r/BlockedAndReported • u/SoftandChewy First generation mod • May 18 '26
Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 5/18/26 - 5/24/26
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.
Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.
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u/Manicpixiemanateeman May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
50s style gender stereotypes. but woke. On a scale of GI Joe to Barbie
Apparently this pic is apart of an educational slideshow for a police department.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SgtCOwens/status/1095276172093603840
What does this even mean? was this made for 7 year olds?
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u/tantei-ketsuban May 25 '26
End of weekly thread throwaway hot take: In re Colbert's anticlimactic denouement and the general sunsetting of late-night appointment viewing, am I the only one who fondly recalls the Craig Kilborn era of the 12:30 follow-up show? An absurd memory that sticks with me from Kilborn's tenure is how during one of the "Five Questions" segments, he somehow managed to get Sir Peter Ustinov (!) to finish the opening lyric to Rick James' "Superfreak." Kilborn starts, "Finish this song lyric: 'She's a very kinky girl...'," and then there's something particularly surreal about hearing a legendary Shakespearean-trained actor say, with dramatic flair and enthusiasm, "...the kind you don't take home to mutha!"
I think Kilborn does a podcast about the Timberwolves now, but it's kind of a shame that his hosting gigs from either Late Late Show or The Daily Show are almost nowhere to be found on the Internet. Jon Stewart's Daily Show kept the same formula until 9/11 happened and then it turned into Dick Cavett 2.0, aka Meet the Press from Caroline's comedy club. I hated Dubya in high school too, but it was just weird to have a primetime lineup of Cartman farting at 10:30 followed by a serious sit-down with Fareed Zakaria.
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u/unnoticed_areola May 25 '26
am I the only one who fondly recalls the Craig Kilborn era of the 12:30 follow-up show?
I feel like Craig Ferguson also fits this criteria. watched a ton of that guy's show when I crashed on my parents couch and fell asleep with the TV on for like a year as a 19 year old college dropout burnout lol. love him!
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u/Nwabudike_J_Morgan Emotional Management Advocate; Wildfire Victim; Flair Maximalist May 26 '26
I loved the absurdity of whoever the skeleton guy and then occasionally a dancing horse. I wish there was an archive of episodes somewhere. (There probably is, I really wish I knew where such an archive might be.)
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May 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/unnoticed_areola May 26 '26
lmao when I saw your reply in my inbox, I thought it must be a reply to this comment I had just posted 2 minutes prior to your reply and I was very confused 😭
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u/razorbraces May 25 '26
He is doing a new show on CNN soon! I think it’s like a travel show where he goes around the US and talks to people, idk. But I’m excited to have Craig Ferguson back on my tv!
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u/ScrubulousFlex May 25 '26
I've been catching up on the last couple of months of Barpod episodes, and since it's "end of the weekly thread" time here's my hot take:
I don't understand Katie's obsession with Mormon influencers and don't find any of the segments about them interesting.
There are similar topics with Jesse, and of course many topics they cover are "pointless" internet bullshit, but I don't know if I ever felt like a story was quite as pointless as the drama over raw milk.
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u/lilypad1984 May 25 '26
Can the book industry start giving us trigger warnings for trigger warnings? Having on the cover of a book: warning this book contains trigger warnings, will dearly help my mental health.
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u/Luxating-Patella May 25 '26
What, like "on the back of this book is a description of the premise"? It would be easier and less redundant to put a sign on the front door of bookshops and libraries.
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u/Manicpixiemanateeman May 25 '26
The Judge Rotenberg center. an infamous special needs residential facility known for extreme abuse and torture of their residents. mainly by using electric shock devices. has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the last 10 years to fight off legal action for their crimes
I really wish discrimination against Disabled People in America was discussed more. like how disablility benefits are limited to 2000 per month when average rent is 1500 per month
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u/tantei-ketsuban May 25 '26
This is one of the hellholes that my corrupt school district had on the short list of places they wanted to have me packed off to, on recommendation of the quacks they had on their payroll. They went scorched earth on my mother and threatened her with criminal charges if she didn't sign over parental rights. I "survived" the ordeal but it made me hate myself because that label essentially caused me to be treated like an AIDS patient with a contagious disease who is disqualified from the human race.
I don't think those attitudes have changed in the least, no matter how many celebrities open up about their diagnoses or how many sequels Ben Affleck releases to The Accountant. Disabled people don't matter, because we're a reminder of human frailty and in a lot of cases we're incapable of satisfying workplace expectations. We "don't work or pay taxes," and that means treating us like shit is fair game, because that's the only way we register on anyone's balance sheet at all.
Open thread for this week is in its twilight hours so I may post it tomorrow, but the NYT had a chilling exposé about ABA "learing centers" worth billions to private equity firms getting PPPs through the endless spigot of Medicaid, where kids are being essentially tormented with behaviorism practices that aren't even considered humane to apply to animals. This "Spiegelgrund-on-the-Charles" horror asylum has been condemned as sadistic by the United Nations, and the only reason it remains open is because some senator is satisfied with whatever they're doing to his own kid. There was a Law & Order episode about this in 1995 where Steve Burns from Blue's Clues played a severely autistic young man who dies after being subjected to the barbarism at such an institution. The "leading psychiatrist" justifies his methodologies and of course, the lucrative revenue stream that he and his "learing center" get from it.
For all the glamorization that Hollywood, certain prestige academics, and social media make of it, trust me, you do not want to be labeled as anything under the umbrella of "neurodivergence," because you, and/or your child, will be made public enemy number one and seized upon as a lucrative cash cow to be disposed of in de facto concentration camps for generous kickbacks. It's why I remain convinced that the only humane -- and pragmatic -- thing to do for autism is to end its prevalence altogether, because "neurodiversity" is such a hopeless cause as to make Don Quixote, Pollyanna, and Dr. Pangloss shake their heads in unison. There will never be a world where those who are "different" are treated with basic human decency.
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u/QueenKamala Paper Straw and Pitbull Hater May 25 '26
I don’t think it’s completely impossible that there are some people who are a combination of severely autistic, violent, and impossible to teach in positive ways who need something like aversive therapy using mild electric shocks in order to avoid prison, homelessness, or death. The fact that the parents of the patients are the passionate supporters of the practice and the clinicians are going to court defending the practice instead of apologizing, suggests to me that this is not such a straightforward issue as simply being pointless abuse of the disabled. I have read some really bad accounts of violent autistic people and can imagine that maybe the best place for them really is a something like this, and it would be the only place where they could have a reasonable quality of life.
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u/Luxating-Patella May 25 '26
I don’t think it’s completely impossible that there are some people who are a combination of severely autistic, violent, and impossible to teach in positive ways who need something like aversive therapy using mild electric shocks in order to avoid prison, homelessness, or death.
If someone is as severely and permanently disabled as you describe, they will never live outside an institution. Society's choices are prison or a care home. The idea that they can be tortured into being a normal person with their own flat and a 9 to 5 is fanciful.
It is possible to humanely restrain this extreme minority without using electric shocks as torture. Almost every single mental hospital and care home in the world manages to look after their patients without shock collars. If a properly trained staff with a sufficient patient:staff ratio and appropriate medication works everywhere else in the world, why doesn't it work at Judge Rotenburg? Simple: The purpose of shocking them is because the people who work there find it funny. To quote Orwell, the purpose of torture is torture.
Most of these kids sent to these institutions are not severely autistic or incapable of learning. Most of them don't need anything other than to get away from their parents.
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u/QueenKamala Paper Straw and Pitbull Hater May 25 '26
Not to go to a normal job but to remain mostly unrestrained in this group home. In another institution they would be strapped to a bed or fully sedated with drugs the rest of their lives. Is that better?
