaign. I was younger, riding through the Carolinas in the back seat, when I first saw its billboards. Dark backgrounds and gloomy-looking faces along that single word and, of course, a phone number. Given their proximity to signs for gentlemen’s clubs and divorce lawyers, my impressionable mind concluded it must meant for adults, one way or another. It wasn’t until much later that I bothered to google it. Imagine my disappointment—nothing salacious, just an attempt to address creeping ennui.
I have no idea if “Unfulfilled” is still active. There was a while where I’d see campaigns like “FOR TRUTH” instead. Perhaps one of these carried the torch? Regardless, these ads convey more of a strategy. They are nonfunctional as affirmations: no Christian imagery, no religious language. The only way I can make sense of them is as a pipeline, resonating with vulnerable individuals to bring them closer to Christianity. If you feel that ennui, or have certain doubts, or struggle with alcoholism, then “Unfulfilled” or “FOR TRUTH” or Alcoholics Anonymous wants you to remember them. Compare the normal model of advertising, where many people will see your ad, a few will attach, and some trickle of those will come to your service instead of a competitors’.
All this is a preface to ask—which of these formats is the best model for “He Gets Us”? It’s pretty inefficient as a pipeline. As you point out, the cops and trad girls aren’t going to come to Jesus because they heard He’s into feet. This isn’t an attempt to resonate with anyone’s object-level situation, or to snag any vulnerable population before they fall any further.
No, this is about branding. It’s part of a concerted effort to portray Christianity as compatible with secular liberalism. Christians washing feet aren’t supposed to be envied, but tolerated. Likewise for Jesus’ love, which is portrayed not in esoteric terms, but in ordinary, informal language. It’s a nonthreatening sort of Christianity, a Universalist sort which doesn’t want to alienate the dominant public.
Today, the Samaritans aren’t known for being an insular ethnic religion. They’re known for that one time one of them was held up as an example by Jesus Christ. The people making these ads would prefer not to be known as creationists, Westboro Baptists, all those other unpopular facets about which the atheists were so vocal. So they skirt around the supernatural, emphasize the moral high ground and the humility, practically shouting “yes, we can play with your rules!”
Do I think it’ll work? Well…I have my reservations. Insincerity is the death knell for a brand like this. But we’re hanging out and picking it apart. The real measure will be whether random Super Bowl viewers, NYT readers, et cetera pick up what they’re putting down. If Christians lose some of their acceptable-target label—if people are less likely to assume their neighbor is a fascist just because she goes to church each Sunday—I think that’s a win.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 FlyingLionWithABook U Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that. 3m ago You may be thinking of this passage from C. S. Lewis's essay "On the Reading of Old Books"
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 MaiqTheTrue U Zensunni Wanderer 20m ago Being fair, most of the debates I’ve seen people talk about are generally public oral debates. And frankly I find those kinds of debates to be seriously lacking in getting at truth simply because they are, by nature, performances as much as they are debates. A person with style, personable, able to look good and sound confident, able to make their opponent sound uncertain and stumble or make a mistake you can pounce on.
Written forms of debate are much superior simply because the lack of the human in those debates means that the focus is on the words, the logic, and the quality of the citations and data. I can’t easily snow you into believing in something with a poor foundation because I have only the words, and they can easily be cross-checked and examined by the audience. There’s no way to hide the fact that your argument doesn’t hold up behind a slick presentation. If I say something in a written debate, it’s there naked.
Were I to debate whether Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection, my argument in his defense would be based on showing first of all why there’s reason to doubt that January 6 rises to the legal definition of an insurrection, second, whether anything he said rises to the criteria of incitement (again, in the legal definition of the term), and finally whether or not, based on his behavior during and after 1/6 he seems to have intended the results he got. At each point, I have to cite sources, and they’d be published sources: citations of legal definitions, trial transcripts of those trials that have actually happened, the Jan 6 committee documents, news reports, and so on. I have to show my work, and because especially online, it’s easy to go back to those sources and see if the sources I’m citing say what I’m claiming they say. It’s also easy enough to find counterpoints to those sources in your rebuttal. If I point out that no one has thus far been charged with treason or insurrection, it’s perfectly reasonable to answer back with a reason why that does or doesn’t matter. If I’m wrong in a fact, you can point it out.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 guesswho U 22m ago If my two minutes of googling is correct, it looks like these ads were basically funded by a random food-chain billionaire who wanted to share his vision of Jesus with the public.
You can say all the things that the ad failed to do or the ways that it doesn't agree with your/experts understanding of the Bible, but does the billionaire financing the ads care about those things? Really, only he can say whether or not the ads accomplished what he wanted.
Anyway, yeah, this is sort of what the culture looks like when we have random billionaires wandering around with the ability to finance large cultural moments on a personal whim. I agree that this guy's understanding of Christianity and his directorial instincts are kind of dumb and annoying; it's capitalism's fault that we ended up exposed to them anyway, and I wish it weren't so.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 Southkraut U Rise, ramble, rest, repeat. 26m ago Accepted.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 gattsuru U 36m ago There's an irony in having this conversation now.
