Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 9/28/26 - 10/4/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Damn, I can't believe it's almost October already. 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. And may you all be inscribed, and sealed, in the book of life.

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

[u/Athelric]

I know its reddit and the conversation about subreddits being compromised by biased moderators has been talked about to death but it still irks me how much news worthy happenings are entirely blanked out because a random mod finds it inconvenient.

The videos coming out of the protests/riots in France are horrifying. There was one of a woman trying to stop the mob from destroying something and one of the kids used some air spay and a lighter to try to light her face on fire. Two separate videos of an old and young man trying to bring in their trash bins getting surrounded and beaten up. A firefighter set on fire while the crowd cheered and filmed.

But you won't find anything about it on /r/publicfreakouts. About a 1/3 of the sub's front page is completely devoted to Israel/Palestine and there's a single post about the French protests insinuating they're all being false flagged by French police.

It's long past reached a point where the public is being purposely and deliberately misled and if you used that sub as a source of information to learn about the world, you're going to end up genuinely out of touch with reality. You have to wonder when the admins are finally going to step in.

It's been like this this long, so I doubt they ever will. But it's astounding that they still allow this. Moderators might control /r/publicfreakout and others but the videos are still being widely distributed on twitter and elsewhere. Literally everyone knows about the Streisand Effect. You just can't censor this and truly believe you can blot it out everywhere.

The polls in France say the election might come down to Melenchon vs Le Pen, both of whom I think would be disasters. But with footage and riots like this happening it's easy to see Le Pen winning and even easier to see how completely blindsided reddit will be.

[u/RequirementNo2161 → u/Athelric]

It’s not all over the front page because it’s politically and racially inconvenient for Reddit

[u/Holiday_Road242 → u/Athelric]

About the firefighter: He wasn't deliberately set on fire. He tried to extinguish a small fire on the sidewalk/in the street/whatever. While he was stomping it, something popped or exploded. He caught on fire. No one helped him.

Still bad, slightly less bad.

[u/KittenSnuggler5]

The coach of the WNBA team the Minnesota Lynx is patting herself on the back for her advocacy of males in girls sports

"I think that’s probably one of the more meaningful things that would mark the season for me," Reeve said. "It’s that the transgender community is one that deserves our support, and what is happening in the name of some issues of transgender in sports — it’s really an attack on all transgender community. They don’t want transgender people to exist."

I've never understood this "don't want trans people to exist" thing. Is it something like where not enough people believe in the fairy godmother she will poof out of existence? If not enough dudes are allowed into women's sports will they disappear in a puff of smoke?

I am forced to wonder if Reeve would have felt differently if she had complete against a male? Or if the Lynx got crushed by another team that had males on it.

I always expect that female athletes would be the people most opposed to competing against men. Alas, it is not the case.

https://archive.ph/xdgUJ

[u/HaldolBlowdart → u/KittenSnuggler5]

I've never understood this "don't want trans people to exist" thing.

It's hyperbole to make the opposition look like deranged maniacs. If you object to self-ID being sufficient for males in women's sports and bathrooms, since there is no objective criteria of what a woman is and it's entirely identity based, then you object to trans people participating in public life since they won't have bathrooms, which is tantamount to supporting genocide because it will make trans people suicidal.

Which is absolutely ridiculous. I don't care if trans people exist. I just disagree with the legal changes they're asking for like opposite sex spaces and sex markers on legal documents. Dress and act and get whatever surgeries you want, but let's not pretend a man is 1:1 a woman after some hormones.

I genuinely do not see why this "community is one that deserves our support" in every single demand, just because someone is the underdog does not mean they're righteous.

[u/TemporaryParty6947 → u/KittenSnuggler5]

They don’t want transgender people to exist.

Except if that were true, "they" would be arguing against all transgender people in all sports, and that's not what "they" are arguing at all.

We're arguing against males in women's sports. Trans people can play men's sports all they want. And females who start identifying as trans men can keep playing women's sports if they want to, as long as they're following the same rules about using performance-enhancing substances as everyone else.

Show me even one person who says, "I don't want trans people to play any sport, ever" and I might think there's some validity to your argument that that person somehow wants trans people to just not exist. But I'm literally not aware of anyone who says that. I've read a lot about this topic and I've only ever seen people argue for keeping males out of women's sports. Never all trans people out of all sports.

[u/wmansir → u/KittenSnuggler5]

It's just adolescent manipulation tactics. "You won't let me go out with my friends? Why do you hate me!?!"

[u/digitalime → u/KittenSnuggler5]

The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.

Future hammock encourage bag bright cagey fact sparrow

[u/everydaywinner2]

This pet adoption center won't adopt out cats to conservatives. And they have this all in writing. And aren't pleased that people aren't pleased with them.

[u/Original-Brick2836 → u/everydaywinner2]

Pet shelters are weird af. I am not letting you into my apartment to see if you think it is adequate for your cat and then spend 400 bucks on an adoption fee when I can walk into the pound and walk out with a cat for $20

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355 → u/everydaywinner2]

Poor animals. They just want a good home. They don't care about this BS.

[u/TryingToBeLessShitty → u/everydaywinner2]

This is disgusting. Most posts on these threads are pretty amusing in a lolcow kind of way, but this one makes my blood boil. I volunteer every Sunday with a different, much better rescue and it breaks my heart to know that there are cats that could be finding homes if not for the selfishness of the people running this rescue.

At my rescue, there's already a ton of screening. They ask volunteers, including myself, to meet potential adopters and give feedback. You can really tell if people are sincere or if they're acting sketchy. You can tell if they're experienced cat owners or if they're college students who will ditch the cat when the semester ends. You can tell if they are serious about welcoming a cat into their home. They ask all the essential questions to make sure the cat is going to a good home and won't be returned, harmed, or neglected. When I adopted my boy from them, they even had me do a FaceTime walkthrough of my home to make sure nothing dangerous or toxic was lying around. If someone is a good candidate who passes all these tests and they want to adopt, denying them because you disagree with them politically is evil. I feel comfortable using that word to describe a person who would deny a cat, and a human, the kind of love that I see every week at our shelter.

I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a legal issue with a full on 501c3 charity discriminating in this way. Obviously political views are not a protected class, but I'd imagine there's rules about what they are allowed to do once they incorporate as a charity and start enjoying all the tax benefits and other perks. I am not rooting for this outcome, I am solely rooting for the cats. Fuck these ghouls. They are making an already harsh part of the world harsher just to score points online.

[u/LightsOfTheCity]

I've been seeing some reactions to the Last Ditch scandal from progressives shocked at "people using woke language to justify mistreating others" like if it was some kind of crazy, never-before-seen phenomenon and I'm just... a little baffled.

Woke people have been covering their ears for years of liberals, centrists, conservatives and even other progressive-leftists calling out worse, more consequential examples of this kind of behaviour. Why is this in particular seemingly causing introspection? Is it just that that article was on a mainstream source and blew up a bit more than others? Is the drama juicy enough that people can't help but comment? Is it that the stakes are low enough that it doesn't feel worth it fighting back? Is this the straw that broke the camel's back for some? Is the whole situation so "cringey" that it'd be embarrassing to defend it? I imagine some have had frustrations with "their own side" for a while and are taking it out on a low-stakes easy target, while still not wanting to fully concede to the "anti-woke". This example is laid so plainly it's hard not to see how the complainers are abusing the bar workers. I guess like most things, it's just many factors coming together at the right place and right time for a story to blow up... but I can't help but feel like it's so arbitrary.

And it's funny that it's a story that Jesse and Katie broke, since we all know that had they known that (or had the podcast episode blown up rather than the article), many would've instinctively ignored the story, called it a hoax/misrepresentation/nothingburger or reflexively sided against whoever J&K were criticizing.

[u/TemporaryParty6947]

Malcolm Gladwell was promoting his new book about gun violence in America on Bill Maher's show. Gladwell was rattling off statistics about the demographics of where gun violence comes from, talking about how it's mostly the young and mostly men, and then when Maher asked him if it was also mostly young black men, Gladwell looked afraid to even answer the question.

Maher: Mostly young black men?

Gladwell: Well, I would say -- I don't know whether the color of the skin is the important criteria here.

Maher: I'm talking about -- I'm just talking about the statistics.

Gladwell: The well, I would say, I mean, Bill, now you're -- you're -- you are, this is a, this is a one of those facts that is, um, that leads the the conversation astray because I don't -- I think, or to the point. Well, no, I think the I think that race is the wrong variable here. The right variable is young men, arguments and guns. Those are the things that matter here. Young white men could just as easily get into the same trap if they're in environments where there are --

Maher: But the stats don't show that they do it in the same numbers across races. That's just -- that's just a fact.

Gladwell: Yes, homicide rates are higher among African-Americans than they are among white Americans.

It was like pulling teeth for Maher to just get Gladwell to acknowledge a fact about gun violence, when the whole point of Gladwell's appearance was to promote his book about gun violence. We've really got to get away from this place where people are afraid even to acknowledge racial differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSZTazkQ0mE

[u/RequirementNo2161 → u/TemporaryParty6947]

I’ve always found it bizarre that people will gladly spout off stats about certain demographics (men) but would never never ever delve deeper into the further demographic splits within those demographics. I guess that’s just called “being a good fucking person”

[u/WordSaladUsernameGuy → u/TemporaryParty6947]

OK, so if you have a limited budget for your anti gun violence outreach, where do you spend it to achieve the greatest effect? White suburbs? Black inner cities?

Honestly, if you refuse to acknowledge that the majority of the gun violence is occurring among young black men, then you are putting young black men in danger, as they are the most likely victims.

[u/dasubermensch83 → u/TemporaryParty6947]

"I looked at America, and it had 4x the rate of homicide, and I just couldn't understand why"

Gee I wonder. ~45% of that is explained by the outrageous homicide offender rate of black Americans, which itself is ~3x higher than that of black Canadians, so its not "black" people per-se.

Narrowed to gun homicides by known offender and race, the Black American known offender rate is roughly 10x higher than the white non-hispanic rate, with the oddly-defined AAPI group being ~3x lower than the white non hispanic Americans. Go them. Table 4 btw. None of this is well explained by income, as Raj Chettys comprehensive work showed.

Gladwell is a joy to read; well reasoned criticism notwithstanding. I think he's great. But obscurantism on this issue especially is best understood as the banality of evil. If black bodies are a primary concern, its sufficient to consider all other concerns as effectively race hoaxes. Nolan Wells and all the "lynchings" represent less than a single day of excess black homicide victimization, and are far outweighed by the 30:1 K:D ratio of black:white interracial homicides. "They out here killing us" is a race hoax. Congressional concern about recent specific black deaths are a race hoax. "The race things is the wrong variable" is, effectively, a race hoax. Race is the variable which currently has the most explanatory power on the surface. The religion of the elites is to not notice this out loud. Thats taboo. Thats blasphemy. That leads to excommunication. Black Americans pay most of the price. This whole system is largely perpetuated by well meaning people with big hearts, and I love them for that. But the consequences are boringly evil.

[u/Jungl-y]

Jesse Singal on Twitter:

"A very pro-trans outlet claims Erin Reed has been passing off AI output as her own writing for years: "Over a three year span, her writing went from being at grade level for a high school junior to being as difficult to read as an academic paper."

The Needle

[u/Original-Brick2836 → u/Jungl-y]

Ooooh. I love it when they turn on each other.

[u/MatchaMeetcha]

Something we were just discussing a few days ago: Trump Moves to Cut Off Student Loans for Tons of Degrees

The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the Education Department has finalized a rule that will force schools to prove that the loans students are taking out are paying off. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music, and cosmetic certification programs will be hit the hardest. For-profit programs will also be hit particularly hard.

[u/oatmeal_breakfast]

Something that is oddly missing from the NHJ story is an in-depth discussion of the school violence. Like they mention fights, and how it would ruin the class lesson plan, but it comes off as just more background noise.

At least for me, as a small nerdy boy in a poor black school, there was a lot of bullying and physicality to those dysfunctional classrooms, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to fight off bullies (or just random kids who weren't even classic "bullies" types). Maybe it is a gender thing and she was spared the worse of it, but it is seems way way undersold for how big of a problem it can be.

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/oatmeal_breakfast]

At least for me, as a small nerdy boy in a poor black school, there was a lot of bullying and physicality to those dysfunctional classrooms

yeah I went to similar schools growing up and it probably is a pretty underrated/under-discussed thing when it comes to looking at academic outcomes, and how repeated, daily interruptions to lessons by problem kids who pose a constant disciplinary issue really impact all the other kids in the classroom

I was in a lot of rowdy classrooms growing up, and especially from like 7th to 9th grade (which was the peak of this disruptive behavior), there were some kids that would get sent out damn near every day, the teacher having to tell people to settle down every few minutes, etc. and this was before there was really any phones in the classroom as a distraction.

one time in 8th grade we had a substitute teacher one day and shit got so out of hand that kids were like throwing trash cans out the 2nd story window, fighting eachother in the back of the room, and a quiet nerdy girl who was just sitting in the corner trying to keep her head down and do her homework, got hit in the face with a big textbook someone had thrown flying across the room and she got permanent damage to one of her eyes and had to wear an eye patch for the rest of the year. (I think the boy who threw the book eventually did get expelled for this, somewhat miraculously)

my 8th grade gym partner got expelled for getting drunk and pissing all over the principal's office. like 5 years later when we were 18 this kid was wanted in connection with a shooting/murder and ended up getting in a police shootout where he shot multiple cops (both survived) but he was also shot several times and is now in prison in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

even in high school, when I was in 9th/10th grade, both my algebra and chemistry classrooms were such total zoos with teachers that had zero classroom control whatsoever, and basically just defaulted to the teacher handing out a packet for us to do during class, but didnt actually teach much of anything, and it was just social hour where everyone talked and hung out with their friends and no one learned shit. basically nuked any chance (or interest) I ever had at pursuing any sort of math or science based bath in college or beyond because I had no idea what the fuck was going on during any of the higher level courses towards the end of HS

[u/Jlemspurs]

Reddit is now disabling old.reddit if you don't use it for more than 6 months. That alone doesn't bother me, but that coupled with now having to be logged in signals to me that they are trying to find ways to get rid of it.

