When you can't live without bananas

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Saturday, November 16, 2024

Food and "Chemicals"

Alan Levinovitz on X

"There's been a LOT about why RFK Jr is a terrible pick, but I want to focus on something that is very concerning to me, but no one seems to be mentioning.

He appeals to a widespread, common-sense idea that the problem with our food is that it has "lots of artificial ingredients". Get the artificial ingredients out — no chemical additives! no food dyes! no high fructose corn syrup! — and our health problems magically resolve.

This is 100% incorrect, and fundamentally misunderstands the problems with our food system. 

Here's the truth: If people keep eating large amounts of highly caloric foods made with organic sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, colored with beet juice instead of Red No4, our health problems will remain precisely the same. 
 
Now in a strange way, forcing manufacturers to use "natural" ingredients COULD improve our food system, but not in the way people think. It wouldn't make the food healthier, but it would make it MORE EXPENSIVE TO PRODUCE.

And that would reduce consumption. Like a tax!
 
Unfortunately, RFK Jr. does not seem to understand that the problem with our food system is the UBIQUITOUS EXISTENCE OF CHEAP, CALORIE-DENSE, HIGHLY PALATABLE FOOD.

That's it. That's the whole problem. It has precisely nothing to do with food dye or high fructose corn syrup. 
 
Food manufacturers employ the very best in the business. If you focus on "artificial additives" they are going to spend millions on how to produce "natural" versions of the same food, at the same price point.

*taps earpiece* What's that? You say they're already on it? 

People want easy answers to complicated problems. We want to believe that Haagen-Dazs "Five" is the solution to our problems.

Five simple natural ingredients! Free ice cream for everyone now that it's only got five natural ingredients, and sugar instead of corn syrup!

That's not how it works. But someone like RFK Jr. encourages this simplistic, misguided approach.

At any rate, I've been on this beat for a decade. Here's a piece I wrote in 2015 that explains how these misconceptions work.

For the fun TL;DR, scroll down to the bottom of the piece, where you can see the fake diet I invented, and click on how I exploited misconceptions to make it sound plausible.

This tweet is a perfect example of how RFK Jr. will encourage the kind of misunderstanding I'm talking about here.

Is sugary cereal "healthier" than hamburgers?

Well, I'll tell you this much — the reason sugary cereal is bad has nothing to do with the screenshot of chemically-sounding ingredients.

The reason sugary cereal is bad — "worse" than hamburgers — is because it is easy to eat lots of it, it is calorie dense, it doesn't sate you, and it is extremely cheap! Not the f*ing ingredient list! 
 
This thread blew up, so it has been impossible to respond to everybody. But one of the main objections I've seen is this: "Oh yeah? Then explain why I lose so much weight and feel so much better when I go to Europe?"

The implication is that stricter European standards for food products make for foods that are healthier, sate you more quickly, etc.

But is that the reason? Or is it possible there are other reasons?

I happen to be familiar with this kind of argument because I heard it a lot when I was writing about gluten. People who were gluten-free in the US — notably not people with celiac disease — would say that in Europe they were able to eat bread with gluten, because it was [insert claim: organic, different gluten levels, whatever].

The truth is that in both cases, the answer to the mystery has nothing to do with the food. It has to do with the change in context.

I'll explain a little more: When people feel better going gluten-free, or lose weight on a new diet, there are two main factors that don't involve the specifics of the new diet:

1. They are paying more attention to what they eat and changing their habits. If you are eating unhealthfully, just doing those things will, unsurprisingly, improve your diet! You could go keto, or go vegan: As long as you are fundamentally changing your (previously unhealthy) diet, you're going to feel much better.

2. You feel empowered! The change makes you feel like you can do something. That you are doing something. That what was once hopeless is now possible. And that makes you feel really good. It's important!  
 
So let's consider the "Why do I feel better / eat better in Europe?" question. Is it stricter European regulations on food ingredients?

Well, there's another possibility:

You're in a different context. You're not at your office, next to the vending machine. You don't have access to the same stores and restaurants. You have to fundamentally change up your (previously unhealthy) eating habits. And that is going to make you feel better! If you are consuming less calorie-dense food, less frequently, you'll also lose weight.

Not only that, but often people are going to Europe on vacation. They're walking around! They're relaxed! They're not stress-eating from their fridge and their pantry, because they don't have a fridge or pantry and they're not stressed!
 
So what's more likely: The European standards for food create a miraculous new food environment in which, thanks to the stricter standards on ingredients, you simply get healthier and fitter?

Or European portion size is smaller, you're on vacation, in a different context, and those changes lead to healthier eating habits.

In my opinion, the choice between the two explanations is crystal clear. I usually really enjoy responding to everyone but it's impossible right now. One more response to something I keep hearing: "Well, maybe you're right, but at least RFK Jr. wants to do something about our unhealthy food in general!"

This is truly the weirdest take. For decades medical professionals have been calling for drastic changes to our food culture. The much reviled food pyramid, while wrong about the relative dangers of fat, did NOT recommend eating as many Twinkies as possible.

There have been many, many attempts at targeting soda consumption (with taxes, by trying to get celebrities to not endorse it).

There have been many attempts to stop companies from advertising sugary foods to kids, or making it seem like they are healthy. 
 
There are endless advocates for home cooking, for more balanced diets with foods that aren't as calorie-dense, sate you, and don't leave you craving more.

And...you're not going to believe this, but almost all of these advocates didn't take unfounded positions on "artificial vs. natural" or the danger of "chemicals" and vaccines, or the virtues of hydroxychloroquine.

Sure, some of RFK Jr.'s desired changes are reasonable! If he were the first person to come up with them, I'd be very impresssed.

But he's not. He's one of many, and the way he came to his positions, along with all the other positions he holds that are ridiculous, make him completely unfit to be advising the nation on how to eat more healthfully.  
 
Here's another response to a common objection. People keep saying that American obesity rates and associated health problems are due to artificial ingredients that aren't allowed in Europe.

But how does this explain basic variation in obesity rate by country? Why, for example, does Tonga have an obesity rate 22% higher than the US? Why do Romania (a European country!) and Kuwait have comparable levels to the US?

Why does Canada, which regulates food more or less like the US, have an obesity rate that's 12% lower than the US? 🤔

The answers are complicated, but I'll tell you what isn't the answer: The relative levels of "artificial" ingredients in these countries' foods! 
 
Thousands of anti-seed-oil folks furiously googling at this very moment to see if Canada banned seed oils.
If you've read this far, you may enjoy this anecdote about J.I. Rodale, founder of Rodale Press, and an early advocate of eating organic — and taking "natural" supplements — as panaceas for good fitness and preventing cancer.

At one point, he claimed, "I'm going to live to be 100, unless I'm run down by some sugar-crazed taxi driver."
 
Rodale taped an interview for the Dick Cavett show in 1971. His last interaction with Cavett was to offer him his special "asparagus boiled in urine."

