Links - 26th April 2026 (3 - Get Woke, Go Broke: Ubisoft/Assassin's Creed, Jaguar, Disney)

AC Shadows sales numbers finally released, 367k copies sold on Steam; Ubisoft stock plummets : r/KotakuInAction

As a Japanese Person.. : r/fuckubisoft - "The people defending this game are the actual racists. I grew up on Assassin's Creed, so I have been waiting my entire life for this game.  A few months ago, I click on the reveal trailer and what do I see? A 6'4 black dude in 1500's Japan bashing my ancestors brains in while Ubi quite LITERALLY switches the background music to hip hop. And they have the AUDACITY to call anyone who disagrees with them racist? THEY are the racists, defending a game where a massive black guy massacres a bunch of japanese people who are half his size, while sleeping with the wives of their royalty and raiding sacred tombs? Is this not racism towards asians? What happened to 'stop asian hate'? They have the nerve to call me a bigot while they viciously defend "Johnny Somali Wet Dream Simulator"?  And where were all these racists with Origins? or Freedom cry? or Mirage? Nowhere, because it is glaringly obvious to anybody with a brain that nobody cares what skin color the main protagonist has. They care that out of the thousands of actual Japanese samurai who were both also real historical figures, but also much more renowned as warriors, they landed on Yasuke for reasons we all know why. Im sick of these people trying to take the moral high ground and gaslight everyone into thinking that valid concerns are nothing more than bigotry."

AC Shadows sales in Japan dropped 60% from Valhalla. The general public in Japan showed no interest in the game at all, and the vast majority of Japanese gamers choose not to buy it. : r/KotakuInAction

In Assassin's Creed Shadows, it has been revealed that players will be looting the tomb of an ancestor of the Emperor, sparking controversy in Japan. : r/KotakuInAction - "The Daisenryō Kofun is the tomb of Emperor Nintoku, an ancestor of the current Imperial Family." I mean usually I'd not care, but this seems a little too far for Ubisoft, they've pulled countless of these "accidental" insults.  First the wrong clan symbol, then a fake japanese "letter" on the box, then the nuked shrine entrance, the literal existance of watermelons outside of season just because racism.. At this point I'd be more surprised if this game was real."
"It’s almost like their ‘cultural consultants’ and sensitivity training don’t actually do anything."

Endymion on X - "I’m nearing the end of Assassin’s Creed Shadows main plot. I kid you not Akechi Mitsuhide who historically killed Oda Nobunaga & threw away Yasuke to the Jesuits in real life…  Just got on his knees in this game in front of an entire village & admitted that Yasuke is the greatest samurai in Japan & he is & I quote, “the best of us all.”  You can tell this game is fan fiction written by liberal white women. I wish I could say the plot is good but frankly there barely even is one.   Now I gotta kill some Portegeuse guys I guess cause big shocker of course the evil white man is the main villain your game set in Japan.   I’m having a hard time finishing this man. What a disaster this game is."

Meme - "ASSASSIN'S CREED AFRICA *white man standing on head of black man buried in sand*"

Assassin's Creed Shadows Is the Lowest-Selling Release Across Last Five Entries - "total sales are at 4.3 million six months after launch, which isn’t a great number considering the time and budget, which is allegedly between $250 million and $350 million went into the game development and marketing. In a span of 3 months, Assassin’s Creed Mirage sold 5 million and performed better than Shadows despite being a spin-off release"

Bye bye, Ubisoft! : r/KotakuInAction - "The funny thing is they had not one, but TWO silver bullets to print money: A Pirate game using AC4 mechanics but on steroids, and an AC game in feudal Japan. Like, you had to literally make an effort to not print money from these two projects."
"ACS is the absolute perfect example of DEI and "modern audience" lie completely ruining franchises.. Like you said, they literally had to go out of their way to make these games NOT sell 10m copies easily.. A fuckin Japanese ninja game was staring at them like a billion dollar deer in headlights and they ran their car off the side of the road into a ditch instead"
"A samurai would have been a bad idea even if they had chosen a Japanese main.  AC is about climbing walls, parkour, and assassinate from the shadows.  That has 'Ninja' written all over it."

