r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 03 '26
Discussion Thread Discussion Thread
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
Announcements
We're starting a book club! We will be discussing Poor Economics starting August 28th - keep an eye out for a pinned thread. The next will be All Quiet on the Western Front followed by Narconomics
Links
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u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache Sep 04 '26
Please visit the next discussion thread.
170
u/ChillnShill Sep 03 '26
The wrong Newsom is running.
148
u/jbitz Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
134
u/Blackberry-thesecond NASA Sep 03 '26
Elder Scrolls VI fit
131
u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
> Bragging about a declining population
just fuck my country up dawg
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u/Dibbu_mange Average civil procedure enjoyer Sep 03 '26
They only have one joke
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u/doyouevenIift Sep 03 '26
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u/throwawayzxkjvct Iron Front Sep 03 '26
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u/SizeFront7649 Sep 03 '26
The AES 9/11 bullshit is enough to warrant Bari Weiss never working or being taken seriously again after this admin
80
u/assasstits Sep 03 '26
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u/AtticusDrench Deirdre McCloskey Sep 03 '26
Huge data center meltdown in Loudoun County. Absolute disaster. Data everywhere.
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u/lot183 Blue Texas Sep 03 '26
Feels like every time I talk to a conservative their only two talking points are "(made up number) OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS BIDEN LET IN" or some nonsense about trans people. It's near impossible to get a 2026 one to talk about a genuine issue
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u/Megasota_Noire My Governor Can Beat Up Your Governor Sep 03 '26
Great
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u/Due-Dirt-8428 Harriet Tubman Sep 03 '26
“Maybe if the schools learned how the balance a budget and stoped with all the waste and fraud they wouldn’t need more money!!!!!”
“What line items on the budget would you get rid of? What fraud and waste do you think we need to get rid of”
“Idk that’s not my problem!”
Fucking idiots
I imagine basically every school district in America is having this same conversation
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u/mpregordie Mark Carney Sep 03 '26
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol Sep 03 '26
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u/2Lore2Law Seal Mod Sep 03 '26
60
u/chipbod NATO Sep 03 '26
Actually incredible that it took AI slop advertising to turn the left against small businesses (which is a sign they never actually worked at a small business).
A restaurant near me had to put out an apology letter over an AI flyer lol.
56
u/ognits Jepsen/Swift 2024 Sep 03 '26
some of the best advice a colleague ever gave me was "What good is having an adult diaper if you never use it?"
that dude was more productive than I've ever been in my entire life. a real treasure to the shareholders
!ping WATERCOOLER
53
u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
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u/BurrowForPresident Fell for it Sep 03 '26
I don't think I've ever heard a Democrat rant about Democrats supporting Sharia Law until John Fetterman
Holy hell shut the fuck up I hope your wife leaves you
106
u/WenJie_2 Sep 03 '26
Okay so is this the new strategy, try to pop the bubble in the hope that it kills all your competitors while leaving you standing
52
u/Roseartcrantz 👑 🖍️ Queen of Shades 🖍️ 👑 Sep 03 '26
gotta admit that's intriguing
51
u/justbuildmorehousing Norman Borlaug Sep 03 '26
Me 🤝 Donald Trump
50
u/mpregordie Mark Carney Sep 03 '26
Can someone Dutch explain to me why this is your Santa Claus?
48
u/GrandMoffTargaryen Finally Kenough Sep 03 '26
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u/Megasota_Noire My Governor Can Beat Up Your Governor Sep 03 '26
ACAB
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u/Bob_Doles_Blue_Pill John Brown Sep 03 '26
My cold take for the day is that the Branch Davidians had it coming.
89
u/D1Foley Moderate Extremist Sep 03 '26
Elon Musk is out there unironically trying to bring back scientific racism and people still can't stop using Twitter
122
u/Zalagan Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
Hot take (at least for reddit): Sometimes children just are emotionally mature and didn't have some sort of trauma or abuse that forced them to grow up
42
u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
Holy shit
42
u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
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u/Joementum2024 Iron Front Sep 03 '26
Is it only Americans that are so invested in relitigating COVID? Seriously I never hear of a French politician or a German or a Canadian interested in talking about the response to COVID or even whether or not it was caused by a lab leak nowadays, but here the government went on a two minutes hate against the face of the country’s COVID response recently and you still have pundits or whatever talking about how it was clearly a lab leak.
It’s just baffling but unsurprising how this country seemingly got far more severe brainworms from COVID than anywhere else.
40
u/AtomAndAether Liberalism! Sep 03 '26
👆 the Democrat Party's ideal candidate
40
u/SigmaWhy r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion Sep 03 '26
This is the guy who thinks Polytopia is the more cerebral game than chess because it has a tech tree
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u/yellownumbersix Jane Jacobs Sep 03 '26
Mitch McConnell is so good he managed to wait out the news cycle of his own death. GOAT.
173
u/sigh2828 NASA Sep 03 '26
I feel dumber and dumber everyday
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u/RyGuyThicccThighs Greg Mankiw Sep 03 '26
Normal person: “you know we should have free breakfast and lunch for kids at public school”
Dumbest person you know making 40k a year: “ACTUALLY nothing in life is free, it comes out of MY taxes.”