The interview never aired, however, because Rodale had a heart attack onstage, right after the interview ended, and died.

You cannot make this stuff up.

Rodale Press continues to pump out books full of nutrition and health misinformation, just like their founder would have wanted!  

Lastly, for everyone saying "hey buddy what are your qualifications, RFK Jr. just wants to follow the science!"

Here's a very anti-establishment physician who was adamantly against lockdowns during the pandemic, discussing how RFK Jr. comes to his conclusions:"
 

Related: How 'Diet Gurus' Hook Us With Religion Veiled In Science

"As a scholar of religion, it's become increasingly clear to me that when it comes to fad diets, science is often just a veneer. Peel it away and you find timeless myths and superstitions, used to reinforce narratives of good and evil that give meaning to people's lives and the illusion of control over their well-being. 

Take the grain-free monks of ancient China. (My specialty is classical Chinese thought.) Like all diet gurus, these monks used a time-tested formula. They mocked the culinary culture around them, which depended on the so-called wugu, or "five grains."

According to the monks' radical teachings, conventional grain-laden Chinese diets "rotted and befouled" your organs, leading to early disease and death. By avoiding the five grains, you could achieve perfect health, immortality, clear skin, the ability to fly and teleport. Well, not quite. To fully realize the benefits of the monks' diet, you also had to take proprietary supplements, highly technical alchemical preparations that only a select few knew how to make. All of this may sound eerily familiar: Look no further than modern anti-grain polemics like Dr. David Perlmutter's Grain Brain — complete with its own recommended supplement regimen.

Despite basic logic and evidence to the contrary, the philosophy of the grain-free monks gained popularity. That's because then, as now, the appeal of dietary fads had much to do with myths, not facts. Chief among these is the myth of "paradise past," an appealing fiction about a time when everyone was happy and healthy, until they ate the wrong food and fell from grace.

The Chinese monks represented this "fall" as the discovery of agriculture. In Abrahamic religion, it was eating from the tree of knowledge. In either case, bad food is routinely scapegoated as the original cause of our damnation, and we've been trying to eat our way back to paradise ever since.

The mythic narrative of "unnatural" modernity and a "natural" paradise past is persuasive as ever. Religious figures like Adam and Eve have been replaced by Paleolithic man and our grandparents: "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food," is journalist Michael Pollan's oft-quoted line.

The story also has a powerful moral dimension. It's the Prince of Evil, after all, who tempted Eve. Once secularized, Satan reappears as corporations and scientists who feed us chemical additives, modern grains and GMOs, the "toxic" fruits of sin. (No matter if science doesn't agree that any of these things are very toxic.)

Paradise past. Good and evil. Benevolent Nature with a capital N. The promise of nutritional salvation. After you've constructed a compellingly simple narrative foundation, all you have to do is wrap your chosen diet in scientific rhetoric.

For Chinese monks, that rhetoric involved "five phases theory." For ancient Greeks and Romans it was "humors" — four fluids thought to be the basis of human health. Now it is peer-reviewed studies. Thankfully for diet gurus, the literature of nutrition science is vague, vast and highly contested — just like religious texts — making it easy to cherry-pick whatever data confirm your biases."

 

 

 

Links - 16th November 2024 (1)

Only in Brampton is it cool to drive in the construction lane : r/TorontoDriving - "One of the many reasons Brampton has the highest insurance rates in Ontario."
Only in Brampton is it cool to drive in the construction lane : r/TorontoDriving - "I just got banned from the r/Ontario sub for saying: “Let’s be real, Brampton drivers get their reputation for a reason” Apparently it’s trolling. I guess insurance companies are trolls too."

Janel Comeau on X - "Americans: I use miles and pounds
Europeans: I use kilometres and kilograms
Canadians: [snorting a line of assorted measuring systems] I'm 5'3, I weigh 150lbs, horses weigh 1000kgs, my house is an hour away and I drive 80 km/h to get there, I need a cup of flour and 1L of milk"

Meme - "I WAS DISQUALIFIED FROM THE PUMPKIN CONTEST AT WORK *pumpkin goatse with underwear*"

Meme - "I'm about to put some cucumber farmers out of business: *corn in the shape of a rabbit vibrator*"

Meme - "The first thing a man looks at in a woman is her heart. The fact that her tits are in front her heart is NOT OUR FAULT"

Meme - Car licence plate: "907 X 815"
*written in dust below* "= 731,205"

Meme - AskAubry 🦝 @ask_aubry: "Omg Pride and Prejudice."
Pratik @PatelESPN: "gotta say. that’s a new one for me."
*Confederate trans flag*

Jokes UK 🔞 on X - "When my wife left, I was sad, upset and lonely. Since then I've got a dog, I bought a new motorbike, shagged two women and blown a grand on drugs and drink... She'll go fucking mental when she gets home from work!"

The Tragic Tale of Hajime Fujii – A Kamikaze Fighter Who Crashed Into & Sunk The USS Drexler - "This is an odd story that involves a flight instructor, his family, and a single-minded request. The whole thing was so strange, in fact, that the Japanese government censored it at the time... The mortar shell didn’t take out his left hand, but it left him unable to grip a plane’s control stick. So the more he expressed his desire to die with his students (many of whom went on to do just that), the more the whole thing bothered him... Fujii’s favorite motto was: “words and deeds should be consistent.” So after months of telling his students to kill themselves by crashing into the enemy, he wanted to do the same by joining the kamikaze. Unfortunately for him, he was a victim of his own success. Popular with his students and staff, and having proven his worth in China, the Army refused his request. They also cited the fact that he was a family man, while most of those they sent on one-way missions were single. Fukuko also pleaded with him to stay out of the war. He had two young daughters, after all. If he died, what would happen to them? But as more and more of his students left on suicide missions never to return, Fujii couldn’t shake off the idea that he was betraying his wards. He felt like a hypocrite, which is why he again appealed to the Army to let him die. They refused his second request. So now Fukuko was trapped. If Fujii stayed in Japan, she’d have her husband, while her daughters would have a father. But he would forever be haunted by his self-perceived betrayal of his students and his country. He would become a ghost (“dim spirit” in Japanese), only half alive. At best, he’d just fade away. At worst, he’d eventually blame his wife and children for his dishonor. So on the morning of December 14, 1944, while her husband was away at Kumagaya, Fukuko dressed herself up in her finest kimono. She did the same with three-year-old Kazuko and one-year-old Chieko. Finally, she wrote her husband a letter, urging him to do his duty to the country and not to worry about his family. They’d wait for him. Then she wrapped Chieko up in a cloth backpack and strapped the baby to her back. Taking Kazuko by the hand, she walked toward the Arakawa River near the school where her husband taught. Taking a rope, she tied Kazuko’s wrist to her own and jumped into the freezing waters. The police found the bodies later that morning, and Fujii was brought to the spot as they were being laid out. The following evening, he painted a letter to his oldest daughter, begging her to take care of her mother and younger sister till he could join them. Then he performed yubitsume (cut off his pinky finger). With his own blood, he painted his third appeal to the Army. On February 8, 1945, Fujii became the commander of the 45th Shinbu Squadron – which he named Kaishin (cheerful spirit). Just before dawn on May 28, the nine planes headed to Okinawa, each carrying a pilot and gunner. To their delight, they came upon the USS Drexler and USS Lowry. Two slammed into the Drexler, sinking her within minutes and taking out 158 of its crew. Fuji was in one of them. He was reunited with his family."
Of course, you still have people who hate the US who claim that Japan would've surrendered, and it wasn't necessary to drop the atomic bombs

