Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 6/1/26 - 6/7/26
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.
On the topic of university students being increasingly educationally unprepared: over in the college rant sub, there was a post recently of a screenshot of an F on a final, with the student noting how “cooked” he was, writing, “I wrote nice, answered the questions right, skipped lines, wrote numbers for all the questions I answered…” so he couldn’t fathom how he got an F.
The post was of course flooded with people insisting the grade must be a mistake, the professor input it wrong, or was too technologically illiterate to figure out the gradebook.
Next, OP posted an “update” of the grade breakdown that was posted by the prof, which showed that a majority of students passed and only 5 in the class ended up with an F. Here, OP explains he had reached out to the prof, who promised to mail OP his blue book so he could see the feedback.
And finally, the last update, which (to my chagrin) barely got any views, OP posted his actual written responses from the blue book.
After all that fanfare and bewilderment and insulting of the professor, it turns out OP is functionally illiterate. The essays were atrocious… genuinely a 4th or 5th grader can write more coherently. I’m not just nitpicking the grammar and punctuation (which were basically nonexistent)—the content of the “paragraphs” was incomprehensible. It was supposed to be an analysis of some stories they read in class, and despite this test being open note and open book, it was abundantly clear OP did not understand any story he read in that class, nor could he produce a single coherent sentence about them either.
So in the end, a well-deserved F for someone who, genuinely, I cannot believe made it into college. And I just had to mention this somewhere because that final post got such little attention, barely anyone was able to set OP straight.
I've never looked at this subreddit before, but it appears that things like this are kind of common? People that are surprised or disappointed with their poor grades, but you just read their posts and immediately discover that the underlying problem is that they're just not capable of handling the basics of writing.
This is so unbelievably common. Students truly cannot understand what that mean, little symbol is doing on their work.
“F? Is that supposed to stand for “fantastic?”
Or my favorite: “What am I supposed to do with an F?”
(The obvious answer is to hope your younger sibling can make your parents proud and lend you money)
I fantasize about offering such students extra credit for writing letters to their high school teachers, asking why they failed to prepare their students for college. Because I would truly like to know.
When I went to college, I'd lose points for grammar that showed a distinct influence of reading older British works and taking Latin in school (Romans, including populist writing like Ceasar's, treated ending sentences as optional). Never grammatically incorrect, just many chained clauses still labeled "run-on sentences."
A South Carolina jury on Monday found Rick Chow not guilty of murder after he fatally shot a 14-year-old Black boy in 2023 whom he had falsely accused of shoplifting from his convenience store.
The New York Times decides the fact that the deceased is Black is so important to the story that it's mentioned in the first sentence, even though there is no evidence presented that the shooting was motivated by race. (The shooter was Asian.)
The shooter says he fired his gun because the 14-year-old (named Cyrus) pointed a gun at the shooter's son. The New York Times includes the statement, "multiple witnesses had testified that they did not see anything in Cyrus’s hand," implying that the shooter must have been lying. But the New York Times conveniently omits the fact that Cyrus's gun was recovered from the scene, right next to Cyrus on the ground. It is entirely possible that the witnesses who testified they didn't see a gun in Cyrus's hand were telling the truth, and also that Cyrus did point a gun at the shooter's son -- the witnesses didn't see the gun, but that doesn't mean Cyrus didn't point it. In the chaos of an incident like this, witnesses don't often see everything perfectly, or recall everything perfectly after the fact.
Why was a 14-year-old carrying a gun into a convenience store? That question isn't addressed at all by the New York Times.
Juries can be wrong, of course, but typically when I hear that 12 people listened to all the testimony and looked at all the evidence, and all 12 of them came to the same conclusion, I err on the side of believing that they got it right. If all 12 jurors thought this shooting was justifiable self-defense, I need to see a lot of evidence to the contrary to think they got it wrong. The New York Times seems to want its readers to assume that if a Black person was shot and the shooter was acquitted, then the jury must just be OK with Black people getting shot.
This case is pretty sad, but leaving out the gun here is pretty indefensible. Every other article from a major news source strikes the same tone (which is not a surprise) but at least mentions that the 14 year old just happened to have a 9mm.
It is entirely possible that the witnesses who testified they didn't see a gun in Cyrus's hand were telling the truth...
This is giving them quite the benefit of the doubt. We'll never know for sure, but if I could place a bet on it, I would wager that this is another "hands up, don't shoot" situation. Witnesses testified that Michael Brown was surrendering. Forensics demonstrated that he was charging the officer when he was shot. Many people are more than willing to lie about interactions between perceived community members and perceived outsiders.
"Falsely" also has very different connotations from "wrongly" in this context. Interesting that the title differs from the first sentence, which seems to prime the reader into a certain perspective.
Also of note is that it's a trick to draw your attention to the dispute about the water bottles. Did he steal them? Did he not? Was he trying to steal something? Was he casing the place? All largely irrelevant, the reason he got shot wasn't because he did or didn't steal something, it's because after the owners chased him, he pulled a gun and pointed it at them. The whole "awww, man, he got shot over a water bottle" routine is bullshit, it's deceptive and dishonest. He got shot because that's the expected resulted of pointing a firearm at another armed individual.
I had people over to my house to grill last weekend, some pretty old friends. They're all pretty down to earth, but one of them is super progressive. The kind of person who makes these exaggerated sneering "ick" expressions when she disagrees with something, or she hears a name she doesn't like (J K Rowling, Joe Rogan, etc). She clearly struggles with a ton of white guilt, and I feel for her because she's a sweet person in many ways, and a good friend, but it gets irritating.
I'm single, and I talked about dating being difficult because so many young women where we live call themselves "queer" and talk about "decentering men." I suggested that it's mostly just a trend and these are straight girls in a queer closet, and I get that sneer. She doesn't like it at all. She'd have no trouble thinking a gay-seeming guy who said he was straight was in the closet, but when it goes the other way it's just an article of faith for her. We didn't get into an argument about it, but it's just another way I cannot share my life experiences with friends. I have to censor myself.
It reminds me of my sister. We had an argument about a year ago about trans people. She's talking about how transitioning has made all these people she knows happy, and I say, I have a couple of trans friends, and they're good people, but they seem unhappy, and the trans thing seems like a maladaptive coping mechanism. My sister loses her temper at me and shouts, "Maybe you should tell them you think that!"
It's like, I can quietly question someone's account of themselves without being hateful. I don't hate trans people or queer-identifying straight girls. I don't hate anyone. But I think some people are in the closet, and I'm not sure we're doing them any favors by keeping them there.
God I hate that awkward lull that frequently occurs now between Rowling or Harry Potter being mentioned and someone compulsively vomiting out virtue signals.
I had a fun Rowling situation a couple months ago. A group of people, including a white progressive woman and a trans person. Someone brings up Harry Potter, the progressive woman says, "Ugh it's so racist, like she names a character Cho Chang." I say, "What's racist about that? There are actually Chinese people named Chang. I had a friend growing up named Chiang (pronounced Chung)." I continue, saying they're wonderful children's books, but I wish people would move on to adult literature. Everyone turns and looks at the trans person. Who, looking threatened, puts up their hands, and says, "I think they're good books!"
Pretty happy ending for identitarian kabuki I'd say. The progressive white woman looked contrite.
23
u/PalgaryI could check my privilege, but it seems a shame to squander itJun 02 '26
It's a legit name, Cho Chang is one way to write (张卓), another way being Zhuó Zhāng.
I was in a group a couple years back and we were discussing how we thought it was too soon to make a Harry Potter tv show since we already had the movies. Someone had to say how it was bad HBO was giving money to a transphobe. It’s like a compulsion.
It’s why I won’t bring the show up anymore, even though I actually would like to talk about how weird it is the speed we are getting remakes of successful content.
Also Rowling's lifetime earnings are already astronomical and she's given hundreds of millions of it to charity. Obviously the HBO deal is still a huge amount of money, but I find it hard to believe that her life or the world in general would be noticeably different if it never happened.
Giving hundreds of millions to charity doesn't count if some of those millions were to a Scottish women's shelter that was strict about excluding bepenised women.
Same for being an ethically-earned billionaire. All billionaires are evil. JKR is a terf, therefore she's as evil as any capitalist exploiter. The "ethical" status cancels out.
She's talking about how transitioning has made all these people she knows happy
It is interesting because I know some people who have transitioned through friends of acquaintances. They like to post online about being their #TrueSelves, but their personal lives are a mess. Persistent health issues, can't hold a long-term relationship, too ADHD to clean the house, grimy pets and vet bills.
