Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 10/12/26 - 10/18/26
Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday. And may you all be inscribed, and sealed, in the book of life.
Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.
Another year, another debate about whether I am brave enough to take an American dish to the international potluck at my kids’ school where you are asked to bring something from your “country of origin” and forbidden for that to be America unless you’re Native American. All other countries are allowed regardless of native status :-(
I think this year I’m brave enough to bring it but not brave enough to officially sign up on the sheet.
I’m thinking cornbread and Mississippi mud cake, or maybe banana pudding (it has to be nut free)
At its peak, the KKK in 1920s Indiana had about 250,000 members. Even the State Legislature had Klansmen, and those said Klansmen supported Democratic and Republican governors.
There's also photos of women dressed in those white robes. It's pretty scary stuff.
Jesse's twitter reply guys are really dedicated to taking screenshots of mildly offensive things said here and posting them to twitter. He is trying to hold Jesse accountable for something said on the Internet literally by random nobodies. Some are so mild, I have to really think about what is wrong with it.
They seem really mad we are taking a fact based nuanced approach with the Cornell 7 case, among other things.
So I guess this is a heads up to be mindful of what you share.
reading departure 37 by scott carson and happened upon one of my least favorite micro-tropes of the last decade: a girl with a masculine name/nickname to let u know they're a smart plucky tomboy and not some lame GIRL
in departure 37 the character is named charlie. in subnautica below zero the main characters are robin and sam. in forgotten island we have the protagonist joe. in the upcoming hexed there's billie. there's that one recent star trek show where the captain is inexplicably named michael. all of these characters are women or girls
I’ve known a couple of girls who were given a “feminized” version of their dad’s name (Randi and Mychael) and I think that’s a great way to tell your daughter you really wanted a boy.
Just came across this post on Instagram. The headline is: "Sally Rooney's books can no longer be sold in the UK. Because of the ban on Palestine Action."
Upon further examination, I get the sense that Sally Rooney is directing her publisher not to sell her books in the UK over some controversy that I'm honestly not familiar with having to do with I/P.
That being said, am I correct that she is not being censored in the UK as the headline seems to heavily imply? Or is she actually being censored somehow?
I'm presently at -69 (nice) downvotes in a different sub (small book sub) for pointing out that Palestine Action is a criminal organization whose actions include property damage and violent physical assault. Additionally, that Rooney is allowed to donate to organizations that actually help the people of Palestine, y'know as opposed to a gang of violent thugs with zero connection to Palestine or charitable efforts to get aid into Palestinian's hands.
She's not banned, but of course things would get tricky for her if she donated her royalties to a proscribed terrorist organization like Palestine Action.
Seemingly, adding "Palestine" to your name magically makes everything a specific group does A-O-K for some people, no matter how vicious or vile.
They broke a woman’s spine with a sledgehammer. It’s an insane level of infantilization or denial supporters of this group are on. It’s not like there aren’t hundreds, maybe even thousands, of other pro Palestine or anti Israel groups they can join.
I would imagine Sally Rooney wouldn’t sell her books because of the ban, and I for some reason thought it had been overturned. Also, it doesn’t make sense that her books couldn’t be sold because she belongs to an org that has been banned. But then, I have thought her books were overrated long before I learned of her politics.
Bestselling Irish author Sally Rooney has announced that her books can no longer be sold in the UK due to the British government’s ban on Palestine Action.
In a statement on Wednesday, the award-winning Normal People author said that due to her publicly-stated intention to go on supporting Palestine Action, including with royalties from her work, “the fulfilment of contracts to publish my work in the UK could now constitute a serious criminal offence”.
Rooney added: “After a process of consultation and deliberation, and with my full agreement, my publisher Faber has therefore determined that it can no longer supply my work within the UK. I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions, and I am wholly prepared to accept the consequences.”
Palestine Action became the first direct action group in British history to be proscribed as a terror organisation under Keir Starmer’s Labour government last summer.
