Atalar 🇺🇸 on X - "You’re literally Turkish Muslim refugee in Europe Uzay hanım"
Uzay Bulut on X - "My ancestry/DNA is Greek. Let me elaborate: My ancestors spoke Greek and were Christian until Muslim invaders forcibly islamized them after having murdered thousands of others. Today I’m a critic of Islam. And being called a Muslim is the biggest insult to me. You talk too much for someone who doesn’t know sh*t, so best crawl back in your hole."
Meme - "Why People Can't See the
Truth Yuri Bezmenov 1939- 1993 was a KGB informant and disinformation expert who defected to Canada. He is best remembered for his anti-communist lectures and books in the 1980s.
"Exposure to true information does not matter anymore.
"A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information.
"The facts tell him nothing, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures. ...he will refuse to believe it...
"That's the tragedy of the situation of demoralization."
Once people's morals have been debased...
Education becomes indoctrination
Entertainment becomes hypnotism
Criminals become "leaders," and
Lies become truth."
Taylin John Simmonds on X - "One pattern I’ve noticed in all miserable people: They overthink and underact. The system I use to escape the cold, dark prison of overthinking:"
Pick-up trucks are ridiculous clown cars and 99% of the people who buy them will never have a practical need to own one. - "Here’s why: First off, pick-ups have for years consistently been among the most popular, best selling vehicles in America. But we know from consumer surveys that almost no one who buys one uses them for anything more than daily commuting. A Strategic Visions survey from a few years ago found that 75% of pick-up owners towed something with their vehicle one time a year or less. 70% went off-road one time a year or less. More than a third didn’t even use the bed of the truck more than once a year or less. So the vast majority of people who buy them don’t use them for their primary design function. Which shouldn’t be surprising as the most popular models don’t really have a useful design function that can’t be fulfilled by other, smaller, cheaper vehicles.
When you think of pick-ups at the very least you’re thinking hauling lumber in the back. But most pick-ups sold are crew-cab models, which means a second row of seats in the back in exchange for less bed space. Trucks with full 8ft beds are actually remarkably unpopular. What that means though is your average Ram 2500 Megacab is no better for hauling plywood than a base-model Toyota Sienna minivan with the seats folded down. People don’t want to admit though that they’re driving a four-ton family sedan though. So we talk about towing capacity. Except most truck owners don’t tow with them, and those that do can’t tow as much as they think or don’t need that truck to tow what they have. Each truck model has a fixed towing capacity. But once you start customizing the truck (as most truck owners do and they’re sold to just have endless add-one) the vehicle itself weighs more. More feature, less you can tow. Outside of a few fifth-wheel campers, most trailers people would use can be hauled by smaller vehicles. People don’t NEED the large stuff, they get it because the truck can haul more. The bigger vehicle creates its own need.
But let’s look at the people who ostensibly use them for work: contractors, remodelers, construction workers, etc. Trucks represent a fair portion of what they drive for work, but not as much as you think. I’ve seen surveys that show only a third of remodelers drive pick-ups The actual work-horse of American contractors and tradesmen is something closer to a Ford Transit Connect, i.e. a tall van. Enclosed storage area, infinitely customizable, 24 mpg for city driving as opposed to a Ford F-150 Supercab’s paltry 16. Even farmers don’t for the most part drive modern pick-ups, because they’re basically useless for most farm work. Too tall, too heavy. The used trade for 90s models among agricultural workers is huge, because that was the last time trucks were made they could practically use.
And the problem with trucks getting bigger and bigger doesn’t end with them being impractical. Taller front-ends mean lower sight-lines. You become both less likely to see a pedestrian AND more likely to kill them. I’ve seen some different stats on this but I’d say conservative estimate is that larger pick-ups and SUVs on the road has caused pedestrian fatalities increase by about a quarter since the mid 1980s. Basically all gains made in auto safety features erased over the last 40 years.
They are also ridiculously expensive vehicles. The MSRP on a base model Ford F-150 is about $29,000. But I’ll be clear, basically no one buys that. That’s a single-row seating vehicle with an AM/FM radio in it. The same model fully-loaded, like you go down the features list and check every box, will run you close to $80,000. That’s basically luxury car prices. And most the people buying them are going to finance some or most of that, so just go ahead and add $10-20,000 to that. I’ve said this before, but car dealerships do not sell cars, they sell debt with a car attached.