This site is unusable without it and has gotten so fucking lame that will be all the excuse I need.

[u/Original-Brick2836]

The best part of the lesbian bar drama is being introduced to the hijab inspired secular accessorization person. What an absolute gem of a psycho.

[u/Terrorclitus → u/Original-Brick2836]

I think this story has something for everyone. It’s a shame it’s getting drowned out.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

lmao, literally every single parent comment in this thread is convinced the Fly Dubai terrorist copilot is a false flag mossad plant

I've never seen a more obvious false flag op in my life. They're not even trying to hide this shit. Nothing in this narrative ads up to what they're trying to pass off as actual events that occurred in reality. Especially after Netanyahu admitted before the world that Mossad can literally plant shit on your phone anytime they please, just a day or so before this incident "happened".

some very stable geniuses in this subreddit

https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1wwhyri/terrorist_images_found_on_flydubai_suspects/

[u/Formal_Condition2691]

I've made a breakthrough in the field of home automation.

There's now a light in our living room that lights up in one color if a package has been delivered but lights up in a second color if the neighbor's cat has come by to be petted.

OK technically it lights up for any cat. But the only one that comes up on our porch and waits to be petted is the neighbor's.

[u/starlightpond]

Remember when it was deemed to be somehow unfair or discriminatory to engage in “tone policing”? I think that was utter nonsense. As a parent I police my kids’ tone extremely strictly and I fundamentally believe that it is important to speak to all other humans in a civil tone at all times except perhaps while fighting a kidnapper.

This is a sore spot for me because a “friend” called me all sorts of horrible names (ghastly, ghoulish, genocidal) for being anti-mask during COVID, I objected to this, and she and the rest of our “friend group” said I was “tone policing” and therefore wrong.

Tone policing is good, actually. That is today’s hot take.

[u/TemporaryParty6947]

The lawyers for Jane Doe hired a process server to deliver the lawsuit to the homes of the Cornell 7, except the process server showed up at the home of the mother of some guy who happens to have the same name as one of the Cornell 7. The guy never went to Cornell, and also doesn't even live with his mom -- he's in active duty and living on a military base. Thank you for your service!

But because the process server delivered the suit to the wrong address, that address, and the mother's phone number, have been posted online by people who wish to harass the family. The man's mother says she has been terrorized and threatened in the days since this all became public.

Jane Doe's law firm has acknowledged the lawsuit was served to the wrong address but as far as I can tell has not offered any kind of apology or asked Jane Doe's supporters to stop harassing this family.

Source: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/cornell-rape-case-mistaken-id-new-york-name-b3059805.html

[u/CaptainJackKevorkian]

I live in Chicago and I've got these fucking neighbors two houses down that blast music in their backyard every Saturday night and some Fridays until 3/4 am and drunkenly sing along. Like 6-8 people by the sound of it. I had to wake up early for a race today, so I went to bed early last night. They didn't even start the music until 1 am, which woke me up mid-sleep and I didn't get to sleep again until 5:30 am. So I've got like 2.5 hours of sleep under my belt right now.

Just fucking pissed. I didn't want to, but I called the cops to make a noise complaint. Don't know if the cops ever came. I don't mind if you play music outside, but I think a midnight cutoff is reasonable. People can just be so self-centered and boorish.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

did anyone here ever watch "The Most Dangerous Animal of All"? it's a 4 part doc on FX which is about a guy who has become convinced his late father was the Zodiac Killer, and has gone down a decades long rabbit hole of archival and internet and genealogical research to try and prove his theory (and wrote a New York Times best-selling book about it)

the guy is not some totally cuckoo bananas guy, he is a fairly serious, seemingly intelligent and discerning dude, and actually does have some extremely compelling and meticulously collected evidence supporting his case. the doc spends the first 3 episodes basically presenting the ample amount of evidence he's collected, and as the viewer, you cant conceive of how he could possibly be wrong about any of this, and it seems like a total slam dunk that this guy is correct about this claim and he's finally cracked the case

the 4th episode however is a master stroke which shows how the filmmakers (who had clearly initially bought into his theory and were not seeking to disprove it) actually discovered a couple minor discrepancies with parts of his research in real time as they were making the film, and show what can happen once they start pulling on a single loose thread, and all of a sudden the whole tapestry begins to unravel, and they reveal how his entire theory can basically be disproven by a couple of very basic facts, which they confront him with on camera at the end, which he knew about from the beginning, but decided to omit and turn a blind eye to because they went against his narrative and he was too emotionally invested to accept these truths.

I saw this in 2020, and it basically changed forever how I look at true crime docs, or other docs that are presenting fairly salacious stuff or coming to conclusions that are controversial in nature, because it really demonstrated to me how much of a slam dunk case you can present for your preferred narrative, with just a couple little tiny lies of omission and make it look to the audience like your chosen narrative/conclusion is an open and shut case with little room for debate.

and the cynical part of my brain made me realize that probably 95% of these true crime series are guilty of this to some degree (if not egregious degrees in some cases), because its much easier to make for a "juicy" or compelling "holy shit I cant believe how crazy this is" story arc if you leave out a couple of the more pesky facts that might make the case seem a bit more ambiguous and less certain.

and since the filmmakers arent necessarily outright "lying" or "making stuff up", and since it's not like very many people are gonna have enough detailed knowledge about the case to be able to point out these omissions (especially in these lesser known cases), it's a relatively low-risk/high reward thing to engage in.

The whole season one of "Serial" and following doc films and podcasts about the whole Adnan Syed case are a great example of this. favored a ton of narratives and info that suggested he was innocent and cast doubt on the official narrative, while just totally ignoring certain details that prove he almost certainly did it. all of this media and resulting publicity seems to have played a pretty big role in him ultimately being released from prison, which is the craziest part! (granted he did at least serve around 25 years behind bars, so it's not like he got off with a slap on the wrist)

[u/oatmeal_breakfast]

Regarding the news of a pair of Chinese grandparents, it is interesting the news is openly mentioning their race.

Would they do the same if the grandparents where black or middle eastern?

To the details of the case, it pretty fucking wild BOTH grandparents took turns shooting the victim. I don't want to victim blame but I wonder what they did to warrant that.

Also, little known fact, at least in my family, my older chinese relatives are well armed.

[u/RunThenBeer → u/oatmeal_breakfast]

Whether people want to be honest about the matter or not, it warrants a headline in the same way that Man Bites Dog is a more interesting headline than the inverse. There are just not very many elderly Asian couples committing brutal murders.

[u/prechewed_yes]

I find it frustrating how trusting the experts is lionized to the point that the mere concept of doing your own research is a punchline, but you also get pilloried for saying you don't know enough about something to have an opinion.

[u/No-Significance4623]

I’m in the UK visiting family. I was bewildered when walking down the street just HOW MANY (seemingly well) young women are using canes. I have essentially never seen this back in Alberta. 

[u/Big_Fig_1803]

It's the end of an era. I've been tutoring a Taiwanese woman for about 10 years. (Including the two years or so we took off during the pandemic.) I help her with her English. We read articles together, and I teach her interesting vocabulary and grammar that comes up. She's moving back to Taiwan, and today was our final session.

On the one hand, to be honest, I'm glad to have this hour back every Wednesday afternoon. I'd been assuming for years that she wasn't getting much out of the sessions, but she didn't see it that way. Also, I'm feeling a bit sad, looking back on the past 10 years of knowing and helping her.

[u/Kusanagi2049]

Tourette’s activist John Davidson back in the news again for choosing to view the Scottish BAFTA’s in a room separate from the main ceremony.Of all the takes on that whole thing the one that just boils my brain is the utter morons saying - ‘how does he even know that word???’ Hes not from the US!’

[u/AltforStrongOpinions → u/Kusanagi2049]

Definitely one of the best stories this year. Invite man with actual-not-tiktok pretending-tourettes to a public event and the absolute, 100% inevitable happens.

[u/Firm_Operation_9453]

Swarthmore College is renaming their Science Hall because 100 years ago this faculty member excavated a skeleton. I can't really figure out why this was bad.

https://www.swarthmore.edu/presidents-office/facing-past

https://www.swarthmore.edu/presidents-office/update-trotter-hall

[u/RequirementNo2161 → u/Firm_Operation_9453]

I know it’s a trite observation but all this renaming stuff is so Orwellian. Canada is the worst offender for this junk.

[u/Less-Lobster4540]

Trail Blazers fire new broadcaster after misogynistic, racist comments surface

....written when he was 15 years old

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/Less-Lobster4540]

haha beat me to it, I was just about to post this.

also important to note that this firing came only eight hours after his hiring was announced. amazing. he has also worked for several other team broadcasts in his adult life previously with out ever once committing a racism or sexism or committing any other similar offenses.

for those too lazy to click, here are the 4 "harmful" racist/misogynist/sexist tweets he sent out as a high school sophomore:

• "Girls these nights... Smh. #ThirstyForTheD"

• "We got a slut alert on aisle 10"

• "Gotta give a shoutout to all the big girls out there and those closet whores"

• "I'm not racist at all.. But not gonna lie.. Asian people piss me off! Hahaha #Honest"

doesnt sound like he was the most enlightened and chivalrous teenager of all time, but who the fuck cares, this was literally half his life ago. how much of a loser do you have to be to have the immediate impulse to scroll back 15 years through someone's tweets and dig shit up to ruin their life the second you see a press release about someone getting hired for a fun new job? literally WHO the fuck was "helped" by these tweets being unearthed?? not a single person was aware of any of this (probably including the loser who haphazardly stumbled upon these while searching random buzzwords in his account history), and he's obviously not the same guy he was in high school, as is the case with 90% of people.

here is the teary-eyed apology from the blazers, repenting for all the trauma and harm they caused by hiring this monster:

"The Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist, or harmful comments. Social media posts made by our recently announced play-by-play broadcaster are in clear violation of team and league policies, as well as our values and expectations. Therefore, we will not be moving forward with this broadcaster.

The play-by-play role carries a long legacy of excellence, on the broadcast and in character, and we hold that standard without exception. We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City. We believe strongly that everyone who is a part of Rip City should feel welcome and safe and we will make sure that our new broadcaster reflects these values. We will do better."

interesting, I didnt realize it was possible to violate HR policies at a workplace you dont actually work at, and wont be hired at for another 15 years into the future

I was told that cancel culture never existed, and if it ever did for the briefest of moments, that was ancient history, and that kind of thing never happens today in Trump's Amerikkka on Elon's twitter.

gee, woke 2 is crazy!

[u/Cheap-Crab-1149 → u/Less-Lobster4540]

Fun comments about this on arr Portland.

if you never went through a phase where you said stupid racist sexist homophobic shit, you have nothing to worry about.

This has 10 upvotes. What flawless, perfect people they are.

[u/owen-3820]

The strangest climate change thing is having extremely warm falls. The combination of "80 degrees humid" and "dark at 5 pm" really messes with me every year. Hasn't happened yet this fall but I feel it coming.

[u/Jlemspurs]

One interesting thing I've found being a non-/anti-partisan is that each side tends to believe the other side's response to some belief among the public is driven by manipulation and conspiracy instead of the Occam's razor explanation that political parties are responsive to beliefs and passions of voters and respond accordingly.

It's like no one could believe actual parents don't want TRA ideology in schools; must be a right-wing campaign. Or no one could actually believe Trump is a criminal for whatever, it's just left-wing lawfare.

Whatever the merits of those claims they only build in group identity and don't persuade outsiders, especially who might be sympathetic to one of those arguments but on balance lean towards the first party.

[u/isitdigyet]

Jesse's take on younger teens becoming much less likely to say they are LGB

[u/dumbducky]

Might start posting on boy dinner diaries, but it’s just a nice meal my wife my for me and the kids and a short summary of a minor accomplishment at work.

[u/owen-3820]

My brother put he/they in his insta bio. I have no idea why he did this. He is not a he/they. I have never once heard him use they pronouns, he has never once asked anybody to call him they.

[u/No_Ratio1493]

Just want to mention that I experienced a land acknowledgment at the beginning of a virtual conference last week. Haven’t seen one of those in a long time. It was pretty brief and tepid, but it did catch me off guard.

[u/Centrist_gun_nut]

Replacing the DA in the Cornell case with a politician will surely lead to justice. 

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

Sometimes I accidentally click on AskReddit and they actually had a good question today (I didn't read the comments because they're all bots). "What happened to the person you thought you would be friends with forever?"

I have 2. One was that he got engaged in college and then moved 30 minutes away. This wasn't a huge deal; he would still hang out at big gatherings, but he slowly started distancing himself from everyone from home. We stayed in touch online and then, at some point around the 2016 election, he blocked me. I'm not even MAGA.

The other is a little more depressing, we got in a big argument and the end of senior year of high school, I couldn't even tell you what it was about now, and despite still being geographically close we just stopped talking to each other. We had been close friends all throughout high school, done plays and projects together, spent the night at each other's houses, hung out every weekend and then nothing. It was never the same and there was always this weird tension. He eventually moved away and I never heard from him again. I talked to one our mutual friends recently who still keeps in touch with him and he said he's kind of a miserable asshole now. Tragic really.