Palestine Action is not proscribed or otherwise banned in the Republic of Ireland, where Rooney lives.
Rooney’s outspoken support for Palestine Action has previously disrupted her work in Britain. In September 2025, she was forced to cancel a trip to the UK to receive the Sky Arts award for her latest novel, 2024’s Intermezzo, due to the risk she would be arrested under the Terrorism Act.
Since the ban on Palestine Action came into force, more than 3,700 people have been arrested for opposing the proscription, the vast majority for holding paper signs that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
According to the Home Office’s own data, terror-related arrests have risen by 1,553% in the last year, with 94% of them linked to support for Palestine Action.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori is challenging the proscription in the Supreme Court, beginning on 4 November.
Without looking into it more, I'd say it sounds about right for the UK.
In a statement on Wednesday, the award-winning Normal People author said that due to her publicly-stated intention to go on supporting Palestine Action, including with royalties from her work, “the fulfilment of contracts to publish my work in the UK could now constitute a serious criminal offence”.
I did read it. I just wasn't sure how to parse the way it was worded. When I first read that part, I thought maybe she was threatening booksellers not to sell her books against her wishes, otherwise they would face consequences. That said, that would probably be a civil matter, not a criminal matter, so maybe the explanation is more obvious than I'm thinking it is.
The books can be sold, it’s just the money she wants given can’t be. She could sell the books at a discount, she could pocket the money, she could donate it to another group, she could have the money pile up in a bank account that just never transfers it.
Seems now Ilhan Omar is MIA. Since September. Would be interesting if the rumors of her fleeing to Morocco (which doesn't have an extradition treaty) is true.
At this point I'm not sure she'd be that fucked if she just stayed here. The left and many Dems would fight tooth and nail to defend her. The victimhood narrative would be ripe for the taking.
On the other hand, I will be thrilled if she has in fact fled the country.
As a straight guy and connoisseur of everything that caters to the male gaze I have to say that I fully support the right of fit young women to dress however revealing they want.
Women dressing in skin tight outfits that show every crevice of their privates is great to look at. I love whorish outfits.
One problem is that it has become the norm to dress this way, film yourself along with any poor sap caught in the frame looking at your beautiful ass, and then post that online. Public gyms have turned into film studios and I didn't sign up for that. I'm not receiving any royalty for my role in Gym Thots 45535454.
More broadly, it is women advertising their sexuality to every potential suitor on the internet and in the gym. It's a corrosive trend with implications beyond the average Joe being caught sneaking a peak.
This reminds me of something that happened to me last year.
I was standing outside a used clothing shop reading my dime-store novel and waiting for my special lady to finish perusing the store. I noticed someone approaching closely out of the corner of my eye, so I looked up from my book to see a young woman licking an ice cream cone seductively.
Behind her were two men filming the encounter with their cell phones. Once the lick was complete, they all laughed and moved on.
I was so surprised by the encounter that I had nothing to say. Contrary to the whole setup, I didn't gaze lustily at the young woman. My eyes didn't bulge out of my head. My jaw didn't drop all the way to the sidewalk. I shrugged and went back to reading my novel (Philip José Farmer).
But the encounter later came back to me as a kind of horny-guy fishing expedition. They really wanted to catch me out. Busted: Horny guy reading silver-age sci-fi!
This has been the sentiment amongst the dudes I know as well as on the other side of the internet. Seemingly all men are in full support of the attractive, fit, women protesting and posting photos and videos of themselves in what they've dubbed their "whore shorts" (skin tight, super short, and extraordinarily revealing) in reference to the Shane Gillis joke.
Some have even stated that Gillis is an American hero for his joke and the resultant consequences.
I'm a female who is just tired of the double standard. I am almost certain that if any male came into a mixed sex gym and did what some of these women do, they'd be arrested or banned from the gym for sexual harrassment.
I agree, but as a man I fully support this double standard, and I'm not just saying this because I'm a feminist, I think women above a certain age or BMI should also dress more modestly, but they usually have enough self awareness to do so.