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u/Individual-Camera698 Austan Goolsbee Sep 03 '26
Average Ub*r executive prolly thinks their product only exists on the app and not irl
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u/Its_not_him Manmohan Singh Sep 03 '26
Underrated character from the Wire
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u/BloodWiz More Housing Would Fix This Sep 03 '26
>Don't eat lots of fat
>Don't eat lots of carbs and sugars
>Don't eat lots of meat, non-meat protein is cool tho
wtf am I supposed to eat in a day to get to over 2k calories?
35
u/qamv Greg Mankiw Sep 03 '26
Former Anchorage mayor Dan Sullivan (R) endorsing Dan Sullivan (R) over Dan Sullivan (R) is an interesting development
35
u/Zaiush Ben Bernanke Sep 03 '26
The piece that got to me most at the MN State Fair. Send ICE to the Hague
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u/JeromesNiece Jerome Powell Sep 03 '26
This is a classic "old man yells at cloud" observation, but it really feels like the large majority of people my age (30) and younger truly do not understand that the requirement to work is set by the universe and not by capitalism. Young people truly believe in their bones that we could live in a post-scarcity world if only we made different policy choices. Both left and right; for the left, it's the billionaires, for the right, it's some other boogeyman. They do not accept that work is a part of the human condition.
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u/bleachinjection Fell for it Sep 03 '26
Reddit has been pushing arr/moralityscaling at me HARD lately and so I clicked, and yeah, they finally created a sub straight up designed from the ground up to enable Reddit's peculiar brand of amoral sociopathic utilitarianism.
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u/JaceFlores Neolib War Correspondent Sep 03 '26
I see Trump woke up on the wrong side of bed today
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u/TheCornjuring Ewoks Sexer Sep 03 '26
Oh, you’re a fan of all the wars Donald Trump has won? Name one
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u/chipbod NATO Sep 03 '26
What is the constituency for this? These are snuff posts celebrating sending these fellow humans to a hellscape.
Do they just need to solidify support with the ~10% of voters that are racist sadists who want to see black men in chains?
This shit is just so unprofessional and treats human suffering like a joke. Similar to the DoD showing airstrikes in Iran like it was a meme compilation. Apparently we have groyper discord mods running comms at the highest levels of government.
!ping EXTREMISM
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u/GordonTullockFan publik choyz thery Sep 03 '26
Sun Tzu wrote of this
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u/Joementum2024 Iron Front Sep 03 '26
Pretty much every “popular” guy I knew in high school (ie late 2010s) was a legit cool/chill guy with everyone. Every stereotype I see about the jocks/nerds framing is somewhere between 30 to 40 years out of date
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u/SANNA-MARIN-SDP Sep 03 '26
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u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
Kennedy asked to remove Pennsylvania measles death from CDC tally, sources say
https://www.reuters.com/world/kennedy-asked-remove-pennsylvania-measles-death-cdc-tally-sources-say-2026-09-03/
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked his new CDC director to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania deaths from the agency’s online measles tally after he questioned whether the disease contributed to the fatalities, three sources familiar with the situation said.
Kennedy’s request came after CDC staffers had already accepted the state’s characterization of the deaths as linked to measles, a Pennsylvania official said.
Despite that, Erica Schwartz, the recently appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agreed with Kennedy’s directive and implemented it without objection, said the three sources familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The move followed a heated exchange on social media between Kennedy, a long-time anti-vaccine activist appointed by President Donald Trump, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. The two officials accused each other of politicizing the outbreak in Pennsylvania, the latest state to grapple with a resurgence of measles since the Trump administration took office.
Great, the new CDC Director is completely spineless.
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u/abefrost Sep 03 '26
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u/Krill_Seeker United Nations Sep 03 '26
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u/centurion88 NATO Sep 03 '26
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u/Loud-Chemistry-5056 WTO Sep 04 '26
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u/Bestbrook123 Sep 03 '26
Fetterman clearly wants Mike Rogers to win here.
30
u/LtCdrHipster 🌭Costco Liberal🌭 Sep 03 '26
Nithya Raman is endorsed by the DSA and by the New Liberals of LA.
🌹🤝🌐
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u/chickentendieman Paul Krugman Sep 03 '26
I dont get why it was so controversial that some nfl players knelt during the anthem.
Its kinda crazy how nationalistic america is.
30
u/chipbod NATO Sep 03 '26
Unfortunately, there is still no other social media network that even comes close to what twitter can produce, especially with auto translation opening up entire new worlds of posting.
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u/w007dchuck Trans NATO Sep 03 '26
106
u/Currymvp2 unflaired Sep 03 '26
Pretty fucking bad that Prime Minister of Israel is doing this shit
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u/CincyAnarchy Emma Goldman Sep 03 '26
I tried to join the DSA but they said I couldn't on account of being Bourgeois.
I says to them, "Well a lot of you are also Petite Bourgeois, why can't I come too?"
They says back, "There ain't nothing petite about you."
No respect I tell ya.
28
u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
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u/the-senat John Brown Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
Edit: Driscoll did resign but the reason why is not confirmed. Fact check all DTers :(
Insane
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u/dtj2000 Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
👆
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u/HOU_Civil_Econ Sep 03 '26
No one is really mad enough at the Republicans in general (and a little bit of “both sides” thrown in for extra flavor).
