Jake on X - "AOC was caught on camera in the halls of Congress saying: “They’re learning that Democrats are not weak… and next time we just have to hurt Americans more to make them fold.” Look out, America. This is what Democrat socialists are all about — flexing power, bragging about pressure tactics, and openly admitting the strategy is pain, not policy."
HustleBitch on X - "🚨 THE SNEAKER MARKET JUST COLLAPSED - AND NOBODY KNOWS WHY
A sneaker shop owner says the entire market “died overnight.” And the numbers are insane:
• Shoes that were $500–$600 now won’t move at $300
• Jordan 1s sitting for $90
• Dunks and GRs gathering dust
• Even HEAT priced under retail isn’t selling
• Yeezys - once the safest resale shoe on earth - are tanking everywhere
He straight-up asks: “Does anyone wanna explain why shoes are literally just dying right now?” And the weirdest part? Nobody’s selling OR buying - the whole ecosystem is frozen. Something broke but nobody can agree on what. What REALLY killed the sneaker market - the economy, the hype dying… or is the whole resale game finally collapsing?"
Glenn Thrush on X - "Tim Mellon, the GOP donor who gave Trump $130 million to pay troops, has a history of negative comments about Black people. When a @nytines reporter w/ a Hispanic surname contacted him in 2020 in English, he replied with the Goya slogan -- in Spanish."
Catturd ™ on X - "Dude just paid the military with his own 130 million dollar and these lowlife scumbags immediately wrote a hit piece on him - trash people."
Meme - "> Food stamps get cut
> DoorDash stock drops by 30%"
Meme - *Who killed Hannibal*
*Senate Democrats shooting SNAP Recipients"
"Look at what Trump is doing to the poors!"
Meme - "Democrats in October: "This is Trump's shutdown! He's keeping the government closed!"
Democrats in November: "I can't believe the Democrats CAVED and reopened the government!!!"
Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock on X - "The average SNAP benefit is $6 a day. And you just took that away from 4 million people."
Calley Means on X - "Democrats are actively lying to the American people on SNAP. Raphael - can you explain how SNAP doubled in 2020 and didn’t come back down? Anyone who suggests SNAP should stay forever at COVID levels (or not acknowledging there is clear fraud here) is not serious."
Meme - "If you make $70k per year you pay around $36 per year for SNAP benefits. Let that sink in just $36 for the year"
Ruben Bastidas: "Everytime I buy groceries I pay for 100% of it. Let that sink in"
* I offered our best part-time worker a full-time job with a raise and benefits, but she said no because she would lose her food stamps. What now? - "her refusal is rooted in a very real problem known as the "benefits cliff." The benefits cliff describes the point where even a small increase in income triggers a sudden loss of essential benefits like SNAP or Medicaid. For a lot of low-income workers, the value of these benefits far outweighs whatever raise you may offer them
Clearly, this is proof that greedy billionaires only earn their money by underpaying their workers and are relying on taxpayers to feed them, so they're getting corporate subsidies. Of course, left wingers never conclude that to stop these "subsidies" that supposedly allow greedy companies to underpay workers at minimum wage, they can just end SNAP, and they'd be forced to raise wages
FOODS TYPICALLY PURCHASED BY SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (SNAP) HOUSEHOLDS (SUMMARY) - "SNAP households spent somewhat more on soft drinks than non-SNAP households (5 versus 4 percent)."
Ending SNAP Subsidies For Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Could Reduce Obesity And Type 2 Diabetes - "To reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes rates, lawmakers have proposed modifying Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to encourage healthier food choices. We examined the impact of two proposed policies: a ban on using SNAP dollars to buy sugar-sweetened beverages; and a subsidy in which for every SNAP dollar spent on fruit and vegetables, thirty cents is credited back to participants’ SNAP benefit cards. We used nationally representative data and models describing obesity, type 2 diabetes, and determinants of food consumption among a sample of over 19,000 SNAP participants. We found that a ban on SNAP purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages would be expected to significantly reduce obesity prevalence and type 2 diabetes incidence, particularly among adults ages 18–65 and some racial and ethnic minorities. The subsidy policy would not be expected to have a significant effect on obesity and type 2 diabetes, given available data. Such a subsidy could, however, more than double the proportion of SNAP participants who meet federal vegetable and fruit consumption guidelines."
Weird. In Gaza Israel is accused of fattening Gazans to death, but in the US, if you think there should be restrictions on what food SNAP can buy, you're a monster
Kalshi on X - "JUST IN: US Health Secretary RFK Jr. says food stamps will no longer be allowed to be used on sugar and soda"
Lauren Chen on X - "It's been reported that the average weight of a woman on SNAP benefits is 212 lbs. The average weight of a woman not on SNAP benefits is 146 lbs."
