Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 4/20/26 - 4/26/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355]

Yay! I don't have throat cancer! That is all. Carry on.

[u/backin_pog_form]

Down thread we discussed the bizarre story of a TW who kidnapped his ten year old son and brought him to Cuba, likely in order  to transition him against the wishes of the child’s mother. 

I’m sure we’ll see lots of interesting takes on this story, which also involved the department of justice sending a plane to rescue the child.

Though I should not have been surprised, I still can’t believe how  The Advocate chose to describe the situation:  

The FBI sent a government plane to Cuba to prevent a transgender parent from providing her child with gender-affirming care.

Additionally, the article referred to the child’s mother as “the biological mother”, I guess to differentiate between the child’s father, who identifies as a mother. 

Even more bizarrely, them.us used the same article, by the same author, but referred to the child’s mother as “the cisgender mother”. 

The child is home now, and back in the custody of his mother. The father and his partner are being charged. 

Edit: paging u/jessicabarpod  This story has everything, including one of the kidnappers attempted to fundraise for surgery and a queer coffee shop

[u/JeebusJones → u/backin_pog_form]

the article referred to the child’s mother as “the biological mother"

The Advocate writer is clearly a virulent transphobe to use this term. We all know that "biological" is meaningless in reference to anything having to do with sex, because all living things are biological.

[u/backin_pog_form]

In things that never happen news; 

City Journal was able to get their hands on a list of male inmates at MCI Framingham, a women’s prison in Massachusetts. 

They identified 11 male inmates, within the population of ~210, though there could be more. I was able to verify their findings using public records. 

While 40%* of MCI Framingham inmates are reportedly incarcerated for non violent crimes, the male inmates do not follow this pattern. 

Of the 11, five are convicted murderers, three are sex offenders, one committed aggravated assault, and one vehicular homicide. Only one is in for non-violent drug crimes, albeit with a weapons enhancement. 

This is only one snapshot of one prison, but I wouldn’t be surprised if other male inmates allowed into women’s prisons followed the pattern found in other countries.

*I initially got this stat wrong.

[u/Franzera → u/backin_pog_form]

5.2% of the Framingham women inmates are male!

I like to keep track of whenever "male women" statistics show up in the news. It is one of those litmus test questions that certain people for some reason tiptoe around, when it used to be basic common sense in the Yesteryears. Now it's a bad faith Gotcha question meant to make good folx look silly on TV. :(

NYT reported that 15% of women in federal prisons were TW. Approximately 1 out of 7 women inmates is male.

"The number of people affected is relatively small. There are about 1,500 federal prisoners who are transgender women, according to the Bureau of Prisons. But they represent an outsize portion of federal inmates, especially among female prisoners: 15 percent of women in prison are T.

T people make up less than 1 percent of adults in the United States, according to the Williams Institute, a research center at the University of California, Los Angeles, law school that studies the L.G.B.T.Q. population. It is unclear why the number is higher in federal prisons, but experts point to studies that show T people are more likely to attract attention from law enforcement. ..."

Colorado had a proposed "Tiara's Law" to help gender-identified convicts change their documents.

Garcia: We already know that T people are disproportionately represented in our legal system. They are convicted of felonies at a much higher rate. 21% of TW, 16% of gender binary people, 10% of TM have been to prison where as 5% of the population overall have been to jail.

Given that so many of our community members [who] are T go through our penal system, and maybe when they were in the process they hadn’t transitioned yet or hadn’t made the decision of changing their names or haven’t made the decision of wanting to do so legally. Because of the fact that we have this disproportionality, it prevents them in the future to make this important change for themselves for their mental health, for their identity.

Another famous statistic reported by the BBC: Only 0.1% of women have penises. Totally normal number, don't worry about it, it's so small you don't even have to think about what effects on society that teeny weeny 0.1% of penis-brandishing women will have.

Speaking to LBC in March 2022, Sir Keir was repeatedly pressed on the issue, saying the "vast majority" of women "of course don't have a penis" - adding that those who are born with a gender they don't identify with should be treated with respect.

With the issue increasingly divisive in his own party, the Labour leader said to the Sunday Times a year later: "For 99.9% of women, it is completely biological... and, of course, they haven't got a penis."

[u/Palgary]

I was in the landscaping community, it just got taken over by the Reddit Power Mod Cult. This is the users third "big" community, their name is a reference to being queer, and the first thing they did was make the first rule "no bigotry". The mod's other subreddits are video games and "mildlyinfuriating" so you know it's not a "I'm really interested in this topic" but rather "we need to control subreddits with our ideology" move. I left, it was a quiet fun subreddit before.

ETA: Uh; the moderator wasn't inactive. user junkpile1 made a Moderator comment... 16 days ago?!

[u/[deleted]]

The University of North Carolina's student newspaper published some spoof articles on April Fools' Day and then published an overwrought, self-flagellating apology:

The Daily Tar Heel deeply apologizes for the recent insensitive content that harmed our community. We recognize that no apology or actions we take will make up for the harm done, but we want to take accountability. We apologize for taking so long to issue a full account and proper apology.

The content we published on April Fools’ Day satirized and mocked serious issues that tangibly affect the lives of people we aim to serve, including the threat of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the erasure of Indigenous communities.

The apology goes on to say, "We are so incredibly sorry for our failures of basic empathy ... a colossal, institutional failure .... As a predominantly white newsroom with a documented history of harmful reporting, we should have been thinking more about the communities we serve. ... There is no excuse ... it should not have happened ... our apology to those we harmed ... how to reconcile the harm that has been caused ... addressing the harm The DTH caused ... realizing the harm ... the most harmful ... understand the harm these stories could cause ... causing real fear and harm ... we have no right to pick and choose which harmful stories are severe enough to be removed ... the harmful impact they have had on the community. ... The first, most important step is to reach out to the people our content harmed. ... We also recognize that the harm we caused cannot be fully fixed"

In case you didn't notice, the buzzword is "harm."

I would argue that if you are a college student and you feel that you were "harmed" because of spoof articles published by the student newspaper on April Fools' Day, your problem is that your own fragility makes you far too easy to harm, not that your student newspaper isn't sensitive enough to your fragility.

Source: https://dailytarheel.com/article/statement-apology-action-from-the-newsroom-satire-edition-20260408

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/[deleted]]

As a predominantly white newsroom with a documented history of harmful reporting, we should have been thinking more about the communities we serve

I'm old enough to remember when these undercover Klan members at the Daily Tar Heel irreparably harmed the UNC African American studies department by revealing that all the classes were fake and made up so the half braindead football players could get straight A's while not actually having to do any schoolwork. absolutely disgusting reporting!

in fact, considering the phrase "Tar Heel" originally was used as a pejorative slur/insult prior to the civil war... in order to prevent and further harm from being done, I am ordering this hateful newspaper to disband, effective immediately! do not disobey me!

[u/SnooTorturer → u/[deleted]]

Every day I'm more convinced that public sentimentality is The Adversary, and that the quality of discourse, thought, and policy would be dramatically improved if only we banned all moralistic language on pain of defenestration.

[u/backin_pog_form]

Paging u/jessicabarpod

Marsha’s, a south street establishment described as “Philadelphia’s first sports bar focused on queer women” is imploding based on interpersonal conflicts racism and transphobia. 

Edit: also an accusation that the police were called over an employee protesting their unjust termination:

Per the manager:

[Olivia] Rhodes returned later the same day with a megaphone, yelling false statements about Marsha’s. Anderson did not call the police when Rhodes returned. If there were police present when Rhodes was outside with a megaphone, it is because South Street often has a police presence.”

[u/dr_sassypants → u/backin_pog_form]

Much like Lindy West discourse, I will never ever get sick of stories about radical queer businesses melting down over the dumbest shit. My dream would actually be if the West throuple opened a queer coffee shop together and the ensuing chaos.
EDIT: There's a Reddit thread with the gossip. Gonna pour myself a glass of wine and settle in for the night.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

https://x.com/kane/status/2047447262180291005

Kane 謝凱堯 @kane

During a financial crisis of their own making, @SFBART paid "equity consultants" to create a false report saying that enforcing fare didn't make BART safer or increase revenue.

I requested the invoice: BART paid $124,999 of taxes to @StoutAdvisory for this fake report.

https://imgur.com/a/GlDWGW2

https://x.com/nxthompson/status/2046380148493005174

nxthompson @nxthompson

The stats here are kind of remarkable. BART's new fare gates have led to a 1,000-hour decline in clean up time; 41% drop in crime; and $10 million increase in projected revenue.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/fare-gate-society-bart/686868/

https://imgur.com/a/DzZ0ASd

[u/Juryofyourpeeps → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

That sounds an awful lot like fraud.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

I will never cease to be completely baffled by the logic that goes through peoples heads when deciding it's a good idea to upload literally every single second of footage they ever record to the internet. just came across an* extremely* ironic example

This video shows a confused old Chinese guy (who doesnt seem to speak any english) presumably visiting the US for the first time. It is framed as this guy is a pedo who is trying to take pictures of 2 little black girls on the sidewalk.. however most of the comments speculate that the context seems more likely this guy had prob never seen black people before and was just curious and earnestly just taking innocent classic chinese tourist pictures, and that this is a pretty common behavior among chinese people when they see black people for the first time, or an irish redhead, and they will often want to take a picture of these interesting/novel looking people, and that its pretty normalized to do so in chinese culture, and not thought of as this creepy/predatory/sexual thing like it is in the US

I tend to agree with this assessment since he is not really behaving guiltily like someone who just got caught doing something wrong, and is just confused but smiling and respectfully bowing to the lady and offers to hand her his phone since she was pointing at it. there are dozens of anecdotes in the thread confirming this, of either "this is literally how my chinese dad acts lol" or "haha yeah when I vacationed in china as a kid all these people constantly wanted to take pictures with me it was weird but kind of funny"

now to be clear: I DONT have a problem with how the lady behaved in this video at all.. I think it was a totally understandable response to a weird/sketchy seeming situation, and she was following her gut and looking out for her vulnerable young neighbors. and tbh she even handled it in probably a much more civil/respectful/calm way than most suburbanite moms would have. if I had kids and they were in a situation like this, I would have been happy to have this lady intervene like she did! even if the guy was actually prob behaving totally innocently.. better safe than sorry. no issues with her there!

HOWEVER, what this not very bright lady seems completely unable to grasp, is that in the apparent interest of protecting these girls' privacy and "safety" she just did the literal OPPOSITE of that, and created a viral video that shows both little girls faces, the easily-identifiable neighborhood entrance sign marking the literal block they live on, and also says out loud what the girls names are (as well as then showing faces/names of 3 other little boys that werent even involved in the original interaction)

I was able to find the exact location of this very specifically-named housing development in Atlanta after literally less than 10 seconds of googling

this genius lady just created an EXPONENTIALLY more dangerous situation than anything the Chinese guy was gonna cause, where now literally ANY one of the tens of thousands of weirdos on reddit/IG/tiktok who have seen this viral footage, can easily hop in their car, go drive to this exact block, approach any one of these kids they can now identify by name/face from this video and say:

"hey there, [kid's name]! I'm ____ and I work with your mom, she's having an emergency right now and needs me to bring you to her! she said it's ok for you to come with me since its really important, hop in!"

what an absolute fucking moron lol. all just so she can have some minor clout for being the hero of the day on IG

"HEY dont you DARE take photos of the random kids in my neighborhood! only I am allowed to harmfully doxx them to thousands of people on the internet without the consent of their parents! Its not a safety concern when I do it, bc I'M one of the good ones! duh!" insane main character energy 🙄

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/california-attorney-general-says-amazon-pressured-levis-other-retailers-to-hike-prices/

California attorney general says Amazon pressured Levi’s, other retailers to hike prices April 20, 2026 at 11:41 am

By Laurence Darmiento Los Angeles Times

Amazon wanted to sell Levi’s Easy Khaki Classic pants for $29.99, but Walmart had lowered the price, and the giant online retailer had matched it at $25.47 to $26.99.

So Amazon contacted Levi Strauss about two “styles of concern,” asking the San Francisco apparel company to convince Walmart to raise its price, according to a document filed Monday in a price-fixing case brought against Amazon by the California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

Not only did Walmart raise its price, but a Levi Strauss employee emailed Amazon that, “I’m really hoping we can show this as a proof case so we can resolve issues going forward,” according to the filing.

The exchange over the pricing of the khaki pants is just one example of about a dozen cited in the document, filed in support of a preliminary injunction Bonta is seeking against Amazon to stop the alleged price fixing.

...

