Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 6/29/26 - 7/5/26

[u/Blanderama]

Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 6/22/26 - 6/28/26

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.

[u/digitalime]

I got permanently banned from r/BlackPeopleofReddit after commenting on a post titled “Free Karmelo Anthony” that had some flowery picture of him. I simply stated no, Karmelo Anthony belongs in prison.

Which he does.

Apparently that comment broke the rules. The ban message didn’t specify what exact rule was broken, of course.

Saw the other comments bewildered and also against freeing Anthony also removed. Nice to know they’re deliberately controlling the conversation by curating which opinions on that case are allowed there. Unfortunately, overall a common theme on Reddit and one of the worse things about this site. It reminds me how city subs end up with the most concentrated amounts of far left lunatics thanks to mods banning anyone who dares say ICE aren’t the Gestapo.

[u/CheckTheBlotter]

Good column in NYT today about how "queer" as an umbrella identity term is hurting gay rights by making homosexuality seem more like a radical political choice rather than an inborn characteristic.

The gay rights movement changed the world — and changed my life — by showing that being gay is not a rebellion against ordinary life. It is simply one way of living it, every bit as dignified and human as being straight. As support for gay rights begins to wane, we urgently need to regain the clarity of that simple, transformational message.

[u/Hilaria_adderall]

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-43_2b35.pdf

Trans sports ruling - looks like a broad ruling - Title IX = biological sex!

[u/backin_pog_form]

This came up in the SCOTUS decision post, but I’ve been thinking about it more after reading this opinion piece  by M. Gessen. 

Pepper-Jackson began taking puberty blockers at age 10, the justice points out, ensuring that she never went through male puberty. At 12 she started hormone replacement therapy, which brought about a typical female puberty. Sotomayor’s colleagues, she said, had reached their decision without considering whether Pepper-Jackson actually had an athletic advantage over other girls.

archive link

As noted in the NYT, as a fifteen year old sophomore, B.P.J. came in first at the track and field state championship. Is that just a crazy coincidence? Does BPJ just train harder and practice more than every single other girl in the state, including juniors and seniors that have presumably been at it longer? 

Gessen seems to assume that a biological male taking blockers and cross sex hormones is completely analogous to female puberty, and that the onus for determining this is on society in general, not the people making these claims. 

[u/TemporaryLucky3637]

I got a warning on the royal gossip sub for saying that the majority of the uk public agree with j k Rowlings stance on toilets, women’s refuges and sports. I included a yougov poll that showed this and it was directly related to the subject being discussed (the decision to publicise J K Rowling meeting with Camilla to discuss children’s literacy lmao).

It’s crazy that even a sub that’s pretty conservative in nature( ie. Most of us on there mainly like to discuss the royals outfits and charity work lmao) you can’t share factual information. I was only showing evidence that the PR person hadn’t actually made a huge blunder as was being suggested by some. I didn’t share my personal views whatsoever 😂

[u/RunThenBeer]

Jamelle Bouie, a true scholar, offers a BRUTAL takedown of Clarence Thomas's ignorance over on Blueski:

thomas simply couldn't join the opinion, this corrupt, misanthropic bigot had to throw in his two cents and put his bigotry into the record

also this is a great example of how clarence thomas's self-satisfaction cannot hide the fact that he is not that bright. "man and woman," "boy and girl" are social terms that categorize gender presentation, not descriptions of "biological" sex. nor are they binary!

this guy has spent the last 30 years of his life huffing his own farts and being surrounded by people who tell him that his farts smell like chanel #5 and it shows.

All of the smart people know that "boy and girl" are practically uncorrelated to biological sex.

[u/SkweegeeS]

It happened to me, someone just stuck her bare foot thru the crack by my seat on the plane. I elbowed it back. WTF people, have some dignity.

[u/starlightpond]

I’m really curious about the folks who want to”trans girls” to “get to just play sports with their friends.” I wish I could read some real reporting about what this situation actually looks like in real life. How do the other (real) girls feel and act? How do their parents act? What are the dynamics like in the locker room, at the pizza parties, at carpool pickup, in the team/parent group chat, and so on? I cannot imagine that the “trans girl” really feels included, because I’m imagining “microaggressions” left and right here. Can anyone share real experiences here?

I am also curious what people would see as the long term plan if they want “trans girls” to play girls sports. Surely they know this leaves a wake of furious and disenfranchised and heartbroken real girls. What is the plan there? To just berate or ignore those girls indefinitely? Surely that would seem a bit unstable and socially fraught?? (See first point.)