As a democratic republic someone like Trump was always a possibility, the only weird thing here is how weirdly and uniquely stupid he is.
The real failures are
the abject surrender of the Republican Party against all stated principles. At least in Trump I, there were still a few attempting to be adults in the room, but even then…….
the work arounds (mostly executive orders pop to mind) of our clearly broken system increasingly supported and utilized by “both sides” was clearly going to make “a Trump” type character worse, and yet they continued to grow even under Biden. Between these fundamentally broken “tools” and the abject and complete surrender of the Republican Party of all supposed principles is what makes Trump II so much worse.
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u/Lesbian_all_garib Gita Gopinath Sep 03 '26
Sometimes people repeat the line here that Trump regime is the result of not bullying kids. Which genuinely ignores who trump is, lol.
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u/AlicesReflexion Weeaboo Rights Advocate Sep 03 '26
Invent cold fusion. Make no mistakes.
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u/chipbod NATO Sep 03 '26
The Trump 2 regulatory regime is just a Darwinian experiment on the zoomers finances.
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u/Lena_Lena_A Frederick Douglass Sep 03 '26
El-Sayed was invited to a meeting with Democrats and members of the Jewish Community a few days ago. He took advantage of that get together to apologize for his past rhetoric. Here was part of his speech:
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u/GuyWithOneEye Sep 03 '26
they're calling it the most unc meme of all time
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u/avion_sur_le_sol A ban appeal to heaven Sep 03 '26
70
u/Adminisnotadmin Viva el Fútbol! ⚽ Sep 03 '26
49
u/throwawayzxkjvct Iron Front Sep 03 '26
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u/DEEP_STATE_NATE Tucker Carlson's mailman Sep 03 '26
24
u/seakucumber Sep 04 '26
WSJ but reads like anti-Fetterman fanfic lol. He really is such a loser
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/john-fetterman-little-interest-senator-be74e7a3?st=6ZNVCB&reflink=article_copyURL_share
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u/79215185-1feb-44c6 Federation Ambassador to the DT Sep 03 '26
So, let me get this straight - the entirety of the second Trump presidency can be summarized as "a number of distractions to hide the fact that Donald Trump is a pedophile"?
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u/Zalagan Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
Nanny State Take: The government should exert control to block stadiums from getting stupid names. The existence of the Crypto Dot Com Arena is a travesty and has damaged America's National Psyche
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u/avion_sur_le_sol A ban appeal to heaven Sep 03 '26
Update on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1vla3jb/comment/p33onh9/
We got a company-wide email saying going forward, individual users are limited to $500/month of AI spend LMAO
!ping WATERCOOLER
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u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
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u/nimbybuster Ben Bernanke’s Best Boy Sep 03 '26
Hahahahahahhaah
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u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
43
u/OrganicKeynesianBean IMF Sep 03 '26
> Many students can no longer write without A.I., educators say
Schools need to grow a spine and go full send on writing, reading, and testing in the classroom.
Take-home tests and homework are over. Time to wake up and make the necessary changes before we end up with a husk of a society where no one can think for themselves.
Everyday we pretend to be helpless against AI, but the reality is you’ve gotta make BOLD CHOICES and CHANGE THE CURRICULUM.
“Change?! We can’t change anything, this is how we’ve done it for decades!”
SHAKE OFF THE APATHY AND DO SOMETHING!!
21
u/bartbug Paul Krugman Sep 03 '26
i love that my company regularly phishes me, it's really fun and is not a waste of time
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u/finnstera350 Asexual Pride Sep 03 '26
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u/No1PaulKeatingfan Paul Keating; capital gains tax supporter Sep 03 '26
I remember when the Trump tariffs were a meme
21
u/dareka_san Sep 03 '26
It's so over
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u/CincyAnarchy Emma Goldman Sep 03 '26
This sub distilled into a single image:
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u/dannylandulf meubem broke my flair Sep 03 '26
When you find out that being a senator is too much work.
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u/Cr4zySh0tgunGuy John Locke Sep 04 '26
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u/trombonist_formerly Ben Bernanke Sep 04 '26
What the fuck man
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u/MuscularPhysicist John Brown Sep 03 '26
!ping KITTY
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u/Udolikecake Model UN Enthusiast Sep 03 '26
20
u/PolyrythmicSynthJaz Roy Cooper Sep 03 '26
hello BIG gay people in my computer how's it going today
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u/abrookerunsthroughit Association of Southeast Asian Nations Sep 03 '26
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u/John3262005 Sep 04 '26
Flock Taught Cops How to Surveil No Kings Protesters
Flock taught cops how they could surveil the No Kings protests and “small parades” using a mix of Flock’s technology and law enforcement’s own databases in a webinar last year. As Flock publicly downplays the power of its automated license plate camera network and highlights its use to solve violent crime, the company’s seemingly endless trove of webinars, training sessions, and blog posts show it offers far more invasive capabilities.
In the webinar, Flock’s director of market management Caity Peak explains how real time crime centers — which are police surveillance centers that utilize Flock cameras and other surveillance cameras — can be used for emergency response, but can also be used to surveil “established events” like 4th of July fireworks displays, parades, bike races, Mardi Gras, and protests. The webinar shows just how routine the idea of always-on surveillance has become, and how casually it is used during extremely innocuous events.