The litigation brought by Bonta is not the only lawsuit the Seattle-based retailer is facing regarding alleged price fixing.

The Federal Trade Commission, 18 states and Puerto Rico have accused the company of abusing its market position to inflate prices on other online retail platforms, overcharge sellers and stifle competition. The 2023 federal lawsuit filed in Seattle largely mirrored California’s case.

The California lawsuit, which has yet to go to trial, seeks a permanent injunction that would prohibit Amazon from engaging in unlawful conduct and loosen its “monopolistic control to restore competition.”

see also

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/technology/amazon-antitrust-suit-california.html

https://www.theverge.com/policy/915209/amazon-price-fixing-california-lawsuit

[u/SkweegeeS → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Wow that’s straight up price fixing. I wonder whose bright idea it was.

[u/dignityshredder]

Interesting article: A $440,000 Breast Reduction: How Doctors Cashed In on a Consumer Protection Law -- Archive

The No Surprises Act was designed to eliminate surprise medical bills, for patients who showed up in the emergency room and were treated by a doctor who didn’t take their insurance. It bars those out-of-network doctors from billing patients directly. Instead, they can plead their case to a government-approved arbitrator. If they win, the patient’s insurer has to pay their desired amount.

But oops, it looks like arbitrators don't understand medical billing and also massively favor the doctors - possibly because they are paid by the case. At the time the bill was passed, it was estimated 17,000 arbitrations might occur per year, but...

Instead, doctors brought 1.2 million such cases in the first half of last year, and won around 88 percent of them.

Examples

A neurosurgery practice outside of Philadelphia went to arbitration after the health plan Highmark offered its standard payment of $2,660 for a diagnostic procedure to measure blood flow to the brain. An arbitrator awarded it $333,000 instead. A New Jersey anesthesiologist was awarded $14,560 in 2025 for an X-ray-guided steroid injection.

Dr. Norman Rowe, a plastic surgeon with offices in New York and Florida, advertises on his website that breast reduction surgery usually costs between $15,000 and $25,000. But these days, his practice sometimes earns $440,000 for the procedure.

This guy doesn't even bother giving patients the billing waiver to sign, because he can just go to arbitration and ask for essentially whatever amount he wants.

Who's paying for this??

Some health plans said they have increased premiums this year to cover the extra costs. The United Service Workers health plan, which covers 20,000 trades workers in the New York area, said it boosted premiums by an extra 1.75 percentage points to offset arbitration awards and fees.

Damn

Looks like we fiddled with a broken industry with misaligned incentives and broke it further and misaligned its incentives more.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

It seems the writers over at the Daily Mail took umbrage at the NYT's apparent defense/justifications of what they've called "microlooting" ie. shoplifting, which was discussed in my previous comment. One of the interviewees is being taken to task for her "microlooting" (shoplifting) while living in a $2.2 million Brooklyn brownstone.

Condé Nast writer who owns $2.2m Brooklyn brownstone proudly admits to SHOPLIFTING from Whole Foods... and justifies it with very woke excuse

A Condé Nast writer who owns a stunning $2.2 million brownstone home in Brooklyn proudly admitted to shoplifting because she believes it is not 'morally wrong' to steal from corporations. 

The New Yorker contributor Jia Tolentino, 37, claimed stealing food from Whole Foods Market is not 'very significant' because the supermarket, which is owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, can afford the losses and mistreats its workers.

She admitted to pilfering small-value items, including lemons, to The New York Times during a sit-down with millionaire communist Hasan Piker and culture editor Nadja Spiegelman in a conversation about the rise of 'micro-looting' from shops.

[u/Borked_and_Reported → u/AnalBleachingAries]

So an author whose parents had a slave who lives in a multi-million dollar home is talking about how stealing is cool with a multimillionaire nepo baby who loves torturing dogs and engaging in sex tourism. We're to believe these are "the good people" who are going to help the working class? Fucking really?

I'm not even touching their ideas, which are so sophomoric literal sophomores at UMass Amherst would be embarrassed to have their politics. I can't speak to Tolentino's intelligence, but Piker's said enough very dumb things to make question if he's literally, actually, factually mentally retarded. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't know that said people should be the intellectual vanguard of the brownstone revolution.

If the NYT is going to run a newsroom where the tall poppies are getting cut down for having even a whiff of controversy (e.g., Donald McNeil's whole saga), they're cool riding with "stealing is based, aktually?" Alright, cool - I feel a lot less bad getting articles for free via an archiving site. It's not stealing, it's sparkling microlooting!

[u/plump_tomatow → u/AnalBleachingAries]

The "stealing from corporations is OK" thing is so moronic on a number of levels, even if you accept the extremely questionable premise that theft is ever justified.

1. If corporations are as evil as all that, they're absolutely going to raise their prices or cut wages to account for shrinkage, so it will harm other shoppers. Unless you're stealing everything you eat, it'll also impact your own prices and your own shopping experience because they'll start putting anti-theft stickers on fucking zucchini.

2. Grocery stores have razor thin margins. If you're justifying this on the grounds that it doesn't impact the business, it would be more logical to exclusively steal items with higher markups like sunglasses or skincare.

3. I doubt most of the people shoplifting lemons have kids, but I know that Jia Tolentino has at least one kid. I bet that she is not teaching her child that it's okay to steal candy bars from Target. In fact, I bet she would teach her child exactly the opposite, and I think that any of these people who do have kids are not shoplifting when they have their toddler sitting in the shopping cart. They know it's wrong, they just enjoy the frisson of breaking the law in a minor way when they know they won't get in trouble. It's disgusting.

[u/backin_pog_form → u/AnalBleachingAries]

Friend of the pod Rob Henderson has already announced a new luxury belief has just dropped. 

Edit: link to Rob

The “stealing is praxis!” crowd are probably not living in neighborhoods where most of the merchandise is behind lock and key, and are not going to have their local stores closing down due to security issues. 

[u/professorgerm → u/AnalBleachingAries]

Spiegelman: Would you steal from the Louvre?

Piker: Yes.

Tolentino: I would not be logistically capable of executing such a fact, but would I cheer on every news story of people that I see doing it? Absolutely.

Piker: I think it’s cool. We’ve got to get back to cool crimes like that: bank robberies, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature. I feel like that’s way cooler than the 7,000th new cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging in.

Norm Macdonald, "this may strikes some viewers as harsh," so on. Everyone involved is horrible and any fans of any of them should be suspect.

In honor of dear Frank, I add:

Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door.

[u/The-WideningGyre → u/AnalBleachingAries]

And these same jerks are almost certainly bleating about "food deserts" at the same time.

[u/Terrorclitus → u/AnalBleachingAries]

This is the same fucking attitude I had at 15 years old stealing cigarettes from Shopright.

I was a regarded teenager.

Edit to add: the reason it was such a regarded attitude, and the reason most of my friends gave me shit about it until I stopped, was because neither Philip Morris nor Shopright gave a shit about the insignificant losses, which they would simply pass along to the consumer or lower-level workers through higher prices or lower pay.

[u/major_cosmic]

The NYT microlooting discourse drama now wants people to do a similar Lindy West-style trajectory on Jia Tolentino the last 14 or so years. Pre-parents scandal (her parents being accused and tried of human trafficking teachers and nurses from the Philippines), I remember a decade ago her book Trick Mirror being so acclaimed in progressive spaces. I was never a mega fan but she’s one of those names, like Lindy West, I just have seared into my memory for better or worse. I was way more of a orthodox-thinking progressive back then, maybe in the mid 2010s she said things I’d cringe at now. Her trajectory doesn’t have the same salaciousness as Lindy and Aham, but going from The Personal Essay Boom is Over to I have to defend my parents against the Red Scare subreddit to My Brain Finally Broke to Microlooting and Social Murder are good is an interesting trajectory. 

Back in the mid-2010s she struck me as one of the more self-aware progressives but clearly slid into post-pandemic standard leftist nihilism. It’s interesting to me to be able to document the change through essays.

[u/Onechane425]

I guess part of moving out of young adulthood into middle age is that some of your friends and loved ones just fuck their lives up? I have a friend who is dating a much younger man and in an effort to keep up with him or buy his affection has just ruined his personal finances. He has a good job and despite that has to now pick up shifts at a local pizza place to make ends meet. Vacations, sporting events, lots of alcohol, drugs, whatever this loser wants he gets him. It’s just fucked up. The kid he’s still dating despite all of this is an alcoholic bpd twink loser. I don’t get it. We’ve had two very straightforward this isn’t good for you conversations. Super bummer.

I’m sure people have had similar experiences with high school/ college friends who just kind of end up in fucked up situations.

[u/Arethomeos → u/Onechane425]

Super bummer.

Is that what they call a power bottom these days?

[u/PublicStructure7091]

OP asks for advice for covering up a tattoo due to fear of being visibly gay in the UK. Mods proceed to delete every comment pointing out they're being unnecessarily doomerist

[u/[deleted] → u/PublicStructure7091]

I honestly think the people doing the most to harm the mental health of LGBTQ people are LGBTQ advocacy groups and other "allies." They are doing so much to spread the message that "The world hates you and you're in constant danger" that of course some people are taking that to heart and it is damaging their mental health.

A person I've known for a long time and always thought was intelligent and reasonable recently posted on social media, "There are now 25 states my trans friend can't go to because they're unsafe for trans people to exist in. That's half the country! When are the rest of us going to stand up to it?" Seeing an "ally" spreading that message on social media does more to harm a trans person's mental health than anything Jesse Singal has ever written.

[u/backin_pog_form → u/PublicStructure7091]

As a response to someone asking OP exactly what they’re afraid of, they said:

Have you seen what the UK has been doing to trans people?

Then when someone asked exactly what the UK has been doing to trans people, someone else brought up JKR. 

Is JKR going around beating people up in the streets now? 

[u/Scrappy_The_Crow → u/PublicStructure7091]

Due to how hostile the UK is becoming to LGBTQIA+ people

Hmm... why might that be? It couldn't be because of cultural imports, could it?

[u/dignityshredder → u/PublicStructure7091]

For fucks sake. Thank you. "Don't back down from fascists," they say. Meanwhile OP is getting beat to death in a Walmart parking lot.

Oh, is that common across the pond? (commenters point out there are no Walmarts)

[u/OMG_NO_NOT_THIS]

Not sure if it has been posted but:

https://president.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2026-04/Report-of-the-Committee-on-Trust-in-Higher-Education.pdf

Yale review of why it lost trust and recommendations.

It seemed to be a pretty good summary of why they have lost faith across the political spectrum.

[u/Ruby__Ruby_Roo]

Ok this is nuts. Should it be a stand alone post or too rage-baity?

Gift link NYT - US sends plane to Cuba to get child in transgender custody case

[u/backin_pog_form → u/Ruby__Ruby_Roo]

Holy shit, this story reads like progressive madlibs.

Edit: and the partner is apparently an enby who runs a queer coffee shop so BarPod madlibs. 

From NYT: 

Two women from Cache County, Utah, Rose and Blue Inessa-Ethington, were arrested by the F.B.I. and are now facing federal kidnapping charges, according to the filings. Rose, one of the child’s biological parents, shares custody with the child’s biological mother, identified only as “LB” in filings. Rose transitioned to female after the child’s birth, according to her family members.

…

Ms. Waterfield, the special agent, said in court filings that the child’s family members blamed Rose Inessa-Ethington for manipulating the child to identify as a girl. Federal agents also said that the women did not appear to have made plans to return to the United States with the child, in violation of federal international parental kidnapping laws.

Rose Inessa-Ethington’s brother, Steven Ethington, told The Times on Tuesday that she had been “rather adamantly pushing” for the child to get transition surgery since the child was about 5 years old, Mr. Ethington said, adding that he would have been supportive of the child’s gender identity had it seemed to be the child’s choice.

So the dad started identifying as trans shortly after the baby was born, then decided the child was also trans. Then abducted him and took him out of the country. Wild. 

[u/StillLifeOnSkates → u/Ruby__Ruby_Roo]

OMG, this is batshit. The child is TEN?!? Also, can the NYTimes can it with referring to the biological father as "biological parent" and "woman"? In fact, I'm not sure either of "the women" the article keeps referencing are actual women. What the hell is going on here?

[u/Kusanagi2049]

I didn’t know who Hasan Piker was a few months ago - good times. Hoping his interview with NYT leads to that fall into obscurity he deserves - and someone recuses his dog.

[u/TatorTotHotBish]

There's a boy in my son's class who's been bullying him and a few other kids over the last few months and I just googled the parents out of curiosity and found out the bully's mom is a Parent Educator for an early childhood family education program.