Bye bye, Ubisoft! : r/KotakuInAction - "I worked for large media company that was heavily influenced by BlackRock, as the CEO was a Larry Fink protégé and received their financing from them.  Blackrock directly influenced artistic decisions to make the projects we had rolling out woke as fuck, even though it was targeting a South East Asian and KR. Spoilers, some of the characters would be put to death in the countries we were targeting.  Obviously it was a big flop and everyone got shitcanned."

Erik Wedin on X - "Ubisoft was hit by "Metoo" first and then "BLM" It was Metoo that caused Ubisoft to stop delivering successful games. They literally fired the guy behind AC Black Flag (Who also was working on AC Valhalla)
AC Black Flag - success
AC Valhalla - success
AC Mirage... mediocre.. turning a side character of Valhalla into the main character.. Why? Because DEI boxes.
AC Shadows... disaster. worst AC game ever on the grounds that one of the two main character literally cant do assasin things at all. Thus being the most useless miscasted guy in all of AC history.
AC Outlaws (Yes, Outlaws is just a re-skinned AC game, thats why the presentation and the stealth mechanics are at odds with eachother) Well...
Star Wars Outlaws is an unmigitated disaster so epic that Mauler (EFAP) is currently making a several hours long video ABOUT it... because the irony is its more interesting talking about the shitshow of WHY Outlaws is the way it is... than actually playing it"

Loopie on X - "Ubisoft's problems are like Blizzards. Sexual Harassment charges and the fired employees were all replaced with woke retards that couldn't foot the job. Driving the cost of games thru the roof and the quality down."

Grummz on X - "Anybody who thinks Ubisoft's stock halt was just an "minor accounting delay" (i.e. most of the gaming press right now) is just fluffing. Ubisoft nearly triggered a default on a major loan, and had to scramble to get Tencent to pay for it."

Gamer's JoyRide  | Facebook - "Legendary Black Samurai Yasuke, in spectacular fashion, assassinated the job of Marc-Alexis Côté, VP & Executive Producer of Assassin's Creed franchise 😭  Marc worked in Ubisoft for 20+ years and was the boss of AC Series for more than 5 years. Chinese Tencent took over the main IPs from Ubisoft, in the newly formed Vantage studio and fired him 😂"

Ubisoft shutting down Halifax studio despite nearly $1 billion in tax subsidies - "CWA Canada, the union representing laid-off Ubisoft workers, is demanding tougher accountability rules after learning that the company received nearly $1 billion in government tax credit subsidies in the last five years alone.  French Senate documents reveal that the video game giant received more subsidies from Canada (federal and provincial governments) than from all other countries where it operates combined (see attached chart in Euros)...  In Quebec, subsidies cover nearly a third of workers’ wages...   Despite the massive subsidies, the company announced last week that it is closing its Halifax studio and laying off 71 workers – just three weeks after CWA Canada was certified to represent 61 staff – due to declining revenue and corporate restructuring.   CWA Canada has filed a complaint with the Nova Scotia Labour Board accusing Ubisoft of shutting down the Halifax operation to keep out the union.   The union is now calling on governments to put tougher conditions on corporate subsidies, including tax credits, to ensure companies don’t “dine and dash” at taxpayer expense."
Ubisoft received more than $700 million in tax credit subsidies from the Canadian government in just four years : r/KotakuInAction - "The one thing 'go woke, go broke' didnt account for, tax payers money subsidizing the woke."
Time to rage against Poilievre for wasting $2 million on an unnecessary by-election, which is money that could've been used for healthcare

Meme - PapaStanimus Gaming: "Ubisoft has announced a sweeping company restructure that will result in the cancelation of six games including its Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake, and a delay to a further seven titles. The company has also closed two studios and confirmed further layoffs."
Orang Utan with breathing tube: "DID WE AT LEAST OWN THE CHUDS?"