Now you can think up a myriad of examples of how you, personally, need a pick-up or the one time that it was useful to have one or whatever. But your experience is stacked against the literal millions of pick-up owners who bought them as engorged status symbols. The fact is most practical uses of a pick up can be handled just as well 1) in a smaller vehicle 2) are so uncommon that it’s cheaper to occasionally rent something. Owning a truck the size of a WWII Sherman tank serves no practical purpose and makes you look fucking ridiculous...
Some people have brought up snow and ice conditions, which, fuckin’ lol. First off if you’re regularly driving in snow deep enough to justify a pick-up and you don’t have a plow attached to the front then you 1) work on a farm or for the Forest Service or 2) are a fucking moron. If you’re talking about icy roads then you’re talking about just adding weight and momentum to a situation where stopping isn’t happening easily. Consistently best-rated winter drivers are almost always AWD sedans. If you personally can think of situations on ice where a truck is better than a Subaru Outback and ISN’T just going to fishtail your ass into a curb, then good for you but I guarantee your insurance company begs to differ, and they have a bigger dataset than you."
The cope against this is very interesting. They usually keep going on about what their pickup trucks *could* do. Rather than what they actually do with them. And even if they themselves use them for their intended function, that doesn't mean most do
Kit Harington Revealed Jon Snow Fate to Avoid Speeding Ticket - "After discussing the infraction with Harington, the officer told him, “Look, there’s two ways we can do this: You can either follow me to the police station now and I’ll book you in, or you can tell me if you live in the next series of Game of Thrones,” Harington told Jimmy Fallon. The officer also admitted that the fate of Harington’s evening depended on whether Snow lived or died. “He said, ‘I have to tell you, whether I take you into the police station depends on what your answer is.’ So I looked at him and said, ‘I’m alive next season,'” Harington explained. “And he said, ‘On your way, Lord Commander. Keep your speed down this far south of the Wall.'” The lucky policeman was one of a few select people – including Harington’s parents and girlfriend – who knew that Jon Snow would be returning to Westeros, as Harington told Fallon that he even lied to his cast mates about his character. “That got tricky as well, because Jon Snow is a character around which a lot of other characters’ storylines pivot around, so essentially when going and telling all my cast mates that I’m not back next season, I’m also going, ‘Oh yeah, and you’re fired too. I’m dead so we’re all kind of not here,'” Harington said of the ruse."
Singapore jails man who planted cannabis in estranged wife's car - "Tan Xianglong, 37, planted what he thought was more than half a kilo of cannabis between the rear passenger seats of his wife's car, assuming it was enough to warrant the death penalty for drug trafficking... In Telegram chats with his girlfriend last year, he said he had hatched the "perfect crime" to frame his wife. On 16 October, he bought a brick of cannabis from a Telegram chat group, weighing it to make sure it exceeded 500g (1.1lbs), and placed it in her car the next day. What Tan seemingly didn't account for was the fact that his wife's car was equipped with a camera, which sent her a phone notification alerting her to a "parking impact"."
Man planned 'perfect crime' by planting cannabis in estranged wife's car, knew it could draw death penalty
Zack Stentz on X - "I remember reading an article about how Somali pirates had fallen on such hard times that their luxury cars were getting repossessed and all I could think was that a Somali repo man who takes cars back from pirates must be the toughest bastard on planet Earth."
Crackdown good for Somalia, bad for its pirates - "The empty whiskey bottles and overturned, sand-filled skiffs littering this once-bustling shoreline are signs that the heyday of Somali piracy might be over.Most of the prostitutes are gone and the luxury cars repossessed. Pirates while away their hours playing cards or catching lobsters."
Meme - "Kids today wonder how our parents were able to survive with one paycheck. This is exactly how it was done. See the size of this house. This was normal when I was growing up. No 5 bedroom homes with 5 baths. Living and buying within your means. Starter homes."