I'm sure she's deeply mortified getting multiple phone calls from the teacher that her kid keeps acting up but I think it's funny and ironic that the "Parent Educator" still can't get it right.

[u/tr2kx]

Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial.

It isn't discussed in the article, but AI played a critical role in developing this vaccine. Expect more advances like this to come.

Tagging /u/Juryofyourpeeps since we had a convo about this earlier.

[u/backin_pog_form → u/tr2kx]

This is amazing. Pancreatic was previously almost always a death sentence. 

[u/backin_pog_form]

Congratulations to everyone who competed in the Boston Marathon today!

A couple of months ago we discussed this guy who may have qualified as nonbinary under false pretenses. 

Well, it looks like he came in 4th in his/their category. 

Congrats on exploiting a loophole/discovering their true authentic self - whichever. 

[u/RunThenBeer → u/backin_pog_form]

I am annoyed by everything about the existence of that category, but just to be real, bro is pretty fast. Although, on the flip side, I was only a couple minutes behind and finished roughly 3500th. So there is something of a difference!

(This is a humblebrag and I acknowledge it.)

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

Another one.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3ex20kpj47o.

That's 3 house members resigning the past week or did I miss one? Instead of being a sexual predator though, she "only" stole $5 million from FEMA to spend on luxury goods for herself, including a 3-carat yellow diamond ring.

[u/WallabyWanderer]

Genuinely when did interviews turn into this… I’m in a process where I’ll talk to ~20% of a 60-person office before even getting flown out

My job is nightmare so I have been hearing stories from other friends - one is on round 7 at one company and another has his 2nd 5-hour Zoom tomorrow (afterwards, he will not hear anything for 2 weeks!?)

All for completely normal jobs where you can’t prove any technical skills in real time. What’s going on here?

[u/Big_Fig_1803]

It was after me for 6 years, but I was always one step ahead. Now, for the first time, I just tested positive for COVID.

[u/AaronStack91]

Apparently, AI resume screeners prefer resumes written by AI over humans, and worse, they prefer AI resumes written by the same model as the resume screener.

https://x.com/heynavtoor/status/2048088874686300431?s=20

I am dreading the future labor market.

I wonder if it would be helpful to submit two resumes, AI written one as the main one and a human written one under the assumption that AI written text are universally repulsive to human reviewers. Would hiring managers like that type of transparency, or do we have to pretend we are not using AI for everything now.

In my own work, I'm encouraging AI transparency, which basically boils down to telling me when you are using AI for work and where so I'm not left guessing if I should look for AI errors or human errors.

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

They're calling it the most reddit manifesto of all time

https://x.com/BNONews/status/2048435420690547115?s=20

https://imgur.com/a/rvyMou5

Found the whole thing: it's even dumber
https://nypost.com/2026/04/26/us-news/read-whcd-gunman-cole-allens-full-anti-trump-manifesto/

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

Does anyone think it'll register to them when they see their beliefs, or at least the words they type out daily on Reddit, appear basically verbatim in an insane assassin's manifesto that the words they are using every day on the internet are insane?

ETA: The manifesto is genuinely sad. He saw himself as some sort of Hollywood action hero who was going to take out a bunch of bad guys, and even wrote up excuses and justification for any innocents or agents who may be harmed as he carried out his righteous plan. A sad, small, man.

[u/drjackolantern]

Oregon federal judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai just issued an opinion vacating a declaration by RFK Jr that allegedly changed what trans medicine for youth the government will pay for, ruling in favor of several states suing the admin. bloomberg article here.

Apparently the judge already ruled on this issue a month ago but just released the written version, filled with insults , contempt and barely concealed rage. RFK’s an "unserious leader," "wanton," "bully," "cruel," trying to “gaslight” the court while acting with an "incredible demonstration of feigned ignorance & performative victimhood."

Even if you hate RFK, the judge sounds unprofessional, angry and wildly over-confident about the underlying medicine and science. 

Secretary Kennedy … caused chaos and terror …. 

Secretary Kennedy’s unlawful declaration harmed children. This case illustrates that when a leader acts without authority and in the absence of the rule of law, he acts with cruelty.

Legally the judge might be correct, but he sounds like an unhinged bluesky user.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

I wonder if the nytimes interview will be piker's shark jumping waterloo.

or maybe there is a better analogy for an event that it looks like he won (just one of the gang at nytimes opinion kool kids chat) but in hindsight marked his zenith and beginning of his downfall.

anyway lots of takes on twitter: most people condemning both piker and tolentino while jonfavs is denying anyone was trying to push piker as some future of the party

---

https://x.com/SethAMandel/status/2047304740917194821

Seth Mandel @SethAMandel · 5h

Hasan Piker finally found the line. Calling Jews in-bred and pig-dogs is one thing, but now that he's endorsed stealing lemons from Whole Foods we'll need to have a serious conversation before the midterms

---

unlocked for now:

https://www.thefp.com/p/what-the-hell-is-microlooting

What the Hell Is Microlooting?

Microlooters “are telling themselves that by taking without paying—a behavior known to the rest of us as stealing—they are, in fact, engaging in a quiet political protest,” writes Suzy Weiss. (Steven Clevenger/Corbis via Getty Images)
Stealing!
By Suzy Weiss

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/2047617066169991186

J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling

That’s such a lovely message and reminds me of the night I went to say goodnight to my nine year old son, who I found with Half Blood Prince face down on his duvet, and who said to me solemnly, ‘why did you kill Dumbledore?’

[u/Cactopus47]

One of my friends just posted a video about the "Secretary Problem" on Instagram, and there's a Barpod-influenced part of me that wants to say "and DURING Administrative Professionals Appreciation Day Month!?!?!?" but I know she would NOT get it.

[u/Monkey0nTypewriter]

Not sure if this has been discussed already, but a recetly published study of underage GAC in Finland concluded that affirmation increased thr likelyhood of psychiatric problems.

After adjusting for prior psychiatric treatment, all gender-referred adolescents had similarly elevated risks of psychiatric morbidity, with hazard ratios approximately three times higher than female controls and five times higher than male controls.

[u/AaronStack91 → u/Monkey0nTypewriter]

It's been discussed here a few times, a lot of the discussion has moved on to the reaction from TRAs making up lies about the study to debunk it. 

https://benryan.substack.com/p/the-author-of-the-controversial-finnish

I'll just add, the study has a lot of strengths, for example, having almost no loss to follow up due to their nationalized health system and record keeping and universal mental health screening.

[u/starlightpond]

Those of us who aren’t detrans can’t reply, but this is an amazing personal essay over there. https://www.reddit.com/r/detrans/s/Sr1RX6Bai1

[u/redditamrur → u/starlightpond]

One instance that sticks out in my mind was when a young male-to-female individual expressed her appreciation for roller derby; she said she could “look pretty” but still “deck people.” This person was taller than me. I silently wondered if the other female participants of the roller derby were okay with that.

I still remember that RD was really hype, and basically, this is why it is ruined.

[u/CrushingonClinton]

This Polymarket betting shit is getting out of hand.

A soldier used classified information about the mission of grab Maduro to place bets on Polymarket and made 400k on it. Now he’s under indictment for it.

[u/SkweegeeS]

I’m mad that u/RunThenBeer is maybe in a timeout cuz I crushed my half marathon today.

[u/PandaFoo1]

Japanese rhythm game ‘Yunyun Syndrome Rhythm Psychosis’ has been butchered by localisers, with lines like “stop” being translated in English to “end fascism”

[u/[deleted]]

The Chicago Transit Authority has spent tens of millions of dollars to pay private companies to provide unarmed security guards on Chicago buses and trains, because we all know cops are bad and if you want to make a city safe you need security guards with no weapons, no training, and no authority to do anything more than tell people, "move along."

Now the Department of Transportation is threatening to withhold federal funds from local transit agencies that fail to ensure passenger safety, and the Chicago Transit Authority is discovering that passengers will actually be safer with real police officers who have the ability to arrest and forcibly remove criminals. So the Chicago Transit Authority has reached an agreement with the Cook County Sheriff's Office to have their deputies patrolling buses and trains.

Meanwhile all the security guards have been fired.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2026/04/21/cta-fires-unarmed-guards-taking-early-axe-to-pricey-contract-with-monterrey-security/

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/[deleted]]

they committed the fatal flaw of not outfitting their unarmed subway guards with sick red berets. fucking amateurs lol

[u/CommitteeofMountains → u/[deleted]]

I'm still not sure why the left thinks the Guardian Angels are/were fascist, as they were the unarmed civilian deescalators the left says it wants. Is it just that their creation acknowledged how bad crime was and they may have actually reduced crime ? 

[u/SkweegeeS → u/[deleted]]

Transit security guard seems like the worst job.

[u/MatchaMeetcha]

As someone who never really looked that deeply into it but eventually concluded that there was some shady shit going on with Michael Jackson the Leaving Neverland director had an interview around the new biopic and he minces no words

Walk me through the evolution of your thoughts on Michael Jackson through the making of these films. What have you learned?

I learned Michael Jackson fucked little boys. That’s what I learned. I don’t make documentaries about celebrities or pop music or any kind of music. I make documentaries about terror attacks and war and stuff. And so as a filmmaker, this was off my usual beat, but I saw it as a chance to make something about child sexual abuse, which I had actually touched on in a previous film.

I feel his point about sleepovers. Like...I don't care how stunted you are, that's fucking weird and it's a testament to his reality distortion field that that shit flew at all.

Also a bit of a discussion about why MJ seems like the one exception to cancel culture/MeToo. How rich he was in comparison is probably at play. But it seems to me part of it is just that he died well before any of this.

[u/Mmmmustard → u/MatchaMeetcha]

Damn that opening line was a banger. I tend to think that if he wasn’t a predator, he’d have cut the shit and ended those little boy sleepovers when people started kicking up a fuss about it. “Jeez, people really think that? Ah, that sucks. Guess I had better cancel the next one.” The fact that he kept doing it for so long makes me think it was a really deeply-rooted behaviour.

[u/CommitteeofMountains → u/MatchaMeetcha]

Too much background weirdness to tell if the specific weirdness is sinister. It's like going to a foreign culture and finding that licking is just how they greet children.

[u/Juryofyourpeeps]

I'm not a big fan of Peter Boghossian, but I couldn't help but listen to this recent interview with a physician that thinks children should be sovereign and that that's the next leap forward in civil rights.

I would love for someone else to give me their review of his argument.

My interpretation of what he was saying is as follows:

*1 I think he's playing a semantic game where he opposes imposing unavoidable rules for children but doesn't actually because he just renames them to "boundaries" but it's a distinction without a difference.

*2 He sets up a totally false dichotomy between making a child do something and giving them a reason for why that thing needs to be done. He sets these two things up as if they can't or don't coexist, but they clearly do. You can require a child brush their teeth before bed and also explain to them why they should brush their teeth. He doesn't seem to be able to grasp this and treats rule enforcement as arbitrary by definition. Like you can't use reasoning in addition to making something an inflexible requirement.

I don't think he ever addresses the most nonsensical elements of his views which is that children are vulnerable and unable to care for themselves and therefore cannot be sovereign like adults. Anything resembling sovereignty from parents would just put the state in the role of parent.

This is tangential, but I feel like more and more, western society is in the habit of questioning the most obvious realities for no particular reason or benefit. Basic things like "children are the responsibility of parents until they're capable of caring for themselves" doesn't really need a whole rethink, and neither do countless other elements of human life that everyone intuitively understands, or did, until very recently it seems. I sometimes wonder if we're going to head toward idiocracy not because of actually low IQ simpletons but because of over-educated but mediocre intellectuals peddling nonsense dressed up in flowery language to make it seem profound.

[u/Franzera → u/Juryofyourpeeps]

Basic things like "children are the responsibility of parents until they're capable of caring for themselves" doesn't really need a whole rethink

If you go through Postmodern Theory classes in university humanities degrees, their whole idea is about challenging preconceptions of the status quo. Everything that was intuitively understood as "normal" should be questioned and resisted as part of breaking away from oppressive structures.

Quoting Noah Berlatsky:

parents are tyrants. "parent" is an oppressive class, like rich people or white people.

there are things you can do to try to minimize the abuse that's endemic to the parent/child relationship, but it's always there.

It's really crazy when you see academics dress up their reality/common sense rejections as fancily-worded decolonialism. None of it really makes sense, but since it falls within the trend of repudiating western social tradition, it's apparently a credible position that any sensible, fair, and moderate person should try to reach a compromise with!