Damon Chen on X - "My friend told me he and his wife live paycheck to paycheck. I don't believe it because they both are high earners in tech, and he even works for Google. But after doing a little bit of math, I found out he didn't lie.
• Mortgage: $17,000/month for a $3M home
• Property Tax: $3,000/month
• Private School: $3,000/month for 1 kid
• Travel: $2,000/month (assuming $20k/year)
• Utilities: $1,000/month
• Groceries: $2,000/month
• Eating Out: $1,000/month
• 2 cars: $1,000/month
So in total $30k per month, not including other misc costs like house maintenance, paying for Netflix, etc. W-2 employees usually take home only 50% of their salary, so they have to make $60k per month pretax, which is $720k in annual TC. What's the point of living a life like this?"
Obviously the problem is that they don't earn enough, and capitalism has failed

Meme - "Tourist MAP OF AUSTRALIA
*Green (land)*: AREA WHERE THINGS ON LAND CAN KILL You.
*Blue (sea)*: AREA WHERE THINGS IN THE WATER CAN KILL YOU.
*BLack (shoreline)*: BOTH."

Ruby Franke’s daughter says her innocence was ‘ruined’ by vlogging in impassioned appeal to lawmakers - "Laws for the children of family vloggers have only recently begun to come to fruition. Legislation was passed last month in California requiring parents to set aside money earned by child social media influencers. The law required 15 percent of children and teens’ earnings to be placed in a trust left untouched until their 18th birthday. The law, called the Coogan Law, previously only applied to child actors. Illinois also amended its labor laws in July 2024 to require minors 16 or younger to be paid if they appear in 30 percent or more of their parent’s or caregiver’s social media content over 30 days and the number of views received per video met the online platform’s threshold for compensation. “It is more than just filming your family life and putting it online. It is a full-time job, with employees, business credit cards, managers, and marketing strategies,” Shari said. She emphasized that the business’s employees are children, listing specific moments from the deactivated YouTube channel that made a large profit. "Some of our most popular videos were when my eyebrow was accidentally waxed off, and the whole world saw a crying teenager who just wanted to mourn in private,” she said. “Or the time I was violently ill, and got the leading role in the video for that day. My friends became scarce because dates would be filmed and none of my friends wanted to be on camera.”... She explained that social media quickly became her family’s primary source of income. In terms of the compensation she received, she mentioned a “$100 shopping spree” for filming an embarrassing moment or going on a family vacation."
Ruby Franke’s family say she was ‘brainwashed’ as she’s sentenced over child abuse - "Ruby Franke’s family wrote letters to a Utah judge ahead of the former vlogger’s sentencing over child abuse, saying that she was “deeply brainwashed” after meeting her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt... The mother-of-six was once a YouTube sensation, drawing in millions of subscribers to her channel where she offered parenting advice. But her reputation unravelled when she and Hildebrandt were arrested in August 2023 after one of Franke’s sons escaped Hildebrandt’s home. In a harrowing 911 call, the neighbour said: “I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help. “And he’s said he had just come from a neighbor’s house and we know there’s been problems at this neighbor’s house.” The neighbour added: “He is emaciated. He’s got tape around his legs. He’s hungry and he’s thirsty.” The malnourished boy later said that Hildebrandt put cayenne pepper and honey on their wounds that were caused by being tied with the rope, according to arrest warrants."
If women are so easily brainwashed, which is why female criminals are all victims, don't they need more protection than men? So they shouldn't be allowed to sign binding contracts at the same age, for example

Historians say Inquisition wasn't that bad - "Estimates of the number killed by the Spanish Inquisition, which Sixtus IV authorised in a papal bull in 1478, have ranged from 30,000 to 300,000... But according to Professor Agostino Borromeo, a historian of Catholicism at the Sapienza University in Rome and curator of the 783-page volume released yesterday, only 1% of the 125,000 people tried by church tribunals as suspected heretics in Spain were executed. Other experts told journalists at the Vatican yesterday that many of the thousands of executions conventionally attributed to the church were in fact carried out by non-church tribunals."
It's more important to bash Christianity, though

Italian train conductor who issued 5,000 fines wrongfully dismissed, court rules - "Francesco Bonanno was accused of terrorising passengers by working with ‘uncommon zeal’"

Getting fit is great – but it could turn you into a rightwing jerk
Good luck punching "Nazis" with this attitude

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu brings loads of dirty laundry to be cleaned in Washington - The Washington Post - "Over the years, the Israeli leader has developed a reputation among the staff at the U.S. president’s guesthouse for bringing special cargo on his trips to Washington: bags and suitcases full of dirty laundry... The clothes are cleaned for the prime minister free of charge by the U.S. staff, a perk that is available to all foreign leaders but sparingly taken advantage of given the short stays of busy heads of state... “After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional.” Israeli officials denied that Netanyahu overuses his American hosts’ laundry services, calling the allegations “absurd,” but they acknowledged that he has been the target of laundry-related accusations in the past. In 2016, Netanyahu sued his own office and Israel’s attorney general in an effort to prevent the release of his laundry bills under the country’s freedom of information act. The judge sided with Netanyahu, and the details of his laundry bills remain secret pending an appeal in the Supreme Court. The relatively minor accusation joins a longer list of corruption allegations that have threatened the 70-year-old leader’s hold on power and triggered protests... Shraga said his organization took an interest in the laundry issue after reports that Netanyahu and his wife took 11 suitcases on a one-day trip to Portugal in December. Netanyahu’s office denied speculation that the suitcases were filled with dirty laundry, saying they included items he needed for his office work."

