Meme - Damon Linker @DamonLinker: "I wish there were more liberals left on here to read what I have to say: This below, from a world-renowned historian at Yale, is completely unhinged. There are so many reasons to oppose Hegseth's nomination, but this paranoid outburst isn't one of them. People are going insane."
Timothy Snyder: "13. Hegseth thus represents a policy of regime change. Trump's nomination of Hegseth is best understood as part of a decapitation strike against the republic. A Christian Reconstructionist war on Americans led from the Department of Defense is likely to break the United States."
How much more batshit insane can left wingers get?
Charlie Kirk on X - "Pete Hegseth describes how he was banned from serving with his National Guard unit for a tattoo of the Jerusalem Cross, the same Christian symbol that was on the floor of the National Cathedral during Jimmy Carter's funeral."
Meme - Arthur Schwartz @ArthurSchwartz: "Who put Pete Hegseth’s Nazi tattoo on the cover of Jimmy Carter’s funeral program?"
Matt Oroak @MattOroak: "For those that don't understand the satire... Senator @SenWarren wrote a 33 page letter to @PeteHegseth regarding his nomination to be the Secretary of Defense. In that letter the following is on page 24: "You were also removed from President Biden’s inauguration because of concerns that you were an insider threat after reports that your “Deus Vult” tattoo “was a Christian expression associated with right-wing extremism.” We cannot have a Defense Secretary whose fellow servicemembers feel concerned enough about to report as a potential insider threat." Complete Letter is here: https://warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/"
Cynical Publius on X - "Understand what happened with Pete Hegseth's nomination and confirmation. Pete was overwhelmingly supported by the veterans' community. We know he is a dirty boots warrior who has the gumption to straighten out the mess that is the DoD, and collectively we have been his greatest voice of support. Who vehemently opposed his nomination?
-The senior generals, the senior admirals and the SESers in the Pentagon.
-The entire defense lobbyist community.
-The entire defense industry.
-The entire Democrat Party.
-Three "Republican" senators who receive massive campaign contributions from the defense industry.
And in a fitting end to this saga of veteran warriors vs. the Military/Industrial Complex, it finally took a USMC Lance Corporal to vote him into office."
M'sian Gets Her Money Back After Spamming Scammer's Bank Account With 1 Sen Transactions - "@amuse_gueule shared that she was scammed after not receiving a RM53 product she ordered on Instagram. The woman, nicknamed Mom of KL, realised she was not the only victim after reading Facebook reviews recounting similar situations. "So, I did 20 transactions of 1 sen to the scammer's account late last night. They texted me and promised a refund. "I got my money back this morning!" she wrote."
Parents Are Paying Food Delivery Riders to Send Their Kids to School So They Can Sleep In - "To those who dread waking up early and wish someone would help send your kids to school, this is possible… in China"
M'sian E-Hailing Driver Charges Extra RM20 for Air Con in the Backseat, Price Increases With Fan Speed - "A Nasi Lemak restaurant recently went viral after charging its customers RM1 per head for air con usage. This time, an e-hailing driver is being criticised for charging customers a ridiculous amount for air con usage in his backseat. In a viral post circulating on X(formerly Twitter) shared by MALAYSIAVIRALLL, the passenger of an e-hailing ride shared a photo from the backseat, revealing the additional charges that passengers are expected to pay if they need to use the air con. Passengers need to pay AT LEAST RM20 if they want air con in the backseat"
Consumers' Assoc Penang Says F&B Operators Should Not Impose Extra Fee for Not Ordering Drinks - "A coffee shop in Penang recently made headlines for the wrong reasons after they publicly shamed a customer for not ordering drinks. The owner of the coffee house, Lim clarified that he has since apologised to the old man before deactivating the shop’s official Facebook account following the massive criticisms online."
'Mountain Lion' That Made School Go Into Lockdown Turned Out to Be a Fat Cat Eating a Rat - "Goff Elementary School in Moses Lake, Washington, went viral when, one random Tuesday morning, the school received reports of a mountain lion in the area."