Meme - Satan: "Suicide is never the answer. You gotta outlive your enemies."
tay I 5 @tayisnotokay: "this is strangely motivational"
Meme - "Welcome to Jurassic Park. We have:
NOT a jurassic dinosaur *Tyrannosaurus Rex*
NOT a jurassic dinosaur *Triceratops*
Definitely NOT Jurassic dinosaurs *Velociraptors*
Oh, finally a Jurassic dinosaur (5 seconds on screen) *Brontosaurus*
Surprise! Other dinosaurs from Cretaceous period! *Gallimimus flocking scene*
Seriously? WTF is this? The final evolution of Joe Dante's Gremlins? *Film version of Dilophosaurus*"
Meme - MR. OBVIOUS @ObviousRises: "I'm half Filipino and half Mexican. I have Spanish blood on both sides including my name. I can hear the calls for expansion, conquest, the stars, and war in my blood. I'm built different."
Canuto Shippuden @YamiMarika: "Bro you are not the conquistador you are the conquistado"
Meme - "r/TrueOffMyChest
SilverMedalss
My husband is the moderator for a few different subreddits, and he genuinely thinks it's a job
Edit: To all the profile-lurkers, my husband is no longer a moderator, and has a (real) job now FYI
my husband refuses to look for a job even though I think it would be good for him (And we could use the additional income), but he just says he's, "got too much on his plate already". That being monitoring these stupid subreddits. And Everytime I bring it up he claims what he's doing is un labor similar to that of a homemaker. But he doesn't clean or cook or do any of that the way he used to. He just mor stupid subreddits. I don't know what to do. Sometimes I want to leave him because I believe I may not be able to reach him."
PowerModerator: "I'm seeing many bigoted comments down there so I just want to make this clear : any hate towards moderators will result in a permanent ban from this subreddit with no warning, This includes, but is not limited to, calling moderation a "fake job" or saying that we "do it for free". Moderation is one of the most useful jobs to society. Behave. Or get banned."
SilverMedalss: "Nick?"
Dr. Maalouf on X - "In Dallas, Texas, an Islamic imam got very angry when he saw a fellow Muslim talking to a Christian preacher. He then called the police and threatened to get him arrested and ban the man from his mosque if he keeps ‘talking to Christians.’ This is what a cult looks like."
Man suffers stroke from excessive daily energy drinks - "Doctors have suggested that consuming high-caffeine energy drinks could potentially lead to a stroke by elevating blood pressure. A case study detailed a man in his 50s who suffered a stroke and alarmingly high blood pressure, attributed to his daily consumption of eight energy drinks. His blood pressure returned to normal and medication was no longer needed after he stopped drinking the high-caffeine beverages. Medical professionals concluded that the patient's excessive energy drink intake was a significant contributing factor to his secondary hypertension and subsequent stroke. The Government has announced a ban on high-caffeine energy drinks for under-16s, with doctors advocating for further regulation and specific questioning by healthcare professionals."
Pensioner ‘fined £250 for spitting’ after leaf blew into his mouth - "A man has claimed he was fined £250 for spitting after a leaf blew into his mouth in Lincolnshire. Roy Marsh, 86, was given the financial penalty after the incident in Skegness earlier this year. He is now calling for “responsible” litter enforcement. East Lindsey district council (ELDC) told the BBC the enforcement teams, who work on behalf of the authority, would “only approach individuals who have been seen committing environmental crime offences”."
Mark Zuckerberg prepares to abandon Metaverse - "Meta shares surged by $100bn (£75bn) as investors cheered plans for Mark Zuckerberg to rein in spending at his struggling “Metaverse” unit. Mr Zuckerberg is plotting steep budget cuts as high as 30pc at the division, which has been developing virtual reality (VR) gadgets and games, according to reports. The Metaverse project has divided Wall Street, with some shareholders concerned about the costs involved. Meta’s virtual reality efforts have lost at least $70bn since 2020, with $4.4bn of this occurring in the most recent quarter. In a sign of the unease, on Thursday, Meta shares surged the most since July on Mr Zuckerberg’s spending cuts plan. They rose by 5.5pc, adding $93bn to the company’s value... Mr Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta in 2021, launching a spending spree on so-called “Metaverse” technology. The innovation promised a kind of 3D internet that meshes with the real world... the technology has largely been a flop... Mr Zuckerberg has quietly stopped mentioning the Metaverse in his public appearances and Instagram videos, instead promoting Meta’s efforts in artificial intelligence (AI)."