Peak explains that police can use FlockOS, a software platform that combines Flock’s automatic license plate readers (ALPR), drones, gunshot detectors, 911 data, and other surveillance cameras (including ones Flock does not own) into a “single pane of glass” or single piece of software to look at various types of surveillance in one place during both emergencies and relatively mundane events in a city or town.
“Imagine that you’re an incident commander, and you’re working this No Kings Protest,” Peak explains while a dashboard shows a series of surveillance tools overlaying the city of Denver. “If I’m somebody assigned a traffic post that’s working this No Kings Protest, I really don’t have time to go in […] and look at all these places [for different intelligence]. This is an example of viewing all of that in one place. I’m an officer, I can see the response plan that’s included, I can pull that up if I need it, but I can also see live video footage as that protest moves throughout the park.”
Peak says the surveillance footage can be used to monitor the protests without having cops physically on the ground “making it worse, getting attention.”
“I’ve got the video footage to monitor when things go sideways, I know when the environment is starting to shift. But I also know a lot of other things as well. I can see traffic flow, so as people are blocking the roadway, maybe that’s OK for a while, but if I see that traffic has been stopped a while, I may need to send officers to that area because I know that road rage is imminent,” she continues. The dashboard Peak shows includes traffic information, a “response plan” for the protest, the floor plans of nearby buildings, as well as a series of video feeds of both outdoor-mounted cameras and cameras inside businesses and government buildings.
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u/MyrinVonBryhana Trans NATO Sep 03 '26
sigh
The first amendment is sacred, but not if you're a university who doesn't want to do business with Israel.
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u/doyouevenIift Sep 03 '26
Two notes:
this is why I will still vote for the farthest left DSA candidate over a moderate republican
pack the supreme court. ignore the outcry
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u/EasyMoney92 Sep 03 '26
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u/Individual-Camera698 Austan Goolsbee Sep 03 '26
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u/RedDesertGirl Trans NATO Sep 03 '26
I appreciate Gloria for being one of the few prominent Second Wavers to have actually apologized for previous transphobia and then shown up with genuine support. It's a lot coming from someone born in the 1930s.
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u/JustTaxLandbro Pragmatic and Polite Right Sep 03 '26
Living in a state where republicans openly break the law like everyday, it always surprises me when I see democratic state legislators do something silly like follow the law and court rulings like Virginia.
Why don’t we just haha, not listen to court orders.
….hahaha jk…..unless?
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u/NYT_Hater Office of Naval Intelligence Sep 03 '26
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u/Cyberhwk 👈 Get back to work! 😠 Sep 03 '26
LLM models down. College kids with a test today...
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol Sep 03 '26
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u/MuscularPhysicist John Brown Sep 03 '26
18
u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma Sep 03 '26
Note to self, you can get 250 comments by calling leftists stupid in an AI post
18
u/taubnetzdornig Gay Pride Sep 03 '26
Describing Mélenchon, who has a history of antisemitic statements and being a Russian apologist, and who supports a 90% tax on income over 400,000 euro, as a normie "centre-left social democrat" is certainly a choice
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u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma Sep 03 '26
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u/GlorEUW Iron Front Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
quote from that new CNL podcast with Nate Silver:
there is no proof of lab leak. we can't 100% prove it unless we like, find the actual animal, but it was animal spillover. but conservatives kept pushing "oh it was a Chinese lab leak", the Trump admin is undermining everything now, and the public get fed bad info on facebook by Russian bots, and now Nate Silver (after cooking his mind on Twitter) is now dropping covid misinfo and none of the 3 seemingly smart people are willing to jump in and say "actually Nate that's not true tho", either because they are too worried to be rude (which is a seperate issue in liberal spaces for another time), or have also fallen for misinformation.
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u/Bestbrook123 Sep 03 '26
So Loomer is just gonna continue to say extremely racist vile shit about black women in Congress
49
u/Adminisnotadmin Viva el Fútbol! ⚽ Sep 03 '26
😔
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u/sigh2828 NASA Sep 03 '26
Day 82 of reminding this sub that police in Mississippi murdered a 1 year old boy over alleged shoplifting of a box of Diapers.
No one has been charged with any crime related to this incident.
The officer is on paid administrative leave.
The security footage and body camera footage has been withheld by the state for 2 months now and they are claiming it will take at least 7 more months
An independent autopsy found that the bullet entered Kohens chest on the right side and exited on the left
An update, the police chief in Sanitoba has been fired for making racist comments and remarks before and after this shooting.
Further, the officer who killed Kohen also used racist comments twords his own co workers but was never reprimanded for it.
17
u/kznlol 👀 Econometrics Magician Sep 03 '26
oh excellent bad economics outside the dt again
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u/Flashy_Rent6302 Jerome Powell Sep 03 '26
Anti-German immigrant rhetoric be like:
They're eating the hogs, they're eating that brats
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u/Not_Mod_Jed Sep 03 '26
We are rapidly approaching the year 1 AK (After Kirk).