Ford Tunnel skeptics should offer alternatives, not same old ideas - "Induced-demand thinkers can even cite studies that basically say, yes wider roads were built and more cars used them. Wouldn’t that be the very purpose of the wider roads? One might more plausibly argue that demand for more roads is caused by rapidly expanding population. Due largely to high levels of immigration, the GTA is expected to add three million residents by 2051. Many of them will have cars. Tunnel skeptics say the solution is more transit, but that’s not an inexpensive alternative. Take the Toronto Transit Commission as an example. The transit agency has a 10-year funded capital spending program that will cost $12.4 billion. That still leaves unmet capital needs of $17.916 billion over 10 years and $35.458 billion over 15 years. By comparison, the Ford government will spend $70 billion on transit capital costs over 10 years, compared to $100 billion on roads. The road total does not cover the potential tunnel. Transit is also expensive to operate, partly because transit systems provide vehicles, drivers and fuel, a cost car owners cover themselves. If cars were treated the same as transit the government would buy you a car and provide you with a chauffeur. You would pay a fraction of the real operating cost, as transit riders do. The only hitch would be that the car would only go where the government tells it to go."
Urbanists claim that induced demand means there's no point building roads, but even if we ignore the fact that the coefficient is 0.25 at most, that pretends there's no value to people of taking those additional trips (e.g. someone driving 1 hour instead of spending 3 hours on public transport, or someone else going out for dinner when he would otherwise have stayed at home)
Opinion: Unchecked judicial power — that's Chief Justice Wagner's vision for Canada - "Chief Justice Wagner was asked to comment on an ongoing controversy over whether the Supreme Court should provide official French-language translations of its judgments prior to 1970, before the Official Languages Act was enacted. Attempting to justify the court’s refusal to do so, he made a series of bizarre claims that sought to diminish the importance of his own court’s prior decisions. According to Wagner, “apart from considering these decisions as part of our legal cultural heritage, no one today will refer to a decision from 1892 to support his claim,” later adding that “sometimes a decision from five years ago is an old decision, in commercial and civil matters.” He then concluded that “the legal value of these historical decisions is quite minimal.” Coming from Canada’s top judge, these cavalier statements reflect a breathtaking dismissal of the role and significance of legal precedent. As any practicing lawyer will readily attest, at all levels of court across Canada, litigants routinely cite and rely upon judgments of the Supreme Court dating back much further than the 1970s. This is most apparent in the Canadian provinces and territories other than Quebec, where basic areas of law — the law of contracts, torts and property, for instance — are founded upon the common law, which emerges from legal precedents and landmark decisions that date back centuries. It is also true across the country where fundamental issues of constitutional law are concerned, including in matters relating to the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments. Here, precedents dating back to 1892 and beyond continue to be authoritative. What is even more troubling about the chief justice’s remarks, however, is that they confirm the now widespread impression of an undisciplined approach to judicial responsibility at the Supreme Court of Canada. Regrettably, the judicial decisions that appear to exemplify this attitude are legion. Rather than attempting to resolve disputes within settled legal frameworks and principles, recent appeals before the court are explicitly framed as invitations to overturn established doctrine. This was notably the case in Canada v. Bedford (2013) and Canada v. Carter (2015), two Charter challenges that targeted the criminal prohibitions on prostitution-related activities and assisted suicide, respectively. In ultimately deciding to strike down these laws, the Supreme Court went so far as to approve the effacement of its prior work. More recently, in a case where a claimant sought compensation from the public purse for the mere enactment — as opposed to the enforcement — of a law later deemed to be unconstitutional, the Supreme Court again emancipated itself from the constraints of settled law. Under orthodox constitutional principles, inherited from the United Kingdom, the recourse for imprudent legislation is found in the democratic process, not in the courts. Yet the majority judgment in Canada v. Power (2024), co-authored by Chief Justice Wagner, effectively embraced judicial supervision over the law-making process, unperturbed by its drastic departure from longstanding constitutional tradition. In the court’s eyes, the Charter had effected a “revolutionary transformation of the Canadian polity” in 1982, such that courts now had a right and duty to sit in judgment over Parliament and legislative decision-making."