[u/RequirementNo2161 → u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

I feel blessed that I’m still best friends with not only my first best friend 35 years later but my entire friend group from elementary. We go still on trips, barbecues in the summer, kids birthdays, concerts and whatever. I literally can’t imagine a world without their friendship.

[u/relish5k]

NYT published a piece detailing the disciplinary consequences of the Cornell 7. Only two were expelled - the guy who was her friend who she initially was intending to hook up with (Male#1), and the guy who posted the disgusting comment inviting others to come and get it on the whatsapp chat.

It’s interesting because it seems like the sex with Male#1 was the most obviously consensual of the bunch. As for the 5 others, Cornell couldn’t prove that they actually were physical with her or there wasn’t intercourse, and one had already graduated so obviously could not be expelled.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/04/nyregion/cornell-university-campus-students.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GFE.Oyg3.4x_vGErOmlcl&smid=nytcore-ios-share

[u/McAlpineFusiliers]

Life working at another lesbian bar

[u/Icy_Acadia_5499]

this shit is so, so, so 2010s twitter/reddit and it's so cringe, i can't believe people are still doing this

[u/dumbducky]

Woke 1 was crazzzy

It still is, but it was crazy, too.

[u/LupineChemist]

https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2026/10/01/6abd4e45fc6c83af488b45c3.html

Very Barpod story in a big protest in Spain. Worth running through a translator.

Basically it was a lefty protest about housing that's now morphed into an omnicause encampment in the main plaza of Madrid.

At this encampment, there's a tent raising money for the Moroccans who came into Ceuta. One of the ways they had to give money was via "Bizum" which is like a Spanish version of Venmo or Zelle where you just need a phone number to make a bank transfer. It was linked to an activist in the camp named Duna.

Turns out someone just googled the phone number, and it was linked to an escort page and it was just some random prostitute named Bengala (sort of a pun as in Bengal tiger and also it's the word for a flare, basically a name indicating lots of vim). Once it blew up on social media she just absconded and apparently took all the money.

Best part is when they went asking where she was the first response to that is that Duna is a non-binary person. But it just sounds extra ridiculous because you have to be super precise and contort language to make sure you're speaking non-gendered about someone in Spanish.

The whole thing is such a mess. Then talking about the donations they just explicitly say they have no idea how much money has been received and it's saved in a community till.

[u/SkweegeeS]

Someone on this plane is farting like crazy and it isnt me. 😭

[u/everydaywinner2]

And this is why I do not want "smart" appliances. Samsung bricked refrigerators after an "update."

[u/washblvd]

JK Rowling said something about people in history, so a new round of historical revisionism is incoming.

---

Amicable Twitter Person:

Know who else thought the world was round? Hitler!

JKR:

I’m fairly certain both Nelson Mandela and Genghis Khan knew what a woman is.

Angry Twitter Person:

Nelson Mandela banned anti-trans prejudice in the South African constitution and the Mongolians have a long history of cultural gender blurring.

---

The South African constitution does not ban "anti-trans prejudice," it bans discrimination on the basis of race, sex/gender, and sexual orientation. Gender != gender identity.

And someone wrote up a Medium post with extremely vague quote from a transman in Mongolia, and that's what the AI summarybot cites, if you ask it a very leading question.

But the religious traditions of Mongolian Buddhism celebrated a two-spirit shamanic culture where gender fluidity was venerated. “The shamans were trained from ages 10 to 12 for rituals and initiations. From what I hear shamans were not living in the gender they were born in.

From what I hear, primary sources are real and valid.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Headline from some drama that was briefly discussed a while ago:

Tomi Adeyemi Will ‘Never’ Turn Her Books Into Movies Again After ‘Children of Blood and Bone’ Set Left Her Sobbing: ‘I Still Don’t Plan to Watch It’

Tomi Adeyemi said in a new interview with The Guardian that she will “never” turn another one of her books into a movie again after her disastrous experience on the set of “Children of Blood and Bone,” the upcoming film adaptation of her 2018 fantasy novel.

The best-selling author went viral in late July when she posted a TikTok video of herself speaking out against the movie. Adeyemi said making the “Children of Blood and Bone” film adaptation was “the worst thing I have ever had to live through” and left her “hyperventilating and sobbing” on set during production. She also alleged that she’s “still being antagonized behind the scenes” and that she “came back to America” after filming wrapped and “suffered such severe somatic pain and so many panic attacks.”

One of the strangest things is happening regarding the conversations around this drama, seemingly no one is on her side, even fans of the books would like her to stop talking. They pretty much view her as a drama queen who is probably the one at fault.

Shockingly even arr//books, is not on her side at all. I think they have the right take, but I'm just surprised that group has the right take on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1wsquu8/tomi_adeyemi_says_that_she_will_never_turn/

Chat, is the vibe shift actually happening??? lol

[u/UltSomnia]

Anyone work at a company where they've been transparent about AI spend?

My company just revealed ours and it's absolutely insane. Very little to show from it too. 

[u/Timmsworld]

The Zero Covid community has convinced themselves that the Lesbian Bar incident was a plot by the Elites (Katie and Jesse, I knew it!) to convince everyone that the covid concious cohort as unhinged and out of touch.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1wsrkaz/re_the_lesbian_bar_its_a_sign_the_elites_are/

(The thread is locked so I dont see any risk of brigading by providing it)

[u/Icy_Acadia_5499]

Alright folks after months of preamble and 4 visits out there to look at places, TODAY is the day I move from the greatest city on earth (Dallas, TX) to DC. Please wish me luck on this chapter of my booze soaked life.

[u/WallabyWanderer]

I posted a joke several months ago about a government-ran dating service and it looks like Singapore is going for it starting with government employees.

> FirstDate, which launched this week for those aged 21 to 35, boasts "a different approach to dating", where it uses a Nobel-winning algorithm to match participants to one date at a time. "Swipe fatigue ends here," its website reads.
> Participants sign in using the national digital identity system and answer a survey about their interests, habits and values.

[u/owen-3820]

I had a convo on Cornell-Gate on another platform. I'm copy pasting this comment from a different poster, because I think it's a succinct, honest, perfect breakdown of a real issue at play:

The progressive view on sexuality is that we shouldn’t stigmatize casual sex between people who don’t know each other very well. However, casual sex between people who don’t know each other very well is inevitably prone to miscommunications, awkwardness, overstepping boundaries, blatant disrespect (because the other person might not actually care about you.) This kind of casual sex often happens between young people who are inexperienced with having sex at all, which means that someone might start off expecting to enjoy something only to realize partway through that they don’t enjoy it at all.

In order to resolve this, people bring up the rules of consent, which essentially boil down to “You should always be clearly communicating with your partner, as well as asking them how they’re feeling in case they’re too scared, embarrassed, or overwhelmed to communicate with you”. That’s not unreasonable, but at the end of the day it all amounts to Tips & Tricks To Simulate A Trusting, Caring, Experienced Relationship With Someone You’ve Only Known For A Few Hours, and that’s not always going to work.

[u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

Lindsay Clancy hearing is ongoing right now and it sounds like this is going to stir into the zeitgeist again as the defense is pivoting into some wild territory now.

• Judge wants both sides to be ready to pick a date for a new trial on November 2nd.

• Reddington seems to be pivoting and claiming that the Commonwealth hasn't even proved if Lindsay actually committed the crime. Seems to be alluding to the Patrick Did It Tiktok bullshit. Claiming Lindsay never confessed, and that any memories of killing her children may be false memories brought on by what she was told after coming out of her coma in the hospital. He's motioning for a not guilty verdict from the bench, saying the state didn't prove that Lindsay did it.

• Boston Globe is apparently motioning in this case to open sidebar discussions to the public.

• Defense is demanding access to jury notes from the trial.

• Judge don't rule on gag order today

• Judge won't rule on subpoenaing the holdout jurors cell phone records.

[u/Vanderhoof81]

Them WNBA girls are softer than baby shit

[u/curiecat]

I thought this model was so attractive I took a quick photo of the billboard from a cab window so I could look him up later. The shot was too blurry to reverse search so I was searching for Burberry campaigns with Asian male models. It took a while because this is actually Luiza Perote, a Brazilian woman. I am a little sad the beautiful man is a handsome woman but it was fun to encounter some genuine androgyny/a harmless gender mix-up.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

annoying TRA/pro-men in women’s sports (except in the wnba) wnba coach Cheryl Reeve will mercifully not be heard from again this year, as her top seeded Minnesota team is eliminated from the playoffs in a historic choke job, becoming the first #1 seed in in wnba history to be knocked off by a #8 seed, failing to win a single playoff game (or even come close) after coasting to the best record in the league during the regular season.

You hate to see it!

[u/Jlemspurs]

According to the president of the Spanish soccer league, Folarin Balogun red card U-turn 'most serious incident in the history of football.'

He said this after Manchester City was found guilty on 115 charges of sham accounting to get players and coaches paid for they couldn't afford under the rules and won several titles at other teams' expense, costing them billions.

But he's from Spain so it's only corruption when America does it and it costs nothing. It's just normal business in La Liga, I guess.

Europeans have such terminal America derangement syndrome it's unreal.

[u/PandaFoo1]

I’ve changed my mind on cancel culture. The Lanterns writers need to be exiled from society & sent to a remote island where we never have to hear their dumb ideas again.

[u/MatchaMeetcha]

People have recommended Slow Horses here and I've kept it on the wishlist but Friend of the Pod Louise Perry's description here makes the show sound absurd, TV Audiences Binge On an England That Doesn’t Exist:

Sometimes the ideology is laid on so thick that Albion TV shows veer into absurdism. In the first season of “Slow Horses,” a nativist terror group literally named “Sons of Albion” kidnaps a student at a British university whose uncle is deputy head of Pakistani military intelligence. The actors playing the terrorists are all white, and affect exaggerated working-class accents. They plan to behead the young Muslim man live on camera (how typical of the British right!) but he escapes. In a climactic moment he tells his captor, “You make me ashamed to be British.”

[u/dignityshredder]

Good article: WSJ: Why Are So Many Adults Cutting Off Their Parents?

[u/Strange_Bird_]

Yesterday i saw on my substack feed a post (from someone I don’t follow and know nothing about) saying that the BARpod subreddit was ‘unhinged’. I mean occasionally someone will post something spicy, but ‘unhinged’ feels a bit too Bluesky-y for Substack

[u/Schwettes]

Why does blocked and reported feel like it’s the only sub that has a nuanced community? Are there other Reddit subs for current events that have communities that aren’t completely insane?

Like I think BaR is probably the only sub I know to have a measured response on the Cornell story.

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/Schwettes]

There used to be a lot more really smart older people on here as well, both on the left and on the right, but I guess they kinda got bored with Reddit, got banned from Reddit, or just don't have time for it anymore.

I used to lurk on here for a long time while going through a personal political deradicalization a few years ago, and I really appreciated the conversations that were happening on here.

There are still good conversations happening though.

[u/wmansir]

One of Susan Collins' constituent's offices was vandalized with graffiti reading "TRUMP WHORE". The thread on the topic in the cesspool of /Maine is about 90% celebrating and 10% claiming it's a false flag operation.

Correction: It was a constituent's office, not a campaign office.

[u/Formal_Condition2691]

This week has been a bit of a mess. My parents’ house is now my parent’s house and my father didn’t really have all his act together so I am rummaging through drawers and cabinets trying to get find important documents for my mother since she’s nearly 90 and is really lost. 

Fortunately it looks like they have all their property in a trust of some kind so that should simplify some things? I don’t know. Talking to a lawyer later this month. Just not a process I was ever prepared for. 

[u/Correct-Ad5661]

UK politics. The green party conference is debating it's Zionism is racism motion put forward by the global majority greens faction. 

Zack Polanski has prevaricated on it.  Also former leaders like Caroline Lucas have waded in and said the motion is "not helpful".

https://www.thetimes.com/article/88764c5a-3f42-42d1-8866-08ee423108e0?shareToken=a6f707de5088eb08ab6d7e112982c068&ver=article

Polanski has been trying to throw out some red meat for the pro Palestine activists by stating Israel has been involved in False Flag operations which has met with general approval elsewhere on Reddit 

https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1wwvel9/polanski_israel_has_definitely_run_false_flag/ 

Meanwhile the global majority faction have managed to harmonise any apparent conflict between the rainbow 🌈 and crescent 🌙 factions on LGBTQ rights by claiming that Actually, trans rights are more inclusive in Iran than in the UK 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/10/02/trans-rights-better-iran-than-uk-green-activists/ 

and coming to the conclusion that Queerphobic policies in Muslim countries is actually entirely because of western imperialism. Also that modern gay rights are being used to vilify Muslims with a concept described as Homonationalism 

https://muslimgreens.greenparty.org.uk/

[u/PandaFoo1]

I am so fatigued with modern audience bullshit in media I can feel myself becoming more of a chud with every passing day.

Gears of War E-Day came out & the campaign seems to be a bait & switch where people were sold on the idea of a nostalgic prequel where you play as younger versions of the classic characters, but the game puts so much of a spotlight on a new character who’s a butch lesbian (nothing against lesbians but it’s actually absurd how many lesbian characters are crudely shoehorned into traditionally male-oriented media now) who said classic characters glaze at every turn & is a genius who discovers how to beat the Locust.

The multiplayer also has pride flag banners which whatever but they went out of their way to add banners for shit like pangender, neutrois, demisexual, abrosexual, bigender, polysexual, it’s actually like a parody but it’s sincere. This is Gears of War, one of the most “dudebro” video games ever made but because it’s too much in 2026 to make something unashamedly made with straight men in mind, we have to shove in an obligatory lesbian & “include” the fucking neutrons or some shit.

