Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020 : TheMotte

Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-06T05:17:09+00:00

To maintain consistency with the old subreddit, we are trying to corral all heavily culture war posts into one weekly roundup post. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people change their minds regardless of the quality of opposing arguments.

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More pessimistically, however, there are a number of dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to contain more heat than light. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup -- and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight. We would like to avoid these dynamics.

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/u/MugaSofer on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-12T09:03:21+00:00

Online censorship meets the Iran Thing - Instagram has been systematically removing any posts by Iranians worldwide that criticise the US government's assasination of Soleimani:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/10/tech/instagram-iran-soleimani-posts/index.html

https://codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/instagram-iran-soleimani/

At least fifteen Iranian journalists have reported having their accounts suspended, according to the International Federation of Journalists. Government-owned and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated media agencies such as Tasnim News Agency, the Iran Newspaper and Jamaran News all had their accounts, with a combined hundreds of thousands of followers, removed entirely by Instagram. “This poses an immediate threat to freedom of information in Iran,” the International Federation of Journalists said in a statement.

Iranian influencers, human rights advocates, and activists are also experiencing account shutdowns.

[...]

Prominent human rights advocate and investigative journalist Emadeddin Baghi, 57, who has nearly 40,000 Instagram followers, also had four of his Soleimani-related Instagram posts removed. Baghi, who has been imprisoned multiple times in Iran, is a well-known critic of the IRGC. “I shared a post that had two parts,” Baghi said. The general’s death, he wrote, had “saddened some, and made others happy,” but that the assassination “was an act which is contrary to the principles of international law.”

In the post, Baghi also reflected on how Iran reached this point in history, and how it could have been avoided. Baghi described the post as daring given the current emotional climate in Iran. “In fact,” he said, it was “a criticism of the government’s policies.” But Baghi is nonplussed as to why the post was deleted: “which of these words is really questionable on Instagram?” he said.

“If you learn and follow our guidelines, you can prevent your account from being deleted,” the Instagram app warned Baghi. He believes the reason for the post’s deletion may be as a result of describing the general’s death as a “martyrdom,” a view held by many Iranians, who see Soleimani as a uniting figure that fought Saddam Hussein and ISIS.

“When it comes to non-English languages, their tools and metric for designating dangerous speech are really sloppy—or at least, underdeveloped,” said Campbell. “My guess is they have a list of danger-words, and the word for “martyr” in this case was probably one of them.”

[...]

The Iranian diaspora has also been affected by Instagram’s crackdown. Norwegian-Iranian businesswoman Bahareh Letnes, the partner of Norway’s former fisheries minister, also had her posts removed. Letnes, 29, who has a following of more than 20,000 on Instagram, had posted a black-and-white photo of Soleimani, describing him as a “war hero” and adding: “I hope the US military is now thrown out of the Middle East forever. Rest in peace.” Her post was deleted by Instagram.

“I was not surprised, because I knew censorship and lack of freedom of speech exist all over the world,” Letnes said. “Instagram said I am not allowed to use violent images. Can you show me violence here?” she said, in reference to one of her posts depicting the general. “Instagram thinks the image of Soleimani is violent.”

[...]

Iranians are already attempting to get around the threat of deletions and account shutdowns. “People are self-censoring. When they post something about the situation they try not to mention Soleimani’s name or the IRGC,” said Rashidi. “It seems there is no platform ever for us to express ourselves or speak our mind.”

The Iranian government is pissed, obviously, but apparently they'd already been considering tightening their grip on Iranian internet access so this will likely just serve as an excuse:

While Facebook, Twitter and Telegram are all blocked by the government and can only be accessed through a virtual private network, Instagram is one of the few Western-built social media apps not yet banned by the government. The platform has an estimated 24 million active users in Iran and is an important communications tool – though reports say it’s about to be blocked by the government, too.

[...]

On Monday, an Iran government spokesperson, Ali Rabiei, condemned Instagram for shutting down discussions of Soleimani. “In an undemocratic and unashamed action, Instagram has blocked an innocence nations’ voice protesting to the assesination of General #Soleimani,” he tweeted.

In November, the Iranian government shut down the internet for a week, denying millions access to the web. For years, Iran has been building a government-controlled “intranet”, and are also creating a domestic platform to replace Instagram as the government prepares to block the app.

[...]

Rashidi said Instagram’s removal of Soleimani-related content has played into the hands of Iran’s leaders and their campaign to build an internet that’s ring-fenced off from the world. “It’s a huge propaganda gift for the Iranian government—these companies need to understand the consequences of their decision,” he said. “They are basically helping the Iranian government control the Iranian people.”

The Iranian government has called for nationwide legal action against Instagram in protest, even creating a portal on a government website for the app's users to submit examples of posts the company removed, Iranian state media reported.

Instagram claims they're required to do this by US law, because Soleimani was a terrorist and any post supporting terrorists is illegal terrorist activity:

Instagram said that in removing posts in praise of Soleimani, it was complying with U.S. sanctions law. In April 2019, President Trump designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. Shortly after Trump’s designation was announced, Instagram removed a number of Revolutionary Guards’ pages, including that of Soleimani himself and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s English-language page, which the company later reinstated.

Stephanie Otway, a Facebook company spokesperson, said: “We operate under U.S. sanctions laws, including those related to the U.S. government’s designation of the IRGC and its leadership.”

Instagram said any accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards, as well as content that supports it, are in violation of its community guidelines banning terrorist content.

Instagram and its parent company Facebook are removing posts that voice support for slain Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani to comply with US sanctions, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to CNN Business Friday.

[...]

Instagram shut down Soleimani's own account on the platform last April after the US government designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization. Soleimani was an IRGC commander. "We operate under US sanctions laws, including those related to the US government's designation of the IRGC and its leadership," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

[...]

As part of its compliance with US law, the Facebook spokesperson said the company removes accounts run by or on behalf of sanctioned people and organizations.

It also removes posts that commend the actions of sanctioned parties and individuals and seek to help further their actions, the spokesperson said, adding that Facebook has an appeals process if users feel their posts were removed in error.

(emphasis added)

In principle, it would appear that this with-us-or-against-us rule applies to almost any criticism of or disagreement with US foreign policy.

I find this particularly concerning given that you may recall there have been recent pushes to label Antifa, the NRA and pipeline protestors as domestic terrorist movements [edit: although given that this is supposedly rooted in sanction law, it might be harder to apply to US citizens ... then again we've already seen widespread deplatforming of gun hobbyists].

EDIT:

Electronic Freedom Foundation lawyers weigh in, saying that the claim this is legally compelled is completely wrong.
Coincidentally, UK Police just issued, and retracted, a guide for teachers asking them to report children as potential terrorists who support climate-change groups such as Extinction Rebellion.

/u/yellerto56 on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-10T22:17:56+00:00

NYT: A Polish Museum Turns to the Right, and Artists Turn Away (Archive Link)

"A new director wants to reshape a leading Warsaw art space to show conservative works and challenge left-wing positions."

Piotr Bernatowicz is one of the most talked about figures in Poland’s art world this winter, for one reason: Many artists say he’s about to destroy a leading Warsaw art museum.

Bernatowicz has just been made director of the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art for the next seven years, and hopes to introduce a new direction to the museum that critics say "doesn't fit with the institution's background."

Mr. Bernatowicz is interested in politics, but those politics are different from many in the art world, which he said in an email interview was “dominated by a left-wing, precisely neo-Marxist ideology.”

Artists are expected to make work about fighting climate change and fascism, or promoting gay rights, he added. “Artists who do not adopt this ideology are marginalized,” he said.

Mr. Bernatowicz wants to change that and promote artists who have other views: conservative, patriotic, pro-family. His plans are transforming the museum into the latest battleground in Poland’s culture wars, which pit liberals against the governing populist Law and Justice Party, as well as other conservative groups.

[...]

Mr. Bernatowicz said he had once been a liberal, but his worldview changed in 2010 after Poland’s president and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders died in a plane crash in Russia. He became concerned about Russian interference in Poland, and Poland’s position in the world, he said.

Around the same time, he said, he came to feel “extreme identity movements” had overtaken the art world, and that accusations of “hate speech” were being used to censor work that went against their ideology. It reminded him of Communist rule, he added, when artists had to do as they were told.

[...]

Mr. Bernatowicz pointed out that a prestigious theater in Poland had recently put on a play, “The Curse,” that had offended people in the Roman Catholic church. (It features a scene in which a woman performs fellatio on a sex toy attached to a statue of Pope John Paul II.)

“According to them, Catholics should be more tolerant and open to art,” Mr. Bernatowicz said. “My exhibitions reveal the hypocrisy of the art world.”

[...]

Mr. Bernatowicz was an “interesting curator” whose attitude differed from the “one-way thinking art society in Poland,” Mr. Modzelewski added. But, he said, Mr. Bernatowicz must make sure his programming at the Ujazdowski doesn’t divide people. “This is the main condition of success,” he said.

Mr. Bernatowicz said that was not his plan. “I don’t intend to turn the center into a kind of ideological ghetto for conservative ideas and artists,” he said. “In my opinion, most of contemporary art galleries look like left-wing ideological ghettos. This is what I want to change.”

But some art world figures said it will be difficult to find enough right-wing works to show. “I don’t know what a conservative artist is,” Malgorzata Ludwisiak, the Ujazdowski’s previous director, said. “If it means painting like in the 19th century — a lady on a horse — well, it’s not contemporary art.”

Mr. Bernatowicz seemed to realize he might have a struggle on his hands. “If you ask, ‘How many conservative avant-garde artists are there now?’ My response is: five in Poland and maybe one in Belarus,” he said, riffing on a famous remark by Marcel Duchamp.