I think wanting to sanitize part of the ideological and cultural landscape is understandable, and I wish there was nothing wrong to do so. And it's important for people from outside a community trying to talk in, who want to be taken credibly or honestly, to understand the sort of motivations that make subcultures curl in on themselves.
But it's very easy for a community that successfully cuts itself off from the outside world to go wonky.
Transnational Thursday for February 8, 2024 reactionary_peasant U 36m ago Does the average Finn have a high opinion of the American empire? I would have imagined that Finns share the same broad anti-Americanism that you find in most of western Europe. It seems clear to me, even as a denizen of the empire, that America honors its commitments to allies when it feels like it and has few qualms about throwing erstwhile allies under the bus. Still probably better than Russian domination though, so maybe this attitude is more accurately described as Finns holding their noses and choosing the lesser of two evils?
Transnational Thursday for February 8, 2024 reactionary_peasant U 41m ago Can you elaborate on this? As I understand it, one of the supposed rationales for invading Ukraine is that it is Rightful Russian Clay because "Kievan Rus"/"cradle of Russian ethnicity" etc etc. Is the same true of the Baltics? I thought that a distinct Baltic people had lived there for a long time.
Or are you referring to other reasons?
Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 11, 2024 Gaashk U 43m ago It's definitely possible we're being too sensitive about the noise from the children. On the good side, the parish has at least five other little girls; so far the only time my daughters have been able to see them was in the middle of liturgy, so I wasn't exactly surprised they were trying to make friends by talking and dancing, but maybe they'll calm down if they get a chance to talk to the other girls during lunch or play time or something.
We have all been sick about half the weekends this year (working in two different elementary schools, with kids in yet another daycare), and yet again last weekend, I'm hoping it will improve with the spring and we can try staying for lunch and acquainting them with the other kids.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 2rafa U 43m ago There are a lot of denials about this kind of thing, but in my adult PMC life I’ve actually known a moderately large number of very progressive liberal Christians who go to Hillsong or some other happy clappy multiracial Christian pop megachurch thing and basically believe in all of this stuff. I’m not saying it’s the majority but it seems to be less dead than some people here make it out to be.
Wellness Wednesday for February 7, 2024 notaflatland U 45m ago Maybe just having the resources to have tutor and be smart enough, or be born into a smart and rich enough family to get a tutor has more to do with that. It makes sense that personal instruction would be better than rote teaching from a powerpoint. But I think an order of magnitude might be pushing it.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 jkf U 57m ago Probably not -- IIRC it's more of an aid to assortative mating in that people tend to prefer partners who smell like their own family. Maybe it would make it easier for one's sons to pick up Asian girls?
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 jkf U 1hr ago It wasn't the headings (well they were weird too), it was the lengthy repetitive uninteresting content. I much prefer posts of the form
[pithy description of culture war event/local happening] [potentially inflammatory (or not) take on said events] [call to discussion/sharing of alternate takes]
But people don't make this kind of post anymore, because they are liable to be scolded by the (recently enlarged) mod squad.
So instead we get long boring contentless 'effortposts', and are not allowed to let the poster know how lame they are because of course they are apparently in line with the mission statement.
Wellness Wednesday for February 7, 2024 Boarchariot U Red Ones Go Faster 1hr ago Personally I don't like biological tracking tools. But for training performance, I like FitNotes for weight training, and Strava for running.
FitNotes is free, let's you add your own exercises, easy to use, and tracks volume that you can compare daily, weekly, or monthly. For a few bucks you can upgrade with other features, but you probably don't need them.
Strava is substantially more expensive and based on a yearly subscription which sucks, but great for tracking routes, distance, pace, etc and you can compare to others if that's your thing.
Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 11, 2024 ToaKraka U Dislikes you 1hr ago It could. But does it?
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 reactionary_peasant U 1hr ago Great post. I was also bemused by the ad. C.S. Lewis had a passage (maybe from God in the Dock, can't find it) about how each age blows one virtue out of proportion and by doing so turns it into a vice, and in our present age this vicious virtue is clearly Charity. This example is yet another example of Christians extending the principal of charity to an absurd scope and at the expense of other virtues (see also immigration and some overseas poverty reduction).
The first question that popped into my head after watching was -- cui bono? To me, the ad reeked of this. So I tried to look up who was behind it. Apparently it's a nonprofit called [The Signatry](. Clicking through their site, I don't see any telltale signs of wokeness or progressivism. The entire board is old white dudes, every employee in the random sample I took was white and I only came across one woman. Skimming their site revealed that they created a mural of "Jesus and the children" in Oklahoma City and that they donate to what sound like bog-standard Christian charity causes. There are even negative articles about them about how they're anti-gay. One of their major public donors is Hobby Lobby CEO David Green of supreme court case fame. I'm not really sure what's going on here. A rogue department? Entryism? Or am I merely ignorant enough not to know that most Evangelicals look favorably upon washing the feet of Muslims and unrepentant gays?