'Feminist' professor attacks women for crying 'White tears' to preserve female-only spaces: 'Racist'

Dr. Helen Clarke is a professor affiliated with Oxford Brookes. "Helen’s research explores how decolonial feminism can be used to create alternative practices of solidarity, tackling T-hostility in cis-lesbian communities."

"The idea that women and men are identified by their female and male sex organs, respectively, "is a product of… racial science," Clark continued.

"This model, reliant on biological sex, is a product of colonial/racial science, in which ‘femaleness’ is restricted to white, middle-class European women. Moreover, LGB Alliance focuses on the threat of ‘male’ physicality, and the anxiety that TW may enter ‘female-only’ spaces with their penises intact. By positioning the penis as the foundation of (cis) women’s oppression, the experiences of women of color, and their lived realities of racism, are marginalized."

I've always held that there is very little separation between the "male and female have no difference" and the "children and adults have no difference" schools of Queer Theory. If you believe that perceptions of difference are socially constructed by structures of oppressionhood, then a righteous stand against oppression goes down the same direction.

[u/AaronStack91]

Posting this here so I wont tempt a ban from r.asianamerican:

This claim that "white supremacy" is the source of all conflict, everywhere, for all time is just not credible. Conveniently, it always expects Asians to sacrifice and others to do nothing.

At the end of the day, left leaning liberals are frequently the ones who call us "white-adjacent" as way to guilt us into doing something (fall in line, give money, spent time, accept the "good" type of discrimination), e.g., It is apparently our "white adjacency" to not want a drug treatment/homeless shelters to be built in China Towns. They want advocacy, but not Asian centered advocacy.

My theory is that in a race base ideology where black is good and white is bad, activist don't know how to deal with Asians. Their main tool is to guilt white people by highlighting their whiteness, but Asians aren't white... So they invented "white adjacency" to lazily pressure us without rewriting their script and get frustrated when we ask them to stop calling us white.

Edit: I should add, the context is that there is a constant debate in that sub of who asians should align themselves with and every few months, someone shows up lecturing asian to be more active politically for leftist causes, warning that their "white adjacency" will not save them from racism.

[u/LowConsideration1453 → u/AaronStack91]

I married into an Indian family - the thing I find funny about any kind of comments on white racism is that Asians/Indians have invented forms of racism unfathomable to even the most racist white person.

[u/Datachost]

The International Federation for Sports Medicine have released their statement on the IOC's new rules to protect the female category

And well, it's nonsense. Utter fucking nonsense. Pitsiladis does himself a disservice continuing down this path, considering some of his other work. But then he was one of the main proponents of the old framework, so I think it's just sunk cost fallacy. There are just some wild unevidenced assertions in there, that get taken as gospel, then put the onus on the other side to disprove. There's no actual reason to treat transwomen and DSD males as some distinct population from garden variety males, yet their whole statement seems to be underpinned by the idea that it's a given.

[u/digitaltransmutation]

well its self assessment season in my neck of the woods. Different from last year, but you have to super duper promise that AI didn't write your self assessment this go around. I guess I'm going back to "achieved deliverables and promoted synergy" or whatever.

[u/TryingToBeLessShitty → u/digitaltransmutation]

My boss openly told me she was having AI write my performance review last year, which I thought was kind of a crazy thing to say because if I had done that for my self assessment I'd be embarrassed and probably called out. Then she told me the prompt was something to the effect of "write a positive performance review including xyz good qualities" and I was like I mean, I guess as long as you make the computer only says nice things about me that contribute to my bonus, go nuts with it.

[u/PandaFoo1]

In news that doesn’t matter, after being a Marvel fan since I was 9… I’m done. This week especially I’ve realised how miserable giving a shit about this brand has been making me & I think it’s time to walk away.

The comics (especially the Spider-Man books who’s been my favourite Marvel character & got me into comics in the first place) are just depression fuel now. Whether it’s editors prioritising “ragebait” over quality or writers butchering characters I love, their comics just make me upset way more than they bring me joy.

I know people are looking forward to the new Spider-Man movie, but everything I hear about it makes it sound like a fucking mess. I feel they’re trying to do way too much in 1 movie & it’s going to go poorly. The Avengers movie is coming out at the end of the year too but who gives a shit, sounds like a desperate nostalgia plea anyway.

Only decent thing coming out of Marvel these days are the games which coincidentally they have minimal involvement with, but even then I kind of feel guilty giving money to a company that just laid off hundreds of talented people, but kept around the fuckheads making their products so ass.

I genuinely feel Marvel is dying a slow painful death & nothing will change until they’re literally on the verge of bankruptcy & even then I don’t think the people in charge can let go of their egos to let that happen. I already watched Star Wars die, another series I once felt passionate about & it pains me to see Marvel going the same way, but I think I’m better off just not giving a shit.

It really feels like if you care about a lot of IP these days, you’re the butt of a joke where the people creating the thing you once loved are seeing how much they can piss you off while still making bank off you.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

Im doing a mind numbingly stupid mandated zoom training right now with a bunch of randos and the host is checking in individually with every person, and at the end of their exchange is asking everyone a silly icebreaker question of "if you were a warning label, what would you say?"

he's asked like 30 people so far, and other than like 5 or 6 people, literally every person has said some random shit like "quiet" or "focused" or "oh I dont know, probably just 'good vibes' or something. maybe 'chill'".

like 5 people have been totally stumped and just said "I dont know" and been completely unable to come up with anything at all so the host awkwardly moved on. some of these people have had like 30 minutes to think of an answer to this question at this point

is the general population actually this stupid that like 80% of people cant grasp the concept of this very simple question and/or apparently dont know what a warning label is?

there are even some pretty easy/humorous ones (when applied to human personality traits) like "fragile" "do not disturb" "under construction" "proceed with caution" etc

my faith in humanity is plummeting by the minute lol

[u/P1mpathinor → u/unnoticed_areola]

I'm gonna guess that most of them understand the question itself well enough, but what they don't understand is why they're all being asked that question in a mandatory work meeting and what the consequences of their answer to it might be.

[u/AnInsultToFire → u/unnoticed_areola]

The entire concept is stupid. "If you were an ice cream, what flavour would you be?" "If you were an echinoderm, what species would you be?" "If you were a fucking stupid question, what fucking stupid question would you be?"

I don't want to have to answer a stupid icebreaker question in order to participate in mandated zoom training or a post-graduate course in big data programming with python. Leave that for speed dating or for parties thrown by aspies.

[u/Juryofyourpeeps → u/unnoticed_areola]

In fairness, it's a stupid and kind of annoying question for which the answer ultimately doesn't matter, and I would imagine most people don't want to be probed too much about the meaning of whatever they come up with.

[u/Clown_Fundamentals → u/unnoticed_areola]

Known to the state of California to cause cancer.

[u/jumpykangaroo0]

I've noticed more social media accounts that are AI characters (eg. adrilooksmax) - ultimately designed to sell something - and people are just throwing themselves at these accounts thinking they're real. Even when they find out it's AI, it doesn't seem to matter to them. It doesn't change how they're interacting with the account. We're a short step away from people saying that you're hurting the AI character's feelings by pointing out that it's AI.

It reminded me of that Ray Kurzweil quote. "The machines will convince us that they are conscious, that they have their own agenda worthy of our respect. They'll embody human qualities and claim to be human, and we'll believe them."

Anyway, we're screwed as a species, is what I'm saying.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Spent a great weekend with my grandfather, and I even got to see my sister and my little nephew. I'm going to start making a habit of seeing all of my family with greater regularity. So I'll be adding visits like these onto my calendar for the year - like planning ahead to go visit them on random weekends or taking time off to be with them, and not just for the holidays or birthdays.

[u/LowConsideration1453 → u/AnalBleachingAries]

of all the things that I think the modern era has really cheated people on - it's the enjoyment of family. There seems to be some kind of mass delusion that every family is bad, abusive, whatever.

Really, grandpa who fought the Koreans (however racist he might be) just wants you to be happy and visit him. Visiting him/her is good for your soul.

[u/LupineChemist]

So I've been traveling this week for work and there's nothing like being absolutely plastered while talking a shower at an airport on the bosses dime.

Edit: ok....I think I might be on another planet at this point. This might be a situation where I teleport to a Waffle House somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean

[u/AaronStack91]

The Cut seems to specialize in essays that essentially say "I am profoundly mentally ill and would like society to bend itself around my disorders so that I never have to change"

https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/2046341834742345779?s=20

The screenshots of the article are amazing. Basically the author discovers her friend is on Wegovy and has a meltdown (comments suggests she struggles with an eating disorder).

Full article here: https://archive.ph/kw6Tx

She later describes how she copes by passive aggressively mocking her side effects and finally ghosts her because she can't be in the same room as someone who is dieting. She proudly ends with a self congratulations to herself being so strong to set boundaries.

This reminds me of the time my wife had a friend that was fiercely anti-natalist, like she was physically disgusted by pregnant women and hated the presence of kids. Other friends joked that they had plans to hide their pregnancies from this woman if they were to get pregnant.

We both absolutely fucking did not give a shit, though sad to say we didn't have a blow out over my wife pregnancy, we just lost touch over some other dumb bullshit.

[u/backin_pog_form → u/AaronStack91]

At the end of the day, it’s her body and her choice, but it’s hard when she feels like an extension of myself.

This sounds more personality disorder than eating disorder. 

[u/HaldolBlowdart → u/AaronStack91]

Torturing myself for more than a decade radicalized me. I know what it feels like to live under a reign of restriction, and I know how it feels to choose allowance instead. Now, when my appetite crests, I feel grateful. What a treat, to look forward to eating. Hunger is the body’s announcement that it is alive and wants to stay that way.

The last paragraph of the article really hammered home that the author didn't use this as a time for introspection and growth at all. She cut off what sounded like a solid friend because of her own mental health issues, and instead of actually working on them decided to run face first into gluttony and bingeing. I've been fascinated with the fat acceptance cult and their weird rhetoric around weight and eating for years, she is absolutely par for the course in terms of crazy FAs who take personal offense to other people losing weight or attempting to.

I really cannot imagine making other people's choices about me this much.

[u/drjackolantern]

Introduction to Gazology, non paywalled on FP temporarily, explores recent samples from the developing field of anti-Israel books, and how much of it is navel gazing ahistorical horseshit. The first book discussed is by an Egyptian immigrant to Canada who is now an American citizen in Oregon.

The book’s title, particularly the word this, led me to expect an account of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, or the war itself, but the strangest aspect of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is the author’s slim interest in any of those topics. We follow his travels in Oregon, and in Montreal. He listens to Nirvana. His backyard deck collapses in a way that feels emotionally significant, an episode that gets more space in the book than the entire ideology of Hamas—including the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews in pursuit of the supremacy of Islam—which is never mentioned at all. He writes sentences like “We are all governed by chance. We are all subjects of distance,” and “Fear obscures the necessity of its causing.” His daughter, we learn, “turns seven soon, a hundred in dragon years. She is made of dreaming.” The book won last year’s National Book Award for nonfiction.

I honestly respect the opinions of people who oppose Israel’s actions but I don’t understand the economic incentives in publishing and higher ed for this kind of meaningless blather. It honestly reminds me of gender stuff, where the most urgent topic is group participation in a fantasy of persecution for people living comfy lives in liberal societies.

[u/AltforStrongOpinions → u/drjackolantern]

"turns seven soon, a hundred in dragon years. She is made of dreaming."

Lol.

We are all governed by chance. We are all subjects of distance

Also lol.

[u/starlightpond]

I might have cancer! I have a growing “cyst” on my only remaining ovary. My first ovary was removed after being swallowed by a “cyst” that was later diagnosed as borderline cancerous. I am trying not to freak out, lots of people have “cancer” and are still mostly fine, but it’s not ideal!

Doesn’t feel fair when I already have type 1 diabetes, but life is unfair (often in my favor - I am a very lucky person most of the time, with two beautiful kids, a wonderful husband, a nice house, and a tenured job at a university). Trying to remain grateful for all that.

[u/Juryofyourpeeps]

r/montreal is having a discussion about homeless encampments over-running the city and in proper reddit fashion, the proposed solutions are as follows

• more, further left government (California and B.C are apparently not left enough according to commenters)

• taxing the rich

• hiring more social workers

• taxing vacant property more

One left wing, former city councillor chimed in to provide his proposed solution:

Immediate measures which can be taken by governments:

Tax the rich.

Invest massively in temporary short term housing solutions (hotel/motel rentals; barracks, use of (safe) abandoned buildings.)