But, he added, “I hope within the next seven years, the situation will change.”

Modern art certainly appears to be a culturally fraught area with regards to whose work is recognized, exhibited, and celebrated. Contemporary art in particular tends to diverge wildly from classical art in terms of aesthetics, politics, and place in society. I don't know enough about the art world to speak with any certainty as to its level of ideological capture, but the backlash to Bernatowicz's appointment certainly indicates some degree of cultural liberalism among artists (though who can say whether a director with the opposite politics wouldn't have been protested as well?)

To what extent do you think that contemporary art is able to promote conservative values? I personally think that the major obstacle to this goal is that art garners attention for pushing boundaries (even the "fifty Stalins" type of boundary pushing), whereas conservatism as a philosophy is about justifying and reinforcing existing boundaries and practices.

Do you think this reaction to Bernatowicz's appointment is evidence in favor of Scott's Neutral vs. Conservative hypothesis (wherein institutions not established as explicitly conservative become inexorably more liberal with time)? What effect do you think Bernatowicz's vision will have on the Warsaw contemporary art museum's trajectory? Lastly, are the motivations that the article attribute's to Poland's Law and Justice Party (promoting "conservative, patriotic, pro-family" artwork) a useful correction in a world where artwork with the opposite values receives the most mainstream promotion?

/u/yellerto56 on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-06T17:09:16+00:00

NYT: Why Are Young Americans Killing Themselves? (Archive Link)

Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for young people in the United States, having increased by 56% between 2007 and 2017 after decreasing in the previous two decades. The historical gap between male and female suicides has narrowed in recent years as rates of increase in female suicide have outstripped rates of male increase. (Left unsaid in the article itself are the size of these gaps. 40 years ago, male youth comprised around four suicides for every one female youth suicide. Nowadays, those ratios are about two males to every one female.)

The author speculates that this trend may be correlated with a spike in the rate of teen depression, with possible connections to the rise in social media usage and its adverse effects on mental health. The author (a professor of clinical psychiatry) proposes the following response to this growing epidemic:

How is it possible that so many of our young people are suffering from depression and killing themselves when we know perfectly well how to treat this illness? If thousands of teens were dying from a new infectious disease or a heart ailment, there would be a public outcry and a national call to action.

...

You’d think it would be no big deal to see your family doctor or a therapist and get your depression treated like any other medical problem. But the data suggest otherwise: Only 45 percent of teenage girls who had an episode of depression in 2019 received any treatment, and just 33 percent of teenage boys with depression did. In contrast, two-thirds of adults with a recent episode of depression received treatment.

...

It is legitimate (though controversial) to ask whether the Food and Drug Administration’s “black box” warning for antidepressants back in 2004 — which said the drugs could cause suicidal thoughts and actions in some children and teenagers — discouraged the use of these drugs and unwittingly helped fuel the rise in teen depression. Within two years of the F.D.A. advisory, antidepressant use dropped by 31 percent in teens and 24 percent in young adults. Although antidepressant use recovered somewhat after 2008, it has remained below levels that would have been expected based on prescribing patterns before the warnings appeared.

The good news is that we don’t have to wait for all the answers to know what to do. We know that various psychotherapies and medication are highly effective in treating depression. We just need to do a better job of identifying, reaching out to and providing resources for at-risk youths.

To start, we need a major public campaign to educate parents and teachers to recognize depression in young people and to learn about the warning signs of suicide — like a sudden change in behavior, talking or writing about suicide, and giving away prized possessions. We should have universal screening of teenagers at school, with parental consent, to identify those who are suffering from depression and who are at risk of suicide. And we have to provide adequate funding and resources to match the mental health needs of our young people.

Every day, 16 young people die from suicide. What are we waiting for?

While the author clearly believes that this is the proper course of action to combat suicidality in youth, his emphasis on medicalization of this social phenomenon strikes me as somewhat misguided. The main thrust of his argument (in the link to a study he himself authored) is that the risk of increased suicidality posed by prescribing SSRIs to young adults is less severe than the suicide risk of untreated depression, and that the FDA's warning about youth antidepressant prescription has resulted in lower rates of depression treatment all around.

I'll admit my biases against mass prescription of psychiatric medication to young people in noting that besides suicidality, SSRI's have many well-studied side effects (both physical and psychological) in addition to the risk of chemical dependence. I generally oppose prescription of psychiatric medication to children in anything other than life-threatening situations (more life-threatening than merely "a sudden change in behavior, talking or writing about suicide, and giving away prized possessions.")

What do people here think would be the consequence of a dramatic increase in youth antidepressant usage? What factors do you think are driving the current increase in youth suicides? Aside from method, what do you think drives the disparity in male vs female suicides today?

/u/BernieBolGang on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-07T20:39:26+00:00

A followup to the drama with the Covington school kids, Native American guy and Black Hebrew Israelites from earlier last year: CNN just agreed to settle with the Covington student who was wearing the MAGA hat for an undisclosed amount.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cnn-settles-lawsuit-brought-by-covington-catholic-student-nicholas-sandmann/

CNN agreed Tuesday to settle a lawsuit brought by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann.

Sandmann sought $275 million from CNN over their coverage of the confrontation he and his classmates had with an elderly Native American man while visiting Washington, D.C. on a school trip in January of last year. The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington on Tuesday, according to a local Fox affiliate.

“CNN brought down the full force of its corporate power, influence, and wealth on Nicholas by falsely attacking, vilifying, and bullying him despite the fact that he was a minor child,” reads the suit, which was filed in March.

Sandmann and his family still have lawsuits pending against NBC Universal and the Washington Post over their coverage of the incident. The Sandmann family sought a combined $800 million in damages from CNN, the Post, and NBC Universal.

“This case will be tried not one minute earlier or later than when it is ready,” Sandmann’s attorney Lin Wood said of the remaining lawsuits.

Numerous national media outlets painted Sandmann and his classmates as menacing — and in some cases, racist — after an edited video emerged of Sandmann smiling inches away from the face of Nathan Phillips, an elderly Native American man, while attending the March for Life on the National Mall. A more complete video of the encounter, which emerged later, showed that Phillips had approached the Covington Students and began drumming in their faces, prompting them to respond with school chants.

The lawsuit filed by Sandmann’s attorneys in the Eastern District of Kentucky identified 53 statements included in CNN’s coverage of the incident as defamatory. One such statement, included in a CNN opinion piece, accused the students of acting with “racist disrespect” towards Phillips.

CNN filed a motion to dismiss the suit in May on the grounds that accusations of racism are not actionable in defamation cases because the allegation can’t be proven true or false. They similarly argued they could not be held liable for uncorroborated claims that Sandmann and his classmates chanted “build the wall” during the encounter.

It is not defamatory to say the Covington students “expressed support for the President or that he echoed a signature slogan of a major political party,” CNN’s motion to dismiss states.

An investigation conducted by an outside firm contracted by the Diocese of Covington found “no evidence that the students performed a ‘Build the wall’ chant” and further found that Phillips’s account of the incident “contain some inconsistencies” that could not be explored because investigators were unable to reach him.

/u/KulakRevolt on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T21:32:14+00:00

Part 1

A Conservative Judiciary; a Progressive Armageddon: Meditations on a Potential “Constitutional” Coup

I don’t think people outside of right wing circles understand just how monomaniacally obsessed with the courts the right is.

People will say “Oh, the supreme court appointments really informed the evangelical vote for Trump” but then they’ll point to other Trump problems and be exasperated with those same evangelicals for supporting him in a way that just Betrays how much they don’t understand.

For the modern Right the supreme court and the judiciary isn’t just an equal branch of government to the presidency and the Congress.... it is the government.

The average right wing partisan or intellectual would gladly trade years, if not entire terms, of the presidency for their justices of choice. Hell if you made the offer “instead of Bush Sr. Having his term, Bush Jr. having his two terms, and Trump getting elected (4 presidential terms), you’d give those 16 years to the Clintons (no term limits, switch off when they feel like) but you get to replace the 5 most liberal justices of the supreme court with conservative justices of your picking” they’d almost certainly make that trade.

They’d surrender the presidency for 30 years if only they could have the courts.

And really can you blame them?

The vast majority of the most important changes in politics, especially to social conservatives, since 1970 have come through the courts. Abortion, Gay Marriage, The vast majority of Discrimination “Law”, almost every culture war defeat conservatives have suffered, has come not through the democratic will of a majority of the population but through the Judicial Fiat of (often) 5 of 9 appointed Lawyers who (more often than not) have never won an election to anything.

But there’s more! The court’s, and especially the supreme court’s, job is to “interpret” the constitution and peoples fundamental rights and then to “defend” those “principles” from the ”excesses” of the legislature and the state.

Or put simply Constitutional Law is superior to ordinary law (that is actually passed by the legislature, signed off by the president, ect.), if an ordinary law violates con law its automatically void, and the supreme court decided what Constitutional Law is. Full stop.

Sure you could pass an amendment (good luck), but who’s going to “interpret” how that amendment gets applied.

Essentially as long as they can avoid provoking a coup, or an amendment abolishing them, the 9 justices of the supreme court enjoy defacto dictator status. The only limits being how plausibly they can make their whims sound like they are really there in the constitution/natural law/human liberty/precedent, ect., and thus avoid provoking that coup.

There is a real asymmetry here, Whereas progressive politics insists on its modernness, new-found rationality, and (increasingly) its break from precedent and the historical rule(s) of “old white men”, conservatives insist on their place in a long tradition that stretches back to the founding and before, their esteem for the founding principles, the principles of a free and liberal (in the Classical sense!) republic, and the constitution in particular.

now which side do you think would have an advantage in a game where the only rules are “make it plausibly sound like its in the constitution or demanded by historical ideals”?