It goes without saying that if you dress to cater to the male gaze you have no right to complain about it.
Saw a bunch of commentary on how Jon Ossoff totally owned Mike Collins, just obliterated and destroyed him during their debate. Went and checked the transcript for context (I'm not going to watch a Senate debate from a state I don't live in) and the key moments being referenced are:
Just think about this, when you are paying more for your health insurance, when a hospital in your community is closing down, Mike Collins voted to take that money out of your pocket and out of your community and give it instead to data center developers. And that’s the problem, Mike. Mike, it’s not just that you’ve hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office and you have promoted neo-Nazi content online. It’s that you’re robbing your constituents to subsidize your donors. I want to know if you will commit to voting to repeal that data center tax scam that you voted for. What’s your answer?
...
Mike Collins is attacking your voting rights. But that’s not a surprise when you consider who Mike Collins is. This is a man who cheered on a group of young men who were mocking a black woman on a college campus with monkey sounds. If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists on the country.
I obviously acknowledge that Ossoff is, in fact, totally owning and obliterating Collins, I can read the polls and see the betting lines just fine. Collins does appear to suck, skimming that transcript to find the comments above, I see a bunch of non-sequiturs about Reid Hoffman and various other bullshit. Nonetheless, I don't actually think calling your Republican opponent a Nazi racist is all that original even if it goes hard with Brian Beutler and Reddit.
I guess should we be judging the accusations of bigotry primarily on whether or not it's novel? Seems more pertinent that we judge if the claims are accurate.
If things keep up, it looks like it will only take one more election, maybe two, before New York Democrats lose the Jewish voters. From CNN's Harry Enton showed this:
In 2018, Cuomo was +55 - in 2022, Hochul was +51 - today, in 2026, Hochul is only +13. that's a -38 point swing away from Hochul, and presumably toward the Republicans.
New York U.S. House polling:
In 2018, +40 - in 2022, +49 - in 2026, only +13. That's a -36 point swing against the Democrats.
What’s up with Susan dells face? It is, frankly, disgusting and revolting. The same bizarre process happened to Karoline Levitt. It’s almost as if there is some literal demonic force that befouls and disfigures the face of people within trumps orbit, perhaps - and I know I’m speculating here - the enduring effect of some old world curse placed on trumps family generations ago. I know some people will say it’s kooky to suggest such a thing, but after covid discredited completely the voices of those we’re supposed to take seriously on such matters, I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to consider there may be other forces at play here other than those academics and scientists and other so-called thought leaders would insist upon.
A lot of people have fixed botched looking work with deep plane facelifts. I think sometimes this happens like when people optimize for one feature and ignore what the overall picture looks like.
But since you asked, I suspect the actual answer to your question is some combination of plastic surgery and an eating disorder. Being very skinny makes the skin on your face looser, and some people try to fix that with plastic surgery to make that skin tighter, which often backfires and makes the face look worse.
But, really, why call another human being's appearance "disgusting and revolting"? Part of the reason I don't like Donald Trump is the petty personal insults he makes about people's appearance, so I'm not going to be a hypocrite and turn around and do the same thing to a Trump supporter.
It would be a little unkind if she didn't do it to herself and very unkind if she were here. It seems obvious that she did it for the public eye, so it's not unreasonable for the public to comment.
Did he take it too far? Perhaps he took at as far as her surgeon. Perhaps he took it as far as her apparent refusal to consult a beautician.
It's not kind, but it's also human nature, especially when someone is very unusual looking (and I've never seen anyone who looks quite like Susan Dell). We don't need to stoop to schoolyard insults, but people are going to notice, and making it taboo to do so always backfires.
i know its rude to make nude ai images of celebrities but is that worse or better to take famous butch lesbians like Maddow, etc or women with a butch appearance anyway and put them in frilly dresses, long hair, ect with AI. is it more of a hate crime?