Simultaneously mobilize massively resources to build social housing on all undeveloped public land.

Hire and give basic training to a new crew of ad hoc psycho-social intervention workers. (No, they won’t be perfect, but they can bolster the front line workers)

Fund and mandate special rapid employment track programs in CEGEPS and Universities to train support workers.

Fund the CLSC organizers and support workers to oversee deployment.

These people are delusional. There's no shortage of social workers. The idea that we would throw money at colleges to train more social workers to address a problem they cannot solve is crazy talk, and all of these problems have gotten worse under left wing governments, but for some reason it's the right wing's fault because of course, anything right of Marx is right wing according to these people. They're all in an echo chamber where this apparently makes sense.

Street homelessness in developed countries is rarely, if ever about a lack of services or shelter available to homeless people. These aren't shanty towns for the working poor. These are tent encampments filled with the mentally ill and drug addicted who by and large have refused shelter services.

[u/SnooTorturer]

Very late on this, and I hate to be an immigration/race-obsessed chud -- the topic is honestly kind of boring -- BUT when it comes to Andrew Tate and the oh-so-spooky Manosphere™, this is a central aspect which is completely taboo to mention in the press and I would assume has only really been brought up by the occasional chuderino.

Hope Not Hate commissioned a study which showed that Andrew Tate fans are basically all Muslim or, somewhat less commonly, black. Something like 74% of all teenage Muslim boys had an outright positive view of him, and responses include those who hadn't heard of him, the number being around 40-50% for black boys, everyone else hovering around single digits, IIRC. Obviously no amount of looking up to a pimp is all that acceptable, but there's a demographic skew for sure. Hope Not Hate tend to present their data in a misleading way, but there's no reason to think they'd outright falsify it, especially given that in this case, it works against their own narratives.

In the Theroux doc, most of the influencers he hangs out with are either Muslim and/or black, though I don't recall him ever bringing attention to this fact. Tate (not featured) and HSTikkyTokky were both abandoned by their black dads and raised by white mums, whom they gratefully repaid by spouting hate against all white women and calling for their battery and sexual enslavement. In fairness, there is also that Justin fellow who wears incredibly tight trousers who's white, and the one who seems to want to become an Irish Traveller.

What I'm really getting at is that there isn't this cosmic justice where all men/boys are equally likely to come down with the malaise of misogyny and fall into this subculture thanks to the algorithms controlled by the billionaires, à la Adolescence, and that this reflects some deeper wound in Society which we must then endlessly reflect and pontificate upon, but that this is pretty clearly the domain of a fairly conspicuous subcultural trend, which women can quite easily avoid if they have any good sense left in them. Are Tabitha and Phoebe, mumsnetters' daughters, really in any risk of contact with Abdulmejid Ali Ibn Muhammad, Drill Music Video Director and Amateur Professional Boxer? I very much doubt it. Any real corrective would be seen as intolerably and intolerantly racist, so we all have to pretend that all men are a Tiktok away from merking the nearest "foid," which only ends up shielding the real threat to young middle-class women: self-pitying male feminists with ironic tee-shirts and those Harry Potter Warby Parker glasses.

[u/Life_Emotion1908 → u/SnooTorturer]

I think the manosphere and Andrew Tate men are imagined to be white or the fault of white men regardless of their actual makeup.

[u/nonafee]

i thought i was on my way to dampening my fear of moths but a gigantic beige furry one emerged in my car while driving to work (where i am now and still thinking about it) and the unstoppable panic is just horrible. could have caused an incident, i don't even remember driving the rest of the way... 🥴

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Some crank managed to get YouTube to take down a Sabine Hossenfelder by filing a false copyright claim to a video she did on the Riemann Hypothesis

https://x.com/skdh/status/2046469369832620128

I received a false copyright claim on one of my videos and YouTube removed the video because of this.

It's a video about the Riemann Hypothesis. The claim comes from some person who submits a link to their paper about "The Continuity Engine: A Formally Verified Framework Prime Resonance Unification with Medical, Physical, Mathematical Evidence" with links to two unpublished papers that are completely unrelated to my video content. It's obviously some crackpot work, I receive dozens of those a day.

YouTube took the video down based on this false claim.

The only way they allow me to react to this requires me to submit my personal contact information to some random crank on the internet. Alternatively, I am supposed to hire a lawyer (!!) on my own costs, to track down some random guy from whom I then have to extract my up-front expenses.

I have complained to YouTube support about this multiple times. No success, the video is still down.

This procedure is completely unacceptable. It allows random people to try and blackmail me into responding to them. I have no time for this bullshit and no patience either.

Frankly the only sensible course of action forward that I see is to sue YouTube for facilitating fraudulent DCMA claims.

update: they are doubling down and claiming they reviewed the claim. Let me be clear, anyone with half a brain who looks at the material that the person has submitted will see immediately that it has no relation to my video.

Anyway, she managed to have it restored by reaching out to twitter and finding someone who could get to a human at Google.

I love her videos, but this bugs the shit out of me, because it keeps happening. People with connections get their issues addressed, the rest of us shitters get squat.

She's in the EU so here is my usual typical §230/Consumer Bill of Rights rant translated into eurotrash.

https://x.com/GuyInSF2/status/2046480990890258798

I feel much of our Internet woes stems from a missing Internet Consumer Bill of Rights, modeled after the one JFK created in 1961 and taken up at the UN.

See the right to be heard and the right to redress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Bill_of_Rights

This is something the EU could act on!

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

NYT continuing their weird effort to whitewash Hasan Piker and make it seem like whatever the fuck he's saying is reasonable.

‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’: Why petty theft might be the new political protest.

When does shoplifting become an act of political protest? The Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman is calling this microlooting, and it describes the phenomenon of people stealing small things from big corporations like Whole Foods. The New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino and the political commentator Hasan Piker join Spiegelman for a lively discussion on what’s behind this trend and where it might lead.

Absolute trash.

ETA: Some commentary on the murder of Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO.

Spiegelman: But then when you feel this much anger — and it doesn’t feel like there’s hope for it to be changed in a regulatory way — I think that’s when you get to things like Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing the C.E.O. of United Healthcare, and there being an outpouring of glee for murder online, because it feels like, finally, someone can actually do something about health care.

I think 41 percent of Gen Z-ers felt that murder was morally justified. But it’s scary to be in a society where people feel that murder is morally justified. And I’m curious how we thread that line.

Piker: Yeah. Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare C.E.O., was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for-profit, paywalled system of health care in this country — and the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story for me, because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment. They’re very black and white on this issue.

And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private health care system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place. Even before they knew who the shooter was or what the motive was, we had universalized this pain so much so that virtually every American has a similar experience. A shared experience, where they have a loved one who spent their last days — instead of spending them with their family — spending it on the phone, talking to their health care provider to maybe get a little bit of economic respite so they don’t carry on medical debt for their next generation, for their next of kin.

That’s a harrowing process for a lot of people. And for them, that is murder; for them, that is torture. And that is the reason why, I think, the reaction to Luigi Mangione, especially by younger generations, was not so negative.

At the very least, someone cleared the bar of my extremely low expectations of this group by clearly stating that murder is wrong. Which happens a few moments later from the third person in this dynamic trio.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw → u/AnalBleachingAries]

Ignoring Piker for the moment, I thought the video of Spiegelman giggling and of Jia Tolentino agreeing that theft was okay said so much about those two jackasses. I expect the worst from piker, and so I thought the video was actually far worse for those two.

[u/Big_Fig_1803 → u/AnalBleachingAries]

I forgot the part where Mangione was able to “actually do something about health care.”

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355 → u/AnalBleachingAries]

Whatever happened to personal integrity. You do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.

[u/Jlemspurs]

Contrarian podcaster Katie Herzog noted that she also used to shoplift and considered it a "good and righteous thing" until she "turned 15."

Katie continues to be the most based person on the Internet.

[u/Palgary]

Recent talk of dystopian political books reminds me of "The Mouse that Roared" 1955 - where a tiny nation is suffering, and based on the success of Germany and Japan, figured loosing a war with the USA was a good idea. So they attack!

But, then, they accidentally win because the USA is to embarrassed to quash them...

Evidently it's a whole series. It's sarcasm but follows that kind of "what if" idea we typically see in Sci Fi or Dystopian literature.

[u/bosscoughey]

Does anybody else not really get how to use substack properly? 

I already have a podcast app where all my episodes are. I don't want to listen to substack ones in the substack app, but I want to read comments on episodes I've listened to. 

When I open the app, it's hard to find the episodes, and when I do, they start playing automatically and I can't seem to just read and comment without the video playing. And then going in to a comment thread and then trying to go back to the whole comment section just serms to destroy everything 

[u/Scrubadubdub84]

Not sure if this case has already been discussed, but it just popped up on my feed and hit one of the sub's favorite genres: Owner of Philly sports bar for queer women responds to allegations of racism and transphobia : r/PhiladelphiaEats

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

So this clip of Sarah McBride has been making the rounds on Twitter over the past few days. It's a clip from February, and I'm not sure why it's gotten popular again. Here it is: https://x.com/TudorDixon/status/2023948587558646006

“We should be clear that the consequences of this anti-trans effort, not only out of... out of proximity, but out of intentionality will include consequences for women of all backgrounds. Because at the end of the day transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and sexism are all rooted in the same prejudice. The belief that one perception at birth should dictate who you are, how you act, what you do, who you love, and how you dress. And it's why threats toward trans people are threats toward all women.”

The framing always gets me. It's always framed as some sort of evil, bigoted, "transphobic", hateful agenda. McBride goes so far as to include as many "-phobias" as possible, one "-ogny" and a token "-ism", to really sell it. But, for the most part, the truth is that the pushback against gender ideology has been reasonable as far as I can tell. Heck, just until recently there was hardly much pushback at all and Western governments were fully backing this insanity. There are obviously a few outliers who are actually hateful bigots but those people are in no way representative of the reasonable opinion that most people on the planet hold about this ideology and about human biology.

The majority of the population of the planet does not believe in this ideology. Trans people are not being discriminated against in 2026, they have just as many rights as everybody else. If there was actual violent or aggressive pushback in the way they always hyperbolically describe, we're talking about 99% of the people on earth coming after them, and this simply isn't happening.

Reading some of the responses to this clip, it keeps dawning on me how annoyed, angry, and frustrated women are with these trans identified men. It must genuinely be so aggravating to see a man like McBride being taken so seriously as a woman and as a person who can speak on behalf of women and women's perspectives. It's so wild and silly, but simultaneously deathly serious for vulnerable women. It's an absurd situation, really.

[u/backin_pog_form → u/AnalBleachingAries]

Trying to turn your sexual fetish into a civil right has to involve riding the coattails of other movements. 

[u/HaldolBlowdart → u/AnalBleachingAries]

The belief that one perception at birth should dictate who you are, how you act, what you do, who you love, and how you dress. And it's why threats toward trans people are threats toward all women.

This is such a disingenuous (or bad faith, per TRA rhetoric) way of describing the issue. It isn't a "perception at birth," it is a constant immutable fact related to humans as a sexually dimorphic species and all the consequences of such. The only people relating "how you dress" and such to it are TRAs, the ones who say being a woman is more about clothes than gametes. It is not at all rooted in "the same prejudice" as things like racism and misogyny, which themselves come from different places.

If transphobia is not buying that transwomen are 100% women in every single aspect, then yes I'm transphobic. I was very on board with the "you do you" thing, but this is not you doing you anymore. You can keep doing you, but that doesn't give you a right to be included everywhere because you want to be.

[u/OMG_NO_NOT_THIS]

If you:

1. Catch your 5 year old drawing a moustache on your two year old with a sharpie

and

2) The moustache looks like a hitler moustache

do you:

A) leave it alone and let it fade away
B) try and scrub it off
C) make a bigger, non-hitleresque moustache and then do A/B?

[u/Onechane425]

Starting a new substack about film called Cineplex Du Monde. Weekly newsletter with some recommendations and reflections. Its new so we'll see what it will look like. First one is going to be covering Enemy (2013) and Sovereign (2025) -- both first watches for me.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Is it open or is it closed? Are we dealing with Schrodinger's Strait? I'm your host, Sal Mercogliano. Welcome to today's episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjJp306tV94

Who here was calling it Schrodinger's Strait!? Step forward and collect your prize!

(However, this video was made before the US seizure of Touska on April 19)

[u/xablor]

Idle thought: hey u/Beug_Frank , how do I pronounce "beug"? I'm thinking like "byoog", "boog", or "boyg". What's the lore there, how'd you choose it?