As much as conservatives complain about the progressive bent of the court from the 60s to today, the progressives actually couldn’t use the the court that effectively. Sure They practiced judicial activism as hard as they could, but it was an uphill battle:

Abortion: ok you stopped the government from enforcing a law; Gay Marriage: OK you broadened the definition of a legal institution which mostly affects some tax incentives; Discrimination law: OK you managed to apply the civil rights Act and not block a congressional action you agree with; Countless expansions of executive power: OK you didn’t act to block other branches of government.

Most of the progressive agenda are simply things you can’t get through the court without stretching its mandate past the limits: increased taxes (the constitution was painfully specific about who had to do that), Banning Guns (a supreme court could refuse to uphold 2A but it couldn’t institute a Ban by itself; how many prosecutors does the judiciary have?), regulating CO2 emissions (you could maybe get lawsuits for damages out of the most progressive court conceivable).

Sure you could skew minor decisions in the direction your party favours, but this is true of every position of authority. The simple truth is progressive policy preferences, almost without fail, demand vast new bureaucracies that the court is almost singularly unable to create on its own, except for some private institutions it can foist liability on.

The Conservative-Libertarian fusionist right however has a vastly different policy program, the correct language and values to achieve it through the court, and is uniquely focussed on things the courts could achieve acting alone.

...

Continue to Part 2 below (do not reply to this comment)

/u/zoink on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-09T17:03:58+00:00

Back in 2011 Dr. Brenner jumped on the scene with medical hotspotting, focusing on a subset of the 5% of patients who account for 50% of health care spending.

Nine years later and the results are not promising.

Brenner's prescription: Pair these patients with front-line care workers who would shepherd them to the social and medical services they needed. Early evidence was promising, the anecdotes inspiring. Brenner boiled the model's potential down to four words and two tantalizing goals: better care, lower costs.

We see a difficulty, the most problematic people are really problematic. For instance, 47 year old Larry Moor who "has hypertension, alcohol addiction, chronic seizures and difficulty walking." Moor missed a rent payment, disappeared from the program, ended up mostly homeless for 2½ year, visiting the emergency room 70 times.

The study: Health Care Hotspotting — A Randomized, Controlled Trial

Background

There is widespread interest in programs aiming to reduce spending and improve health care quality among “superutilizers,” patients with very high use of health care services. The “hotspotting” program created by the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers (hereafter, the Coalition) has received national attention as a promising superutilizer intervention and has been expanded to cities around the country. In the months after hospital discharge, a team of nurses, social workers, and community health workers visits enrolled patients to coordinate outpatient care and link them with social services.

Conclusions

In this randomized, controlled trial involving patients with very high use of health care services, readmission rates were not lower among patients randomly assigned to the Coalition’s program than among those who received usual care.

The New Yorker: The Hot Spotters [Archive] [Outline.com]

NPR: Reduce Health Costs By Nurturing The Sickest? A Much-Touted Idea Disappoints [Archive] [Outline.com]

/u/grendel-khan on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-07T22:57:05+00:00

To kick off this season of housing politics in California, Scott Wiener via Medium, "Working to Pass SB 50 in 2020: New Amendments and New Support". (Part of an epic series on housing, mostly in California.)

This is the third year that the Senator has introduced a mass-upzoning bill; in 2018, it was SB 827, which didn't make it out of its first committe hearing. Last year, it was SB 50, heavily modified some months later, which passed its two committees and was then delayed until this year via an odd procedural move by a single Senator.

Originally, the bill would have overriden local height and density limits near train stations and bus stops. The second version would do the same, but added 'job-rich' areas, delayed implementation in 'vulnerable communities', exempted small-population counties from the height overrides, and crucially, legalized fourplexes statewide. This third version, in response to calls for more local control, delays implementation until 2023 to allow cities to provide their own plans (though fourplex zoning would take place as of 2021). Cities can now propose their own plans; if they don't, the original SB 50 overrides apply.

Specifically, plans would have to not increase total VMT, be feasible to construct, and not disproportionately impact poor areas. (Here are some samples.) This seems to address the explicit concerns that cities have raised. Interestingly, this structure is similar to RHNA, the 1960s-era system where California cities must allocate and build housing according to demand, which clearly they haven't. Unlike RHNA, SB 50 would force change (cities have historically just ignored RHNA), and it's more of a one-time change than an ongoing reallocation process.

You can see how contentious this is at this morning's press conference, where protestors brought a megaphone. The people who weren't happy in the first place remain unhappy (previously). But there are new endorsements, and the bill either will or will not pass the state Senate by the end of the month, which is its deadline.

/u/heterodox_jedi on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-07T13:52:00+00:00

From Slate, "The Military’s Ban of TikTok Is Just the Beginning: The military wants to crack down on apps and services that could betray information about service members. That could be a losing battle."

Excerpt:

The Defense Department hasn’t specified exactly what prompted the ban or what threat TikTok poses beyond warning employees of a “potential risk associated with using the TikTok app.” But the most likely explanation is that the Pentagon is concerned that the data being collected by the video app is accessible to the Chinese government, given that the parent company is headquartered in Beijing.

It concludes: "Eventually, the military may have to move to a whitelisting system in which only a designated set of vetted apps can be downloaded on devices and all others are off-limits by default. Otherwise it’s hard to see how it could possibly keep pace with the growth in mobile threats."

Also from today, we have:

No cellphones, laptops were allowed to go with Army 82nd paratroopers deploying to Middle East

Paratroopers deploying to the Middle East were told to leave behind their cellphones, laptops, tablets and other personal electronic devices, according to Army 82nd Airborne Division officials. The move was made to ensure operational security was maintained during the emergency deployment, which saw 3,500 paratroopers from 1st Brigade Combat Team begin to fly out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait, over the first week of January.

I'm interested to see how all of this plays out. I think that the combination of better tools for analyzing data (including lower-cost memory and facial recognition technology) and the collection of more data (smartphones) is going to lead to more and bigger data breaches, including on the part of foreign governments.

Edit: DoD actually has said what the threat is, if you're on facebook:

A class action lawsuit in California alleges that Video-sharing platform TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, are harvesting and storing personally identifiable information (PII) and other user data in data centers in China.

/u/Barry_Cotter on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-10T07:23:40+00:00

The Global Fertility Crisis

Interesting article on how fertility is a global problem, not a first world only one. Some quotes below.

the much-discussed decline in global birth rates over the last half century is overstated. Adjusting for children who died before age five, fertility in 1963 was just 4.4 kids per woman, and today birth rates are around 2.3 kids per woman. Human birth rates actually peaked in 1963.

Contraceptive technology hastened that shift, but academic research does not support the idea that it caused it. Economists attribute at most 40 percent of the post-1957 fertility decline to improved contraceptive access.

In most societies marriage is delayed until culturally sanctioned initiation rites into adulthood have been completed, and in virtually all societies the transition to adulthood also signifies an end to education. The initiate is no longer primarily a learner and dependent, but now a teacher and contributor. In pre-modern societies with little formal education, high demands for manual labor, and short life expectancies, the ritual transition to adulthood comes early in life. But in most modern societies, thanks to the intense demands for knowledge and human capital in our economy, “ritual adulthood” is achieved later and later, as years of education continue to rise across virtually all occupational categories.

To the extent that Christendom or the American experiment or the continuation of the species matters to you, you have kids. But as society has become wealthier, life expectancies longer, and childbearing costlier, the “price tag” on living out a commitment to a transcendent community has risen. Therefore, fewer people hold such values, and in turn fewer children grow up with them.

It turns out, parents aren’t stupid. They know that by having a baby they will incur material and emotional costs for decades to come. They won’t choose to do so just because they landed a job or the Christmas bonus was bigger this year, and indeed, rising wages could discourage fertility by encouraging parents to spend more time at work. Lifetime fertility is better predicted by lifetime experience of things such as economic volatility (large swings in boom-and-bust cycles) than by lifetime experience of economic growth — greater economic uncertainty yields lower fertility.

In fact, the key economic determiner of fertility isn’t income at all. Rather, at both the macroeconomic and the individual level, the economic variables most predictive of childbearing are asset value, net worth, and homeownership. When the price of rental housing rises, fertility falls.

/u/VampyIceMan on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T20:53:48+00:00

George Friedman, chairman of Geopolitical Futures, recently gave an interview about the Iran situation. There's a few comments he made that stuck out to me and I was wondering what the sub's take on them are

When you heard the news that Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani had met his earthly reward, what was your instant reaction? What in the world was the head of Iranian intelligence doing just south of Baghdad airport? The last thing you do is allow your head of intelligence to go in harm’s way. You don’t want him captured, you don’t want him questioned. Yet there he was, meeting with the head of Iraqi intelligence. So my first thought was, “This is not how you plan a major attack. This is what it looks like when you're panicking.”

We know the Iranian economy is in shambles because of sanctions. We know there has been a great deal of unrest. We know the sphere of influence Iran has developed ran through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. There have been riots in Lebanon. The Israelis are hammering the Iranians daily in Syria, and the Russians are not protecting them. And in Iraq there were anti-Iranian demonstrations.

So, we know that the Iranian position is under tremendous pressure. Normally, at this time, you protect your top assets, and you send other people. So, from the intelligence point of view, this is not the way it works, but it’s what they did.

What would cause panic? The Iranians are wondering if the U.S. has penetrated Iranian security. We seem to have been hitting targets, and that seems to disturb them, but even more disturbing is that Soleimani was meeting the head of Iraqi intelligence. And if you’re going to have these two guys meet, you’ll do it in Tehran. Or someplace safe. You will not do it outside the airport.

