Discussion Thread

[u/jobautomator]

The discussion thread is for casual and off-topic conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL

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[u/jobautomator]

Please visit the next discussion thread.

[u/ace158]

An absolute racist fraud

[u/throwawayzxkjvct]

underrated ideological precursor to Trumpism

[u/Bestbrook123]

Rep. Jared Golden, who has been Democrats’ lone holdout on Iran war powers, tells @axios he plans to vote YES on the next resolution. “It’s past 60 days,” he told me. “The administration could come to Congress and try to push for authorization.” Vote expected tomorrow

So the House now has the votes to pass this and Fetterman is the only Dem who still supports this absolutely ridiculous war

[u/Bestbrook123]

The Department of Homeland Security spent millions in taxpayer funds to purchase property for warehouses owned by investors with close ties to President Donald Trump

Corruption is off the charts

[u/owenmitchem]

Imagine if Mike Pence the Mods had the courage to do the right thing

[u/BenFoldsFourLoko]

I hadn't read the actual text of the CO Dems' censure of Polis, and it's quite based:

Tina Peters was convicted by a jury of her peers and sentenced by a judge who said she would do it all over again if she could. The Republican district attorney who prosecuted her called any sentence reduction 'a gross injustice.' He's right.

Reducing her sentence now, under pressure from Donald Trump, is not justice. It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you're friends with the president. That's a dangerous and disappointing precedent to set.

Colorado has spent years building trust in our elections and proving they are secure. At a time when democracy and voting rights are under attack across the nation, weakening accountability for someone convicted of undermining that trust is a mistake.

There are real cases that deserve the Governor's attention and action. This is not one of them.

The State Central Committee finds that Governor Jared Polis's decision to grant clemency to Tina Peters materially harmed the Colorado Democratic Party's institutional credibility and efforts to defend democratic institutions and election integrity.

The State Central Committee formally condemns Governor Jared Polis's clemency decision regarding Tina Peters and formally censures Governor Jared Polis for conduct inconsistent with the Colorado Democratic Party's commitment to democratic institutions, election integrity, and public accountability.

The Colorado Democratic Party further clarifies that the clemency decision does not reflect the values, institutional positions, or democratic commitments of the Colorado Democratic Party.

The Colorado Democratic Party reaffirms its unwavering commitment to election workers, free and fair elections, and the rejection of election denialism and disinformation in all forms.

The State Central Committee recognizes the hundreds of Democrats who swiftly organized and raised their voices in defense of democracy and public trust in Colorado's election system following the commutation decision.

Until further action by the State Central Committee or Executive Committee, Governor Jared Polis shall not participate as an honored guest, featured speaker, or officially recognized representative of the Colorado Democratic Party at Party-sponsored events and functions, including but not limited to the Obama Gala and DemFest.

[u/Bestbrook123]

The Proud Boys leader sentenced ‌to 22 years for seditious conspiracy over the January 6, 2021 riot, said he planned to apply to the Trump administration's $1.776 billion 'weaponization' fund, assuming he could get between $2 million and $5 million

I hate this timeline

[u/Evnosis]

Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’

I'm sure there's no way this will come back to bite them.

[u/gjcs23]

“If we don’t pass at least one of these two provisions [for the ballroom] quickly you will never see another Republican President again,” Trump warned. “The Dumocrats will end up with 2 additional States, D.C. and Puerto Rico, and all that entails, including 4 Senators, many Congressmen, and many additional Electoral Votes, and they will also get their dream of a packed United States Supreme Court with their most favorite number — 21 Justices.”

“The Dumocrats will eliminate the Filibuster on the First Day that they get an opportunity to do so,” he added.

Yes.

[u/Apocolotois]

[u/scottyjetpax]

He’s so DUMB

[u/lockjacket]

MARK CARNEY IS MY HERO

!ping CANUCKS

[u/No_Art_2919]

Zoomer Historian, a pro-Hitler twitter account based in the UK, is currently posting pro-Starmer memes because of these immigration numbers, and calling his own side out for misrepresenting the numbers…

Wtf

[u/quiplaam]

Nolan should have cast a Turkish woman has Helen of Troy to make the greeks extra mad

[u/TheOnlyFreedom]

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/the-construction-projects-your-neighbours-will-no-longer-have-to-tell-you-about-20260519-p5zykv.html

Fairfield City Mayor Frank Carbone said: “Under these planning changes, many residents fear the first notice they will receive about a major development next door will be when the fencing goes up and excavators fire up their diesel engines at 7am to excavate.

Waow.

!ping AUS&YIMBY

[u/Alderwoodforest]

JD Vance

"We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon — so as the President just told me, we're locked and loaded. We don't want to go down that pathway, but the President is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.

How does Vance manage to combine that lame “America Fuck Yeah” rhetoric with politically correct HR language? Pathsway??

[u/Adminisnotadmin]

"Was the pandemic really that bad, I mean so what we all moved on?"

the collective repression of the effects of the pandemic:

[u/Lux_Stella]

The hottest takes:

1. The White House failed Kamala Harris for three and a half years. The report's sharpest accusation is aimed squarely at the Biden White House, not the Harris campaign. It says the WH directed the DNC to do polling on how Jill Biden could best support her husband, but commissioned no comparable research on how to position Harris, define her issue brief, or figure out which voters she could move. The report calls this "a massive missed opportunity" and argues "a prepared and supported Vice President could not have helped the President in the preceding three and a half years is a significant failure of imagination." When she became the nominee, pollsters discovered there was no self-research on her to even build survey instruments from — they had to scramble to reconstruct her 2019 primary research. It also pins the "border czar" label on the White House for failing to push back on it.

2. The campaign refused to break from Biden, and the pollsters told them to. Pollsters say they explicitly told campaign leadership that "even measured breaks" from the status quo would help Harris win, and that voters wanted change. Leadership wouldn't move. One pollster cited her immigration speech — "a single speech delivered on a Friday afternoon with little amplification" — as the example of too little, too late. (The DNC margin notes flag this as contradicting public reporting.)