Jaguar boss says criticism of rebrand is ‘vile hatred and intolerance’ - "The boss of Jaguar has defended the carmaker’s controversial rebrand and said criticism of its marketing campaign had featured “vile hatred and intolerance”.  Rawdon Glover, the managing director of Jaguar, said the campaign message had been lost in “a blaze of intolerance”, adding that the carmaker must move away from “traditional automotive stereotypes”.  It comes after Jaguar ditched its historic “growler” cat logo and released an advert featuring models with asymmetrical haircuts and dressed in brightly-coloured clothing. It also includes the phrases “break moulds” and “create exuberant”.   Mr Glover told the Financial Times: “We need to re-establish our brand and at a completely different price point so we need to act differently.  “If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand.”  He said he had been disappointed by the “level of vile hatred and intolerance” aimed at those who featured in its advert.  The campaign, intended to promote Jaguar’s new electric vehicle, was met with widespread ridicule earlier this week after it published a 30-second video that did not feature a car...   Advertising experts have warned the campaign risks damaging Jaguar’s brand with potential buyers.  A page on Jaguar’s website describes a new logo for the brand as a “powerful celebration of modernism” and its new look as a “preview of the fearless approach to come from Jaguar”.  Paul Burke, an advertising copywriter, told The Telegraph this week: “As a piece of creative work it’s rubbish. It’s really cheaply done and there’s no idea in it. It will do enormous damage to a great brand.”"

'You'll See Things Our Way': Jaguar DOUBLES DOWN on Cringe Ad With Vaguely Threatening Reply to Critics

How Jaguar’s rebranding gamble triggered a 98% collapse in sales - "For decades, Jaguar stood for a blend of British engineering, performance, and luxury, an identity that helped the brand build loyalty among customers who valued refinement and heritage. But in its attempt to reinvent itself for a new era, Jaguar now finds itself facing one of the most severe sales declines seen in the European automotive market... At the centre of this dramatic slide is a rebranding strategy that, analysts say, misread both the market and Jaguar’s own strengths. The brand’s new identity, launched in November 2024, was meant to signal a bold pivot towards electrification and a new customer base. Instead, it left many long-time buyers alienated and failed to connect with the new audience it was hoping to attract. Jaguar’s rebranding was striking in its departure from the familiar cues that had defined the brand for decades. The iconic leaping jaguar logo was dropped in favour of a minimalist nameplate. The advertising campaign showcased bright, abstract visuals and models in stylised, conceptual settings. Slogans like “Copy Nothing” and “Delete Ordinary” replaced references to cars, performance, or engineering. In fact, the advertisements featured no vehicles at all. This change was designed to appeal to a younger, urban, design-driven demographic. Jaguar’s leadership spoke openly about the need to move beyond the brand’s traditional customer base, often described as affluent and older buyers who valued Jaguar as a symbol of success. But in its effort to reach new customers, the brand overlooked the expectations of its core audience. “Jaguar’s transformation towards a new portfolio of pure-electric vehicles was announced as part of the Reimagine strategy in 2021. JLR always envisaged a period when the current range would ‘not be on sale’ before the introduction of the new Jaguar collection. Production of XE, XF, F-TYPE, I-PACE and E-PACE all came to an end in 2024 as part of that transition. This strategic ‘sunset’ of the product range is going to plan and will allow Jaguar to transform and reposition the brand for the future. Comparing Jaguar sales to 2024 is pointless, as we are no longer producing vehicles in 2025 with low levels of retail inventory available. Jaguar’s rebranding is not related to a sales decline”... Industry observers pointed out that the marketing failed to communicate what the brand was offering and why consumers should care. Without cars in the advertisements, and with the familiar identity stripped away, the campaign struggled to create a link between Jaguar’s new image and the product."