Q: The view we tend to get in The New York Times and other publications is: The sky is falling. What do you think of reports like that? Part of the picture is that the internal politics of the United States are such that whatever the president does, it will be catastrophic—in the press. But it’s also that Iran has power, particularly covert power. It does not have nuclear weapons. It does not have a military force that can challenge United States.

The United States, for that matter, doesn’t have a military force to challenge the 80 million Iranians. We’ve learned, hopefully, that occupying a hostile country is hard—and it doesn’t always work out as you’d want, so we’re not going to go to war. They may strike at us, but we have shown a remarkable capability of striking at them, and now we’re threatening their leaders. There’s a huge psychological crisis in Iran. Their security apparatus, which is one of the best in the world, has been compromised.

/u/AshLael on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-10T11:55:22+00:00

So, Australian fires again. They’re heading for where I live now, probably will hit in two days time or so. I dunno what’s going to happen but I’ve got a bag packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice in case we need to evacuate suddenly. I think I’ll still have a house a week from now, but there’s no guarantees.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about the broader culture war implications. I want to ask other Australians what their sense of opinion on the ground is.

Clearly, there’s been a very vocal contingent wanting to tie the fires to climate policy. That perspective is very well represented on reddit, in the media, and in general among the political class. Scott Morrison is actively resisting it, which has made him public enemy number 1 for this contingent. There were protests in all the big cities today demanding his resignation etc.

But... I don’t sense any real movement here. Obviously the politically active left is feeling very energised at the moment, but I feel like these are the same people who always wanted a more aggressive climate policy. When I talk to average, non-political people about the fires - and it’s impossible not to, it’s virtually the only topic of conversation any more - I am absolutely not getting that perspective echoed.

My sense is that politically non-engaged people - i.e. swing voters - are very much seeing this as a fire management issue. They’re feeling the fires bearing down on them, and the idea that a tax would solve this issue is something that doesn’t even come into consideration. They’ve all got opinions about water bombing aircraft and back burning and fire breaks and things like that, but no one seems to be talking about climate policy.

What do other aussies sense? Do you feel like the “climate emergency” rhetoric in the media is resonating with actual people who weren’t already foot soldiers in the climate wars? Or is there a big disconnect emerging here between the political class and everyone else?

/u/Im_not_JB on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T23:29:56+00:00

Yet another top-level Iran comment, but I don't see a better place to put this.

I listen to Rational Security. Yes, I still do, even though they're rabidly anti-Trump enough that it often leads to eye rolls. The reason why I do is because every so often, they have a genuinely unique take that I don't get from my other sources. Last week's episode provided one of those. (Side note: I'm often even further behind than just a week; it's actually kind of nice to be a couple weeks behind, because you can see how whatever situation they're aghast about has been resolved.)

This was recorded after the attack on the US embassy in Iraq, but before the US strike that killed Soleimani and al-Muhandis, so it was critically before all of the opponents of Trump dutifully found their way to claiming that the strike was obviously bad for the United States. Tamara Cofman Wittes points out that it appears as though the Iraqi government must have (at least) tacitly supported/accepted the attack on the embassy, as the primary responsibility for the defense of an embassy is always the country hosting the embassy. This was further supported by two additional claims. First, when the Iraqi government finally decided that they wanted the attack to stop, they put their foot down and the attackers stopped. Second, while there have been a variety of protesters/attackers who have gone after Iraqi buildings within the Green Zone, those efforts have been shut down with far more force than the attack on the US embassy was. All of the folks on the podcast talk about how this indicates that the political situation with the government of Iraq is incredibly complicated in a sort of general struggle for influence between the US and Iran.

To me, this brought an entirely new meaning to the fact that 'the Soleimani strike' also killed al-Muhandis... and that it did so in the heart of Iraq, literally on the way to the Baghdad airport. Post-strike, this has been interpreted as, "How can you be so ham-fisted, going after an Iranian general in a way that is only going to piss off our Iraqi partners, who we need," with much airtime being given to the (non-binding) Iraqi parliament bit about asking/telling the US to leave. But given this precursor, I can't help but wonder if this strike was three quarters a message to Iran, and one quarter a message to Iraq, saying, "We're the big dick here. If you continue to do shit that is against our interests to flirt with Iran, like allowing this embassy attack to occur, it's not going to go well for you."

/u/honeypuppy on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-11T10:07:07+00:00

Ezra Klein interviews Nathan Robinson on his new book, Why You Should Be A Socialist

I've been reading a fair amount of Nathan Robinson through his magazine Current Affairs. I'm not a socialist, but I feel like I haven't read many socialists, and I've been concerned that I may have unfairly dismissed them based on a straw or weak man understanding of them. While I may often not agree with their conclusions, I've found Robinson's articles to generally be well-argued and thought-provoking. His new book is explicitly intended to be trying to convince open-minded non-socialists. I haven't read the whole thing, but I have read the Google books excerpt and have listened to this podcast. (Maybe /u/ScottAlexander could review it).

One of Robinson's core points that he keeps coming back to is that he feels that it is viscerally grotesque that we live in a world where some people have enormous wealth that they spend on luxuries while others are in poverty. I can certainly understand this perspective. But I do not think disgust can be the sole basis for a political philosophy. I would like to see a clear alternative and the reasons why its pros and cons outweigh the status quo.

However, Klein notes that Robinson does not spell out what his ideal society would look like. This is very disappointing, I thought this book might finally be the place where Robinson would do more than just criticise capitalism and actually propose and evaluate alternatives. I worry that Robinson's whole body of work is basically just one big Nirvana fallacy, little more than "capitalism kinda sucks at X, therefore socialism".

Klein also defends the potential for capitalism to create large amounts of innovation, which Robinson does not dispute. However, Robinson again goes back to his grotesqueness argument. He claims that even if capitalism maximises whatever metric you're evaluating, it's just so grotesque that there are billionaires that could help people (but don't) that it's still unconscionable.

I find that whole line of reasoning profoundly unconvincing. At the limit, it would endorse a form of "mad egalitarianism", where everyone is equally wretchedly poor, over a society with some moderately poor people and some extremely rich people.

I do not think Robinson desires such a society, but he seems rather uninterested in providing an affirmative case for why he believes socialism will help the poorest of society in the long run. It really just does seem to him to be about reducing inequality and "injustice" regardless of the cost. I find that deeply troubling.

I can understand tolerating a small trade-off of economic growth for greater equality, but a society run by people who don't seem to care about economic growth so long as there aren't any billionaires seems likely to be worse for almost everyone in the long run. (Here I'm influenced by Tyler Cowen's argument that if economic growth had consistently been moderately lower in the past, almost everyone would be much poorer today).

Overall, if Robinson is supposed to be the steelman of socialism, I'm thoroughly unimpressed. Is there someone better out there? Or is this really all socialists have to offer?

/u/Way-a-throwKonto on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-10T10:48:39+00:00

I'm not sure if this is CW, so better safe than sorry.

I studied English Social Credit intensely for a couple years in high school after learning about it from Robert Heinlein's book, For Us, the Living. Many years later, I still don't know how to handle it - does it have any bearing on modern economics, should I just abandon it?

The Social Credit movement itself is not particularly of concern to me. It was a jumbled mess, not least because C. H. Douglas, its founder, was a notoriously dense communicator, as well as being a bit anti Semitic and conspiracy theorist-y in his later years. After a Social Credit party attempted a monetary reform in Alberta, Canada that was almost completely different from what Douglas and his associates originally came up with (expiring money!), it fizzled out and became a bog standard conservative party.

What is of concern to me is the original economic idea. This pamphlet-length paper from 1929 gives a reasonably ok overview of what it is.

It's always hard for me to put it in words, but I'll explain it as I understand it below. My question is in the last paragraph.

-Basically all money (paper and digital) that non-financial businesses and consumers have ultimately originate from bank loans, by way of loans to businesses. Money is created when loans are made, and destroyed when paid.

-Money's life follows a path: bank - > business - > workers/consumers (WCs) - > business - > bank. It can cycle between WCs and businesses many times before paid back.

-Whenever money cycles between businesses and WCs too long (waylaid as "savings"), loans go unpaid, and business suffers; this by itself is usually self correcting though.

-The problem is when capital expands via savings, instead of loans. Savings-investors ultimately will want the principle back in full, so they can plough it in again, or use it for their own purposes. This is vital to the functioning of a capital-based modern economy.

-But remember the saver's money - it must ultimately be paid back. There are now two claims for one amount of money; one of them must go unpaid.

-In the near term, this "gap" is usually satisfied by increasing loans. Bigger loans today pay for the bank-loan payments and the savings-capital dues of yesterday. This is a broad cause of inflation, and is a large reason why economic growth is more like a terminal value rather than an instrumental one in economic policy.

-At some point, the economy's capacity to make new loans becomes less than the amount needed to bridge the "gap." This results in bank-loans being written off, and the writing off of capital dues (likely, I think, the unprofitable ones). This is a recession.

-When enough capital and loans have been written off, banks are willing to make new loans bigger than what's coming due (since what's due has gone down through writeoffs), and the economy enters a recovery.

-This is usually aided by the government making loans when no others are willing; the government becomes a pit into which the bad debt and capital goes.

That's the portrayal of how the economy works, per English Social Crediters, so far as I can tell.

Right now, the government waits for everything to fall apart and then issues "loans" it will never expects to, on net, be paid back. (It was worse when the gold standard was still in effect).

Social Crediters take this one step further; this is essentially printing money, so why not just outright do it? Instead of messing around with a ballooning "national debt", just figure out a certain appropriate % of GDP - corresponding roughly to economic growth, so perhaps 3%ish- and cut a check to every household like a basic income. Right now that works out to about $150 a month per citizen.

