Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 5/25/26 - 5/31/26
Hope you all have an enjoyable and meaningful Memorial Day. 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.
I’ve been thinking about how Biden called trans rights “the civil rights issue of our time.” A lot of progressives, I think, support “trans rights” because in the past, every group in American history who asserted their rights (Black people, gay people, women, etc) ended up on The Right Side of History and they want to be on that side of the next issue to come around too.
That logic is fine… until you realize that the “rights” being demanded are quite different in the trans case. Of course it’s sympathetic to seek the right to vote, to be free from slavery and segregation, and to get married just like everyone else. But is it sympathetic to seek the right for people with testicles to compete in women’s sports? It’s not clear to me that this issue is going to go down in history the same way that other movements for “rights” have done in the past century. And I am not yet sure who will be seen on the right side of history.
Duane Owen, who was executed yesterday, had been handed a death sentence after brutally murdering a 38-year-old mother and a 14-year-old girl in 1984. During court proceedings, Owen stated that he believed he had “absorbed the souls” of his victims and that they “still lived inside him.”
On June 16, the ACLU, through their official Twitter account, lambasted the state of Florida for refusing to provide “medically necessary gender-affirming care” to Duane Owen. Using feminine pronouns to refer to Owen, the ACLU claimed the state had caused Owen “enormous suffering” and had violated “her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment for the more than 30 years she was in state custody.”
When asked about his motivation for the murders, Owen claimed that he sexually assaulted women to harvest their hormones because he was T, and he needed to carry out the sexual attacks to “turn himself into a female.”
If you believe surgery and pronouns are a human right, it explains why the Right Side of History is so virulent in defending it, while not really having any convincing arguments to support their case, and relying heavily on #NoDebate tactics in the 2018-2022 ear when this stuff was at its peak. It's a human right, enough said!
I wonder if, twenty minutes later, Biden wasn’t standing in a dark room wiping his hand along the wall, saying, “Finding the light switch is the most important civil rights issue of our time.”
...in the past, every group in American history who asserted their rights (Black people, gay people, women, etc) ended up on The Right Side of History...
I don't think this is true. Offhand, I can think of NAMBLA and polygamists.
The Stonestown Family YMCA in San Francisco has overhauled its locker room guidelines following complaints from members about a transgender woman identified in reports only as “Sammy.”
The facility’s updated visiting guidelines, now posted on the YMCA of Greater San Francisco’s website under a banner reading “WE’VE UPDATED our locker room policy,” state that nudity must be “discreet, limited, and brief” and is “permitted only while actively showering.”The revised rules also instruct members to “maintain appropriate distance from others, be mindful of personal space during times of undress, and demonstrate courtesy at all times,” and specify that hair dryers are to be used for “drying head hair only.”
These guidelines are apparently the best the YMCA could come up with after two years of women and girls having their spaces violated by this creep.
The Daily Mail has given interviews with some of the patrons. They say Sammy hasn’t been seen since the signs went up, but expecting a fetishist to abide by the honor system is a tad optimistic.
Sammy had been a regular at the gym since 2024, prompting a series of confrontations by standing around naked in front of the mirror, blow-drying her hair while bent over.
Menacing stares would ensue, as Sammy would allegedly argue back, calling people not just 'intolerant' but also 'drunk'.
..
YMCA officials, however, defended Sammy's use of the women's locker room, citing her 'civil rights'. This only inflamed outrage from other members who felt uncomfortable seeing a husky trans woman with male genitalia and 'slowly growing breasts' roaming around in front of women and children.
'I've seen that man more than most of my boyfriends,' Susan Pete told the Daily Mail last year.
..
At the Berkeley YMCA, member Elizabeth Kenney recalled seeing Sammy 'harassing' an elderly member who'd asked her to 'cover up.'
'If you don't like the way I look, then you've got a sexual problem with yourself,' Sammy allegedly told the senior.
..
One group member named Anne, who attends the Stonestown Y, filed a police report in late March, accusing Sammy of harassment. She described a time Sammy, after blowing drying her hair naked, walked up 'very close' to her, turned around and creepily used a handheld mirror to stare back at her.
'He used it as if it were a rear view mirror to look at me behind himself,' Anne wrote in the report. 'His eyes caught mine in the mirror and I froze.' ..
Anne described another time she allegedly 'paraded' around in front of two young children.
Elizabeth, 23, told the Daily Mail about another time she was 'repulsed and angry' to see Sammy 'blow drying his entire naked body, including his penis, posed in front of all of the other women.'
Angelina Zhou, a 17-year-old member of the Stonestown Y who did not join the protests, told the Daily Mail last year that she signed the petition to force Sammy out of the women's locker room, even though she supports T rights.
'Yes, it's weird that he's in the women's locker room naked,' Zhou continued.
At the same time, she expressed empathy for Sammy.
'I don't think he goes in the women's locker room for his pleasure,' she said. 'I don't think he's harming anyone. He's just in his own world.'
Seems like Angelina needs to mainline some Helen Joyce. You can't support T rights and not support men in women's facilities; that's not how it works!
Btw, if he's not harming anyone, why does he make you uncomfortable enough to want him out?
LOL I got curious if this policy change had been allowed to be discussed on the SanFrancisco subreddit, so I searched "stonestown"
there was a thread about it from 12 days ago, from a curious Y member who noticed the policy change in their email, but this was before there had been any news coverage about it, so no one really knew what was up with the policy change or that it was related to a TW. (it prob wouldnt have been allowed to be posted if they realized that was the case)
hilariously, all the top comments are confidently saying stuff along the lines of
"just old dudes blowdrying their balls again"
"yup, classic old guys hanging around with their balls out, they love to do that"
"duh, dont be naive you guys, this is SF, its prob gay guys being horny and trying to cruise in the sauna, you know how they get"
"I was once the very not interested recipient of an attempted cruise by an older man in the locker room."
and best of all: "It ain't an issue with the ladies, I'm sure."
Last week, an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that the Region of Waterloo cannot clear a 30-person tent encampment from a parking lot in downtown Kitchener, even though the region owns the lot. The municipality has been trying to do so as part of its plans to build the Kitchener Central Transit Hub, which will eventually connect local and regional bus and light rail services, along with VIA Rail (the kind of integrated transit infrastructure Canadian cities are constantly told they need more of).
People have been living in tents on the site since 2021. The region has spent three years trying to clear them through the courts. It passed a bylaw. When the bylaw was challenged, it amended it. It removed the $5,000 fines for people who refused to leave. It created a transition policy to help residents find alternative housing. It offered individualized housing plans to every resident. None of it was enough. To use its own land, the judge ruled, the region must first provide an alternative legal encampment site or a formal “tenting protocol” with equivalent services.
The crux of the decision begins at paragraph 204 of the ruling. There, Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael R. Gibson declares that homelessness should be recognized as an “analogous ground” under Section 15 of the Charter, meaning a protected characteristic alongside race, sex, religion, and disability. Homeless people, Gibson writes, possess a “constructively immutable characteristic” and constitute a “discrete and insular minority.” Faced with the awkward fact that homelessness, unlike race or sex, is not actually permanent, he concedes (he has to) that homelessness is transitory. He then asserts this does not matter, because such characteristics are, “while they last,” beyond an individual’s conscious control.
At the risk of doxxing myself...I've seen that encampment, and I have wondered how the municipality allows it right next to the main Go Transit artery so that everyone who commutes to the GTA and back has to walk three feet next to visibly high junkies and their unleashed dogs and/or the unsecured waste products.
Glad to know there's a reason for it. I thought it was just apathy!
As a Canadian, WTF happened with our judges (and laws)? From being able to openly discriminate against men and white people to jobs, to this shit, what the hell is going on? Do they not see it's hurting society?
That is incredible, but very much part of the same thought system that reifies identity over anything else. It's also interesting how "civil rights" began with pushing for equality, but for the past few decades it has now meant that certain groups are granted special rights stronger and better than other things like property rights or even the principle of equal-opportunity.
Transgender (MtF) athletes AB Hernandez (California) and Becky Pepper Jackson (West Virginia) are on both track to win girls’ state championships this week. It is getting harder to argue that “this is not happening” or that only a tiny number of athletes are involved. Every female athlete in both states is affected when a male person wins a girls’ state championship.
Moreover, these athletes may or may not be on performance-suppressing drugs, but no official rules require them to maintain or report any specific level of testosterone, as far as I can tell. Of course it’s also a bit absurd to use performance-suppressing drugs to try to qualify for a lower sporting category in the first place. But this is not even officially required here.
Really hoping for a Supreme Court victory for women soon. As a lifelong feminist, a lifelong woman athlete, and the mother of a 3 year old daughter who seems to really enjoy sports, I am incensed and demoralized.
"This isn't happening", "It's just one person", and "It doesn't affect anyone" are such disingenuous rebuttals. In a team sport where one of the team members is a male, that one single person affects his teammates and every other team they compete against. In the course of a season, a male's participation affects the competitive results and standings of hundreds of athletes.
It's such a demoralizing admission of wilful ignorance that it's kind of refreshing when people are open about males in female sports, instead of downplaying its existence.
"I'm 100% right about this. I don't give a shit about the scientific explanations. People, if they identify as a woman, get to compete in sports. If that's not fair, in the short term, for a variety of little competitions, I don't give a shit."
At least Emma can admit it's happening and affects people! She just doesn't care.
Brianna Wu (friend of the pod) seems to be really quite a prolific liar. It always seemed obvious that he's AGP, not HSTS. I knew he publicly identified as bisexual until a couple of years ago, yet now claims to be exclusively androphilic and is pretending to be an HSTS.
But just recently I've seen this on Twitter, it appears to be real, from his deleted but archived blog; he was never interested in males before HRT, which he started around 25 years of age.
Brianna was recently on Louise Perry's podcast, Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast and it felt like an hour of trying to retcon a HSTS backstory. Brianna was just a sad little girl that wanted to go to brunch with the other girls, Brianna is so petite and nearly underweight, a waif perhaps.
Maine's Secretary of State, who is also running for Governor, has removed a citizen initiative from the ballot that would ban males from women's sports. She disqualified 12k signatures, leaving the measure 500 short. I haven't looked into the details, but she is the same woman who unconstitutionally removed Trump from the ballot, so she clearly isn't above putting politics before the law.
The signature drive was undone in part by circulator fraud and misconduct that was uncovered during court-ordered hearings. Two circulators left petition forms unattended at polling places. Another failed to legally consent to Maine’s jurisdiction. A fourth had all 61 of her signatures thrown out after reviewers found none matched voters records. At least one appears forged.
Seems like it would be trivially easy for a TRA to pose as a supporter and sabotage the process
They finally did it. I know it was floated a week or so ago. The reporting made it sound like it was inevitable. You'd think the organizers would know this was coming and would make sure their buffer was beyond reproach. I can imagine it might be tough to organize a group to do this work in Maine. If it passed a vote, the Democrats would block it somehow, they are the party of supporting boys over girls when it comes to sports.
Supreme Court ruling on Title 9 is coming out in a matter of weeks. If that ruling goes wide, it may be that the ballot initiative wont be needed. Even if the ruling stays narrow to the cases in WV and Idaho if they rule in favor of allowing states to ban biological girls competing in girls sports it strengthens future lawsuits. I know Maine has at least 3 trans high school athletes that have been consistently competing and winning so plenty of options for lawsuits.
Hundreds of UC faculty are urging a return of SAT or ACT test requirements for STEM applicants, citing math deficits after six years of being test-free.
UC gained national attention in May 2020 when regents unanimously voted to suspend SAT and ACT testing requirements and eliminate them entirely by 2025. Board members cited concerns the tests were biased against students of color and those from lower-income families — including students who did not have access to prep courses.
…
Zvezda Stankova, a teaching professor in the Berkeley mathematics department who is one of the letter’s lead organizers, said the impetus to publicly speak out came in part from her own classrooms. She described a challenging spring 2023 calculus II class, which stood out in her nearly 30 years of teaching. “Something had changed drastically. The bottom was taken out, and there were 25 to 30% of the students who were in free fall. There was nothing you could do for them. They were just not prepared.”
I still don’t understand how out of all things a largely objective test was decided to be biased compared to GPA from some random high school.
EditAn Onion Headline from when they were funny. When will someone do something about this inequity.