Scientists who object to animal testing claim they are frozen out by peers - "She said activist scientists received silencing treatments. “In other disciplines, we accept scientist activists. We accept climate scientists who are activists. We accept physicians who advocate for their patients, who are activists about maternal rights. But within the animal research community, that is somehow considered anathema,” she said."
Maybe other industries should be smart and reject activism, since it hurts scholarship

Is Western culture stopping people from growing up? - "An older boss was correcting a younger female employee. “There is no P in ‘hamster’,” said the boss. But “that’s how I spell it,” the 20-something objected. The boss suggested they consult a dictionary. The employee called her mother, put her on speakerphone and tearfully insisted that she tell her boss not to be so mean. It is an arresting vignette. The tearful employee appears to have imbibed the notion of “my truth”, a popular phrase intended to rationalise the speaker’s beliefs and shield them from criticism based on facts. You may say that 1+1=2, but “my truth” is that it makes three. Post-modernists deem this way of thinking sophisticated. Keith Hayward calls it childish. He is right. But Mr Hayward, a criminologist at the University of Copenhagen, goes much further. In “Infantilised”, he contends that young people today are less mature than previous generations, and that Western culture is to blame. He offers plenty of examples of “kidulting” to reinforce his case. Some people like to recreate their childhood pleasures by dressing up as “My Little Pony” and buying tickets to places where they can jump into ball pits and do pillow-fights. Some carry on pursuing teenage kicks in nightclubs well into early middle age. Over many years as a lecturer, Mr Hayward grew concerned that his 18-year-old students “resembled less mature teenagers on the cusp of adulthood and more fearful schoolchildren adrift in an alien world of adult autonomy”. One arrived in class dressed in a onesie, noting that it was cold and he liked to feel comfortable. Was he not “concerned about the infantilising overtones of such a garment?” asked Mr Hayward. “No, I want to be treated like a kid,” came the reply. “Adulting is hard.” Here the author produces his most solid evidence, though it will be familiar to many readers. In rich countries there has been a dramatic fall in the share of people who, by the age of 30, have attained the traditional markers of adulthood: leaving home, becoming financially independent, getting married, having a child. In Britain, the median age for a first (heterosexual) marriage, at 33 for men and 31 for women, is a decade higher than it was in the early 1960s. In 2016 a Pew study found that for the first time in 130 years, American 18-34-year-olds were more likely to be living with their parents than with a partner in a separate abode. Pop culture, Mr Hayward believes, is infantilising people. Modern cinema celebrates immaturity. From the unreconstructed man-children of “School of Rock” and “Ted” (which stars a beer-drinking teddy bear) to the endless “Batman” and “Spider-Man” remakes, “a visit to the movies these days feels more like a trip to a toy shop”. Reality TV shows “normalise infantilism” by making “40- and 50-year old celebrities dress up as toy cars, children’s bears and dinosaurs”. Many advertisements are an “assault on mature adulthood”. The Milky Bar Kid has been portrayed by actors of all ages. Evian water’s “live young” campaign featured adults in T-shirts that showed baby torsos beneath their necks. The education system deserves some blame, too. Students are shielded from potentially upsetting ideas. Students are shielded from potentially upsetting ideas: the University of Aberdeen in Scotland put a trigger warning on “Peter Pan”, saying that students might find the “odd perspectives on gender” in the book “emotionally challenging”. Schoolchildren are told things that are manifestly untrue, such as “You can be anything you want to be.” History, sociology and philosophy are compressed into a “childhood morality tale” of the “privileged” and the “oppressed”. Schools and universities used to teach “the uncontroversial idea that [students] will need to adjust their behaviour and adapt to the world if they are to function effectively within it”. No more. Finally, Mr Hayward chides the liberal commentariat. On the one hand, they celebrated Greta Thunberg, a former schoolgirl activist, as an “all-knowing sage”, despite her possessing “no scientific expertise” and saying “nothing original whatsoever about climate issues”. This, he claims, is evidence of “a role reversal in which young people are increasingly assigned the intellectual gravitas and cultural authority to educate adults”. On the other hand, when Shamima Begum, a British schoolgirl roughly the same age as Ms Thunberg, went off to join the mass-murdering, mass-raping Islamic State, the same liberal pundits decried the British government’s decision not to allow her back into Britain to face justice, presenting her “as a duped child…far too young and naive to know her own mind, and therefore not responsible for her subsequent actions”. “When society acts in such a hypocritical fashion, adultfiying on the one hand and infantilising on the other, it is playing a dangerous and duplicitous game,” thunders Mr Hayward... according to the “fabulously named” Immorality Lab at the University of British Columbia, those who regularly signal victimhood are more prone to lying and cheating for selfish ends, a habit people are supposed to grow out of... Perhaps there is more memorable evidence of adults behaving childishly these days because everyone has a camera and posts amusing clips to social media... perhaps the reason why young people are finding jobs and having children later in life than earlier generations is that they are remaining longer in education."

What’s the best age gap in a relationship? - "When a friend opts to date someone who is old enough to be their parent, a common response is to see if the decision passes the “half their age plus seven” test... While female users look for men roughly the same age as them (or perhaps a year or two older) men prefer women in their early twenties, regardless of their own age... Could a smaller age gap also make couples more likely to stay together? In 2014, the Atlantic claimed that “a five year age difference makes a couple 18 percent more likely to get divorced, compared to a couple born on or around the same year.” While the study cited – which polled American couples and ex-couples – did show an association between divorce rates and age gaps, it did not prove a causal link. Something about the kind of person who opts into a marriage with a large age gap could be driving the higher divorce rates, rather than the age gap itself. A bright young thing considering a silver fox should also take heart from a study by Britain’s Office of National Statistics. It did not find a strong link between age gaps and divorce rates in England and Wales, though there was some evidence that women marrying later than 30 who were more than ten years older than their spouse were more likely to divorce. Common sense does suggest that a large age gap would have implications for old age. Having someone to look after you in your dotage is wise, as is avoiding widowhood. A younger, healthier partner could make sense, at least from your side of the equation. Another study by Sven Drefahl of the University of Stockholm looked at people over the age of 50 in Denmark, and found that men with younger spouses survived for longer than those with ones of a similar age. The older their spouse, the worse their survival chances, even after controlling for things like education and wealth. Again, the link might not be causal: healthy men might be particularly able both to attract younger mates and live to a ripe old age. But mysteriously, this phenomenon does not appear to apply to women, where the bigger the age gap, the worse their survival chances, regardless of whether they were younger or older. In the case of women with younger husbands, Drefahl suggested, the gender difference could be due to women being less reliant on their partner for support, and so benefiting less from the energies of a younger spouse. What evidence there is, therefore, vindicates the choices of OKCupid’s users: women should pick men who are as close as possible in age to them, while men should look for younger women."

Scientists discover dogs are entering a new phase of evolution - "service dogs are 'uniquely well adapted to life in the 21st century,' they wrote in The Atlantic. These dogs are 'highly trained professionals' who can assist their owner with tasks, remain calm and quiet when not actively working, and have uniquely friendly dispositions. 'Unlike most pet dogs, service dogs are attracted to strangers, even as puppies,' Woods and Hare wrote. 'And increasing friendliness seems to have changed these dogs’ biology, just as it did thousands of years ago,' the researchers added... 'guarding against strange people and animals might make a dog more difficult to walk around the neighborhood.' 'Dogs that are more energetic, excitable, fearful, or anxious than average are more likely to be relinquished to shelters, where they may struggle to find a new home,' they added. Woods and Hare believe that these new societal pressures are driving a third wave of canine domestication, with service dogs representing the most highly evolved members of the pack. 'Service dogs may look like your average Labrador retriever, but compared with military working dogs or even the average family Lab, they are almost a different breed,' the researchers wrote. 'The differences between Canine Companion dogs and pet dogs also demonstrate how different a population of dogs can become in less than 50 years,' they added."