This, Social Crediters claim, should make it so that ballooning private and public debt - economic growth at all costs - should become less of a priority in the macro sense. The "gap" is filled with honest, printed money, instead of abusing private sector loans and then offloading it onto the national debt when it gets too hot. Benefits include smoothing out the business cycle, creating a less hectic and more long-term focused business environment, reducing cost-push inflation, and helping individuals out with the beginnings of a basic income.

It sounds too good to be true, which makes me pretty suspicious of it, but it doesn't seem to come up much in modern discourse. Why is that? Has it been discredited (pardon the pun)? Is it accepted, and out there under a different name? From what I've heard, MMT looks like it if you squint hard enough. But I'm not sure.

/u/Beej67 on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-06T14:40:26+00:00

File under (guns) (self promotion) (Collin Woodward's 11 Nations) (GIS Mapping)

Geographic Evidence that Gun Deaths are Cultural

I'm pretty sure I haven't posted this here yet, and searched to be sure. If it's a repost, please flog me. This article really exploded in the past few weeks. Basically someone over on r/dataisbeautiful posted a link to an online GIS system that mapped gun deaths per capita, gun homicides per capita, and gun suicides per capita, on a county basis in the USA, then proceeded to go through the usual 'red state bashing.' But when you look at the maps themselves, there's this wild pattern where above average suicide flips to above average homicide, and visa versa. There are very few locations where the trends coincide. It's almost creepy. The linked article moves through some screenshots to show this pattern.

Further, the band of high suicide through the southeast seems to follow Collin Woodward's 11 Nations boundary between "Appalachia" and "The Deep South," and also seems to follow the boundary for his "The Far West" region fairly well too. So it's not just 'red state blue state,' nor is it 'urban rural.' It's deeper still.

/u/georgioz on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-09T15:47:42+00:00

Peter Singer published an opinion where he specifically thinks killing of Suleimani was not justified. This is the crux of the argument:

If senior State Department officials believe that the US is engaged in a just war with Iran, as it was with Japan in 1943, the killing of Suleimani makes sense. According to standard just war theory, you may kill your enemies whenever you have the chance to do so, as long as the importance of the target outweighs the so-called collateral damage of harm to innocents.

But the US is not at war with Iran. The US Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to declare war, and it has never declared war on Iran. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi suggested that congressional leaders should have been consulted on the plan to kill Suleimani. If it was an act of war, she is right.

Now there are multiple things that immediately jumped into my mind. The first one is more CW related so let's deal with that first - the fact, that it is Suleimani who provoked these responses. On one level I understand it - there is a lot of buzz around this event and one has better chance to get attention, especially with critique of the attack. On the other side it really makes me feel uneasy. USA conducted drone strikes for decades with thousands of casualties - 20% or more of them civilians. Both this and previous administration endorsed attacks even in countries that USA is not at war with - such as Somalia, Pakistan or Yemen. The fact that it takes Suleimani to generate the buzz - probably also due to the infamous Trump Derangement Syndrome where any critique of presidency can get traction - makes me uneasy. Is Suleimani really where we make ethical red line of drone strike practice?

Now to be fair that drone strikes were widely criticized before. And there were prophetic voices like in this piece where author says

If President Obama loses in November, drones will be his most dangerous legacy. Drone strikes that began under George W. Bush in Pakistan have vastly expanded under Obama to Somalia and Yemen.

That was back in 2012. Obama won, but nothing was done to curb this dangerous legacy. But if one looks at ethical and legal sides of the question Obama administration bears a lot of blame here. I hope that also this episode will bring to the forefront the institutional and procedural matters as opposed the logic "it is good if our guy does it and let's pray that our opponents won't". This message is very relevant for other CW topics such as free speech and others.

In the end I am interested in the whole situation also as a litmus test of the overall Culture War. Suleimani assassination - at least to me - seems like naturally controversial situation where it is hard to paint it with one color. One can see pros and cons from both sides. I just hope that for once it can be used to think outside of tribal affiliation and towards thinking more in institutional and procedural framework.

/u/mcjunker on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T21:31:23+00:00

Right, so. I’d like to register my understanding of the current tension between Iran and the US.

Conventional war between us will unfold with ghastly predictability- our army kicks the piss out of theirs, at which point we get bogged down in a horrific insurgency that we have zero chance of defeating and which will make the worst days of Iraq look like a touch football game in middle school.

We know this. Iran knows this. So traditionally, we very carefully make sure not to invade Iran, and they in turn very carefully ensure they do not provoke an invasion.

The problem is the Bomb. Every country with a nuclear weapon has a Get Out of Free Card when it comes to being invaded. Iran is incentivized to make one, because then the basic equation that governs their foreign policy changes in their favor.

If they acquired the Bomb, one of two things will happen. Either they’ll flex their muscles and assert their power by closing the Strait of Hormuz, which is like crushing the nuts of the world economy in a steel vice, or they’ll stay chill... at which point the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who they have a regional Cold War with will try to acquire the Bomb too to even the scale. The first option is the nightmare scenario that keeps John Bolton’s mustache awake at night. The second isn’t much better- two nuclear armed bands of religious fanatics who hate each other and have boundless faith in God. With luck, the winds will change and 80% of the fallout will drift to some other continent, but either way you can kiss the global supply chain goodbye.

Iran is and always has been about 4-6 months of hard work away from constructing a usable nuclear bomb; 4-6 months is the perpetual Doomsday Clock that occasionally comes to life and ticks its way towards that aforementioned invasion that every knows will be a disaster for everyone. But the simple fact is that America is incentivized to invade anyway if Iran starts that Doomsday Clock ticking too long; it’ll be fucking awful, but still easier than invading a country with a nuke, and still better than a nuclear exchange.

And in the meantime, the Cold War between Iran and KSA simmers on by proxy, keeping the hate and power politics alive and well and making sure everybody is on edge all the time.

It is, to put it bluntly, a fucked up situation for all players.

Obama found a way out- the Nuclear Deal. He took a sword out and hacked away at the Gordian Knot, separating the feud between Iran and the KSA/USA from the question of nuclear armament entirely. They were now officially two different questions.

Iran had to agree to destroy what progress they had made in developing the Bomb, promise not to start up again, and allow observers into their country in perpetuity to monitor them to prevent sneaky Bomb making. In exchange, they get increased access to the world market, the freedom to pursue nuclear energy distinct from weaponry, and a great big stack of cash- the holdings we froze back when they first dare piss us off in 1979. If at any time they barred the observers or fucked around trying to start up the 4-6 months clock again, all sanctions would kick back in and we would be free to go back to plan A- invasion, piss kicking, horrific insurgency, etc.

It was a stroke of diplomatic genius- the nearest parallel I can think of is perhaps Nixon going to China. It didn’t even cost us much- we were still free to go on the warpath if we needed to, and the cash we paid out was Iranian to start with. The only problem with it was that a goodly portion of the increased revenue and the fat stack of cash would be used to fund terrorism and tyranny by Iran’s allies in the region. But fuck it, says I. Better an extra couple of bombs in Beirut and Sadr City than nuclear holocaust.

And it worked. Shit calmed down. Inspectors went in and verified good faith compliance on the Iranians’ part. There were hiccups- Iranians were found with stuff they shouldn’t have, plants were shut down, stocks disposed of. But it worked.

And then Trump unilaterally backed out of the agreement and imposed sanctions anyway. And acted outraged when the Iranians failed to uphold their end of the deal- the deal that he’d unilaterally backed out of.

All the rest of it- the Embassy attacks, Suleimani getting got, the missiles, the diplomatic posturing, the Twitter slapfights- whatever. Same difference. Maybe shit might have kicked off, maybe not. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Trump has welded the regional Cold War back to Iranian nuclear weapons again. That means we are back to where we started, perpetually 4-6 months away from a horrific invasion that will ruin everybody involved. Except now there’s fresh blood to avenge and more broken promises hanging around our neck and less international support for cracking down on Iran.

I do not believe that Trump fucked up at all by killing Suleimani or by talking tough when the Iranians shrieked about it. Killing Suleimani wasn’t dumb, unless the rumors that he was lured into the kill zone with talks of truce are accurate- even then, killing the Maestro conducting the orchestra of Iranian Guerrilla Warfare would have been a worthy objective marred by a dishonorable method, which may sound irrelevant but will bite us in the ass next time we need to negotiate in good faith for realsies. So fingers crossed that the Iraqi PM was talking bullshit.

But I do believe that Trump fucked up by tearing the guts out of the Iran Nuclear Deal with no alternative to fall back on other than the Doomsday Clock of the status quo. In my opinion he has fucked up Iranian-American relations for a generation, until the preteens of today grow up and become the old men who direct policy when their elders and the elders’ sons die off. With luck, everybody will stay rational and self-interested and keep poking each other in the eye at sustainably relaxed levels until a new rapport can be established.

/u/onyomi on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-09T21:18:40+00:00

I'm still rather baffled by Biden's continued polling strength: he's old, he's weird, and, most importantly, he's currently under suspicion for a kind of corruption that, whatever the reality, feels subjectively similar to the thing Democrats recently insisted was impeachable behavior for Trump. Of course it could be that Democrats are just not on the same page and the people who thought impeachment was a good idea are not the people supporting Biden, but it just seems bizarre, strategically. If impeachment was meant to be a 2020 electoral weapon I feel like nominating Biden not only defuses it, it arguably turns it into more of an asset for Trump.

One theory I've heard is that black support of Biden is very high because they associate him with Obama and he did a lot of outreach to their communities during the Obama years. Though only 12% percent of voters in the last presidential election black voters are presumably a higher percentage (can't easily find numbers right now) of Democratic primary voters, and they seem to prefer "establishment candidates."