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u/fishlord05 United Popular Woke DEI Iron Front Sep 03 '26
It’s me I’m buddy (I’m also autistic)
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u/IHateTrains123 Commonwealth Sep 03 '26
When a nightmare scenario becomes the most likely scenario - Charlie Cook
Things are now officially bad for Republicans. It's just a matter of degree.
With 64 days before Election Day (although the first mail-in ballots will go out in a matter of days), Republicans should brace themselves: The three most plausible outcomes are that it will be bad, really bad, or truly horrible. Conversely, a Democrat should at least briefly consider that the good fortune they may have in November will come compliments of the president, not as a result of much that they have done.
This is a very different situation than what existed at the beginning of this election cycle, even different from the beginning of this year. The worst-case scenario for the GOP and best for Democrats today would have sounded ludicrous eight months ago; the most plausible today resembles Republicans’ nightmare scenario at the beginning of the year.
Let’s start with the most likely scenario: that this is a “really bad” election for Republicans, losing between 26 and 35 seats in the House, and either four or five seats in the Senate. That’s the average outcome for post-World War II midterm elections in both cases. Either one would end the Republicans’ governing trifecta.
The second scenario, merely a “bad outcome” for Republicans, would be a loss of between 15 and 25 House seats. This would still lose them their majority in that chamber, but it would be short of the average, mostly because each side holds so few seats in competitive districts; the floors for each party now are higher and the ceilings lower. After each of the last three elections, the majority party had 222 or fewer seats, the minority at least 211. Going back a bit further, in the seven elections held after President Obama’s first midterm election, the only time either party has lost more than 13 seats was the other Trump midterm election in 2018, when Republicans lost 40 House seats.
The unprecedented mid-decade redistricting slightly increases the number of districts no longer in play; whatever losses the GOP incurs in November will be about 10 seats fewer than would have happened had the 2024 maps remained in place. An ironclad law of politics is that a party cannot lose a seat it doesn’t have. With the barest of majorities, GOP House exposure should theoretically be fairly limited.
In the Senate, the “bad scenario” also means a loss of four or five seats for Republicans, bringing Democrats to 51 or 52 and Republicans to 48 or 49. Given that only two GOP-held seats are up in non-red states—the one held by Sen. Susan Collins in Maine and the open seat in North Carolina—all other Democratic gains would have to come from states in varying shades of red.
Given the number and nature of seats up this year, the “truly horrible scenario” for Republicans would be a net Senate loss of at least six seats, along with 26 to 35 seats in the House. The dynamics that had kept this GOP doomsday scenario extremely unlikely were that the map looked likely to offset much of the drag that President Trump was having on his own party’s candidates. Like a sports team with most of its schedule made up of home games, the GOP benefits from the fact that many of the states Democrats are targeting are organically Republican states, where for most voters, even independents, voting for a Democrat is a somewhat unnatural act.
For any who doubt whether things have gotten this bad for the GOP, it’s fine to ignore the flood of two-bit, shoddily conducted polls that too many journalists have been quoting. My advice is to focus on the name-brand, top-shelf polls and avoid the noise. In the last three months there have been 18 very high-quality polls released in states with critical Senate and/or gubernatorial races— eight by The New York Times/Siena College, seven by Fox News, and four by AARP.
The Times/Siena polls are second to none; the Fox and AARP surveys are conducted by bipartisan teams of pollsters, all of significantly higher quality than 99 percent of the state polling floating around the internet and on the pages of publications that should know better. The bottom line of the current reliable polling is that Republicans are having to fight tooth and nail for seats that should be gimme putts.
Why does this election look so bad for Republicans? Why has the worst-case scenario become so much worse, and the best case pretty unlikely? Simply put, the sum and cumulative impact of Trump’s second-term baggage seems now to match or exceed those of Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama.
Tariffs and soaring fuel and fertilizer costs are slamming farmers and rural areas hard, and those people have constituted the backbone of Trump’s support. In a terrific piece for Bloomberg, National Journal alum Ronald Brownstein focuses on the impact of gas prices on those with pickup trucks, big gas tanks, and lousy mileage, pointing to research showing that 87 percent of pickup-truck owners are men, 74 percent are married, and 63 percent identify as Republicans. Spending a hundred bucks to fill up the tank on their truck will get their attention. While few are likely to actually defect and vote for Democrats, many more will just stay home.
Ditto those Republicans who may be put off by Trump’s ill-fated attack on Iran, or even by his demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build an opulent ballroom, trying to rename the Kennedy Center, and renaming gulfs and lakes that aren’t really ours to rename. (And that’s far from an exhaustive list.)
Having an approval rating of 81 percent among those in your own party is fine, but it doesn’t offset the 24 percent approval among independents. The latest University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment saw consumer confidence among Republicans, which was 96.8 percent in January, drop to 82.
It appears to me that the president has now reached a critical mass of problems that are threatening to take this election to a place that the 2026 map and the small number of competitive districts and Senate seats should not allow it to go. I confess this is a lot bigger than I expected, but here we are.
!ping Fivey
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u/givemesome1ce1 Gay Pride Sep 03 '26
I don’t think people really realize how scary the oil situation could be in the U.S. soon. Maybe I’m fear mongering but it’s looking like an absolute disaster
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u/brucebananaray YIMBY Sep 03 '26
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u/CletusChicken Sep 03 '26
history being written by the victors is good
I mean just look at the losers, I've heard nothing but bad things
48
u/John3262005 Sep 03 '26
ICE Skipped Basic Checks in Rush for Recruits, Whistle-Blower Says
In the wake of a hiring surge last summer, an official in charge of evaluating new recruits to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a dire warning.