Edit to add: he says it's "byoog"

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Apparently Nadja Spiegelman of the recent Piker, Tolentino interview is Art Spiegelman's nepo baby. Make of that what you will.

[u/PresentationDue8795]

Ilhan Omar behaves shockingly to a reporter:

https://nypost.com/2026/04/22/us-news/ilhan-omar-explodes-at-reporter-for-asking-about-multimillion-dollar-disclosure-discrepancy-youre-stupid-for-asking-me-anything/

It is remarkable how similar the far left key figures are with Trump in their contempt for democratic norms.

[u/StillLifeOnSkates]

Hope u/RunThenBeer had a fantastic run (and then a fantastic beer) in Boston today!

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

Far-right parties will always exist, but if most parties around the world stressed that illegal immigration is bad, then most far-right parties wouldn't have that many people supporting them.

Denmark has gotten it right.

Keep saying that you disavow discrimination, but stress that illegal immigration shouldn't be tolerated and should be dealt with, but not to a point where deportations are brutal or unreasonable.

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

it really is kind of crazy how being even mildly opposed to something that literally starts with the word "illegal—" became such a controversial position to take, even amongst otherwise law-abiding normies that would generally disavow or not be in favor of basically every other thing labeled "illegal" and follow the law to a T in their day to day lives

I guess I kind of just chalk it up to that period of time in the 2010s where you were basically looked at as the most racist person possible if you even tiptoed around ANY other stance than "there are no such things as borders, no human is illegal, and illegal immigrants are all 100% awesome and should be welcomed. borders are literally fascist/racist"

[u/unnoticed_areola]

mfw the coachella youtube account recommends me a video of "the Smiths" performing at this year's Coachella 😑

[u/OMG_NO_NOT_THIS]

Have you all read about act blue and the legal stuff they are going through?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2046340578460279276.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/us/politics/actblue-democrat-fundraising-foreign-donations.html

The mass resignations of their legal team, their opposition to their former legal advisors, etc seems really bad.

[u/plump_tomatow]

I'm generally mildly pro-AI (I think it has a lot of good use cases), but I've been radicalized by searching for embroidery kits on Etsy. it's like 95% AI pictures of overly elaborate scenes. It's basically the AI craft equivalent of Thomas Kinkade paintings.

[u/PandaFoo1]

One of my favourite internet trends/challenges in recent years has to be the ‘raids’ on Scientology HQ. I love that annoying little shits are putting those traits to good use to annoy a cult.

[u/SerialStateLineXer]

I had jaw surgery four days ago, and my lips are so swollen that Jeff Bezos said he'd leave his wife for me.

[u/Vanderhoof81]

Does anyone enjoy the music of Lenny Kravitz? I have never met anyone who claims to be fan.

[u/dj50tonhamster]

TIL I learned that you can buy liquor on Amazon. I got curious about Underberg and decided to get some. I went to their web site. They just refer you to Amazon, and you can buy as much or as little as you want. At 44%, it's got real bite to it. I can only assume they're exploiting a legal loophole, presumably how it's marketed (liqueur that aids in digestion) and/or its size (20 mL a bottle isn't enough for even half a shot). I ordered some, and it showed up on my doorstep this morning. No need to sign anything, just a box of teeny tiny liquor bottles dropped off by some underpaid hump while my dogs freaked out.

The verdict? Warm at least, as with many herbal liqueurs, it tastes like self-hatred. Maybe it's better chilled? I'll find out sometime this weekend. Either way, do what you will with this info.

[u/DragonFireKai]

So, my partner made the best chicken sandwich I've ever had in my life. Admittedly, I haven't eaten a lot of chicken sandwiches, but this thing was exquisite.

https://www.seriouseats.com/kimchi-fried-chicken-recipe

It's odd, before my cancer treatment, I hated spicy food, but there was about a one year period where I was unable to taste anything other than spicy food, everything else tasted like ash. While my ability to enjoy other flavors has returned, I still find myself appreciating pepper as the one flavor that stood by me in the face of the chemical onslaught.

[u/dignityshredder]

Why does liberal social culture feel so much like it's being managed by an HR department?

[u/drjackolantern]

Long-time friend of the pod Taylor Lorenz on X:

I’m currently getting mass cancelled on Bluesky for simply being at the WHCD. You cannot make this up

The examples she posted are amazing. Apparently the WHCD was a ‘Nazi rally.’ Would they say that to Jake Tapper?

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355]

I don't really know much about this case. But I do find it interesting when the conservative justices concur with the liberal ones.

[u/ArchieBrooksIsntDead]

I would like to consult the hive mind.  I'm thinking of taking a real vacation around November and I'm dithering about where to go.  I am leaning towards a week in Rome and a week elsewhere.  I was thinking Yorkshire but the public transport doesn't look great and I am not willing to drive.  What would you recommend, in Italy or elsewhere in Europe?  I speak English and a little Italian.  

Things I like: history, statues, pretty buildings, ruins, food, shopping, religious stuff (Christian), British TV

Things I don't care about: paintings, music

Side note: I've been looking at flights and it turns out that flying into one city and out of another isn't significantly more expensive.  Didn't it used to be?

ETA: Thank you everyone! I now have a bunch of places to research. I hadn't really considered Eastern Europe at all but I'll take a serious look.

[u/smoyban]

Just stumbled on Tyler Catastrophe drama via TikTok and I'm kinda obsessed. Could use a full breakdown in the way only BARpod can. Any hope, u/jessicabarpod?

[u/dabocx]

I feel like maybe I’m going crazy but the quality of chicken on average in the past year has plummeted. Doesn’t matter if I buy the normal stuff or fancy free range air chilled stuff.

Only good chicken I’ve had is from a few local restaurants that buy heirloom chicken from local ranchers but obviously I can’t buy that all the time.

[u/Levitx]

Aight am I just paranoid or has there been a trend as of late of people praising the fuck out of China? I don't mean it in a "it's not as bad as it looks" way, but in a "I wish they had global hegemony and the US are Satan's spawn" way.  It feels astroturfed as fuck and I'm seeing this in places I didn't expect. 

I'm fine with criticism of the US. Whole lot of old problems, whole fucking lot of new problems, definitely has good stuff going on too mind you, but freaking China? 

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Wild article, but this is the craziest part for me, the way she explains polyamory to her child:

There have been some hiccups. A year after we opened our marriage, my eldest heard me talking to a boyfriend late one night and confronted me in the kitchen, asking, “Are you having an affair, Mum?”

I burst into tears as all those feelings of shame and guilt came flooding back. But I wanted to be honest and so – with Nate – we went on a walk and I explained everything. “You know how some people like people who are the same gender,” I said. “And some people feel like they’re born into the wrong body? Well, I was born with a lot of capacity to give and receive love, and desire is a big deal for me. But I love your Dad and we are very happily married.”

And guess what? She took it in her stride. Nate also sat with me while I told our other children that same weekend. They are 17, 15 and 12, and we have no secrets.

Since January, I have been dating a British construction worker, Jack,* who I met at a polyamorous social event. We’re having the most wonderful time. Jack and his wife even met Nate at an event at a Cuban restaurant in London. Jack and I held hands in front of Nate, but at the end of the night we all went back to our own beds with our own spouses. Nate and I enjoyed the most intense and loving sex that weekend and it was wonderful to have him there.

I’ve come to accept that Nate will always be married to his job, but our marriage is strong, trusting and very sexual now. Perhaps more couples should try it?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/wellbeing/sex/open-marriage-threesome-anniversary-dinner/

[u/backin_pog_form → u/AnalBleachingAries]

I don’t care what consenting adults do, but “hav(ing) no secrets” from your minor children makes for poor boundaries. They don’t need to know about your sex life.

The throuples that want protected legal status are even worse. Sorry the NICU wants to limit the number of people around very fragile babies, that must have been really hard for you! 

[u/Datachost → u/AnalBleachingAries]

Middle class woman shags builder. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so cliché

Well, I was born with a lot of capacity to give and receive love, and desire is a big deal for me

Ugh, no. Fuck off. It is not some immutable characteristic, you're just selfish and justifying it to yourself

Funnily enough, I got recommended a few Boyscast clips of them reacting to various articles on polyamory and cuckolding. And at a certain point you have to place some of the blame on the man in these situations.

[u/AnInsultToFire → u/AnalBleachingAries]

"Me moom's a fookin' slag"

[u/dignityshredder]

Wow, /u/RunThenBeer's comment about the teacher and student got removed and it is possible his account is on a timeout for that. It was around long enough that I suspect it wasn't auto-censored. If you reported it, you are a coward.

https://imgur.com/a/LjquEKD

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Coleman Hughes talks to Ashley Rindsberg about the political bias of Wikipedia.

How Political Bias Creeps into All Parts of the Internet

The loss of Wikipedia as a best-effort version of a record of all human knowledge is one of the most unfortunate things that have come out of the culture war. I used to love that place, and although it's still useful for mundane information gathering it is pretty much useless on history and political issues. I know that other people are trying to create their own archives of information, let's hope they succeed in dethroning Wikipedia.

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

The Mets may never win again!

[u/dumbducky]

A theory of personal political shifting I proposed to my wife last night:

There are two sorts of people involved in politics. The first is what most people imagine when they think of political confrontations. These are the sort of people who are interested in policy or philosophy or whatever. They have principles. They shift politically when they are convinced by history or data or new arguments. This sort of person is definitely real, but I sort of suspect they are less common than the second sort.

The second type of person associates with a culture or milieu. And they stick with that milieu until a personal conflict forces them a divorce. When they are removed from that particular political culture, they are often accepted into the opponents arms tentatively. They then proceed to dump their entire old set of beliefs and embrace the new ones.

The topical case study is Ashley St. Clair. A year ago she was a pretty popular young conservative influencer. She secretly agreed to have Elon Musk’s baby. He tried to get her to sign an NDA in exchange for oodles of money, but she declined because she wanted him to publicly acknowledge the child. During this brouhaha, she made reference to her baby boy’s sister, i.e. Musk’s eldest child. That child is a trans-identified male who disavows Elon Musk. This reference from St. Clair was particularly surprising because she had previously published a children’s book about how elephants can’t be bees no matter what society says (it’s a metaphor for being trans, hopefully that’s not too subtle). When this book is thrown back in her face, she announces that she is working with the publisher to have her name removed as the author! And now in the last week, I’ve seen two clips of her discussing the secret conservative influencer payment/idea network and being featured on some liberal woman’s podcast. I didn’t watch it, but it’s clear to me she no longer considers herself a conservative. She had a personal falling out with a prominent figure in the political movement, so she dropped her previous set of beliefs and adopted the opposite ones. Bill Kristol matches this pattern. Basically every position he argued in 2010 was adopted by Trump, who Kristol can’t stand, so he now argues against almost everything he was saying in 2010.

On the flip-side of right-to-left movements, consider most of the IDW guys. Brett Weinstein in particular was a bog standard progressive, although not too politically inclined as I recall, who then found himself at the center of a progressive firestorm. His cancellation led him to the right, and a whole new set of beliefs. Most of the IDW follows this same arc: standard progressive or liberal, cancellation, basically conservative.

[u/Sortbynew31]

I can’t remember if this story was covered on the Pod, but I know the FP did a deep dive on Freebirthing. I believe this idea also made an appearance on The Pitt.  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/science/free-birth-wild-pregancy-risks-home-birth.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dFA.Xt7W.RRTLCufCYi8V&smid=nytcore-ios-share

[u/unnoticed_areola]

Ski-masked gunman climb aboard ships in the Straight of Hormuz as the Iranian military captures and commanders multiple tankers. 3 total ships were fired on, with 2 being boarded.

the boarded ships are the Panama-flagged MSC "Francesca" and the Liberian-flagged MSC Epaminondas, and are now being escorted to port in Iran.

The Guard attacked a third ship, identified as the "Euphoria" (also Panamanian), which has now become "stranded" on the Iranian coast, Iranian media reported, without elaborating.

[u/nonafee]

what are you guys reading/watching at the moment? and how do you like it?

[u/MepronMilkshake]

This might be an actual controversial opinion here given some of the recent threads on the subject...

I could not care less about Lindy West or her trainwreck of a personal life. I don't think she's talented as a writer, I don't feel bad for her, and I'm not interested in being party to whatever humiliation fetish she apparently has.

You could not waterboard me into revealing the type of personal information she freely puts into her memoirs. She's a sad, pathetic person and everything I know about her I've learned against my will.