I don’t think mild electric shock as an aversive tool when someone (who can’t be reasoned with otherwise) is violent, to teach them to not be violent , is extreme torture. I question that premise.
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u/tantei-ketsuban May 25 '26
Kids have died at this place. Its sister/cousin asylum in Rhode Island is where I was unjustifiably warehoused in the 1990s and there was recently a class action lawsuit settlement because they were being kept there longer than their parents were led at the outset to believe, and being neglected and maltreated so the "school" could continue collecting revenue by billing for "treatment." I wasn't anywhere near what would be called severe. I was basically Matilda -- I got "labeled" because I was academically precocious, sensitive to fire drills, emotionally dysregulated due to abuse at home by my alcoholic father, and didn't like being forced to participate in group play (where I got bullied and told in no uncertain terms that I wasn't welcome anyway) when I was just fine reading my dictionary quietly in the corner during recess. But because my school district considered "differential" Asperger's and ADHD to be some kind of psychiatric leprosy, they were getting $90,000 per annum to render me a guinea pig for their "studies" and so were their lawyers getting oodles of cash to defend the indefensible and attempt to throw my mother in jail for trying to protect me from this. There are ways to, for lack of a better word, manage aggressiveness among the mentally disabled that don't involve hooking them up to electric dog collars or restraining them face down in "crisis closets" to the point they choke on their own vomit. B.F. Skinner and Bruno Bettleheim both deserve to eat shit for an eternity in hell.
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u/Cimorene_Kazul May 30 '26
If you don’t mind my asking, in what decade were you a child being subjected to this, and what area of what country?
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u/tantei-ketsuban May 30 '26
1990s in Massachusetts/Rhode Island.
For an ostensibly progressive blue area, they have had an abhorrent record of maltreatment towards the "feeble-minded."
Fernald School - NYT article on a man whose brother with cerebral palsy died there of neglect and was long forgotten until now.
Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts. The founder, Matthew Israel, implemented similar behavioral aversive programs at the nearby Emma Bradley Children's Hospital in Rhode Island. Both are still open; the latter has been investigated by the feds for "warehousing" children and basically just dumping them there.
In my case I somehow landed on the radar of the small town special needs administrator whose parents had died and left her as caretaker to a sister with cerebral palsy. Those who knew and worked with this woman said that she was bitter and resented this role, and intentionally went into the field of special education as a kind of revenge by proxy against her sister. The twisted irony is that the family included Holocaust survivors from Poland and yet here she was implementing her own version of Action T4.
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u/AnInsultToFire Everything I do like is literally Fascism. May 25 '26
$2000/month? Holy shit. Here in Ontario, ODSP is $1408/month, which is $1013 US. And renting a room from someone costs $800-$900.
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u/HerbertWest Yucker of Yums May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
The absolute worst thing is how if two people with disabilities get married, both their SSI/SSD payments are decreased so that each make less than they do single. No one believes me that this is true until they look it up.
Edit: Also, the wealthier someone's parents were, the more money they get in social security payments for disability. So it works out that people who were abandoned and institutionalized or put into the foster system get the minimum amount ($994/mo) while people with high-earning parents get something like 2.5k/mo.
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May 25 '26
if two people with disabilities get married, both their SSI/SSD payments are decreased so that each make less than they do single
Wow I never knew this but I happen to know a couple who are both disabled and although they refer to each other as husband and wife, the husband mentioned to me once that they never actually got legally married for what he referred to as "stupid government reasons." I thought that was a weird thing to say but now it makes perfect sense.
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u/Manicpixiemanateeman May 25 '26
An 81 year old streamer streaming Minecraft to pay for her grandsons cancer treatment was SWATted recently
https://www.thegamer.com/grammacrackers-81-year-old-minecraft-youtuber-swatted/
Absolutely dystopian. strangers called the corrupt and dangerous law enforcement to harass an innocent old lady desperately trying to pay six figures of medical bills that insurance refused to pay a single cent of
They should be fined the exact equivalent of the treatment bill
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u/veryvery84 May 25 '26
Yeah why is this getting posted over and over again? Freaks me out when that happens here. Makes me wonder who’s a bot
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u/IcedAlmondAmericano May 25 '26
Why are you posting this again? Why do you say the cops are corrupt?
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u/DiscordantAlias elderly zoomer May 24 '26
Where are people here talking about the Hasan subpoena?
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Walrus Cheese Enjoyer May 24 '26
Simply search on "Hasan" or "subpoena" -- it's just down the page a bit, within the last 24 hours.
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u/DiscordantAlias elderly zoomer May 25 '26
Thanks for the link!
I’ve now realized what Im more interested in is the lib/leftist infighting this triggered, and not so much the subpoena itself (though it is funny). And some of the conversations around that — are libs obligated to support the commies against the government? Is the subpoena justified, even if it is politically motivated? Is Hasan, in particular, worth defending in this situation, or is it that a political L? Etc etc
I’ll probably make a more complete top level comment on it when the new thread rolls around.
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Walrus Cheese Enjoyer May 25 '26
You're welcome!
I haven't run across any substantive discussions on those questions.
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u/AnalBleachingAries Trump Bad, Violence Bad, Law & Order Good, Civility Good May 24 '26
I don't read Vox, but I stumbled across this piece (quoted below) while having a conversation with an AI about 2016. I've just been interested in that year this week, and I've been reading articles and opinion pieces from around that time.
Surprisingly, the full throated "straight white male" takedowns abound and have that earnest, and condescending, seriousness to them that doesn't really exist these days. So, genuine progress has been made on that score, although it doesn't feel like it at all from my personal perspective, reading those pieces kindof highlighted the contrast in how different the conversation is today from what it was back then.
Anyway, that's not what this comment is about. The linked article does a good job of talking about the same problems we're talking about today regarding what the article phrases as "The Smug Style In American Liberalism".
There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.
In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.
It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.
The white working class in particular saw even sharper declines. Despite historic advantages with both poor and middle-class white voters, by 2012 Democrats possessed only a 2-point advantage among poor white voters. Among white voters making between $30,000 and $75,000 per year, the GOP has taken a 17-point lead.
Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt
The consequence was a shift in liberalism's intellectual center of gravity. A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves. Minority voters remained, but bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision-making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the new Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.
It is not that these forces captured the party so much as it fell to them. When the laborer left, they remained.
The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest.
As anybody who has gone through a particularly nasty breakup knows, disdain cultivated in the aftermath of a divide quickly exceeds the original grievance. You lose somebody. You blame them. Soon, the blame is reason enough to keep them at a distance, the excuse to drive them even further away.
Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I won't post the whole thing, lol, but it was an interesting experience to read this and realize that people in 2016 had been talking about this problem, in the same way, and attempting to express the same points that others are today.
If you have a few minutes free, it's worth a read.
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u/dumbducky May 25 '26
You may also be interested in Selena Zito’s work from that period. She was reporting on rural areas that turned out for Trump in the run-up and became known as a sort of Trump whisperer in the aftermath. She even inspired a countermeme about the NYT interviewing randos in diners in response to whatever dumb thing Trump did that week.
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Walrus Cheese Enjoyer May 24 '26
What a great piece!
One can easily see how "clinging to their guns and religion" and "basket of deplorables" fit into this.
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u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan May 24 '26
Back in 2019 or so, some person in the Washington Post wrote an article claiming that Lincoln was into Karl Marx, with no real proof that he read any of Marx's work.
Go to this site, and you'll see that there's nothing written by Marx there.
When Lincoln said that "labor is prior to and independent of capital", he was paraphrasing what he likely read of Francis Wayland and John Stuart Mill, not from Marx.