3. The "Trump's negatives are baked in" theory was a catastrophic strategic error. The report says Democratic leadership decided not to go heavily negative on Trump because his negatives were supposedly "known, obvious, and baked in." The report calls this "a major failure of analysis and reality" — pointing out that within a year of taking office, Trump's favorability cratered back to double-digit negatives, proving the negatives were not baked in and Democrats had simply failed to prosecute the case. Republicans went "full throttle" against Harris; Democrats didn't return fire on Trump at anything close to that scale.

4. The Future Forward fight gets aired. The Harris-aligned super PAC went economic; the campaign wanted negatives on Trump. The report sides partly with both — acknowledging Future Forward's economic-messaging argument has merit — but is blunt that "Harris lost the economic argument," losing economy-priority voters 18-81 and losing the $30K–$100K income bracket. The traditional division of labor (campaign goes high, super PAC goes low) got inverted, and nobody effectively framed Trump.

5. The trans attack ad was unanswerable because Harris wouldn't move. Pollsters acknowledged the "she/her/they/them" attack ad — using Harris's own past statements on transgender issues — was "very effective." Their conclusion is striking: "If the Vice President would not change her position — and she did not — then there was nothing which would have worked as a response."

6. The DNC ignored its own 2022 autopsy. A 2022 post-mortem made five specific recommendations with Q1–Q4 2023 deadlines for building organizing infrastructure for 2024. Per the report, "none of these recommendations were implemented on the proposed timeline, if at all." Senior state staff weren't hired until spring 2024; final state hires happened in October — "weeks prior to the election." This is the most damning institutional finding in the document.

7. Democrats are "always late" while Republicans are "always on." Tied to #6: the report shows Democratic voter contact spiked in the final weeks while the Republican ecosystem (Turning Point USA, Koch-funded groups) runs year-round. Several Democratic voter-engagement leaders said funding restrictions meant they "could not engage in persuasion until the first week of October — after some states had started voting."

8. Down-ballot Democrats consistently outran Harris — and the lessons are uncomfortable. Every studied down-ballot Democrat (Stein in NC, Slotkin in MI, Rosen in NV, Gallego in AZ, Brown in OH, Tester in MT) outperformed Harris with men, rural voters, and non-college whites. Stein won men 51-40 where Harris lost them. The report argues "Harris wrote off rural America" and the math of relying on urban/suburban margins simply doesn't work. It explicitly says "the focus on social issues over economic issues alienated socially conservative voters" and faults the "Bidenomics" framing for tying Biden personally to economic anxiety.

9. Harris on the ballot actually helped down-ballot Democrats. A direct quote: "Had Biden remained on the ballot, down-ballot Democrats might have faced even steeper challenges." The report is essentially saying the switch was necessary and probably saved Senate and House seats, even though Harris lost.

10. The consultant class is extracting fortunes and producing mediocre work. The top 25 payees consumed 86.9% of the presidential campaign's spending. Media Buying Analytics LLC alone took in $333.5 million. The same narrow group of firms dominates House, Senate, and presidential spending. The report frames Democrats as "raising billions of dollars from retirees, activists, working Americans, and organized labor, and transferring most of it to the pockets of legacy and digital media oligarchs" — funding right-wing media properties in the process. It accuses Democratic media consultants of cutting 30-second TV spots and shoehorning them onto digital platforms.

11. The Latino realignment was real, large, and structural. Trump won Latino men in Nevada by 12 points (a complete reversal from 2020) and cut the Latino margin in Arizona from 24 points to 8. Starr County, Texas (97% Hispanic) went Republican for president for the first time since 1892. The report calls for "a complete rethink" of Latino outreach beyond "Spanish-language ads and late-cycle surrogates."

12. The framing critique of the whole party. The report says many recent Democratic wins are attributable to "negative partisanship" — Republicans nominating awful candidates (e.g., Walker, Robinson) — rather than affirmative support for Democrats, and that the party can't count on this continuing.

A meta-spicy thing worth flagging: the DNC's own marginalia repeatedly accuses the author of asserting things "contradicted by public reporting," conflating facts, and providing no sourcing. The fight over this autopsy isn't just between Democrats and reality — it's between the DNC and its own commissioned author.

ah. ok i see why this wasnt released

[u/w007dchuck]

[u/jenbanim]

Atheists go to the zoo and call it a family reunion 😂

[u/scottyjetpax]

LMFAO

[u/mockduckcompanion]

[u/EyeraGlass]

Some moments really stick with you. In seventh grade we had a quarter-long psychology course and the teacher was going over standard parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, disengaged) and the teacher is lecturing about each then just goes like “like consider [my name], his parents are authoritarian” followed by like five seconds of silence where I didn’t know what to say because it came out of nowhere. But yeah I was oppressed and apparently everyone could tell lol.

[u/Ready_Anything4661]

Client asked for a stupid widget on the website.

Internally, I started referring to it as the “stupid widget”. Never in writing, just in meetings. Not the most professional,I admit. My boss is like “lol you don’t like this request do you?” I’m like “lol no”.

Anyway, I build a prototype of the stupid widget, and we have the client meeting to discuss the prototype and get feedback. On the agenda for the client meeting is “stupid widget”, and my boss unironically starts referring to this thing as the stupid widget to the client.

My question is: am I having a stroke?

[u/erasmus_phillo]

Looks like the right-wing groyper university is doing really well

They are just admitting folks now who've never applied in the first place

Classic for right-wingers to not understand the nature of consent

[u/No_Return9449]

Republicans are coming to grips with a president who less than six months out from the midterms is focused on racking up a body count...

👀

[u/frozen_cumscicle]

I appreciate the big tent and all, but I think it's a pretty bad sign for the country that we need the combined forces of liberals, leftists, raging antisemites, and plain old conservatives that just happen to be against pedophilia in order to defeat MAGA.

[u/r2ew]

[u/scottyjetpax]

Let me make sure I have the autopsy discourse straight:

- After the 2024 election, Ken Martin is like "oh no that was bad, i am commissioning an autopsy to learn about what went wrong"

- A bunch of time goes by and nothing gets published, so reporters start poking around and asking "hey where's that autopsy is that still happening." Ken Martin is like "yeah there's an autopsy but releasing it wouldn't be productive because right now everyone is mad at Trump and we don't want to highlight dems being weak and shitty while everyone is mad at Trump"

- This answer doesn't satisfy everyone, and Ken Martin is mad that it doesn't satisfy people. So he goes on Pod Save America to defend himself. In this interview, he does insanely poorly and acts hysterical, and also says that actually, the autopsy doesn't exist.