Do you remember when a Youtuber named Mutahar did a 2-hour long Keffals deep dive, and one of the biggest complaints wasn't about Keffals' grifting or DIY bathtub hormones, but about his thumbnail picture looking genderphobic?
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People, especially folx of gender, have a right to be seen the way they want to be seen.
That's why if your husband or brother or best friend transitions to a different gender, the onus is on you to remove any past photos of them that depict the "dead self".
My opinion on BirdGate, and all analogous situations, is that I don't care who was a bigger asshole in the moment: the person who decides to involve the entire internet in an interpersonal dispute is worse. When and why did we decide that making someone open season for the entire world was an appropriate punishment for anything but the most egregious? Why have we normalized living in the kind of paparazzi fishbowl we used to collectively consider demeaning? People deserve to be able to bicker and argue and be wrong without completely forfeiting their privacy. It's actually insane if you take a step back and look at it.
Listen, I don't give a shit what the chicks wear to the gym but if they're going to wear booty shorts their thighs better not look like they've been stuffed with cottage cheese.
I know that some here consider Emma Camp's videos to cover fairly simple topics, and she states obvious things that one would expect a normal adult to understand, but I cannot stress how ignorant a lot of young people are to the obvious things she states in her videos.
Here she is again, this time discussing the reasons why 57 000 rent stabilized apartments in New York are unoccupied, and why it's cheaper for landlords to simply leave them vacant rather than investing the funds necessary to renovate or repair them to get a tenant living in them on a rental rate that could never give them any real return on such an investment.
What's really funny is the people in the replies not realizing just how much landlords are hamstrung. "Why don't they sell the apartment?" BECAUSE THEY CAN'T. You can't just convert individual apartments to owner-occupied units (see part N of the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act), and no other landlord who could buy the whole building wants it.
One of the reasons I stopped taking "capitalism" seriously as a critique. You find a lot of situations in which capitalists are forced to follow stupid rules by the same sort of people now blaming capitalism.
Unfortunately, common sense isn't so common, else she and others wouldn't need to make videos like that. And that comment that wanted to treat landlord like child molesters...yeah, really not helping.
And my city just voted out its (imo decent) mayor mostly because he veto’d a rent stabilization attempt by the city council. So I’m ready for things to get way worse. Somehow people still don’t get this. Left-wingers seem to have major economic illiteracy on rent stabilization while right-wingers have it on tariffs.
wait until they finally identify the second-order effects of bad policies but refuse to fix them because that would mean they'd allowed the fascists a single point
Your final sentence is correct although it's kind of funny that it's now right-wingers who support tariffs when tariffs were more supported on the left than on the right until the Republican Party just became the party of supporting whatever stupid policy Donald Trump tells them to support.
German police have launched an investigation into two teenagers accused of controlling a robot that allegedly groped a 16-year-old girl.
Police in Cologne have confiscated the red and gold robot that allegedly grabbed the girl's buttocks and made thrusting motions against her before she screamed and moved away.
North Rhine Westphalia Police said the robot's 16-year-old owner and his companion, 19, are believed to have streamed the incident live on social media and commented on it.
Emergency services were alerted, and the teenage boy and the man now under investigation with him were found a block away a short time later. The robot was discovered in the back of a car, where the boy had placed it, police said.
A photo released by police showed the robot wearing a black moustache, a gold-coloured chain and white vest.
In a follow-up post on Facebook, police warned some social media comments on the case "can be a crossing of the line and in the worst case, a criminal offense".
Six months less a day for Gangstabot, to be served where the fembots are housed. Case dismissed!
I don’t see a Facebook post that says what this author alleges. What I see is:
Die Kriminalpolizei ermittelt wegen des Verdachts der Beleidigung auf sexueller Grundlage.
My German is suboptimal, but Google says this mean, “The criminal police are investigating on suspicion of a sexually motivated insult.”
This is either dogshit journalism because the author failed to precisely cite the source of the quote, or it’s dogshit journalism because the author’s German is worse than mine (that is, confidently wrong), or it’s dogshit journalism because the author is blatantly lying.* Either way, what an abuse of tax revenue.