Jaguar Land Rover hunting for new advertising agency after disastrous woke rebrand unveiling new Tesla Cybertruck-style car - "Jaguar Land Rover is looking to replace its current advertising agency just months after the company faced a backlash over its controversial rebrand.  The company launched a review of its global creative account - currently held by Accenture Song and its in-house agency Spark44 until mid-2026 - following widespread criticism over its campaign... The group also abandoned its iconic 'growler' cat badge, replacing it with a curved geometric J and L symbol.  Defending the campaign late last year, JLR's Managing Director Rawdon Glover told the Financial Times: 'If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we'll just get drowned out.'"

Jaguar's Woke Rebrand Leads To 97.5% Drop In Sales - "Jaguar, the once-legendary manufacturer behind some of the most legendary cars in the history of the automobile industry, is in big, big trouble. And it's all their own fault. Car manufacturers over the last several years have turned their efforts to building electric cars at the expense of traditional internal combustion engines. These efforts, outside a handful of success stories like Tesla, have been wildly unsuccessful. Porsche, Ford, General Motors and many other companies have either altered plans to produce EV's or abandoned them entirely. Apparently Jaguar didn't get the memo. In late-2024, they launched a rebrand with one of the most inexplicable marketing campaigns in corporate history. A bizarre series of colorful, eccentrically dressed, uh, modern individuals, to advertise a car company. Reactions were overwhelmingly negative, with rampant comparisons to the Bud Light fiasco... A new report out this week revealed that Jaguar's sales in April 2025 throughout Europe dropped nearly 98%, 97.5% to be exact. The company sold just 49 cars throughout the continent, down from 1,961 vehicles... This is what happens when companies choose political activism instead of producing the best possible products. Seems like such a simple lesson, doesn't it? Yet they so often refuse to learn it."

Jaguar CEO steps down after controversial woke rebranding campaign - "The Jaguar CEO is stepping down months after leading a controversial "woke" rebrand campaign for the auto company.  Jaguar Land Rover CEO Adrian Mardell is set to retire after three decades at the luxury car company and serving as CEO for three years... Columnist Jon Gabriel wrote, "This is so the wrong timing for this. I can understand the C-suite being conned into this in 2022, but you have completely misread the moment. Bud Light 2.0." Jaguar defended the ad in a statement to FOX Business at the time.  "Our brand relaunch for Jaguar is a bold and imaginative reinvention and, as expected, it has attracted attention and debate. As proud custodians at such a remarkable point in Jaguar's history, we have preserved iconic symbols while taking a dramatic leap forward. The brand reveal is only the first step in this exciting new era, and we look forward to sharing more on Jaguar's transformation in the coming days and weeks," it said.  Soon after, Jaguar took heat with the release of its new EV design that was called a "pink Batmobile.""

Meme - Danny Able @DK_Able Replying to @Jaguar: "Are you guys the car company or something else?"
Jaguar @Jaguar: "Soon you'll see things our way."
ThatOneGuy55 @Tesla7771: "That sounds like a threat."
"I said we gay today"