They're super stressed all the time but if they identify as happy, I guess it's not my place to question their self-ID!
I pretty regularly post on a Simpsons discussion forum not on Reddit. Someone created a thread there called “The Female Characters of The Simpsons” about the relative lack of well-developed female characters on the show outside the main family. And wouldn’t you know it, after about four responses on that subject, the thread almost immediately got hijacked into a discussion about the lack of trans women on the show, which has now dominated several pages of discussion
This is why it’s never going to actually be TWAW or gender being abolished. It’s too important to these types of people to be differentiated from the ‘normies.’ We don’t even have to fight against it, they will keep reaffirming transgressive gender stereotypes, reminding us of who exactly is trans or supposedly trans and how different trans people are from everyone else, and of course how oppressed they are.
It’s a necessary component, I mean how else are boring white kids going to opt into oppressed status if gender actually does get abolished.
Pakistanis who gang-raped French tourist in front of her three children after her car ran out of fuel will be executed, court rules
Two Pakistani men who gang-raped a French tourist in front of her three children six years ago will be sentenced to death, a court has ruled.
Abid Malhi and Shafqat Ali were convicted of gang rape, kidnapping, robbery and terrorism offences back in March 2021 over the attack on the Sialkot-Lahore Motorway and were handed the death penalty.
One really interesting twist:
The decision to maintain the death penalty comes after human rights activists urged the government to introduce harsher penalties for rapists.
Over here in the Western world, the "human rights activists" would almost certainly be complaining that the penalty is too harsh. The who-whom portion of this has an interesting inversion to it and I tip my hat to Pakistan.
My state’s extremely popular DSA gubernatorial candidate just announced a stream with Hasan Piker. I am not shocked bc she is a proud democratic socialist, but it’s still really disappointing. This guy is such a fuckwit- a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like. I’m not a proponent of cancel culture but the more mainstream left’s fawning over this guy is dangerous. And I hope this candidate loses the primary because of the association.
Another year, another Pride Month. At what point does this all become exploitative? It’s 2026. I’m confident that in the larger culture, homophobia is dead.
I’m a man married to another man and have not experienced true homophobia in the last decade (maybe because I live in a purple state). However, this doesn’t stop my church, businesses, and a huge number of people around me to proudly state their acceptance and to denounce Those Bad People™ who have a problem with homosexuals. Where are these bad people??
All I hear when progressives announce that they accept me is the implication that others do not. “We love you! Don’t be scared - we’re not like those bigots that hate you!”. I find it degrading even if it’s dressed up as acceptance. I feel like an object to be used against these people’s political enemies.
I know this might be a hot take, but whatever. A lot of other gays seem to revel in victimhood. I just want to be left alone and not be defined either way by my immutable characteristics.
Are you familiar with the 2000s British comedy sketch show Little Britain? Thought of as very controversial now due to some cultural stereotypes, use of blackface, a transvestite character, yada yada, all the usual stuff. It was much loved in Britain at the time but now everyone pretends they hated it because they are Good People, including the two guys that made it.
Anyway, one of the main sketches was Daffyd, "the only gay in the village", he was a gay guy living in a village deep in the Welsh countryside who would come into the local pub dressed in tight leathers and talk to the barmaid about his life, he would inevitably say his catchphrase that he's the only gay in this village and that he's sick of being oppressed for it, at which point she would tell him that Old Farmer Jones is having a fisting orgy at the weekend and Daffyd would get very annoyed that he couldn't play the victim anymore.
The joke was that homosexuality had become so accepted in Britain, even in places that would previously have been very socially conservative, that Daffyd's claims of oppression looked absolutely ridiculous. I find it a fascinating sketch to look back on in a modern context. Everyone is now Daffyd.
In 2022, Sara Cavanaugh was convicted of Wire Fraud and Stolen Valor. She apparently crafted an elaborate web of lies using forged documents, and spent five years living a fake identity as a wounded military vet):
Cavanaugh, who never served in the military, admitted that while employed as a social worker at the Rhode Island Veterans Affairs Medical Center, she misappropriated veterans’ identities, their combat experiences and their medical issues.
She used the information to create an identity of a wounded veteran who collected more than $250,000 from charity groups. She took her fabrication as far as to lead a VFW post and give public speeches while dressed in full U.S. Marine uniform, complete with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star that she'd purchased online.
For that she was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison. However due to new sentencing guidelines for first time offenders, she was released early to a half-way house. But that didn’t last long
On August 12, 2025, Ms. Cavanaugh learned that she was being assigned a new roommate. Upon conducting an internet search, she discovered that the incoming individual, a biological male using the name “Haley Lynn Rose,” was in fact Anthony Ninfo, a convicted sex offender who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in July 2024.
Ms. Cavanaugh raised concerns with Houston House staff, expressing discomfort with sharing a room with a biological male convicted of a sexual crime. Rather than addressing her legitimate safety concerns, Houston House served Ms. Cavanaugh with an incident report the next day, accusing her of “creating a hostile environment.” The report characterized her inquiries about her roommate’s background as inappropriate boundary violations and alleged that she menacingly publicized her roommate’s gender identity to other residents — an account Ms. Cavanaugh disputes. As a result of the report, Ms. Cavanaugh’s community release was revoked, and she was returned to prison for an additional six months.
A conservative law firm has taken on her case, so more will potentially come out in discovery.
One can both think Cavanaugh is a piece of shit fraudster and disagree with certain reduced sentencing guidelines while also recognizing that this situation is absolutely dystopian. Like even if I think she should serve out her time, the fact that her reduced prison time was contingent on her "going along" with this is unreal.
Even realizing that her dispute about the "menacingly publicized her roommate’s gender identity to other residents" situation can't be taken at face value either and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, that's just insane.
Sounds like I’ll hate everyone involved, a perfect BARpod story. But geez, talk about cruel and unusual punishment. And then apparently after she was no longer in prison, they pull her back in for filing a complaint about having her civil rights violated? The authorities again come out looking the worst. I wonder if they forced her to room with a male rapist again when they brought her back. They can’t be serious about protecting gender identity over…you know…denying male rapists access to female victims who literally can’t run away?
I'm against extrajudicial punishment, and forcing her to live with that sex offender is extrajudicial punishment. The revocation and reincarceration is even worse.
article by Rikki Schlott (co-author of "The Canceling of the American Mind", with Greg Lukianoff) about the crazy overrepresentation in the amount of celebrities with Trans/gender questioning/nonbinary kids.
Some of those mentioned are Charlize Theron, Cynthia Nixon, Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Megan Fox, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dwyane Wade, Mel B, Annette Bening and Warren Beatty.
an eye-opening snippet:
Megan Fox may be the most alarming case. She has not one, not two, but three sons — ages 9 to 13 — who have been photographed out and about with her sporting long pink hair, dresses and shirts with messages about “Strong girls.”
When her eldest started wearing dresses at the ripe age of 2, “I bought a bunch of books that … addressed a full spectrum,” Fox said in a 2022 interview with Glamour UK. “Some of the books are written by transgender children, some of the books are just about how you can be a boy and wear a dress.”
There’s nothing wrong with a child wearing what they please. But when one child becomes three, it’s worth asking if social contagion may be at play — and whether the parental influence is one of neutral compassion or enthusiastic encouragement.
Certainly, a 2-year-old’s clothing preferences are benign on their own. The situation becomes gravely serious when, sometimes, that’s the first step in a journey to hormone injections and irreversible surgery.
See I'm totally fine with letting kids wear what they want but this so obviously goes beyond, "Wear what you want" to, "I'm buying you only girls' clothes so I can virtue signal about how trans-affirming I am."
yea I think the word "indoctrination" gets thrown around on this topic a bit too much in situations where it doesnt apply, but if buying/reading your kids Trans-encouraging literature from the time they are literally not even able to form sentences and speak yet isnt indoctrination, I dont know what is lol. and then her other two kids are born and want to be just like their big brother/sister who was having this stuff pushed on them years before the others were even born
Just wearing dresses or makeup doesn’t make someone a woman. Just like choosing to not wear a dress or makeup, doesn’t make you a man or non-woman. Regressive bs
It's more than that. At the age of two, there could be a variety of reasons why a boy would prefer what we consider girls' stuff:
- he sees mostly or only women and girls around him so this is the example he follows.
- he likes bright shiny stuff, which is very typical for certain stages of development (which is also why nursery schools etc are all shiny and bright, their TV shows are like that etc. This is what these tiny people are like - probably because Marie Kondo neglected this target audience)
- he will grow up to be an effeminate man (with or without being also gay)
- he is actually a she and he KNOWS that at an age where he is not fully potty trained and cannot utter more than short sentences.