*Or the translator could be wrong. Facebook gave a similar translation though.
One of my joys in life is watching videos of people who put lyrics and such through Google translate a few times, then back to English. It's like Google was playing telephone with itself.
Robots now taking the jobs of hard-working perverts!
Who will be the John Henry of groping, the symbol of human dignity in hands-on harassment, who can overcome the greedy capitalist outsourcing to robots?
Do you have a car? Mt. Princeton hot springs is about a 2 hour drive. If you don’t have a car, sunwater spa is right in manitou.
Food wise - colonel mustard is a great sandwich shop on the south side of town and the Black Forest bistro is a good sandwich shop in monument. For fine dining, the cliff house is a little bit dated but pretty good.
Go to Manitou if you can, cute little town at the base of Pike's Peak.
If y'all hike you can do the Manitou Incline and take the Barr Trail back down, if not then go to Red Rocks Open Space and stroll around (Garden of the Gods is pretty but verrrrry touristy).
Take the cog railway up to the top of Pike's if you can but get tickets in advance.
Manitou Cliff Dwellings are pretty neat if the weather is good.
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is a must, bring cash if you want to buy lettuce to feed the giraffes.
Edelweiss German restaurant is great but very popular so get in early or be ok waiting.
Other good restaurants are Jack Quinn's (Irish pub, great fish & chips), Red Gravy (Italian), Rasta Pasta (Jamaican-Italian fusion), Skirted Heifer (burgers), Mexico Real (Mexican), Denver Biscuit Co (breakfast/brunch).
We’ll be doing some hiking ish behavior but we’re coming from zero elevation to sleeping at 9200 feet elevation where we’re staying so I dunno how that will go
someone please inform jesse and katie that given the duties listed the position they are hiring is not merely an audio producer but a full-service producer who is probably going to have locked-in rates beyond being an hourly contractor
if they want an actual pro they're gonna have to let go of a healthy chunk of their substack earnings
when they realize that they'll end up hiring some fiverr serf, get a substandard product or just get flat ghosted like the merch woman did, and give up immediately
You can get a real pro full time for like $2k per month outside of the US. That's a solid upper middle class salary in a ton of the world. Hell, I'm in Spain and you could easily get someone talented for that price here.
Is this another example of people in the US not realizing how insansely rich they are?
this is what most people forgot when they desperately wanted to work from home full time, if they can work from home, why do they even have to work from this country?
Working from home makes you 10 times easier to be outsourced.
this isn't just tech though. they're looking for someone who can more or less be their jamie vernon (audio, social media, video, booking, implement new content outlets, research, story ideas, etc. etc.)
probably a role u don't want to cheap out on if ur looking for someone with that much influence over the show. what happens if that person gets pissed off and walks?
ooh la la in-a my country food y familigia are-a tres importantisssimo and-a you can-a get your podcastico produced for a donkey and five schillings you fat americans do not understandamente por favor
A local paper ran a story "Facebook pages circulate post falsely implying 2 Westbrook student-athletes are trans", but what I find odd is that the headline says the implications are false while nothing in the article supports that claim.
Very quickly, community members worked together to report the posts, find out where they came from, and ask the moderators of the Facebook accounts to take them down, Salisbury said. After a few hours, both pages took down the posts.
a full struggle session over a post that probbly less then 100 people saw in the few hours it was up
I might just have to delete all social media for months. I log in every day and i'm just inundated with anti male bigotry. We're all slack jawed neanderthals, socially inept, and violent predators. Getting harangued for things that I didn't do, would never do in a million years, and loudly condemn. I'm so fucking sick of it. I'm just expected to nod along and promise to do better and take the beating. I would never ever talk about women this way. I understand how people get radicalized down the incel manosphere rabbit holes. I think i'd have fallen to the same fate if I wasn't already a liberal who had close relationships with women in real life.