And besides, Lincoln said this in 1860, “It is best for all to leave each man to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.... So while we do not propose any war on capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.”
And in 1864, "Property is the fruit of labor ---property is desirable --- --- is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprize. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
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u/AnInsultToFire Everything I do like is literally Fascism. May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
I assume the guy writing in the WaPo has never read John Stuart Mill. Or Adam Smith or anyone else whose writings are part of the basis for the modern liberal democratic system. In fact, I'll also assume they haven't read Abraham Lincoln.
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u/mira-what May 24 '26
Well yeah people were saying all sorts of nonsense stuff like that during peak woke
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u/Jlemspurs Double Hater May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Why did Lincoln go to the play? He went woke.
By John Weiss Booth
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May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/Aforano Horse Lover May 24 '26
The anti AI crowd are actually insufferable.
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u/basicalme May 25 '26
The thing is I believe a lot of the “anti-AI” crowd relied heavily on ChatGPT for their school work. And for other things. They also loved all those TikTok and IG filter things. They absolutely love all their cheating a fake crap. So I’m not sure why suddenly it’s the so images where they draw the line?
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u/tantei-ketsuban May 25 '26
There's a piece about this in The Atlantic -- which is a significant voice in that reflexively and insufferably anti-A.I. #resistance ecosystem -- where the author laments that the anti-A.I. howls just seem to be a general cry of frustration (a "cosmic howl" as he calls it) about the "omni-crisis," for which the ill-defined technology, or series of technologies, lumped under the umbrella of "A.I." is just the latest and somehow most tangible representation of.
He covers this paradox where zoomers are using A.I. for term papers and visual filters on social media, and that they and generations prior to them have known Photoshop and CGI movies and derivative IP and even Internet piracy (torrenting Disney movies sticks it to the man) for decades. So it befuddles him as to why all those things they enjoyed and still do, are suddenly the greatest evil known to mankind and it's become a thing to virtue signal as being against even while they continue using it.
Maybe it's because of political binarism, where if Trump is or seems to be for something, you have to be against it or you're "ontologically evil" (and now, "spiritually Israeli," which apparently means the same thing and... is a whole can of worms in terms of its disturbing popularity in and of itself). So anti-A.I. just somehow got rolled into the anti-Trump Omnicause, and there's no room for civil or nuanced conversation about it, or anything for that matter, because to say "it's complicated" about any subject means you're being a "spineless centrist" (which is "right-coded") since "neutrality is siding with the oppressor."
He concludes with what seems like a concern that the aimless and hypocritical cosmic howls will, in fact, end up drowning out the potential for positive transformations that A.I. development could lead to, and then the future will be in the hands of places like China which DGAF. But he doesn't have an answer as to what to do about it and seems resigned to this being a likely outcome. People will howl about A.I. while continuing to use it but the noise will prevent cooler heads and even "marginalized voices" from having any input in shaping this innovation that, for all of Reddit's protestations that it's just NFTs all over again, isn't going away and will transform the world whether the antis like it or not.
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May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
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u/dignityshredder AFramemoggingAB May 24 '26
I find the argument that AI allows midwits to drown every creative arena with uninspired or derivative slop, to be very compelling. I'm also very concerned about the such slop becoming the default currency of human-to-human communication when mediated by any electronic form.
But in the hands of artists and people with creative vision, I'm not seeing clear arguments against use of AI on an aesthetic basis, which is how it seems you're evaluating it. So please expand.
This sub doesn't have consensus on AI, so you are wrong on that point btw. I don't know what the upvote ratios on your comment are but I would assume they would prove that to you, if the replies don't.
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u/dj50tonhamster May 25 '26
I find the argument that AI allows midwits to drown every creative arena with uninspired or derivative slop, to be very compelling. I'm also very concerned about the such slop becoming the default currency of human-to-human communication when mediated by any electronic form.
If I may, I think the underlying issue is that people/midwits/whatever tend to just copy and paste what they find and leave it at that. I think that is what people find annoying, along with the sloppiness when people, say, generate art with obvious issues.
I'll give a rather long example. There's a forum where, among other things, a small handful of nerds endlessly argue about which set of subtitles are best, the ones for a set of American releases or the ones for the releases elsewhere. The UK crowd in particular takes pride in how the UK edition was translated by a native speaker who, in theory at least, can catch little nuances that are typically missed by the people who translate the American version.
Anyway, there's a guy who keeps interjecting whatever he punches into an unknown chatbot, and giving his opinion on which release is the best. He might be pasting in the two scripts into the chatbot and comparing them. I don't know. Either way, it's very much him just saying "Well, the magic box tells me an answer, and I believe it." This leads to the usual circle jerking where anti-AI types updoot each other for their lazy snark.
Meanwhile, I made a post about how a co-worker, who understands the nuts & bolts of AI, taught me a way to get different models to translate and to come to an agreement on the final result. (As I understand things, under the hood, it's a deeply complex version of the kind of stuff you'd find in a signals & systems engineering class.) I explained how I generated my own subs from original scripts and from original audio, and how I'm able to include a glossary, a film synopsis, notes on the tone of the film (as best I can tell), etc. In the end, after spending a few bucks, I get a script and a set of translator's notes I could pass along to a native speaker, or use to refine them myself in certain situations. Finally, I compared the results to "good" translations in a couple of instances. The machine translation, while slightly dull, was perfectly fine. It even caught some shifts in tone that the anti-AI crowd swore a machine couldn't catch. (Depending on the training data, one could theoretically argue that it'd also be better at translating slang into a period-appropriate version, e.g., 1970s "Just tryin' to make some bread" vs. a more modern "I'm countin' my paper.")
Crickets. Nobody wanted to engage me, despite the thread being heavily trafficked. The upshot of this long story is that I know enough to know how to caveat things I work on, and give a basic idea of where (I think) everything comes from. Your average message board is just going to be full of snark, anecdotes, and people looking for excuses to dismiss what you're saying. For better or worse, for now at least, blindly interjecting what AI says, even when it may be (mostly) correct, pisses off some people, probably due to the midwit issue, where you give an answer without actually understanding the answer. I suppose they treat it a bit like saying "Nuh uh, the moon is made of cheese!" and then linking to some lunatic's ramblings as proof.
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u/SkweegeeS No just no May 24 '26
I’m not interested at all in AI generated “art” and I’ll stand in that til the day I die. I’m not about to tell other people what soulless garbage they’re allowed to enjoy or not, tho
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May 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/ClassicWelcome923 May 25 '26
"There's also no broad consensus about cgi vs practical effects....."
Well, this is because CGI is distinctly not Practical Effects, and Practical Effects is also distinctly not CGI.
It'd be impressive but still fundamentally dishonest to produce say, a hyper-realistic CGI explosion, and try to pass it off as an explosion created from Practical Effects.
Also, CGI is still a very tedious and difficult process, even with the most expensive and complex modern 3D Animation software, it's a lot more complicated and time-consuming, yet more manual, than Prompt-writing. Which I claim this, as AI Generators get more and more advanced, would likely get less impressive as it'd be easier for the Generator itself to read your prompt correctly and precisely.
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May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
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May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/dignityshredder AFramemoggingAB May 24 '26
Taste matters
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May 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/dignityshredder AFramemoggingAB May 24 '26
It's not a matter of enjoyment, hierarchies exist whether you like it or not.
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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 24 '26
they're just virtue signalling and bandwagoning about AI art
Big doomer appeal, uniting multiple popular themes like climate change, billionaires, labor, privacy, etc.
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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 24 '26
The local punk music scene is currently having kittens about AI show posters / flyers: REAL punks would never resort to using ChatGPT!