Pluralistic: Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain; The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV) (21 Feb 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - "A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit. Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google: But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google: Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query: Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them: It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it. This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine: Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them." And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win." Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway. A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete: You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference... The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'" They broke the deal. Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right... In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money. An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up than Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense. Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:"
Degree Requirements for Police Officers Will Not Make Us Safer - "Relegating police training to outside universities smacks of duty shirking; it should be the responsibility (and purview) of police departments to train law enforcement professionals effectively. Furthermore, the ever-expanding realm of credentialism further shrinks the available pool of quality jobs for working-class Americans, who, despite the increasing technological complexity of the economy, remain the largest economic and cultural bloc of the general population. A close inspection of the historical and increasingly severe push towards “credentialism” reveals that it should not only be questioned cautiously, but rejected outright... Outside of careers in academia, university degrees may no longer be the most optimum training route for employment—indeed they may never have been in the first place. Considering that university tuition costs are rising faster than inflation rates at a time of high unemployment, it seems reasonable to review the arguments against enjoining university degrees for blue-collar occupations... Allan Bloom in his seminal work The Closing of the American Mind argued that American university education was evolving into precisely what Emerson feared—a mere credentialing process for the professions. Bloom argued that by the 1980s, the American university experience neither inculcated students in the values of the Western canon nor encouraged critical thinking. This left graduates not only unemployable, but uninformed. Both of these thinkers understood that molding the university degree into an imperative for employment not only left students unprepared for analytical innovation, but also transmuted academics into subordinate employees of their own students... nation-wide 86 percent of departments report a deficit of officers. This situation will presumably worsen as a glut of officers hired in the 1990s become eligible for retirement... if there is not a corresponding increase in potential pay (Jones-Sawyer did not proffer any legislation to increase police pay), the result will almost surely be a gross decrease in applicants for police positions, at a time when police departments are already compromised by so many officer vacancies. The effects of such a position can already be discerned; for although most police departments still permit applicants without degrees, a growing percentage require bachelor’s degrees and even master’s degrees for advancement within the ranks"
Too bad he doesn't look at education and performance or public safety (the latter despite the title)
Interpreting Italo Svevo—When Literary Orthodoxy Misses The Mark - "Although I was relieved to learn that literature in Italy has not been taken over by social justice activism as has happened in the U.S., Italian literary studies are not immune to rigid orthodoxies. The study of 20th-century Italian literature is strongly “theory-driven,” and dominated by two schools of thought: the Marxist, and the psychoanalytical (or Freudian) school. In the past, there was also a Catholic school in Italian literary studies, but it is no longer prominent... Marx’s ideas have been debunked by economists; Freud’s ideas have been debunked by psychologists. These facts are irrelevant to many scholars in the humanities, who believe that they can safely ignore developments in other academic disciplines even when they base their work on these very disciplines... Due to their ideological commitments to Marx and Freud, Italian literary scholars have failed to recognize that the key to understanding Svevo’s novels lies in the influence that Darwin and Schopenhauer had on Svevo’s thinking and his literary work. Svevo’s is not an isolated case. The notion that literary fiction may reflect ideas derived from science or philosophy is more foreign than ever to current literary scholars. This is inevitable given how concepts of science, reality, evolution, and human nature have been banned from contemporary literary discourse. Unfortunately, as literary studies become more entrenched in dogmatic ideological orthodoxy, they also become more detached from the realities of novelists, their lives, and their work—and less helpful to readers who consult the opinions of experts in the naïve hope that these will shed light on what they are reading."
Margot Cleveland on X - "KBJ suffers from misconception that if something’s really really good, in her eyes, it’s constitutional & if it’s really really bad, it’s unconstitutional. Unfortunately, this same theory is shared by every liberal judge, law professors, media, civics teachers & I daresay public"
Don Wolt on X - "KBJ's Greatest Hits (Volume 1):
🔸"Experts" should have more power
🔸Blacks are disabled
🔸Listing people's biological sex in passports is cruel
🔸The First Amendment shouldn't hamstring the govt
🔸I can't define the word "woman""
Meme - "@lonewanderer882: Why every african nation has the same history? it's always some shit like "The rebels led by Abdal Faruq Mutobombo have declared war on the ruling party, the Front for Liberation and Love, which is responsible for the famine that has hit the nation from 1920 to today... And then started another civil war who killed 18 billion of citizen""
"EVERY AFRICAN, REVOLUTIONARY AFTER TAKING POWER *laughing men*"
Charlie No-Face Legend: True Story of the Glowing Green Man - "He was severely electrocuted. His nose, lips, ears, and eyes were all gone or misshapen. His arms were maimed. One of his hands was blown clean off. His suffering was unimaginable. Somehow he survived. Doctors marveled. But Ray didn't have much of a life after that, at least for a while... He managed to dodge notoriety until he began craving a respite from the prison his life had become. He started walking the local highways. Always alone. Always at night. This is where the man becomes the legend."