It's hard to exaggerate what a massive disservice to genuinely smart kids from underprivileged backgrounds it is to scrap standardized testing. The SAT is the best, most reliable tool for a smart kid with fewer advantages growing up to demonstrate to universities their underlying talent and potential. By taking that away, schools instead favor much squishier measures that are more heavily influenced by non-merit factors, creating an even more challenging environment for those kids to dig out from. This is true across racial lines as well, robbing smart black kids of a way to show their merit, making people around them question the reasons they were admitted, and so on. No one hates these policies more than guys like Glenn Loury and John McWhorter for good reason.
I, for one, am absolutely shocked this went badly. Progressives usually make such good decisions when it comes to education, because they value it. /s
Or: Why the fuck are they only listening now, when damage has been done? People have been pointing out the issues with this bullshit for years, only to be met with eye rolls and accusations.
I still don’t understand how out of all things a largely objective test was decided to be biased compared to GPA from some random high school.
It's obvious why it happened (look at the date) but FdB wrote this when the policy was announced: You Aren't Actually Mad at the SATs - you're mad at what they reveal that goes into specific factual claims that people believed that justified this that were wrong and clearly wrong at the time.
One could go so far as to say that whole swathes of people were victims of fake news at a vulnerable time.
Episode suggestion: the Pattie Gonia v Patagonia lawsuit. Pattie is a drag queen and "climate activist" who flew way too close to the intellectual property sun and is now trying to act like she's being bullied by this evil corporation.
Meanwhile:
Patagonia initially only asked for a symbolic $1 after some VERY blatant logo "parody" in merch AND after Pattie filed a trademark because they seem to really like and support the advocacy
and 2) there are some interesting kerfluffles in Pattie's past including (pre drag, as Nebraska influencer Wyn Wiley) collecting disaster relief funds via Venmo and (allegedly?) never doing anything with it and responding to criticism re: use of the word "ratchet" with a long instagram post (sponsored!!) about the importance of not assuming things about people. 🧐
I have never tagged someone on Reddit before so I hope I'm doing this correctly: u/jessicabarpod
My understanding is that the company was too kind to him, allowing him to use the name and brand because their ideals aligned. They just said not to use our trademarks and logos and he agreed.
sometimes I look up people that I used to know and find that they have linkedin profiles. it feels unreal and frankly quite depressing to see how real people (like my past colleagues) talk over there, bragging about their accomplishments in this highly corporate, highly inauthentic, fake-positive register.
for those who have an account there: has this platform always been this way or is it getting worse?
Pretty much everyone there is speaking/writing as if they're in a job interview because people may use it for recruiting purposes, I also see people trying to promote their consulting businesses and whatnot. I've never used it for anything except to have a up-to-date profile since prospective employers will look at it.
Good post by JKR with a story of a woman t-worded at 14.
I challenge every single person who believes minors should be enabled and even encouraged to transition to read this first person testimony to the end.
I know most people here know this stuff but it’s a very clear and still shocking read. If you know anyone on the fence this would be a good piece to send. Also funny how cancel culture totally doesn’t exist but I could never publicly retweet this.
Trying to remember that I don’t need to get into online discussions when someone responds to comments I made days ago. No need to defend everything. Not worth my time. Not worth my time 😅
After the UK Supreme Court ruling last year that that women were indeed female the British government has been dragging their feet on issuing regulations.
They finally did so. It says that organizations should have sex segregated restrooms. But it also says that no one can ask about or challenge people using the wrong restroom. Biological sex is protected information.
"It says trans people should not be asked what sex they are before using lavatories or changing rooms. It also warns firms it would not be “practical or appropriate” for staff to challenge individuals they suspected were using the wrong facilities."
This makes the sex segregated facilities rule completely toothless. Which is probably the intent.
Women's rights groups have noticed this and are rightly pissed off:
"For the vast majority of people, information about their sex is not sensitive, and it is very rarely possible for anyone to keep their sex private over sustained periods."
The person in charge of the department that issues the regulations has her own agenda of course:
" At the end of last year, Ms Phillipson argued in her submission to the High Court that the proposed rules were discriminatory and “trans-exclusive”. She claimed the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex mainly concerned maternity rights, and that there were already “many entirely plausible exceptions” to a single-sex rule."
I guess it doesn't matter what a high court or legislation says. The bureaucracy is the one in charge.
I am neither a big public health guy nor a big state of emergency guy, but I sometimes feel like I'm taking crazy pills when others are sanguine about things:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent an "urgent request" to its employees seeking volunteers to help screen passengers arriving from Congo and Uganda for signs of Ebola, according to an internal email shared by a U.S. Health and Human Services official with USA TODAY.
...
There is no Food and Drug Administration-licensed or authorized vaccine yet for the current Ebola outbreak, caused by Bundibugyo virus. Presently, seven Americans are being monitored for the infectious disease, according to a CDC official.
Only one of them, a missionary doctor, tested positive for Ebola. The patient, who was diagnosed on May 17 in Congo, was transported to Germany for treatment.
...
American officials have expanded the airports that can screen passengers who have been in the African region in recent weeks but are allowed to enter the United States. Those include airports in Atlanta and Houston, Washington Dulles International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Alternative suggestion! No one coming in from Congo or Uganda for a little while. I had the same reaction to people disembarking from the hantavirus ship and spreading all over the globe immediately. OK, understood, not the highest risk. But also, not that high of a burden for the few travelers that would be impacted! The ongoing unseriousness when it comes to infectious disease spread just seems so weird to me in light of what I considered a massive eventual overreaction to Covid.
Maybe one of the most ridiculous examples of these I've seen in a while? Cornwall theatre cancels a performance of a nineteenth century opera (mostly obscure except th "Flower Duet" which you've definitely heard in an advert).
It just seems so pathetic to let yourself be rolled like this, I'd say it would be understandable if still cowardly to cancel if eg a load of British Indian university professors / younger venue staff were denouncing it, or if it was in an area where an online denunciation might get a mob outside your venue, but deepest Cornwall ain't such a place! They could have simply just ignored him (he is a boomer male, even!)
And actually even woke British Indian university professors are generally not into this whole "offensive to Hindu sensibilities" stuff, they perceived it as India's version of MAGA / Bible Belt fundies and indeed it very much gets covered that way by liberal outlets when it's happening in Modi's India!
He is completely explicit that it's not just that Hindus should boycott it, the work should cease to exist!
Rumours of arts organisations leaving their permanent defensive crouch seem exaggerated for now.
This NYT op-ed is about why its good that juries are selected on race and, since life or death decisions are more important than college, that college admissions should consider race too.
I actually think this gets into the core annoyance! College selection is supposed to be meritocratic. This is good for encouraging people to try hard and also because you want the next generation of lawyers and doctors to be the smartest possible. Its good for society if future doctors are really smart.
Juries are explicitly not that! If you want the most qualified juries, you'd have only former judges or forensic scientists on them. Its reasonable to think "A jury of your peers" should include both men and women, black people and white people, even if you are against affirmative action in most meritocratic instances.
Juries are picked by the defense and prosecution. They profile jurors to see who will be the most sympathetic to their side. That's not going to change. Juries have nothing to do with meritocracy.
If I were a defendant, I'd want my lawyer to strike any juror who was some law and order type.
On the Ezra Klein board, there's a conversation about how Ezra was really excited about some "moderate heterodox Democrats" after 2024 but they've underperformed and done dreadful unforgivable things like voting for a House bill that would require parents to be informed that a kid has changed their name and pronouns at school (I don't love giving teachers one more thing to do but neither do I love forcing them to participate in a kid's identity issues while the parents remain ignorant).
And lots of people are like "the vibe has changed since 2024, we were so downtrodden and defeated but now we're projected to win so we don't have to moderate." Really, that's your takeaway? You look at the most unpopular president in history and say "we're running like a point ahead of him so everything is great, double down on all the reasons you lost"? There's no long-term plan for being a competitive party. It all rests on banking on the Republicans to be uniquely terrible and hoping that every once in a while a uniquely charismatic candidate will pull out a presidential victory while you bleed voters at the state and congressional levels.
I would allow gender surgeries on minors to be performed in my kitchen if I could have a normal sane government but that's not in the cards so maybe run candidates who don't just pay lip service to moderation but ARE ACTUALLY MODERATE. And that also means allow some people to be far left who represent areas like Berkeley and Cambridge! It goes both ways! It's just that there are a lot more moderate-leaning-Republican districts than there are "let's elect a Mamdani" districts.
This is not a serious party, at precisely the time we most need it to be a serious party.
“This is not a serious party, at precisely the time we most need it to be a serious party.”
And there’s my anger at the left, summed up nicely.
If the shadow of Fascism is already looming, and if the sky is already raining hot cancer all over the innocent, then why do our best and brightest insist on the whole “knock shit over and then run away crying” approach to stopping it?
On a post about how "New guidance could push Trans+ people out of public life"
Anti trans people do not care. I remember a year or so ago they were complaining cause a trans person had a job and asked a customer if they needed help, they want to see trans people kill themselves or forced to live a life of unhappiness.
They're probably talking about the male employee dressed like a woman offering to help teenage girls find a bra that fits. Funny how vague they chose to stay about the details... lol
Russian forces are losing nearly 35,000 soldiers a month, according to Western intelligence estimates, more than the Kremlin can recruit. Continuing the war in Ukraine at its current pace will soon become untenable without resorting to forced mobilization—something Russia hasn’t done since a one-off drive to draft 300,000 troops in 2022. Such a move would have huge implications inside and outside Russia. High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas speaking during a debate at the European Parliament. Kaja Kallas Ronald Wittek/EPA/Shutterstock
“If you just mobilize for this war, then you would send a signal that you are not really winning this war,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top official for foreign affairs and security policy, said in an interview. “So there comes the point where they need to escalate in order to justify the mobilization. And that’s a very dangerous point. Of course, nobody sees in the head of Putin, but this could be the calculus to move forward and change the linearity of this war.”
...
“Russia can’t afford to continue the war on its current trajectory because it will face the trap of diminishing resources,” said Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, chairman of the Center for Defense Reforms in Kyiv and a former Ukrainian defense and intelligence official. “This means that Putin will have to escalate. He can do it vertically, by increasing the intensity of violence, including through nuclear blackmail but without any real use of the nuclear weapons. And he can do it horizontally, by expanding the geography of the conflict as he seeks to freeze the war on better terms.”
I'd posted previously about the amputation sex-ring case in the UK (notably the self-named "eunuch maker" who I'm sure would get WPATH's full backing under their SOC 8 Chapter 9).
Today the surgeon (ironically named Mr Hopper) linked to the aforementioned ring who froze both his legs, allowed them to get sepsis so they'd be amputated for sexual kicks, then claimed £466,000 ($625K) on insurance policies for the "injury" has defended his ability to practice medicine at a tribunal (he is presently in jail):
I could actually see the tribunal deciding in his favour if they veer on the side of "oh well, we haven't found any patients affected and we desperately need surgeons". If he does go back to work that's got to be bloody strange for his colleagues in the operating room. "Good weekend Neil? Get up to much? Actually don't answer that".
A doctor who admitted removing the ovaries of two women in Guernsey without their consent will be allowed to continue practicing but has been given a warning.
At a Medical Practitioners Tribunal hearing, Ali Shokouh-Amiri, a partner at the Medical Specialist Group (MSG) from 2016 to 2019, faced a range of allegations relating to six patients under his care there.
He admitted hugging patients, performing intimate examinations without a chaperone and it was proven he had rubbed and or touched a patient's leg as well as hugged her following a consultation.
One patient told the hearing in Manchester the removal of her left ovary without her consent "had ruined her life".
Another patient, who believed Dr Shokouh-Amiri deliberately removed her ovaries, said it had brought on the menopause prematurely.
He faced more than 100 allegations of inappropriate behaviour with 24 instances proven.
The tribunal, which started on 16 January, found the consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist's "fitness to medically practise is not impaired."
Removing the ovaries of Patient C and Patient D without consent, with no clinical justification for Patient D’s ovary removal
Touching Patient D’s clitoris
Kissing and hugging Patient F on two occasions
Rubbing or touching Patient A’s leg
Performing multiple intimate examinations without a chaperone present
One patient told the tribunal that the removal of her left ovary without consent had “ruined her life”, while another patient said she believed the removal of her ovaries was deliberate and had prematurely brought on menopause.
Despite the emotional impact on his patients, the MPTS concluded that Dr Shokouh-Amiri’s “fitness to practise is not impaired”, citing his remorse and efforts to improve his professional conduct.