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 TIRM U 1hr ago Some rootless young person might like it. But I am very much tied down with my family. I have my yard with my garden next to my house that I worked hard to renovate and my kid sleeps in their room, etc, etc.
On one hand this is all just stuff. On the other hand I really like my property and my stuff and I worked hard and paid a lot to set up things my way (or really the way my wife likes it, but close enough). No bug paste in a pod can replace what I have and value.
Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 11, 2024 grognard U Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6 1hr ago Couldn’t YouTube communicate the timestamp at which the user hit dislike
Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 11, 2024 Boarchariot U Red Ones Go Faster 1hr ago Biggest issue I see is that losing weight and looking great naked aren't really goals, they are symptoms of any goals you might actually make. Or to use your own words in conjunction, how you look and how much you weigh are not performance, they are tertiary features that may or may not relate to performance.
The best foundation IMO is finding a physical pursuit you enjoy and care about, outside of any goals regarding your appearance. This could be anything from weightlifting, to yoga, to climbing. That will allow you to do something you enjoy that has the nice side-effect of improving your health and appearance. You will also be able to set tangible, performance related goals. It's good to set both long term goals, and flexible short term goals. For example: a longterm goal of squatting 225, and a daily goal of doing more reps with 155 than you did the week before. This makes training more engaging.
Setting goals about weight loss or how you look in the mirror is really tough when you begin because your actions don't have a 1:1 correlation to your outcomes. This is disheartening. If you don't have a solid base interest in health and fitness, you are likely to lose interest, hence why an enjoyable sport is a better foundation. If you want to set diet goals, you are probably best setting goals like cutting out certain kinds of foods, or eating more of others. Again, you are building solid habits. As you have found, the biggest hurdle for reaching your goals isn't overcoming harsh challenges, it is disinterest and difficulty in changing basic your basic way of life.
I also recommend forgetting about trying to follow specific fitness or diet plans until you have more experience. The best thing you can do early on is more activity and less non-activity. Eventually you will need to discover more nuanced strategies, but until then just be active and track your performance.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 Gaashk U 1hr ago This has the aesthetics of my aging neighborhood church. I tried going a couple of times, and they were singing about their friends in the 90s dying of AIDS, and almost the only conversation I had afterwards was a church musician mentioning his non-binary daughter. He seemed kind of sad about it, but like he thought he shouldn't be.
The steel man is probably that, despite massive amounts of propaganda lately, many people (most? It's hard to know) are being fake about accepting that, and do not actually like effeminate gays, illegal immigrants, underclass blacks, homeless druggies, (their father in law?), and so on. Perhaps a bit more propaganda, this time with a Christian flavor, will push them over into being sincere?
Which seems naive? If an attitude has been resistant to decades of extant propaganda, what is this short ad going to do? It's probably an "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" situation for people with media representation skills.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 4doorsmorewhores U 1hr ago The most prolific American example of footwashing that comes to mind being Mr Rogers washing the feet of some black police officer on Mr Rogers neighbourhood seems to go against a large part of your post re:
Hierarchies Familiarity with the concept of foot washing The Pope also does this sometimes and it's in the news. It seems sort of conceited and contemptuous to assume that normies who aren't as obviously well-versed in history as you will see foot-washing and think "Wtf? Christianity is about washing old people's feet? no thank you." What reason do you have to believe that a smaller portion of viewers would "get it" vs what the ad-makers expect?
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 TIRM U 1hr ago But people make and distribute cartoon porn with underaged characters. YouTube socialist Vaush accidentally screen shared cartoon child porn. Whoopsie-daisey. He's not being prosecuted for this and the sites he got them from are presumably a quick Google search away. He """thought they were drawings of really short women""". Which thinking about that ridiculous excuse, is the sort of input someone would use to trick the PornAI into making a really quite short, really quite petite partner.
Of course reputable AI companies will make their AI lock up if you ask too much for a younger virtual parter. But some day someone will make a unlocked version or find an exploit to trick the AI into making no-no images
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 ymeskhout U 1hr ago Thanks, Markdown drives me insane sometimes. And it's interesting hearing how the conversations sound from your perspective, having a shared foundation always seemed like a natural way to have a good discussion.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 2rafa U 1hr ago I think the point is that for most people it is about aesthetics. Indians and Malaysians and Japanese won’t want ‘white’ kids but their designer babies will look like biracial white-and-themselves versions of them. And that’s what most people would be content with.
Culture War Roundup for the week of February 12, 2024 ymeskhout U 1hr ago My cross-examination post frequently gets misunderstood as me saying that oral-only debate is superior to writing but I didn't claim that. My argument was how some elements of one medium are superior and cannot be easily replicated within the other medium, and that applies in both directions. When I decry the element of surprise here it isn't based on springing an unexpected line of reasoning (which I think is generally fair game) but rather unveiling evidence that would have otherwise fallen apart if there was enough time for scrutiny.
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