French lawmakers weigh political risk of curbing boomers' costly pensions - "A growing number of economists and analysts say that pensions would be an obvious place to find savings in France's overall public spending, which is among the highest in the world at 57% of GDP. "It's difficult to reduce spending only through cuts without doing anything about pensions," former public finance auditor Francois Ecalle said... Some economists say the previous government missed a chance to rein in pensions when it raised them 5.3% in January to match inflation... A lawmaker in Macron's party told Reuters Macron considered it political suicide to touch pensions close to elections. Young and working class voters have deserted his party, leaving retirees his main supporters... Pensioners in France have living standards close to or greater than working people, whereas in most other countries they are lower, according to the national pensions council. They also retire earlier and live longer than in most other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, which means France spends nearly 14% of GDP on pensions compared with an average of 8% in the OECD."
Is a banana a berry, and what about strawberries? - "Despite its name, the strawberry isn't a true berry. Neither is the raspberry or the blackberry. But the banana is a berry, scientifically speaking, as are eggplants, grapes and oranges."
The Largest Berry in the World May Not Be What You Think It Is - "Botanically speaking, a pumpkin is a fruit. And even more specifically, a pumpkin is a type of botanical berry called a pepo."
Guide dog owner says Louie may be her last unless behaviour of 'service dogs' changes - "increasingly when she and Louie are in stores, restaurants and other indoor public spaces, Rinn is often not the only person with a dog, and lately she hasn't been welcome with Louie. "There's an industry out there that provides very official looking service dog vests and even service dog ID cards," said Rinn. "And people use them to get access to places." In addition to accredited guide dogs for the visually impaired, like Louie, there are other dogs that fall into the more general categories of "service dogs," "support dogs" or "comfort dogs."... "They really don't have the right training or temperament to be in public," she said. "They misbehave, they growl and their humans let them do things that a guide dog handler never world. It happens everywhere now.""
Meme - "What you've stated is false. I've done my research"
"Can you show me your sources?"
"I got my information from the database. I'm sure you can find it too."
"The only information I'm finding in the database supports my original statement. Can you show me what supports yours?"
"No. Keep looking. I'm sure you'll find it"
*eye twitches*
This has happened to me many times. People keep claiming that anyone can Google the source, or that the information is out there and anyone can find it, but I can't find it and they refuse to provide a link
Meme - Man in white: "This escape room sucks."
Nurse-Nun in white: "Once again sir, this is a psych ward."
Meme - "Batman now: Sad man who never got over his parents' death.
Joker now: Mentally ill loner abused by a toxic society.
Meanwhile Batman & Joker in the 1960's: *surfing together with surf shorts over normal outfits*"
Meme - Calley Means @calleymeans: "The Senate hosted a historic 4 hour bi-partisan hearing on chronic disease with doctors from Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Stanford - and this is how @TheAtlantic decides to cover it. The writer mocked concerns about artificial colorings in kid’s food. What’s the deal here?"
"The Woo-Woo Caucus Meets. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s appearance at a "health and nutrition" event hosted by a Trump ally showcased a congruence of crunchy and cranky. By Elaine Godfrey"
Meme - Thinkwert @Thinkwert: "The Chinese have access to culinary delights that we in the West can only dream of." *Pepe the Frog popsicle at Haidilao*
LIZZY💥 on X - "Feminism and the modern age, for all of their failures, have opened a hole in the culture where women have the opportunity to choose men based on true compatibility rather than for basic provision and protection."
Wilfred Reilly on X - "Hot take: I don't really think this was a good thing. In the USA, we never had truly abusive, Persia-style arranged marriages. But, under the Old Rules, couples would very openly and frankly use empirical standards to pick partners who would be likely to give them a good life. Some were...
Ability to provide, income Ability to fight/protect Sexual compatability Attitude toward children Ability to run a home Ability to BUILD a home Skill at (XYZ) tasks Shared religious/moral beliefs
Etc. You had to ~LIKE the guy/gal too, but this was very real. And, while some people ended up with "frigid" hen-peckers and a smaller but worse-off minority with true male brutes, most marriages - around 90% - worked pretty well. These farmers and office girls and such...knew how to write. We have a ton of data on this. Today, nothing I mentioned here^ except for income (i.e., "cooking skill") makes the top ten list of things people look for in partners. People tend to select on what used to be dismissed as silly "love match" criteria - like temporary lust, shared secular politics, "good sense of silly humor," etc. The divorce rate is 35-50%. Just saying."