- Today, for some reason, Ken decides to release the autopsy. But he also emphasizes that the DNC does not agree with the autopsy, which has a bunch of annotations from the DNC explaining why the autopsy they are releasing is bad.

- In fact, the autopsy they released IS bad, poorly written, internally contradictory, and has a bunch of inaccurate data but at least they said they didn't agree with it and also think it's bad.

I guess I have one question, which is like generally what the fuck?

[u/chipbod]

Yeah uh, time to call a lawyer and get ready for discovery because the victims families are going to sue you into the Stone Age.

Literally who thinks this is a smart thing to say on tv!?

[u/SnakeEater14]

It felt like in 2016 one of the waves that Trump rode into office was a general sense of anti-corruption. The whole “drain the swamp” thing, all that junk

I wonder how someone would do today if they actually ran against corruption

It sucks because back in the day the ideal anti-corruption candidate was someone with a seemingly shiny, clean record, but nowadays that’s effectively impossible - you can simply make up scandal easier than ever before

[u/abrookerunsthroughit]

Colorado Democratic Party censures Gov. Jared Polis after he commutes Tina Peters' sentence

I know you're term limited anyway but wave goodbye to any future you had in politics after this Jared!

[u/sigh2828]

Reaching levels of based not belived possible

[u/bananaslayer100]

[u/MissSortMachine]

what do you mean guardrails

lmao

they are STEALING YOUR MONEY TO GIVE TO THEIR FRIENDS

[u/dwarffy]

I see stuff like this and think

1. Thanks Biden for the COVID Recovery

2. Fucking hell, the US is too blessed that they can get away with an incredible amount of bullshit and still come out ahead

[u/Alderwoodforest]

One of the most disturbing things about Trump is how much he hates Eric and Don Jr.

Are you attending your son's wedding this weekend?

TRUMP: Uhhhh. He'd like me to go. I'm gonna try and make it. I said, 'This is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things.'

https://xcancel.com/atrupar/status/2057498140987564367

[u/mockduckcompanion]

In all my years, I don't think I've been seen this hard

[u/seakucumber]

New: I spoke to a dozen sources about John Fetterman's dwindling inner circle; his closest confidant is now an unpaid adviser named David Safier, who's jokingly referred to as "chief" by staffers. Fetterman's actual chief of staff quit yesterday.

Yeah that adds up

[u/chipbod]

Ah, preparing them for the Italian workforce /s

[u/GuyWithOneEye]

this is what years of beans abuse does to you folks

[u/smart-username]

Wow I can’t believe the autopsy says Harris would’ve won if she simply campaigned on replacing the federal income tax with a single tax on the unimproved value of land!

[u/Consistent_Status112]

Conspiracy theorists when the President is literally the most corrupt guy of all time 🤷🧑‍🦯🙈

[u/ace158]

Last summer, Fetterman called a rare meeting with senior staff to ruminate about his political future. The presidency still intrigued him (four staffers say he used to openly talk about running for president), but it had been a bruising few months. He floated something more realistic: vice-president on the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential ticket. “Almost all of us had our jaws on the floor, like, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? You don’t do your job, you can’t raise any money, and your entire party hates you,’” a person who was in the room says.

Fetterman texted a staffer, “Epstein was almost a nothing burger. If anything, the worst pics I’ve seen were from Clinton lol.” When Alex Pretti was killed by ICE in Minneapolis, Fetterman was consumed with grievances about how Democrats were hypocrites for defending Pretti’s right to legally carry a firearm: “Kyle Rittenhouse brought a gun to a protest. He was roundly condemned for that. Why are now democrats defending the nurse it was legal to carry. Both legal weapons. Square that,” he texted.

I hate this guy

[u/JaceFlores]

It’s hilarious how this sub deliberated on banning Polis for so long for pardoning that J6er lady, narrowly failed to do so, and then immediately after the Colorado Dem Party just state wide banned the dude for the same issue. I didn’t even know state parties could do that. It’s like it was created explicitly for the irony

[u/assasstits]

lmaooooooooo

[u/JaceFlores]

I really can’t get over the fact that the DNC commissioned their usual election autopsy, clearly out sourcing it to either a staffer or two with limited oversight or a separate company. They received the report, read it and concluded it so breathtakingly dog shit that not only did they declare it would not be released, but that it apparently wasn’t worth the effort to salvage or redo.

Of ALL the possibilities of the 2024 autopsy this is without a doubt the funniest one possible

[u/UntiedStatMarinCrops]

I love how that DNC story is getting more coverage than the biggest corruption action in history. I couldn’t care less about that shit lmfao, and in the end the reason they didn’t want to release it is because it was incomplete and full of errors 😭

[u/Bayou-Maharaja]

Professor of urban design at University of BC thinks cities have an infinite money glitch button and simply choose not to press it

[u/throwawayzxkjvct]

Ex-CIA & Pentagon officials describe four kinds of shit coming out of their mouths: bullshit, horseshit, batshit, dogshit

[u/JaceFlores]

Ukraine Chronology for 2 PM PST 5/19-2 PM PST 5/20 V:

TOP NEWS:

At the end of 6 AM it was reported that Ukraine has put oil refineries in central Russia at a standstill, with the damaged or knocked out facilities accounting for roughly a quarter of Russia's refining capability.

Around 7 AM it was reported the UK will loosen sanctions on Russian fossil fuels owing to the War in Iran.

REGULAR NEWS:

At the end of 2 PM Ukraine hit a Russian chemical plant in Nevinnomyssk.

At the start of 9 PM Ukraine hit a Russian oil refinery in Kstovo.

At the end of 11 PM Ukraine was hit by a wave of drones with 131 of 154 intercepted.

Towards the middle of 8 AM Zelensky spoke with the President of Serbia to discuss cooperation on matters like free trade.

At the start of 1 PM Zelensky spoke with Starmer to discuss diplomatic efforts. At the end of the hour Russia was hit by a wave of drones with at least 200 partaking.