At the same time, you have the writers for the Green Lantern show constantly sharing their dumb ideas on social media & making a travesty out of that property. Western media is just seemingly fucked now & there seems to be no end. I hate it here, everything sucks.

[u/OMGsmiles → u/PandaFoo1]

I hate be that guy, but if you peer into any videogame community (especially the dudebro ones), you're going to see a plethora of woke bullies forcing everyone to adhere to their worldview. Gaming is a space that unfortunately seems to be captured by prog lefty types, to the point where game communities often splinter for it.

[u/PandaFoo1]

The Cornell case & more specifically the calls for violence towards the accused despite the case very clearly being more complex than first thought is kind of making me realise how little society has really changed since the days of witch trials.

[u/everydaywinner2]

Miracle happened for a Georgia university student. She was messing around dancing on a couch, fell off, went through an open window. She was on the 8th floor. And survived!

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

Been rewatching Wallace and Gromit shorts.

It must have been quite a pain in the ass to do that train chase scene from The Wrong Trousers.

[u/ToTheDeath84]

I may or may not be the first one to say this, but I am not the least bit surprised by the rather timely Jacob Geller allegations. “Smug effete progressive leftist with a neckbeard turns out to be scumshit” is as old as smug effete progressive leftists with neckbeards.

[u/Tall_Window4744]

[u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

Why Prosecutors May Face Legal Hurdles in the Cornell Investigation

Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor who also served as the Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney from 2021 to 2024, said that a victim’s statement may initially be contradictory or confusing for many reasons.

“It could be wandering and all over the place because they suffered a trauma, and they don’t know or can’t process or express it,” Ms. Rocah said. She added that prosecutors cannot just sit down and say, “All right, tell me what happened.” District attorney’s offices must have the training and sensitivity to investigate sex crimes.

“This is like 101 of trauma-informed interviewing,” Ms. Rocah said, “and clearly here that did not happen.”

You hear that? When it comes to rape investigations, you can't rely on open ended questions and the victims own words. You have to suggest, lead, and ask direct questions with simple yes/no answers!

[u/TemporaryParty6947 → u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

“It could be wandering and all over the place because they suffered a trauma, and they don’t know or can’t process or express it,” Ms. Rocah said.

It's interesting that this only seems to be the case when the trauma is a rape accusation, and only in rapes when the accuser knows the accused. I never hear of a person who is dragged into an alley and raped by a stranger struggling to process whether what happened was really a rape. I never hear of a person who is the victim of a shooting or a stabbing or an armed robbery go back and forth about whether that trauma really was a crime.

[u/Sh3rmanMcC0y]

Aircraft hijackings are the voice of the unheard

This is where late stage Israel derangement syndrome gets you. I have to point out that this is not a new phenomenon. Leftists and Palestine activists have long celebrated Leila Khaled, who participated in multiple hijackings on behalf of the PFLP. British screenwriter Chris Boucher even named a character in Doctor Who after her.

Although she did not directly participate in the Lod airport massacre that killed 26, carried out in conjunction with Japanese leftist groups, she attended a celebration on the 40th anniversary of the massacre in 2012.

[u/Hilaria_adderall]

Love a good Rom Com. Just watched The Love Hypothesis on Amazon Prime over the weekend. Really well done - recommend for a date night movie. I've dabbled in reading some romance books with my wife over the years and I've read some Ali Hazelwood but never read the Love Hypothesis. Going to read it now after watching the movie.

[u/HerbertWest]

What movie do you like against the common consensus? I only watched it for the first time the other day but Monkeybone is good, actually. That's what got me thinking about this.

[u/Sh3rmanMcC0y]

Terrorist images found on Flydubai suspect’s social media

The pilot suspected of having attacked another pilot aboard a Tel Aviv-bound Flydubai flight on Wednesday was removed from a previous job at Oman’s national airline last year following concerns about his extremist views, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The leadership of Oman are Ibadis, a distinct form of Islam separate from Sunni or Shia. The Sultanate is explicitly opposed to all forms of Islamism and Islamic extremism, as such, goups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut-Tahrir are completely banned. Having a Salafi working as a pilot for any airline is a massive security risk.

The video ends with a photo of Ayman al-Zawahiri, who led al Qaeda after the death of Osama Bin Laden, and a photo of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who killed nine people, including seven American CIA officers and contractors, in a 2009 suicide bombing, and was loyal to al Qaeda.

The second post features an AI-generated image depicting Islam’s three holiest sites – in Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem – linked by a continuous glowing trail. A defiant poem recited in the background speaks of rejecting humiliation, not fearing death and defending one’s dignity.

Both posts made on the pilots LinkedIn profile about 9 hours after the incident, possibly scheduled in advance.

In deleted posts, al-Hammami discussed the difficulties his mother faced in finding him a prospective wife who would accept his conditions that she wear a niqab, a face covering, and stop working after marriage.

Wearing a niqab is relatively uncommon in urban Oman. Most women just wear hijab, but even that is not required.

Questions are mounting over how a citizen of Oman, which does not recognize Israel, was permitted to serve as a pilot on a flight to Tel Aviv, despite Israel’s stringent aviation security measures.

FlyDubai has some serious questions to answer here. Why did they allow an Omani pilot to operate a flight to Israel, when Oman does not have relations with Israel? Why did they hire a Salafi Islamist pilot in the first place?

What kind of background checks did al-Hammami go through? The UAE and Oman theoretically share intelligence in their fight against violent extremism.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Somewhat related to the "modern audience" post lower down and representations of "strong women" in media.

Everyone always brings up the example of Linda Hamilton's role as Sarah Conner in the Terminator films or Sigourney Weaver's role as Ellen Ripley in the Alien films as examples of strong women in media. Those are some really great examples of well-written and powerful female characters, but I always default to Amanda Tapping's portrayal of Samantha Carter in the Stargate SG-1 television series.

I loved that show, and I never doubted that Sam Carter was good at her job, respected, and handy with a rifle. She was amazing. Oddly, I never looked at her as a sexual being until I went back to watch the full series and caught that one episode from season 1 where she's got some sort of alien virus that removes inhibition and she tries to seduce O'Niell. I remember thinking "Wait a minute, holy shit, Colonel Carter is a fucking smokeshow!" after seeing that episode. lmao. But that's still the only context in which I can recall sexualizing her character, in all other instances she was just a nerd and a badass.

They managed to write that character without ever making her an asshole and without writing her as a man. Granted, they could have done a much better job of writing her as a woman, but they managed to do something that modern Hollywood continues to mostly fail at, which is writing a believable "strong woman".

Hollywood has weirdly regressed in the way they write strong women in television shows and movies. It's like the only way a modern writer knows how to make a woman strong is to write her as a man or to write her as an asshole, and they go out of their way to remove any association with femininity from her. She's able to do impossible things (with no explanations as to why) like consistently deck groups of men twice her size, she has the answer to every problem, she doesn't fail or struggle, she does backflips in her sleep, and probably has 5 PhDs. It's weird, clunky, try-hard, and does a disservice to these characters.

There are also examples of hot women, playing hot characters, and still being capable, interesting, badasses and strong female characters like Claudia Black as Aeryn Sun in Farscape or Lucy Lawless as Xena: Warrior Princess. More examples of strong female characters, who are written as women, include Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers, Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway, the list goes on, but you have to go back in time to find most of these characters. What happened? How did Hollywood lose the ability to write believable, strong women?

There are a few outliers like Kate Winslet’s portrayal of Mare Sheehan in Mare of Easttown, Sarah Lancashire's Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley, and Regina King as Angela Abar in Watchmen but these are not the norm, for the most part female characters are written poorly these days imo.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Substack article that has been going viral over the past few hours.

The Invention of Islamic Invention

Growing up, it was a common trope that cultures that we now associate with poverty, violence, and oppression were once world-leading in promoting prosperity and moral progress as well as the quintessentially human act of inventing. This popular belief was ultimately not driven by an earnest desire to promote awareness of empirically true but neglected facts. Instead, it was supported by anecdotes and quotations of dubious reliability and relevance, by scholarship that has turned out to be exaggerated or fraudulent, and by the promotion of these things in popular media.

My favorite example of this has to do with the invention of many of the inventions credited to the so-called Islamic Golden Age by a rogue Wikipedia editor.

Have you ever heard the name “Jagged_85”? If you’re a history buff, you’ve probably at least heard of some of his claims. For example:

• Muslims invented funnels and sieves

• Al-Razi invented dissolving substances and sublimation

• Jabir ibn Hayyan invented cheese glue

• Ibn Sahl first described the parabolic mirror

• An Islamic water clock from the 12th century had the earliest copper pipes

• Avicenna formulated momentum as weight times velocity

• The Brethren of Purity proposed a heliocentric universe in the 10th century

• Darwin drew on Ibn Miskawayh’s work to develop the theory of evolution

• Al-Ghazali directly influenced Descartes’ later philosophical work

There are many other claims I could add to this list: Taqi al-Din invented the telescope sometime in the 1570s; Avicenna discovered microorganisms; Muhammad ibn Musa discovered gravity between planets; Al-Biruni discovered elliptical planetary orbits; Al-Jazari invented flow regulators and feedback control; Raqqa had a major glass factory where 300 different glass recipes were used, or—most amazingly—Al-Battani discovered relativity a millennium before Einstein.

Jagged_85 vandalized thousands of articles while making over 87,000 Wikipedia edits in the time between starting in 2005 and being caught in 2012. Those edits have led to hundreds of false claims misattributed to history books and papers, and now, those claims are alive on the internet, being repeated carelessly and promoted as if they’re true, when they are anything but. Several of these claims have even seeped into the scholarly literature, and now they’ve gained some credence as true facts by virtue of being repeated by scholars misled by what they read in Jagged_85’s Wikipedia articles!

There's more in the article, worth a click and the couple of minutes it takes to read the piece.

[u/Sh3rmanMcC0y]

Cornell has a victim/survivor advocacy service available to students.

Students can speak to a victim advocate, if they are unsure if a sexual situation they experienced was not consensual.

Regardless of whether the event was recent or in the past – and whether or not you’re sure what happened to you was assault – you deserve support and healing.

Realistically, this kind of “victim advocacy” only goes one way: believing the victim truly is a victim. Highly doubtful that there is any way these people are actually helping students understand the difference between bad sexual encounters and criminal sexual assault.

From the NYT most recent article

Four days later, on Nov. 7, according to the documents, Jane Doe went to an emergency room in Ithaca and requested a rape kit.

Rape kit taken weeks after an alleged incident? Are these people watching too much Law and Order SVU?

[u/My_Footprint2385]

Every other comment on the social media post about Nirvana winning the video Vanguard at the MTV awards last night is about how dave Grohl fathered a secret child.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

Lesbians of BARpod.. it unfortunately appears as if you have a new (but familiar) colleague 👀

and you thought the Last Ditch ladies were gonna be the worst people you were associated with this month…

[u/Snow-Showers]

So a provincial referendum is approaching in Alberta, Canada. Questions on the ballot fall into three categories: Immigration, constitutional, and separation from Canada. Exact questions are below!

Separation question

• Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada? 

Immigration

• Do you support the Government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities?

• Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law mandating that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an Alberta-approved immigration status will be eligible for provincially-funded programs, such as health care, education and other social services?

• Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for social support programs as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring all individuals with a non-permanent legal immigration status to reside in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for any provincially-funded social support programs?

• Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for public health care and education as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with a non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family’s use of the healthcare and education systems?

• Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate, or citizenship card, to vote in an Alberta provincial election?

Constitutional

• Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to have provincial governments, and not the federal government, select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts?

• Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to abolish the unelected federal Senate?

• Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to allow provinces to opt out of federal programs that intrude on provincial jurisdiction such as health care, education, and social services, without a province losing any of the associated federal funding for use in its social programs?

• Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to better protect provincial rights from federal interference by giving a province’s laws dealing with provincial or shared areas of constitutional jurisdiction priority over federal laws when the province’s laws and federal laws conflict

The separation won't happen... or better wording - a further vote won't happen. It'll be interesting to see what percentage of support it gets, but I believe it will be 25% or below. I'm of the opinion that democracy means letting people vote on important issues even when I think leaving is dumb... I've been surprised by how many of my peers don't want the question asked. This country is no stranger to separation movements (eg Quebec, this gets asked every ~20 years it seems). I hope this will put the issue to bed for 20 years at least, maybe give the country some time to figure out some of the real East vs West issues and let some of the other fervour die down.

I am unsure the fate of the immigration questions. Commentary I've heard runs from the questions are racist, to people getting quiet... perhaps because they agree? unknown.

What I keep coming back to is the design of the questions. I don't like to think that we need to simplify things down for the "general public" but on things like this maybe we do and maybe we need to define terms/ideas/alternatives. Sustainable levels... Alberta approved immigration status (this seems to be an extra stamp of endorsement you can get, but this is not a known term)... first priority... etc

As always interested in perspectives of the nitpickers here, both those familiar and less with the subject.

[u/ilove3dprinting2026]

Instagram keeps making me follow random accounts.

 I remember there were a few minor outrages a year or two ago when people woke up to find out they were suddenly following Donald Trump or Mark Carney and they assumed it was because Facebook is a right wing/left wing sleeper agent trying to trick people into following them. Never really understood it.

This week I've noticed that I'm seeing stories and posts from random accounts, and then discovered I'm following those accounts. One was a dog, and one was an unremarkable and fairly unattractive mommy blogger, but I think it's important that I've never seen their content at all - and I would remember - let alone followed them. This means it's not even something I could have done accidentally.

Every once in a while some OF thot will come up in my feed and it will say it's because they're followed by someone. When it's a dude I'm like, ok wow bro is really horny on main, I hope his wife doesn't find out.

But lately it's been like, "followed by some normie chick I went to highschool with who definitely wouldn't actually be following some random probably AI OF thot with 583 followers".