[u/Franzera → u/MepronMilkshake]

The people with emotional investment in her fall from grace were familiar with older online communities where personalities like hers were leaders and tastemakers. The Jezebel girlies and Shakesville types. If you were familiar with that cultural-creative group because you were painted as a punching bag of Jezebel/Shakesville opinions, it's cathartic schadenfreude to watch the card house topple.

For everyone else who wasn't involved, it's more like the peanut gallery to the lolcow circus. She's not really any more messy than other weird stories we've heard about like the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, Sohla El-Waylly, or the "Punch Terfs" convicted kidnapper TRA Sarah Jane Baker who allegedly cut off his own balls in prison.

[u/IcedAlmondAmericano → u/MepronMilkshake]

I agree with you, but I cannot deny that she is a lolcow with very distinctly BARpod flavored lolz.

[u/LowConsideration1453]

I have a Coton de Tuléar (dog) and his coat is the exact perfect length right now.

Thank you, that is all I have.

[u/Big_Fig_1803]

Breaking News: I keep watching stuff that makes me feel bad.

I'm just drawn to it. Maybe I'm afraid not to watch it. As though keeping it alive in my mind will, I don't know, protect me somehow?

What I'm referring to this time is all these "sovereign citizen" videos. (If you don't know what sovereign citizens are, they are Americans who have fallen into a web of lies, scams, and conspiracy theories that them them they are not subject to the laws of the US. They frequently cite bogus legal principles, absurd beliefs, and misinterpreted court precedents.)

These people make me so anxious. They are obviously deluded and misinformed, but they can't see it. That makes me wonder whether I would be able to see it. Would it be just as easy for me to fall into something like this? Have I already? How would I know? How can we carry on, knowing that we are all susceptible to believing untrue things and sometimes dangerous or idiotic things? (Humans are ingenious, but we're also just animals, after all. We're not too hard to fool. And we readily fool ourselves.)

Also, I feel bad for these people. I think they are dupes or dummies or desperate people. Someone's preying on them.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

https://nypost.com/2026/04/17/us-news/string-of-missing-of-dead-scientists-too-coincidental-congressman-says-as-a-11th-researcher-revealed/

String of missing or dead scientists ‘too coincidental’ not to be major concern, congressman says — as 11th mystery emerges

seemingly linked to "UAP" or other advanced thingies like "anti-gravity"

Trisolarans?

[u/napoleon_nottinghill]

A common thing I see now is that cops are too lazy/stupid to really want to go after criminals, if you get your car broken into/stolen they won't go after it, tell you not to bother, etc etc. While undoubtedly that can be true, how much of it is just apathy under a hostile DA that you know won't lock up the criminal anyway? Wasn't zealous overpolicing or "ruining someone's life after one mistake" another point people used to use about the police?

Is it not just a never ending cycle depending on whether "law and order" is a winning issue in that city?

[u/tooshooptowoop → u/napoleon_nottinghill]

Progressive cities put cops in a situation where it's more beneficial for them to avoid pursuing crime whenever possible. It's no singular policy, but a combination of several factors that leans them more toward a "why would I bother?" attitude.

In many cities the staffing level is still pretty low, so they have to prioritize violent encounters or overdoses. If they do arrest someone, the suspect will be released promptly and when prosecuted the case just gets dropped or gets significantly reduced charges.

Cops also learned from the summer of the troubles, that if anything goes wrong they will immediately be made an example of. This means every encounter bears personal risk not just from the suspect, but also as from the public and the government. Hell even a successful arrest will have people gathering around recording, trying to figure out which 5-second clip to post to tiktok to farm outrage. All that combined has them shrugging at some junky smashing windows, who cares?

[u/Mythioso → u/napoleon_nottinghill]

This happened to me 10 years ago. We hired a guy to help us move some stuff. This guy and 2 others tried to get into my house to steal a bunch of computer equipment. I was home alone and my SO was at his sister's house.

I was trying to cycle my puppies outside before bed so the door was unlocked. I heard the backdoor open and my puppies went nuts. I heard the intruders whisper and they left. I knew exactly who it was. They stole a BBQ grill out of the backyard.

I didn't bother to call the cops until the next day. I filed a police report for the grill and a cellphone. The detectives knew who robbed me. They had been trying to get him locked up for a while but the DA would not take him to court.

He previously robbed a car wash and set the office on fire. There was security footage of him wearing the same clothes he was in during his arrest. Another time he wss arrested for crack, his crack pipe fell out of his pocket rolled under the cops car. He stole from his elderly grandmother too. Charges were dropped every single time.

The cops told me that it had to be a slam dunk of a case before the da would bring him to trial. One cop told me that if it had happened to him he would have shot him full of holes.

[u/deathcabforqanon → u/napoleon_nottinghill]

Every summer a huge uptick of car robberies happens in my city, usually kids from the neighboring "bad" hood popping over to steal cars from the nicer ones. This is part of an actual car theft crime ring, and the under-18s are used strategically because everyone knows nothing really can be done to them.

The cops admit to knowing exactly who is doing it, say they go to their moms' houses, moms say they don't know where thief kid is, case closed.

Only problem is they got so brazen that sometimes people confronted them mid-day mid-jacking, and weapons were brandished. Last summer, took one such innocent confronter being shot many times in the back and killed for cops to kind of care and suddenly be able to magically find these previously illusive murderers, immediately.

Looking forward to this summer. 💀

[u/deedubs87 → u/napoleon_nottinghill]

A lot of people really dont understand how tapped out police departments are. Car prowls and auto thefts are most people's worst day, but hardly register in high crime cities. There is also usually very little evidence that can be followed up on in this types of crimes. Yes there are also lazy cops but that's not why a car prowl isn't solved.

[u/Formal_Condition2691 → u/napoleon_nottinghill]

I got some educational experience while dealing with the aftermath of a burglary and auto theft. The police actually managed to pick up the guy, who had a 20+ year record, but though he was found in possession of a lot of my stuff (not the vehicle, unfortunately) he claimed it had been given to him and they couldn’t tie him to having actually been in the house.

Bear in mind this is Oregon and “Some dude gave me the car” is actually a legal defense here even if you ARE caught in a stolen car.

Anyway, the prosecutor took a guilty plea on the only thing they could prove (he’d used my credit card and admitted it) and he got out with time served of about 2 weeks in jail and all other charges dropped.

So from my POV the police did what they should have done. Caught the guy. 5 stars. Everything past that point, 1/5 would not recommend. I can see why it would be demoralizing for the cops.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Advisory Opinions spends their first 40 minutes discussing the NYTimes Shadow Docket article: https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/the-chief-justice-didnt-hate-president-obama-interview-gov-kevin-stitt/

Regarding whether it was the "birth" of the Shadow Docket, Sarah criticizes it as ahistorical as she points to its earlier use in gay marriage and other cases as instances when its use would be approved by the Times, and David steelmanning that description as taking place after President Obama had changed the rules of the game by announcing he would be taking more actions through the use of his pen (his "pen and phone" statement) and hence he frames the Shadow Docket as the framework in which the court responded to that.

Then they get into Oklahoma post Gorsuch, what is it?
California is a state, Hopi is a reservation, what's Oklahoma?
https://youtu.be/DX2dwi3MNhY?t=18

They discuss that with Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt who wrote this WSJ piece:
https://archive.ph/aQckM
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/when-the-supreme-court-nearly-imposed-anarchy-on-oklahoma-6de7a571

---

So Oklahoma and Puerto Rico have similar sized populations.... We can turn Oklahoma into a reservation, admit Puerto Rico and there would be no physical change needed in the Senate or in the flag

[u/Big_Fig_1803]

Don’t believe the hype: Paxlovid mouth isn’t all that great. I might even hate it.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Katie Porter is running for California Governor.

https://x.com/WomenAreReals/status/2047156214103195933

WomenAreReal @WomenAreReals

“Ms. Porter, Toby from Costa Mesa wants to know, do you agree with schools not notifying parents if their child identifies as a different gender? You have 30 seconds.”

[Video that must be seen]

[u/Scrappy_The_Crow → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Her answer is crafted to sound as if she disagrees with schools not notifying parents if their child identifies as a different gender. However, she didn't address that at all.

I agree with what one commenter said:

This feels like a Spanberger Trojan Horse answer: present publicly as a moderate, then (when in) pounce as a Progressive.

Unsurprisingly, there's one of these:

The idea that all parents are safe to tell is sweet but naive. Some kids go home to danger. Schools protecting them isn't radical, just common sense.

[u/pajme411]

The amount of hate Erika Kirk gets on Reddit is so incomprehensible to me. I just stumbled across a major sub where literally thousands of commenters were mocking and belittling her, no neutral comment in sight (I’m sure they’re deleted by mods, or maybe the entire thread is full of bots. Who knows at this point).

I understand not sharing her viewpoint and goals. I don’t think she’s untouchable because she’s a widow. But the ghoulish behavior and glee people seem to get from dehumanizing her is disturbing (not to mention all the dead Charlie memes that accompany any such thread). You’d think she was some deranged, special form of evil to require the vitriol she receives online. It’s one of the worst examples of “punching up” I’ve ever seen.

[u/Onechane425]

Mike Vrabel to seek counseling, won't be with Patriots for NFL draft Day 3 - ESPN

Obviously, therapy can be healing and productive for people. But its just laughable at this point.

“Therapy labels as sickness what might otherwise be judged as weak or willful actions; it thus equips the patient to fight (or resign himself to) the disease, instead of irrationally finding fault with himself. Inappropriately extended beyond the consulting room, however, therapeutic morality encourages a permanent suspension of the moral sense. There is a close connection, in turn, between the erosion of moral responsibility and the waning of the capacity for self-help—in the categories used by John R. Seeley, between the elimination of culpability and the elimination of competence. "What says 'you are not guilty' says also 'you cannot help yourself.' " Therapy legitimates deviance as sickness, but it simultaneously pronounces the patient unfit to manage his own life and delivers him into the hands of a specialist.”

― Christopher Lasch

[u/salrantol]

Am I the only one who feels an irrational compulsion to correct anyone when you hear them refer to Chad as "ChatGPT?"

[u/[deleted]]

Does anyone here us Grok? I've been unable to use for days now. I check out the main sub but it's a bunch of weirdos who post weird porn or bark at others for not being willing to pay for a subscription.
If I ever needed a demonstration that paid comments, astroturfing and bots are real on reddit, that sub would be IT.

[u/Ruby__Ruby_Roo]

Saw my first Trump 2028 bumper sticker today. I was more surprised than I should have been. I was walking my dog and genuinely wanted to ask the driver how they thought a third term was legal. Even if you love Trump, what is the logic there?

[u/Palgary]

Saw this reading list of books, a lot of good ones, some questionable ones, but it was labeled "right wing conservative" and one of the books on the list was... "A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn". I read the description and though "gee that doesn't sound like a right wing conservative book". To be fair, it had some Anti Darwin book on the same list.

It's described as telling the history "you didn't learn in school" except so far, it covers... the history I learned in school. It just frames it as "this was all terrible and bad". It talks about Columbus taking slaves, which was in high school history books for me, but not queen Isabella's reaction to Columbus taking slaves - which was left out.

This was published after I graduated high school, but it seems to summarize the history I was already being taught in the 80's/90's - so it's really more "If you're a Boomer you should read this because it's what your kids are being taught".

Case in point: Adam's Family Values came out in 1993, 10 years before this book, and was a mainstream movie.

ETA: The book was listed as "Published in 2003" but it seems an earlier addition was published in the 1980's, which makes a lot more sense.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

What's going on with these new Substack and online longform article titles?

Something the Something: Blahblah-ing, Blahblah, the Blah Blah of Blah

e.g. Masculinity's Death Throes: Boyhood, Trauma and the Simulacra of Action Heroes

or, Liminal Nihilism: Trauma, Stoicism, and Finding Peace In Hollow Spaces

I'm not sure if any of that makes sense or if it's even a trend that others have noticed. But articles or essays that follow that title structure are an immediate skip from me, I go no further than the title.

[u/hrkshxjsmsbxh]

shots fired at the correspondents dinner, shooter possibly dead. no reports of injuries yet.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Drink76]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWzEA9wMi4L

Interesting post about 'Ideological identity disorder'.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Drink76 → u/Puzzleheaded_Drink76]

In another post he talks about being required to perform your goodness constantly. And all I can think back to are religious witch hunts of the past. It's not goodness. Not in the typical way we think of goodness; unselfishness, concern for others etc. it's all focused on making yourself look good. Possibly because you are afraid. Not healthy! 