Disney Loses $170 Million On ‘Snow White’ As Studio Reveals Movie Blew Its Budget - "Despite being a bust at the box office, it had a blockbuster cost and there's no doubt about that.  The cost of movies made in the United States is usually a closely-guarded secret as studios combine their spending on all of them in their filings and don't break them out individually. In contrast, movies made in the United Kingdom are an exception and Snow White was one of them. A lucrative fiscal incentive has made the U.K. a hub for Hollywood film-makers and shines a spotlight on the cost of the movies shot there.  Studios filming in the U.K. benefit from the government's Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit which gives them a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country. It comes with a catch.  To qualify for the reimbursement, at least 10% of the core costs of the production need to relate to activities in the U.K. and in order to demonstrate this to the government, studios set up a separate Film Production Company (FPC) there for each picture. The FPCs have to file legally binding financial statements which reveal everything from the headcount and social security payments of the staff to the amount of reimbursement banked by the studio and the total cost of the production. It takes a bit of detective work to get to the bottom of it.  The FPCs usually have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when filing permits to film on location. Tallying the code names with the productions they are responsible for requires deep industry knowledge which my colleague and I have built up over nearly 15 years of reporting. We are the only journalists worldwide who specialize in covering the financial statements of U.K. film production companies for national media and we have reported on them for more than 10 leading titles including The Times of London, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and the London Evening Standard... The $336.5 million spent on Snow White is higher than the cost of Disney's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, its Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel movie and its live action version of Beauty and the Beast which grossed a staggering $1.3 billion in 2017.  Impressively, the cost of Snow White is right in line with the 2023 estimate from expert film industry pundit Valliant Renegade who forecast that "Disney's Snow White remake cost $300m." Unlike some observers, his estimate wasn't wildly high or low, it was conservative and that served him well as the costs shown in the filings round down to the precise prediction he made two years before the movie was released... The share of the box office isn’t the studio’s only return from a movie so offsetting it from the costs in the financial statements does not show whether it made a profit or a loss overall. As a Disney spokesperson told me in 2023, "there will be other income generated by the production (such as DVD/Blu Ray sales, merchandising, etc.). It’s not reflecting a true account of whether the film was overall profitable."  However, just as the production generates other income, it also incurs other costs, chief of which are the marketing expenses, which aren't shown in the FPC's financial statements as they are just for the company which produces the movie. Accordingly, if the home entertainment and merchandise sales should be added to the theater takings, the marketing cost should be deducted from them. This makes it less likely that Snow White turned a profit though it casts a cloud of uncertainty over its actual bottom line."
This won't stop left wingers claiming it was a success

Meme - "How Disney treats its female characters *ugly bald black woman as fairy godmother in 2022 Pinocchio*
How Nintendo treats its female characters *Bo Bragason as Zelda*"

Disney is retreating from LGBT propaganda after losing a billion dollars - "The surest sign that the LGBT movement’s mafia tactics are beginning to fail them is that Hollywood executives no longer fear them.  In 2022, a letter signed by “the LGBTQIA+ employees of Pixar and their allies” went viral, with the aforementioned rainbow mafia claiming that studio execs were censoring LGBT content in films before release. The letter was clearly intended to publicly shame the studios into returning to the practice of turning their films into expensive adverts for the LGBT movement...   Disney had initially gone all in on the LGBT agenda. In 2022, executive producer Latoya Raveneau stated that Disney was implementing a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and “adding queerness” to all children’s content. Production coordinator Allen Martsch announced the creation of a “tracker” to ensure that the company was creating enough “canonical trans characters, canonical asexual characters, (and) canonical bisexual characters.”  Disney corporate President Karey Burke agreed, noting the “many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories” and reiterating Disney’s commitment to making sure that at least 50 percent of the characters displayed on-screen were sexual and racial minorities.  This pivot cost Disney profits, but that was a trade-off it appeared willing to make initially. In Disney’s SEC filing for 2023, for example, they admitted, “We face risks relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment, travel and consumer products, which impact demand for our entertainment offerings and products and the profitability of any of our businesses.”  But since the company reportedly lost a billion dollars from just four films, they appear to be having some second thoughts.   According to the Wall Street Journal, scenes that implied that the lead character of Pixar’s Elio was gay were deleted “after test screenings suggested audiences weren’t excited enough to pay to see it.” The film lost more than $100 million at the box office in 2025. Win or Lose, also released in 2025, was “dogged by claims that a trans character and plotline were removed during the development process.” Disney responded to the accusations by stating that, “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”  That statement indicated a drastic shift in attitude at Disney, but comments to the Journal by Pete Docter, Pixar’s chief creative officer, make it clear that studio executives are fed up with extraordinarily costly demands from LGBT activists. Asked about the exclusion of LGBT content from films, Docter said sarcastically, “We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy.” He added, “As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.”  Better late than never. But for millions of parents, the Disney brand is irreparably tarnished."