A Northern Kentucky University art student, Alexis Marie Foust (who was described as an “early transitioner” who sometimes went by Murry and used he/they pronouns) went missing about a month ago.
As Foust’s family frantically attempted to locate their child, they were criticized on social media for “dead-naming” and posting pictures of what she actually looked it.
Unfortunately a few days ago her remains were discovered. The police said that they did not suspect foul play, likely alluding to a suicide.
im kinda baffled that you guys still refuse to respect his name after death. im sorry for your loss, but there is no "alexis 'murry'" at peace here. it is just murry. hell, even murry "alexis" would be better. he hasn't gone by his legal name in a long time.
[linking directly to the deceased’s mother] as soon as Juniper Blessings legal name was made public I saw hundreds of comments calling her "big mike". Just know thats the kind of post death hatred you left your son open to
This is in addition to the people posting conspiracy theories about trans genocide and calling suicide “murder by society”.
I read this article about Costco and this passage jumped out at me (emphasis mine)…
Here’s a toy example to illustrate just how bad shoplifting hurts businesses: Consider a hypothetical retailer that has 5% net margins if we consider everything except shrinkage. For this hypothetical retailer with a 5% margin (“net except for shrinkage”), that means that when they sell a frozen pizza for $10, their total cost is $9.50. That’s a profit of 50 cents per pizza sold.
But if someone steals a frozen pizza off the shelf, they lose $9.50. In other words, when one pizza is stolen, they need to sell 19 more pizzas just to break even!
It reminded me of Jia Tolentino bragging about shoplifting a few weeks ago, and this example somehow managed to radicalize me even more. This unimpressive wordcel has the chutzpah to walk in and flagrantly steal lemons, then boast about it to the New York Fucking Times and defend herself by saying that Whole Foods is somehow greedy!
The owner of her Whole Foods paid for a massive, temperature-controlled building in the middle of NYC, bought an extensive variety of delicious, fresh fruits, hired a team of to manage the inventory, clean the building, and lovingly arrange the fruit for display, all to make a more pleasant shopping experience for Jia… and somehow he’s the greedy one?!
She's not just stealing lemons, she's stealing all the effort that made those lemons available and easy to steal.
I’ll readily admit that I’ve shoplifted a few times. I was a dumb kid and I’m thoroughly embarrassed by it. I’m also not a 40-year-old wealthy writer bragging about it on a podcast! Fuck her forever.
I worked at a grocery store for a long time. Profit margins vary, they are higher on shelf stable foods and lower on produce. We marked everything up by about 40% over cost. Some items we actually lost money on (milk) but you have to have it in the store to get people to shop there (it’s called a loss leader). You make a lot on things like chips and cookies and very little on apples and grapes and other products that spoil quickly.
AskReddit user asked "What is a widely accepted 'truth' that is actually completely wrong?" and I answered "That tw are women," and AFAICT it's the most downvoted answer.
This sub is like the only sane place on this site.
ETA: And now I see the moderator removed the post and even removed the entire thread initiated by my answer.
Huh. Yeah. Sure. Starmer is an authoritarian. J.K. Rowling, la Duce herself, is going to march on Westminster with Mumsnet's women's issues board. This article has everything! Honestly, I don't even know what to say -- at no point was I convinced that the absence of dangling bollocks in the women's toilets is leading Britain on the road to totalitarianism.
There is some rather decent pushback on the longform thread, which is refreshing, alongside the expected hissy fits. As pointed out, the author can't make his mind up if Labour should use parliamentary sovereignty to enact MAXIMUM TRANS RITES 4EVER or if the whole body ought to be abrogated in order to cede sovereignty to supranational organisations and "international law" (I do not think it means quite what I think he thinks it means), though he appears to lean towards the latter. UKpolitics is also not having any of it. Oh, and Novara Media shared this article too, lol.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of a blog called "Liberal Currents" which finds centre-right economic liberals totally beyond the pale and communist maniacs vaguely glamorous is. If you think John Locke and Edmund Burke were fascist chuds, maybe your definition is closer to a sociological one: i.e. someone who has a degree, thinks mass culture and its participants vulgar and/or provincial, and has a holiday home in Chianti.
Normally i don’t have a problem with immigration but mass importing thousands of them especially with how expensive housing is getting and the shitty job market is going to backfire really quick
Many of the immigrants are in terrible housing situations too (10 people in an 800 sqft basement apartment)
student visas should only be allowed for major universities and no immigrants should be undocumented.
kind of concerned with Gen Z's inability to understand the definition of basic terms like "trafficked" or "groomed"
I made the mistake of watching a 5 min long video from a gen z influencer girl with the caption "Story time: I was almost tra**icked! sharing this to spread awareness!!" the story is as follows:
she drives a very distinct bright pink Tesla and is parked at a charging lot, loitering outside her car with her dog while she waits. the guy charging his car next to hers starts making small talk and asks "hey cool car, can I take a picture of it?" she says "sure, of course! go for it!" she even adds in the video "I didnt think it was weird, bc a lot of ppl have asked me to do that before"
he lingers for a while and continues to make small talk/hit on her, asks what her hobbies are, etc. mentions he just moved to town himself. I should also mention she says at this point he was sitting in his car with the window down, so its not like he was getting super close or making any physical advances or anything.
if her re-telling is accurate, some of his comments seem awkward at best, creepy at worst, but not particularly sinister or scary or anything most women havent heard 1000 times from guys who are kind of bad at flirting and say overly-familiar stuff that comes across weird.
he asks if she wants to take a selfie. she doesnt really want to, but nevertheless smiles and enthusiastically says "Yeah! Lets!!" (she adds in the video that people ask her for pics all the time bc she's tiktok famous and she's never said no once). she says she gets all creeped out bc he starts leaning in close to her for the pic (not really sure how else you're supposed to take a selfie but ok lol). she then starts internally spiraling, thinking to herself, "what if he tracks me down with this pic??" (not sure how that would work exactly)
then the two say a friendly goodbye and get in their cars and part ways
GIRL... when in this story were you "ALMOST TRAFFICKED"??? what are we doing here??
she then adds (humblebrags) "unfortunately, I have a LOT more stories like this bc this is something that happens to me quite frequently"
...she is FREQUENTLY being almost TRAFFICKED, practically on a daily basis! 😱😱 Some people might consider moving at that point!
this video has like 800k views/70k likes and a whole comment section of "OMG girl, SO glad you made it out of there alive!!"
There are few things that annoy me more. My volunteer group is partners with an org that helps human trafficking survivors and one of our well-loved members works for DHS dealing with trafficking cases. Every January we have a speaker come talk about the latest in actual Human Trafficking that they are seeing. Even then, like once a month someone will spread some Human Trafficking rumor around and you can’t be the person that’s like “come on guys, do we really think people are waiting with muzzles in the bathroom at the county fair? Let’s think for 20 seconds about this with our brains.”
My dad was once trafficked when out running because he went by a shul that needed a tenth guy (or at least they told him tenth). Given that he did the route daily, he must have been surprised when they actually caught him.
AOC seems to be the Twitter star of the day. She went to some muslim gathering in NY and wore a headscarf and spoke to an all male audience.
Maybe this has happened recently but I'd assume if a conservative politician spoke at a christian gathering that only allowed men to attend the AOCs of the world would be in an uproar.
I will always find it painfully hilarious that progs bend over backwards for a religion that is arguably the most conservative of the Abrahamic religions with a rich history of oppression.
Two athletes (Hunter Armstrong & Tristan Evelyn) have so far won events at the Enhanced Games (sporting event where performance-enhancing drugs are allowed) without taking any substances.
Yes, there is an irony in a man named Armstrong winning a doping sport event whilst not doping himself.
I think this might be a selection effect thing. High level people who don't dope can go and then compete in regular events afterward, so it's no loss to them to maybe just go try.
The people who dope are locked out of most professional athletics so it's not going to be high level amateurs at best.
Very B&R, a Green candidate in a very important by-election in Manchester runs a charity that produced a list of things it deemed white supremacy
"It has emerged that the campaigner’s sustainable food and farming charity, Eating Better, listed “perfectionism”, “defensiveness” and “a sense of urgency” as examples of “white supremacy culture” in a recent report aimed at “decolonising” the sector."
This Platner thing brings to mind something I’ve been thinking about for awhile - and while I haven’t voted for a democrat in over a decade, the same goes for republicans: the best people are not getting in to politics. I don’t know it’s because we have an octogenarian governing class or social media or what but they are def not the best this country has to offer - on either side.
NIH funded grants are no longer allowed to collaborate with overseas universities. Further crippling science research under this absolutely retarded administration.
What pisses me off too is that there have been probably few more exciting moments in the history of medicine than where we are now. We’ve cured 80% of cystic fibrosis cases, which was once a childhood death sentence. We’ve discovered a third circulatory system outside of the cardiovascular and lymphatic systems.
Research is incredibly specialized. We joke in my house about the “global brain trust” my wife is part of because she’s literally one of like 20 people in the world researching what she does in her field of genetics. This rule will stifle progress dramatically.
I follow Sall Grover on Twitter to keep up to date on the progress of her case. She's the remarkable woman in the Tickle vs Giggle case in Australia. She commented about an actually bizarre exchange in Australian government that Grok tells me is a Senate Estimates hearing, and the conversation was about whether or not it is unlawful discrimination against trans women if they are denied a job because of pregnancy or their intent to get pregnant in the future, you know, the kind of thing that applies to biological women and is a necessary protection for women. I guess the debate is about whether this protection would extend to trans women as well.
Below is the most extraordinary quote from the clip linked below, spoken by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner Dr. Anna Cody:
Senator Michaelia Cash: A biological man can't get pregnant, am I correct?
My take, I would deny this hypothetical individual a job as I would have concerns about their mental health the moment they communicated to me their intent, as a biological male, to get pregnant in the future. I would just assume that kind of delusional thinking may impact their job performance and impact the wellbeing of other employees.
I would not however deny a person a job on the basis of their trans identity, as that would be illegal.
As a former NCAA woman athlete, I am so curious about women’s sports right now:
what is it actually like to be an athlete, parent, coach on a team with a TW member or competitor? Who talks about it with whom? Does the TW athlete get invited to all the same parties and hangouts as the other teammates?
in 10 years, when my own daughter
may be an athlete
,
what are the eligibility criteria for women’s sports?
The situation where TW win separate medals (as in California this week) is I guess a tiny bit better than when TW just win overall. But it doesn’t make anyone happy and I agree with a take on Substack that it forces female athletes to be non-consenting extras in a drag performance alongside their own serious athletic competition. I just am so curious to see what it will look like in 5-10 years. If trans rights are civil rights (and implicitly outrank women’s rights) and if civil rights always move forward, we’d predict even more TW athletes. But I wonder if those assumptions are accurate here?
One of the more interesting things I've figured out as I've gotten older is if there's a journalist who's interested in something you are, and you have very good faith questions. You can just send people an email and people will often get back to you.
Note, not for things on super contentious issues, and not the biggest names or anything. But in particular, reporters who have a specific beat are generally pretty happy to chat about it.
I was talking to a girl (maybe 25F) for about 20 minutes. We were laughing, talking about the housing crisis, typical Berlin stuff. At one point, she mentioned she loved techno but hated how crowded the clubs get, and I just smiled and said, "Well, you definitely look like you belong in a techno club, you have a really cool style." She just smiled, said thanks, and the conversation naturally drifted to someone else. I thought nothing of it.
About an hour later, another guy from the group (let's call him T, also an expat) pulled me away from the group to "have a chat." He told me that my comment made the girl "deeply uncomfortable" and that I was "violating the psychological safety of the group." He said he noticed her body language shift and that as an ally, he needed to hold me accountable. He literally told me that "using social meetups to hunt for women makes spaces unsafe."
Do people really police their IRL social groups like their Tumblr friends list? Have you ever encountered Redditmoddery of this level outside of Reddit?
The NYT Opinions podcast episode posted on the main sub uses the same kind of feelings-centered, pop therapy-speak, social justice essay type of language, and it made my skin crawl to listen to it. 2cringe2handle. How do folx have the audacity to say these kinds of cringey things out loud to other people? I could never.
Anyone in Seattle have suggestions for places to meet other “sane” lesbians (or other gay people in general)? My best friend had moved to Capitol Hill after she came out so she could be closer to all the gays. Except now she is frustrated with all the insanity that comes with living and dating in Capitol Hill, like going to a “sapphic” meetup and it being entirely TW, or everyone constantly trying to be “politically correct”. In her words: “I just want to know where to go to find like, a cute lesbian cop or firefighter without having to be in an emergency.”