Besides the Obama connection I can see he may have a kind of "glad handing," old school politician charisma or appeal, especially perhaps to center-lefts who want to vote Democratic but aren't down with all the latest trends in wokeness, but otherwise he still seems a pretty weak nominee. There also seems to be a perception that he is the guy to stand up to Trump's "bullying" or is otherwise a strong opponent vs. Trump in particular but I have no strong opinion on whether that's true. Any other thoughts on Biden's seemingly improbable continued polling strength?

/u/JTarrou on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-12T03:02:04+00:00

Now that my ban has expired, let's discuss what we've learned from the recent Iran/WW3/End of All Things debacle, how it affects our priors, and how precisely our models reflect reality.

First, the caveats. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. However much we learn, the world is a big place and the most learned of us knows comparatively nothing. Predicting the future is a fool's game, especially when disparate groups of opposed people with their own internal politics are involved.

Second, the victory lap. This turned out more or less as predicted. Iran felt the need to save face by launching an attack of some sort, but did not do something that required a response (and made it clear that this was what they were doing). Those whose model of the world is that Trump is so unhinged that he can never stop escalating tensions have yet another mark against them. Trump seemed to be letting them save face, when the complication happened.

Third, the complication. Iran shot down a civilian airliner (as has been noted, the US did something similar at one point years ago). But it wasn't a US airliner, so it's not a provocation of the US, it's just an international tragedy. If it had been, I think we'd be having a different conversation, but such is the nature of chance and international relations with missiles. Ukraine isn't going to do anything to Iran, Trump can just sit back and let them look bad. I'm actually surprised the Iranians copped to it, but kudos to them for owning it. These sorts of things can happen, and if nothing else, this takes the sting out of the similar mistake the US made in this context.

Fourth, calibration. This is left as an exercise for the reader. For myself, a failure teaches me more than a success, so I learn relatively little here. I did think that the Iranians would blame the jews or the US for the airliner, and while I could be snide and note that they still are claiming that we made them do it by being all mean, they have accepted responsibility, which does change my priors about Iran a bit.

/u/VelveteenAmbush on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T05:23:42+00:00

So let's game this out. We're still kinda under the fog of current events, so this may end up looking foolish with hindsight, but from what I can tell right now, Iran attacked US bases in Iraq, managed to kill no US troops, our missile defenses didn't activate, and Canadian troops were anomalously moved out of the way this morning. Iran announces that this was their retaliation, that Suleimani is hereby avenged, and that if we don't escalate, it ends here. Trump puts out a generally positive tweet so Americans can sleep tonight and promises to make a statement in the morning, giving everything at least a few hours to cool down, scrambled Iranian jets to land, etc. Everything about this looks like Iran tipped us off one way or another that they'd be making a fake attack on US bases to save face in front of their people without provoking further retaliation.

So, what does Trump say tomorrow morning?

One move would be to spit in Iran's face: "Don't worry, this was all a bunch of theatre by Iran so they didn't look like total bitches in front of their angry mobs, they basically told us about it in advance which is why everyone was out of harm's way." Presumably he'd make it a little more plausibly deniable, as long as the subtext gets through to the American electorate.

(Sorry for "bitches," there's no less offensive alternative that conveys the visceral power dynamic that I can think of. We're all just primates and one of the simple machines of primate power dynamics is the bitch-slap.)

Cons of doing this is that it would piss off Iran and make them more likely to engage in further regional shenanigans and to restart their nuclear R&D. And next time we're in this scenario, the other side might remember this move and decide they can't afford to fake their retaliation, which would both raise the likelihood of real retaliation and (possibly? slightly?) deter them from getting into this situation in the first place. It also stirs up the muck a little and destabilizes things at least marginally compared to just grinning and bearing it.

Pros are that Trump himself would save face in front of his people for not counter-retaliating despite his red line. Iran would lose face, it would potentially destabilize the regime if Trump's message penetrated to the Iranian people, and there's probably nothing they could do to avoid that (even a real retaliation at that stage would look weak and weird after the dust had already settled).

My prediction is that Trump is going to find some way to get the message out that Iran's attack was fake. I think he'll hint at it in his official statement and then he, Pompeo and Esper will talk with every media organization who will answer the phone and tell them the full story under condition of anonymity. The story gets out, and Trump actually lands this whole shitshow looking pretty good.

/u/oerpli on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-06T08:57:18+00:00

Apparently, Ricky Gervais held a speech last night and "offended" "Hollywood". Here's the best video I could find:

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1214003226938351617

Benny Johnson seems to be excited that finally someone stepped up to these posh actors to tell them what's what.

But is it just me or is this a very regular occurrence? And also, isn't it strange that a guy known for slaughtering 'holy cows' is invited and given a platform year after year to do so? Maybe the cows aren't so holy after all. r/television also seems to like it. Not sure, if that's telling or not (i.e: are they to movies what r/politics is to politics?).

He made some remarks concerning political acceptance speeches:

So if you win an award tonight don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So accept your award and fuck off

I would be a bit interested whether this had an effect on people usually known for their political speeches.

For the rest of the monologue: A few fun jokes here and there. Nothing outstanding.

/u/PolishBearSneeze on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T05:11:30+00:00

Saved by the Bell is getting a remake and will star a transgirl as 'the most popular girl at Bayside' with the plot synopsis as follows: When California governor Zack Morris gets into hot water for closing too many low-income high schools, he proposes they send the affected students to the highest performing schools in the state — including Bayside High. The influx of new students gives the over privileged Bayside kids a much needed and hilarious dose of reality.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/saved-by-the-bell-reboot

(Buzzfeed article is kind of fun if your idea of fun is using Brittany Spears GIFs to not really make a point or a joke, which mine definitely is and it just feels right in the spirit of the remake)

I'd like to say that I am 100% excited and interested in this trainwreck of a possibility. I un-ironically loved Saved by the Bell, the two films (especially Hawaiian Style but Wedding in Las Vegas too), and the College Years (Oh My God Zack, did something happen to the monkey?) and watched every episode 2-3x and the films just as often.

I think I'm so excited because the show is so frivolous but still somewhat heartfelt if you lived it in the moment, because Zach Morris is the governor, Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley are stated to be in it, and it's going to have a transgirl in there so it will make LOUD NOICES basically everywhere.

I think if this was like, Baywatch, or it was going to be on NBC Monday's at 9pm I would be a bit more like I usually am with shows (like it being announced white nationalists were the focus of Watchmen or the Witcher would have random POC strewn about to culturally appropriate my folklore) which is to say, unhappy.

/u/AshLael on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-07T23:54:55+00:00

Monash University researchers claim to have revolutionised battery design using sulfur. Commercial application predicted to take two to four years.

The article explains the engineering challenges of sulfur batteries and what they did to solve them. Basically they can hold a lot of energy, but they swell in size when that happens and that causes structural stress and breakdown that breaks circuits. The solution apparently has been to make the batteries with a kind of mesh/net design with polymer structural support that allows the batteries to “breathe” without breaking.

I know nothing about battery design, but Monash is a highly credible institution and they’re saying that they have the breakthrough, not that it’s coming. This seems worth getting excited about.

In theory sulfur batteries should be a lot cheaper than conventional batteries as they don’t need rare earth minerals and sulfur is highly abundant. So we’ll see how it all pans out, but this could end up being the missing ingredient needed for low-cost solar power to become reliable enough to fully displace traditional coal power. Obviously this has major implications for climate change politics, economics, etc.

/u/cjt09 on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-09T18:41:21+00:00

FiveThirtyEight has launched their 2020 Democratic Primary predictions. Right now they're giving Biden a 47% chance of winning a plurality of delegates, and Sanders a 24% chance of winning a plurality. The takeaway is that FiveThirtyEight considers Warren and Buttigieg to be pretty unlikely to win the nomination, and considers everyone else (Yang, Klobuchar, Bloomberg, etc.) to very much be longshots.

Modeling primaries and accurately predicting the results is notoriously difficult, especially as candidates drop out, achieve surprise wins in certain states, or earn media coverage. I don't know of anyone else who has attempted to create a serious statistical model of primary elections at this scale, so I'm curious how robust this will turn out. My general opinion is that FiveThirtyEight tends to know what they're doing when it comes to creating data models, and it's clear that they put a ton of work into this, but it's such a difficult problem that I'm sure there are improvements to be made. I'm fascinated to see how they do and where their model performs well and where it falls short.

/u/jbstjohn on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T22:15:55+00:00

So, I was shocked to see How Star Wars and its Score by John Williams reinforces our prejudices

It does make some fair points -- I found it odd and weirdly racist that the evil trade ambassadors (have to giggle a bit reading that) had Asian accents, but misses that Watto (who sells slaves on Tatooine and owns Anakin and his mother) has a Jewish accent. I guess that didn't fit with calling anti-Asian.

Anyway, it then hits the score, e.g. "Williams’s music associates the “good guys” with the grand orchestral style of the European Romantics (think of the beautifully hummable melodies for Luke, Leia and Rey), while the themes for the “bad guys” are expressed in the vocabulary of Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern music."

Not that I've really thought about this, but the only one I can think of, The Imperial March, associated with Vader (dum dum dum dum-de-dum dum-de-dum) seems very much a classical western march to my ignorant ear.

So where is this going? I mean, attacking something most people quite like is always worth a few provocateur points, but this seems to cost a bunch of credibility points to do so.

It continues: "This may seem incidental or unimportant. But this music reinforces, even at an unconscious level, the primacy of Western culture against an imagined “other” that reproduces harmful prejudices in pop culture that, given the power of mass media, has larger political consequences."