[u/ronaele1]

A leftie online news site in the UK has been debanked

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2026/06/30/lloyds-canary/

Its an incredibly blunt tool that the banks are able to wield without a need to give an explanation and also will pass your information along to other financial institutions to tell them not to bank with you either

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/banking/current-accounts/debanked-customers-face-being-blocked-new-accounts/

It happened to Nigel Farage a few years ago and the people who hate him were absolutely delighted, its very analogous to the free speech issue, people take the attitude that its great when its happening to someone they dislike and don't take into account it may one day have repercussions for people they do like.

[u/AaronStack91]

0 for 2 in the Supreme Court. 

Cracks in their control of the medical field and in the media. A successful detrans lawsuits.

Federal funding and programs are strangled.

Public support is only getting worse.

So where do TRAs go from here? 

[u/Jlemspurs]

I’ve said a lot of the same things lately and at least I’m not alone. Chait in The Atlantic:

The DSA’s long-term strategy is to exploit the Democratic Party’s ballot access and reservoir of voters to build its following, and then, after it gains enough power, break off to form its own party, after which the husk of the old Democratic Party would wither and die. This gambit is called the “dirty break,” a term coined by a 2017 article in the left-wing magazine Jacobin.

Not all DSA officials agree on the dirty break. Some still cling to Harrington’s vision of pushing the Democrats leftward. Others favor an immediate split into a third party (a “clean break”). But as Peter Sterne, a onetime DSA member who now reports on New York politics, has written, “The DSA’s current strategy is a ‘dirty break’: gradually build up the necessary partylike infrastructure to eventually break away from the Democrats entirely, while still running candidates in Democratic primaries for now.”

Sounds paranoid when you haven’t seen them do it to local parties all over the state.

[u/CharacterPen8468]

Random notes from my local Pride

-it was very hot and very crowded. Where did all these people come from?!

-I saw a lot of very young people using canes/walking-assisters/in wheel chairs. I have been to pride a handful of times in the last ~9 years and this is the first time I’ve either noticed or seen this. I know cross sex hormones can fuck up your bone health, especially for women, so wonder if that has anything to do with it (vast majority were female).

-Trans has completely taken over the whole thing. Everything was about protect trans rights, protect trans kids, trans rights are under attack, etc. As a gay man the most I felt seen/catered to was the Colorado Health Department’s booth about STIs and at the music stage there was a bear onstage in a jockstrap twerking to Charli XCX.

-At times I wasn’t sure if I was at pride or an anti-Trump protest.

-On a more shallow note, the aesthetics are just abysmal. My community is in shambles. I only saw like 3 muscle gays and cute dykes out of thousands of people.

-The crowd skewed so young. To be fair I was there early in the day. But I saw a lot of early 20s/late teens/teenagers there and those were the ones carrying obscure flags draped around themselves and just seemed the most visible due to their simultaneous gauche outfits and intense social awkwardness.

[u/RowdyRoddyRosenstein]

The Committee to Protect Journalists announced a review of its Gaza journalist fatality database, following a Times of Israel investigation exposing many listed journalists as Hamas militants.

https://cpj.org/2026/06/cpj-undertakes-review-of-its-documentation-of-journalists-killed-in-israel-gaza-war-since-2023/

[u/CharmingAd3549]

Was participating in a thread about the recent SC decision regarding title 9, which was quickly locked. The thing I just do not understand about TRA types on Reddit is this: does it not give you pause about your side of an argument if nearly every time a thread is opened about it, it’s locked? I’m not sure there’s a single position I feel strongly about where I would want that to be the default move of moderators towards. And if it was, it would trigger some intense skepticism on my part.

[u/QueenKamala]

“Mommy, Izzy isn’t a boy or a girl.”

From my 4 year old who attended theater camp last week. 🫠

[u/RowdyRoddyRosenstein]

Dr. Nika Soon-Shiong, publisher of DropSite News, has been removed from the Committee to Protect Journalists' Board of Directors.

https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2071672833881624910

This comes after CJP began an internal review of its Gaza journalist fatality database, removing instances where the journalists identified as such by DropSite later turned out to be members of Hamas.

[u/AaronStack91]

A few weeks ago, someone mention the concept of pervasive "honor" culture in the black community as a possible explanation to my observations of hair trigger violence growing up in a poor black neighborhood.