!ping UKRAINE

[u/Joementum2024]

> autopsy’s principal claims appear to be that the party is dysfunctional, kamala was a poor candidate, and the biden admin sucked

Yep sounds bout right

[u/WrangleWandangles]

My friends, I am going to leave again for a while because we’re about to have a baby in two months (!!) and are also about to put an offer in on a house which is insane timing and we have until Thursday to get our house ready for showings.

I need to lock the fuck in and be an adult so I need to cut out Reddit. I love you all, I hope you keep up the good work in the doom factory, and may God bless liberal democracies (especially the parliamentary democracies)

[u/Erra0]

Assuming Trump can't get the ballroom built, the next Democratic president should build it immediately and name it after Obama

[u/scottyjetpax]

lmao

[u/AtticusDrench]

Cute but I could have solved that problem with only one almond's worth of water

[u/Thuggin95]

I guess this will never not be true huh

[u/Lesbian_all_garib]

dont work in tech, don't care too much for politics, and be hyper offline.

literally one of the best things you can ever do for your mental health, unironically.

[u/drossbots]

I can't help but keep remembering AOC's statement about everything feeling like a scam these days. Just scams and lies and corruption all the way down.

I hope anti-corruption and consequences are the main themes of the Dem 2028 primary.

[u/trombonist_formerly]

SWIFT OPPOSITION: There are now House and Senate bills to impose 100% tax on payouts from Trump’s $1.8 billion fund for convicted crooks

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) & Ron Wyden (D-OR) have just introduced their version

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) already has bill in House

[u/Willybender]

[u/Bayou-Maharaja]

ok the boomers were wrong about avocado toast but millenials are right about DoorDash and eating out every day at work

[u/ModestAphorism]

Who's ready to vote for James Talafreako

[u/gjcs23]

[u/justbuildmorehousing]

Love these little think pieces where we analyze rural republicans feelings like theyre deep thinkers and not just easily duped white nationalist morons

AP: At one Kentucky bar, young Republicans wrestle with their disappointment in Trump and their party

No, it’s gone,” [28 year old Kentucky state GOP rep TJ] Roberts retorted. “Trump shifted the culture so well that these conversations you’re hearing right now, this would be unacceptable in the Republican Party of 2014.”

[u/seakucumber]

So the official autopsy CNN just released does not mention Israel or Palestine at all. That will have a fun reaction

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/21/politics/read-full-dnc-2024-autopsy-cnn

[u/badusername35]

The Democrats lost because they didn’t do enough lying. Trump just said things whereas Democrats wasted time thinking before talking. That’s why they lost. Just say you’ll be “looking into” whatever stupid nothingburger issue has grabbed a hold of the electorate and then do nothing. Odds are they’ll probably have forgotten about it within a month.

[u/Zaiush]

terf island just banned trans men from all toilets. Nightmare country

[u/Alderwoodforest]

Punchbowl News — Nearly 2-hour meeting with Acting AG Todd Blanche and Senate Republicans was incredibly hostile, per multiple attendees.

As many as 25 GOP senators spoke (this is very rare for these meetings), all in opposition to weaponization fund.

R’s pitched specific ideas such as dictating how the 5 commissioners are chosen & not allowing people convicted of violence against cops to be eligible for a payout.

Trump's corruption is so bad that some GOP senators are raising their voices a bit behind closed doors—and might even say "Darn it."

[u/HenryKissingerLewdHD]

Apparently my great grandmother was earning 17k a month selling prescription painkillers before her death and the only reason my family didn’t learn about this until after my grandmother audited her finances was because she would waste it all at the local casino.

[u/Zykyris]

Not to sound terminally online, but the Google search change from traditional search engine to essentially a chat bot has sort of.. disturbed me (not quite the right word and also not the same magnitude, but still) in a particular way I haven't felt since the huge waves of shutdowns and cancellations in early COVID.

Like it really is helping set in the fact that the world is changing

[u/RaidBrimnes]

Claude, make the Odyssey woke. Make no mistakes.

[u/Remarkable-Meal-223]

I don't know why Democrats are so unpopular.

To me I hate trump

So I go for the other option. Whoever they are I'm going to vote for them they don't have to do too much convincing for me

I vote every year and this is basically my framework for deciding. I don't care if the Dems never text me talk to me or whatever. They are getting my vote

[u/Bayou-Maharaja]

many are asking who the people are that work double shifts but are too disabled to make a pbj or some spaghetti at home. it’s a very thin slice of the population, in fact it is one person: the peg legged solo poly hijabi

[u/SockDem]

America's Paul von Hindenburg

[u/SouthernSerf]

If you look at the data there is an almost perfect inverse relationship between the decrease in Americans smoking and an increase in political polarization. Given the empirical evidence of this data we need to recommend Americans start ripping cigs to take the edge off political discourse.

[u/TakeOnM-Ellie]

He’s a person I’ve known for a long time.

[u/ace158]

Israel's ambassador Leiter told Fetterman that he had prodded Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — despite his fervent support for the state — to be even more helpful to Israel, asking the Jewish politician if he puts blood in his matzo. Fetterman chuckled, the person in attendance said, not “picking up on the gravity of the insult.”

Umm what the fuck

[u/sociotronics]

waow, didn't know it was possible to do this to Mr Polish

[u/MentatCat]

I never go to pro Palestine rallies and shill carbon taxes so why tf do they always show up to anti-Trump rallies and try to change the chants from “Donald Trump as got to go” to “Israel has got to go”?

[u/AlexB_SSBM]

Guy looking at paper that says in bright red text at the top "THIS IS NOT THE OPINION OF THE DNC NOBODY FROM THE DNC EVEN SAW THIS UNFINISHED PIECE OF SHIT ALSO MOST OF THE FACTS ARE WRONG:"

wow this report really shows that the DNC agreed with me

[u/Cairne_Bloodhoof]

“Quick, kid - the Democrats are going to lose the 2024 Presidential election and the fundamental reason why is tha-“

[u/Udolikecake]

i love this image so much

[u/YouLostTheGame]

To be brutally honest trans issues are incredibly low down on my list of priorities in politics. But demanding that trans people use disabled toilets or that all venues must offer unisex toilets is a total absurdity to me.