The feminist cope is that divorce is good because in the past a lot of women were trapped in unhappy marriages and unable to leave (when you consider anti-depressant use and declining female happiness, they need a lot of copes to reconcile the facts with their claims)
A. Westgate on X - "Bacon cheeseburgers are prime white man's food. Jews can't eat bacon. Muslims can't eat bacon. Indians can't eat beef. Other non-whites will probably get sick from cheese due to lactose intolerance."
Meme - "You can't expect me to believe there is a race of creatures living in well-ordered homes who spend all day making candy while their evil counterpart hides out in menacing fortresses that augur only destruction *bees, wasps*"
Meme - "Based on this, I finally live like a Disney Princess *Cinderella doing household chores*"
Meme - "When parent tells me that their kid is an angel.
[Whispering] So was Lucifer"
26-Year-Old Mom Has 22 Children and Doesn’t Plan to Stop Until She Gets 105 - "Kristina Ozturk, currently residing in Georgia, and her millionaire husband Galip are the parents of 22 children. Kristina welcomed her first child at the age of 17. Out of the total number of children, 21 were born via surrogates. Kristina made this decision to expand her family rapidly."
wanye on X - "Imagine what society would be like if 100% of the population had the intelligence and conscientiousness to graduate high school with good grades and high scores on standardized tests. That's a college campus! That's the environment college kids actually live in. And once you understand that you can start to understand why they have such ridiculous ideas about society as a whole."
Meme - wanye @wanyeburkett: "Every once in a while some urbanist account will do a repeat of the tweet where it’s like, “people are nostalgic for college because it’s the last time they lived in a walkable community.” I think the fact that literally every single one of their neighbors was top 10% for conscientiousness and intelligence might be the bigger factor.
Walkable neighborhoods are nice, but these people go out in the world and everybody is dumb and there’s trash everywhere. Of course they miss college."
Urban-Rural Happiness Differentials Across the World | The World Happiness Report
In highly developed countries (even in Western Europe), urban residents are more unhappy than rural, which suggests that walkable cities are not what makes people happy when in college. Suggestive, too, is that "highly educated students in the United Kingdom experience happiness benefits from moving to the city, while less-highly educated students experience negative effects from moving to the city"
Meme - ornstein @poopswag34: "The Chinese Indian border where they skirt around peace agreements by using medieval weapons and armor instead of guns is insane and can't believe there's not more videos of it online"
Clash Report @clashreport: "China's PLA Border Guard on India border in body armor armed with a traditional sword known locally as a 'Guandao', 2023."
Steve Guest on X - "UNHINGED: Fran Lebowitz to Bill Maher: “Biden should dissolve the Supreme Court.”"
Gad Saad on X - "This guy is insane. If the Supreme Court no longer bends liberal then get rid of it. If we can't win via the Electoral College, get rid of it. If we can't win the elections, allow illegals to vote. But of course, it's the GOP that is a threat to democracy."
If you believe in separation of powers, that's fascism
Auron MacIntyre on X - "For decades the left ruled through the Supreme Court. Forced bussing, abortion, gay marriage, these were not popular ideas so the left forced them through the judiciary. Conservatives took note and in a rare moment of political realism focused more on controlling the institution than winning elections. Now that the court isn’t a tool of leftist revolution it has to be destroyed"
Meme - Garbage Human @ @GarbageHu...: "This however is not a red flag *H. Pearl Davis with black guy*"
H. Pearl Davis @pearlythingz: "Alright this is going on 3 years ago can we let it go please. I get it I paid the toll alright"
Meme - "*** replied to your story. You look like my future"
"You have a girlfriend!"
"Yes but do i have a wife?"
Meme - *Teen couple making out with morose Kim Jong Un facing them*
Meme - *Young girl hanging laundry*
*Young girl finds hole in trousers pocket*
*Young girl sews hole in trousers pocket, and mother sees her*
*Mother scolds young girl*
*Father riding scooter with mother*
*Mother's hand in father's pocket*