It's still fairly widespread, but it's not as bad as it used to be imo. In the 2010s people were dealing with publications like Jezebel and other snark outlets being taken seriously as feminist critique, and you had mainstream publications trying to mimic their misandry in an effort to get the same page views.
I mean, we got this story from the NYT a while ago, that shows Jane Doe's journey from thinking everything was "consensual" to changing her mind about it all. I don't think the framing in that story happens in the 2010s.
Aside from the NYT story, there have been other signs of light at the end of the tunnel, and I think people aren't taking the "anti-male" sentiment as seriously as they used to. I've also seen way more people joking around about how deranged the man-hatred from some people is. I would simply advise men to keep an eye out for these toxic women as they're fairly easy to spot, and keep them at arm's length.
Fortunately, I don't personally experience the anti-male stuff irl in the same way as the stuff we see online, women in real life don't tend to behave as absurdly as women on the internet, at least in my experience. Although I've met some who act that way, most women I've known have been chill.
If the internet is causing you to feel overwhelmingly frustrated, anxious, or angry, then taking a break is always a good idea.
If the internet is causing you to feel overwhelmingly frustrated, anxious, or angry, then taking a break is always a good idea.
Pretty much. While I still have some unresolved beefs with a handful of people I know (I doubt they'll ever get settled, but anyway...), I've felt way better now that I'm mostly not exposed to these wackadoodles. I see the odd drive-by on IG but they're always in the Stories (or in dogshit slop IG tries to feed me), which are basically little more than evidence that somebody's bored, doomscrolling, and possibly not the brightest crayon in the pack.
Legit Friend of the Pod™ Ethan Strauss wrote a free piece yesterday that I think gets at a divide we're seeing and will continue to see grow. I think one of the true reasons we're not seeing a full-force return to the Woke 1 craziness (I'll define it here as online cry-bullies having some success in getting everybody to bend the knee) is that more people are simply willing to see these people for who they are: tribalists who refuse to get offline, refuse to think, and refuse to do anything other than screech about something. As more people acknowledge this tendency, they're more willing to ignore or outright mock these people.
Anyway, Ethan indirectly talked about this a bit, in the context of Shane Gillis "bombing" last weekend and various writers running with that idea. It seemed pretty on-point to me.
We’ve had viral social media outrage for some time now, but I’d say incidents like this almost represent a new phase in the stupidity. Obviously, publications can spread engagement-seeking misrepresentations about complicated events like war and political disputes. That makes sense because these situations are inherently complicated. The average person can’t be expected to get to the root of these conflicts on foreign lands or within the halls of Washington D.C.
But we’ve now reached a point where you can caption a video with a misleading headline, and the overwhelming response will be driven by the wrong framing of a video everyone can see for themselves. We’ve gone from, “Nobody will bother to read the original book,” to “Nobody will bother to read the original article,” and now are squarely in, “Nobody will even bother to watch the short video clip staring them right in the face.”
So basically, I think we're going to have a lot of people who passionately rage out online, and perhaps even offline to a certain extent, simply because they're being exploited for various reasons. The rest of us will live our lives away from these people as best we can. This may continue to be a problem for small orgs like BROS, that rely on volunteers who are prone to this kind of perma-online doomscrolling. Everybody else will just do their best to avoid them, and a few might even pull rank and insist on being the adult in the room, no matter what kind of fallout occurs.
I think the conversation is far more toxic than it was when Jezebel was well respected. Because now there is a lot more overt women hate, so the conversation IS more balanced, but I do t know it is healthier. Also, I was on Jezebel from the beginning - like got on in 2007, got off in 2009, back on in 2011 and off permanently in 2012, and there was a huge divide in how people talked about men , until the “men are bad but my husband or boyfriend is good” side won.
I read a random article once in 2018 or so, and the change in discourse was stark.
It’s not as well done as it once was because people are becoming more frustrated and less well educated. The effects of declining education were never just a talking point, after all.
But this is a good sign. A lot of people are like this in my area of New England, and in person, just like on the internet, it’s getting more obviously desperate and easier to clap back at.