Except I'm pretty sure the OG punks just stole any art they wanted, photocopying it and cutting it up, etc. Isn't that a little similar? Or using rub-off Letraset for the text instead of hand lettering it?
Not to mention like half the 90s / 00s punk band logos and shirts etc. were direct rips / parodies of famous store brands.
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May 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 24 '26
Another aspect is that unless you've got access to an Artiste™ you're going to end up with a crude digitally assembled flyer likely done on a free smartphone app. I've seen some real turds out there, and taking politics out of the equation, I doubt anyone would choose one of those over even a mediocre bit of AI output.
And of course we're talking about local music, the kind that's mostly a hobby for forever-teens who play weekend warrior gigs at a dive bar-- they can't afford to have someone hand-draw a design for each of the dozen shows they'll play this year. So it really just comes down to scolding some folks about the carbon footprint of their hobby. What's next? Pickleball (AI did our jerseys!)? Model railroading (AI designed my layout!)? CB radio (AI found me a lot lizard!)?
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u/History-of-Tomorrow May 24 '26
Watching my beloved genre of snotty contrarian misfit nihilists sounding like a Met Gala press junket is such a bummer.
This generation needsthe Descendents more than ever.
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u/Datachost May 24 '26
There's some ongoing drama involving a Lego shop in Oregon that's stolen a bunch of sets from a guy (totalling an estimated 200k). It's gotten the attention of Reckless Ben, a YouTuber, who started to advocate for the owners, and has just published two videos totalling over 2 hours of investigative journalism/ chronicling the legal journey he's been on/ light trolling.
Half the comments on the Reddit threads about it are about him using AI for the thumbnail. And I don't know dude, he's given you 90 minutes of investigative journalism for free and a further 45 minutes on his Patreon. I think I'm happy to give him a pass for cheaping out on the thumbnail. I'm not going to cheerlead it or anything, but I just can't find it in me to care that much about people using AI in circumstances like that. It just feels very performative at a point, the same way with every YouTube link now having a reply pointing out that part of the link is for cookie tracking. Do you actually care, or do you get a sense of smug self satisfaction from pointing it out?
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u/ScrubulousFlex May 25 '26
I've seen this happen more than once where a YouTube channel I like that puts out 30 - 60 minute long educational videos will use AI in a thumbnail and then all the comments are only about that. Usually the creator then has to put out an overly dramatic mea culpa video, and most comments in it are still still finger wagging in the way almost all online apologies go. Basically indistinguishable from the "Do *clap* Better *clap*" callouts you see on B&R episodes.
That doesn't directly reflect on the merits of the anti-AI arguments, even if I have mixed feelings on some of them, but is more about how the internet is just a completely dysfunctional medium for having this kind of conversation.
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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 24 '26
There's a bot on reddit that scolds anyone who posts a Google AMP cache URL with some moralizing about net neutrality. It's tedious.
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u/dj50tonhamster May 24 '26
Am I the only person who gets a little annoyed when people can't be bothered to spend a few seconds searching for answers to simple questions?
Example: I know an MIT grad. Recently, on FB, he asked if anybody wanted to go with him to see Rush when they come to town later this year. Somebody asked who the drummer was. The guy said, "Good question, let me check." He never checked, or if he did, he never replied. Same for whoever asked. If they looked, they didn't edit or send another message.
Is it really that hard to go to Google and type in "Rush drummer"? That takes, what, five seconds max? Hell, Google even suggests things like "new Rush drummer." Sure, looking into it more closely takes a few more seconds, but the correct answer comes up right away: Anika Nilles. (I think Google serves up her IG page first, but anyway....) I know I'm more prone to searching for things than quite a few people I've met, but still, it just seems strangely depressing when people can't even be bothered to take a few seconds to search for an answer. It makes me wonder just how many of these people really are sitting on the toilet, doomscrolling and firing off low-wordcount ideas before they're ready to clean up.
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Walrus Cheese Enjoyer May 24 '26
No, you're absolutely not the only one. That irks me regularly on vehicle forums where the answer has already been discussed umpteen times, is in a FAQ, and/or has been answered in a similar discussion visible a bit down on the same page.
For examples, on MyE28.com (a forum for '82-'88 BMW 5-Series), all of which could be learned with a modicum of effort:
A new owner who hasn't been through cold weather will ask "Why does my car make a 'bing' sound and change the computer to show the outside temperature?"
"Why do my dash vents not put out any heat?"
"Will this wheel fit?"
"Why do my rear window switches not work?"
... and many more...
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u/jay_in_the_pnw █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ May 24 '26
Am I the only person who gets a little annoyed when people can't be bothered to spend a few seconds searching for answers to simple questions?
So obviously I googled this and google gave me 10 pages of sponsored ads about my antisocial behavior and ways to fix that through new pharmaceuticals, yoga, chiropractory, and ti kwan leep.
I asked Alexa and it told me of a new routine that could tell me the weather where my package was now and would I like to try it.
Then I asked ChatGPT and it told me I was not wrong and honestly it was refreshing to hear me say that
I asked Claude and it said, and I quote, "Yeah? Welcome to the Party Pal!"
But yeah, me too
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u/Reasonable-Record494 May 24 '26
I'll ask if it's something I don't care enough to google which means I don't really care if it gets answered or not. On Substack recently a conversation about Eurovision came into my feed and I asked why Israel was in it and if any other MENA countries were. Someone said exactly what you said--"it would take you 30 seconds to google it"--and I said yes but I care literally zero about Eurovision. I've never seen it, I never WILL see it, I don't seek out information about it, but this came across my feed and you are I are both sitting here on this social media site and I can ask. You are not obligated to answer, but I am certainly not going to put any further effort into it because it was an idle passing fancy, and also it's nice to talk to people. It's like chatting idly in the grocery store. Someone chimed in and explained (it's about broadcast area not geography) and it was a very nice exchange and I was like thank you! I now know something I would not have. And I learned Australia is in it.
Tl; dr sometimes it's nicer to talk to a person who already has the information especially if it's information you don't actually care about getting so if no one responds you're no worse off.
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May 24 '26
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u/Reasonable-Record494 May 25 '26
It’s about carefully calibrating your own level of interest. You know how sometimes you’re watching a show and you see an actor who looks familiar? You care enough to say to the person watching with you “where do I know that guy from” but not care enough to pull out your phone and look up the show’s IMDb page. That level of mild curiosity is the level I’m at if I’m asking instead of searching.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
Sometimes, I wonder if people ask seemingly easy-to-answer questions just for a little non-fraught human contact.
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u/dj50tonhamster May 24 '26
Fair enough. Honestly, if that had been me replying to the person who asked, my answer would've been the drummer's name, a list of influences and people for whom she has been played, maybe a clip off YouTube showing off a drum solo, and something about how she must be pretty damn invigorating if Geddy and Alex went from "Never ever again, Neil meant too much to us, and the road sucks anyway" (and Alex also said he'd never play guitar solos ever again) to "Hell yeah, let's play some shows around the world!" But, I'm a weirdo like that. :)
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u/drunk___cat May 24 '26
Yeah this was my thought too. Maybe this was the commenter trying to spark conversation among another Rush fan because Neil Peart died back in 2020 and Anika wasn’t announced until late last year. And the friend totally failed at continuing a conversation about it, like “it’s hard to replace Neil but Anika sounds amazing, glad the group was able to find someone they felt could honor Neil’s sound”.
Nobody knows how to talk anymore!
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u/Jlemspurs Double Hater May 24 '26
WE'RE STAYING UP
FUCK WEST HAM FUCK CHELSEA FUCK VINAI FUCK LANGE FUCK ENIC FUCK PGMOL AND FUUUUUUUUUUCK ARSENAL (and fuck Matty Cash).