LignoSat: First wood-panelled satellite launched into space - "Named LignoSat, after the Latin word for wood, its panels have been built from a type of magnolia tree, using a traditional technique without screws or glue. Researchers at Kyoto University who developed it hope it may be possible in the future to replace some metals used in space exploration with wood. "Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there's no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it," Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata told Reuters news agency. "Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood," Prof Murata said. "A wooden satellite should be feasible, too." If trees could one day be planted on the Moon or Mars, wood might also provide material for colonies in space in the future, the researchers hope."
Thread by @itsolelehmann on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "2 years ago, I moved my entire life to Cyprus to escape Germany's 50% tax rate. It was the most expensive "money-saving" decision I've ever made. Here's 21 brutal realities of tax haven living (that nobody warns you about):
1. i was the spreadsheet guy in berlin obsessing over cyprus's 12.5% vs germany's 50% tax rate. it felt like i'd cracked some secret code. plot twist: i was solving the wrong equation entirely...
2. when you organize your entire life around tax optimization, you end up dividing yourself as a person. moving to cyprus for tax benefits taught me that you can't spreadsheet your way to a fulfilling life. the numbers looked perfect, but reality hit different...
3. i built a technically perfect life that was practically impossible to live in. perfect example: a simple squat rack took 3 weeks to arrive because of EU + island logistics. that's when it hit me - i'd optimized for numbers, not actual livability.
4. cyprus's 60-day residency requirement sounds simple until it starts controlling your entire life. every family visit, business trip, or spontaneous opportunity becomes a complex calculation of residency risk. i traded one "prison" (high taxes) for another (day counting).
5. being far from real innovation hubs costs more than any tax break saves you. the energy and opportunities flowing through places like SF, NYC, and Singapore can't be replicated in a tax haven. you save money but lose access to the growth engines of business.
6. your identity crisis sneaks up on you slowly, then hits all at once. in berlin, i was a proud local entrepreneur building something meaningful. in cyprus? just another expat chasing tax benefits. that psychological shift impacts you more than you think
7. living in a tax haven infects everything with a temporary mindset. i never bought my dream desk setup or invested in proper home furnishings. why? because when you choose a place purely for tax reasons, your subconscious knows it's not really home.
8. you end up living perpetually at 70% commitment. not fully moved in, not fully invested in the community, not fully building a life. everything stays in this strange limbo state because deep down, you know this is just a tax strategy masquerading as a life decision.
9. tax havens attract people focused on wealth protection, not wealth creation. the conversations here never revolve around building or growing something meaningful. instead, it's all about tax schemes and protection strategies. that scarcity mindset becomes contagious faster than you'd expect.
10. maintaining basic life connections becomes a 2nd full-time job. between quarterly family visits, monthly business trips, and regular escapes to places with actual energy, your life transforms into a complex travel schedule just to feel somewhat normal.
11. living in a tax haven creates a sense of rootlessness that nobody warns you about. you can't truly identify with your new home because you chose it for its tax code, not its culture. meanwhile your connection to your old home slowly fades, leaving you in a strange limbo.
12. building real, lasting in-person relationships becomes nearly impossible i've watched friends disappear for months at a time, returning briefly to maintain residency status before vanishing again. the community never solidifies because it's in constant flux.
13. my real problem with germany wasn't just the 50% tax rate - i realize now it was the fundamental anti-entrepreneurship sentiment that pervades society. but trading that for a place that values nothing except low taxes? it really wasn't an improvement
14. those impressive tax savings vanish faster than you'd expect. between emergency flights home, higher shipping costs for basic business needs, maintaining multiple living spaces, and the constant travel required to feel connected - the financial benefits thin.
15. your professional network slowly evaporates when you're far from actual innovation hubs. no amount of zoom calls can replace the serendipity of being where things actually happen.
16. the infrastructure challenges wear you down over time. simple tasks become multi-step challenges, and your home office setup remains perpetually "almost there" because the effort required to make it perfect feels pointless when you're mentally ready to leave.
17. this place doesn't encourage building anything meaningful - because everyone's just passing through. when was the last time you heard of someone opening a community space or starting a local business initiative in a tax haven? exactly.
18. your business grows slower in tax-efficient zones, no matter how much you save on paper. being near actual markets, customers, and innovation hubs matters more than your tax rate. i learned this lesson the expensive way.
19. the psychological weight of being a tax optimizer compounds over time. missing family events, watching your home network fade, living in permanent transit mode - no spreadsheet can calculate these costs to your wellbeing.
