I believe the culture war has moved to a new stage.

In particular, the Anita Sarkeesian-esque "boobs bad" brand of feminism finally, blessedly...seems to be losing.

This has been building for a while but I didn't want to count my chickens before they hatched. They're hatching. The decisive turning point to me came over the last few days with the release of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and the new trailer for Stellar Blade (formerly Project Eve). Not the products themselves, as they're Asian which is less effected, but the western reaction...or lack thereof.

I wish I had it in better quality, but I've been wanting to talk about the anatomy of this #DCStargirl fight scene all day. Because wow just what a show, the acting, the directing, the score, the choreography, this is peak superhero TV.

First of all, I love that Stargirl embraces its essential "comic bookyness". They're not trying to make the fights John Wick. There's zero effort to make characters move realistically or hide that the stunts are on wires. The movements are like live action comic panels.

#TerrorOnThePrairie Okay, serious thoughts (spoilers): Good movie. Slow to start, but once the proper action gets going it's tense as fuck and incredibly gritty and realistic. I'd be hard pressed to name a western with more attention to the gunplay and tactics. @ginacarano sells the HELL out of her part, though the guy playing her husband is a bit stilted in his dialogue. Nick Searcy is an utterly detestable villain and it's incredibly satisfying to watch him and his scummy band get picked off.

The left seems to be gearing up for another summer like 2020, this time over abortion, and twitter is already filling with apologia for intimidation protests at people's houses, rioting, and the most thinly veiled calls for political violence. Here's why that's a super bad idea: This approach did not work in 2020. It was tried. Everything the far left is saying they want to do to fight for Roe, they tried it with BLM in 2020 and what'd they get? In terms of actual substantive policy, they got nada. Goose egg. Zilch.

The tide has turned. The pendulum is swinging back, and it is swinging HARD. Some of the manifestations of this (Elon twitter) are good, others (Roe v Wade) are horrible. But it's happening, the culture war has moved to a new phase, and SJWs: WE FUCKING WARNED YOU! 🧵 Seriously! All of us on the dissident/more libertarian left, moderates, centrists...we warned and warned and warned for a decade that the woke, illiberal cultural left would push so far they would generate a terrible backlash, and you didn't listen at all!

Okay, so what is currently circulating regarding Roe and Casey is a draft decision written several months ago by Justice Alito, he writes it as though it's the opinion of the court, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is. We can only be sure that it's HIS opinion. It could be, essentially, his opening offer in a negotiating process among the justices, an idea floated to see who he could get to sign on, and who would want tweaks and concessions for their vote. It may not be representative of the final ruling at all.

Today in Kenosha, a jury found #KyleRittenhouse not guilty on all counts.

They reached the legally, and I believe morally, correct verdict.

The system worked...this time. But let's take the opportunity to talk about how it sometimes doesn't, and came close to failing here.🧵 Rittenhouse was fortunate enough to have the things a defendant is supposed to have, competent counsel and a sympathetic judge. Not perfect counsel, mind you, as a defense attorney myself I could backseat-lawyer them all day, but they did an overall good job.

Things like the OnlyFans porn ban don't happen in a vacuum, they're outcomes of a trend of new-Puritanism that's been growing in our culture over the last decade, on both the right and the left. See for example: video games. (thread) The days of Lara Croft's giant chest triangles and Supergirl flying around in a bare midriff and miniskirt are basically gone. Female characters like that just don't get made anymore (outside Japan) because they'll be labeled "objectified" and "sexist" based on male gaze theory.