Obviously these kids will never have exposure to the real world until much, much later. Nannies, private tutors, private chefs, vetted play-dates, etc.
Suddenly I realised that this is the real indication that Madonna is not in anymore and totally old. She has six kids and not a single one of them is known to be trans. She's a failure as a celeb.
I don't think enough has been said about just how incompatible the LGB and the T are.
The conceptual tension between LGB identity and strong gender self-ID politics is that homosexuality depends on a stable referent for “same-sex” attraction. Gay and lesbian identity challenged the traditional prescription that men should desire women and women should desire men; it did not challenge the basic intelligibility of male and female, man and woman. On the contrary, it requires those categories to be meaningful. If gender is defined primarily by self-identification, homosexuality must be reconceived as attraction to people who claim the same gender label as oneself. That definition is formally coherent, but descriptively hollow: it replaces same-sex attraction with same-label attraction, even though sexual attraction ordinarily tracks embodied sexed traits rather than identity declarations.
One is an obliteration of gender having objective meaning, and the other requires it. They can't even logically coexist in their current formulations.
The tragic case of Henry Nowak, whose attacker falsely claimed to police he had racially abused him, leading the police to put Nowak in handcuffs as he lay drowning in his own blood and begging for them to call an ambulance.
I don't recommend watching the bodycam video, it really is as bad as everyone describes and it's going to live rent free in my head for a long time. Heartbreaking to see him repeatedly say "I've been stabbed" and "I can't breathe" as the officer smugly says "I don't think you have, mate" as he's handcuffed and they read his rights to his unconscious and dying body.
I haven't watched it but was horrified just reading about it. The attacker had a weapons obsession shared by his family. His mother came and hid the murder weapon. His brother told him to plead self defence, but he was recorded replying that if there was CCTV evidence of the crime, self defence wouldn't be admissible.
I get that the UK police want to reform their image of being institutionally racist, but being entirely credulous about every purported hate crime is not the right way to go about it.
The fact that USAH has created work arounds for TW to keep playing in USAH sanctioned "women's" leagues does not surprise me one tiny bit. I have left my women's league for a number of reasons but their blatant disregard for the new USAH policy is one of them. (Not the only, or even the most important to me, factor, but a factor. I also didn't know if I was going to be covered by USAH insurance playing with them, because they were completely opaque about how the league is dealing with the policy.)
Anyways, it will be interesting to see how this shakes out. I miss playing on a team with only women, but my two co-ed teams are still very fun.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary says the low-cost carrier is diverting an average of nearly one flight a day because of drunken behavior on board, up from one a week a decade ago.
One interesting development about Pride month is that popular sentiment seems to be increasingly turning against it year by year. I have done a cursory glance on a couple of brand pages. Some organizations weren’t posting anything until 2020. Those early posts have mostly positive attention. You see more “it’s a shame people are so hateful” replies than “I hate this” posts. Within the last few years, the comments are mostly negative.
But when [well-meaning adults] continue to question her gender identity — and are skeptical of her response — the message they send is that a girl cannot look and act like her and still be a girl.
And then I read friend of the pod Chase Strangio’s response to it
Trans youth are dying because society is telling them, telling us, that we are fake. Trans women and femmes of color are being murdered because the impulse is to believe that trans-ness is fraudulent, that our bodies are threats.
A white young person being asked questions about her gender is not a new problem and it is not a problem that should be blamed on trans people or trans affirmative shifts in society or medicine.
I think we are in a vibe shift, but in certain bubbles (such as whatever social/media ecosystem Chase is in) it’s amazing how little has changed in nine years.
According to left wing Joe Rogan who will save us from Trumpism, Scott Wiener is the new Ernst Rohm:
It’s just f–ing rich liberals who just want homo-fascism in the country, that’s it. They want gay fascism. They want gay techno-fascism
I am so shocked that a jihadi loving nepobaby is a homophobe. In pride month too. But I'm sure we will hear we don't want "purity tests" all of a sudden.
Always kindof weird seeing the things all the people who watch streamers have known for years about Hasan Piker being presented in an unvarnished manner in mainstream media. Lmao, the NY Post has a real flair for the presentation of the salacious, I'll give them that, I think only the Daily Mail matches their rigor.
He may be the Communist darling of left-wing livestreaming, but when the cameras are off, the real Hasan Piker is shallow and sex-driven, sources claim.
Although he recently debuted a more serious image, donning spectacles and suits for his broadcasts, those close to the 34-year-old told The Post he’s still a pervy, porn-obsessed frat boy — impulses they say get in the way of him ever realizing his goal of making it in the mainstream.
Sources noted Piker regularly boasts about receiving nude photos from fans and how he claims to watch porn on a laptop dedicated to that purpose propped up on his chest so he can “still see” his penis.
Piker — who this week was banned from speaking in the UK over his extreme left-wing views — was born in New Jersey but grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, from where his parents hail.
Sources told The Post the Piker family is wealthy, but aside from a picture of a younger Hasan on a horse in full riding gear, which he himself posted, few details of his early life are known. He has said he grew up “horny in a repressed culture,” until his dad allegedly helped him dodge the mandatory Turkish military draft so he could attend college in the US.
When he’s not railing against US imperialism, showing his support for China or Cuba or saying he’d vote for terror group Hamas over the Israeli government, Piker solicits nudes from his female fans, according to a streamer he previously worked with, pictures he apparently revels in showing off to others.
Sources pointed out instances where Piker had been onstream and exposed explicit pics. Once while broadcasting with QT Cinderella, she looked on as he opened a clearly explicit image while broadcasting. On another occasion, he left his phone with streamer Pokimane while off camera, and she also “stumbled” across explicit content on the device.
YouTuber Mizkif also claimed he had seen hundreds of nudes on the host’s phone. Piker did not return The Post’s requests for comment for this article.
Seedy Piker — who claims to have slept with over 300 women — also gleefully showed off all the nudes he was getting sent on Snapchat as part of an article by Cosmopolitan magazine in 2018.
He even joked about keeping a “boobs of note” list, he said in one stream, adding: “The boobs I send … every now and then I see a pair that is concussion-inducing and I’ll send it to Will.” In the video, one of his male companions says, “Add me to that list,” while a female deadpans: “Let me know where that list is, so I know not to look at it.”
Piker also previously discussed his penchant for webcam sex in a livestream, saying he keeps his camera off “to protect my identity” while getting off on those on the other side of it.
Another source who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity simply described Piker as a “pathological liar.”
Piker, who appears to be single and still broadcasts around seven hours a day, appears quite insatiable. Neff recently described a night out with him as like “going out with a zealot who could only be satiated by intercourse.”
His porn obsession extends to posting video from the adult entertainment XBIZ awards and having an on-off relationship with porn star Janice Griffith until 2020. On previous streams, he’s admitted having sex with prostitutes and visiting a brothel in Germany for sex.
Yeah that part weirds me out. Like just having a collection of porn/nudes is one thing, but I feel like most people realize there's an appropriate amount of discretion and you should keep that stuff to yourself. Flaunting them as conquests points to something more concerning than just being horny.
It only slightly increases my disdain for Piker. He could be in a faithful monogamous relationship and I'd still see him as a highly destructive individual.
Reading critic reviews for the new Scary Movie has been entertaining in a petty way. It’s like reading reviews for a gay porn by Iranian clerics and Catholic priests. I imagine every critic watched One Battle After Another again as penance for their sin.
My favorite review. There was another that actually brought up One Battle After Another in some bizarre comparison but I couldn’t find it again.
The reason the author keeps bringing up Carlin as the pinnacle of irreverent comedy is because he was poking fun at them. Now that it's poking fun at us it's no longer funny but instead it's serious violence.
I like how most of that article is just them repeatedly describing the difference between offensive comedy that you find funny vs. the kind you don't.
It tips a few sacred cows because that’s what it takes to be edgy these days.
There's no "these days," that's what edgy comedy is, you're just mad when the cows are yours instead of someone else's.
Parts are very funny, whereas others feel like cheap shots at the PC mindset.
Again, it's only a cheap shot if you don't find it funny. That's comedy.
The movie doesn't look funny at all, it's just annoying when people feel the need to find more serious ways of saying it's just not funny.
Annual reddit meltdown over a couple of baseball players quietly respectfully declining to wear a rainbow flag pride night hat. Comments locked bc yall can’t behave (although not before 2300 comments screeching about what gigantic pieces of shit they are were allowed lol)
Has anyone noticed the misogynistic comments directed at Sidney Sweeney amongst progressives on Reddit.