Labour’s promise to end cronyism has backfired spectacularly - "Given the pre-election rhetoric of Labour front benchers, we might have expected a genuine sea change in ministerial behaviour. The revelation that more than 200 “cronies” have been appointed to the Civil Service since the new government took office without having to go through all those inconvenient processes like open advertising and competition, sparked an interesting response from Labour. “There were 24,000 appointments without competition in just two years under the last Conservative government, which puts these figures into perspective,” said a Labour source. This smacks of Angela Rayner’s defence [sic] of her and her colleagues’ acceptance of generous donations of concert tickets, free accommodation in luxury flats and cash for spectacles in the last few weeks: MPs have always done it, so what’s the problem? The problem is that we were promised, not a smaller scale of what had gone before, not a scaled-down version of dubious practices, but a wholesale abandonment of them... In Scotland, the Civil Service supporting Scottish ministers at Holyrood is already held in relatively low regard because of its members’ willingness – some might say eagerness – to promote Scottish independence on behalf of their political masters, despite their being part of the UK organisation."

She thought her daughter’s sweet fragrance was a blessing; it turned out to be a deadly condition - "Sugar and spice, and all things nice – that was what Madam Felicia Tan thought little girls were made of when her daughter Elvia Lim was born in 2019. “My firstborn, a boy, cried throughout the night. Elvia was different. She smelled as sweet as maple syrup. She hardly cried and always slept,” the 36-year-old housewife said, telling The Straits Times that she was blessed to have a baby girl who was naturally this way... Elvia was taken to the intensive care unit after she was diagnosed with maple syrup urine disease (MSUD)... MSUD is treated with a strict, lifelong diet that restricts protein intake."

Meme - "Hindus 10000 Years Ago Discovering Internet, Time Machine And Intergalactic Travel"
"Modern Hindus Struggling To Build Toilets"

Meme - Simp Neelix @SimpNeelix: ">lesbian television icon *Xena Warrior Princess*
>has countless sexual and romantic relationships with men
>taking dick is core to her character's story and development"
Stonetoss Comics @stone_toss: "women be like "im lesbian" *sleeps with men*"

Meme - "Just saw on Facebook that a girl I went to high school with married some guy despite writing <3 U 4 eva in my yearbook and not talking to me for the last 15 years. Real nice, Brenda."

Bad toothbrushing habits tied to higher heart risk - "Dr. Shogo Matsui, the study's lead researcher, said the findings suggest "poor oral health, based on daily teethbrushing behavior, is associated with" poorer heart health. It's possible that longer toothbrushing might reduce this risk, but the new study was not designed to prove cause-and-effect, said Matsui, a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical and Health Sciences at Hiroshima University in Japan."

Outdoor time is good for your kids' eyesight. It protects against myopia - "Spending at least two hours outside each day is one of the most important things your kids can do to protect their eyesight. "We think that outdoor time is the best form of prevention for nearsightedness," says Dr. Noha Ekdawi, a pediatric ophthalmologist in Wheaton, Ill. And that's important, because the number of kids with nearsightedness – or myopia – has been growing rapidly in the U.S., and in many other parts of the world. In the U.S., 42% of people are now myopic – up from 25% back in the 1970s. In some East Asian countries, as many as 90% of people are myopic by the time they're young adults... Wu convinced his son's elementary school to increase outdoor time. He also recruited a control school. A year later, his son's school had half as many new myopia cases as the other school. "We saw the results – they were very successful," Wu says. He did more research, at more schools, and eventually convinced Taiwan's Ministry of Education to encourage all primary schools to send students out doors for at least 2 hours a day, every day. The program launched in September 2010. And after decades of trending upward, the rate of myopia among Taiwan's elementary school students began falling – from an all-time high of 50% in 2011 down to 45.1% by 2015. It's a major achievement, says Ian Morgan. "Certainly the people who have led the field are the people in Taiwan," Morgan says. Other studies have found that outdoor time can reduce the chances that kids will develop myopia even if they're doing lots of near work, such as reading or looking at screens – something that has also risen dramatically in recent years. Outdoor time also helps even if kids haveparents who have myopia... And if you are worried about leaving time for homework, Ekdawi suggests having kids do that outside, too. As long as they are outdoors, that's what matters."

Uttar Pradesh news: UP official drowns in Ganga as diver waited for online money transfer to complete - "According to the reports, Singh’s friends, who had accompanied him, requested a diver, who was present at the ghat, to rescue him but the diver demanded 10,000 rupees and said that he would jump into the river only after the money was paid... Adityavardhan Singh, a joint director in the UP health department, drowned in the Ganga river in Kanpur while taking bath"

Friday, November 15, 2024

Links - 15th November 2024 (2 - Trump)

With Trump win comes sign of rightward shift in Mass. - "In the last 40 years, just one Republican had flipped a state legislative state during a presidential cycle, according to Carnevale, the MassGOP chair. On Tuesday, they flipped three... Every Republican incumbent held on to their seat, too."
Even in the face of powerful psy ops, many people retain an independent streak

Erin Adair on X - "The GROWN ADULTS going into absolute hysterics, filming their deranged, paranoia fueled meltdowns, POSTING them, & calling off work today are the same people who think they’re more intelligent than you. In what world should adults who behave this way be calling the shots?"

University of Oregon employee says Trump voters should 'jump off of a f***ing bridge' - "A University of Oregon staff member expressed hope in a social media post that people who voted for President-elect Donald Trump will jump off a bridge, a recording of the video published Thursday by a media supplier shows. “Do something, because you are f***ing stupid,” Leonard Serrato, an assistant director for fraternity and sorority affairs at the school, said in an Instagram story shared by Grabien. “And I hope you go jump off of a f***ing bridge.” Earlier in the video, he said Trump’s voters can “go f***” themselves. “I say this in the most disrespectful way possible: I don’t care if you are my family. I don’t care if you are my friend. I don’t care if we’ve been friends our entire lives. You can literally go f*** yourself if you voted for Donald Trump," Serrato said. He continued, telling people who are sad about expensive grocery costs to “get a better f***ing paying job” or a “f***ing education.” Angela Seydel, a spokesperson for the University of Oregon, told The National News Desk (TNND) that Serrato was placed on administrative leave"
The party of joy, love and empathy cutting people off because they voted differently from them
Weird. Left wingers used to mock right wingers who tell people unhappy about low salaries to get a better job

Resist the Mainstream on X - "🔴 Liberal woman says she NEEDS MEDICATION to COPE with Trump's victory. How will these people survive?"
Left wingers like to mock white men for making videos in their trucks when the world is supposedly changing. Ironic

Tom Elliott on X - "Lincoln Project’s @TheRickWilson, Nov. 4, 2024: “Trump's going to lose. He's going to lose badly. He's going to be wrecked. I don't know what the Electoral College count's going to be at the end of this, but it's going to get loud and it's going to get hard for him.”"