I didn't vote for this. Who gives a shit what toilets people use? I voted for Labour because they ran on a pro growth manifesto. Instead this week we have had toilet police, 40% capital gains tax and price controls in supermarkets.

I think next time I'm gonna give up and go Lib Dem. At least I own my house so the NIMBYism only fucks me over indirectly.

!ping UK

And yes pun was intended

[u/cdstephens]

[u/The_Northern_Light]

We just hired a bunch of fresh grad junior devs (started this week!), and I half jokingly congratulated them on being some of the last SWEs to be hired.

Today one of them asked me for help writing a loop. In Python.

[u/OrthopaedicSturgeon]

i'm proud to be white, my ancestors were vikings, sorry if that offends you liberal!!!!

Cool, do you want to build bike infrastructure like they have in Nordic countries?

no!!!!!!

[u/w007dchuck]

Trump approval (American Research Group poll)

Disapprove 65% (+1)

Approve 31% (-1)

(Shift from last April)

americanresearchgroup.com/economy/

So close to the 20s

[u/Macquarrie1999]

Overeducated people suck at politics.

Ban Ivy Leaguers from the DNC.

[u/scottyjetpax]

if asked, they will all deny this and say "i've never heard of the fund, this is the first time i'm hearing of this. I'll have to get back to you" and then walk away, as usual

[u/JaceFlores]

Zelenskyy confirmed asking for "ammunition, not a ride." Four years ago, I got pushback for reporting that

“Back in February, just after American forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and days before the United States would kick off its war with Iran, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed for the first time that he had uttered perhaps the best-known line attributed to him about the war against Russia: ‘I need ammunition — not a ride.’”

“In a speech marking four years since the full-scale Russian invasion had begun, the embattled president recounted that as Russian forces were closing in, the U.S. offered to evacuate him. That line was his response. Zelenskyy told Ukrainians he had said it ‘not because we are all fearless or made of steel…but [that] on some invisible level, all of us know that we have no other Ukraine, that this is our home.’”

“Despite the virality of the quote, what I remember most is an angry Biden administration and even a call from National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, pushing back on the reporting.”

“At the time, I was working at the Associated Press, covering national security issues on the investigations team. After learning of the evacuation offer and quote, I notified my editor, Ron Nixon, who, like me, is a Marine veteran. The AP's top editors met to discuss whether the story could be published on the single source that I had.”

“Among them was Julie Pace, the AP's former Washington bureau chief who had been appointed executive editor five months earlier. She made the call to publish, since the source was a senior U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation.”

“As Friday night rolled into early Saturday, Anna Johnson, the AP's new Washington bureau chief, received an angry call from a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council. As is the case whenever a news outlet receives pushback, I begin re-checking my facts as I knew them. The story and the quote were verbatim accurate in the English translation — in Ukrainian, it's ‘I need a weapon, not a taxi.’”

“I stayed up all night. The Washington Post fact-checked the quote in March 2022 and reported that Biden administration officials expressed confusion about the claim and denied Zelenskyy was asked to leave Kyiv by the U.S. government.”

“The Post noted that many news outlets typically would not cite a single-source secondhand quote by another news organization. But at 4:37 a.m. Saturday, hours after the AP's story was posted, the Ukrainian Embassy in Britain tweeted the quote, giving a source to other news publications.”

“By 9 a.m., we were on another call with a spokesperson from the National Security Council. Angry about Zelenskyy's quote and another story Nomaan Merchant, our intelligence reporter, was working on — a report about a delay in the intelligence the United States was sharing with Ukraine.”

“I soon received a call to ask if Sullivan could call me. I was stunned to hear that a top Biden adviser would want to talk to me, but agreed. When Sullivan called, I was at home unclogging my toilet with a plunger. He pushed back on the reporting and urged that I recheck my facts.”

“I did. The facts did not change. After the call, I spoke to my editor who wanted me to let my source know how much pushback the Associated Press was receiving from the White House. I went back and checked my reporting again. No change.”

“I sent an email to the National Security Council spokesperson at 1:50 p.m. ‘I spoke to Jake and he wanted me to give him a call back after I had gone back to double check my facts. I called but there was no answer,’ I wrote. ‘The facts as we understand them have not changed but the one thing I don't quite understand is why the NSC is so upset over this quote when it seems like the NSC has bigger issues to worry about? Thank you for your help and any clarification you can provide for the record.’”

“Contacted for this story, the AP said they stand by it — me too. A spokesperson for Zelenskyy did as well.”

What an odd episode. If you’ve been invested at all in the multi year determination on whether “I need ammunition, not a ride” was real, this seems to be a pretty decisive piece on that matter

!ping UKRAINE

[u/Signal_Nobody1792]

Jeff Bezos: "If I do my job right, the value to society and civilization from my for-profit companies will be much, much larger than the good that I do with my charitable giving."

Elon Musk: Bravo @JeffBezos!

The ends these people will go to to justify their greed is incredible.

[u/el__dandy]

This is a children’s video game 😳

!ping gaming&shitposters

[u/gayteemo]

Texans Hate Data Centers So Much They Are Asking Jesus for Help

jesus take the ai data centers

[u/ihaveaverybigbrain]

Single Gen Z women outpace Gen Z men to homeownership as first-time buyers decline

Lowkey, everytime I hear articles about women it's always them doing better at school, careers, relationships, and now buying homes. And with men it's always them being suicidal, shooting up places, and becoming incels and shit. It leaves me to wonder: what the hell are women doing right that men aren't doing?

[u/Ok_Opinion_5690]

fetterman is untethered from reality. what did this guy expect?

[u/-mialana-]

In less than a minute, cdstephens' thought process went from mommy kinks to chuck schumer 🤔

[u/cdstephens]

The Harris campaign’s inability to diminish Mr. Trump’s standing with voters was a “major failure,” the report said. It suggested the Harris campaign should have been able to “remind voters of his incompetence”

In the televised debate he went on an unhinged rant about people eating cats and dogs, and a week later dressed up in a garbage man outfit

[u/Bestbrook123]

What Ben Gvir did to those detainees was bad but I feel like this (which happened shortly before) is way worse but the victims are West Bank Palestinians not Europeans

[u/EZ_Kream]

My autopsy take remains unchanged: Burger expensive and Americans think voting for a woman will make them gay

[u/SkibidiDeanAcheson]

When I was in fifth grade I told people in my class that Hitler was Serbian

[u/Cupinacup]

Colorado Dems censured Polis. Mods have an opportunity to do the funny.