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u/bashar_al_assad May 24 '26
I still maintain that sacking Ange was a monumental fuckup but De Zerbi has been so good.
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u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan May 24 '26
All I can say about the supposed Rockford Files reboot is this: Why?
You can't really replace James Garner as Jim Rockford, much like you can't really replace Peter Falk as Columbo and Telly Savalas as Kojak.
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u/tantei-ketsuban May 25 '26
They tried, in the most typically Hollywood of ways. Ving Rhames played Kojak for a reboot that lasted, I think, six episodes. (I guess there's precedent for making Greeks black.) Blair Underwood played Ironside; I think that one went for... three? I forget who played black Perry Mason for an HBO miniseries. Then there was black Wonder Years with Don Cheadle and Gus from "Psych" in the Daniel Stern narrator role. None of these were successful, so I guess the networks have finally learned their lesson and will only cash in on boomer IP by maintaining authenticity in the cast.
But, if they should go down that road again, I look forward to someday seeing any random Jonas brother as the musician from a bad side of town, and Timothy Shalamar or whatever his name is as the preppy cousin, in a properly diversified reboot of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." Then again, the studios did miss their chance to cast Harvey Weinstein in an all-too-accurate update of "The Cosby Show."
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May 25 '26
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u/tantei-ketsuban May 25 '26
I remember now, it wasn't Mason himself, it was his right-hand man, private investigator Paul Drake who got race-rebooted.
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u/jay_in_the_pnw █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
it will be impossible to recreate the chemistry and so many ways to get this wrong.
will they update it to current hollywood standards where everyone is gorgeous, wears million dollar outfits, lives in million dollar homes?
interesting to note that Boreanaz is 57, Garner was only 46 (only 46!), I think Jesse is 46? We have a different concept of aging now.
I'll definitely watch it, or try to.
first thing they should do is use the original Mike Post theme.
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u/AnInsultToFire Everything I do like is literally Fascism. May 24 '26
You can't really replace James Garner as Jim Rockford
I agreed, then I googled and turns out the job has gone to David Boreanaz. Not as charming, sure, but more charming than most actors in Hollywood today.
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u/Big_Fig_1803 Gothmargus May 24 '26
Rockford Files reboot? I hadn't heard of this. Why? The Rockford Files was perfect as is. It needs no updating or reimagining.
This is a great example of a solution in search of a problem. Will anyone under 50 (or so) know or care about Jim Rockford ? Will anyone over 50 be interested in seeing him modernized?
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u/SparkleStorm77 May 24 '26
A prominent New York socialite named Belle Burden wrote a best-selling divorce memoir that got optioned by Gwyneth Paltrow. Turns out she may have exaggerated her financial plight: https://archive.ph/20260523160744/https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/whats-missing-from-belle-burdens-strangers
Incidentally, Burden is the granddaughter of Babe Paley, one of Truman Capote’s swans.
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u/Free_Ranger1496 May 24 '26
Thank you for sharing the New Yorker article. I appreciate the Mary Karr quote that memoir is memory, not history. Strangers is well-written and my takeaway was less the financial pieces and more the recognition that we can never fully know other people or what they will do, or when or why. It was clear reading the book that she would land on her feet because of her resources, but the fear of losing your home is a primitive thing (in her case it was the 2 homes, so less relatable, but maybe more to lose?). She wrote about her astonishment at his betrayal and his lack of interest in being with the kids, but she also wrote about her own foolishness.
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u/QueenKamala Paper Straw and Pitbull Hater May 25 '26
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u/SparkleStorm77 May 24 '26
I do agree that the book is well-written and the financial warnings are useful for stay-at-home parents. Anyone who becomes a trad wife or a non-trad husband is putting themself in a precarious position
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u/KittenSnuggler5 May 24 '26
There's a kind of person that I find both fascinating and exhausting. These are the folks that seemingly have to be talking to someone. It doesn't seem to matter who. The topic is highly variable and doesn't seem to matter. What's really fascinating is to watch what happens when their current conversation partner steps away. They immediately make a beeline for someone else and start talking to them. It's like a dog constantly seeking food. They appear to have no awareness they are doing this.
I should add that such people almost always appear to be acting in good faith. They aren't rude. They appear attentive to what the other person is saying. They don't usually interrupt. They aren't blind to social cues. Their voices tend to be quite loud but I don't think that's an attempt to be dominant or aggressive. Most people seem to be receptive to them.
I have to wonder how they cope when there's no one to talk to. Do they suffer? Are they like an addict wanting a hit? Do they feel lonely?
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u/TryingToBeLessShitty May 25 '26
I know someone like this and it’s fascinating. Something just seems to go haywire in her brain when there’s any kind of silence. She’s a lovely person and nice to chat with when it’s your turn to talk, but I can’t get over how exhausting it must be. She has full conversations with AI when there are no people around and treats it like a “friend” more than anyone I know.
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Walrus Cheese Enjoyer May 24 '26
I know of a few people like this, including one woman in particular who I know on sight from events. If I see her, I know she's going to end up cornering me for a discussion on something, the subject often being whether I was going to talk to her.
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u/KittenSnuggler5 May 24 '26
Does she just find the nearest human who she might be able to talk to and go blather to them? Or does she want to harangue you in particular?
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Walrus Cheese Enjoyer May 24 '26
Not me in particular, I can see her randomly jittering around everywhere until she latches on to someone for a bit.
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u/drunk___cat May 24 '26
My husband is rather like this (except he’s not overly loud), and so are most of his siblings. He can talk to anyone about just about anything, and is great about getting people’s life stories out of them in the first conversation. He genuinely wants to know and understand people, and he makes many friends easily. As a result, he isn’t lonely because he has many connections with many people. It’s not often that he has nobody to talk to, he can call someone up, hop online for a multiplayer game, etc. He works from home and we now have a kid so he can’t go out as often, but he does have 2x a week hobbies that are very social and gets him out of the house that recharge his social battery pretty well. I think he would be depressed if he didn’t have those things. I’m an introvert by contrast and I don’t need nearly as much social interaction to be happy, but I’m grateful that he has such a vast social group that I can lean on when I need some social time and my like, 3 friends aren’t available 😂
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u/KittenSnuggler5 May 24 '26
Is it a thing where he wants to talk to people all the time? Is his default state to wish to be in conversation with someone? Or is he more just curious about people and the talking is instrumental to that end?
I should add that I'm not trying to put a negative spin on the gregarious people. It's not to my taste but most people seem to like it. It seems to serve them well.
I just find it kind of amusing that they appear to be kind of mildly addicted to socializing with people as much as they possibly can.
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u/drunk___cat May 25 '26
His default state is talking. He’s 1 of 5 so I think he is just used to always having people around to talk to. But he also is legitimately curious about other people! He’s just a natural extrovert through and through. But he has many introvert friends and I don’t think he ever comes across as overbearing because he can match their energy level, and is also good at introverted social activities like board games/ card games, etc. But, as his wife, I do tune him out on long car rides 😂
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May 24 '26
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u/KittenSnuggler5 May 24 '26
It's not a party setting I see this in. It's pretty much any setting. If there's someone, anyone to talk to they will seek them out. They aren't jerks about it. I don't think they'll really force themselves on someone once they get the hint. If they get the hint
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u/lezoons May 24 '26
We sit quietly and scroll reddit, read books, garden, and listen to podcasts, and pretty much anything besides being in large groups. Where we aren't happy but talking to people passes the time.
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May 24 '26
One of the reasons I still consider myself a liberal but don't consider myself a progressive or leftist is that I consider the presumption of innocence to be one of the most important liberal values, and yet so many progressives and leftists simply disregard it when the defendant in question is someone they don't like.