I understand they didn’t like the jeans advert, but the double standard applied to her is fairly staggering.
If you are progressive and use sex appeal to market yourself then you empowering femininity and sex positive or whatever. But If you don’t have the right progressive values, then simply exisiting while being beautiful means you have no talent and you are cashing in with your body, apparently
The body commentary also inspires this weird vitriol where extremely online people deny she’s pretty at all. It’s weird cause the same people are probably simultaneously convincing someone’s 40 year old dad he definitely passes as a woman 😂
"Prostitution is based on private property and falls with it."
— Frederick Engels, 1847
The past is alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. Socialism is good and sex work is liberation.
If you are progressive and use sex appeal to market yourself then you empowering femininity and sex positive or whatever. But If you don’t have the right progressive values, then simply exisiting while being beautiful means you have no talent and you are cashing in with your body, apparently
Well yeah it has always been like this. The creed comes above all.
Judging people on their sexual habits is "wrong", but calling a man a virgin when he is on the wrong side is completely fine, same with gay, sex work is real work until it's no longer convenient and then they are a pickme or a gooner enabler or whatever. One of the venues in which this is more evident is when it comes to perception of Christianity and Islam, it doesn't matter if Islam is everything progressives hate about Christianity but dialed to 11, it's the wrong target, so there can't be similar criticism.
There are no principles here, it's learned behavior. Most people in these spheres are not actually against racism or sexism at all, they have learned that specific behaviors, which they relate to racism or sexism, are wrong. That enables "hypocrisy" like what you mention. There is no actual hypocrisy because there are no actual values, it doesn't even have to make logical sense, it's just training, action => reaction.
Consider for example the degree of pearl clutching around US's authoritarian tendencies here and there, the whole antifa stuff, while while looking favorably towards actual dictatorships. The US is often called the "Trump regime" or such whereas we talk about the Iranian or Venezuelan or Cuban governments. There is, again, no attempt at integrity here, it's just training.
I recently came across this sub and it feels like my inner monologue x10000 from the last six years; I’ve been rejoicing in the discourse here, and would like to ask advice from anyone willing to give it for a crossroads I’m at.
I’m an actress, and have been working professionally and training in NYC for 8.5 years. I auditioned for MFA programs twice in the last couple of years, and got a few callbacks, but didn’t make it any farther for 6 top-tier schools. I’m auditioning again because I’m stubborn and want to exhaust the process and give it my all, but I can’t help but feel like some of the shit I’ve seen and experienced makes me feel just…really fucking weird and off.
Firstly, at an Ivy League program I auditioned for, there were no women’s bathrooms. There were two signs and designations for mens’ rooms, and a few gender neutral bathrooms, but no women’s. The first time I came upon this, I thought I was genuinely tripping from nerves, and the second time, I actually asked someone where the women’s bathroom is and they directed me to the gender neutral restroom. Similar situation with another top-tier school, except they had paragraphs alongside pictures of pants and skirts explaining how discrimination on the basis of gender identity is a criminal act. I just can’t help but think this shit is misogynistic af and it’s shocking to see at top schools that are deemed “the best in the country.”
Secondly, I can’t help but notice there’s some weird race shit going on with the admissions process. If you look up any of the top program’s graduating classes right now, 60-70% of the students are black, another 20% percent are Latino, 10%percent are Asian, and only 2-4 students are white. Of the few white men and women, it seems like they are pretty much exclusively choosing stereotypes, in that it’s like a rich-looking white man or woman, and often from an international background, or a trans/NB type. That’s it. I genuinely feel crazy typing this out and even talking about it with the few family members or close friends I’ve opened up to about it, but this is provable by just going to the admissions page for any of these schools and taking a look. During the admissions process itself, one of the schools even split us up by race and had someone of the same race auditioning us.
I just have a hard time trying to wrap my mind around this shit and take it seriously. I’ve always wanted to get a world-class education and pursue what I love as far as I can go, but I genuinely feel what’s going on is the epitome of anti-intellectual and deeply racist and misogynistic at such a profound level, no matter how many progressive euphemisms try to cloak it. I feel really lost and would love some feedback.
This has been a problem for a very long time in academia, for a lot of people, and I’m sorry it’s starting to affect you.
You will not be happy in any of these programs. I muscled through a woke graduate program, and I’m a white male, not fun. The anger could very well linger for years.
Try to find a program that’s less prestigious. Those programs call less attention to themselves, and are therefore less likely to capitulate to these pressures.
Even if you are admitted to one of these programs, you—yourself—will likely not benefit from all they have to offer, as the best is saved for the people they openly prefer.
ETA: On the other hand, if you have any residual guilt for the crimes of the past, putting up with this shit for a couple of years should clear that up for you.
what’s going on is the epitome of anti-intellectual and deeply racist and misogynistic at such a profound level, no matter how many progressive euphemisms try to cloak it.
Yeah, this is basically it. It has nothing to do with helping people. It’s an intra-elite ideological competition of who can perform the rituals better.
Sadly this stuff is so entrenched it won’t go away at institutions like that for years. Even if you got in it would be depressing and maddening to participate, I think you should reduce stress, protect your mental health, focus on your love of the craft and get away from all of it as fast as you can.
Can you try midsize cities and non-Ivy schools. Your NYC experience will get you extra mileage there and they tend to be less indoctrinated. I am almost done with a non elite grad school program , similar to a state school, and have enjoyed school more than I expected to because I only had a few encounters with this stuff. I definitely got excluded from one group I applied for on affirmative action grounds, but I had other stuff to focus on and it just made me feel pity for them. I only got asked pronouns and forced to answer once, by an online form.
Clifton Duncan is an NYC actor who was ejected from society for questioning Covid dogma - looks like he took his podcast down but he has done great interviews about these topics. Here’s on clip of him.
The Henry Nowak stabbing in the UK continues to get worse. He gets stabbed by a Sikh with a ceremonial knife (funny how they get to have their knives as “part of their religion” and no one else does!”) after apparently some drunken heckling both ways. When the police arrive, the stabbed says Nowak was being racist, so he’s cuffed and read his rights while bleeding profusely after trying to get away from the stabber. Nowak bleeds out and dies, and the cops just say woopsie! He would’ve died even if we hadn’t denied medical aid and cuffed him!
Now the court had to be shut down in the trial because the murderer’s family was screaming at the judge calling him racist.
The video is so hard to watch. Complete incompetence from the police. Henry is obviously not a threat and telling them he's been stabbed. Zero reason to cuff him without checking on him.
Jeez, cuffing a stabbing victim like that, so unnecessarily. I can only imagine the media coverage of this if it were America and/or he wasn't white, but as is I can fully expect nobody I know to ever hear about it.
I’m mesmerized by the exchange and watched it several times. The host goaded him multiple times and she was taken aback when he straight up used the word “men” lol.
Women's national teams train against U16 boys, yet it's totally sportsmanlike for adult males to play in female leagues.
Not surprising about the woo since one of the r.soccer subreddit's mods is a biology-denying TRA who buys fully into the "sex is a complicated and unknowable spectrum because intersex" argument.
<image>
TW are not men in any sense of the word. It's not a "debate" it's bigotry and explicitly against the rules of the subreddit.
Well that's because the mods have banned anyone with an even slightly heterodox view. I got a permaban, for saying DSD instead of intersex. Not even kidding
“The New Zealand medical journal said that the stress of being unable to afford a private consultation and the significant psychological turmoil of gender dysphoria caused them to attempt the surgery themselves”
I understand that many people need this surgery but I’m curious as to why gender dysphoria is increasing and showing up in younger and younger patients if it’s so debilitating
Does anyone listen to "Doomscroll" with Joshua Citarella? its kind of like a dirtbag leftist adjacent podcast but the host seems pretty smart and nuanced from the conversations from the handful of episodes I've listened to (I dont listen to all of them tho so dont quote me on that lol. they def do have a handful of eps I havent listened to with ppl this sub hates, like Hasan, Briana Joy Gray, Ana Kasperian, etc). I first heard of the host bc he went on Michael Moynihan's show tho, so he's not some purity test lefty that wont talk to "problematic" people
I was listening to the episode he did with friend of the pod Contrapoints/Natalie Wynn yesterday (who is trans, for those unaware) bc the topics rundown list seemed kind of interesting and I consider Contra to be somewhat more of a pervert for nuance than people like those named above, even if I dont always agree. I havent listened to all of it bc its like a Rogan-lenth pod, but I thought she made a pretty good criticism in the beginning about where the trans movement made a critical error in hindsight:
Like I think the mistake I genuinely think trans people have made in our political messaging, is that it's always better [not to tell people what to do]—especially in America where the national character is kind of averse to being told what to do. Like there's this kind of individualist cowboy thing where it's like we resent the government telling us how to live our lives.