EXCLUSIVE: FEMA Official Ordered Relief Workers To Skip Houses With Trump Signs - "A federal disaster relief official ordered workers to bypass the homes of Donald Trump’s supporters as they surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Daily Wire and confirmed by multiple federal employees. A FEMA supervisor told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal. The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, multiple government employees told The Daily Wire. The government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance. Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”... “If they had damage or lost power for over thirty-six hours, it was my duty to inform them of benefits to which they are entitled through FEMA,” one team member wrote in a complaint filed to DHS about the guidance... a FEMA spokesman clarified that Washington is not actively working for the agency, pending an investigation... The employees say that Washington has not been punished for the guidance, but has been shifted to another county in Florida."

Andy Ngo 🏳️‍🌈 on X - "New: The fired FEMA supervisor who told subordinates to skip hurricane-ravaged homes with Trump signs did a sit-down interview on Fox News and said that staff had the right to not go to homes with Trump signs if they were uncomfortable, similar to them avoiding homes with aggressive dogs on the property. Marn’i Washington says this was FEMA policy, and it applied in other states beyond Florida affected by the hurricanes. She says she's being made the scapegoat because she wrote the directive, which was later leaked to Daily Wire."

Meme - John McTernan @johnmcternan: "Turns out the world's richest man can buy an election. Who knew?"
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "The Democrat Campaign spent approx. double that of the Trump Campaign on political advertising over the summer. Since Oct. 17, the Harris Campaign has received approx. three times the amount of donations compared to The Trump Campaign."
Weird. Left wingers keep insisting that money needs to be kept out of politics, because the biggest spender always wins

Meme - Patrick Webb: "BREAKING: 2,038 suicides have been reported today following Donald Trump's election win."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "MISLEADING: The global average for daily suicides is 1,975 deaths per day. Today's statistic likely has nothing to do with the election and is roughly following the daily average."

Meme - "Why did so many men vote against a woman's right to choose?"
"A Few months earlier..."
"I choose the bear..."

Opinion | Where Does This Leave Democrats? - The New York Times - "I find myself thinking about the 2004 election. In my lifetime, until today, that was the most total rejection liberals experienced. In 2000, George W. Bush was this accidental president. He’d lost the popular vote. He’d won the Electoral College after winning Florida by a few hundred votes. But by 2004, the lies and the failures and travesties of his administration were clear. The disaster of the Iraq war was clear. And the result was that Bush went from accidental president to unquestioned victor. He won the popular vote cleanly. On the electoral maps, the center of the country was a sea of red. What made that loss hurt so much for liberals was that by 2004, Americans knew who Bush was and what he had done. They chose him anyway. That is roughly what happened Tuesday night... Trump didn’t just win this election. Democrats lost it. President Biden, at 81 years old and hovering beneath 40 percent favorability in most polls, should never have run for re-election. And for months and months and months, the leaders of the Democratic Party, with very few exceptions — shout-out to Dean Phillips — refused to say that. As poll after poll showed supermajorities of voters thought Biden was too old for this job, the party continued to suppress any serious challenge to him. It suppressed its own doubts. It ignored its own voters, to say nothing of the voters it was going to need to win in 2024. I was one of the people arguing, beginning back in February, for some kind of competitive process: a mini-primary leading to an open convention. Those processes create information. Yes, they mean argument and dissension and fracture. But it is through argument and dissension and fracture that you discover what you do not yet know. It is through the bruising process of primaries and debates and speeches and interviews that you learn which candidates are able to connect to the mood and moment of the country. But Biden stepped aside mere weeks before the Democratic convention, after an extraordinary mobilization by members of Congress and Democratic donors. The hour was late. The party was scared. It had wasted so much time. And in wasting that time, it had refused to face up to a core problem: Biden wasn’t just too old. Voters were unhappy with his administration, with the wars abroad and the prices at home and the absence of leadership that made them confident that the people in charge knew what they were doing. The line in the Democratic Party was and is that Biden’s record ranks him as perhaps the greatest president since Franklin D. Roosevelt; the tragedy is that he is not 15 years younger. But Americans did not and do not believe that — and Democrats never reckoned with that fact or came up with an answer to it. That, more than any other reason, is why Kamala Harris lost... Was the endorsement of the Cheneys — and the enthusiasm with which it was embraced — a sign of the Democrats’ big tent or a sign of its internal confusion?... The Democratic Party had spent years kicking people out of its tent... It wasn’t that many years ago that Rogan had Bernie Sanders on for a friendly interview. And then Rogan kinda sorta endorsed him. Rather than celebrate, online liberals were furious at Sanders for going on “Rogan” in the first place. I was still on Twitter then, and I wrote about how of course Sanders was right to be there and this was one of the best arguments for Sanders’s campaign. If you wanted to beat Trump, you wanted to win over people like Rogan. Liberals got so angry at me for that, I was briefly a trending topic. Rogan was a transphobe, an Islamophobe, a sexist, a racist, the kind of person you wanted to marginalize, not chat with. But if these last years have proved anything, it’s that liberals don’t get to choose who is marginalized. Democrats should have been going on “Rogan” regularly. They should have been prioritizing it — and other podcasts like it — this year. Yes, Harris should have been there. Same for Tim Walz. On YouTube alone, Rogan’s interview with Trump was viewed some 46 million times. Democrats are just going to abandon that? In an election where they think that if the other side wins, it means fascism?... Democrats did everything they could to convince voters Trump was unfit for office, and voters gave Trump his first-ever popular vote victory. Emotionally, there are two ways Democrats can respond: contempt or curiosity. I’ve seen plenty of contempt already. If Americans are still willing to vote for Trump, given all he’s said and done, then there’s nothing Democrats or Harris could have done to dissuade them. There’ll be a desire to retreat, to hunker down, to draw the boundaries of who is decent and who is deplorable ever more clearly. But Trump sharply improved his margin in New York City... Trump seems to have made huge gains among voters making less than $50,000 a year. The Democratic Party is losing voters who lie at the core of its conception of itself."
He is deluded about Kamala being good, though
Left wingers have contempt for ordinary people while pretending to represent them

ZNO 🇺🇸 on X - "The same women who feared that Trump would impose a dystopian ‘Handmaid’s Tale’-like system, where women were forced to wear colored attire to identify them, are the same women now voluntarily donning blue bracelets as a form of self-identification. Amazing."