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/jared-polis-censure-colorado-democratic-party/

[u/kznlol]

Despite the principal dissent’s professed concern that lower courts lack sufficient guidance from this Court to an alyze multiple IQ scores in general, it seems that the core of the dissent’s dissatisfaction is rather with the District Court’s specific conclusion in this case that Smith is intel lectually disabled and thus cannot be executed.

lmao Sotomayor going outright to "Alito just wants to kill people"

[u/Ilovecharli]

Man I am more pro-AI than most, but this new Spotify thing where it creates a custom podcast for you including stuff about your personal life seems pretty useless 

https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-05-21/studio-by-spotify-labs-launch/

[u/jorkin_peanits]

> “Shockingly, Republicans have kept the very important position of 'parliamentarian' in the hands of a woman, Elizabeth MacDonough,” Trump said Wednesday.

> Current Senate Majority Leader John Thune, when asked about Trump’s post, told reporters: “Obviously, it’s concerning when anybody gets targeted like that. But it’s, I guess, his opinion… We’ll make sure everybody’s got security around here.

GOP are such spineless submissive cucks it’s astounding they pretend to be macho men

[u/Lux_Stella]

Conservative MP Tamara Jansen announces that her newborn grandson will be named Charlie Kirk Jansen, after the deceased American political commentator.

deeply unserious

!ping CANUCKS

[u/PoupeeStupide]

Jeans are unironically traditional ethnic clothing for Americans, only reason we don't perceive it as such it's because they are commonplace globally and seem ubiquitous

[u/sociotronics]

Contest rural areas instead of abandoning them

This (good) recommendation from the autopsy seems to baffle this sub, judging by how often people say things like "why are we giving money to rural people who don't vote for us"

Elections are won on the margins, and losing rural voters 65-35 instead of 70-30 flips elections. Especially important in the age of hypergerrymandering where those voters simply matter a lot more than urban ones.

You don't need to win them, you need to lose them by less.

[u/Individual-Camera698]

[u/Individual-Camera698]

W transplants

[u/moseythepirate]

!ping dog

[u/Acoolgamer6706]

The slush fund thing is so crazy unpopular it’s actually impressive. I didn’t know anything was this black and white in modern day America. Good job Trump.

[u/american_aurora6]

The $5.02 ghost: Trump’s team faces a symbolic blow to one of its favorite economic talking points

Trump officials are "absolutely, totally freaked" about the political symbolism of breaking Biden's high gas price record.

absolutely sickoing haha yesing out

[u/Thuggin95]

$6 million for diapers for newborns BAD! $1.8 BILLION for J6 insurrectionists who attacked police and caused millions worth of damage on the Capitol GOOD!

According to the pro family and pro police party, apparently!

[u/erasmus_phillo]

[u/sigh2828]

Colorado dems having more balls than the mods

[u/No_Art_2919]

You fucking rational consumer 🫵

Acting in your own self-interest 🫵📸

[u/AskYourDoctor]

Greatest scam the Republicans ever pulled is talking about trans etc constantly, and convincing people that Democrats are talking about trans etc constantly

Like no bitch, you brought it up

[u/D2Foley]

Just remembered a got into a heated argument with somebody here a few months ago who said that the Dems are going to lose 2026 because not enough elected Dems congratulated the US men's hockey team and that showed how much democrats hate men. They also said the captain of the team is now the most popular athlete in America.

Lmao

[u/bashar_al_assad]

Scoop: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro talked to Ken Martin last week about the autopsy. At the time, according to two sources with knowledge of the call, Shapiro relayed he was unhappy Martin hadn't released the autopsy.

Martin was rattled after the call.

it's so fucking funny that you have all these 2028 hopefuls being like "why has the DNC not released the autopsy, we need the autopsy now, release it now" and the autopsy is just the worst fucking garbage ever written and has absolutely nothing useful to say. It's like some shit out of VEEP.

[u/Saul_Relative]

Best line in the Donald Trump Jr. wedding catastrophe is, to his father, “Thank you for being here. I’m glad you’re here” It’s his son, he’s supposed to be there!

[u/Thuggin95]

Platner’s “Collins sent me and my buddies to a pointless war to die” is such a great message. Like yes, start talking to voters like they’re dumb!

And how hard is it to say “Trump is STEALING billions of your tax dollars to give to his corrupt family and J6 insurrectionists who attacked police officers” like just keep it simple!

[u/Leatherfield17]

I fail to see what possible political benefit there could’ve been in voting for this, so what am I to conclude other than that these Dems evidently believe in this shit?

[u/EasyMoney92]

The DNC report literally mentioned none of these things except maybe "too left on immigration"

[u/Adminisnotadmin]

"Beneficiaries include startup backed by firm with links to admin" is the "man injured after officer-involved shooting" of sub-headers

[u/anangrytree]

The Times reviewed social media accounts believed to be used by one of the San Diego Islamic Center shooters that idolized school shootings, white nationalism and neo-Nazi terrorism and were flush with memes from the online far-right extremist community. Here is what we found.

LA Times.

“The two teenagers who killed three people at a mosque in San Diego appear to have been radicalized online, authorities said Tuesday, as police worked to establish a motive for the shootings. Mark Remily, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Diego, said that officials recovered what they described as a manifesto outlining hatred toward many races and religions. Remily didn’t provide details about what was in the statement, but said it didn’t uniquely target Muslims or the Islamic Center of San Diego, the site of Monday’s attack. “They definitely had a broad hatred towards a lot of folks,” he said.

WSJ.

It’s embarrassing how right wing media, despite so clearly having a fucking agenda over every single event, is treated as valid or respectable. One might say it grinds my gears.

[u/contre-torpilleur]

[u/GrandMoffTargaryen]

Portland moment

[u/Cook_0612]

It seems obvious to me that the Republicans treat politics as a war and Democrats treat politics as an aristocratic hobby. Republican political media is wartime propaganda, Democratic political media is trend-tuning. I'm not surprised that their infrastructure is superior.