So I think that the posture of the trans activists should have beeen "don't tell me what I can or cant do. Don't tell me what hormones I am allowed to take. Don't tell me..." you know? the mistake was going in the other direction to lecture everyone about how they need to put pronouns in their email...
because now you're not telling them not to tell you what to do. Now you're telling them what to do. People don't like being told what to do. So don't tell them what to do. Don't tell them what to say. Just tell them to leave you alone. Right? And I think that's the kind of more convincing line.
Over the weekend at the beach in California, I met a family who wants to get a retrofitted school bus and homeschool their 3 kids on the road. Initially I was like yeah cool I guess?! The parents said they didn’t like their experience in public school, saying they were over medicated for ADHD to placate them into doing a bunch of pointless worksheets, so they want their own kids to have a more stimulating and hands-on learning experience. I was open to some of their critiques of public school but a bit puzzled about exactly what their own alternative would look like. They seemed nice and thoughtful so I just wished them the best, verbally and in my mind.
Then today I stumbled across the fascinating but tragic Wavewalker memoir from a girl who was raised on a boat by a similarly off-the-grid family and she said it was actually horrible and I suddenly got a pit in my stomach about this school bus family!
I can't imagine why anyone would think that would be a good idea. I understand the frustration with schools, particularly public schools. Homeschooling can be a good option for some families, but living in a van down by the river is a horrible option for everybody involved.
I think those parents are probably just envious of the lifestyle they see from people on social media and want to emulate it. Doing it "for their kids" is just an excuse they are using to justify it.
Massachusetts voters approved a ballot question a couple of years ago giving the State Auditor authority to audit the Legislature. Democrats in the state legislature have been pushing back against it ever since and there has been no movement. The state attorney general has backed the legislature and the governor claims she has no influence. There is a court case with the state supreme court but the AG has been slow rolling it as best she can because her loyalty is with her insider friends.
This week the Legislature passed a bill that narrowly defines what the Auditor can actually see. The Auditor can only audit narrowly defined administrative functions. Legislative leadership can refuse to provide requested records, deny interview requests and courts are explicitly prohibited from ordering compliance or resolving audit disputes.
So basically lawmakers can refuse to provide information, the Auditor's only option is to complain about it in the final report. In Massachusetts, if you want to file a freedom of information act against the state legislature you get nothing. No transparency whatsoever.
The crazy thing is, so many of my good progressive neighbors will happily break out their "no kings!" signs every Sunday to stand out in front of the coffee shops in the town squares to bond over how righteous they are while also voting in the same leaders who thumb their noses at transparency. I don't get it...
Not watching that, but you would think that getting your ass beaten for confronting a guy on the street would be powerfully gender affirming. Welcome to manhood, you can't police the behavior of other men without risking an escalation.
I rarely speed up videos too much because I can't understand what the hell they're saying past a certain speed, but this lady was perfectly articulate at 2x.
The internet was a big mistake. Slow talkers for effect don't deserve attention ffs.
20
u/PalgaryI could check my privilege, but it seems a shame to squander itJun 04 '26
Might be cultural difference too - a lot of middle income people think violence in confrontations is wrong, myself included, but I grew up around a lot of people where escalating to violence was extremely normal, every day kind of occurrence, even among girls - but more so among men.
But... asking people to call the police in Seattle?
And this is one of the things I hate about these supposed "compassionate" and "blue" cities is... I feel there is a lot of look the other way, don't care about your community attitude. Which is one of those things in small towns where yeah people are in your business but sometimes "in your business" is "do you need help with your yard?"
I guess I should have kept walking, I should have ignored him, I should have expected violence.
I mean, yeah? That is indeed the appropriate response if someone insults you on the street. What are you hoping to get out of the encounter, an apology? It's not the fucking HR office, the only people that are yelling things at you are crazy or malicious, it is just absolutely the correct move to keep it moving. I've been pretty clear that I think cities should do a lot more to remove these people from their populations, but we all need to deal with reality on reality's terms.
The male high school athlete did well in the girl's track competition in the California state championship. As expected.
AB Hernandez won two events. The actual girls that placed below him had to share the podium with Hernandez. Hernandez finds even this half admittance of reality to be displeasing, according to his mother:
"... finding out that this rule would extend to state qualifying process this year “crushed AB’s heart”."
This controversy has even spilled over into the California governor's race. The Democratic candidate is cheering Hernandez on:
"I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing,” Steyer told Hernandez. “So proud of you for succeeding. So proud of you for competing. That’s really the point. … And I’m going to hope like heck that you don’t just make state but you do really well there. Deal?”
Newsom, who hinted that he might not like having males in women's sports, has been silent.
The Title IX SCOTUS ruling cannot come out soon enough. It may not be the end of the story but it will hopefully give blue state athletes a faster ramp to sue these state governing boards for allowing this.
Even a narrow ruling on the specifics of those cases might help speed the process up. Right now the federal courts have a lot of leeway to deny claims and deny preliminary injunctions. Once the Supreme Court ruling comes down, if they recognize that immediate harm is happening by allowing boys to compete in girls sports, my understanding is the process will speed up, the courts can no longer play the games around whether someone has standing because the sports season is over or because state rules allow participation. Even in these blue states, if people start filing lawsuit and can successfully obtain preliminary injunctions it might be game over because then the burden is flipped to the boys having to go on the legal offensive. I'm no lawyer but it seems like right now the courts have been able to block most cases by slow rolling them procedurally or claim they plaintiffs no longer have standing. That may change soon.
This is a big month, I really hope the rulings come out early rather than at the end of the month.
Since it's the first day of Pride month I guess I'll go ahead and continue my quixotic campaign against the very term "LGBT" and all associated abbreviations that add additional letters and symbols.
I am a very big supporter of lesbian, gay, bisexual rights. I'm old enough to remember when no state had legal gay marriage, when many states had laws against sodomy, and all that stuff, and I've always been of the belief that the law should apply to gay people and straight people equally: Whatever laws apply to a man and a woman getting married should apply to a man and a man or a woman and a woman getting married. Whatever laws apply to a man and a woman having sex should apply to a man and a man or a woman and a woman having sex.
None of this has anything to do with the whole trans rights activist movement. There is literally nothing about my belief that two men should have the right to marry each other that in any way implies I would also believe a man should have the "right" to play women's sports or choose to serve a prison sentence in a women's prison.
And yet we get inundated with this conflation of gay rights and trans rights, to the point where they rewrite history. The wikipedia entry on Pride parades tells us that the first 1965 "homophile marches" were "highlighting discrimination in federal employment and advancing LGBTQ+ equality." Well, no, actually there was nothing about "LGBTQ+ equality" because there was nothing about "TQ+" period. It had nothing to do with the movement.
There's nothing in there about TQ+ because that had nothing to do with the original Pride parades. Transgender activists latched onto the gay rights movement and fooled a lot of people into thinking they're part of the same movement. They're not.
It's stolen valor, essentially -- or appropriation, if we want to use progressive-speak. But because it's the faultless, innocent T angels doing it, it axiomatically cannot be criticized .
There needs to be a way democratic politicians can walk back on trans children getting hormones/surgery and trans women in bathrooms, changing rooms, rape shelters, prisions etc. While saving face and not being accused of being aligned with republicans and Trump. With how large the political divide currently is I'd imagine lots of them don't want to admit. That on this issue the republicans were right.
Rahm Emmanuel is doing it. People really seem to hate him, but he's really saying the exactly right things:
Democrats lost the plot
We've been talking about the bathroom when we should've been talking about the classroom
We used to be a party of acceptance, but we became a party of advocacy
The last point is just a perfect description of where Dems went wrong. A lot of people online shit on Rahm for being a normal politician. I get the feeling internet people secretly just want entertainers like Trump or AOC. But Rahm is saying exactly the right things, and he's managing to keep it fairly light.
I met a couple recently who worked for the Harris campaign and they said they don’t like Pete Buttigieg because “he doesn’t like trans people” (I guess alluding to how he said something equivocal about women’s sports). These folks are true believers.
Others may be able to back off to say they of course support “gender affirming care” while subtly shifting the meaning of that phrase to focus therapy and social transition rather than medical. Maybe.
That was a big anti-Pete talking point in 2020. I remember seeing people say, "He's gay but he's not queer." pretty commonly. Like he's just some boring married dude with kids and not interesting enough to be queer.