John Pavlovitz on X - "I knew a lot of men hated women, but I didn't realize how many women hated women."
Melissa Chen on X - "Suddenly we are women again, not just vagina-havers. This male feminist reveals the contempt he has for our agency and capacity to think for ourselves. Apparently ladies, we owed our support for Kamala because we share the same genitals."

Elon Musk on X - "Arizona just declared for @realDonaldTrump, making it a clean sweep of all swing states! Massive red wave success! It is beyond a landslide, as Republicans won:
– Presidency
– Popular vote
– Senate majority
– House majority
– State governor majority
– State legislature majority
The few states that didn’t go red are mostly ones without voter ID requirements. Must be a coincidence 🙄 This is an extremely clear mandate from the people for significant change!"

Meme - Gad Saad @GadSaad: "All of my academic colleagues think that the totality of red shown in the map below is a reflection of the number of uneducated, low-information, deplorable, degenerate garbage people that apparently make up the United States. Imagine that the people who are entrusted with education your children think this of you."
TaraBull @TaraBull808: "The Red Wave for Trump 2024"

Meme - wanye @wanyeburkett: "“The American people are fundamentally stupid and bad” is a sinister position that’s held by quite a large share of the left. And it’s not just the view of coastal elitists with impressive resumes. It’s probably the most common sentiment in my Facebook feed today, expressed by some of the most mediocre and uninteresting people I know. It’s something I thought when I was much more progressive and was a frequent topic of conversation amongst my liberal friends. The feeling that you’re smarter and more moral than conservatives is fundamental to the project."
Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling: "Kamala Harris’s campaign didn’t fail the American people. The American people failed the Kamala Harris campaign."
Michael J. Stern @MichaelJStern1: "CNN has a story titled “where the Harris campaign went wrong.” Nope, I won’t read it. Harris ran a great campaign. The story should be titled “where the American people went wrong.”"
Shannon Watts: "Kamala Harris was not a flawed candidate. America is a flawed country."
Ally Sammarco: "I genuinely am so proud of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. They took a less than ideal situation and worked non-stop to make it happen for us. Their campaign team was absolutely incredible. It's unfortunate that our country failed them."
To protect democracy, left wing elites need to prescreen candidates to ensure that only approved choices can run for election

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Kendi: "Men know a scared man when they see one." In his entire career as a "public intellectual," Kendi has never agreed to debate anyone who disagrees with his views. He has been offered huge sums of money. He has been challenged to debate numerous times. He never responds."
Ibram X. Kendi @ibramxk: "As a man, I’m just not scared like Trump. I’m not scared of telling the truth. I’m not scared of humility. I’m not scared of people who don’t look like me. I’m not scared of immigrants, of powerful women, of working people, of trans people, of Muslims. I’m not scared of love. I’m not scared of radical change. I’m not scared of Putin. I’m not scared of fair fights. I’m not scared of admitting when I lose. Trump is trying to get men of all races to be scared like him. Once we are scared like him, he can arrest us with our fears. Once he can arrest us with our fears, he can control us through our fears while telling us he is freeing us. Let’s not fall for it. Let’s not fall for Trump’s fears. Men know a scared man when we see one."

Chris Rose on X - "I haven’t seen the BBC this depressed since the former Hamas leader was killed."

Meme - samantha.tara: "So far, I haven't talked to a single woman or LGTBQIA+ person, who didn't start their day on Wednesday by crying"
casi_magz: "I actually had to pull off on the side of a highway because I was having the worst panic attack of my life. The cops and an ambulance showed up because someone called, saying I looked like I was in distress. Upon seeing the white male cop, the panic attack ONLY got worse"
These are the people who go on about "white fragility"
These people will never reflect a bit and realise that they're living in a bubble. Far easier to blame fraud
Good luck if you have a panic attack when meeting a "minority"

Shannon on X - "So I'm supposed to go to work and do my job tomorrow as if half the country didn't just vote to give me less rights than men?????"
Gad Saad on X - "I have spent more than three decades studying human behavior. The capacity for human minds to violate axioms of rationality is limitless. No self-reflection. No intellectual humility."

Meme - Carole Cadwalladr: "Democracy died in darkness."
Chris Rose @ArchRose90: "Almost 200 million Americans voted, that’s democracy in action you mad woman."
Daniel ShenSmith (BlackBeltBarrister) @dshensmith: "Clearly meant “democracy that gives the result I want”!"

Kathleen Stock on X - "Progressive talking heads really have to get their theory of human nature straight. It's not credible that your big flaw all along was optimism/ believing in inherent human goodness, when you've spent years insinuating half the electorate skew fascist at the drop of a hat."

KanekoaTheGreat on X - "In 2016, there was no peaceful transition of power. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party weaponized the FBI, DOJ, and the legacy media to frame Donald Trump as a Russian agent. They lied to a FISA court multiple times to secure wiretaps and surveillance on Trump and his team. For years, federal agency heads fed disinformation to the media to undermine the duly elected president—the first populist outsider in recent history. The same media that dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation, perpetuated the “very fine people” hoax, and portrayed Joe Biden as “sharp as a tack” also lied to the public about the integrity of the 2020 election. Russiagate, along with disinformation campaigns and social media censorship from the left, fueled widespread distrust and deep frustration with our institutions, ultimately leading to the events of January 6th. Meanwhile, the left supported BLM protests that caused billions in damages across American cities, yet continues to focus on January 6th because they are obsessed with smearing President Trump and his supporters while projecting moral superiority. For Trump supporters, who now represent the majority of the country, there was no peaceful transfer of power in 2016. Russiagate was always seen as the real insurrection—a coordinated attempt by the Washington establishment, unelected bureaucrats, and national institutions to overthrow the American people's choice for president."

Meme - Matt Bruenig @MattBruenig: "The majority of trump support came from women and people of color"
"Percent of Trump Votes that Come from Each Demographic Group (2024 Edison Exit Poll). 59% - Women & POC. 41% - White Men"

Meme - Chris Rose @ArchRose90: "“Dear brown servant, why aren’t you as hysterical as I want you to be?”"
Owen Jones: "I'm going back to my hotel in New York. With a Muslim Pakistani American cab driver... who voted for Donald Trump because "the prices were too high" under Biden"

Meme - 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐠 @HarmfulOpinion: "All it takes is one little upset and their racism comes right out."
Greg Hatfield: "Fuck Latinos and Arabs. There. I said it. Hope you all get deported and banned."

Matt Blackwell on X - "The “Latinos are voting for their own deportation” takes are maybe a good indicator of why the left isn’t doing well with Latinos"

Meme - Aes @AesPolitics1: "Anyone else find it odd that billionaires chose the president?"
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "Harris had 83 billionaires backing her, vs 52 billionaires supporting Trump."