20. that perfect tax setup comes at the cost of an imperfect life setup. i traded one form of constraint for another and somehow convinced myself this was optimization. turns out, life optimization and tax optimization are usually opposing goals.
21. here's the hardest truth that took me 2 years to learn: if you wouldn't live there without the tax advantage, don't live there for the tax advantage. life's too short to treat it like an accounting exercise.
note to future tax optimizers: i'm leaving Cyprus next year. not because it's a bad place – its really beautiful tbh. but i've learned that the true cost of tax optimization is paid in much more valuable currencies:"
FischerKing on X - "The most disturbing aspect of Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ is the revelation that so many restaurants (even ‘good’ ones) are just microwaving your meal. I had no idea. And I’ve been a lot more reticent about going to restaurants since, cooking at home much more."
John Kennedy on X - "This week, left wingers in Britain are rushing to give away a strategic U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean before Pres. Trump takes office and could stop the deal. Pres. Biden is going along. Ignoring the potential of war increases its likelihood."
Thread by @BrandonWarmke on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "One symptom of what’s wrong with American higher education is how bad *people with PhDs* are at thinking and talking about the political Right. They might have a PhD, but they haven’t learned much about the political ideas they don’t like. Three thoughts:
1. Many academics will simply admit they have no idea what conservatism is. “What even is conservatism? You mean Rush Limbaugh/Donald Trump? Why would students need to learn that?” Imagine a crowd of PhDs asking “What even is liberalism, you mean like Rachel Maddow? Who needs to learn that?”
2. Many just think of everyone on the “right” as just one big undifferentiated blob: Burke, Oakeshott, Maistre, and Scruton (if these names are known at all) are all of a piece with Ayn Rand, Nozick, Hayek, Margaret Thatcher, Donald Trump, Joseph McCarthy, Franco, and Fox News. It’s one bad team, connected via one shadowy network. Understanding politics on Left requires careful distinctions and nuance: it’s important to distinguish the 8 varieties of Marxism and 13 shades of democratic socialism. The Right? Just a blob.
3. Many have just two categories to associate with conservatives: reactionary and fascist. “Reactionary” is typically just used to refer to people who don’t like whatever the Left happens to be on about at the moment. “Fascist” is typically just used to refer to anyone who values patriotism and feels attached to a place and way of life.
I don’t know how to fix this. I’ve seen lots of syllabi from faculty and grad students over the years, from all kinds of institutions. There’s little interest in exposing students to “bad ideas,” at least with much charity. Instructors don’t want to “platform” these ideas. And they certainly don’t want to risk students coming to believe them. One final point: “Democrats’ understanding of Republicans actually gets worse with every additional degree they earn.” Democrats *without* high school diplomas do much better than PhDs. The current education system simply isn’t helping."
Whatever the more educated believe in automatically correct!
Meme - "AITAH for telling my girlfriend she was the perpetrator, not the victim, in her "trauma"?
My [25m] girlfriend [24f] and I have been dating for about a year. I'll call her Casey here. We have lived together for two months. A few hours ago, Casey approached me saying that she wanted to talk about something "serious." At first, I didn’t know what to expect, but she wanted to share something traumatic that had happened to her before we met, and she asked if I would be willing to listen. I of course said yes, I would, if she’d be willing to share. Casey hesitated for a second, like she wasn’t sure about telling me, but then gave me the full story. What happened was when she was a university student, she had a crush on a pizza guy. He worked at a small shop near her apartment, and he would often deliver to her. She wanted to ask him out, but she wasn’t sure how, so she consulted her friends. Her friend group talked over it, and then one brought up the suggestion of answering the door in lingerie. The others jumped onto the idea quickly, and while Casey had doubts, they quickly convinced her to try it. They apparently even went shopping for the lingerie together. Casey put on makeup, did her hair, and ordered a pizza. When the guy came, she did exactly as her friends suggested: she opened the door in skimpy lingerie. The pizza guy initially didn't address it, but Casey, "desperate," pushed the topic. She asked him, "What do you think about my outfit?" He responded, "Dude, please don’t do that," and then left. At this point in the story, Casey was near tears, and she told me how embarrassed and sick she felt. I almost expected more from the story, but she was finished. I then said, "Uh … you do realize that you weren’t the victim, but the perpetrator, right?" She literally recoiled at this comment. She elaborated by blaming everybody else: her friends for "tricking" her, society in general, and even the pizza guy that she sexually harassed. To this I responded that she’s like those guys who touch themselves in hotels, intentionally getting the maids to walk in on them. She insisted it was completely different, and a full-blown argument ensued. She finished the argument with "I came to you to feel better and now I feel WORSE!" and stormed away. I don’t even know. I feel so disgusted with her right now. Was I the asshole for my comments when she felt vulnerable?"