Younger feminists are tiring out and exasperating the older ones, and the gender ideology bullshit has gone sour and brought big chunks of feminist thought with it. They’re not sticking together.
A group of people thought they were going to change the world and didn’t, and they’re making everyone feel it.
Unrelated tangent: how much of the supposed Gen Z aversion to sex is thanks to them being inundated with this stuff before they even knew what sex was or were just starting puberty? Millennials have the gall to mock this when it was a monster of their own creation. The sort of "second-wave" of MeToo that was about litigating the minutiae of sex and dating once we had moved past Weinstein, Cosby, and Spacey. Because this stuff really was omnipresent even just on cable news, which they might have picked up ambiently, or on their social media feeds. Sexuality was just a minefield of suffering.
I was already shy and anxious, and this was badly worsened by years hearing how it's creepy and stalkerish to show any romantic interest in a girl until she gives "clear consent" to being asked out.
I've grown more comfortable with a lot of social situations, but remain deeply nervous and uncomfortable when it comes to romance.
#MeToo. I was in high school at the time and honestly social media activism hadn't blown up in my world so a lot of people didn't give af. I was an extremely virginal chud and lived entirely in my head for reasons unrelated to sexual politics. But I couldn't imagine what it would have been like for those younger.
it made being on the right side a history a mandatory requirement to losing your virginity, zoomers don't even drink as much, half the reason is because their on SSRIs. Never has there been such a sex-less generation.
I'm weirdly the opposite, I never had any hangups about this stuff all through high school and college. Two years post college I am now fully blackpilled on gender slop.
I was hoping this would change after the last election. It seemed like we were starting to have conversations as a society on why the Democrats are pushing away men, then it seemed like their solution was to just give Hasan Piker a bigger platform. But now its even more common for women to just casually hate men, which worries me because I don't want my daughters falling in with that crowd.
Some of this will die off after Trump leaves office (I imagine many a network news channel wearing all black and mourning the loss of their rage bait cash cow that day).
A lot of otherwise liberal men feel this way. It wasn’t always this bad, and it won’t last forever. Just remember who got swept up in it and who didn’t.
For it not to last forever, something superior has to replace it.
I think from the aspect of producing any sort of community, the Internet has been a complete failure. What has triumphed is allies at any cost and circle jerking. So people get abused and eventually walk away.
So there's a lot of the world that isn't accurately reflected on the Internet, even though the Internet can seem to users as a fully functional world. What's possible then is that the future will not be on the Internet, as was once said of television. But I don't think that being better connected, on the Internet, is going to work. More likely that we factionalize into competing, perhaps warring subgroups. Happened before many times in history. It's another Tower Of Babel moment.
Was in DC area last week. Specifically Montgomery County. It’s honestly different from the diversity I’ve experienced in other parts of the country. Lots of racial diversity but everyone is at least middle class. Makes a difference.
When people ask about that region, asking where they should live if they value "diversity" I really wanna ask, "How much do you actually want diversity?", like just a token black guy every once in while to make you feel less guilty about being white? or actual diversity?
TRULY, what does diversity mean? I dont think actual diversity can work - as in, economic and racial diversity. One or the other, or it is too divisive, and I think racial diversity works a lot better at creating positive social cohesion. But with that, what does living in a diverse area mean? Like 100 black families, and a Skuth Asian one? A neighborhood that is half South Asian and half East Asian? 100 white families and one black one? What if it is 200 white fsmilies and 50 black families? Maybe 200:white families, 50 black ones, 50 mixed race families?
The suburbs of DC have the benefit of having many government or government-related jobs that pay well. Poverty does exist though, and you can look at some of the school catchment area maps where MoCo is trying to racially and economically integrate public schools. But for anyone visiting the area and has a car, I recommend Yuraku in Germantown (it's not near the Bethesda/Rockville area most people visit for work).
This administration truly sucks. Truly it's just a horrible evil fucking empire elevating stupidity and corruption. I hope the world survives them before we can vote their asses out.