Meme - Elon Musk @elonmusk: "Worth noting that far more “billionaires” backed Harris than Trump and she raised almost 50% more money. Nonetheless, America showed that elections aren’t just a function of money and gave Trump a resounding victory!"
Seth Dillon @SethDillon: "Harris had 83 billionaires backing her."
"This year, high-earners swayed both ways, but more veered left: Forbes counted 83 billionaires backing Vice President Kamala Harris and 52 in former President Donald Trump's corner. Between their campaign committees and the PACs that supported their election efforts:
Harris raised $1.6 billion with help from deep-pocketed donors like Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs, Reed Hastings, and Dustin Moskovitz (a Facebook co-founder).
Trump raised $1.1 billion, with one-fifth of the pile coming from Elon Musk and Timothy Mellon-a banking heir who was this election's largest individual donor. The former president also got $100+ million from Miriam Adelson, the majority owner of Las Vegas Sands Corp."
Why are left wingers on the billionaires' side?

Meme - The MAGA Slayer @LePapillonBlu2: "Trump said, “We don’t need [the] votes,” and “We got more votes than anybody’s ever had.” He knew the election was rigged in his favor all along."
Elinor @elsurf1: "I am wondering if people were secretly paid to vote for Trump."
Pensandpages @Pensandpages: "Yup. Wondered that, too. Musk has the money to buy votes."
🌊🌊🌊Ronda🌊🌊🌊😘😚💖❤💪 @Rparton196310: "He has more than the money he has that satellite bullshit, in comes Elon changing the votes"
Weird. I thought election denial and unsubstantiated fraud charges were disgusting and fascist. Turns out...

Meme - Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald: "Oh, damn: liberals are about to unleash a level of vitriol and scorn for America's Latino voters unlike anything we've seen in awhile. Literally nothing enrages Democrats more than when the "marginalized groups" they believe they own don't do what they're told:"
kimberly @problemsthots: "we have to have a very very uncomfortable conversation about latino voters in this country."

Meme - Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald: "The Nation's Justice Correspondent and all-around hate-driven maniac @ElieNYC basically threatens some sort of civil war between Latino voters and Black voters (even though polls show 20% of Black men also voted for Trump):"
Elie Mystal @ElieNYC: "One thing I do worry about, is that the "solidarity" between "people of color" has been significantly damaged. Watching Latinos chase model minority status has never sat *well* with black people, but this is a wound the Black community won't soon forget"
DB @Hi_ImBria: "Please, I beg, don't EVER group us together as "POC" anymore."

Thread by @DeAngelisCorey on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "BREAKING: A California public school teacher had a total meltdown in class because Trump won. He compared Trump to Hitler, told kids they could end up in concentration camps, called them privileged, said Kamala lost because of racism/sexism & MORE I have the audio Buckle up👇🧵
WARNING: This guy is verbally abusing these children 🚨
"This sh*t is not a f*cking game.. Can you end up in a concentration camp in your lifetime? YES! Can you end up with no human rights? YES! .. has Donald Trump quoted Hitler? YES! Does he embody some of Hitler's ideas? YES!"
"Donald Trump won.. because Black men and Brown men didn't show up to vote for Kamala Harris. I know a lot of Latino men on this campus that love Donald Trump and he has called their mothers rapists. He has called their fathers rapists.. and they did vote for him."
"I know a lot of Latino men that wish they were White.. A lot of your fathers. A lot of your uncles. A lot of your grandfathers. God they wanna be White so bad but they never will be. I hate that sh*t. I hate Latino men that oppress the women in their family, their own daughters"
"God I f*cking hate the patriarchy. If you're a young man right now in front of me, I hope you hate it too.. you get the privilege of not being born with a uterus.."
"Do you have privilege because you live here? YES! .. You got a f*ck ton of privilege living in this great state."
"Trump said people who fight for the military are stupid cowards. He got drafted into Vietnam and faked medical paperwork to get out of it. Is that someone you idolize? Why did he win the election? A rapist draft dodging coward. Treasonous scum. Why would he win?"
"Why would he win? Why did he win them? WHY DID HE WIN THEM? She [Kamala] has a vagina and uterus.. she has melanin."
"When Joe Biden dropped out and Kamala took over, I cried for a week nonstop. I knew that there were White people and non-White people that were men that would show up and would rather vote for literally anybody except someone with a uterus who has melanin."
"We all deserve better. You know know what this country is. Is our country racist? Is our country patriarchal? Can we change it? Maybe."
I've obtained an email from the principal to a parent indicating that the incident involved "Mr. Perez's AP World History Class" at Valley View High School in Moreno Valley Unified School District. "We do not condone the behavior that was exhibited in class [Wednesday]"
UNBELIEVABLE: A "Mr. M. Perez" is listed as the school's advisor for the "AP Mental Club." Purpose: "To focus on mental health and social resources for those students in an advanced placement course.. To experience social emotional wellness firsthand."
Total Pay & Benefits: $106,442
2020 Medium article on lesson plans: "I was able to talk about cultural erasure, colonialism, systemic racism, the fight.. against white and capitalistic American forces." "The evidence and activities are centered around the understanding of inherit racism and white supremacy"
I just obtained an email from the @MorenoValleyUSD Superintendent Alejandro Ruvalcaba to a parent. "Personnel matters are highly confidential. Please trust that the matter will be addressed and appropriate action taken as deemed necessary." Just trust they'll do the right thing?
Superintendent Alejandro Ruvalcaba's base salary is $356,000.
BREAKING: "We do not condone the behavior that occurred, and an immediate investigation has been launched. The staff member involved has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of this review." The school district just sent this message to parents."

Former ICJ President on whether Israel and accusations of Genocide in Gaza

Terrorism supporters have very poor comprehension skills, so they keep claiming that the International Court of Justice has found that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

In reality, the ICJ found something quite different.

Joan Donoghue, former ICJ President (who was President when they issued the ruling) explains:

Stephen Sackur (BBC HARDtalk): Would it be fair to say, and I'm no lawyer, and many people watching and listening will not be lawyers, but would it be fair to say that the key point that you made your initial order and ruling upon, was whether or not there was a plausible case that should be taken on by the court, of genocide in the case of Israel's actions, in Gaza after October 7. And you quite clearly decided that there was a plausible case. Is it right to say that's at the heart of what you decided?

Joan Donoghue: You know, I'm glad I have a chance to address that, because the Court's, um, test for deciding whether, uh to impose measures, uses the idea of plausibility. But the test is the plausibility of the rights that are asserted by the applicant, in this case South Africa. So the court decided that, the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide, and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court. Um, it then looked at at the facts as well but it did not decide, and this is uh uh something where I'm correcting what's often said, uh in the media. It didn't decide that the claim of genocide was plausible. Um, it did, it did emphasize in, in the order um that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide, but it, the shorthand that often appears, which is that there's a plausible case of genocide isn't what the court, uh decided.

Links - 15th November 2024 (1)

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*

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