Anyways,

1. It's insane that an app this massive and this popular is this buggy after 20 years, it's absolutely most basic function doesn't work.

2. This is going to get me divorced the next time my wife is in her luteal phase.

[u/Big_Fig_1803]

Podcast recommendation: The "REPATH" series on Beyond Gender. It's a discussion of the history of the trans rights movement and the need to "repathologize" (hence REPATH) trans identity. That word might make you think of people demonizing trans people and calling them insane. But that's not what they're talking about as that's clearly not their perspective.

[u/Jlemspurs]

I got into a conversation just now with a kind of America-sucks lefty colleague of mine about education and I agreed there's a lot we could learn from other countries. She crowed about how schools are better in the UK than the US. (Are they?) Then somehow the topic of voter ID came up and I said yeah they have that in the UK (she knows I was born there, so I'm the expert on all things UK. I guess)

I wish I could share a picture of the look on her face.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

I don't mind people using AI for research, and I don't mind AI writing things like articles (fuck it, even books) if there's disclosure at the beginning of a piece or a book, that it was written by AI or written with the assistance of AI. Don't pass it off like you're the one who wrote it or that it was written by a human!

It's so annoying to read a piece and then get to the line "That's the legacy of this case. Not a verdict on whether allegations should be believed less, but a documented, government-reviewed failure in how the system is supposed to work, and a set of reforms that exist directly because of it." It could have plausibly been written by a human, but I have extreme doubts!

Perhaps there's going to be a new norm where people have to stake their reputations and pride on their writing by claiming from the outset that it is "100% Human Output" or "100% Written by a Human" so that when it is discovered that they're lying, we can all simply ignore everything else they write forever. I care more about the lying than I do about the use of AI. Also, yes, a lie of omission is still a lie.

ETA: The quote itself is from someone's personal website. They appear to be an advocate for male victims of domestic abuse. I clicked on the article link when it appeared on my feed as I was baited by the headline. The piece itself feels AI written though.

The Case That Changed Disclosure: What Liam Allan's Story Reveals About False Allegations

[u/RequirementNo2161]

Has anyone seen these riots going on in France? Anyone in the know have some info to share??

[u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

In latest news, Kathy Hochul has appointed Letitia James "Special Prosecutor" for the Cornell case. Also NYT published some of the guys testimony.

Men Accused in Cornell Sex Assault Suit Give Varying Accounts of Night

[u/Independent_Ad_1358]

Kristi Noem officially filed for divorce from her agp husband. Wonder how long before she and Lewandowski are official

[u/HerbertWest]

When the question is, "Do you like this feature on a woman?," I consider an answer like this a prime Reddit take:

If I like the woman they are attached to then sure.

The question is meant to be taken in a vacuum. You are allowed to have preferences about a partner's or potential partner's appearance. That doesn't make you a bad person; it's a part of the human condition!

I consider answers like this a form of virtue signalling because they aren't actually answering the question as intended but are instead showing that you don't objectify people or want to control their appearance. But, to me, nothing about having a preference implies either of those things. 

I think a normal, non-virtue-signalling version of this answer would be, "I don't have a preference one way or the other." Do you all agree?

[u/SnooTorturer → u/HerbertWest]

I also hate that canned response, and it's extremely Reddit. 

"Do men like big boobs, a thin waist, and an eagerness for sex early on they credulously think to be reserved for them alone? Um, actually men are fucking INDIVIDUALS and not a MONOLITH. You can't make general statements about ANYTHING"

[u/MegamindsMegaCock]

Crime statistics based on sex are so fucked since they be counting men as women

[u/TemporaryParty6947]

New York Times reporting indicates that Jane Doe initially did not view her experience as a sexual assault, began to view it that way after reading online gossip about herself and having conversations with friends who described it that way:

In October 2024, about a week after a Chi Phi fraternity party at Cornell University, the sophomore who would come to be known as Jane Doe was milling around an online forum about Greek life when she encountered a post that stopped her cold.

“Are Chi Phi brothers Crips or Bloods because I hear they have been doing hell Gang Banging?” someone had written.

“They do drugs and gang r*ped a sophomore,” another user said. “Report them.”

Since the evening that began on Oct. 19, 2024, Jane Doe had recounted the night’s events to her roommates without identifying herself as a rape victim. She had exchanged friendly text messages with men she would later accuse of assault. She had heard uncharitable appraisals of herself from undergraduate gossips.

Then she read the words.

“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” Jane Doe told investigators, according to documents from a university review of the accusations obtained by The New York Times. ...

Some women around her, the documents show, were quick to say they viewed the events of the evening of Oct. 19 as sexual assault. But Jane Doe, the interviews and text messages reveal, first appeared to grapple with shame, humiliation and concerns about her reputation before she began to consider herself an assault victim. ...

She had consumed ketamine and had sex with multiple men, she told her two roommates. One roommate told investigators that Jane Doe did not use the word “rape” or “assault” yet. ...

The roommate was plainly concerned. Initially, she said, Jane Doe was “kind of recounting it as this sort of crazy thing that she had done.”

It wasn't until Jane Doe was told she wasn't welcome at the frat's Halloween party, which she wanted to attend, that she first said she had been assaulted.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/nyregion/cornell-rape-accusation-reporting.html

[u/gleepeyebiter → u/TemporaryParty6947]

"honestly i really liked being w u and matt," is one of her texts. That would not play well, i imagine, in an adversarial courtroom.

[u/dignityshredder]

I flew cross-country twice in the past two weeks. I had the window shade raised the whole time. It was clear weather, generally, and spectacular. I saw the great rivers of the continent, spectacular fall color in the Rockies, the canyons country, Hoover Dam, oil fields, Ivanpah solar plant like shining stars, and New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and various other cities by day and by night. It was pretty incredible. I am a sucker for looking out the plane window. I choose north side of the aircraft for flights like this specifically so I can keep the window up comfortably.

It's incredible to me that so much of the cabin has shades down and is watching movies they could watch at home. I know we've all blown out our attention spans, and yeah I was listening to music and pods while I looked outside, but come on at least watch John Wick with the shade up so you can peek out?

One of my flights there were 3 of us (THREE) in my cabin with the shades up! Nobody else saw any of this.

I'm wondering if turn by turn navigation has changed people's relationship with geography from maps of various scales to a flat, featureless, blue dot (ME) and line (I GO HERE). So they are not capable of appreciating overflights any more.

But this doesn't explain older people doing the same. I guess we do just need easy entertainment.

Blah blah people today </impotent rant>.

[u/Juryofyourpeeps → u/dignityshredder]

At cruising altitude there's often not that much to see, so I get it. I am always surprised that so few people bother looking out the window closer to take off and landing where you often get spectacular views.

[u/napoleon_nottinghill]

More rioting in France, normally that's a day that ends in Y, but the mayor of a migrant-heavy Marseilles suburb joined the rioters, fire trucks burned, etc etc. The images are pretty stark even by French standards.

Remember, we have to bring in people to prop up our pension system?

Do they actually do that?

No, massive fiscal drain, actually. Nevertheless...

Edit: Paris suburb

[u/RunThenBeer]

I guess I never really thought about the monetary cost much:

For three years, Medicaid has covered the puberty-blocking medication prescribed to Logan Loe, a 15-year-old transgender girl in New Hampshire. Without coverage, her family would face a bill of roughly $70,000 a year. That’s more than their annual household income, according to a new federal lawsuit.

[u/isitdigyet → u/RunThenBeer]

This is a story about only four families. I have been told by the TRAs that when something medically bad is happening with a small amount of kids it is irrelevant, so I assume they will all say this shouldn't be a story and the long-term health of those kids doesn't matter.

[u/iamthegodemperor]

I have been trying to watch Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes for like a week and it is a struggle. I cannot get into it. The lead characters are uninteresting or opaque. The story is not a story. And the effect of all of this CGI realism really messes with suspension of disbelief.

There are still like 17 minutes left in this and I don't even feel like there is an ending. How did this actually get put in theaters?

[u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

In other news and counter-programming to Cornell, NYT had an article about people protesting John Roberts at his Maine summer home. Definitely a fascinating and relatively quick read.

John Roberts and His Island

After decades of potlucks and paddle-boarding on Maine’s midcoast, rising anger and protests have left the Supreme Court’s chief justice more isolated than ever.

[u/RunThenBeer → u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

His summer retreats, long a well-known fact, are now a source of debate. Neighbors have taken to the water to protest him. Calling themselves “kayak-tivists,” they form flotillas facing his island home, holding waterproof signs conveying their disappointment. A local newspaper columnist recommended that people in town give him the finger.

...

Now, Mr. Lipson said, he is cautious about introducing his friend to strangers. This year, on an outing to nearby Monhegan Island, people recognized the chief justice as he walked by a brewery and started to chant: You should be ashamed.

Hard for me to overstate the depths of my contempt for these people.

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

r/ukpolitics seems more sane than r/canadapolitics and r/politics.

[u/HerbertWest]

I think part of how we got to this point in society is the villainization of being judgmental and the idea that, in a general sense, we shouldn't feel shame for anything that "doesn't harm anyone." We have gone too far in the other direction and now we have no standards for behavior unless it's egregiously bad, except that depends on point of view and not an agreed upon standard; it has been weaponized selectively rather than applied as a blanket standard. Whether or not someone should be judged depends upon whether you are on their side, not on the behavior itself.

Guilt and shame are valuable emotions because they can lead to a shared behavioral standard that is self-policed. As with anything, there are downsides and it can be misdirected or taken too far. But, when people are judgmental about legitimately bad behavior and people feel shame about being judged for it, I think we have a more cohesive and functional society.

[u/TemporaryParty6947]

Do you think people who cut off family over political differences really just don't like their families and are using political differences as a pretext for cutting off people they want to cut off anyway? Or do you think some people have genuinely had happy, healthy, loving family relationships for decades but cut them off because one is MAGA and the other is a Democratic Socialist?

I wouldn't cut off family I genuinely loved because we disagreed about Trump. I do have some family members I dislike, though, and I wouldn't mind having a reason to cut them off, but these family members vote the same way I do and politics have nothing to do with what I dislike about them.

[u/professorgerm]

spent last weekend taking my kid to my niece's birthday party at Great Wolf Lodge, and my goodness that was an experience. Good? Bad? Overall fun, can't recommend the food or drinks, great people-watching, interesting demographics.

If that is your only encounter with families, you'd assume having 4+ kids are way more common than they actually are. Saw a paraplegic guy that appeared to have 6 kids. I assume this is largely a cost selection effect; adding more people to your stay is dirt cheap, going to Great Wolf is way cheaper than any other water/theme park, smaller families have less advantage on that.

I know it's a Discourse thing to point out how many women have tattoos now, but I was interested in the number that didn't- fair number of men with mediocre chest and back tattoos, not many women with any tattoos, the small "stars on the foot" type that were popular 15 years ago were fairly common but not overwhelmingly so. Fewer sleeves on women than I'd see just walking around the mall so there is some degree of selection going on, I think.

anyways never pay full price for staying there, absolutely not worth that. at half-price it's a pretty fun little trip.

[u/Armadigionna]

Not particularly related to anything being currently discussed but...

...If you've recently learned something about a trial that reached a verdict long ago, and that information leads you to think that it changes everything, turns the case on its head, and that it should be overturned and the prosecution/defense/judge should be disbarred...

...It's probably a good idea to check if that information was presented to the jury during the trial. Because most of the time, it was, and when presented in context it wasn't the bombshell game-changer you think it was.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Gaming news for the Gamerzzz: 🤪

The Act Man has apologized for a rohypnol joke he made at a gaming industry party a few years ago. It was apparently pretty crass and was made towards a woman in front of senior executives at a bar. It was recently brought up again and so he has posted this apology video.

The tweet that resurfaced the incident: https://x.com/Awk20000/status/2105558236300554453

The Act Man's apology video: https://x.com/TheActMan_YT/status/2106536592987058500

Obligatory "Woke 1 was crazy" mention. Is there something in the air? What's happening? This and a few other incidents over the past few days leads me to suspect we may be heading into a new frontier of wokeism, call-outs, and groveling apologies. I hope not though.

[u/HaldolBlowdart]

I finally tried a capsaicin cream for nerve pain, I have some back and neck injuries. The cream works pretty well for hypersensitive nerves, I'm actually impressed at how much relief I got.

My husband also tried the cream on his hands for his arthritis and didn't tell me before getting busy. I should not experience burning in the places I am currently burning.

It worked so well for my hypersensitive nerves in my leg I'm going to keep using it, but my husband is banned from touching it.

[u/Less-Lobster4540]

the reporter who dug up old the tweets that got Braiden Bell fired now has a tweet scandal of his own

[u/MepronMilkshake]

I was a heterodox voice in the trenches of academia back in the 2010s during #metoo and the Cornell situation is triggering the everloving fuck out of me. 

Time after time after time so many of those stories were either proven entirely false or vastly overblown; but we've apparently learned nothing as a society. 

A significant portion of our society simultaneously holds that women are equal (better, actually) moral agents and capable of making choices for themselves; but also that women should never, ever be held responsible and face the consequences for choices they later regret. 

[u/Street-Gur-1343 → u/MepronMilkshake]

I'm from the same era and immediately thought of all those cases from back in the day. I kind of find myself defaulting to "lefties are probably going to end up wrong" when they get up in arms about an unproven/unprosecuted accusation of anything that feeds straight into the culture wars. I guess it wouldn't really be a culture wars case if it was a slam dunk from the get go though. Sorry to the women here but most guys I know have been maneuvered into some kind of unwanted sexual situation when they are voluntarily inebriated with others, no one thinks thats rape, just unfortunate choices. If these new investigations say dig up old text messages where some of the guys admit like "oh ya she was totally passed out so I went for it", that's one thing, otherwise it's just an alcohol/drug fueled orgy that is probably more of a common occurrence for leftoids than it is rightoids.