To me that's a bunch of claims of biasing without any evidence at all, but whatever. He also adds "“Indiana Jones,” possibly the most famous modern example of cinematic Orientalism." Which I don't realize understand at all. Archeology and fighting Nazis is Orientalism? I mean, yes, I guess you do have some developed westerner vs third world country stuff, but it seems more than a stretch. (*Edit, okay, I haven't watched these for 20+ years, and clearly forgot a bunch from Temple of Doom that is pretty bad.)

Okay, skipping all that stuff to get to what I think is the gold, and in a way, it makes me sad.

"The practice of hiring white composers to imitate non-Western music when it comes time to introduce bad guys, usually with a European-style orchestra, continues to this day. <big snip> We should also think about who gets to score films in the first place and how those choices contribute to the longevity of this type of music in contemporary filmmaking. <snip> There are plenty of young composers of non-Western descent whose work deserves to be heard and to frame our stories, and there are plenty of established artists, such as Tan Dun, Joe Hisaishi or A.R. Rahman, who could be hired for Hollywood assignments." [emphasis added]

So seeing this pushed my cynicism meter away from much CW stuff being good intentions gone awry to straight entryism and a push for more resources. And, of course, no mention of actual talent, because I think John Williams and Hans Zimmer (also banged on) are pretty damn amazing when you look at what they've produced.

At least there has been some push back against it.

I guess this is a bit "boo outgroup", but the useful direction I'd want to take it in is, how do you recognize entryism vs, e.g. honest attempts to be more fair and inclusive and provide, e.g. equality of opportunity, and when it is entrying, how do you resist?

/u/IGI111 on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-11T15:32:34+00:00

So Iran just admitted to shooting down the airliner by mistake.

Definitely not a good look for their military, but I can't help but feel for all the victims and the Ukrainians whose planes are apparently SAM magnets.

Hajizadeh partially blamed the US for the downing of the plane, saying Iran was already on high alert following the US’s warning that it could target 52 sites in Iran, and amid rising tensions with the country.

He said the plane was shot down by a short-range missile and was misidentified as a cruise missile by an air defense operator.

The operator identified the plane as a cruise missile but was unable to contact the central air defense command to confirm it. So he had to choose between shooting it down or not, and he choose to do it, Hajizadeh said. The operator had 10 seconds to make a decision.

Hajizadeh accepted full responsibility for the incident and said once it became clear what had happened, he thought: “I wish I was dead.”

/u/Hailanathema on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-10T23:20:37+00:00

New in the news from Fox: AOC riles Dems by refusing to pay party dues, bankrolling colleagues' opponents

First some background from the article that I didn't know until now.:

The DCCC assigned the 237 House Democrats (including four delegates) a certain amount of dues they must pay to help the party win elections in November. It's a routine practice for both Democrats and Republican House members. Amounts vary based on the level of leadership and committee assignments.

More high-profile members have to pony up more money to the DCCC, with Pelosi having the highest dues at $1 million. Newer members or less prolific fundraisers have the smallest goals of $150,000 for the two-year cycle.

The October final dues report shows that Pelosi already contributed $900,000 of her $1 million goal. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer paid $600,000 of his $900,000 dues and Rep. James Clyburn paid $350,000 of his $800,000. DCCC Chair Bustos already paid all of her $575,000 in dues.

Of course these "dues" aren't legally binding. I guess the punishment is the DCCC/NRCC withold money from your campaign? Seems like not much of a threat if you have your own fundraising network.

Why Is AOC withholding money from the DCCC? Back in March (perhaps prompted in part by AOC's own victory) the DCCC announced a policy of blacklisting any vendors who work with challengers to Democrat incumbents.

“For me personally, I’m not paying D-trip dues,” said Ocasio-Cortez, using slang for the DCCC and citing a “myriad of reasons.”

“One, I don’t agree with the policy around blacklisting groups that help progressive candidates,” she said, referring to a DCCC effort to sideline vendors who assist challengers to members of Congress. “I think we need to evolve as a party and make room for that.”

Naturally, some Democrats are not happy about AOC backing their challengers.

She solicited nearly $18,000 in donations for Marie Newman, who is taking on current Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, a conservative Democrat who opposes abortion. She also gave Newman an additional $5,000 directly from her campaign account. Ocasio-Cortez also raised nearly $35,000 in online donations for progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, who is trying to defeat Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas.

“Certainly, these are new times,” Cuellar said of his colleague's effort to oust him, “which is something that we certainly don't agree with.”

Cuellar said Democrats should be focused on the larger goal of beating Republicans and retaining the House majority. “To have people try to purify the caucus because they don't agree with them – 100 percent, I certainly don't agree with that.”

A general theme in the article is lots of Democrats seem to think what policies one supports or votes for are second to actually getting elected (a very practical concern). Is this like what happened with the Tea Party and Republicans? Concerted efforts to get more progressive members of Congress elected seem to me analogous to the Tea party's attempts to oust RINO's. Seems likely to contribute to our present political polarization (and its increase). What are people's thoughts? Will such efforts succeed? Will attempts to enforce more ideological purity result in a loss of moderate districts (kinda doesn't seem like it did for Republicans).

/u/LetsStayCivilized on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-10T23:39:11+00:00

There's a movie about a conflict between students, with on one side internationally-minded students, and on the other creepy anime fans who support traditional culture and accuse the others of being unpatriotic.

I'm talking, of course, of Our Shining Days, a 2017 Chinese musical that features this musical battle that you guys might appreciate - jump to 3:50 for the main musical part, in which we see a matching of corresponding Chinese and Western instruments, finishing with the intervention of the Suona, a high-pitched Chinese horn that no Western instrument can match, leading to a Chinese victory (that instrument is notorious for drowning out other instruments, and is made to be heard from afar at weddings and funerals).

The movie plays with one "Chinese culture war" theme, which is that some intellectuals are suspected of giving too much respect to western ideas and cultures, and disregarding their own (I haven't watched the full movie, and am going on what a Chinese friend told me).

(I posted about this earlier in a subthread but thought it was worth expanding a bit)

/u/Ashadyna on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-09T22:37:09+00:00

CBO has a dynamic tool to forecast how changes in the Federal minimum wage affect employer and hourly wages.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55681

For example, according to the tool, a $15 Federal minimum wage, indexed to the median wage, implemented in 2025, and also applying to tipped workers would:

Decrease employment by ~1 million
Move ~1.5 million out of poverty and ~0.3 million into poverty (net change 1.2 million)
Decrease real family income by $10 billion
Decrease earnings for high-earners (above 600% FPL), but increase earnings for all other earning categories.
Give the biggest earnings boost to workers below the poverty level.

My takeaways:

I trust CBO and this doesn't seem too bad. My prior was that a $15 Federal minimum wage would have much worse impacts.
The policy seems to definitely help low-earners.
$30 billion is taken from high-earners, $20 billion is given to low-earners, and $10 billion is thrown in the dumpster.
In terms of efficiency, how would this compare to collecting an additional $30 billion from high-wage earners via income tax, and giving low-wage workers a tax credit?

/u/ncdmn on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-11T06:39:39+00:00

Anyone read the stewardship priorities of Blackrock, which provides index funds and ETFs, for the voting and governance on the companies it holds in its indexes? A great number of people with retirement accounts will hold some of their funds, and unbeknownst to them their money is being used to thrust identity politics upon boards of companies across the country:

https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/publication/blk-stewardship-priorities-final.pdf

In relation to board qualifications and effectiveness, we will continue to engage with companies to better understand their progress on improving diversity in the boardroom. In our view, diverse boards make better decisions. BlackRock recognizes that diversity has multiple dimensions, including personal factors such as gender, ethnicity, and age; as well as professional characteristics, such as a director’s industry, area of expertise, and geographic location.If there is no progress on enhancing diversity at the board level within a reasonable time frame, we may hold nominating and/or governance committees accountable for an apparent lack of commitment to board effectiveness. Further, we will encourage governance structures that enhance accountability (e.g. proxy access in the U.S.), limit entrenchment (e.g. regular election of directors and board evaluations), and align voting rights and economic interests (e.g. one share, one vote).

Index funds make up an average of 22% of the shares on a given company in the S&P500. The more you passively invest in them via their 401k, the more power you give them to perhaps vote against your interests in the form of social justice, climate activism, identity politics, if your interests run contrary to the index fund's governance model. How do you avoid this as an investor? Run your own index?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-01-09/the-hidden-dangers-of-the-great-index-fund-takeover

/u/[deleted] on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-07T17:22:35+00:00

[deleted]

/u/Shakesneer on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T17:39:06+00:00

Meta comment: I think we should have more topic-specific containment threads. I liked the way we shoved all Kavanaugh coverage to one thread when that was the biggest story. I wish we had done that when impeachment emerged. And I wish we had one now for Iran. I suppose someone will have to make a new top-level for Trump's announcement earlier, and another will follow when reactions to Trump emerge. I would make one myself, but I don't want to throw away all the other discussions by burying them under another top-level. (Like exactly what I'm doing now.)

It also seems conceptually messy -- all the Iran discussion is basically the same discussion. It's not multiple stories connected by a common thread, or the same story discussed from multiple angles -- it's all one continuous discussion. This is natural when news moves quickly, because new angles emerge while the old are still being digested.

This is not a strong capital-F Feeling, just a mild preference, perhaps someone could argue the other side. I don't want to fully "contain" these stories in a containment thread. But at times like these I think one specific thread would work. I liked the way the Kavanaugh discussion played out here, I hope I wasn't the only one. Thoughts?

/u/EconDetective on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-11T06:59:11+00:00

Here's something interesting that happened during the 2010s: the percentage of North Africans describing themselves as "Not Religious" skyrocketed. Elsewhere in that twitter thread, someone claims that a bootleg Arabic translation of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion has been downloaded 30 million times.