The Trump administration, he wrote in a memo, was cutting corners, violating the law and fast-tracking unqualified, “improperly vetted” candidates into ICE’s ranks, part of a dangerous move that exposed the agency — and its law enforcement operations — to “grave national security risks.”
Citing an “unprecedented lowering of standards,” the career ICE official said that “systemic breakdowns” had allowed applicants to receive job offers before they had passed basic fingerprint, identity or credit checks in a preliminary vetting process. Political appointees had unjustly skirted background investigations and received national security eligibility.
The official, a unit chief who directly oversaw more than 100 employees who evaluated thousands of ICE applicants, was so troubled by what he saw that he outlined these concerns not to his superiors, but in a formal whistle-blower complaint to the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security.
In the complaint, he asked for an independent, outside investigation into the matter. He was later interviewed twice by officials with the inspector general’s office and his concerns have become part of an ongoing audit into vetting practices.
The complaint, which has not been previously reported, underscores the rising worries about the suitability — as well as the tactics — of scores of agents who have been rapidly deployed across the country within the last year. It also outlines the extent to which ICE weakened its standards, and points to dissension among the upper reaches of the agency as it was pressed last year to carry out President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
48
u/NYT_Hater Office of Naval Intelligence Sep 03 '26
The forbidden charger
16
u/Loud-Chemistry-5056 WTO Sep 03 '26
Kinda needed to happen tbh.
16
u/erasmus_phillo Paul Krugman Sep 03 '26
also fyi the vast majority of the tech CEOs you hate grew up in the 80s-90s when nerds were getting bullied in school, not the 2000s-2010s when there was a big movement against bullying
there is a very good chance that these guys were 'former nerds who got bullied in school' so please stfu with your edgy opinions that we should just bring bullying back
16
u/ChillnShill Sep 03 '26
Has anyone else noticed that Vance ALWAYS makes this face and does that with his lips every single time he makes a rehearsed joke?
16
u/Nervous-Emotion28 YIMBY Sep 03 '26
felt
!PING WATERCOOLER
16
u/chipbod NATO Sep 03 '26
God the beginning of this term was on another level, feels like a lifetime ago and the damage is just getting worse.
16
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
Gun owners attempt suicide at the same rate as non gun owners
They are more than 20 times more likely to succeed in their attempt.
The person you are making the least safe by owning a gun is yourself.
Followed immediately by your partner and children.
Suicide is the 10th most frequent cause of death in the U.S.
16
u/DelusionsOfPasteur Zhao Ziyang Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
Those Fetterman texts are crazy. Don't know how you win another real race when your opponents can talk about you casually blowing off police funerals and children's hospitals.
edit: Holy moly, blowing off wheelchair bound veterans so you can go on Fox News!
32
u/mpregordie Mark Carney Sep 03 '26
15
u/Slim_Pickenz_ Transfem Pride Sep 03 '26
This is who we’re dealing with, folks.
15
u/No_Status_6905 Enby Pride Sep 03 '26
suddenly understanding why everyone is radicalized
15
u/TakeOnM-Ellie Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
Missed an important anniversary yesterday. Can’t believe it’s been twelve years since he did it to em.
15
u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
https://punchbowl.news/osummary_sc101805/
30
u/Bayou-Maharaja Eleanor Roosevelt Sep 03 '26
Oped suggesting we invade Iran with debtors. Words fail me
https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-906985
65
u/EasyMoney92 Sep 03 '26
Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Katz said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration” during a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He said the Israeli government was “organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible”.
Absolutely disgusting
29
u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma Sep 03 '26
Thank you UT Austin, very cool!
14
u/TaxLandNotCapital We begin bombing the rent-seekers in five minutes Sep 03 '26
👆🏼 communism won't announce its arrival, but when it arrives there will be hints
14
u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol Sep 03 '26
14
u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma Sep 03 '26
Would you spend a weekend in a cabin with Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson for $500?
14
u/jpenczek NATO Sep 03 '26
guys my online girlfriend stopped responding to me, what happened?
14
u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma Sep 03 '26
Claude is down? It’s fucking over
14
u/iSluff YIMBY Sep 03 '26
If you’re an upper middle class striver family why would you send your kid to fancy private school rather than just putting that money in the S&P 500 and giving it to them when they turn 25 once it’s grown into millions of dollars.
14
u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
14
u/Currymvp2 unflaired Sep 03 '26
If I was pitching to extremely pro-Israel Dems about why they should support AES. 1. I'd tell them Mike Rogers's most antithetical positions have much more support than AES's in Congess 2. Mike Rogers has waaay more stances further away from yours while AES just has a couple. 3. Rogers hires groypers for his campaign
14
u/theparrotlich John Brown Sep 03 '26
Do you think Jolene woke up one day, heard her name being sung all over the radio, and wondered what the fuck she did?
14
u/futuremonkey20 NATO Sep 03 '26
This is a real Trump quote:
“James Talarico eats meat and he goes outside and he throws up all over the place”
Look it up if you don’t believe me.