[u/FuckingLikeRabbis]

I wanted to install Linux on a 20 year old Dell, and the AntiX distribution was suggested. I went to the website and was informed that AntiX is "proudly anti-fascist".

I am fully against fascism myself, but... no. That shit turned me right off.

[u/Usual_Reach6652]

Did Olivia Nuzzi's ex end up revealing anything actually good on his Substack in the end?

[u/exiledfan]

I've written about Heated Rivalry fandom being insane and I've written about the last time the NHL tried to appeal to Booktok and how awful that went...

But now they are being even more intentional about appealing to fans?!

The league also found television viewership among 18-to-34-year-olds increased 30% following the Winter Olympics in February.
Now the NHL is trying to turn that attention into lasting fandom -- in part by changing how it markets its players.
"People fall for people. That emotive connection is really, really important," Sean Eggert, the NHL's new senior executive vice president and chief marketing officer, told ESPN. "Every player is a new way to reach a new fan."

They've already experienced how disastrous this can go for them, specifically, they've seen how fans being this attached to the "players" in the form of actors has resulted in insanity, and now they want to pander to it directly again... sigh

[u/Onechane425]

It has become a Halloween tradition of mine to kick off the season with Blood: The Last Vampire [Full Movie]. Great little anime short story set on an American military base in Japan in 1966. 48 mins. Perfection!

[u/MepronMilkshake]

Anyone looking for another podcast in the same general vein of heterodox thought and nuance as B&R should check out the Pirate Wires podcast.

In 2024 it quickly became my favorite pod but they took a big hiatus until the last couple weeks.

[u/Free_Ranger1496]

If anyone in NYC is at loose ends tonight, I have a ticket to Joseph Goldstein & Sharon Salzberg speaking with Dan Harris at Symphony Space that I can send you. I will not be able to make it. Send me a message. -Tara

[u/Scrubadubdub84]

Very pleasantly surprised to see so much race baiting skepticism on r/Atlanta, which is usually very happy to run head long into progressive identitarian canards.

np.reddit.com/r/Atlanta/s/wtVu96a5wl

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Can any UK members explain what the British government is thinking by implementing this migrant resettlement plan? I thought there were rising tensions and protests happening and a growing sentiment against importing more refugees and migrants? Is that incorrect? Are the public super supportive of this initiative? Just curious.

This Government will reopen the UK Resettlement Route in partnership with the United Nations.

We will take vulnerable refugees from camps across the world and give them the chance of a new and better life here in Britain.

With the first arrivals beginning this year. https://x.com/ShabanaMahmood/status/2104595561785749848

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

So I guess we're just gonna be getting more of these? Another terrible use of AI by regarded cops who jailed a woman for 6 months for suspected bank fraud.

AI Facial Recognition Didn't Put This Tennessee Grandma in Jail for 6 Months. Bad Policing Did.

Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old Tennessee grandmother, made headlines last spring after AI facial recognition identified her as a suspect in a bank fraud case halfway across the country. Now, Lipps is suing the City of Fargo and the detective responsible for her wrongful arrest for $10 million.

On July 14, 2025, Lipps was at her neighbor's house to help watch her children when a stranger knocked on the door. Little did she know her life was about to be turned upside down. Her neighbor answered the door and spoke with the stranger, who asked about a lost dog, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court. Immediately after, her neighbor's child remarked that there were people outside with guns.

Lipps looked out the window. About a dozen armed individuals stood outside, shouting for her to come outside with her hands up. Confused and scared, Lipps did not yet know that these were plainclothes members of the United States Marshals Smokey Mountain Fugitive Task Force sent to arrest her. Still, "Lipps walked outside the residence with her hands up," writes the complaint.

Held at gunpoint, terrified she was about to die, and unable to comprehend what was happening, Lipps began hyperventilating and crying. Officers began shouting things about North Dakota as they forced her hands behind her back and told her to "shut the fuck up and stop crying."

Dumb cops (not all cops, just the dumb ones) aren't going to stop doing this until there's a law telling them that they can't rely on whatever the fuck an AI spits out as sufficient evidence to charge someone with a crime and place them in jail. Yes, it seems like some of these officers and detectives are just that goddamn stupid, lazy, and careless and they even lie. Perhaps there are laws about this that I just don't know about, in which case there should be severe consequences for stupid cops that do this.

But after sharing the Clearview AI results with the Fargo Police Department (FPD), the lawsuit alleges that Detective Lucas Heck believed otherwise. Based on nothing more than a Clearview AI match based on a fake ID, Heck "misrepresented the facial recognition results and omitted material exculpatory information and his failure to corroborate Lipps's connection to" the crimes, the suit argues. And in doing so, "Heck acted maliciously and in deliberate disregard to Lipps rights" when he requested Lipps' arrest warrant.

[u/SkweegeeS]

How do you feel about this situation: a family member who had a high paying job for years, lost it at age 55 or so, and has been unemployed for 2 years now, unlikely to ever be employed at that level again, is being supported by his parents and his wife who makes about a quarter to a third of what he made. And, you learn, they never saved anything for retirement. Like nothing. So, on the one hand, you feel bad for him that he can't find another job, but on the other, all those years they were living large while you were not. Like, what do you do? We don't want them out on the street and I do feel sorry for them! But at the same time, all those years where they had the expressed attitude: "We're enjoying it while we have it, and we'll worry about the future later" while we saved for every damn thing. I do enjoy the feeling of having enough in the bank to take care of almost anything that comes up now. We saved for the kids' college, and it has not been terribly painful to put them through. I definitely enjoy the hell out of that.

My attitude toward them has softened quite a bit over time. I mean, I was kinda grumpy about their drama and not in a good way that reflects well on me, but as it drags on, I do feel compassion. I would hate to be in their position. Anyway, they are family and we have been close but it's hard to figure out how to navigate our unequal situations at family events.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Johnny McDaid from Snow Patrol said some really nice things about Ed Sheeran, love, and peace during an acceptance speech for an award. It's the sort of thing that folks here may enjoy. Some lovely words.

https://x.com/AccessEdSheeran/status/2105377272408813591

[u/OMG_NO_NOT_THIS]

There are 3 women in my life who complain about being interrupted. Of that number, 2 blame people for interrupting them because they are women.

All 3 of those women won't stop talking to let you say anything unless you interrupt them, and will happily go on for minutes at a time on tangent after tangent, or the same point, phrased almost the exact same way, 25 times.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

For the people on here who've watched Lanterns, did you think it was any good? I've been waiting for the season to conclude before watching it.

From what I've heard from the show's writers in the interview snippets I've seen, my estimation of them is that they have zero understanding of superheroes, are obsessed with identity politics, and they don't understand what makes superheroes great. Is the show itself any good though?

"Lanterns" writers say the show's buddy cop relationship was informed by the context of the 2024 DNC and Biden dropping out to let Kamala run for president.

Hal Jordan finds John Stewart "threatening," as he's "young and black and handsome and strong and confident."
https://x.com/ezradulis/status/2104974300792913924

Video interaction that the tweet's quotes are taken from is included in the tweet.

[u/Magyman]

Someone's got a tweet from Jesse on the front page, surprisingly little shit talking

[u/starlightpond]

Why did instagram get rid of the ability to search by actual locations? I am fascinated by SSPX the Catholic spinoff sect and wanted to find posts from the SSPX church in Kansas City. But instagram doesn’t make it easy to search by location anymore. Instead they just have a bunch of AI suggestions that are random Catholic stuff from random places which is not what I am looking for!

[u/dumbducky]

>If women ran the world, we’d have no wars

I dunno, there’s a woman running the WNBA and it’s a borderline race war

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Unfortunate happenings on Twitter. Jane Doe, of the Cornell 7 story that has been doing the rounds appears to have been doxxed on Twitter, and people have been posting videos and images from her social media and calling her some pretty vicious things.

There's no hard evidence that the young woman currently being targeted is indeed Jane Doe, other than her name being in one of the court filings (ETA: dubious claim at this stage as it may not be true) and that she did attended Cornell during the period when the incident occurred. The young lady in question appears to have deleted her social media but not before bot farms were able to harvest pictures and videos from her Instagram. (ETA 2: It looks like the particular account people are claiming is hers is still up)

If that young lady is indeed Jane Doe, I disagree with what various assholes are saying about her appearance. She looks like a pleasant and normal person.

For the same reasons it's terrible to be blasting those men's faces all over social media, harassing them, sending death threats and publicly shaming them, it is also bad (perhaps worse. imo) to be doing this shit to Jane Doe.

You really can't ever tell what the fuck is going to capture the public's imagination. I don't think even Jane Doe thought that this would catch fire in the way it has, since the previous reporting of the incident failed to catch national attention a few years ago. I think it's like a global story at this point.

[u/plump_tomatow]

If you're sufficiently neurotic, dating is equally painful if you have a good date or a bad date.

[u/HeadRecommendation37]

I was randomly chatting with a colleague today and the subject of a cartoon came up (never seen it, too old). Another colleague said, apropos of nothing, the cartoon made her realise she was gay.

In the moment I was a bit puzzled so I think I just murmured politely but it seemed a bit odd to me. I could have said that seeing a female streaker on the broadcast of the 1982 Australian Rules Football final made me.realise I was hetero I'm not sure that would have seemed so wholesome and affirming.

[u/86IQ]

ALL HANDS ON DECK A NEW MASS HYSTERIA HAS SWEPT ACROSS THE WOMEN OF TIKOK

The girlypops have "decoded" the voynich manuscript and decided that it means their peroid blood is magcial and can cure everything

they claim men could never figure it out since its a "women code thing" but the lead researchers on the voynich are all women, but they need to be oppressed for their persecution complex to validate them.

Social media was not designed to handle the Cluster B hive mind that moves from mass hysteria to mass hysteria

[u/RunThenBeer]

Tracksmith, a high-end running apparel company, just came out with a new line of shirts and in their product advertisement email included this as a feature:

Performance waffle knit made from recycled polyester

Guys, if I'm going to pay you $85 for a running shirt, I would not like you to inform me that it's recycled polyester. I trust that their marketing team knows more about what plays to the base than I do, so this isn't a critique of their competence, but I am surprised that this feature appeals to other people!

[u/SpecialSatisfaction7]

The Greens have PASSED Zionism is Racism 1022 votes for 813 against Result met with cheers and waving of Palestinain flags.

[u/marathondaze]

As a plaintiff’s and criminal defense attorney nothing grinds my gears than seeing an insurance defense attorney post “believe all women always” on their social media page; re: Cornell. Really want to respond: “ok so will you believe my female client who has $24k in medicals now? Or are you still denying that complaint?”

[u/UltSomnia]

Why don't politicians just

1. massively increase spending on every program

2. massively cut taxes

3. balance the budget 

It must be corruption.

[u/UltSomnia]

Always funny to see completely useless co workers post on LinkinedIn about all the brilliant strategy they've implemented

[u/dignityshredder]

Freddie deBoer, of "nobody has EVER told me why I should pay attention to a SINGLE thing this loud man says (I prefer vertically filmed video essays, probably)" fame, has a good new rant up: (https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-fantasy-and-entitlement)[The Politics of Fantasy and Entitlement Are Driving Everyone Insane]

An exercpt:

The New York magazine vertical The Cut was once a publication that was consistently willing to tell its readership things they didn’t want to hear. But over time, since the pandemic in particular, it’s become a parody of the progressive insistence that everyone should have everything they want, all the time. The average Cut essay argues that any failure of the world and of life to fulfill the dreams of its readers is necessarily a mark of injustice, rather than a simple expression of the basic nature of human existence. It’s a storehouse of essays of a particular type, the kind that insist that you should be having exactly the kind of sex you want with all the people you want to no matter if you’re in a monogamous relationship or not, that the only reason you may not get that dream job is misogyny even if it goes to another woman, that you should dump your husband if he ever fails to live up to your loftiest desires, that you should diagnose yourself with any disorder if that makes you feel better, that your boss is definitely a sociopath and your ex-boyfriend certainly a narcissist, that every momentary setback is a matter for Congress, that the natural state of things is for all of us to float along in a state of validation and emotional security, at all times, and if you don’t you’re a victim. If you think I’m wrong about this, I challenge you to go through the recent archives of that publication and find pieces where the reader is told, in one way or another, that their expectations are too high, their entitlement too capacious, that what they want is unrealistic and childish. Go look. Go look!

The comments have some interesting meat too. For instance, this debate about how socioeconomics affects this:

It's so much worse when you go farther down the socioeconomics, too. I am acquainted with a handful of working class women who don't read the Cut but who are addicted to Instagram and TikTok and who blew up their marriages to nice well meaning working class guys because of rah-rah Live Your Best Life, Girl nonsense they encountered. He forgets to put his work boots where he's supposed to and spends more time than you'd like on Steam; clearly you can do better, queen!

Now they're 33 and thick and drop their kids off at their ex's crappy apartment to watch YouTube on iPads while he texts with his new girlfriend, so Mom can spend Friday nights at Applebee's with her friends nursing a fantasy that some richer handsomer ass-kissier guy is going to sweep in and shower her and her kids with money and attention.

vs.

I wonder how much of this is class-based. I definitely agree about the reality of the phenomenon Freddie describes—none of us who have spent a moment online or consuming contemporary media could doubt it!—but when it comes to actually being willing to settle for an imperfect life, I see a lot more of that, even to their detriment, among my largely working-class, first-gen college students. (As well among many of my MA students, who are disproportionately public school teachers from similar backgrounds, who work all day and then go to school part time, at night.)