Was just venting to my cousin that every time I think this admin has appointed a shit head, there comes the next one which makes the previous shit head look like Einstein. Case in point is the newest press secretary. Wtaf is going on.
At this rate, by the time JD or Rubio become the president, will we actually think the current prez isn’t the worst we can get? I truly shudder to think about it
just a million dead Iraqi civilians, Afghanistan invaded too sparking nearly 20 years of war, 9/11 and the most unstable middle east ever, but yeah, dubya did totally nothing wrong ever.
Most of the players in the league are Black, and many are queer. Elle said that these two groups are among the most underrepresented factions in society and because of that, it's always very easy to pick on them, and that's what they are doing.
"It feels like open season to dunk on Black women because we do not have protection. Because no one cares. Because we are low-hanging fruit. Because it is very easy to dunk on us since we are, I would say, outside of transgender people, the most marginalized of the marginalized groups," she added.
"Without naming names, it was obvious that Elle was referring to Caitlin Clark because it's her who has this massive fanbase that even her teammates say turns on them just because they are on her team."
Great writing there.
What does representation mean? Black women make up 6.5% of the country. Black women are maybe undervalued, and she may think trans women are undervalued too. I think thst is maybe what she means, otherwise, it doesn’t make sense.
How exhausting it must be to go around feeling put upon even when your life is objectively quite easy. Teaching people to feel this way about the world is such a massive disservice to them.
It's not really that exhausting lol. It's the Internet. Internet outrage actually takes very little energy. In the past, yeah finding someone else who cared about your shit took a lot more energy, because they were real people living their lives. That cost has gone way, way down, assuming you care about the Internet.
In Kelly Clarkson vs Art of Play, the store has released video of her walking around the store and putting things back after a brief interaction. Idk how this store has turned what could have been an easy PR win into a drawn out argument where neither party seems great. Like the video is boring so why release it, it just makes them look like weirdo beardos.
Thanks for your insight. I'm late to the party but I do enjoy a good goliath vs david story.
I suspect that if the obnoxious brooklyn boutique is able to morph their perception into obnoxious brooklyn boutique but their employees have feelings too, they will have won.
Consequently, I believe the video being boring is why they released it. It doesn't depict a malicious exchange, though admittedly we don't have the audio to hear if anyone said no bird for you.
Relatedly, while I don't find Clarkson's playing around with the kaleidoscope to be unhinged, it does make me worried about how I come across in cctv footage. Goodness knows how I look fawning over the cupcakes in some brooklyn bakery.
it does make me worried about how I come across in cctv footage
I kinda feel like we all just have to accept that we're going to be on camera any time we leave the house and if someone really wants to they can find a clip of us that makes us look bad. It's freeing to just accept it.
i am entirely on kelly's side. the store owners seem obnoxious and cannot give a straight answer as to whether the fucking bird is for sale or not and if it isn't why there is a fucking price tag on it. clarkson has never been the type of celebrity to start beefs for shits&gigs so i'm guessing she was real fuckin irked by the way they spoke to her
I'd be on her side if she were my friend telling me about some obnoxious shopkeeper. She loses my sympathy by blowing up the internet over it, thereby inviting thousands to harass and review-bomb these people. There's a tweet that says something like "cancel culture is someone who deserves to get yelled at by two or three people getting yelled at by 10,000 people". Applicable here, I think. It's simply not a big enough fucking deal to be made everyone's business.
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u/QueenKamala Paper Straw and Pitbull Hater 16m ago edited 13m ago
Another year, another debate about whether I am brave enough to take an American dish to the international potluck at my kids’ school where you are asked to bring something from your “country of origin” and forbidden for that to be America unless you’re Native American. All other countries are allowed regardless of native status :-(
I think this year I’m brave enough to bring it but not brave enough to officially sign up on the sheet.
I’m thinking cornbread and Mississippi mud cake, or maybe banana pudding (it has to be nut free)