Nowadays "trauma" is anything someone doesn't like, and perpetrators are victims, because victimhood is power. If you think a woman can be guilty of sexual harassment, that is literally misogyny and structural sexism
Meme - Colin Wright @SwipeWright: ""Consilience" is the idea that all knowledge should eventually interlock, producing a unified understanding of reality. Below is a network showing this unity, as measured by co-citations. It appears the humanities never received this memo, and have now reached escape velocity! *Disciplines citing each other, except the Humanities which are in their own world*"
Meme - "c'est quand la dernière fois
que tu as pleuré ?"
"hier"
"les gens pleurent
pas parce qu'ils sont faibles, mais parce qu'ils ont été forts trop longtemps
ils sont de quelle couleur tes tétons ?"
Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Step 1: Post a lie.
Step 2: Immediately turn off your replies so people won't call you out on your lie.
Step 3: Forget that Community Notes exists and get embarrassed."
"Bank of America serves more than 70 million clients and we welcome conservatives. We would never close accounts for political reasons and don't have a political litmus test."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "BoA has been placed on notice by 15 state AGs for debanking Conservatives "Your discriminatory behavior is a serious threat to free speech and religious freedom, is potentially illegal, and is causing political and regulatory backlash," Kansas AG Kris Kobach wrote."
The Brazen Head of Everso II on X - "One of my favorite bits of lore is that Justice Thomas was originally a staunch black nationalist and devotee of Malcom X. His shift to the right began when at Yale he lost his wallet and too his surprise, a white student found it and actually brought it back to him. He couldn’t believe a white person would show him that kindness. That white student was John Bolton"
Sulla on X - "You know something weird ? The number of people reporting going to dinner parties at least once per week has fallen 90% since 1950. Actually it fell 90% by the 1990s. Just weird, since there’s no law against dinner parties. You can just ask your friends to come over for dinner... I got my facts wrong. It wasn’t 90% by 1990. And it was once a month or more and it wasn’t just dinner parties"
Larissa Phillips on X - "Years ago I read a cute memoir by an Aussie who married a Frenchman and moved to Paris. It was like a survival guide. There was a chapter on dinner parties. She said that in Paris, at a dinner party, you must have an opinion. It didn't matter what your opinion on a topic was; you must have one and you must be prepared to argue it. It was better to have a crazy or terrible opinion than none. Only a boring guest would have no opinion. Maybe there's no dinner parties because we're not allowed to disagree with friends, and then what's the point."
Neil Stone on X - "Name one human invention that has saved more lives than vaccines"
vittorio on X - "haber-bosch process. 3-4 billion lives and counting"
pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "a Chinese man on xiaohongchu made a video telling American TikTok refugees to keep their sexuality and transgender shit to themselves and they’re getting mad at him"
Sardar Khan on X - "Every Minute in America there are 1.3 forcible rapes. Every Minute. Do we blame any religion for that? People commit crimes not religions. If you have some lowlife from Muslim background in UK who were involved in that heinous crime against humanity, that is their crime not the individuals. Even Hitler’s religion wasn’t blamed for his crimes. Today’s ongoing televised genocides are not the crimes to blame any religion but a person from Muslim background commits any crime its a crime by Islam. Isn’t it ironic!"