Disney Chased Men Out of Marvel and Star Wars. Now They Want Them Back. - "When Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy wore a “The Force is Female” T-shirt at a 2018 Nike event, it sent a message that didn’t sit well with many Star Wars fans. The slogan, tied to a women’s empowerment campaign, suggested a shift that felt out of step with the saga’s loyal, mostly male audience. Marvel faced a similar storm, with its post-Endgame focus on heroines like She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel earning the nickname “M-She-U” from frustrated fans who felt male heroes were being sidelined. Disney wanted to make Star Wars and Marvel more inclusive, but in doing so, they overlooked the heart of their audience. A 2024 Wrap report shows Star Wars fans are 65-70% male, and the MCU’s audience is 60-65% male. By chasing broader appeal, Disney drifted from the adventure and heroism that defined these franchises, leaving many fans feeling unheard. Now, in 2025, with young male fans turning away, Disney is trying to recapture the magic with stories aimed at “guys.” But after years of disconnect, the question looms: can they rebuild trust with the fans they inherited?... George Lucas knew who Star Wars was for. Visiting the Solo set in 2017, he told director Ron Howard, “Don’t forget—it’s for 12-year-old boys.”... A big Fortnite investment hopes to draw gamers with Star Wars and Marvel tie-ins, but fans aren’t convinced: “Disney let us down,” social media echoes. The 2021 firing of Gina Carano from The Mandalorian over posts, settled in 2025, added fuel to fan distrust, with some boycotting the brand... By shifting to inclusive, mature stories, Disney lost sight of those fans without fully winning new ones. Struggling projects and unsold toys show the cost of that disconnect. Disney’s pivot to male-friendly stories is a step, but trust is fragile. To win back fans, they must honor the heart of these franchises—the stories that lit up imaginations. Can Disney rediscover that magic?"

The Critical Drinker on X - "Ironically enough they had two of the biggest and most successful boy brands with Star Wars and the MCU, and completely tanked them both in search of a female audience that didn't exist."

Meme - "REPORT: DISNEY ADMITS MARVEL AND STAR WARS DROVE AWAY MEN - NOW SCRAMBLING TO WIN THEM BACK"
Connor Hodgson: "Not just the men, the women and the children too"

The Scandal of American Welfare Goes Beyond Fraud

The Scandal of American Welfare Goes Beyond Fraud - WSJ
California spends billions on programs that enrich insiders and don’t help the needy—and it’s all legal.

Economist John Maynard Keynes suggested that the government pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up. This is an apt metaphor for progressive government these days: It creates social dysfunction, then shovels out money to correct it. Dredge, fill and repeat.

Healthcare and social assistance added more than 1.6 million private-sector jobs between June 2023 and June 2025, according to comprehensive data from employer payrolls published by the Labor Department in December. Yet the U.S. gained only 1.3 million private jobs during that period, meaning there was a net loss of jobs in other industries.

These two industries accounted for more than half of the new establishments (businesses and nonprofits) created over those two years. Minnesota’s welfare-fraud scandal make you wonder: How many of these new entities and their employees are actually helping people, and how many are merely looting the government?

More than 90 people have been charged with setting up sham businesses and nonprofits in Minnesota that feasted on Medicaid, food, housing and other welfare programs. Defendants employed family members and others to provide autism “treatment” to kids who didn’t have autism, to drive the kids to fake appointments, and to feed them while they were there. The fraudulent enterprises didn’t provide legitimate public services, though they did employ people—in the service of bilking the government.