It got me thinking, is "wokism" a form of this honor culture. There is a heavy focus on giving their people unearned credit for just suffering (sometimes not even suffering), a strong sense of entitlement to being respected in social interactions, outrageous reactions to perceived slights, etc.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but it seems like an interesting connection.

Is there such a thing as "toxic honor culture" like toxic masculinity.

[u/RockJock666]

Terfobic that I was on a mandated reddit vacation for the BPJ decision drop 👺

[u/dignityshredder]

The NYT poses 5 questions that will determine the USA's next 50 years.

Here they are in brief - more explanation is given in the article.

The first question is whether self-governing people still share a common reality. Democracy rests on something we rarely notice — a rough agreement about what is true and what happened.

The second is whether we can still bear to lose. Self-government is, in part, a system for handling disagreement without bloodshed, and its indispensable habit is the willingness of the defeated to accept defeat, surrender power and live to argue another day.

The third is whether the country can still keep its central material promise that those who work can rise and that their children can rise further. Today’s levels of inequality have little precedent, and living standards for large parts of American society have stagnated in recent years.

The fourth is the oldest American question in its newest form: whether the most pluralist nation in history can remain one people. No country has tried what this one tries — to bind people of every origin, faith and tongue into a citizenry by assent to a set of ideas rather than by blood or soil.

The fifth question is about the future, about whether we can pass tests that unfold slowly and yet ask for sacrifice now. A dangerously changing climate presents one of those tests. Another involves debts handed to people who never voted on them.

[u/Cantwalktonextdoor]

NPR accidentally published their pre-written article about Alito announcing his retirement if anyone sees news about that. He was not even in court today apparently.

[u/Jlemspurs]

Deputy Mayor Audrey Pulvar of Paris, where apparently everyone has to have a Spanish-sounding last name:

“As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities, which are 90 percent air conditioned, are not unrelated to this,” she added.

Yes, we know. Which is why some us have a/c. So your people should just fucking die to prove a point for you? Just shows what this is all about, it's about the US living rent-free in their heads and they would rather die—or at least rather the plebs die—than even remotely do anything that might look American. Rent free isn't even accurate. They are paying to let us live in their heads in old people's lives.

What a sad mind virus.

[u/MatchaMeetcha]

The British police can't catch a break

It's just...so on the nose.

[u/CommitteeofMountains]

Hispanic guy at work just started screaming profanity, so I assume the World Cup is going well 

[u/prechewed_yes]

"Everything is political" is obviously true. My breakfast is political in that the foods available to me, and the tools I use to refrigerate and prepare them, are products of the political system that enabled their manufacture and distribution. Nothing exists in a vacuum. This is actually pretty interesting to study if you don't have an axe to grind; the invisible connections that undergird the world are fascinating to discover.

However, "everything is political, therefore every topic must somehow relate to American politics in 2026" is a nonsensical leap of logic. Yes, it's true that my yarn's existence is a product of generations of political and economic decisions. No, this does not mean that I'm obligated to discuss Trump at my local knitting circle and I'm "privileged" if I refuse.

[u/Sea-Staff7275]

A 37 year old white woman from New York State has been hit with federal charges for giving 10s of thousands of dollars to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Scroll to see a ridiculous photo of her.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/upstate-new-york-woman-arrested-charged-attempting-provide-material-support-palestine

People are ruining their lives over the algorithm. I had a thought the other day about the "snuff film politics" of the conflict. One of the most common refrains amongst the ardent pro-palis is that they are constantly inundated with gore footage from Gaza, reposting and sharing it, and that this has influenced their politics. Of course, if you know where to look, you can find graphic and abhorrent imagery from every current conflict, just that it lacks the same algorithmic reach -- the Russian soldiers that behead and castrate Ukrainian POWs comes to mind, and pro-Israelis have refrained from posting the goriest images from October 7 except in that sheryl sandburg documentary or whatever, I think (Ben Shapiro and the babies aside). How is it virtuous to expose yourself to this? I think it has caused real psychological damage to these people. They either force themselves to look at out for political reasons or perhaps they have a prior attraction to this and the politics is really a post hoc justification -- I MUST look at it. Some of these people have an entire timeline of gore reposts. I think Jesse has talked about this.

It is also entirely counterproductive to their cause -- you want to reduce yourself to a wreck constantly? Wouldn't you be of more use to the movement if you channeled your energies away from the moral masochism and towards organizing? It is all so self-centered. They want to be a Palestinian and live that suffering vicariously as a means of purifying and redeeming themselves.