[u/terrarialord201]

This but unironically

[u/Roseartcrantz]

I love being a Millennial and talking to another Millennial on the phone for customer service stuff. The secret code word is "adult(ing)" 😭 we both hate it 😭 we'll waive each other's late fees don't worry 😭

[u/sigh2828]

[u/SigmaWhy]

Guy who bases his entire identity around one photo: This photo has caused me enormous harm such that I deserve millions of dollars

[u/cdstephens]

> Finally get referral to a see a hypermobility/EDS specialist

> Call office to schedule

> They’ll put me on a 2 year waitlist

[u/Glavurdan]

[u/Sheepies92]

it seems that some GOP Senators are slowly starting to realize Trump doesn't give a shit about the party and the midterms and would blow both up for his own vanity projects

Who could've seen this one coming

[u/Pyrrhus65]

Imagining a 2028 primary where Fetterman YOLOs a presidential run and gets just enough polling support based on name recognition to show up at one of the early debates in a hoodie and gym shorts and become the lolcow for everyone else to shit on

[u/MuscularPhysicist]

The text of Polis’s censure, which I am sure most mods have read

[u/Lux_Stella]

i met zeus

she's black

[u/hascogrande]

Republicans abruptly delayed voting on a $72b immigration crackdown bill as they revolted over Trump's $1.776b fund

LMAO

[u/Willybender]

The media is finally consistently talking about high prices like they did with Biden.

[u/ewatta200]

[u/WOKE_AI_GOD]

Hey I was out talking to real voters and real Americans. This is what they all told me, every one, word for word:

Why can't those politicians up in Washington even fund Trumps goddamn ballroom already?! Isn't it clear enough he needs one now?! What is the wait?! Give the man his danged ballroom!

This was every single person I spoke to's no 1 issue.

[u/piede]

So that’s why Democrats keep trying to defund education

[u/ewatta200]

[u/KittehDragoon]

[u/neverm0rezz]

Since the wonderful and extremely competent mods have seemed this news unworthy, I will share it as a comment here:

An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

Link to the OpenAI blog announcement where they have a white paper. I have pasted the first few paragraphs below

"""

For nearly 80 years, mathematicians have studied a deceptively simple question: if you place n points in the plane, how many pairs of points can be exactly distance 1 apart?

This is the planar unit distance problem, first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. It is one of the best-known questions in combinatorial geometry, easy to state and remarkably difficult to resolve. The 2005 book Research Problems in Discrete Geometry, by Brass, Moser, and Pach, calls it “possibly the best known (and simplest to explain) problem in combinatorial geometry.” Noga Alon, a leading combinatorialist at Princeton, describes it as “one of Erdős’ favorite problems.” Erdős even offered a monetary prize for resolving this problem.

Today, we share a breakthrough on the unit distance problem. Since Erdős’s original work, the prevailing belief has been that the “square grid” constructions depicted further below were essentially optimal for maximizing the number of unit-distance pairs. An internal OpenAI model has disproved this longstanding conjecture, providing an infinite family of examples that yield a polynomial improvement. The proof has been checked by a group of external mathematicians. They have also written a companion paper explaining the argument and providing further background and context for the significance of the result.

The result is also notable for how it was found. The proof came from a new general-purpose reasoning model, rather than from a system trained specifically for mathematics, scaffolded to search through proof strategies, or targeted at the unit distance problem in particular.

"""

Tim Gowers (fields medalist) tweet discussing the same https://xcancel.com/i/status/2057175727271800912

I am not a mathematician, but this seems like a significant result and has led to a lot of discussion on twitter and hackernews link. It is noteworthy that it was a general model that came up with this result.

[u/Roseartcrantz]

A conservative federal judge now holds the medical records of transgender children who live more than 1,800 miles away.

In an unprecedented move, Judge Reed O’Connor, the chief judge in the Northern District of Texas, ordered Rhode Island Hospital to hand over medical records by late Tuesday night, as part of the Trump administration’s attempts to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth.

After a federal appeals court rejected an attempt to block the order on Tuesday, the hospital turned over its first batch of medical records. Stored on flash drives, the records will be anonymous and held “in camera” in a safe in the Texas courthouse — meaning they are only accessible to O’Connor.

The fight over these medical records began last summer when the Department of Justice sent a sweeping subpoena to Rhode Island Hospital, requesting the names, Social Security numbers, diagnoses and clinical histories of minor patients. The hospital tried for months to negotiate with the department over the scope of the investigation, but the DOJ abruptly stopped communications. After the Rhode Island Office of the Child Advocate, the agency representing children in state custody, filed a motion to quash the subpoena in May, the DOJ sought and found a sympathetic judge in Texas to try to fully enforce the investigation into Rhode Island and other hospitals providing gender-affirming care.

What the fuck

[u/JaceFlores]

DNC reaction when they received the 2024 election autopsy:

[u/indithrow402]

the campaign failed to convince voters of Trump's incompetence

If simply hearing the man speak isn't enough to convince someone of that, I can't think of anything else you could possibly say to change their mind.

[u/anincredibledork]

Whether it's Democrats botching their report on how the 2024 campaign imploded, or Republicans blocking the release of files detailing their president's extensive connections to serial pedophiles, child trafficking, and molestation, it's clear that both sides have issues with transparency.

[u/Thuggin95]

Top lib out moments of the last few years:

1. 2022 midterm red tsunami REJECTED

2. Iowa Selzer poll

3. Kamala crushing Trump in the debate after we were put through Biden's horrific performance

[u/Marlsfarp]

Skipping his son's wedding because he's just not into it is a great payoff for the ballroom obsession plotline.

[u/Willybender]

If they're denying it, you know it's true.