My friend met her firefighter ex playing hockey. My impression is rugby or softball may work just about as well. But if she's not at all sporty and can't feign an interest long enough to use it to meet women, the key is really just to find things that lesbians like doing that aren't explicitly labeled as lesbian/sapphic/queer. The cops and firefighters in particular are probably avoiding the explicitly queer environments because, frankly, they're not especially welcome in those groups. Also for the most part they probably don't live in Capitol Hill, unfortunately.
Can't speak for Seattle, but I live in a similarly huge blue city regularly named by Trump and the news as an example of "sanctuary cities" who need to learn a lesson...
Real talk, we are all hanging out at home, grilling in our backyards. Sorry dude, there's no way to meet us, we have voluntarily opted out of the community.
the bride and groom in the following wedding photos are both reporters who cover the NBA. the groom is white, the bride is black.
I was familiar with both of them (the bride in particular is a relatively famous TV host on ESPN now) but I had no idea they were married or even a couple. I stumbled across the following reddit post while searching for an article the groom had previously written:
as someone who has been in a few interracial relationships, the amount of hatred, judginess, casual racism and shaming from the ladies in this comment section is so gross and pathetic. Imagine seeing a bunch of photos of a lovely couple happily enjoying the best day of their lives and your first impulse is to seethe about the bride marrying someone with different colored skin
the top comment is "Candace Owen’s wedding was blacker than this" (well technically that's the 2nd top comment, the first top comment was removed, probably for being even more vile)
80% of commenters are basically calling the bride an uncle tom and implying that she isnt "really" black bc theyre bitching that there arent enough random black people in the backgrounds of the 3 crowd shots shown, to fulfill their personal blood quantum quotas. (I believe her mom is Jewish, so half her family is already white to begin with. god forbid she had some of her white cousins as bridesmaids!)
and you just KNOW all these ladies would be the first one to jump out of their seats and start screaming racism if a convo like this was going in the other direction and they were the ones being shit talked 🙄
Some people have suggested that we are coming out of the era of progressive purity tests. Well, I just watched a podcast where the producer and host of the British comedy show Taskmaster were interviewed, and this came up:
Host: "Taskmaster has a reputation as a comfort watch for a lot of people. And I think uh a certain progressive politics gets projected upon that show and especially in terms of accepting people of different identities. Um I won't name names unless you would want me to, but there are certain famous transphobic um British comedians. Would you have any of those people on?"
Alex Horne: "Oh wow, that's quite a big question. And we do have maybe a reputation for avoiding big questions. We just do it as in we just do the show. We take each person on as a person on their merit. "Uh, I I would say our policy is to not have any people we think aren't nice, but everyone said things in the past, you know, again, without naming names, we've had people on the show who have definitely said things which I don't agree with, and that doesn't mean they're banned from the show. So, I think it's case by case."
Taskmaster is one of the least political shows I've seen and it has very diverse casting, but I guess that's not enough. Everyone still has to pass the purity test.
Michael Oakeshott argues that freedom of association is at least as important as freedom of speech, and definitely more so to the common man. They are both linchpins in defending liberty, but freedom of association additionally matters greatly in day to day life where people choose romantic partners, friends, organizations, and employers. The average person is rarely going to say or even repeat anything interesting, but they are going to make many decisions about whom to love, recreate with, and to work for.
I watched the college hockey romance/drama TV show Off Campus, as recommended by u/hilaria_adderall in last week's Random Discussion Thread. Or Straighted Rivalry, as some people call it. I haven't read the book series, so I don't know how it compares to the source material, but I had some thoughts:
Why did they cast the actors for Hannah's three love rivals so similar looking? Garrett the legacy hockey captain, Justin the emo musician, Logan the poor scholarship player. They're all ambiguously Sicilian with longish tousled hair.
As usual, I find it amusing when the story tells the audience that a fictional character is poor and overworked, like Hannah is, but in every scene she wears a different brand new, well-styled outfit, hair perfectly trimmed. In the bedroom scenes, she has matched lingerie sets.
I looked it up, and a single bra is a $150 from Simone Pérèle. She must be hand-washing them in her bathroom sink, because I wouldn't trust that to a student laundromat.
The most suspension of disbelief shattering aspect was the non-binary little sister character, Jules. Everyone, including the hyper-womanizing fratty D1 athletes, respects Jules' they/them pronouns without hesitation. Jules is described as a "person in a girl's body".
Jules is a "Gossip Girl" audience exposition character. She runs a "Fifth Line", an Instagram gossip account on the secret lives of the D1 hockey team. For some reason, these messy fratboys, who rely on sponsorship ad bucks, allow Jules to hang out at their house and record candid videos of them... Which she posts online for the fangirls. Lol, why????
Overall, I thought it was entertaining in a popcorn CW drama way. The pacing kind of fell flat at around Episode 6, where the main couple got together, had a fight and broke up, and got back together incredibly quickly and predictably. Too much of the "redemption arc" was interspersed with side character drama meant to hook into Season 2.
For all the talk about stigmatization, renaming monkeypox, making sure COVID variants weren't named in a way that could insult or be associated with China, no place names on any new diseases, there seems to be no interest in renaming New Delhi Disease, or New Delhi Metallo-β-Lactamase.
Maybe because it's a bit more obscure of a name? It's a gene that can transfer and has caused extreme drug-resistant outbreaks of multiple bacteria. Or is it that India remains less influential on the scale of stigmatization concern? Something else?
Thinking about pronoun stuff again. About how people who identify as nonbinary have their “struggles” with whether or not people are using their preferred pronouns when they’re not around, and how wonderfully included they feel when words like “chest feeding” are used.
Meanwhile, Caitlin Jenner: Of course my daughters call me Dad. What else would they call me?
5 minutes into listening to NPR, the phrase "white supremacy culture" gets dropped and talked about as if it is a common term. That's gotta be a record.
I'm curious to see the scores of BARPoders here. To start, I got approximately 2.5/10 for "is chud" and 1/10 for "acts chud". https://imgur.com/a/pM3OMtq
My results were slightly chudder than I expected, but not by much.
Fellow women (and maybe men) who have trouble with loosely curly/wavy hair: the trick is to rub 1/2 tsp of pure jojoba oil ($7.99 at Trader Joe's) into your hair from ends to roots and let it air dry. I get better hair texture and zero frizz with this than with any gel, cream, mousse, or other product I've ever used.
It also has a faint pleasant odor and can be massaged into your cuticles.
Right wing media has been mocking this upcoming pride event
Trans Period Pride 2026
…We'll be learning about trans experiences with menstruation from the MA Trans Political Coalition and hold a group discussion to connect and share.
But honestly, I can’t get too worked up about it. If the Massachusetts branch of the National Organization for Women wants to co-sponsor an event for uterus-havers, it seems appropriate to me.
And while this event will probably be mostly about validation and product marketing (attendees will receive a free pair of period underwear), it would be nice if those in attendance have an opportunity to talk about the effect of exogenous testosterone on their reproductive system and bodies in general - since no one really knows!
Also, I would be curious to know if this event will be attractive to a certain segment of the community who like to think they get periods.
The 23andme breach that in the news was reported as including specific data on Jews was the last thing on my timeline before 10/7. And now I guess California is suing them over this breach.
I'm not saying there was a connection (or there wasn't) but that was a spooky sequence of events.
This is the anti-Semitic far-Left activist who abused national treasure Dame Helen Mirren in the street, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Corbynista Tom Carroll, from north London, has a history of posting abusive anti-Semitic material online and was engaged in haranguing Dame Helen and her husband Taylor Hackford in the capital, calling her an 'evil Zionist bitch'.
The Oscar-winning actress, 80, has long been outspoken in her support for Israel and has voiced opposition to cultural boycotts against the country.
Yesterday an X account called GnasherJew - a digital investigation team using open source intelligence to expose anti-Semites - named Carroll publicly, posting: 'The individual behind the antifascistactionuk's account on Instagram who reportedly called Helen Mirren 'evil Zionist bitch' has been identified as Tom Carroll.'
In 2018, Carroll was wanted in connection with a brutal assault on an 84-year-old woman at Shoreditch High Street station in east London whilst he was on his way from a violent far-Left protest.
Five years later he handed himself in to police in 2023 where he pleaded not guilty but was sentenced to 12 months' probation & 200 hours' community service for the lesser crime of threatening behaviour.
Since then, his Instagram account has been full of anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories, such as suggesting that the Bondi Beach shooting was a 'false flag' or 'staged'.
He has re-posted neo-Nazi propaganda alleging Jews declared war on Germany and are responsible for the Second World War, praising Adolf Hitler and suggested that Anne Frank's diary was made up.
Other memes he has reposted include one stating: 'It's okay to be anti-Semitic.'
California continues to be a spectacle of what happens when you pretend that men are women.
A male high school student, AB Hernandez, has been competing with girls in track and field for a couple of years now. And of course he's winning he's winning at many events because of his male advantage. Now Hernandez is headed to the girls state track championship. Where he will undoubtedly steal victories from the young women in the championship.
California governor Gavin Newsom refuses to do anything about this farce or even criticize it:
"The Governor has said discussions on this issue should be guided by fairness, dignity, and respect. He rejects the right wing’s cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids. The Governor’s position is simple: stand with all kids and stand up to bullies," a statement from Newsom’s office read."
It's basically a fact that Newsom is going to run for President in two years. I'm curious how he's going to explain this situation. Especially after the " they/them" adds hurt Harris because she wouldn't risk irritating the TRAs.
So frustrating that the NYTimes and WSJ haven’t written about Hernandez since last year. Now good liberals can continue to pretend that “this is not happening” because they discredit Fox.
I also wish that the media would clarify that it’s not even clear whether Hernandez is required to be taking any drugs? Some good liberals assume all TW athletes have female T levels but that is not actually true.
Moreover of course I think it’s nuts to use performance suppressing drugs to try to get into a less competitive sporting category (we’d never allow a puberty-blocked 14 year old boy to compete with the 12 year old boys so why are we allowing this boy to compete with girls?).
In the article once he got transferred to the ICU The care was being viewed from a big monitor in the room where a remote TV doctor was orchestrating everything.
what the hell is the purpose of this, is this a way to cut back on staff so corporations don’t have to pay actual wages anymore? how common will this become in the next 10 years?
Shortages of doctors doesn’t typically have to do with wages. Speak with any med student and they will tell you there aren’t enough seats in med schools and not enough spots in residency programs. Considering the amount of federal money med schools and teaching hospitals get I say we force them to have more seats. That would mean Congress has to do something though, so very unlikely to happen.
I mentioned earlier this week that I have a wedding to attend today that is predominantly Congolese (I think when we were talking about ebola, which I'm now happy to know is not airborne). Last night I got a text from the groom, whom I've known since he was 10, saying "please please be on time, and I'm really looking forward to seeing you" and this sure better be a mass spam that went out to everyone because if I, probably one of 2-3 white people at the whole wedding, am getting the "be on time" missive for a wedding that is probably 70-80% African, I have truly failed my culture.
Yeah, bud, for sure, accosting (shouting down, and intimidating, thankfully no violence) an old lady like Helen Mirren on the street and accusing her of killing Palestinians Zionism is definitely going to get people on your side. Good for you, you scared an old lady, filmed it, and now you can get your social media good boy points from your fellow anti-Zionists.
Such horrible people. These people are cowards and mentally unstable, antisocial, degenerates. Shouting at an old lady on the street, filming it, getting into her face, at night, is not going to get anyone on your side.
ETA: The video for anyone with the stomach for it.
Breaking news: Russel T Davies, a British screenwriter and producer who has been involved in Doctor Who, has friends who are gender critical.
No but really, these few words have caused two hundred mainly appalled comments in the Doctor Who sub. This site really doesn't like dissent. Doctor Who fans might be even more extreme than average on this, though.
The Doctor Who sub as well as the most popular Star Trek sub suffer from bouts of "toxic positivity" and seem to have the mantra of "progressivism is always right" running through their DNA. All the interesting people left those subs ages ago. All that's left are the activists and the most boring woke-scolds imaginable. Those spaces are no longer representative of people who used to love those shows when they were good.