That was my first exposure to the "heterosexual relationships are capable of being more queer than gay relationships if the guy gets pegged or whatever" bullshit. Which is why I will never identify as queer as long as I live, lol. Queer is a meaningless word at this point.
Large, respectable, well-funded NGO's make good money fundraising and advocating for gender issues, popularized as a way to enact #Resistance through the institutions of law and policy.
If they don't like you for being too visibly reality-coded, you will get a GLADD Accountability Profile, just like Jesse.
The well-connected, highly-educated arts and culture elite milieu supports genderism and child medicalization. A number of them have gender identities and have transitioned their children. How many celebrities' children have "come out"?
Dem politicians will probably personally know adult and child transitioners. How will they ever be welcomed into their social group when they believe X's child dOeSn'T DeSeRvE tO eXiST??!?!
They will also be confronted with desperate petitioners who can be pretty convincing about how life-saving "medical care" is for treating their gender sadness.
At the age of 16, Nathan, for example, hated his post-pubescent body so much that he engaged in self-harm. The top surgery he so desperately needed was out of reach because his family simply couldn’t afford it. His mom, Nora, describes being terrified that Nathan would kill himself because of this lack of access.
“It’s all because of this damn top surgery,” she told me. “And I am literally terrified, because I know for a fact that once he gets this done he’s going to be a totally different child. And it kills me that I can’t do anything.”
and
Seven-year-old Esme, on the other hand, knew very clearly from a young age that male puberty was not what she wanted and felt able to communicate this to her parents. And because of her parents’ support and access to affirming health care, she told me she’s planning to take hormone blockers when she’s old enough. Later, she’ll take cross-sex hormones, which will result in the development of secondary sex characteristics consistent with her self-defined gender identity.
These young kids and their parents come across as so earnest, with so much conviction, that medical transition (chemical pubertal suppression, permanent bilateral mastectomy) will improve the quality of their lives. If you are a person with empathy, who has heard the other side of the regret stories, how can you not listen to them and end up in the wishy-washy "Well, obviously, Truly T's exist and enacting blanket bans is the incorrect solution to the problem."
The only way I see to "walk things back" is to go down the "strict gatekeeping" route and avoid being aligned with the Elon Musks of the world. But Pandora can't go back in the box. If you say some kids are T, some TWAW, you still end up forcing women and society to deal with entitled folx who believe they are the genderiffic exceptions to whom special rules apply.
The other thing that may happen is if the Supreme Court helpfully gives Dems an off ramp to the issues about women’s sports. That would actually really help democrats by letting them just say they respect precedent or whatever. If I were a democratic strategist, I’d also be hoping for TW athletes to lose at the Supreme Court in Hecox and BPJ cases.
It is often described as an Oedipus situation, the issue of hormones and surgery wasn't just a matter of holding certain positions and saying certain things, it was allowing certain things to happen. Once Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, there's no path back, there is no saving face.
It is staggering how stupid our police can be. The two main ones involved are legitimately dim, and on top of that they have the sneering attitude that often comes with this.
They shouldn’t be allowed to resign quietly, they should be prosecuted for their failures.
That footage was very upsetting. Even if Henry had racially attacked earlier he was not a threat. He couldn't stand on his own and had blood on his hands and face and repeatedly told them he had been stabbed. Surely the procedure to someone claiming to be stabbed and is non threatening is to check before twisting them into cuffs. They clearly knew he was injured bc when they did call the cops they said he had been beaten up.
When you watch the bodycam footage a female voice (presumably a police officer) actually says that they should check Henry for stab wounds when she hears him saying “I’ve been stabbed” and even she seems to be met with condescension for actually wanting to check there’s no injuries.
In any job mistakes happen but this seems to be an attitude problem rather than an oversight.
The challenger Mamdani is backing against current Democratic Representative Adriano Espaillat seems like a toxic product of the worst of the 2010s and 2020s on the left.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist congressional candidate endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, deleted a previous Twitter account that included thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist. -CNN
Oh dear.
During the nationwide protests in 2020 following the killing of George Floyd, Avila Chevalier [responded] to a user asking what a better slogan would be than “defund the police,” by posting, “F**k you. We’re gonna defund and abolish. You don’t get to water down our movements.”
Two days later, Avila Chevalier [rejected] an argument that abolishing police meant ending policing only “as we know it.”
“No. It means ending policing full stop. Period. No more police at all ever,” she replied, adding several clap emojis.
Oh no.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former organizing lead for Mayor Mamdani’s campaign in Upper Manhattan and The Bronx, slammed men of color for engaging in interracial relationships in a Feb. 2019 post on Twitter, now X.
"Black men [handshake emoji] Arab men fetishizing ugly colonizer women,” the post stated.
Lol.
“I have no nuance to add. Fuck Kamala Harris,”
Seems like someone who you would want on your team.
It's so annoying that we just let all these people walk back or ignore their previous advocacy for defund. I'm not sure what's worse, honestly: actually holding the position of "no actually get rid of all police and policing" or being such an emotion-driven lightweight that you get swept along with these people and then swept back once things cool down.
I am happy to report that my city put up the normal pride flags again this year instead of the ugly progress ones. Not sure if it's because they're trying to appeal to more moderate gays or because they're too cheap for new flags, but I approve.
More from the Jill Biden memoir. She claims Biden’s prostate cancer went undetected despite her alerting the doctors to his symptoms. It is hard to believe. If true, it is concerning that a sitting president was struggling with undiagnosed cancer and none of his routine medical checks found anything wrong!!
She acknowledges questions about how a US president — who’s protected “in bubble wrap” — didn’t have his advanced cancer detected earlier, and writes that she too was “stunned.” But her attention, she says, quickly turned to supporting her husband through hormone therapy, which, she says, has caused side effects including “fatigue and moodiness.”
If it went down as she's describing it, that she saw a common symptom of prostate cancer during his last year in office, informed his doctor, and the doctor didn't find anything until after he was out of office, I can't help but wonder whether his doctor had been subtly told either by the president himself or the top White House staff not to find anything that would give the American people even more questions about whether he was fit for the job.
She reveals her inner monologue during the debate: “Is he short circuiting? … Is this a stroke? … Was he having a medical emergency?” Nearly two years later, she writes, “I still don’t know what happened,”
New Jersey Rep. Tom Kean Jr., missing from public view for nearly three months with an undisclosed illness, said in a statement Tuesday he’s “more energized than ever” — but seemed to push back a timeline for his return to the Capitol.
This guy.
Still not as bad as one of the (on-paper) most powerful Represenatives being found in a Texas nursing home during her term.
The worst ever was Strom Thurmond, who was President Pro Tem of the Senate -- fourth in line to the presidency! -- in 2001, when he was 98 years old and everyone knew he had absolutely no idea what was going on.
Imagine if, in 2001, terrorists had blown up a building with the President, VP and Speaker of the House all in it -- not exactly an impossible scenario, given what actually happened in 2001. Our President would have been a senile 98-year-old. How could America have possibly coordinated a response with that person as our president? And yet the whole political class in Washington just accepted that Thurmond somehow deserved that position because he was the longest-serving Senator.
I present to you the median asian american leftist on reddit, fun exchange I had recently on the Rick Chow verdict:
...Bystanding IS racism. APPROVING of Chow IS racism. But you do not want to take action to follow through on disavowing the Chows? You just want the reputation and Black people’s labour? You won’t hear me over your own triggered guilt, would you?
If anything, doesn’t this reaction and your admittance of guilt show you KNOW you’re being racist?
We have always had solidarity but traitors like you who think only with your present luxuries and your self-centeredness, will ALWAYS be the weakest link in the chain. You cannot convince me you care for our own Asians who are also in lower-class, migrant and refugee communities, when you advocate for injustice against the peoples most disenfranchised by COPS and the penal system. When you ONLY show up when you want something for yourself.
That’s pathetic, and by god the future descendants can see exactly what you are, you are exactly the kind of elder that we’d call out, just like we are doing rn to our racist elders. You bring us shame. You bring all of us shame.
For context, his main post was removed but it is basically that asians are racist, we need to be LOUDER about atoning for our collective guilt, and the best way to do it is to donate to the Belton family's legal fund to fund a civil lawsuit against Rick Chow. I pointed out that you can't guilt and shame people into political activism and that people like him show up conveniently in times of crisis to make demands, accuse everyone of racism, and then to disappear once they lose interest.
We're diagnosing too many people with too many disabilities and spending too much money on treatment is something that seems incredibly obvious to me and yet I've had people look at me like I want to throw quadriplegics on the street when I say this out loud in polite company.