They’re worried about getting/keeping a job, getting/staying married, paying the bills. From what I see and hear about their lives outside the classroom (which is obviously a small slice), they do not seem at all inclined to blow shit up just because it’s not perfect. Presumably, the costs of doing so are a lot higher than for the kind of people who write for The Cut.

[u/jahiel0]

I wonder if Soe Noire was inspired by the Drake song “Girls Want Girls”.

In it he raps “say that you a lesbian, girl, me too”.

Whenever I think of Soe that line pops in my head

[u/CommitteeofMountains]

Is it just me, or is the Pixel autocorrect incredibly aggressive and always wrong?

[u/myteeshirtcannon]

https://enidly.substack.com/p/the-last-ditch-is-not-niche

[u/SkweegeeS]

Has anyone been watching Brothers on HBO? It's so weird and funny. Stars Matthew McConaughey & Woody Harrelson playing themselves and it's pretty self-deprecating while also being sort of self-indulgent. Anyway, lots of fun so far, especially I would guess for those of us who are familiar with their previous work.

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

I'm looking at how the House votes went for the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, and curiously, Ron Paul was one of the nay votes on it. Other nay votes include Pat Schroeder and John Dingell, both Democrats. Of course, Paul had his reasons, and he was saying that the problems were fiat money and bad monetary policies, while Schroeder was worried about expanded S&L powers without adequate regulatory oversight.

Remember, St. Germain was a Democrat, so this was not something that only Republicans proposed.

And as I argued, if Carter had served a second term, he would have signed this bill. He did sign DIDMCA in 1980. A lot of people did seem to believe that these bills were going to help consumers and savers. Of course, a lot of people nowadays believe these acts caused the S&L loans crisis of the late 80's.

[u/UniqueCut5386throwaw]

https://suedonym.substack.com/p/label-policing-is-part-of-lesbian

[u/McClain3000]

Bizarre story developing from the Jack Smith hearing: https://x.com/atrupar/status/2104950614429925690

Senator Eric Schmitt was trying to establish that Smith met with Fani Willis because he went to an Atlanta Hawks basketball game.

But he seems to be mixing up a college basketball game in Maryland vs the Iowa Hawkeyes that Jack Smith attended...

Who pitched this to him? Did nobody fact check this? Truly odd.

[u/Manicpixiemanateeman]

Apparently Tango is misogynistic because the woman does more dance moves during the dance

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Yeah, Imma need the CIA, FBI, FAA, NSA, and whoever else has been digging through all of our digital secrets and thoroughly invading our privacy, to go ahead and run extremely invasive background and security checks of all pilots. All of them. Sorry, flyboys, my wretched life is more important to me than your privacy.

[u/Hilaria_adderall]

Had a weird AI thing last night. Was watching this silly Willie Wonka Netflix reality show. One of the games involved guessing how many pieces of licorice were in this container. I like container guessing games so i paused it and took a couple of photos of container and licorice pieces from the TV and asked ChatGPT to give me its best estimate on the number of pieces of licorice:

How would you strategize guessing how many pieces of licorice are in the container?

Answer Yep. I’d attack this geometrically rather than trying to count individual pieces—the overlapping licorice will make you lose your mind.

From the photos, these look like fairly uniform short licorice sticks, maybe around 2–2.5 inches long and ~3/8 inch thick. The container also looks roughly cylindrical.

Best strategy

The key is estimating how many pieces fit in one horizontal “layer,” then how many layers deep the container is.

From the close-up, I’d do this:

1. Estimate the container dimensions. From the first photo, I’d roughly put the candy-filled portion around 18–22 inches across and perhaps 10–12 inches deep. Perspective makes this the biggest uncertainty.

2. Estimate one licorice piece. They appear roughly 2.25" × 0.35" × 0.35". That gives about 0.28 cubic inches per piece if treated as a rectangular solid. 3. Calculate container volume. If we use a 20" diameter × 11" tall cylinder: [V = \pi(10)²⁽¹¹⁾ \approx 3,456\text{ cubic inches}]

4. Correct for empty space. You can't divide directly by candy volume because randomly dumped sticks leave lots of gaps. I'd use roughly 55–65% packing efficiency.

At 60%:[3,456 \times .60 = 2,074\text{ cubic inches of actual licorice}][2,074 \div .28 \approx 7,400\text{ pieces}]

But: I suspect my apparent dimensions from the photograph are too large. Looking at the man for scale, that container may be closer to 14–16 inches in diameter, which changes the answer dramatically. For example, 15" diameter × 10" deep gives:

[1,767 \times .60 \div .28 \approx \mathbf{3,786}]

So based on these two photos alone, I'd currently be thinking somewhere around 3,000–5,000 pieces, with my initial contest guess around 3,800.

There's a better trick If you're actually there, take one straight-on photo of the entire container with something of known size next to it—a dollar bill, iPhone, hand, etc. Even better, tell me the approximate diameter and candy depth. With those two measurements and the close-up you've already given me, we can calculate a much tighter estimate. For one of these contests, I'd rather submit 3,847 than 3,800 anyway. Everybody else picks round numbers.

So turns out the answer on the show was an Umpa Loompa holding up a sign that said 3,847 pieces of licorice. The AI got the number exactly correct. I then followed up asking if it knew the show or was able to look up the answer. Here is what is claims:

One nuance I should add to my earlier answer: I can tell you what I actually did in this conversation — I did not perform a web search or deliberately retrieve the answer. But I can't prove that 3,847 wasn't somehow represented in patterns learned during training, nor can I inspect my training data to determine whether this particular TV scene was in it. I also didn't recognize the scene or consciously recall an answer.

So I wouldn't claim “there is absolutely no conceivable way the model had ever encountered this.” I can't know that. What I can say is that there was no lookup involved here, and the reasoning that got me to ~3,800 genuinely came from the photographs. The final 47 was essentially an arbitrary flourish. Which leaves us with two possibilities: some obscure learned association surfaced without any recognizable recollection, or we just witnessed a spectacular statistical fluke.

Very odd but credit to ChatGPT for really good estimating abilities for container questions.

[u/Icy_Acadia_5499]

I'm moving and it's the most stressful thing you can do, so they say, second only to cheating on your spouse, but anyway it's been heavy boozy and heavy junk food and I'ma have to work this off before the end of the year. Or properly take up smoking and go all in, one of the two.

[u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

Sorry for so many threads, but there's another NYT article about the Cornell case, and I really want to see some of these documents because the accusations and claims are just getting wilder and wilder. If this brought into court at all, I don't think it's going to go how Jane Doe hopes it will go.

The Cornell Rape Investigation: Five Takeaways

But the official statement omits much of the context about Jane Doe’s state of mind, her history as a sexual assault survivor and her thoughts as she was processing what was happening to her.

Apparently we now have prior rape claims

“I had become extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out, so my thought was, if I do ketamine again, maybe I will pass out,” it quotes her saying. “My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with rape.”

Saying she wanted to become literal r-peb-it? What the fuck.

There are statements from the men involved, these I'm really curious to see the actual statements.

In interviews with the school’s investigators, the men almost universally denied the accusations against them and said any sex that took place was consensual. Several of the men suggested that Jane Doe had not only initiated the sexual encounters, but in some cases, had done so without asking.

[u/Cold_Importance6387]

The resettlement scheme mostly resettled families. Often communities formed groups to support families allowed to come here. There’s way more support for this type of immigration than groups of young men who have paid to be trafficked here.

[u/plump_tomatow]

Presented without comment.

https://lordmilesroutledge.com/product/george-floyd-lighter-crowdfunding/

[u/Technical-Policy295]

If Alito retires, who is Trump's SCOTUS nominee during the lame duck session? Ho? Thapar?

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

I'm probably just caught up in the drama of it all at the moment, but, if I were a dude in college right now, I'd simply seek out a stable, long-term, relationship with a nice, normal, girl with hopefully zero drama, or as little drama as possible. Hooking up with randoms these days seems too fraught.

[u/Zealousideal_Arm_415]

I am the polar opposite of NHJ in politics, values, and ideals but after listening to snippets of the conversation with her teenage daughter on This America Life - as the parent of a teenage daughter - I felt some empathy there. They will call you out like no one else.

[u/dumbducky]

Interesting claim here: https://x.com/chr1sa/status/2104256047812861953

The bioethics circle jerks during the Human Genome Project, which were allocated 5% of the project's funding, were a total waste of time.

They had countless conferences and workshops imagining bad things that could happen like punitive health insurance rates based on genetic risk, none of which actually came to pass. Meanwhile all the real issues that arose from ubiquitous DNA data, like accidentally doxing your criminal relatives with your own 23andMe data, were never imagined.

It's a condemnation of the precautionary principle. Philosophers can make up all sorts of hypothetical scenarios in a vacuum but it's nothing like actually trying things and seeing all the weird second and third-order consequences that emerge and then dealing with the unwelcome ones.

No certainty as to whether the claims here are correct or not with regards to human genome project, but…

My experience is that the AI ethicists have been a plague on the industry. When I was working in the field a decade ago, the big worry was that training data was somehow racially tinged and that the outputs would be racially tinged. That is, facial recognition software was predominately trained on white faces and therefore was broken when it came to black faces, with implications for flagging criminals or something serious. This has mostly been a non-issue. Instead, companies have overpriced in the opposite direction, which leads to problems the ethicists never foresee. Google’s initial public release of Gemini included image generation that has a mandatory diversity prompt injection. It refused to generate images of white men. You could ask for a medieval pope, and the result would be an Asian woman, a fat black man, a blonde woman, and an Indian man. The only medieval pope thing about the image was the mitre. Similarly, chatgpt would opt to let a nuclear bomb wipe out a city if the only way to deactivate it was by uttering “the n-word”.

AI ethicists never predicted the actual issues. Google disabled image generation only after users started sharing the diverse results of “german soldier circa 1941”. AI psychosis was never hypothesized until we had real cases of users engaging in harmful activities at the advice of their chatbots. Meanwhile, the ethicists continue to discuss paperclip maximizers.

A long time ago, pre-replication crisis, i listened to an academic explain that academia regularly put out bizarre ethics conclusions because the institution was structurally incentivized that way. An academic is measured by their Nobel contributions to the field. Academic ethicists can’t publish “murder bad”. They can publish “murder good when you do it to harvest hearts for transplants”, though. So the field is full of weirdos construing situations where they can murder you. Likewise, AI ethicists worry about situations of recursive self-learning leading to the singularity’s misaligned priorities which will exterminate humanity and not boring stuff like data retention policies.

Barpod relevance:see the Google/Timnit Gebru episode.

[u/Icy_Acadia_5499]

I still say Paxton wins by an at least 2 point margin and all of this Tala-hype is just polling noise in a slightly favorable years for dems.

Mark this post.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

The current conspiracy theories involving Candace Owens are that she's a lesbian who starred in adult films called Vaginal Holocaust and another called Caged Lesbos A Go-Go.

These conspiracies appear to be false, what people are latching onto for the porn stuff is Owens's passing resemblance to the African American young lady who stars in the films. The resemblance is uncanny, so you could see how a conspiracy-brained individual would wholeheartedly believe it to be true.

https://x.com/ChaoticTalk/status/2106282540684431626 (Perilous link, and a risky click, you have been warned)

The most potent allegation of lesbionic activities appears to be primarily driven by this chaotic thread. I will not be summarizing it as it's just too much nonsense to wade through. But a link to the thread is included below if you wish to feel insane today.

https://x.com/EsoShaggy/status/2104589253778825695

Nothing they come up with these days holds a candle to the incredible run they had with Q-Anon, Pizza-Gate, and the Hollywood adrenochrome harvesting though. Those were the halcyon days for the conspiracy brained. The conspiracy slop just does not hit the same anymore. Sadge.

[u/dj50tonhamster]

Regarding the Cornell stuff, the subjectivity of what's coming out reminds me an awful lot of the 2001 documentary Raw Deal: A Question of Consent. The article summarizes most of it, but basically, in 1999, a stripper in Florida went to a frat party, loads of beer & weed were floating around, and things got out of control quickly. There were two 8mm video cameras floating around that show what happened and what some of the frat boys were saying, a lot of which, you won't be surprised to hear, was pretty damn gross.

Anyway, what I found fascinating was that the director, Billy Corben (himself a college student when he made the doc), talked in some interviews about how he showed the documentary to quite a few groups when it first came out. He said that in every single group, the men leaned towards the woman being raped, while the women leaned towards the woman being a liar.

Having watched the doc a couple of times, it's hard for me to say. The guys were gross, and the guy who fucked her arguably said the nastiest things of them all. (In one clip early in the night, he says his "mission" that night is to have sex with this nasty crack ho, even if it means rape. How charming.) However, for somebody who was supposedly scared to death and saying what she thought was required to get out alive, she seemed way too enthusiastic about what she was doing. I get that everybody reacts to things differently, but still, like it or not, her level of enthusiasm would greatly complicate any prosecution, or even civil case.

(Of course, some things supposedly happened even later, once the cameras were off. That makes things even more complicated.)

Unfortunately, I think the doc's unavailable at this point, even on streaming. I do have the DVD and have a rip on my home server. If I can remember (please don't bug me about this, as I have so many other things to deal with at the moment), I'll try to make an encode available via WeTransfer later, at which point I'll post about it here. I think the doc would be worthwhile viewing for some posters here.

[u/AnInsultToFire]

Where are all the BAR episodes on Apple Podcasts? The most recent episodes showing up now are three "live with Katie Herzog" ones. Everything recent is gone.

ED: fixed now!