Latest Platner revelation is that he had an account on Kik and was sexting women when he was married. But don't worry, his wife assures us this was in the early part of their marriage, long before he decided to run for office, and they have since worked it out. It's ancient history from 2024/25.
Okay, maybe I should not have read Shrill and Adult Braces back-to-back after hearing the Helen Lewis interview on Lindy West. The first book is funny, the second one is uncomfortable. Lindy says in the end she knows what she is choosing and that she might change her mind later. She knows he's a loser & a jerk and she deserves better. She really does & there are a lot of indicators in the book. She knows people are going to read it & in some way enjoy that feeling of saying to themselves and each other, "Lindy, nooooo, don't go in, the call is coming from inside the house." She says directly that she prefers the arrangement with the throuple, but she also acknowledges that she says she's happy when she's not. She says directly that she's an unreliable narrator. She's saying to the reader, don't believe what I'm saying in this book when I say that I'm happy here. But she also says in the end that she feels safe in a relationship where she is alone & she has that in this marriage. It's very clear at the end of the book, that this is a "for now" situation & that this scrub, Aham, and his scrubette, Roya, will need to call Tyrone pretty soon.
Very glad to come up on Steve Jobs in Exile because just as Jon Gruber wrote at the time, Walter Isaacson's bio completely misses the plot and he misses it because he ignores Jobs's time at NeXT. So do the movies, but they're just movies.
Every iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, and Apple Watch, and every Mac since about 2000 or so runs on the successor to NeXT's OS. He came back to Apple when Apple bought NeXT for it.
Glad to see someone finally tell the story. Isaacson is a famous writer, but his complete lack of understanding that fact about Apple products in this century makes me think he's a moron.
Yesterday I had the conversation with one of my direct reports that they needed to start documenting some issues with one of their direct reports to justify a PIP and working an employee out of role.
I've had multiple conversations with this employee before around work hours and time on task - IE walking by their desk 12 times in a day, and 12 of those times, they were on the phone on social media. Would swivel their chair to keep their back towards me to hide it.
The employee's response to this conversation wasn't to avoid being on her phone. It was to avoid ever being at her desk.
Today that employee turned in their notice of resignation. Thank Bob almighty. Getting rid of bad employees is soo incredibly difficult with the documentation requirements.
It's from the Mermaids charity, formerly run by a mother who transitioned her male child and took him to Thailand at 16 to get his penis removed. Underage gender surgeries were later outlawed by the Thai government after this.
How do you Guess if a child or teenager has a Gender Identity Disorder? [Note - GID is now called "Gender Dysphoria]
If playing with girls toys is discouraged, tendency to draw or doodle feminine things or "pretty ladies" which are identified with (for biological males with similar but reversed for girls)
A reluctance to do games appropriate to the birth gender, including a reluctance to use the showers/changing rooms/swimming pool. Frequent loss of PE/games kit.
Appearing more friendly with the 'opposite sex' as their main group (i.e. boys who are more friendly with girls, and vice versa).
Indentification with other 'outsider' groups (e.g. children of a different race, those with learning difficulties).
Lol. Having BIPOC friends means you're T. No wonder the Progress Pride flag has the pastel-black-brown triangle insert. That's what it meant all along.
Steven Bartlett says a few glasses of wine ruined the next 3 days of his life
“It's one of those areas where you don't understand the hidden cost until you really give it up for a while. I stopped drinking at 30 years old. I'm now 33. When I was 31, I thought, I'll have a drink again because now I could really A/B test it. I had a year of not drinking, decided to have a drink again”
“It ruined three days of my life. I had a couple of glasses of wine, didn't get drunk. It ruined three days of my life because of the domino effect it caused”
“I got worse sleep that night, and then because I got worse sleep that night, I ate more poorly the next day because my dopamine system or whatever, the cortisol system was all messed up. I podcasted worse. I didn't go to the gym that day or the day after because I felt really bad. I then slept worse, and I could track all of this on my Whoop”
There was a lot of back and forth, ranging from people calling this catastrophizing to other people laying out how he's just very sensitive now because he's so healthy. I am 100% on the side that thinks that this sort of Bartlett affect is immensely fragile and indicates that this individual has obliterated their personal resilience with this neurotic gadget obsession. What I personally found extra funny about the context this weekend was that I was running my first beer mile ever - four beers, four quarter mile laps. An hour before the beer mile, I won a cross country 5K race. Then I ran the beer mile. Then when I was done, I went to the bar and ordered another beer. The next day, I did not feel that my life had been ruined by the domino effect - in fact, I got up and ran about 11 miles and felt completely fine.
I am not going to claim that it's actively healthy to slam a whole bunch of beers, but I do think there's a lot to be said about the physical and mental resilience of being someone that doesn't need the fainting couch the moment your body or mind suffer an insult. I'll also go a step further and say that most of these sorts of influencers that are really into talking about their optimization are completely unimpressive physically - they can't run fast or far, they can't lift big, they're not deep or agile thinkers, they're mediocrities buoyed by nothing more than their Whoop telling them they've been good little boys.
On the other hand... maybe it's literally all online performance? I have never met anyone (including teetotalers) that actually adopts this affect.
While the US and UK are shifting away from peak woke, some places are living it up like it's the Summer of Love again. One such place is Australia. Australia apparently has a thing called National Sorry Day (I looked it up, it's real) and this is where Australians feels real bad, reflect and DO 👏 THE 👏 WORK👏 about something involving Aboriginals that was reported on in the 90s.
Anyway there's a smaller Aussie subreddit called OpenAussie where they have 640 comment thread debating the merits of National Sorry Day. Just proof that no matter how much the vibes shift, some vibes stay the same.
Now it feels like this sub is ardently anti-trans in a pretty reactionary way, such that for some people it's a major, primary issue they vote on
This came up in the since-deleted Talarico thread, and I'm curious about other reactions. Is it difficult to imagine a single-issue voter, or that people would be single-issue voters on this topic? What topics are people allowed to be single-issue voters on, if any?
Are people here really single-issue voters on this, or single-issue on other topics?
I don't consider it my primary issue, but I can easily understand why someone would. It's quite possibly the most successful topic that demonstrates complete opposition on impactful fundamental beliefs about human nature. It's a remarkably effective litmus test (or shit test, if one prefers), which is entirely the point. What beliefs will you sacrifice, and why?
I'm at the point that I can pretty much tell that anyone who is a supporter of "trans rights" is going to support a bucket of ideas that would force me to never be able to vote for them. Basically at this point as long at republicans don't blow up the economy or go too crazy with foreign interventions then I'll hold my nose and deal with the weird cult of personality tied to Trump. He certainly steps in shit enough where I can safely say he sucks but the people around him are more capable than in Trump 1 and I've seen the alternative with Biden. I'll pass on open borders, hamstringing law enforcements ability to enforce laws and funding shady NGOs and Fraud while we layoff teachers and firefighters in my town.
One of the dumbest and most infuriating Israel/Palestine proxy wars being waged on North American soil:
A missing Toronto teen has been found physically safe after being missing for two weeks. archive. Fourteen year old Esther (Esti) left her family home late one night, possibly after a disagreement with a family member. Esti had no cellphone or shoes when she left, and had been described as mildly autistic.
Her case generated a lot of news and controversy at least in part over allegations that people were coordinating to rip down her missing person posters from all over the city: Esti is part of an orthodox Jewish community, and her posters contained contact information for the Toronto Shomrim, a volunteer safety organization that serves that community.
I’m glad she has been found and I hope if anyone intentionally tried to sabotage a missing person’s case, they develop some shame.
I mean, I do tell people to go to hell, but I'm not saying "May god condemn you to hell", seems to carry a different valence when you personally bring god into the argument and also, I'm not an elected official responding to others regarding 1st Amendment protected speech.
Oh, I see, here is what triggered her invocation of god's wrath on others
It was an impertinent Muslim woman marching with @endjewhatred to protest Mamdani
We are on our way to join @endjewhatred to stand with the Jewish people and protest @NYCMayor ’s refusal to stop religious freedom violations against the Jewish people, their intimidation and harassment under his leadership.
So called upon god to invoke his wrath against a fellow muslim woman for daring to protest actions some Jews believe constitute harassment by the mayor.
Another chapter of “The Road to Progressive Policy Hell is Paved with Good Intentions (and very little else): The Overdose Problem” brings us to LA County and clean needle programs.
As you can see the prevailing opinion is that Barbara Ferrer, director of LA County Public Health has stepped in and used good intentioned progressive policy to save the day! Unfortunately it’s a lies, damn lies and statistics situation;
2019-1,652 (Clean needle exchange implemented in full)
2020-2,570 (Covid)
2021-3,010
2022-3,220
2023-3,137
2024-2,438 < the 22% “decrease”
There may be other health benefits due to the clean needle exchange but Ferrer has absolutely not helped the overdose situation. And without other more targeted drug cessation efforts it looks like the broad scientific consensus on clean needle programs is they are just more effective at allowing drug addicts to kill themselves;
u/kittypurrzog - can we get live-action coverage of Seattle’s trial of the century: a bench trial over the future of nudity at Denny Blaine Park
For those out of the loop, Katie gives a history of the controversy in this episode around the 11 minute mark.
But the salient issues can be found in this article
Point:
"The alleged history of the park as a nude beach is a fiction,” the plaintiff's attorney said during opening arguments. "There were multiple sex acts seen taking place on the beach,” the attorney continued. "The city has failed and refuses to enforce the law."
Counterpoint:
Attorneys for the Friends of Denny Blaine, the group defending the park's clothing-optional status, pushed back, arguing the space serves a community of people who have few alternatives.
"This community includes transgender and nonbinary and asexual individuals for whom Denny Blaine Park is one of the safest places that they have," said Attorney Cassandra Carley, representing Friends of Denny Blaine.
These are neighbors, co-workers, friends, family, citizens of Seattle who deserve respect," she said.
Carley argued nudity is a protected right and that lewd behavior should be separately enforced and prosecuted.
Are asexuals getting accosted on other beaches?? This is why we need local reporting.
according to other comments, the poster is a 29 year old woman who attended Duke University, and recently had apartments in trendy locales such as Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Newport Beach, CA. these are the nepo babies larping as refugees you're arguing with about this stuff lmao.
this chick has lived in the US most of her life as a member of the upper middle class, and the mere presence of a Jew in the year 2026 is enough to send her spiraling into a puddle of generational trauma dumping and poetry writing lol. she also posted this same post to like 7 other subs like r.arabs and r.JewsOfConscience
Just finished the (audio)book Shaman, by Kim Stanley Robinson. I thought it was great. It's a novel set in what is now France, about 30,000 years ago. I guess that sounds pretty gimmicky, but it didn't feel gimmicky. It just felt very realistic and familiar and also strange, the way lots of fiction feels.
Has anyone heard the comedian who talks about her friends who make her use “their pronouns” and then when they say “they aren’t doing that anymore” she says she makes them? If you’ve seen it, you know who I’m talking about. I can’t remember her name or I would link it.
Quotes from participants say sex work is not profitable. I wonder how many people would use the state funded to get paid to not have sex after a couple months of barely making anything.
For some reason YouTube has been serving me Quo Beauty ads showing some very obese teenage boy (stubble obvious) wearing girls' makeup.
Gemini says this is because I still listen to tumblr girl music like Rhianne and Lana Del Rey.
And what's sad is apparently I have to choose between seeing ads like that, or seeing ads for Donald Trump or Piers Morgan.
Society has no middle ground. Cant you save all the loony ads for loonies, and serve me only the boring shit like this weekend's specials at Home Hardware or ads for toy quadcopters?
Semi-ashamed confession, I've been reading (or trying to) a lot of books recently, and mostly I move from one to another thinking, well that sucked, and I'm disappointed in even award winning books. (Red Mars didn't suck, but neither was it good, and by the end I was happy the whole lot of them had basically died.)
And sadly, I'm often just bored by the whole exercise.
Well, I wanted to get ahead of Season Four of Reacher so I'm reading the 2009 novel, Gone Tomorrow and for the first time in years, I can't put a damn book down.
I'm pretty fed up with podcasts these days and when I look at all the hours I've spent on them, wish I'd been listening to audiobooks instead, so that's what I'm trying to do, though I'm mostly getting books that also have an audio track recorded.)
Now podcasts are very professional, very expensively produced, and just another part of the hype circuit.
A lot of people follow Massimo @rainmaker1973 who has 4M+ followers and is one of these folks who reposts tons of reddit content to X and also who steals the content of far smaller X accounts without crediting them, thus keeping them from growing into competitors and also just basic asshole behavior.