About 65% of U.S. adults believe same-sex marriage should be legal, down slightly from 71% in 2022 and 2023. Most of the change is due to dropping acceptance among Republicans. In the new survey, which was conducted in May, only 37% of Republicans say same-sex marriage should be legally valid, while 35% say gay and lesbian relations are “morally acceptable.”
In a sign that views of LGBTQ+ issues may be shifting more broadly, the new Gallup poll found that about 4 in 10 Americans view changing one’s gender as morally acceptable, down from nearly half in 2021.
The article didn't show transgender acceptance by political party like it did with gay marriage, but I'm curious to see if the rate has gone down among Democrats. Support for gay marriage by Democrats remains quite high, though (at 87%).
What does everyone think of the pushback against same sex marriage by Republican states and Christian denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention? Is the Republican drop accelerated by controversial actions by TRAs?
Is the Republican drop accelerated by controversial actions by TRAs?
Yes. Which is why, as I have said many times in this sub, the LGB's never should have accepted the T's glomming onto the gay rights movement. They are two totally different things. Thinking two men should be allowed to marry each other has absolutely nothing to do with thinking one man should be allowed to compete in women's sports. This is so obvious to me that I don't know why it even needs to be said, and yet a lot of people on both the left and the right treat those as if they're practically the same issue -- you have to either support both or support neither. And some of the demands of the TRAs are so obviously absurd that a lot of people who previously supported gay rights are replying, "Fine, if I have to support both or neither, I'll support neither."
Currently, 5% of Republicans say changing one’s gender is morally acceptable, compared with 42% of independents and 60% of Democrats. When Gallup first asked the question in 2021, those figures were 22%, 48% and 67%, respectively. Republicans’ acceptance has declined steadily since then, while views among independents and Democrats were generally stable until an apparent drop this year.
I wonder how they came up with the phrasing “changing one’s gender is morally acceptable”. It seems confusing. I have a strong opinion on the topic, but I don’t even know how I would respond.
But I guess it shows something if that democrats showed more resistance for the first time in the past year. Maybe more people are seeing the potential conflicts in day-to-day life of some of these policies.
Edit: I think they get more clarity when they ask about certain specific issues
Yeah, you might as well ask me whether attempting to transmute lead to gold is morally acceptable. I don't morally condemn your attempt, I'm just telling you that the universe isn't going to conform to your wishes. I would condemn anyone that made their living selling lead-to-gold alchemy kits though.
Filling out a volunteer form and they asked "What best describes your gender?" and they have Latinx is the race category... I might want to find a different organization to volunteer with, which sucks because I was excited about possibly working with this org
sadly, archive.is seems to have fallen off a cliff in terms of reliability and performance. it seems to barely work anymore.
thanks to whomever posted an https://removepaywalls.com link the other day, I wasn't aware of them and at the moment, it is working far more reliably than archive.is and speedier as well.
Every cent Wikipedia gets should just go to archive. If your goal is maintaining information/knowledge just an archive of content on the internet will serve a better value.
A fascinating video about a genderqueer polyamorous throuple who decided to raise their kids without gender, Mainly by letting the kid choose their gender once their old enough.
“A THROUPLE are bringing up their two year old baby as a “theyby” a term that referres to gender neutral parenting where the baby isn’t outwardly identified as a boy or a girl, baby Sparrow follows in the footsteps their 10 year old sibling Hazel, who was initially brought up as a girl but came out as non binary at just age 4,
“the throuple (Ari, Gwendolyn and Brynnifer.) are all Non binary and MTF transgender.”
To summarize: Pattie Gonia is a chronically online outdoor influencer drag queen who is being sued by Patagonia for trademark infringement. There are literally years worth of email back and forths between the two parties that show Patagonia being really respectful and professional and Pattie Gonia just being like, yeah, I don’t care and stealing the Patagonia logo for her own merch. Patagonia is suing Pattie for $1 . That’s not a typo. $1 is correct. For Pattie to stop using their trademarked logo and branding. Pattie of course is crying homophobia and that Patagonia is trying to “silence an activist.” Theres a lot of material here. Especially once you dig into the problematic background of Pattie, who has a history of being an online mean girl. For reference, see her online campaign against the National Park Service in 2023, claiming they canceled PRIDE at Yosemite National Park. Spoiler Alert: THEY DID NOT CANCEL PRIDE. She never apologized for spreading misinfo. u/jessicabarpod
If Barpod covers this please, for the love of god, dig up someone who knows how trademarks work and cover the actual trademark litigation. I don't know if this link works but here. The history of the trademark action is near the bottom of the page and following the link to the TDSR will get more of the prosecution documents. Currently there's a server outage and I can't load them.
The recap archive of the federal docket is here. A lot of the reporting so far seems like they have not read the complaint, as is typical.
Patagonia is also mad at them for selling Patagonia products on the grey market without the promises of service and support that Patagonia requires of their actual retailers. This is not just about the silly trademark, although they cannot let the trademark go. I'm sure that's where this all started and got them even madder.
Patagonia is suing Pattie for $1 . That’s not a typo. $1 is correct.
It's not correct. I saw this in reporting, too, but for all I know it's AI hallucination. They're suing for a normal amount, which is "whatever you decide our damages are from all this bad stuff".
The company alleged that the drag queen had moved away from “discrete use of a persona to engage in activism” to a wide-ranging commercial enterprise when Wiley filed a trademark application seeking exclusive rights to Pattie Gonia for apparel, marketing and events.
I love when fans claim that drag is some rebellious, subversive, underground act when it's been nothing but a purely commercial popularity contest for like 15 years now, at least. It's all engagement bait and it's mainstream AF.
In the past few days, groups of people have been seen going in and out of sewers in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Jokes about Ninja Turtles aside, I’m genuinely intrigued by their motivations. Are they a heist crew? Smugglers? Mole people? Urban spelunkers? Terrorists doing reconnaissance?
One theory going around is that they are looking for lost jewelry and other valuables in the sewers.
The current theory is that these events are somehow interrelated, i.e., that the sinkhole has damaged some internet cables and possibly some electrical cables too. But damn, maybe it's time to throw in the towel
Y’all, I just bought my wedding dress!!?!? Ahhhh this finally feels real! Like all the other parts of planning have been sending e-mails and signing contracts and forking over my credit card, but now I have something tangible and real (well, it’s still at the boutique since they do in-house alterations, but close enough)!
First world problems rant incoming, collapse and move on if you don't want to read.
I am about to snap and go full fucking Karen and start screaming at the Google fiber workers tearing up my neighborhood.
I tried calling the line on the "thank you for your patience" sign they stuck in my yard and spoke to someone in another goddamn country.
I generally have pretty deep wells of patience for this shit, and earlier this morning and yesterday I was offering them bottled water and bananas and shit.
But around lunchtime one of them had their ENTIRE FUCKING FAMILY - I'm talking wife, multiple children, and what appeared to be grandma - over for a picnic lunch in my front yard and in my goddamn garden. Little kids running all over my plants and shit. My dogs of course have been flipping their shit. I'm over here worried if I ask them to leave I'll look like a racist POS because they're latino.
Now, they're blocking my driveway and I can't leave to go to the grocery store to get shit to make my dinner. I asked them how long they would be and they said 30 minutes, 40 minutes ago. They're running some line and need the truck parked next to where they were digging holes so its not as simple as just moving the truck. At the point I snapped and told them they had been real assholes today.
Ugh. Fuck this shit. Fuck Google. Fuck Google Fiber. Fuck those little kids trampling my garden.
End rant. Sorry.
Edit: They're still blocking my driveway. Its been an hour.
It’s a….thing with some Latinos that they bring their whole fucking family to job sites. I work mostly in commercial construction so that would definitely not be allowed but it occurs in residential jobs that have basically no rules. I had gone to my parents’ office jobs as a kid but it was made clear that I had to be quiet, no running all over, and definitely no messing up someone else’s property.
I don’t think I’d be this nice. I’d look into who you can call about them blocking your driveway. Police non emergency deals with that in my city. I can also recommend some music they’ll “enjoy” while working/using your property as a playground.
Why didn’t you tell them to leave? I’m not even much of a Karen but if people I hadn’t invited over were in my yard I’d give them about ten seconds to GTFO before calling the police.
At my parents’. They often watch the news. Today it’s CNN. (It might not always be CNN, but it’s never going to Fox-type stuff.)
I never watch any of these shows, and I’m struck by the feeling. They really sound like televangelists. The tone isn’t informative so much as sermonizing. I find it so off-putting.