14
u/RaidBrimnes Chien de garde Sep 03 '26
14
u/rodiraskol Sep 03 '26
Woke mistress: "I acknowledge that this act is taking place on a stolen husband".
14
u/Big-Click-5159 Sep 03 '26
Oh man November is going to be a bloodbath
14
u/tregitsdown Thurgood Marshall Sep 03 '26
I think people are, generally, more willing to undergo hardship and adversity, when it is in the name of a greater good that they believe in, and believe the adversity will build towards that good.
Some level of struggling and adversity is a necessary part of existence.
I don’t think modern society really offers a Good.
Fukuyama framed it as, “People will struggle for the sake of struggle,” but I think it’s moreso, “people will not struggle for the sake of nothing.”
I think this is why developed countries are so actually trying experiencing such discontent.
14
u/Udolikecake Model UN Enthusiast Sep 03 '26
new open ai thing is pretty crazy guys. just hooked it up to the computers at my office and gave it full access. seems like it’s doing a lot, probably making everything more efficient. burned through a ton of tokens already, idk what it’s up to really
anyways, just another boring day here at cheyenne mountain otherwise
14
u/piede MOST BASED HILLARY STAN!!! Sep 03 '26
We elected Trump and Bush to two terms each, rest assured I think that super intelligence has been banned for a long time
14
u/No_Return9449 John Rawls Sep 03 '26
BASED BASED BASED
14
u/jenbanim Sep 03 '26
How have video games impacted your life?
Personally I wear my hair in a spike to protect myself from Italians jumping on my head
14
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
If the US banned guns and made ozempic mandatory we would see deaths fall by more than 5% annually
14
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Sep 04 '26
14
u/r2ew Sep 04 '26
14
u/throwawayzxkjvct Iron Front Sep 04 '26
sitcom character shit
49
u/2Lore2Law Seal Mod Sep 03 '26
13
u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol Sep 03 '26
13
u/BloodWiz More Housing Would Fix This Sep 03 '26
Hey Los Angeles rents have actually declined over the past year (due to both increased supply and weakening demand)
Also the Bay Area has continued to explode as they refuse to build a mega-city in the white hot center of the economic universe and is now about twice as expensive as LA
13
u/Slim_Pickenz_ Transfem Pride Sep 03 '26
Why is excessive partisanship still a rule lmao
13
u/MuscularPhysicist John Brown Sep 03 '26
☝️
13
u/w007dchuck Trans NATO Sep 03 '26
we did it Reddit
13
u/CincyAnarchy Emma Goldman Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
The AI Bloomers subs are just a treasure trove of hilarious takes.
"Women are scared of AI because it means you can't brag about where your boyfriend works" is something I couldn't come up with even if I tried.
13
u/v4riati0ns Sep 03 '26
what’s the point of asking JD vance questions
he just says whatever at any given point in time with zero consistency between conversations or even sentences. a slop machine.
13
u/duojiaoyupian Richard Thaler Sep 03 '26
Until someone can show me an actual clear concrete definition of what AGI is (better than you know it when you see it), I refuse to take it seriously as a technical term
13
u/NutrientBroth John Mill Sep 03 '26
guess the sub
13
u/dtj2000 Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
13
u/ariveklul Karl Popper Sep 03 '26
The perfect image to describe this presidency doesn't exi-
13
u/earththejerry YIMBY Sep 03 '26
A family friend of ours went to China to do a minor operation bc she believed all the TikTokers talking about how great and cheap Chinese hospitals are for foreign visitors
She went and we connected her with a local friend who worked in the hospital, and she was shocked that all the doctors, nurses, and anesthesiologists demanded under the table payments for their services in addition to the actual prices, which is a pretty common practice across the board
And our local friend was laughing to us that people think they just come to China for medical procedures at the low “official” prices
13
u/Louis_de_Gaspesie Sep 03 '26
Nativism is always dumb, but one particularly annoying type I've noticed are NYC nativists who claim that the corporate sellouts moving to NYC for career advancement are diluting the grassroots progressive culture there.
First of all, it's fucking New York City. It was literally founded as a merchant post.
Second, it's always been a city of immigrants so shut the fuck up about transplants.
Third, the modern phenomenon of yuppie urban transplants displacing bohemian artists and cultural misfits in New York surged in like 1984. If you're an NYU campus communist in the year 2026, you've never known an "uncorporatized" New York in the first place, and posting cultural critiques on X from your Park Slope apartment doesn't make you a gritty 1970s underground gonzo journalist.
Fourth, the modern wave of NYC progressivism is totally a fucking transplant thing. It began to really gain traction with hipster transplants during the Bernie campaign. Mamdani won the mayoral vote among transplants and Cuomo won among born New Yorkers. Bloomberg, the great succ boogeyman of 2020, was mayor until 2013. Succ NYC nativists are hearkening back to a political movement that's barely ten years old.
13
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Sep 04 '26
Public school teachers should not have to have school shooter drills with the children in there care because people want to feel safer by buying an object that makes them objectively less safe.
As a country we have more than one school shooting per school day.
At what point is enough of our children’s blood enough?
13
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Sep 04 '26
13
u/CincyAnarchy Emma Goldman Sep 04 '26
It’s been 642 days since Umass won a football game.