Robert Spencer on X - "In France, a Muslim quoted Qur’an while raping his victim. A survivor of a Muslim rape gang in the UK has said that her rapists would quote the Qur’an to her, and believed their actions justified by Islam. Thus it came as no surprise when Muslim migrants in France raped a girl and videoed the rape while praising Allah and invoking the Qur’an. In India, a Muslim gave a Qur’an and a prayer rug to the woman he was holding captive and repeatedly raping. Also in India, a Muslim kidnapped and raped a 14-year-old Hindu girl, and forced her to read the Qur’an and Islamic prayers. And the victim of an Islamic State jihadi rapist recalled: “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God…He said that raping me is his prayer to God.” In Pakistan, another Christian woman recounted that her rapist was also religious: “He threw me on the bed and started to rape me. He demanded I marry him and convert to Islam. I refused. I am not willing to deny Jesus and he said that if I would not agree he would kill me.” Rapists demanded that another girl’s family turn her over to them, claiming that she had recited the Islamic profession of faith during the rape and thus could not live among infidels. Links to news articles substantiating all of the above here: https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/france"
Austen Allred on X - "They looked at the data and saw that college graduates, on average, did better in life. Failing to account for selection bias it was assumed that college was the solution to all of our problems. And, expensively, we learned that most of what mattered was the selection bias."
Constance Underfoot on X - "A great example in pursuit of that assumption.
- SAT standards were lowered to let in more students to achieve the aforementioned better life.
- But only 34% of those with a 800-900 SAT score graduate, now saddling 66% with debt they can't repay that also bars them from jobs.
- Brilliant!"
Zain Hoda on X - "This is similar to what happened with ESG research that shows that ESG portfolios outperform. Companies that were successful could afford to implement ESG policies not that ESG led to companies being successful. If you get the causality backwards, it takes a long natural experiment to disprove. In the meantime, if you question the new orthodoxy, people will point back to the old data so you just have to wait for the natural experiment to play out."
Niels Hoven 🐮 on X "They also noticed that kids in honors classes did better in life, but in this case the response was to get rid of honors classes in order to reduce inequality"
Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "'The patient always lies.' A major problem with the healthcare system is that patients lie to their doctor. Most patients will even privately admit that they lied when they were informing their doctors about their issues. Their reasons for doing this often aren't very good:
Patients want to avoid getting lectured, they don't want their doctor to call them fat or tell them their snacking habits are unhealthy. They're afraid the doctor will judge them or think they're stupid or immoral, and they don't want the doctor to tell their family. But because people want to preserve their privacy even in the private setting of a doctor's office, they end up making doctors' jobs harder. They make it harder to diagnose conditions and to prescribe the right drugs. People insist they can't have STDs because they don't want the doctor to know they're having sex. People don't disclose drug habits. People lie about exposures they might've had at home because they don't want to appear disheveled and poor. Whatever the reasons, it's bad! But doctors have a role to play here. Even offering a simple reassurance might go a long way to getting a patient to fess up to the real causes of their problems."
planefag on X - "So. I have a four year degree. I watched my chosen field implode like a supermassive star undergoing direct collapse. I went and hauled I-beams around and learned to weld - after hauling 2x4s around and learning carpentry. I didn't consider myself "too good" for it. But if you tell someone who's already invested his college education and his youth into a particular career field; one he's intellectually well suited for, one he's already spent his college fund and irreplaceable youth to gain, that he should re-start his life at age 28 without complaint; start learning and earning his way up from the bottom all over again, in a career field where he'll be competing with Mexicans (and make no mistake, it's SKILLED labor coming across that border, not just fruit pickers - I should know,) for work because competition with Indians locked him out of his last career field - buddy, they're going to be fucking pissed off. Dude, this guy literally "learned to code." And now you're saying "sorry that fell through. Learn to wrap sandwiches." Where exactly does this elevator stop? "Learn to suck dicks under a highway overpass?""
ib on X - "Maybe young men aren’t owed any kind of material help or status from society at all, ever. But young women, old women, and old men - the rest of society - should think very, very hard before they make a world where their young men have nothing to lose."
Meme - Vince Langman @LangmanVince: "Pam bondi is older than Kirsten Gillibrand. How is that possible?"
pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "Super Size Me really is a masterclass in propaganda because it fully cemented in the public consciousness that McDonald’s was unhealthy and evil meanwhile the dude who made the documentary was an alcoholic who neglected to mention he’d been binge drinking the entire “experiment”"
Grimm Bastard ☣ on X - "I lost over 20 pounds, and my elevated bloodwork dropped to normal levels after I went on a (mostly) daily McDonald's diet for a few months for lunch at work. It was of course in moderation. 2 x Regular Hamburgers, no cheese. 1 x Large Fries. 1 x Large Diet Coke. That's it."