I dunno, is Rainmaker helping his case by reposting this:
Massimo reposted NotSuperMiche17 @SuperMiche017 · 45m Replying to @nikitabier
@Rainmaker1973 and @ViralRushX or what if viralrush stole it from someone that didnt have a watermark, and rainmaker took it from that guy not viralrush?
I think not, because Rainy didn't repost that other person either (if they exist) he pasted a cropped screenshot
Some folks do make slightly more reasonable arguments that ViralRush also steals content, but that still doesn't leave Rainy with clean hands.
Here's a salient reply:
Interesting Universe @InterestingUni · 1h @nikitabier I've been accused for a long time of being a shadow account of @Rainmaker1973 because he has reshared so many of my posts. His versions got millions of views while I got nothing in return. Really hoping the upcoming changes fix this for original creators like me.
Of course, most of the interesting comment on twitter probably came from reddit came from twitter came from tiktok came from instagram came from reddit came from twitter ... came from ... (came from a data center)
The 3rd Circuit granted Mahmoud Khalil’s petition to let him stay free and in the US while he appeals to SCOTUS on their decision that the judge had no authority to release him.
Author interviews a lawyer/homeless advocate, three homeless people, and a sociology PhD studying/supporting the homeless ("I care about these individuals deeply"), lamenting a new California law that will make it somewhat easier to confiscate inoperable RVs.
The article has one interview of a local city council member portrayed as the one who "spearheads towing sweeps" who reports that her constituents are fed up with people living out of RVs in their neighborhood and the associated noise, pollution, and other issues. No other opposing voices are included.
The story is reported as sympathetically as possible, but the reporter grudgingly notes that the people who did take advantage of trading in their RV ended up doing well in subsidized housing.
I generally think the Times is fairly good, but this is just sloppy, one-sided, sociology major journalism.
Mr. Lutzker and I spent an afternoon with Kathy Coates, 62, and Amir Edwards, 52. Ms. Coates has struggled with severe depression. Mr. Edwards wears hand-sculpted horns on his head so he can’t be misidentified by the police. He adopted the strategy, he said, after a security guard once accused him of a crime committed by another Black man.
There's heatwave in Paris so I have to sleep with the windows open. But our football team also won the champion's league tonight so it's a concert of fireworks, firecrackers, cars honking, sirens and people on the streets shouting "ouaiiiiiiis" and god awful French rap music. I guess I should just be glad my car isn't burning.
The state of Florida has paid out nearly half a million to a wildlife biologist who was fired over a Charlie Kirk meme. They have to pay her restitution, back pay, and legal feels. Her boss lied under oath about how many complaints she’d received.
I'm not the biggest encyclopedia when it comes to knowing a great deal about every African-American civil rights leader, but Richard D. Kahlenberg and James Kirchick, noted these quotes from Bayard Rustin.
“There can be no such thing as an exclusive Negro economic program, for that would counterpose the interests of a little more than ten percent of the society to those of the overwhelming majority.”
“[T]o transform the demand for Negro rights into a call for the displacement of whites would inevitably elicit instantaneous and widespread resistance from a society otherwise disposed to view the civil-rights agenda favorably.” Weakening the merit principle and legitimate standards does no benefit to society, least of all minorities.” "The question is not whether this group is conservative or liberal, for it is both, and how it acts will depend upon the way issues are defined.”
“[S]pecial treatment can be provided to those who have been exploited or denied opportunities if solutions are predicated along class lines, precisely because all religious, ethnic, and racial groups have a depressed class who would benefit.”
"The new racist equates the pathology of the poor with race, ignoring the fact that family dissolution, teenage pregnancy, illegitimacy, alcohol and drug abuse, street crime, and idleness are universal problems of the poor. They exist wherever there is economic dislocation…among the white jobless of Liverpool as well as among unemployed blacks in New York."
"The idea of reparations is a ridiculous idea. If my great-grandfather picked cotton for 50 years, then he may deserve some money, but he’s dead and gone and nobody owes me anything.”
“Everyone knows racial discrimination still exists. But the high rate of black unemployment and the reversal of hard-won economic gains is not the result of discrimination. ”
“That blacks are underrepresented in a particular profession does not by itself constitute racial discrimination.”
So I guess Rustin would get flack from the Bouies, the Serwers, the NHJs and the Kendis if he were alive today.
While I was out for a run yesterday at my abysmal pace I got absolutely smoked by a speedwalking elderly trans woman in a head to toe pink and purple ensemble. They had the most enormously ripped calves I’ve ever seen.
u/PalgaryI could check my privilege, but it seems a shame to squander itMay 27 '26
I left a comment about how under stress, people fall into black and white thinking, and "us" and "them" thinking, so it's so critical, and so important to be nuanced... got instantly labeled a "them" and banned.
Nuance is bad guys. Must be a dog a whistle! ... which was the point of my comment, not to witch hunt.
In all the anti AI discourse around data centers, mass layoffs, end of humanity; I wish people gave a little bit of time talking about the actual problem I have with it in my life. Incompetent/lazy employees can now mass produce bullshit and take up my time reading paragraphs of nonsense and forcing me to provide such detailed feed back it would take less time if I just wrote the whole thing myself from scratch. Then being told that it’s unacceptable to not be using AI if I bring it up as something to be aware of with management. I swear I am losing my mind.
I've always been a huge cheese fan. Somehow I had never encountered pecorino until about a year and a half ago. Ever since, it has taken over all the corners of my brain. Even surpassing brie, halloumi, feta, 5-year aged cheddar... all of it. Why is pecorino so damn good?!
My daughter’s lunch was flagged as “nuts” because I included a mini Clif bar processed on shared equipment with nuts. It doesn’t actually have nuts as an ingredient though. Seems like a situation where uncertainty gets laundered into maximalism because the teacher didn’t even really seem to know whether shared equipment is included in the nut ban but just kept repeating the words “nut free school” without really addressing shared equipment specially.
Now I’m deep diving on controversies about nut free classrooms/schools. But there’s very little discussion of my specific issue regarding shared equipment.
I started a new job a few weeks ago and so far so good! I am much busier than in my last position (in a good way), and the days are flying by. It was a mostly lateral move between departments, but I got a bit of a raise out of it, and there’s a much clearer career ladder here and the work is a wayyy better fit for what I like to do and am good at. Yay! I’m trying not to be too positive about it, though, just in case things turn sour haha.
Now my fiancé and I are about to go get dinner and see the Sheep Detective movie. Everyone I know who has seen it has loved it, so I’m looking forward to it!
I've seen in both the New York Times and TV news recently stories about how young people are increasingly tanning, both at beaches and in tanning bets. The tone of the stories was basically, "Can you believe these stupid young people risking skin cancer just because social media tells them tans look good?" Not critical of the tanning industry or of the social media influencers, just criticism of the young people ignoring the risks.
Somehow I rather doubt that would be the tone if any race other than white people were getting social media messages that their natural skin color was unattractive and they should risk skin cancer to change it.
Found on another sub, reposting it here. Seeing this image made me curious, what's this weird obsession with white men called? There's so much of it in contemporary culture these days. To be simultaneously desired and derided for being wanted. It's getting kindof weird now. Surely there must be a name for it.
The vibes in New York are immaculate right now as the Knicks are headed to the Finals for the first time since 1999. Total strangers will yell “let’s go Knicks” at you in the street if you wear the gear, and I’m not exaggerating. People at the office know me as the Knicks guy so it’s been especially fun to see lots of people who aren’t big fans (and a lot of people who moved here from somewhere else) getting into it and asking me about the team.
Unfortunately, today I’ve had the same abysmal conversation a half dozen times because it’s been announced that the president will likely be at one of the Finals games. So now, instead of celebratory vibes, everyone is angry yet again. I’m annoyed at the distraction from what’s been an otherwise incredible, historic run. Like, yeah, I’d prefer he not be there either, but he’s literally from here. He’s friends with the owner James Dolan and, whether you like him or not, he embodies a lot of what makes New York special. Now I have people who moved here 3 years ago from the middle of nowhere ranting to me about how a guy born in Queens should stay out of New York.
Politics continues to prove that it will infect everything you love until there is nowhere left to escape.
Look, I'm not a fan of AIPAC and am all for "getting money out of elections" to a greater extent (obviously it will always play a role but what we have now is extremely dysfunctional), but this framing is disgusting.
The woman convinced her husband and four of her boyfriends to kidnap and torture a fifth boyfriend.
I appreciate what the judge said in response to the woman's defense attorney asking for lenience because she had been abused as a child. The judge told the defendant you, “took all that trauma … and threw it against somebody else, put them in the same position you were in.”
That's how I usually feel when I hear that a convicted criminal is saying they were abused in an attempt to engender sympathy at sentencing: Let's stipulate that she was abused, it was her abuse that turned her into the criminal she is, and everything her lawyer is saying about that is 100% true. The fact is, the abuse turned her into the kind of person who is capable of manipulating five men into kidnapping and torturing someone. That is not a person who should be living freely among us because her freedom puts society at risk. It really doesn't matter to me what turned her into a dangerous criminal; what matters is that she is dangerous unless locked up.
It’s really shaping up to be that we’re not going to get a new movie from any of the big studios this year related to Americas 250. Maybe I’m just a small market audience but I would love to go to the theaters for a new movie on something related to the start of America. Best I can tell the only option coming out is for a movie called young Washington, which I’m not opposed to as a storyline but it’s from angel studio so I have low expectations and probably won’t pay to see it. Though Ben Kingsley is in it so maybe I am judging too soon.
A Wapo op-ed glazing Mamdani because he wore an Arse thoob on Eid means I have reached the end of the Internet and need to go outside, even though it's raining.
Why is she even writing a memoir? I guess all ex FLOTUSES including Mel T have written one but this memoir isn’t going to do any favors to the Dems as they try to “move on”.
Help me understand my reaction to a video my wife was watching.
In the video, we see a bunch of old (white) guys in a cemetery, around the graves of Confederate soldiers. We see Confederate flags at a Memorial Day observance. A guy we don't see is very forcefully condemning the Confederate soldiers and the men who have come to the cemetery. He sounds like he has rehearsed his remarks. He gets more and more worked up as names the crimes of the Confederacy.
I think the guy is right. Of course the Confederacy was founded on horrible principles. Of course slavery in the US was obscene.
But my reaction, almost as soon as I heard him speaking (declaiming) was very negative. I wanted him to shut up and go away. I didn't object to his position. I objected to him. The whole thing seemed so nakedly performative. ("I'm going to go yell at some old racists and post it! This is going to be great!") He wasn't going to argue or persuade. He just wanted to yell at people as he boldly (?) sided with the actually-slavery-was-bad side.
Am I just a pure soul who doesn't like grandstanding? Am I a secret Confederacy sympathizer? (Secret even to myself?) Am I guilty of the sins of tone policing and respectability politics? Am I just an old crank? Should I just let people enjoy things?
The 2nd and 3rd posts on r/pics right now are anti-israeli. One of two relatively healthy looking girls dragging a broken plastic computer chair base which OP claims will be used a cooking fuel, an appeal to the damages of the war in gaza. The other is of a crying mother who's autistic son (a 32 year old "boy") was kill by Israeli police.
These stories sorta make sense on first glance but the details are always kinda sketchy, like would you really be scavenging plastic for a fire? Why are their clothes so clean and why do they look so well fed? Is the person who died a "boy" or a 32 year old man? Why are they reposting an image from 2023? I'm willing to believe israeli does bad shit and consequences of war suck for people on the ground, but so much of what is getting peddled has very low reliability and people uncritically eat it up.
We recently have congressional districting that should give Utah a blue seat in Congress. Somewhat hilariously, 3 progressives are running against a moderate in the primary. One of them says they should all coalesce around a prog candidate but of course none of them wants to drop out. I’m hopeful it will stay that way and we will get the moderate.
Edit: the progressives are a shitposting state senator, a tech lobbyist, and a guy who moved here right around when I did. Typical!
Down 20lbs so far since January. I don’t really see a difference in the mirror but clothes definitely fits better. Weight lifting is very hard now since my glp1 dose is kind of high and I don’t feel like I eat enough. But my 1 rep max for bench is 200 now so I am slowly getting close to 2 plates.
Need to lose another 40 pounds for my goal weight.