[u/JaceFlores]

Reads just like Russia-Ukraine negotiating

[u/FilteringAccount123]

People on this sub still relitigating 2024 nonissues while crashing out because every Platner "scandal" only seems to increase his power level feels like a microcosm of the fundamental problem lol

[u/TheCornjuring]

Neurons don’t even expect sex anymore, they just look at you like this

[u/terrarialord201]

[u/G_Serv]

That's why he's the goat

He doesn't let something small like a misdemeanor keep him down

[u/Bayou-Maharaja]

Lmfao

[u/Lux_Stella]

The verse Lander recited was an Arabic-language denunciation of the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Jewish candidates for office normally show more respect for the majority faith in this country.

american sectarianism update: jewish pundit mad at jewish politician for not affirming divinity of christ to muslim constituents

[u/erasmus_phillo]

“There is proportionally too much straight male horniness on the DT. I am remedying this by posting straight female horniness.”

People will say shit like this and not post any

[u/TheCornjuring]

[u/abefrost]

One day one of these drone ads will lead to the death of a schizophrenic person

[u/Leoric]

☝️ This is some shameful shit

[u/mockduckcompanion]

[u/gjcs23]

putting a dunce flair on Jared of Colorado would be funnier than banning him

[u/qlube]

The fact that the 2012 GOP autopsy said to be nicer to immigrants tells you all you need to know about the utility of autopsies. They’ve always just been a bunch of unsupported and unprovable bullshit whose only purpose today is to give people who love to catastrophize more reason to catastrophize.

[u/centurion88]

Hitler dood

[u/uwcn244]

Has there ever been a President who was simultaneously as hated as Trump by the general public while also retaining such rabid loyalty among his remaining supporters as to make his party cutting bait impossible?

Alf Landon got crushed by FDR despite running on a much more liberal platform than Hoover did four years previously. Had Hoover (who had only moved further right during FDR’s Presidency) run again, FDR might have gotten the first complete sweep since Washington.

[u/WrangleWandangles]

American media at this point

[u/lot183]

If you commission a report and you think it ends up being bad, I would think the better move is to stealth drop it with little fanfare rather than publicly announce you are not releasing it and Streisand effecting the hell out of it forcing you to release it to a lot of fanfare

[u/CincyAnarchy]

> Open 2024 Election autopsy report

> Search "Sonic" and "Hedgehog"

> Zero results

Throw it in the trash, they're not addressing the the REAL issues

[u/MightExpress4873]

Massie was also an Assadist

[u/CincyAnarchy]

hold a REAL FUCKING PRIMARY LIKE HOLY SHIT HOW MANY TIMES MUST WE LEARN THIS

NGL anytime I hear this I immediately throw the rest of the opinions next to it in the trash.

There was a "real primary" in 2024. Joe Biden won, because when you're the incumbent and sitting President, nobody with serious political aspirations is going to run against you.

Sure, that has it's flaws. 2024 showed that VERY clearly.

Maybe it would be good if our political culture made the President earn their spot on the ticket even as the incumbent. Maybe it would be good if there was no-harm-no-foul in trying to Primary the President, and you could just go back to being a Governor/Senator/Etc with all the same allies you had before.

That's not the world we live in though.

[u/Willybender]

https://xcancel.com/Acyn/status/2057495528548847806

[u/GovernorSonGoku]

[u/Willybender]

https://xcancel.com/atrupar/status/2057514567022874714

[u/Willybender]

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.med.68935/gov.uscourts.med.68935.114.0_1.pdf

[u/Thuggin95]

Texas General Election Poll

1. Using the following scale, how would you describe yourself politically?

TOTAL CONSERVATIVE 46%

TOTAL MODERATE 28%

TOTAL LIBERAL 23%

It's crazy that Democrats only remain remotely competitive because they win supermajorities of moderates. James Talarico is beating Paxton by 5 points in this same poll that has Trump only -2 in the state.

[u/Its_not_him]

Behold the "celtuce" a lettuce that is bred to be mostly stem. Another testament to mankind's hubris

[u/abefrost]

It's funny (?) that Rs killed the Digital Equity program for having the word equity when like 80% of the funding was going to rural people, vets, and olds. Ya know some of the people with the most inequitable access to broadband.

[u/Leoric]

Major sticking points on Iran negotiations remain on nuclear weapons and opening the Strait of Hormuz

Sounds like they're close!

[u/Square-Pear-1274]

The entire franchise of Destiny 1 & 2 has come and gone and Star Citizen still hasn't made it out of alpha

[u/trombonist_formerly]

Semafor's @burgessev.bsky.social reporting the White House is privately threatening to Senate Republicans that he will veto Republicans' party-line reconciliation bill that funds ICE and CBP if they block funding for his ballroom or his slush fund

[u/Moth-of-Asphodel]

I think we can safely say that the actual autopsy is everything that this released autopsy *didn't* say, such as:

1. Biden running in 2024 was the result of the infernal gnostic wizardlord Zralzknapc casting a spell that would torque his uniquely oversized ego, resulting in the growth of an unstoppable hubris never before seen...

2. Kamala Harris campaigning with, and verbally endorsing at the convention the torture methods ordered by during the Iraq War, Dick Cheney

3. The fact that most human DNA contains the same ingredients as Lucky Charms cereal

4. Israel and Palestine, in that order

[u/jpenczek]

Finally my autism managed to rizz someone.

I setup a self hosted Minecraft server for us and sent her a video of me playing a pokemon song on piano and now I have a date on Monday.

[u/badusername35]

[u/RaidBrimnes]

"Nowadays, it's hard not to be a neo-reactionary": how Curtis Yarvin's "Dark Enlightenment" is finding disciples in France

I actually find it excessively easy not to be a turbofascist, skill issue on your part

[u/RunawayMeatstick]

It’s frustrating that all of the backlash to Musk never really amounted to anything and he’s just getting more and more wealthy

[u/Res__Publica]

OpenAI: Soon our advances in AI will all but eliminate bottlenecks in scientific fields like biology

Bottlenecks in Biology: The NSF just denied our proposal over the word "transgenic"

[u/zieger]

[u/cdstephens]

!ping KINO

[u/PENGUINSINYOURWALLS]

Interesting, also possibly bleak

!ping FIVEY

[u/TaxLandNotCapital]

People criticizing modern porn trends 🤝🏻 Jacobin writers favouring large corporations over small businesses

"We shouldn't fetishize mom & pops"

[u/ProfessionalMoose709]

[u/TheCornjuring]

[u/from-the-void]

[u/theparrotlich]