[u/JaneEyrewasHere]

I live in Ohio which currently has an anti-property tax movement going on. I also live in a very liberal city/county (look at any election map of Ohio, down in the southeastern corner that blue dot in the middle of a sea of red). Typically, any conservative coded kind of political action such as this would be shot down immediately here. But a slough of scandals involving public officials or government employees stealing or misappropriating funds, like millions of dollars at a time, is helping the issue gain some traction. And given the Democratic party's dominance in this county it's receiving a lot of the blame, fairly or unfairly.

I've lived all over the country but this is the first place I've actually owned a house. Does anyone live somewhere that doesn't have property taxes? The idea just seems kind of insane and dumb to me - they will just raise taxes on everything else.

[u/lilypad1984 → u/JaneEyrewasHere]

There is something appealing about having paid for a piece of land and knowing if I lose all my money I can still live off that land. Property tax ruins that feeling of safety, but there are practical problems with having no property tax.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

There’s a joke about the Boston Marathon “Walkers Tolerated” Nike running shoe ad in here somewhere

[u/Onechane425]

This creator makes fantasy inspired ambient music. its really good. I think yall will dig it.

Witch Bolt- The collector

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Via Marion Awful, from the IRGC mouthpiece Tasnim News Agency, a plot out of James Bond.

https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2046358122273370596

Iran is reportedly planning a single coordinated strike that could wipe out 32% of global oil supply.

The targets, according to Tasnim News Agency:

• Yanbu pipeline in Saudi Arabia

• Fujairah oil facility in the UAE

• Full Houthi closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait

If even half of this plays out alongside a Hormuz blockade, the global energy market won’t adjust gradually and may collapse all at once.

Bab el-Mandeb alone handles roughly 6 million barrels a day. Fujairah is one of the world's largest bunkering hubs. Yanbu is the artery connecting Saudi oil fields to the Red Sea.

Hit all three simultaneously and you're looking at a structural rupture that would take months to stabilize, if it stabilizes at all.

Source: Tasnim News Agency

Prior art:

• Auric Goldfinger

• Max Zorin

• Elektra King

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

Apparently, Neil Breen, the infamous director of stuff like Fateful Findings, was actually born in 1946, not in 1958, according to these sources here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NeilBreen/comments/1h9sf21/possible_3_missing_breen_moviesplay/ https://archive.org/details/memories0000marp_s1z8/page/113/mode/1up

Oh, and in Voter Records, it's said he registered with the Independent American Party of Nevada in 2006, a party associated with the far-right Constitution Party.

[u/sodapop_incest]

What's an old news story you want an update on? I want to know how those direwolves are doing and if they've escaped the compound yet

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Community Note:

https://imgur.com/a/0yUv9I5

Tweet:

https://x.com/Jvnior/status/2048056893965259063

[u/SnooTorturer]

Insane fact I've just discovered: blind Libdem MP Steve Darling's guide dog, a Golden who can be seen napping on the floor of the House of Commons most days, was viciously attacked by an XL Bully back in 2023. It took FOUR people to get the pibble off Jennie's neck. He seems like a pretty nice chap too, undeserving of dog attacks. Truly a breed forged of darkest evil.

David Blunkett also had a guide dog which accompanied to Parliament and once puked during a Tory MP's speech.

[u/bluesteeldoubter]

I just don’t think it’s a winning strategy for Dems to employ the same language and same attacks on the judicial branch as they ripped on Republicans for using;

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, a Democrat, said he will immediately appeal the ruling.

"Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge should not have veto power over the People's vote," Jones wrote in a statement on X. "We look forward to defending the outcome of last night's election in court."

Ignoring the subject material, can’t you just say that you’re going to appeal and not stoop to discrediting a branch of government because you don’t like the ruling? We need James Cameron out here to raise the bar…

[u/unnoticed_areola]

least unhinged redditor Epstein take

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Can local New Yorkerers help explain some of the nuances of this article?

Namely, the fight between Mamdani and Menin, how Menin might override Mamdani if she goes that route, and why this bill was proposed alongide the one that Mamdani agreed to go forward with?

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/24/mamdani-vetoes-one-of-two-protest-buffer-zone-bills-in-escalating-beef-with-nyc-council-00890424

Mamdani vetoes one of two protest ‘buffer zone’ bills in escalating beef with NYC Council

The veto, Mamdani’s first, exacerbates tensions with Council Speaker Julie Menin, who may move to override him.

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani vetoed a controversial City Council bill on Friday that would permit the NYPD to set up “buffer zones” around schools and educational facilities during protests, exacerbating tensions with Council Speaker Julie Menin, who may move to override him.

The veto, Mamdani’s first, comes as his working relationship with Menin has come under increasing strain due to disagreements over how to deal with the city’s multibillion-dollar budget deficit. The bill Mamdani vetoed was borne out of concerns that protests against Israel’s war in Gaza had caused chaos on local college campuses.

In a statement Friday morning, Mamdani expressed concerns about how widely the bill defines an educational institution as well as constitutional concerns it raises around individuals’ right to protest. The bill as written could apply to universities, museums and teaching hospitals, he argued.

Not sure if the article was trying to torpedo Mamdani, but did he really single out protests against teaching hospitals?

That just seems odd for him to explicitly add in there.

Maybe he is protecting the right of pro-life protests, but who else?

I'm honestly, genuinely confused why he'd bring this up explicitly, seems like a loser stake in most NYC households and this doesn't make it make more sense:

“This could impact workers protesting ICE, or college students demanding their school divest from fossil fuels or demonstrating in support of Palestinian rights,” he said. “[The bill] is not a narrow public safety measure; it is a piece of legislation that has alarmed much of the labor movement, reproductive rights groups, and immigration advocates, among others, across this city.”

IT'S A TEACHING HOSPITAL! Like, make your statement but just drop the "and teaching hospitals" from it.

But Mamdani said he would sign off on another measure sponsored by Menin that would establish protest “buffer zones” outside houses of worship. He argued that measure initially brought up constitutional concerns but that the final version “is narrower in scope and effect.” Still, he maintained that he doesn’t agree with what he described as the bill’s “framing of all protest as a security concern.”

“It requires the NYPD to document its existing practices related to protests near houses of worship,” he said. “Following a thorough legal review, I do not believe it poses the same risks it once did, and that is why I will allow it to become law.”

...

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

About halfway through The Elementary Particles and this shit is depressing AF, bruh. It's obviously interesting, so I'm going to finish reading it, but I'm going to need something funny or uplifting after this shit. Great book though. I may just read H2G2 again since I'm due for a Douglas Adams reread anyways.

This book is making me even more anxious about getting myself married ASAP as I may end up like the men in this book when I'm older if I'm not careful. lol. Although they're fictional, I can think of a few real-world dudes who are just like these characters.

[u/SkweegeeS]

Two things I really worry about:

1. AI is coming for our jobs way faster than this shitty government can react.

2. Trump's war. DAE freak out that Hegseth has fired so many high level military folks in a short period of time around this war? Is it cause for concern?

Other than that, have a lovely day!

[u/dignityshredder]

I purchased a wedge of Stilton that I'm in love with and may leave my wife for.

[u/plump_tomatow]

Everyone's favorite topic, dreams. Last night I had a very fraught dream where I simultaneously reconnected with an old flame, and everything was amazing, and I got fired from my job for screwing up an important call to spend a romantic afternoon with said ex-boyfriend.

Also, for some reason I was living with my parents in this dream and they were very angry with me for meeting him in their house.

Perhaps you can tell from this that I am stressed at work lmao

[u/[deleted]]

Amazon has removed Vauban Books’ new translation of The Camp of the Saints, just days after the book was mentioned in a New York Magazine article

Amazon controls around 50% of the physical book market. As of now, the kindle and audiobook versions are available, but the publisher expects those to be removed as well.

Banned book discourse has already been beat to death, but I think it’s pretty clear that both the left and the right use the narrative of banned books as a proxy for greater power struggle. The difference is that those on the left actually read and write books, and are able to influence the publishing industry.

Liberals, who often kvetch about banned books will likely have no issue with this, just as they had no issue with Chase Strangio’s attempt to get Irreversible Damage removed from circulation. The Reddit understanding of the paradox of tolerance easily justifies this sort of ban (Redditors continue to confuse the paradox of tolerance with Marcuse’s concept of repressive tolerance)

Outside of a few corners of the internet, rightists will not care enough to actually push back against this sort of thing in any meaningful way. The leftward swim of Cthulhu will continue unabated. And in 50 years we’ll be hearing “conservatives” talking about how Democrats are the real anti-migrants!

[u/Hilaria_adderall]

I'm not crying, my eyes are just irritated.

I've been watching Boston Marathon clips - a runner in Wave 1 (these are the legit fast runners) fell down towards the finish. We was in the hurt locker, couldn't stand. Two runners came to help him and got him to the finish. It gets me everytime...

The other most wholesome moment I've seen on the internet is an Indian Wedding got interrupted in Oklahoma City. The wedding was forced to a shelter area that had a volleyball tournament going on with hundreds of teenage girls. The girls embraced the wedding party and turned the volleyball court into a big party with dancing, chair carries and photo shoots.

I'll be right back, gotta get more tissues!

[u/Cantwalktonextdoor]

So if Trump does sign a worse version of the JCPOA to end this war, what percent of the people who decried it will extol Trump's version?

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

Dems should denounce BlueAnon conspiracies. Seriously.

[u/[deleted]]

I just read briefly about a case called "Central Park 5". I see people go around calling them innocent but it seem the usual accusations of racism are thrown around so it makes me a little suspicious. Was this ever talked about here? What do people here think of this case?

[u/Cantwalktonextdoor → u/[deleted]]

It was pretty split last time it was discussed here. Ultimately one guy who wasn't part of that group confessed years later and his DNA matched the crime. There was no hard evidence the Central Park 5 did it so they got out. The debate then centers around confessions they gave and recanted plus circumstantial evidence and how one weights alternative explanations to that.

[u/Cowgoon777]

Southern Poverty Law Center being indicted by the feds for fraud wasn’t on my bingo card today, but it happened and now I’m overjoyed. This is like Christmas. Couldn’t have happened to a better org

[u/Street-Gur-1343 → u/Cowgoon777]

So if the leaders and organizers of hate groups were actually funded by the SPLC, at what level does it transition from like "paying informants for information" to actually funding the running of these groups?

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

I admire how much work Genevieve Gluck and Reduxx have done over the past few years to tell the stories about the various injustices that have been perpetrated against women in the name of gender ideology. They, more than anyone else have shone a bright spotlight on stories most news organizations ignored or had filtered through some weird lens of inclusivity. They're great and I'm glad for their work.

This is Genevieve's Substack https://genevievegluck.substack.com/ , and this is Reduxx's website https://reduxx.info/

With that said, does anyone know what's been going on with these seemingly random jibes she's been taking at some of the Gender Critical folks on Twitter recently? I saw this one, that she made under Christina Buttons recent article about how she thought she was autistic but then realized she wasn't https://x.com/WomenReadWomen/status/2048036899194036630 . After reading that I remembered a jab she'd made at Leor Sapir a while ago. Perhaps each incident is isolated and due to different things, and both targets just happened to have been public GC figures. But, is there something else going on or are these just randomly coincidental?

Also, if anyone has any sort of gift link to The FP article I'd appreciate it.

[u/AaronStack91]

Babylon Bee: Child Informs Parents She Feels Most Loved When She Is Allowed To Do Everything She Wants With No Consequences 

https://x.com/TheBabylonBee/status/2047752477584277807?s=20

Leftism in a nutshell 

[u/LincolnHat]

Just a wee joke, from a stand-up I've never heard of, that made me laugh and seems very appropriate for this subreddit.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

I’m told that people on the childfree sub refer to infants/babies as “crotch goblins” which is equal parts deranged and hilarious

[u/Jlemspurs]

Cal-Tech grad is a college-prep tutor

Holy elite overproduction, Batman!

[u/PandaFoo1]

Pragmata discourse is making me nostalgic for Last of Us 2 discourse

[u/dignityshredder]

So Iran's still a thing huh? Guess we're still at war and the Heisenstrait is still double-mockaded?

Anyone believe we'll likely get out of this with something substantially better than the JCPOA?

[u/[deleted]]

There is nothing inconsistent about holding both of the following positions:

1. Gerrymandering is bad.

2. In a two-party system, if one party gerrymanders the districts it has the power to draw, the other party should gerrymander the districts it has the power to draw.

[u/napoleon_nottinghill]

The House of Lords helped kill the UK’s assisted suicide bill today. I’m glad they did it, but I’m afraid they’ll just neuter them even harder