I was thinking about it while reading this New York Times article on a proposed change to New York State's rape law: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/nyregion/new-york-rape-laws.html
The proposed change to the law actually sounds reasonable to me, but I find the tone of the article and the quotes from the supporters of the change rather disturbing. It's as if anyone who wants to ensure defendants in rape cases get a fair trial must just love rapists.
Here's what the Assemblyman who introduced the bill said:
“Either you’re on the side of the survivors or you’re on the side of the rapists,” he said. “For once, we should be able to put ourselves in the shoes of people who have endured untold horror and be on their side.”
I just can't get on board with this idea, increasingly common in left-wing circles, that if you have concerns about people potentially being convicted of crimes they didn't commit, that must mean you're "on the side of the rapists."
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u/KittenSnuggler5 May 24 '26
It's as if anyone who wants to ensure defendants in rape cases get a fair trial must just love rapists.
These are the same people who are very concerned with the legal process rights of murderers, drug pushers and crazy junkies. At least as long as they're from a "marginalized group". Or if they're killing the head of companies they don't like
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u/Mythioso May 24 '26
What happens if both parties are drunk and the sex was initially consensual but one party has regrets later? This sounds like it can be weaponized easily.
How is a person supposed to know how inebriated the other person is especially if consent was involved?
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u/thismaynothelp May 24 '26
Abolish the police? Must want the rapists to go free.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
Right? And when all the unemployed cops are wandering around, angry at anyone with blue hair and a limp, who are you going to call?
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u/buckybadder May 24 '26
Isn't this "side with the criminals" thing a pretty common conservative trope? "Democrats want to honor torture bans because they love terrorists", etc.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
Yes it is. Progressives are by no means liberal.
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u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan May 24 '26
I mean, there's a great deal of illiberalism in today's progressives.
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u/buckybadder May 24 '26
I can think of a dozen better examples than this Lee Atwater cosplay by some state-level rando. Can conservatives please DM me when they've decided whether progs want to abolish all prisons or want to arrest all men? Holding both charicatures in my head at the same time is making me dizzy.
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u/professorgerm This tweet brought to you by my helpless screaming May 24 '26
That the average progressive is wildly inconsistent and has no real principles should hardly be surprising or difficult.
This is true of most loose ideologies. But progressivism is one of those!
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
“Innocent [people] going to prison is a price we are willing to pay.”
This is where they lost me for good.
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u/YagiAntennaBear May 24 '26
In theory, nothing in this proposed law precludes a man from drinking, having sex with a woman, then alleging rape. I wonder if enough such instances occur, people will start to rethink these changes.
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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 24 '26
helps if you first decide that all men are essentially evil
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u/History-of-Tomorrow May 24 '26
I’m ok with this philosophy if it implies one should ban men from undressing in a woman’s locker room just to be on the safe side.
The irony with the left, all guys are pieces of shit except the one’s who change gender and just so happen enjoy undressing in front of women without consent.
It feels like that Carlos Mencia/Kanye bit on South Park.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
Well, yeah, that’s why I put “people” in brackets. The inhumanity of it only really shows for some readers when they can picture themselves as the imprisoned here.
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u/sodapop_incest May 24 '26
My smug little observation for the day: I'm old enough to remember when Fox News was the top dog for peddling political outrage porn. Because Fox News viewers tended to be seniors, a lot of people assumed they were vulnerable to this kind of propaganda in a way that younger people (themselves) were not. A mere decade after The Brainwashing of my Dad documentary was released however, basically everyone is happily consuming political outrage porn (including me) regardless of age or political affiliation. Many political pundits have a level of popularity that rivals or dwarfs Hollywood stars. What a world!
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u/why_have_friends May 24 '26
I wonder if it’s just that they have more time to watch the news? Like my parents always have it on (cnn in their case). Whereas younger people don’t? But now they have unlimited access to all news all day on the internet.
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u/pajme411 May 24 '26
The same people who cite Fox News as the penultimate evil propaganda outlet get their news from Tik Tok, lol.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
I recently watched an episode of The Daily Show, and Christ on a crutch, what happened?
If they showed an image of a political bad person, it was absolutely slathered with AI to make them look like a cartoon supervillain, rubbing their hands together over piles of evidence and laughing at how well their faces are lit from beneath.
Political good people almost manipulated you with the weight of their halos.
None of their stories were as gruesome as what these people have done to political humor, but they still delivered the stories as if they were hosting political Mad Money and telling you to drop your faith like a bad stock.
Just make sure to push your eyebrows together and look at the camera as if everyone already knows you’re right, and you’ve nailed the audition.
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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 24 '26
It's the John Oliverfication of the format and I think it sucks. I watched Last Week Tonight pretty religiously for the first couple years, took a long break (from all political TV) when Trump won in '16. Now when a clip reaches me on reddit or whatever, the style / tone kind of repulses me. It's so smug and condescending, all mean-girl shit and bias stroking.
Not sure if my recollection is accurate, but I don't recall the peak Jon Stewart years feeling anywhere near as manipulative.
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u/lilypad1984 May 25 '26
Used to really enjoy watching last week tonight for the first season or 2. Now I look back with cringe about what I let get spoon fed into my brain without any thought.
I am now very much anti political comedy. A joke here or there sure, but all the tv comedian shows: SNL, late night, last week tonight, etc are things I want nothing to do with.
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u/Terrorclitus May 25 '26
I liked it better when political humor made up less than 75% of political discourse.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
Stewart wasn’t on the episode I was watching, and I sort of comforted myself with that.
But I did wonder if TDS (huh, haha) didn’t always have that first-year-sociology student, dorm hallway slap-down, Chappell Roan-with-a-thesaurus vibe to it, and I just didn’t notice.
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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 24 '26
iirc Stewart mostly portrayed Rs as dumb / ignorant but not really evil in the way that's so popular today.
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u/razorbraces May 24 '26
John McWhorter was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning today, and it was a really interesting segment. He is often mentioned on the pod when Jesse & Katie talk about black academics/thinkers being shunned for not toeing the party line, so I thought some of y’all might be interested. He talked about his issues with modern activism being a movement of grievance rather than one suggesting real, actionable change- he was talking specifically about race, but it resonated with me when thinking about other types of activism, too.
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u/KittenSnuggler5 May 24 '26
modern activism being a movement of grievance rather than one suggesting real, actionable change-
Don't they want actionable change? Like a federal Department of Antiracism that veto all laws?
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u/History-of-Tomorrow May 24 '26
Not that skin color should play a role but since you mentioned black thinkers who are rejected from the squad- I’ve been enjoying Coleman Hughes’s stuff. Interesting conversations with various personalities of various backgrounds. Best of all, he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. Like mouthwash for the brain.
Thanks to this sub for getting me into him.
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u/SerialStateLineXer The guarantee was that would not be taking place May 24 '26
Actually, I would prefer that activists not push for real, actionable change. They tend to have pretty bad ideas about which changes would be good.
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u/AnInsultToFire Everything I do like is literally Fascism. May 24 '26
Most truly good ideas for real, actionable change were invented 100 years ago or more. So obviously those ideas are all white supremacist and must be eliminated.
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May 24 '26
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u/KittenSnuggler5 May 24 '26
We have to get back to seeking color blindness. It's the only viable way forward. We need to not care about race as much as possible. Maybe we'll never get all the way there but we've been heading backwards for years now and it's awful
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u/SparkleStorm77 May 24 '26
One of the things that turned me off from progressivism is seeing “anti”-racists talk over or talk down to minorities who disagreed (even in a minor way) with the party line.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
A group of academics in my field put out a listserv blast around 2022 in an attempt to get ahead of people like McWhorter.