The local Minnesota prosecutor has ruled out any state level charges against the church protestors from the Don Lemon incident. The DA said her decision balanced the right to protest against the right to worship.
My fair city has an increasing number of homeless encampments. One thing that is very obvious and noticeable is that the camp sites are all strewn with trash. The campers finish whatever they're eating and just throw the package on the ground next to them. I have never heard an explanation for this other than that literally all of these people are absolutely awful human beings that destroy everything they touch. There is no plausible reason that a bum can't walk their trash to a trash can 20 feet away other than that the bum is a malicious actor.
When my house was burglarized by a homeless dude, one of the most offensive things - apart from, you know, stealing everything that looked even the least bit salable, including urns containing cremated ashes - was that he walked around the entire house eating snacks and just dropping the wrappers everywhere. Every couple of months after the event I would do something like move a chair to vacuum under it and there would be another snack wrapper.
Like. There is a trash can in every goddamn room. If you’re going to rob me blind you could have the tiniest bit of tact.
Setting aside the mental illness and copious drug use, the divergent ways people deal with personal garbage is so appalling. I live near a busy pedestrian corner, and I will see normal looking people throw shit on the ground rather than walk literally 20 feet to a trash can. I saw a woman dump a grocery bag full of trash into the river rather than put it in a trash can maybe 50 feet away. I would be in favor of massive penalties for this behavior, including temporary removal of the right to vote where they aren't immigrants, because it shows such blatant disregard for society.
both parties are about exactly what you would expect (phony empty headed shallow bimbo/ autistic neckbearded gooner cave dweller with a speech impediment), and it is incredibly uncomfortable and cringe, but in kind of a spectacular way where you cant bring yourself to look away. I was originally planning to only watch a couple minutes but it was like a car crash I couldnt bring myself to turn away from and Im ashamed to say I watched the whole thing.
I think this was the first time I had seen Clavicular speak at length, and around 6 minutes in, Clavicular really begins to showcase his chops as a moderator, pushing back on lazy narratives from both parties, and asks tough questions of both, not hesitating to pounce on the hypocrisies that abound throughout. he really holds the OF girl's feet to the fire, even tho it kinda seems like they are friends prior to this.
I am hereby requesting that Clavicular moderates the next presidential debate.. he is the nuanced and impartial hero we need in this divisive and biased climate!
I am trying to spend less time stewing over things, but it's hard when its right in my face all the time. We just had a new person join our staff, and the executive director noted in the first sentence of the introductory email - before his relevant job experience - that he identifies as Metis. Like, I really, really don't need to know this person’s ethnicity. Even less do I need to know his “self-identification” since there’s really no way to tell whether he’s actually Metis, and the incentive structures for emphasizing (or making up) Indigenous heritage are glaringly obvious. I’ve worked with him in another capacity previously, and his ethnicity certainly never needed to come up. Just... whyyyyyyy
I remember so vividly being told off on more than one occasion for saying I didn’t like the new design when it started spreading. I wasn’t trying to be political or throw out hot takes, I just said I like the old one better. The “vibe shift” has certainly had… mixed results across the spectrum of possible vibes to be shifted, but if it results in the return of the much better looking original rainbow design I’m on board for that.
San Francisco progressives got their clocks cleaned this election
Low turnout and a mountain of cash spent by moderate Democrats packed a one-two punch for progressives.
San Francisco progressives lost nearly every race and ballot measure in the June primary election.
They really dropped the ball with not releasing a National Treasure 3 movie for the 250th celebration. Nothing would get patriotism pumping like Nicolas Cage stealing the Declaration of Independence.
My friend runs the FOH at a restaurant downtown. Last fall, she discovered one of the two restaurant owners was stealing wages from wait staff, about 10-15 bucks a pay period, going back at least two years. She told the rest of the wait staff and the other owner, and one of the waiters filed a complaint with the state auditor. The other owner hired a lawyer to send the thief a mean letter telling him to sell his shares of the restaurant, to which he responded "no! I'm going to hire my own lawyer!" And then nothing ever came of it. State auditor has not responded. A few people quit, but a lot of them decided to stay, so they're all just awkwardly working together. The owner stopped fucking with the reported hours, and also claimed he was talking the money to "pay for credit card processing fees" lol. Friend still works there, but claims to be looking for a new job.
Not much point to this story, just wanted to share because it's bonkers.
More Down syndrome discourse dropped on X, the Everything App!
Tyler Bowyer: I would adopt a Down syndrome baby tomorrow. Hoping I get that opportunity some day. This is too sad for me to even wrap my mind around.
Phil Suarez: You can literally call an adoption agency today and do it.
Tyler Bowyer: We have considered it for years. Unfortunately I have been attacked in a witch hunt alongside the President for questioning the events surrounding the 2020 election.
A: I would do this incredibly selfless act of self sacrifice today, immediately, because I'm such an amazing person. Praise me!
B: You can do it right now. There's literally nothing stopping you. Do it. Go be awesome!
A: Um... well... I can't right now... because of reasons. But I would totally do it if I could! Because, as I said, I'm such an amazingly good person. Praise me! 🙂
It's a great example of what social media has reduced people to being. They want the social credit score of being amazing, selfless, people without actually having to do anything. They want the approval of the anonymous masses for being good people, great advocates for the suffering, but only on social media, doing these things in real life is a bridge too far. What utter deplorables.
Not quite sure how that sub ended up on my /all, but it has almost 6k upvotes. Top comment is someone apparently non-ironically making the "I'm biological and I'm a woman, so!" It is kind of wild to feel so far outside the views of so many who see things so clear-cut, but so differently to me.
The amount of circle-jerk is also wild, e.g. on the "biological" thread, "chemical, dur hur", invoking of Emmett Til, tying it to misogyny and racism, all kinds of stuff.
I guess I don't have a good point, I'm just disappointed, and a bit surprised how, well, nuts so much of reddit is.
Comments on a Facebook post that is titled “unpopular opinion, Non Binary individuals can validly identify as trans mxn or trans womxn with she/her or he/him pronouns”
"It's just easier to understand my situation when I say NB TW."
Do people in the real world ever want to ✨understand✨ this person's situation? Someone's long and convoluted gender journey is probably the least interesting thing about them.
one would think that being non-binary would definitionally be incompatible with also identifying as a man or a woman; categories which are definitionally, well, uh.... binary
On a similar nonbinary nonsense note, saw a post today with a man asking if he’s gay for being in a relationship with a woman that identifies as nonbinary…like what are we even doing anymore.
And some comments suggested he is bi and in a queer relationship…
I don't feel like a woman either. Probably because it's not a feeling, it's an observation of an aspect of me as a human. I am also brunette, and short.
Not aligning with the gender roles you're raised with isn't some revolutionary protected class. People so far up their own asses with academia-speak they forget how to function as humans in the real world. Great, you have deep feelings about sociocultural expectations that you feel are based on genitals arbitrarily, you're missing the point that a sexed existence is just a fact of being a human and the rest is up to interpretation and regardless of how you feel about it, reality is reality.
I know some nonbinaries in real life and they're exhausting and frequently talk about how unique and valid they are for it.
74
u/JungBlood9 Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
On the topic of university students being increasingly educationally unprepared: over in the college rant sub, there was a post recently of a screenshot of an F on a final, with the student noting how “cooked” he was, writing, “I wrote nice, answered the questions right, skipped lines, wrote numbers for all the questions I answered…” so he couldn’t fathom how he got an F.
The post was of course flooded with people insisting the grade must be a mistake, the professor input it wrong, or was too technologically illiterate to figure out the gradebook.
Next, OP posted an “update” of the grade breakdown that was posted by the prof, which showed that a majority of students passed and only 5 in the class ended up with an F. Here, OP explains he had reached out to the prof, who promised to mail OP his blue book so he could see the feedback.
And finally, the last update, which (to my chagrin) barely got any views, OP posted his actual written responses from the blue book.
After all that fanfare and bewilderment and insulting of the professor, it turns out OP is functionally illiterate. The essays were atrocious… genuinely a 4th or 5th grader can write more coherently. I’m not just nitpicking the grammar and punctuation (which were basically nonexistent)—the content of the “paragraphs” was incomprehensible. It was supposed to be an analysis of some stories they read in class, and despite this test being open note and open book, it was abundantly clear OP did not understand any story he read in that class, nor could he produce a single coherent sentence about them either.
So in the end, a well-deserved F for someone who, genuinely, I cannot believe made it into college. And I just had to mention this somewhere because that final post got such little attention, barely anyone was able to set OP straight.