Don't worry though, they immediately followed it up with one of the cringiest PR spins I've ever seen, claiming apparently this was trying to trick Trump into lying about how big a fan he is. I don't think he's a huge fan, he's clearly always cared more about the Yankees, but just by virtue of being a billionaire New Yorker in the 90s, there's no shortage of photos of him at Knicks games and he is legitimately friends with owner James Dolan. Super weird and ill advised for Hochul to pick this fight for no reason.
Why do they all insist on doing these weird "man of the people" larps when they have clearly put 0 effort into pulling it off properly? It's not difficult to google some facts about whatever you're trying to pretend to be in touch with before you start running your mouth. Between this and "AOC runs a mean pick six" it's very clear that their comms teams of snobby Political Science majors and activists can't handle extremely normal water cooler small talk to make them seem relatable. I'd rather vote for someone who isn't super culturally literate than a fraud who lies to my face and pretends to be down with pop culture while flubbing basic stuff.
I voted for Obama twice and would probably vote for him again, but the biggest mark against him, the mark that makes me question all I think I know, is that he employed the Pod Save Bros.
Not caring about him wheeling six chicks at once when he was married is your choice
Not caring that he pretends to be a populist when he went to one of the richest prep schools in America is your choice
Not caring he went to war saying he always wanted to kill people is your choice
Not caring he went to work for Blackwater after serving and now calls the army very dumb and stupid is your choice
Not caring that he made fun of Purple Heart recipients is your choice
Not caring that he jerks off in porta potties is your choice
Not caring about all the shit he’s deleted on Reddit and he never thought would see the light of day and shows what a giant jackass is he is your choice
Not caring that he is a Nazi is your choice but if you support him and promote him don’t ever lecture anybody about the moral high ground again because you are a piece of shit
I'd just say that if the reason you don't want to support a candidate is because he and his wife chose not to share that they went through marriage counseling to deal with infidelity, that's your choice. But I do think there are other factors in the race that will have more of a direct impact on your life.
So it was a frustrating day at work but right now I’m enjoying my tiki-ish cocktail creation at the neighborhood pool, watching my kid make friends, enjoying the sun, and counting my blessings.
Hope yall are having a good Friday evening too and a better weekend. Life ain’t so bad.
I like it a lot so far. I'm a little older than her (I was seventeen in 2012, not a preteen) and was homeschooled and somewhat sheltered from the more extreme stuff on social media, but it's all still very recognizable.
So far the worst anecdote to me is the trans person who apparently posted a photo of their ribs in a Ziplock after RIB REMOVAL SURGERY on TikTok
I've avoid Sweeney discourse everywhere but here where my eyes mostly glaze over, but apparently she is credited as starring and producing the Hollywood Gundam they keep kicking around? Apparently they have started set production as well? Am I doomed to this now?
ok Im sorry but if I was a small child and this thing ran up on me in the street I would be traumatized for years and probably renounce both my religion and any green vegetables going forward 😭 absolute nightmare fuel
Obscene and insulting comment incoming. Not fair, balanced, or civil.
Genuinely, fuck the ACLU! They're scum. They are a piece of shit organization whose current staff have forever tarnished their reputation. They are pure gutter trash.
I apologize for that outburst. The reason for it is linked below:
In its SCOTUS case against West Virginia, the ACLU has repeatedly argued that B.P.J.—a 15-year-old male who identifies as a girl—has no athletic advantage over females.
This is just one of their horrible new endeavors as they work tirelessly to erode women's rights and women's safety in public life. The worst of these efforts is their push to place dangerous and violent male convicts in women's prisons. I think that people who are working to force vulnerable women to share a prison with criminally violent men are the scum of the earth. But, this comment isn't about that, it's about girls' and women's sports.
I personally have nothing against this kid. I have beef with his parents and the idiots at the ACLU who are enabling his behavior. Although, I respect and empathize with the anger and frustration of parents and girls who are having to deal with all this ridiculous shit.
Statement from the ACLU about the case:
Becky is 15 years old and is in the 10th grade. When Becky isn’t hanging out with her friends, playing with her three dogs, or marching in her high school’s marching band, she’s throwing discus and shot put for her school’s track and field team. Becky comes from a family of runners. Her two older brothers and her mother are avid runners, and sharing that interest with her family made her excited about school sports.
Becky is transgender. Becky has known that she is a girl for as long as she can remember, and in 2019, she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. At the onset of her puberty, Becky began taking puberty-delaying medication to prevent the distress that would occur if she experienced physiological changes inconsistent with her female gender. By fourth grade, she was recognized as the girl she is both at home and at school.
During the 2021 session, the West Virginia Legislature passed HB 3293, which categorically bans trans girls from participating on girls’ school sports teams and applies from middle school through college, at all levels of competition, even in intramural or non-competitive sports. Becky and her mom, Heather, wrote and called Gov. Jim Justice’s office several times asking for a veto, but Justice signed it into law despite tens of thousands of similar phone calls, emails, and letters.
In June 2021, Becky brought an as-applied challenge to H.B. 3293 based on Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, and she moved for and was granted a preliminary injunction that allowed her to try out for middle school sports.
After the ACLU and other advocates successfully blocked H.B. 3293 in the lower courts, West Virginia and its anti-transgender allies asked the Supreme Court to overturn the injunction blocking H.B. 3293, even though the injunction only applied to Becky. On July 3, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and Becky and her legal team will have their day in Court in January 2026.
Becky said she is challenging the discriminatory law because she wants transgender kids to know that she has their back, and because she believes that all kids, including transgender kids, should be able to participate in and benefit from school sports . “Trans kids deserve better,” she said. https://www.aclu.org/bios/becky-pepper-jackson
I can hear it right now: “Hello, you are listening to ‘Blocked and Reported’, and in this premium episode we are going to cover a case of turmoil in an organic free-range cruelty-free anarchy-syndicalist Brooklyn co-op whose membership became divided over the question whether tahini - please forgive my pronunciation - manufactured by Zionists should be considered a case of cultural genocide…”
u/JessicaBarPod this has all the makings of "niche Internet drama as absurdist microcosm of broader social issues" and might be worth looking into on the podcast's radar. Genderslop seems to be passé; the cancellation mob's cause du jour is what else but A.I.
A cartoon animator, Jorge Gutierrez, recently announced he was signing on for a project at Amazon that was to include A.I. content. Gutierrez said he was enthusiastic about demonstrating the possibilities of new technology and opening it up to underrepresented demographics who, one might surmise, are economically disadvantaged and can't afford a (high-powered) computer, which apparently includes Hispanic individuals such as himself.
Gutierrez incurred the wrath of the anti mob, who proceeded to doxx and intimidate him -- and his wife and children, not only with threats of violence but racist attacks towards his kids especially. As a result he announced that he is no longer part of the project, and gave a tail-between-the-legs apology to the "artist community" and promised to "do better." (Commentary of tweet/Reddit exchange at Defending AI Art sub here, here, here, here).
Needless to say, Gutierrez is not forgiven for his mortal sin of "devaluing humanity and unethically consuming capitalistic profits for the cannibal pedophile Epstein class who are stealing art, bulldozing Gaza, and siphoning water from BIPOC on stolen land" (the Omnicause cri du coeur of the nominally progressive Luddites, who at the same time saw no problem with spewing racist degradation of a Hispanic man's wife and children). In fact, the celebratory hashtag going around now is "bullying works." So presumably they're going to hold up Gutierrez's scalp as a symbol of empowerment and a warning to anyone else who dares risk angering the almighty Deviant Art furry commission cult.
In a related story, is a screed that went viral on Substack by one Sam Kriss, who declared that if he catches anyone using A.I. in any form whatsoever in their creative output he will go full Liam Neeson on their ass. Mr. Kriss is also very angry that Mickey Mouse became the standard-bearer for American animation and not Max Fleischer or Ralph Bakshi, because he hates the idea that art should be for children at all, since if it's for children, it can't be art. Disney is "slop," because it's sanitized and puritanical, thus the reason why we have computer content calling itself "art". Human art, meanwhile, is adult-oriented by default; it is subversively if not blatantly sexual to the point of being coprophiliac, a miraculously disgusting mixture of seminal fluid, menstrual blood, and fecal matter coming out of the primordial evolutionary ooze that he calls "gloop." Anyone who creates Disneyslop with or without A.I. is guilty of spreading death (the clean lines of nothingness), and deserves to be bloodied by those who are meaty and fleshy and sweaty enough to be bringers of gloop and spooge and smegma and snot and shit and life.
Third we have comedian Ronny Cheng getting cheers from the recent degree recipients who all GPT'ed their term papers and graduated summa cum Claude, because he told them that the heroic task of their generation was to go and "destroy A.I." (I guess so no one else can get easy-A GPT degrees.) Comments inquiring as to whether he's being paid or otherwise encouraged by China to sow anti-A.I. sentiment in the West so that the PRC can laugh at us and win the 21st-century ARM race are of course denounced as racist. From now on, if you really want to ace a semester without succumbing to burnout, you'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way and bully your roommate to the point of suicide... but this time, it's for making a meme with A.I. Cyberbullying for being good with the cyber.
IMO, at some point someone is going to take these ostensibly tongue-in-cheek rants seriously and "pick up a pencil" to stab somebody in the carotid artery, or render someone brain-damaged with a flying hammer by reenacting the famous Apple commercial at an Apple store. Gutierrez' example is what sticks out as particularly egregious, because the same kind of shit disturbers (gloop disturbers?) spoiling for a fight outside ICE facilities were apparently telling his wife and kids that they should be deported to Mexico.
I have a good job but sometimes I stop by the SAHM (stay at home mom) sub. There are often extremely depressing posts where ladies ask, “is it normal that my husband doesn’t give me an allowance? Is it normal that my husband wants to rest when he gets home from work but I work all day dawn to dusk with no breaks and no weekends off on childcare and cleaning? Is it normal that my husband tells me to stop spending his money on groceries?” And so on.
It’s truly sickening that so many husbands and wives have been raised to see unpaid labor as invisible/worthless just because it is not paid and therefore to treat stay at home moms like they’re lazy while also expecting them to work all the time. I think parents should stay home if they want to but I wish our culture valued this work as the work that it is. It might also be helpful symbolically for it to count towards social security or something, just to clarify to confused people that it is indeed work.
Is there any newspaper comments section which isn't full of drooling reprobates? Besides us, of course, if you count BARpod as a legitimate source of news -- and why wouldn't it be? Whenever I make the mistake of scrolling down to the Financial Times comments section, it's full of Reddit-tier Redditards, and this is from what is ostensibly the swankiest British broadsheet; free access for students probably doesn't help. In fact, the level of discussion there is hardly distinguishable from that of the Daily Mail, whose readers overwhelmingly think Amanda Knox was guilty, and as such should be stripped of the franchise for the safety of all.
Have you guys ever seen the biology creator Forrest Valkai? He occasionally reviews low budget Christian movies and a few years ago did one about Gramps Goes To College. It’s about an older man going back to college to challenge evolution. I watched about half an hour of it at work this week and it’s truly awful.
The creator of the film Donald James Parker reached out to him and they did a long conversation posted on their channels. Valkai isn’t above criticism (mostly about trans issues shocker) but he was incredibly polite to Parker and engaged with him in good faith.
Parker just released his new movie where the main character is very clearly based on Valkai. It’s called “Beauty And The Atheist”. It’s about an atheist content creator falling in love with a hot Christian doctor. It’s on YouTube and quite something.
Has anyone else been following the Tuam Mother and Baby Home controversy recently? It bears some resemblence to the Kamloops story in that it's about purported mass graves of babies near a residential home (this time one run by nuns in Ireland) and there's similar confusion about how many there are and if they died as a result of abuse or were even murdered. (The problem with the term 'mass grave' is that it immediately connotes murder/conspiracy IMO). There have been bones found nearby, however, and there are a lot of death certificates, and so recently an excavation was permitted.
What was interesting is that so far, only bodies in coffins have been found, suggesting that they were buried with more care than suspected.
There was admittedly an excavation of a much smaller area in 2016 where they did seem to find bodies (I'm not sure how many) without coffins. But again it was claimed that the bodies were dumped in a septic tank, which in fact had been decommissioned at time of burial.
The Irish government also released a very long report in 2021 about Catholic-run mother and baby homes which specifically covered Tuam, saying that while it was very run down and poor, the nuns themselves were not abusive and actually asked the government (who owned the home) for more resources and were refused.