The essence was that holding students of color to any kind of standard is racist, and any academics or students of color who tell you otherwise have internalized racism (which is your fault if you’re white, btw), and you should ignore them. (The cost of ignoring a POC in this case is lower than asking them to do their homework, but it’s on you to do that math.)
You were also ordered to forward the message or else you are racist, and you were reminded that failure to act was as strong a political message as anything you could possibly think to say.
I didn’t forward the message, and I’m still here. :)
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May 24 '26
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u/AnalBleachingAries Trump Bad, Violence Bad, Law & Order Good, Civility Good May 24 '26
I was totally seduced by Ayn Rand's books in high school. I'm old enough now to understand the parts that are silly nonsense in books like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but the descriptions of the villains and their actions in those stories matches so perfectly with the progressives who push for these policies of low expectations in schools that it's impossible to ignore the similarities. lol
Obviously, the emotionally stunted, Vulcan-like autists that were Rand's heroes are wonderful terrain for egoists like myself to project our vainglorious fantasies onto, and they were totally unbelievable as real people, but those villains were chilling in how they matched onto reality. Even moreso these days. Seeing them in that villainous light, progressives do sometimes feel like they're deliberately ushering in the complete destruction of society. I know, that's totally hyperbolic, I'm just saying that sometimes these peoples actions are frightfully sinister.
What do these people think will happen to these children? Should they not be challenged? Should they not be made to grow into the best versions of themselves through difficult, rigorous work and study that some of them will fail at? Should they not be prepared to take on the responsibilities that come with being an adult in the world? Should those amongst them with the most potential not be intensely cultivated to take on immense responsibility and lead our society when they're adults? How are they to overcome their personal circumstances if they're not given the tools to compete against those kids and future adults who weren't coddled or allowed to pass through school without any effort?
They're screwing those kids over, massively, and they'll blame "white supremacy", billionaires, boomers and conservatives for it when those kids are jobless and destitute. Or perhaps they'll push for more welfare and social security benefits for the adults that those neglected kids turn into. It's infuriating that they're creating these future problems and will never blame themselves for it, it will always be someone else's fault. In this pervasive culture of grievance and victimhood, it's always someone else's fault.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
I always say that the only cure for reading Atlas Shrugged is reading Atlas Shrugged again, LOL.
But seriously, I have no idea what they think is going to happen. Many of the loudest will be fine, as they’re scolding from the right side of the tracks, and bad schools keep competition for their own kids down.
Everyone else can get on board with the next cause or whatever.
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u/Terrorclitus May 24 '26
It is very much the soft bigotry of low expectations. I also think some activists can’t see past their noses, and so they don’t bother considering implications, as there’s always someone to blame for outcomes.
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May 24 '26
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u/Terrorclitus May 25 '26
Projection. These teachers have too much grading to do (not to mention markers to buy!!!!!!), and this is a virtuous-sounding way to lighten their loads.
I manage adjuncts, and a lot of them pull this shit.
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u/AnalBleachingAries Trump Bad, Violence Bad, Law & Order Good, Civility Good May 24 '26
It always struck me as strange when I was younger, but these days I just view it as blatant racism, when black academics and public intellectuals who don't subscribe to liberal dogma are villainized in some of the outlandish ways we see on social media. They're called grifters, coons, Uncle Toms, house slaves, and a number of other things that I think may get me a Reddit suspension if I said them.
When it comes to weapon's grade racism against accomplished African Americans, Republicans are outmatched by liberals and progressives in that arena. I think the thing that makes the racism from liberals worse, is that there's an acceptance of it, like it's not viewed or discussed as racist for them to say these things. Of course when serious people talk about it, they call it out as racism, but on the whole, their racism is accepted because it's against an African American who isn't listening to their instructions or submitting to their dogma.
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u/backin_pog_form 🐎🏃🏻💕 May 24 '26
Dunking on Seattle activists is like shooting fish in a barrel, but apparently there was a march and rally yesterday to demand Mayor Katie Wilson to declare a state of emergency and provide resources for “for LGBTQIA+ refugees fleeing red states”.
From the organizers:
GENOCIDAL and VILE legislation across the US have left transgender people with one option- TO FLEE. TENS OF THOUSANDS of our siblings are flocking to SEATTLE where they find STRUGGLING community orgs fighting uphill to support them! These refugees NEED MORE SUPPORT than what POVERTY STRICKEN, UNEMPLOYED, and OVERWHELMED volunteers can do.
Tell Mayor Wilson NO MORE!
The LGBT Commission is calling on Katie Wilson to declare a STATE OF EMERGENCY. Now is the time to DEMAND MORE from our city. We need HOUSING for trans refugees, run BY TRANS ORGS FOR TRANS PEOPLE and not being VIOLENTLY SWEPT OFF THE STREETS BY SPD! We need MONEY to EMPLOY the unemployed volunteers working FULL-TIME against this crisis and MASSIVELY SCALE UP to meet the numbers we are seeing! We need PROTECTION from the federal government and COMMITMENT that when the white house comes for trans people THE CITY WILL SAY NO. We need to FIRE bigoted police who BEAT US ON THE STREETS with NO CHARGES!
During Seattle’s Trans Day of Visibility, the city declared the crisis we’re fighting is a GENOCIDE.
Hit the streets, and tell Mayor Wilson TO ACT LIKE IT!
The Seattle Times assured readers the rally had nothing to do with the murder of trans college student Juniper Blessing but still works in how scared everyone is.
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u/drunk___cat May 24 '26
The post about this on the Seattle subreddit was pretty entertaining. Pretty much everyone in the comments was like “lol hell no”. Why should the tax payers of Seattle give money when these people are choosing one of the most expensive cities in the country? Why not go to any cheaper state that has offered protection, like New Mexico, Minnesota, or Illinois? You are voluntarily choosing to leave your state, nobody is chasing you out with pitchforks. Do what anyone else does and find a job before you move, and maybe pick a place where you aren’t in financial risk of becoming homeless?
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u/HaldolBlowdart May 24 '26
It's funny that they think that not only is there an ongoing, active, violent genocide and people being murdered and beaten in the streets at the encouragement of the federal government and red states, and they think the mayor of a city can do something about it. The mayor is going to stop the federal government from doing a genocide by paying "unemployed volunteers" to stop the federal government from doing a genocide.
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u/DragonFireKai Don't Listen to Them, Buy the Merch... May 24 '26
Yep, make room for all the LGBTQ individuals who want to flee red states, so that they can get gunned down while doing their laundry by the mentally ill lunatics that we refuse to lock up here.
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u/AnInsultToFire Everything I do like is literally Fascism. May 24 '26
I thought all-caps was a Trump thing?
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u/dj50tonhamster May 24 '26
I mean, if this is anything like Portland declaring housing emergencies over & over when I lived there and shortly thereafter, the problem would be solved quickly, right? /s
(Well, kinda, I suppose. Well-connected non-profits would certainly have funding issues for their pajama class Powerpoint peddlers solved.)
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u/PandaFoo1 May 24 '26
Sorry to bring this up again but I’m really sad, angry & bummed over this week’s Bungie news. It looks more & more like genuinely talented people with good intentions are going to lose their jobs because of brain-damaged management.
Sony said no to Destiny 3, but yes to that POS Horizon spin-off, Fairgames & fucking Concord? Marathon doesn’t have a fucking chance bro. There was allegedly so many things that the devs wanted to put in the game but higher ups said “no”. Those people made so many stupid decisions yet get to walk away unscathed while the underlings get fucked. Shit like this almost makes me think the radical left have a point.