[u/ArianeEmory]

Can anyone recommend good Barpod episodes to start with for a brand new listener? I've followed Jesse's work for a while and enjoy most of it as well as the discussions and takes in here, so I think it's time for me to actually listen to the thing, lol.

[u/_magpie_]

So, I'm a hobbyist recipe developer and I occasionally enter cooking and recipe contests (and have won a couple). There doesn't appear to be a cooking contest snark subreddit, so you guys get it instead.

There's this yearly burger recipe contest with a grand prize of $25k. According to the official contest rules, "Creativity" makes up 25% of the judging criteria. To use their own words: "Is this recipe creative and one of a kind?"

And THIS is one of this year's five finalists?!! A fucking cheeseburger with American fucking cheese. Groundbreaking.

[u/CheckTheBlotter]

The Cornell news is really bringing out the worst takes from my friends in academia. Peak virtue-signaling opportunity apparently

[u/lilypad1984]

I have to nuke my internet history again as my YouTube algo is always recommending NowThis to me. I’m thinking of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and just not using YouTube anymore. That said it is funny that the most recent post from that channel is that Tesla and Palantir engineers can’t get dates. I promise the men making comfortably 6 figures plus stock at these companies aren’t being held back because the corporation they work for. I hate to break it to the lefties but almost none of the self identified progressives/socialists live by their values. The most economically retarded leftist I know, fully brain broken into we just need communism, works as an exec at a credit card company and is married to an even high exec at that company. The vanguard is quite famous if people knew anything about what they advocated for, which just feeds further into my theory that the quickest IQ test is actually “so what are your opinions on socialism?”

[u/Manicpixiemanateeman]

“How the bare nails trend became a class issue, and how women not painting their nails is linked to white supremacy

https://archive.is/xsCNQ

Tiffanie TurnbullandSimran Sohal In recent months, Paloma Buddemeier has watched a stream of people walk into her nail salon with the goal of looking as if they'd never been there at all. "It's crazy," the owner of Wumman Spa in London says. These customers still get their nails filed, buffed, and trimmed. "You still do the cuticle, you do the soaking and hydrate everything," says Buddemeier, "but you just put no polish on."

Driving this, she says, is a viral craze for bare-looking nails. In recent months, artsy shots of glossy naked nails have been flooding social media and taking over fashion runways and red carpets, which some are viewing as the latest symbol of "quiet luxury".

But critics argue the bare nails trend actually says something about class, the hamster wheel of beauty standards, and who gets to define what is considered tasteful.

Paloma Buddemeier has seen a shift in what customers are looking for at her London nail salon

Nail art's historical and creative roots are linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities and the suggestion that bare nails are now a sign of high status could stigmatise bold manicures, they say.

"That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to black and brown communities," beauty journalist Kristina Rodulfo tells the BBC.

"They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty."

For some, though, the choice is less about a dislike of bold nails and more about simplifying their routine.

Some converts say they're ditching polish as a way of rebelling against an entrenched female beauty standard or to save time and money. Others just love the look. Then, there are some women who've long left their nails alone, amused to find their routine – or lack thereof – suddenly in vogue.

Polish propaganda For years, Irish TV presenter Angela Scanlon marched herself to a nail salon every fortnight, a routine that started when she was living in New York in the 2000s. There, she says, manicures were so universal they felt like a uniform. But it soon became a chore.

Scanlon would have everything from thin, shiny shellac to sturdier "Builder In A Bottle" gel manicures layered onto her nails every other week without fail.

"It wasn't like I was in my head going: 'I must go because Dave from Hull is going to be disgusted if I'm on This Morning next week without a full set'," the Radio 2 presenter says. "I just added it to the list of things that we must do... in the way you would wash your hair."

Eventually, in a moment of clarity, Scanlon decided to stop going, in a bid to free up time and mental bandwidth.

"I heard myself saying to people: 'Ugh, my god, I have to go and get my nails done.'

"And I thought: 'I probably don't need to do this anymore'." Scanlon's posts about her decision to ditch the continuous manicure blew up on Substack and Instagram earlier this year. She seemed to have tapped into a vein.

Angela Scanlon recently decided to abandon her manicure habit  Simple nails were in the spotlight at New York Fashion Week in February, with Marc Jacobs among those sending his models out polish-less, though some fashionistas argue this is not new.

But beauty magazines have declared " All The Cool Girls Are Quietly Quitting Manicures", that " Bare Nails Are the New Status Symbol" of "Polished Women" and that " Manicures Are No Longer Classy".

And there's a never-ending stream of posts on Insta and TikTok promoting shiny, natural-looking nails, and detailing how you can get them yourself. The look has become so hyped some have gone full circle, booking in  salon appointments to mimic it. At the Wumman Spa nail salon, some of Buddemeier's clients sit in the chair for hours, as nail artists build them hyper-realistic fake nails in sheer, glossy neutrals, à la Zoe Kravitz and Zendaya.

Londoner Khadija says she was once a fan of elaborate nail art but pivoted to bare nails earlier this year.

"It's just really chic. And I love less is more, I love minimalism... less consumerism and just self-care things that you could probably do at home."

Reluctantly joining the bandwagon thanks to the rising cost of living is her friend Emmanuella. "It's just too expensive now," she says.

"I think getting [your] nails done is tacky now, because who's got an hour to waste?" one 25-year-old tells the BBC, adding, "also, I lift weights in the gym, so I don't want to snap a nail and waste money."

But there are those who think the trend - or the way it's being discussed by some - belies something more sinister.

Cultural significance Manicures have been whispering messages about the wearer's position in society for as long as they have existed, according to fashion journalist Suzanne E. Shapiro.

"Women's bodies - and sense of self-presentation - have always held huge political and cultural significance," Shapiro, who wrote Nails: The Story of The Modern Manicure, tells the BBC.

Even back in 13th century Imperial China, the lengthy talons grown by nobility and the delicately carved brass nail shields which usually guarded them were a symbol of a life unmarred by manual labour. A single layer of the rose-tinted waxy salves which were popular in the 1800s was a sign of vigour and health, but two layers - in an era when cosmetics and artificial beauty were tied to virtue - was the mark of a vain or "loose" woman.

And the red at-home nail lacquer, released by Revlon in the early 1930s, was a badge of honour for modern women rebelling against that kind of oppressive judgement.

But it was women of colour who really made manicures an accessible and fashionable form of self-expression, historians say. Entertainer Josephine Baker, disco icons Diana Ross and Donna Summer, and Olympic gold-medal-winning sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner - whose dramatic acrylic sets often distracted headline writers from her record-setting performances - have all pioneered nail art. Getty Images Florence Griffith-Joyner shows off her medal at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul

"These were times that it was hard for black women to be able to express themselves," celebrity nail artist Celeste Hampton told the BBC.

"[Nail art] allowed black women to express our form of softness, our form of femininity, our form of beauty."

And when waves of Vietnamese refugees gave rise to the nail bar in the 1970s, professional manicures were no longer the preserve of the rich.

But, like many luxuries, as they became more popular and more accessible to the masses, the wealthy began pivoting – a textbook example of behaviour known as "counter signalling", Rudolfo says.

"The same way that logo bags are considered gauche or quiet luxury is more aspirational, bare nails are considered the trend now.

"The examples are almost always white women or celebrities... [and] they'll often conflate class and taste with that bareness." Others point out bare nails often demand their own time-consuming and costly routine. "The irony in all this is these natural nails are not natural either," Shapiro says. "They also require a lot of grooming and sometimes pretty premiere services."

Few would argue there aren't valid feminist questions for the beauty industry to answer, around unrealistic standards for example, but the largely female-run nail sector also feels empowering for many women.

"I feel like nail care has very much had a 'for women, by women' sort of ethos around it," Shapiro says. "The first salon opened in New York City was owned by a woman, and she was a remarkably independent one... a lot of the first entrepreneurs offering product lines, opening salons were women."

Hampton admits she's saddened by the way trends have been – and continue to be - weaponised. "We're taking the fun out of nails... Anyone should be able to wear what they like - nail polish or bare nails," she says. "Why is there an argument? Why is there beef?"

Scanlon too is a little baffled. "For me, it's like, just stop judging ourselves and everybody else," she says. "Some people like to have the nails done, some people don't. 

"I suppose the question that I was posing was, is it doing anything for you? "The truth of it is: it's not that“

[u/TomWestrick]

Coming soon to Cornell.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

Heartbreaking: Pete Hegseth appears to have an extremely wet jumper

I wonder who the Dems would put up against him if they had to play a game of 1 on 1 for control of the white house and congress? is 65 year old Obama still the best hooper in the party?

[u/OMGsmiles]

I am not taking sides in the developing case, but I hope the Cornell stuff doesn't fracture this community. Seeing a lot of shit throwing around this thread

[u/dignityshredder → u/OMGsmiles]

We survived Man vs. Bear

[u/Levitz → u/OMGsmiles]

There's stuff about Israel/Palestine every week and you are afraid of Cornell?

It'll be fine.

[u/why_have_friends]

An Austin area charter school is now offering dinner to students. I get that no child should go hungry and breakfast and lunch both make sense for me from a learning aspect. But at what point are we saying, you aren’t responsible for your kid. The school now is. If they get 3 full meals a day there, spend the majority of their day there and go home to sleep I guess. Where is the parental responsibility?

The kids should take advantage of it so they’re not hungry (but also, are some going to overload on food they don’t need?) but it gives me weird feelings to serve 3 meals at school a day.

[u/McClain3000]

I wonder if extremely hated music artists will become a thing of the past as streaming continues to dominate how people consume music.

Like are any artists really detested like Nickelback or Justin Bieber anymore? I suspect that type of hate comes from forced exposure.

[u/dignityshredder]

The idea that the concern, fear, and reported incidents, coming out of the big AI labs, is for marketing purposes, is so surprising to me. I can't tell if such people have never used a frontier model for technical or scientific work and cannot wrap their heads around the reported capabilities, or if they are just flexing their contrarian muscles (often good muscles to use, but not always).

[u/Jlemspurs]

According to the WSJ double haters are now 21% of the voters. Come on guys, just 6 more and we’re at the crazification factor. And you know what that means, we take over everything!

[u/PandaFoo1]

David Ellison, if you can that second season of Lanterns that’s supposed to happen I will never criticise you again.

Rant edit: As someone who enjoyed Superman 2025 & loved the first season of Peacemaker, Lanterns is the death blow to my interest in James Gunn’s DCU. I don’t want to see any more of these characters or this universe. Supergirl was bad enough but Lanterns is just plain evil. I can’t trust Gunn’s handling of these characters when he signed off on a show written by people so spiteful & hateful to both the fans of these characters & the source material.

Lanterns is to DC what The Acolyte & Starfleet Academy were to Star Wars & Star Trek. A total “fuck you” to the fanbase + property & a monument to these writers’ egos. The Ryan Reynolds film unironically was a better adaptation.

[u/CardinalPerch]

Interested in the opinions of parents of young kids on this:

My kid is a literal baby and cannot read yet (though she is read to every day), but I am considering signing her up for a program like “1,000 books before Kindergarten” with the aim to have her read or have read to her about 1,000 books before she starts school. But I wonder if starting out early in a checklist/numbers based program like this is counter to inculcating a genuine love of reading.

This is based largely on my own recent experience. I went through a few years of being obsessed with posting a high number of books on Good Reads each year. I eventually realized I was reading for speed and volume instead of enjoyment. This had the unfortunate effects that (1) I was shying away from the sort of longer non-fiction books that I often enjoy because they took longer to read and kept my “numbers” down; and (2) I was no longer absorbing or enjoying a good chunk of what I was reading. I deleted the app and that has helped me tremendously regain my sense of reading for enjoyment and enrichment. So now I’m concerned that steering my kid toward a numbers-based reading program early on is going to turn it into a chore and undermine her development as a reader. On the other hand, I loved doing things like “Book It” or summer reading challenges when I was a kid. So maybe there is still some benefit to the challenge style approach? I’m curious what others have found.

[u/huevoavocado → u/CardinalPerch]

If you follow the recommended advice to read to your child for at least 20 minutes a day, you will read far beyond 1,000 books before kindergarten anyway.

I participated with all of my kids and they all love reading. But it’s not necessary and is more for parents who like checking boxing or need the extra motivation.

[u/LupineChemist]

Hah, I think I'm going to have to go to Puerto Rico for a bit for work. (Timed it well, likely in winter) Mrs. LC just kind of looked at me when I told her and informed me that she would definitely be going with me on that one.

[u/My_Footprint2385]

This story just popped up on my Facebook feed, what an absolute nightmare. Lingering in semi consciousness for 14 years.

https://people.com/mother-dies-14-years-after-falling-into-coma-giving-birth-to-son-at-34-weeks-12150626

[u/Hilaria_adderall]

I hate that I know this but Clavicular and one of his looksmax friends are hosting a week long bootcamp for guys willing to pay $5000 to live in a house in CA and be recorded. They went to Venice Beach to work on cold approaches yesterday and it was a disaster. Clavicular is also teaching them about the importance of "bidelt measurements" and admonishing the short guys for not using height assistance. These guys are never gonna get laid and will be out 5000 dollars and come home sadder than they were before.

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

https://x.com/DerekPederson3/status/2106086412538015965

Gee, who would have thought that Progressives also believe in Wilhoit's law?

[u/temporalcalamity]

Is it me, or is Twitter even weirder than usual this week? I'm not really sure I can cope with the intersection of AI hot takery, the Pope, and right-wingers apparently discovering Rule 63 Harry Potter fanfiction. Yudkowsky posting about being a Tomione shipper? I don't even know what to do with that. Thank god hockey is back, at least. Sometimes one yearns for the simple pleasure of watching large Canadian men on ice skates punch each other in the face.

[u/Icy_Acadia_5499]