The atheist movement may have imploded in the West, but it is winning like crazy in Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. Some people think that Islam hampers economic development. It will be interesting to see how things go for these countries now that more people are openly non-religious.

/u/toadworrier on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-09T23:46:21+00:00

Did Congress declare war on the United States before George Washington rode out to put down the Whiskey Rebellion?

Obviously I'm being silly here, but I want motivate a serious question: should the US have to declare war to deal with low-intensity violence and counter-terrorism?

This topic has cropped up again people are calling the assassination of Qasem Soleimani illegal. It's fair to call his an isolated demand for legality, considering the US has been doing this since right through the Obama presidency and before. But some, such as the Volokh Conspirators have been pretty consistently against this executive overreach.

Being lawyers, the Conspirators are rightly concerned about the legality of actions. But even from a policy standpoint, I think going to war should require broader support than just the President's say-so. But on the other hand, the conflicts the US are dealing with in the mid-east don't seem a good match for this.

For one thing they comprise support operations for local forces punctuated by occasional low-level violence. At which time-scale does should the declaration of war happen, and against whom is the war? More importantly, this kind of conflict is "we'll fight you till we win it's a much messier affair requiring strategic ambiguity -- having a declaration from Congress enumerating the goals and parameters of a war defeats that.

So what do y'all think is the best balance here?

/u/Doglatine on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-10T02:12:02+00:00

At the risk of derailing us from discussion of Iran and taking us into only marginally CW territory, I'm curious as to whether people have been watching the latest season of The Expanse and what people think. I just finished watching, and as someone who backed the fan campaigns for a fourth season (okay, only $10, but still), I was delighted to hear it was the 6th most heavily streamed show last week. I was overall very happy with it, and thrilled with subtle but visible upgrades in production values now it's a Bezos property. I'd challenge anyone to name a serious rival for best hard SF show of all time. This season also raised some vaguely CW-related issues, as follows -

NB - I'm including spoilers tags to cover the show up to Season 4; if you're a book reader (I'm not) and want to discuss events from the books that haven't yet been adapted, I'd appreciate a special heads up before the relevant spoiler tag.

1. Overall the show has done a good job so far of being a devil's advocate for a range of different factions and ideologies, from murderous Belter terrorists to authoritarian Martians. The one exception this season was the portrayal of corporate interests, as exemplified by Murtry. Early on, some of his actions seemed fairly defensible (as exemplified by e.g. this discussion over at the Expanse subreddit), but it's hard to justify some of the decisions he takes later in the show (e.g., the attempt to blow up the Barbapiccola) or his stated justifications (he literally just wants to be rich). Nor do we see any particularly sympathetic 'faces of business' in the other seasons - Jules Pierre Mao may have been a visionary, but he was a shitty human being. The only example I can think of in this season was maybe Ezai, who actually came across pretty well. However, he's more the face of the criminal underworld than the face of business per se.

2. I was surprised at how sympathetically the show dealt with people who'd done some shitty things. Lucia helped build (and accidentally detonated) a bomb that killed 21 people. Even more shockingly, protagonist Naomi admits she was involved in a terrorist attack that killed more than *five hundred* people. While it seems like she didn't plan it herself and didn't intend that outcome, she suggests she lied to herself about the motives and character of her lover Marco Inaros who she provided with the means to carry it out. Yet all these characters remain broadly sympathetic and seem to be 'redeemed', even if they don't fully forgive themselves. I'm not sure whether to be appalled or impressed by the boldness of the implied morality of the show, namely that the ideals justify the means - if you're an oppressed Belter fighting for freedom then 500 dead Inners can be overlooked, but if you're a greedy bastard out to make a buck then killing a dozen or so Belters marks you out as a monster.

3. The confrontations between the Belters and their accusations to each other of 'selling out' offer a fun mirror to some real world examples of group purity tests. The powerful in-group identity of the Belters also stands in stark contrast to the apparent utter collapse of Martian self-identity in this season; the line "Mars isn't what it used to be" gets repeated on multiple occasions. Again, there's a kind of implied anti-neoliberal sentiment that it's not simply fairness and transparency and individualism that makes for a strong society, but rather a clear sense of shared purpose and identity.

On a non-spoilerific note: I sometimes roll my eyes when it feels like shows have gone out of their way to have a diverse cast (except somehow actors of East Asian heritage still get screwed), but I have to say that The Expanse does a great job of creating a vividly multi-racial vision of the future a few centuries from now. It's not simply a matter of having lots of non-white actors - it's that almost *everyone* looks at least slightly racially ambiguous, which sort of makes sense given a context of space colonisation in which different ethnic and national groups are thrown together.

/u/satanistgoblin on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-06T12:20:36+00:00

Weekly ban report:

Jan 3 - Feb 2 u/mupetblast for 30 days by u/naraburns, context

Dec 31 - Jan 2 u/AssumingHyperbolist for 3 days by u/HlynkaCG, context

Dec 31 - Jan 6 u/dbtbl for a week by u/naraburns, context

Dec 30 - Jan 1 u/trexofwanting for 3 days by u/Cheezemansam, context

Dec 30 - Jan 29 u/bumbleborn for 30 days by u/ZorbaTHut, context

Full list here.

/u/cincilator on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-09T06:00:41+00:00

On Heterodox Academy website, Musa Al Gharbi has a very detailed article that explains how "the long march trough institutions" by "social justice" leftists was actually achieved. It makes many things often discussed here more clear.

One important point is that the left often wasn't able to directly face the right on their turf so they used tools and institutions they had. For example, the left wasn't able to directly counter rah-rah patriotism that fueled Vietnam war. That would just label them traitors. So instead they emphasized the psychological cost of war -- hence the beginnings of PTSD research. The message couldn't be "Vietnam war is wrong," so the message became "Vietnam War is psychologically damaging." And yeah, that was partially true, but still the research suffered from motivated reasoning.

Modern stuff about "microagressions" and "trigger warnings" is just further extrapolation of the same means. When you can't pinpoint why something is wrong, but you can say it is e.g. a "microaggression" or whatever. Again, the attempt is to use tools of psychology or sociology to indirectly moralize when you don't want or can't afford to be a moralizer.

/u/CDO_Cubed on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-06T23:10:13+00:00

Is anyone aware of any attempts to systematically measure strategic voter behavior? I could imagine a polling questionnaire whose first question is whom you support in the Democratic primary, and the second whom you would select to be President were you the sole voter. Anecdotally talking to friends there is a fair amount of strong Biden support which is based in perceived electability. On a side note a tend to have cynical friends I guess because they tend not to see anything wrong with optimizing for electability, picking the perceived lesser of two evils, triangulating policy positions, etc. I imagine polling for strategic voting may backfire in some way as perhaps it would hurt the electability candidates by implying that they are supported for in large part strategic reasons, thus helping the more extreme candidates with more intrinsic support.

/u/[deleted] on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-06T12:56:22+00:00

[deleted]

/u/ralf_ on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-06T08:52:27+00:00

Ricky Gervais Golden Globe speech is quite a roast:
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1214003226938351617

"Apple roared into the TV game with 'The Morning Show,' a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. So you say you’re 'woke', but the companies you work for, Apple, Amazon, Disney... If ISIS had a streaming service you would be calling your agents. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg."

Ricky Gervais: Epstein didn't kill himself
Golden Globes crowd: groooooan
RG: Shut up, I know he was your friend

And little inbetween digs:
https://twitter.com/DanYanofsky/status/1214036792296529921

/u/VampyIceMan on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T06:07:03+00:00

This is a developing story:

A Ukraine International Airlines reportedly carrying 180 passengers and crew has crashed near Tehran's Imam Khomenei International Airport, according to Iran's state television, which said all those aboard are dead. Iranian civil aviation officials said the crash is thought to have been caused by mechanical problems.

/u/stucchio on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-08T15:34:59+00:00

The Grumpy Economist (John Cochrane) has an excellent series discussing the measurement of wealth, in particular wealth as measured by Saez-Zucman. This is culture war related because Zucman is the chosen economist of Elizabeth Warren, and many Dem candidates are using his numbers.

Key idea. You have two people, Bob and Sally, say in the year 2000. - Sally earns $100k in labor income. - Bob is an active investor/manager and earns $100k in business income from his single member LLC.

To start with, suppose interest rates are 10%. In this situation, Sally has no wealth, whereas Bob has wealth of $100k / 10% = $1M.

Now what has happened in the world since 2000? Interest rates have dropped. So in 2019, lets repeat the calculation. Sally's wealth is still zero. But Bob's wealth is now $100k / 2% = $5M. Wealth inequality has skyrocketed!

However, literally nothing in the world has changed with respect to Bob's situation vs Sally's.

Near as I can tell, Cochrane is entirely correct about this. Insofar as wealth inequality has increased, the primary driver is simply a decrease in interest rates which makes Wealth = Income / Interest go up.

/u/greyenlightenment on Culture War Roundup for the Week of January 06, 2020

2020-01-10T13:59:56+00:00

I think this tweet encapsulates the problem with discourse on twitter. it's not just shrill SJWs but people who are held up as smart that fall into this trap

https://twitter.com/JYuter/status/1215220687843024896

It's not that I agree with the Jacobin article, but oppose the notion that finding a counterexample by just reading the title, constitutes a counterargument , productive discourse . and winning an argument. "I could read the article and find the flaws and merits of the author's main point, or i can just compress it to a single hot-take that will get a lot of claps and retweets and make me look smart and witty in the process." I think many of us have fallen into this trap of lazy discourse, in which finding a counter-example or omission by the author means you 'won' and is a substitute for deeper understanding and discourse.