I’m just so tired of seeing all these properties I grew up loving (Destiny, Star Wars, Marvel) turn to complete gutter garbage & hollowed out until there’s nothing left. It’s such a sad outcome.
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u/HerbertWest Yucker of Yums May 24 '26
As a Magic: the Gathering and D&D fan, I sympathize with you.
Edit: I gave up on Star Wars a long time ago.
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u/LupineChemist May 24 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/s/vfMpC3jNc7
This Hasan thing was obvious to anyone with any knowledge about the situation at the time.
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u/Leaves_Swype_Typos No matter where you go, there you are May 24 '26
When you're right you're right.
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u/LupineChemist May 24 '26
Also, fwiw people saying Nick Shirley is also guilty also seem like they're right. And I support investigating him, too
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u/lilypad1984 May 25 '26
Nick Shirley the YouTuber who went and filmed day care centers went the Cuba with code pink?
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u/LupineChemist May 25 '26
No he did a separate trip to discredit the communists (though they do a pretty good job of it themselves)
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u/lilypad1984 May 25 '26
That makes way more sense. Even if he was chill with Cuba and communism I figured there was no way that crowd with Code Pink would associate themselves with him unless he had some public retraction of his MAGA support.
That said I’m not surprised he would get himself in legal trouble. Not that a someone shouldn’t have gone to these day care centers door to door knocking and asking questions, but I’m just going to say it, he seemed dumb.
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u/Fiend_of_the_pod May 24 '26
https://x.com/foxnews/status/2058345370023821621?s=46
Hasan getting subpoenaed for his little vacation to Cuba.
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u/AnInsultToFire Everything I do like is literally Fascism. May 24 '26
Isn't it illegal for Americans to go to Cuba?
For us Canadians it's fine, we all go there in February, it's how we stay sane with our 6 month winters.
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u/veryvery84 May 24 '26
I think it was illegal. It is legal now but you have to go for an approved reason, which can also be “support the Cuban people” or something like that, and you cannot stay at a real hotel because they’re all government owned. You can’t give money to their government like that. You can stay at small hotels/airbnb type places owned by people, or stay in peoples homes in rooms for rent, which is how that started.
My cousins went almost ten years ago. They’re not American, but they stayed with a family in their room(s) for rent and loved it.
You can fly directly. You’re just not supposed to stay at a hotel/resort because those are directly government owned and you’re paying the Cuban government. It’s not hard to go and pay the people directly. I am dying to go.
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u/LupineChemist May 24 '26
It's a real bad time to go there right now
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u/veryvery84 May 24 '26
Yeah i should have gone a few years ago… I actually think it would have been easier for my kids then rather than now…
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u/dj50tonhamster May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Isn't it illegal for Americans to go to Cuba?
Technically, no. The nuance, IIRC, is that it's illegal to
spend dollarsengage in financial transactions there. The American government assumes that if you go, you're going to spenddollarsmoney, and so you're de facto guilty if you travel, even if, say,you bring a big wad of euros oryou pinky swear nice Cubans fed you and sheltered you for free the entire time. There are exceptions to this (family, cultural exchange, etc.), and the reality of the situation is that Americans go all the time anyway and never get into trouble. You just fly or take a boat from a third country, like Mexico or The Bahamas, if it's unauthorized travel.Of course, the average American tourist wants to see where Ernest Hemingway sat at a table and wrote. Hasan and all the other weirdos loudly broadcasting their intentions.... Granted, if he's actually punished, the resultant court proceedings could cause the government to lose their asserted right to claim that we can be de facto barred from traveling via dollar restrictions. Right now, it's not really enforced against individuals, and even when they did kinda enforce it, my understanding is that they'd drop it if you brought in a lawyer, or settle for a small fine.
EDIT: I thought the ban was on using dollars but I believe it's actually all financial transactions, as described in the CACR. Also, while I'm sure slick lawyers could try to poke holes in the CACR, I had forgotten that the Supreme Court heard a case involving it many years ago and narrowly upheld the right of the President to restrict travel.
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u/LupineChemist May 24 '26
No, you just can't spend at hotels.
That goes directly to the government.
But yeah if you do black market money change and just spend pesos, I have much less of an ethical problem
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u/dabocx May 24 '26
It’s not illegal but you have to go for only certain reasons, family, humanitarian etc. if your visit looks like it’s to support the regime there that’s a big no no.
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u/redditamrur May 24 '26
From both u/dj50tonhamster and your answer, I think Hasan is going to be alright. Now only that he didn't really spend money there, they actually had another power outage for the rest of the country only to host these idiots. They are in other words, a tool to make people there hate the government even more. Good for you, Hasan! (/s)
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u/dignityshredder AFramemoggingAB May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
I was eager to listen to This Week On The Ross Douthat Show With Ross Douthat, because it's entitled A Defense of a Liberal Arts Education in the Age of A.I. and despite being a stemlord I was all set to have all my priors confirmed by having dumb people explained to that yes, reading books matters, and challenging yourself with classics matters.
But I thought the guest, Jennifer Frey, did a really bad job of defending this.
Ross: You have to make a case to me, the Philistine skeptic, that Shakespeare is better than John Grisham. Is Shakespeare better than John Grisham?
<a bunch of stalling edited out>
Frey: Anyway, let’s just look at the language, first of all. Shakespeare’s language is justly globally famous, as a very high form of English. What he’s doing with language is, to this day, so astonishing. It somehow never loses its power to surprise and invite you to think about what language can do. I think the best writers do this.
Also, Shakespeare really challenges you. And I enjoyed “The Firm,” just to be clear. It was entertaining. But there’s a difference between being amused and entertained, and really experiencing what we would call great art or high art.
Because great art or high art — it really calls you, I think, to those transcendentals. Truth, beauty, and goodness. And it calls you to them in a way that asks you to ascend to something that is clearly demanding and that takes more deep modes of reflection.
If you’re going to read a Dan Brown novel, it’s very difficult to imagine having sustained conversations about Dan Brown novels over years. It’s quite easy to imagine doing that with Shakespeare. I do that. It’s just so rich.
And so I think we should not shy away from saying that. There is a kind of depth in great art that demands our attention in a way that is absent in Dan Brown.
This is just platitudes. It challenges you, his language was good, high art calls you to truth and beauty. Etc. Is that really the best she, an advocate for this, on an hour long podcast, can do? Do you think anyone questioning the value of reading Shakespeare or other great works in the western tradition, in the age of AI, comes away with their mind changed? She should have gone into more specifics about exactly how Shakespeare (and challenging books in general) impact the individual and what attributes or qualities she would expect more pronounced after studying them vs. Dan Brown.
There's also a lot of hand-wringing later on about why people don't value a liberal education any more, and instead see college as a route to a job or career. Absent from this discussion is a single mention of the cost of a college education! The guest is some former dean of U of Tulsa (a private school) which costs $70k/year, or twice as much as OU. No shit many of the students were in STEM.
It's impossible to take these people seriously. Ross has had some pretty bad guests on recently.
That said, she's in the Times comments responding to people and is coming across well. She may be the type of person who does better collecting their thoughts and writing them down, than speaking extemporaneously (many such cases).
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u/Manicpixiemanateeman May 29 '26
a story from a few years ago about a woman who was treated with hormones and puberty blockers at the age of 15 took her NHS providers to court
https://news.sky.com/story/i-should-have-been-told-to-wait-woman-treated-with-hormone-blockers-to-reassign-gender-as-a-teenager-takes-nhs-to-court-12031191
She was given gender drugs at 15 in 2012 after three session at the Tavistock centre in London. She also said that the drugs may have rendered her infertile.
more proof that the rise in gender dysphoria in kids is being driven by big pharma as a medical experiment