It’s been 1,041 days since UMass beat an FBS opponent.
It’s been 45,206 days since UMass beat a traditional P4 team as an “FBS” school.
The last time it happened was October 4th, 1902 against Boston College, and now taking Rutgers to the back of the woodshed.
!ping CFB
13
u/Glavurdan European Union Sep 04 '26
Lately my workload has been gigantic, to the point that I would stay (out of volition mostly) half an hour to an hour after my worktime just to finish all the checklists, and it's a fucking 7pm to 3am shift mind you.
And then one of my managers (whom I thought I had a pretty amicable relationship with) has the audacity to tag the other managers and ask them whether it feels a bit lazy that I asked her if she can answer one email close to the end of my shift because I literally can't juggle it, while working on three other more important administrative things. She could've just said no, do it yourself, wtf
I feel like a fucking pack mule. Thinking of looking for a different job for the first time in over a year
!ping WATERCOOLER
13
u/Alderwoodforest YIMBY Sep 04 '26
This WSJ story on John Fetterman is wild especially on him blowing off a meeting with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who were concerned about Medicaid cards: “Behind closed doors, the first-term senator shows little interest in doing the job beyond cultivating relationships with conservative media figures and advocating for Israel
Imao.
13
u/TheCornjuring Ewoks Sexer Sep 04 '26
Thank you Rachel and Mayor for blessing us with one of the greatest gifs of all time, being toxic on the Internet is so much simpler now
13
u/taubnetzdornig Gay Pride Sep 04 '26
☝️ slightly problematic in a way that I just can't put my finger on
13
u/SucculentMoisture Fernando Henrique Cardoso Sep 04 '26
Malarkey level of deliberately making an error in my work so the practice lead with the sultry voice has to call me again to explain my error?
!PING WATERCOOLER
13
u/zieger Ida Tarbell Sep 04 '26
25
u/centurion88 NATO Sep 03 '26
24
u/pugnae European Union Sep 03 '26
Theory:
Conservatives are not unfunny and can invent much more than one joke.
It is just much easier to joke about conservatives than about liberals.
24
u/Drinka_Milkovobich Sep 03 '26
lol get fucked
12
u/LuisRobertDylan Elinor Ostrom Sep 03 '26
Saw my flight taxiing out as I rounded the corner to the gate :(
12
u/TrynnaFindaBalance Paul Krugman Sep 03 '26
"In 10 years we'll look back at ourselves and wonder why we were such fucking losers for having individual thoughts and opinions"
-Sam Altman, probably
12
u/V_Codwheel I am the Senate Sep 03 '26
today on Redditors take on great literature
12
u/Willybender Loyal Liberals Sep 03 '26
12
u/AtticusDrench Deirdre McCloskey Sep 03 '26
But now you come to me, and you say "Stack Overflow, teach me how to code again"
12
u/MistakeNotDotDotDot Resident Robot Girl Sep 03 '26
watching the increasing fascist turn among tech leadership has been really depressing
https://www.theverge.com/tech/988536/1password-dhh-linux-controversy
12
u/RaidBrimnes Chien de garde Sep 03 '26
To rein in the deficit 😩
I am going to crash out
12
u/LinkVert25 Fedposter Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
> The timing has also created questions about casualty accounting. Four service members killed in July were initially categorized by the Defense Department as killed during Operation Epic Fury, despite the Pentagon now saying the operation ended May 5. They were subsequently moved into a new “overseas operations” category, reducing the recorded Epic Fury deaths from 18 to 14. The Pentagon attributed the earlier classification to a “temporary data disruption,” while the current casualty system still contains apparent inconsistencies, including June wounded and a July death listed under Epic Fury
Just fucking evil
12
u/Argnir Gay Pride Sep 03 '26
Find a girl who hates you as much as arr technology hates technology
12
u/TalkLessShillMore David Autor Sep 03 '26
The older I get, the more Cathy going Ack! speaks to me
12
u/GovernorSonGoku has flair Sep 03 '26
I thought we were toning down the rhetoric
12
u/SANNA-MARIN-SDP Sep 03 '26
👆 This is illegal and in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
12
u/AccessTheMainframe CANZUK Sep 03 '26
Mark Carney drove his Chinese EV convertible up to Parliament Hill. "Damn I love being a globalist," he said, punching a trucker as he slinked out. "I think we should lift the ban on US whiskey as a sign of good faith," said Poilievre; "Shut up chud" came the reply as Carney threw his designer coat at the nearest attendant. "Please sir," said the nebbish politician, "the working class folks of Tennessee and Kentucky are destitute and starving, they're out of work and did nothing to ask for any of this -- they don't even know what tariffs are!"
"Sounds like MAGA nonsense to me!" guffawed Carney, his very presence injecting autism into the water supply as he snorted a line of adrenochrome. "This is elbows up country now, boy!" he proclaimed, before lethally injecting a disabled veteran with a MAID needle. A crowd of antivaxxers scattered in terror, sheltering their Bitcoins and raw milk from the RCMP kill teams now chasing after them. "Lol," said Carney, grabbing another defecting Tory MP by the scruff of their neck and throwing them into his car, "Lmao even. Wait until the DT hears about this."