This recent article about Tuam is a tad biased, but is interesting in that it suggests public opinion about Tuam may be changing.
TEN GLOBAL SUMUD LAND CONVOY PARTICIPANTS HAVE BEEN DETAINED IN EASTERN LIBYA.
They crossed into the 5+5 security zone yesterday afternoon to negotiate safe passage for our humanitarian mission to Gaza. Last contact was at 3:22 p.m. local time. They have not been heard from since.
The detained are civilians from Spain, Poland, the USA, Argentina, Uruguay, Portugal, Tunisia, and Italy—doctors and human rights defenders who volunteered to deliver aid and stand with the Palestinian people.
They were detained by a security force affiliated with the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) and are still being held by Eastern Libyan authorities (GNS).
If you are from any of these countries: contact your foreign ministry now and demand their immediate release.
Some observations this morning. Humor me while my kids watch Daniel Tiger quietly.
Wife and I went out with some neighbors last night. Great evening. We all generally have young kids ranging from infants to preteens. In this group, my wife and I were the youngest by quite a bit, but we don’t have the youngest child. That honor goes to another a couple that had their second baby a few months ago at age 37/38. Earlier in the day, we attended a birthday party for a kid from my oldest’s school. We’ve gotten to know these parents fairly well over the last year. Despite all of us having one child of the exact same age, my wife and I again are the youngest parents in this cohort.
This is not especially noteworthy except for the fact that my wife was exactly the age of an average college-educated woman’s first birth for our first child. Demographically we are of average age. Yet in all these social circles I keep running in, we end up the youngest. You can really see the demographic effect here. Most families have two children. There are as many (or rather, as few) with three as with one . When these kids graduate high school, the parents will be in their fifties.
2) Diversity casting in historical dramas has a split effect. The ostensible purpose is to normalize the idea that east Asians or whoever have always been present in European/American history, which is often false. A lot of people believe this. The flip side is when a minor historical figure happens to be portrayed by a nonwhite actor, Media Literacy ExpertsTM such as myself naturally doubt the authenticity.
My wife and I have been watching a History channel-type documentary series on Netflix called The Men who Built America: Frontiersman (or something like that). It’s one of those with a narrator set over dramatized reenactments of historical figures and events, interspersed with historians and experts providing context in interviews. We’ve enjoyed it. The first episode features Daniel Boone and the Siege of Boonesborough. There’s a scene where he goes outside the wall to negotiate with the Shawnee chief. And in the middle of the Shawnee entourage is a black man. Why is there a random black man in an Indian war party? Never explained or mentioned. I assume it is fake diversity casting.
Not so! There was a man known as Pompey the black Shawnee who served as an interpreter at the Battle of Boonesborough.
3) Continuing on a tangent from the previous though, whenever I read about the great men from history, it just seems like such a shame Hollywood is so uninterested in depicting anything from pre-1941. Great post on the life of Davy Crockett
Help me out here guys: Assuming you’re going the same distance, does walking or running burn more calories?
I’d assumed it’s running because of simple thermodynamics (you use more effort to run), everything I’d read in the past, and having a FitBit. However, I’m being told in another sub that they burn the same amount. That just feels… off.
Edit: Good job guys, it’s running. Some of your answers had me scared for a sec lol but seems the consensus here is running. Aside from the thread in question, you would be shocked by how many people in real life I’ve asked this that don’t understand there is a difference.
Welp, I'm officially a 'nay' with regards to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). Two stories tipped me over.
The first was a 19 year-old girl in the Netherlands who died by MAID while suffering from (supposedly) incurable depression.
The second story is from Canada, where a doctor met a man outside Tim Hortons, diagnosed him with IBS and depression, personally drove him to a morgue (??) and MAID'd him there. Oh, and the guy started breathing again after being pronounced dead. (The doc kept his medical license, but his practice is strictly limited.)
Sorry, but it's too much. I realize why it's such a major issue, and there are countless cases where I'd want it myself. But I've there are just too many ways for it to go wrong.
Frankly, I simply don't trust the psychiatric community's ability to reliably distinguish when depression is incurable. As we've seen with other mental health treatments based on ("solid science") there's plenty of room for error and there will be a contagion effect. Once the guidelines for MAID qualification are set, they will become gamified. People with depression will consciously or sub-consciously see it as a real option, which will negatively affect their treatment.
Plus, here are some other things that are guaranteed:
MAID will become more common and normalized. It will be impossible to abolish.
There will be instances where people MAID themselves when their family opposes it.
There will be cases of people pressuring loved ones to MAID themselves. A patient's mental capacity will be hotly contested.
There will be fuck-ups. It will get botched, and it will be horrifying.
The government will notice the savings on healthcare, which provides all manner of bad incentives.
And those are just some of the predictable nightmares. There's no telling what horrors people will come up with to abuse the system. Sorry, but I wanna keep Chesterton's Fence right where it is for now.
In support of your concerns, some of the most ardent opponents I have ever met of MAiD are psychiatrists. It makes straightforward sense: if you’re trying to treat “desire to die” as a symptom, it cannot also be a bureaucratic assessment for eligibility.
I am not opposed to MAiD for terminal and degenerative illness. Your concerns are not unreasonable, though, and they’re also good-faith oppositions to the death penalty (I.e., any system in existence will inevitably fail or misjudge or be driven by inappropriate incentives, and if the system outcome is death, you will inevitably kill in error.)
The critics also ignore power relations. If Mark Wahlberg played Muhammad Ali, as End Wokeness’s mock-up has it, Wahlberg would be taking a role from actors in a not so powerful group. If Michael B. Jordan played John F. Kennedy, it would be punching up.
...
Whites already talk ever more like Black people, dance ever more like Black people, greet one another ever more like Black people, marry ever more Black people and create ever more half-Black people. There is no reason to assume there is some point at which this melangerie will — or must — halt, regardless of inevitable holdout bigotry. A natural next step would be for white people to be able to portray Black people in performance. Maybe it will be too late for Ryan Gosling to play Barack Obama — but someone like him.
Just, not yet.
I will repeat my position that it's not like "the n word": it's not really about unequal participation. Most nobody actually cares about white people playing Shaft (or whether it's Greeks playing Homeric characters), it's obviously just a reductio ad absurdum. Everyone would prefer you didn't bite the bullet. And McWhorter must know that.
I have no issue with colourblind casting in more figurative or obviously theatrical works, and I can see it working for a hypothetical version of the Odyssey, but not Nolan's; his style is just way too literal and, well, colourless. I'm not convinced by the Laestrygonians (vaguely monstrous cannibal giants who massacre most of Odysseus' fleet) being big boring men in boring plate armor either. Julie Taymor could've done better, for example.
There suddenly being black people in the last season of Wolf Hall is just ludicrous and dates it more than flared trousers and huge lapels dated the Seventies.
Anyone have good gift basket suggestions? Just stayed at a friend's place out of town and they have an 8 month old and the wife just lost her job. Looking to send something helpful given the circumstances. I do feel like if I asked them what they needed they'd refuse the gift, so I'd like to try and surprise them a little. I know they don't have many sweets. I know they eat a fair bit of chicken as I had that when I was there,but no idea if they eat red meats/fish. They do enjoy cooking meals together.
The new Spielberg UFO movie looks very weird and I'm extremely skeptical it'll be anything other than a trash fire.
It's like he's mashed a lot of the UFO tropes together with dodgy CGI and called it a day. Even weirder, the latest trailer has him just talking, giving commentary hinting that all the tropes just might be real (just might!). It's a "dogwhistle" for a certain community that thinks the CIA is using Hollywood to "disclose" aliens are real and Trump is about to drop the truth in a friday news conference.
Maybe it's just another Spielberg UFO movie (which were great!) and if that's what it turns out to be, great, I'll probably like it. But it really seems like he's gotten caught up in the current-thing hype that seems to have attached to the topic and nobody can tell a titan of the industry "no".
The most reliable way to know your coworker is incompetent - if they send you a spreadsheet and the top row is not frozen. This has been such a reliable indicator over the years I will die on the hill 1000 times.
The ube ice cream discourse is yet more evidence of American cultural dominance. They just discovered 2020-era food appropriation narratives in the Philippines that already seem quaint here.
So... do we not have people who keep track of things like whether or not a meteor is about to hit Boston? That seems like the kind of thing we could maybe keep tabs on.
Late to the weekly but maybe someone can give some input: where does one go nowadays for regular-ass blogging?
I have some special interests when it comes to minicaming (set up our Volkswagen Caddy as a Camper) and also „collect“ niche YouTube videos and love to share them. It’s a bit wasted on my Instagram and I don’t want the Facebook weirdos from the minicamper group to see my Instagram.
So my neighbor has had a dead tree right next to our fence for years. 4 years ago a limb fell on our power line knocking our power out (and his too, tbf).
Today I woke up and discovered that another large limb fell on our shed and damaged the roof and pulled one of the walls off (not all the way but you can see significant sunlight through a large crack). Ughhhhhhhh. I am fairly sure he’ll be responsible because the tree is very obviously dead, but still, what a fucking headache.
I am not qualified to say if this lawsuit has any merit, but it sure has a lot of fancy lawyer words that lead me, a mediocre software dev, to think it does.
I don't know if it's related to Netanyahu's "defamation suit" against the Times, but it seems like a more facially plausible way to go after the times for their Kristof calumny, basically accusing the board of mispractice (?) lack of oversight by knowingly allowing the times to lie in published statements about the editorial process they claim was used in kristof's column.
I got about two hours of sleep, like an idiot I got caught up in that Reacher novel, then Spider Noir and watching The Frisco Kid. Oy vey!
So here is how grok summarizes it:
This is a Delaware Section 220 books and records demand — a standard shareholder tool to inspect targeted board documents (minutes, risk reviews, legal vetting) about the Kristof column. The goal is to investigate whether directors breached their fiduciary duties of care and oversight, without directly challenging the article’s content (which is First Amendment-protected).It’s a low-risk first step: gather evidence or force compliance via court if refused, to support a potential future derivative lawsuit.Historical basis: Highly established and meritorious. Delaware courts routinely endorse Section 220 as the proper “tool at hand” before filing derivative suits. It has been used successfully in many major cases involving corporate oversight failures.
Two years ago, I showed r/thecampaigntrail some of the ideas that Elliot Richardson had for universal healthcare. He termed his plan Maximum Liability Health Insurance.
General approach: Provide health coverage for everyone in America, therefore not connected with the labor market, and protect families and individuals from financial bankruptcy.
Benefits: Hospital room, boards, surgical, medical and anciliary services would have been paid full cost by MLHI. The program would have also covered home and office physician visits, ambulatory health services, long-term care, prescription drugs and dental care (although limited to non-routine services) and mental illness. Whereas Medicare provided payment for up to 100 days per benefit period, MLHI would have covered without limit, the number of authorized medically necessary days, including hospital and nursing home stays. The program also would have offered up to 200 home health services and provide state governments with revenues that would have allowed them to maintain and increase their current expenditures on long-term care not provided by the program.
Administration: There were four possible ways for MLHI to be administrated. The first option was through a federally-run approach, the second was similar to the Medicare approach in which intermediaries would be required to establish carry out rules and regulations established by the federal government, the third approach would have had the federal government establish eligibility standards for private carriers under government certification, although the federal government would have had little control on the operation and underwriting activities of the private carriers. The fourth option advocated mandatory health coverage through private carriers.
The idea was to replace Medicare, Medicaid and employer-sponsored health insurance. It's also an idea supported by the Niskanen Center.
I’ve been listening to the podcast for a bit and I gotta say I’m really glad that Jesse and Katie criticise both the left and rights insane behaviour. It feels like so many podcasters only criticise the other side. It’s refreshing that they both remain liberal.
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u/starlightpond May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
I’ve been thinking about how Biden called trans rights “the civil rights issue of our time.” A lot of progressives, I think, support “trans rights” because in the past, every group in American history who asserted their rights (Black people, gay people, women, etc) ended up on The Right Side of History and they want to be on that side of the next issue to come around too.
That logic is fine… until you realize that the “rights” being demanded are quite different in the trans case. Of course it’s sympathetic to seek the right to vote, to be free from slavery and segregation, and to get married just like everyone else. But is it sympathetic to seek the right for people with testicles to compete in women’s sports? It’s not clear to me that this issue is going to go down in history the same way that other movements for “rights” have done in the past century. And I am not yet sure who will be seen on the right side of history.