POLITICOEurope on X - "Japan has rebuffed the EU’s offer to join its plan to use frozen Russian state assets to fund Ukraine — dashing the bloc's hopes of securing global support for the initiative."
Denise Wu on X - "Japan is currently facing harassment from China. Has Europe offered Japan any assistance? This is a common complaint from Asia. Europeans often ask for help, but when they need it, they remain silent."
Meme - "They want to undermine the Constitution"
mike solana @micsolana: "believe them"
"The New York Times. The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous? One of the biggest threats to America's politics might be the country's founding document."
Of course, when left wing judges find something the left hates unconstitutional, the Constitution is Sacred
Meme - *Concert*
"We sold pussy to be here!! We <3 Drake OVO"
COE problem solved: Singaporeans can now own their dream car and park it in Johor Bahru, and even keep the car forever! - "Thanks to a clever new venture, as reported by the Malay Mail, Carlogy Malaysia, a one-stop automotive lifestyle hub in Skudai that’s rewriting the rules of car ownership for Singaporeans, car enthusiasts from across the Causeway can now buy, park, and pamper their prized vehicles, minus the dreaded Certificate of Entitlement (COE) price tag... At the heart of this smart motoring revolution are co-founders Heeraj Sharma and Regis Tia, who’ve turned their shared love of performance cars into a thriving cross-border business. Located in Skudai — the sweet midpoint between Woodlands Checkpoint and Tuas Second Link — Carlogy Malaysia is like a five-star resort for cars. Think of it as your car’s private man cave, complete with 24/7 security, air-conditioned storage, detailing services, and even a café for when you drop by for a weekend joyride. And you can even livestream your car via real-time CCTV from anywhere. Because what’s the point of owning a Porsche or a Lamborghini if you can’t lovingly stare at it during Zoom meetings, right?... Now for the fine print: Yes, Singaporeans can own Malaysian-registered cars. The only catch is that you can’t drive them back into Singapore. Singapore’s Land Transport Authority strictly prohibits citizens, permanent residents, and long-term pass holders from using foreign-registered vehicles in the city-state, but for weekend drives, road trips, or track days up north, Johor and beyond are your personal playground."
Meme - Piers Morgan @piersmorgan: "You really need to get laid, you deluded little twerp."
Nicholas J. Fuentes @NickJFuentes: "You need to go get your wife bro"
1stclassclips @1stclassclips: "She's getting her back blown out while Piers is seething on X"
celia.walden: "Wanted. Pool boy. no experience needed"
celia.walden: "When the husband's away Mr Suds comes to play. #youmissedaspot #everydaysexism #notanobject #ButtIWantToBe #Speedo #HollywoodLife #HawaiianTropic *muscular black man in speedos washing car*"
∿ on X - "the sooner you realize that the US is like 47 Albanias and 3 actual countries in a trench cost masquerading as a superpower the more clarity you’ll have"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "Every US state has a higher income than England."
Meme - David Hookstead: "Did we cancel D-Day because of a little rough weather? No. Play the damn game."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "D-Day was delayed by a day because of the weather"
Meme - "r/kitchencels. Decided to get into meal prepping and just made 7 days worth of the most absolute dogshit pasta I've ever tasted. Now I have to come home from my horrible minimum wage job everyday and sit down and forcefeed myself this slop like a good little lave. I'm 24 years old and I've never kissed a girl."
Meme - "Locals who live in a city who's economy is based entirely on tourism when they see a tourist in town *angry stare*"
Thread by @SydneyLWatson on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Sometimes I forget that leftists cheered little girls drowning in floodwaters because those little girls were from Texas and probably came from conservative families. Nothing after that should surprise me, and yet, the vile things these people say still leave me speechless. Like...this is a teacher. Who is gleefully admitting he enjoyed watching someone get shot to death. On repeat. What in the literal fuck?"
Left wingers are full of "kindness" and "empathy" and against "hate"
Clinton on X - "Tonight while I was grilling steaks for dinner, my son said, "Dad, one day I will help you with bills, groceries and rent." My eyes teared up. He'll be 38 next week."