“Honest graft” may be a bigger scandal than outright fraud. America’s all-you-can-eat buffet of health and social benefits—16 different federal food programs, Medicaid, housing support, child care and more—provides abundant opportunities for milking the government. Look no further than California, where a vast welfare-industrial complex has developed around homelessness, drug addiction and left-wing identity politics.

The Golden State added roughly 188,000 jobs in social assistance between June 2023 and June 2025, yet only 4,900 private-sector jobs in total. During this period some 153,000 new establishments were created in social assistance. Every vagrant, drug addict and confused young person needs a social worker and “community support.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Elevate Youth California initiative claims to address substance use disorder “by investing in the leadership development and civic engagement for youth of color and 2S/LGBTQIA+* youth ages 12 to 26 living in communities disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs.” Grants are funded by taxes on marijuana.

Maybe young people wouldn’t struggle with substance abuse if the state hadn’t legalized marijuana and effectively decriminalized other drugs. Or if union-run public schools educated them and molded good character, rather than manufacture left-wing culture warriors. Or if high minimum wages hadn’t killed entry-level jobs for teens.

What do these youth-oriented outfits do with the state money they receive? The nonprofit Brotherhood of Elders Network instructs “system-impacted Black youth” in what it calls “the Art Of Being A Black Man.” Its curriculum explores “African culture through rhythm, song, and dance.” Another nonprofit, Asian Refugees United, sponsors “weekly Queer Youth Art Storytellers programming, which combines youth mentorship, leadership development, and creative skill-building” to reduce substance abuse.

The Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project fosters “community with 60 to 100 Indigenous youth from the Mixteco, Zapotec, and many other Diasporic communities throughout the Central Coast.” The California Youth Empowerment Network sponsored a “youth-led bus stop campaign featuring vibrant, stigma-free posters that connected youth experiencing housing insecurity to essential resources, including food and shelters.” In other words, the state gave money to sign young people up for government benefits.

We’ll spare readers a long recitation of other examples of Mr. Newsom’s splashing around money to left-wing groups, which can be found on the state’s website. It’s possible that work by some grant recipients is reducing recidivism, homelessness and substance abuse, but it’s impossible to know because the state doesn’t measure such outcomes.

The goal of the welfare-industrial complex isn’t to ameliorate social problems but to extract more money from the government. Social workers employed by a nonprofit—funded by hospitals and health insurers—spent recent weeks searching for undocumented immigrants to sign up for Medicaid before a deadline that would make them ineligible.

A story in the Atlantic this fall described how drug addicts and the mentally ill have been cycling in and out of California hospitals. Every emergency-room visit, typically covered by Medicaid, means more money for hospitals. It’s no coincidence that hospitals are the loudest opponents of Medicaid reforms.

California’s Medicaid spending—which pays for Native American exorcisms, music lessons, cooking classes and many other nonmedical services—has ballooned by nearly 50% over the last two years. “Healthy living starts with a chef in your kitchen. Paid by Medi-Cal,” one company advertises. A state audit last month flagged it as high risk for fraud, waste and abuse. You don’t say.

Say this for a union-backed ballot measure that aims to tax the wealth of billionaires to boost spending on Medicaid: It might awaken wealthy liberals to the welfare racket that masquerades as a public service.

 

 

Left wingers want unlimited social spending - because that gives them unlimited opportunities to loot the government

Links - 26th April 2026 (2 - Migrants: Canada)

Bastion on X - "🔴🇨🇦 𝗙𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗛 𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢 — « Sale pute de merde, ferme ta gueule, avec ta tête de chienne […] Si tu veux je t’achète et tu deviens mon esclave » : une policière de Montréal violemment insultée, garde son calme face à un individu menaçant."
Natasha Montreal on X - "Montréal. Arabic man berates female police officer, "You dirty sh!t wh@re, shut your mouth you b!tch... I'll buy you and you'll become my slave... Is it my fault I am richer than you?" He also accuses her of racial profiling-because of course he does. Celebrate diversity!"
Time to do more to fight racism and Islamophobia

Gad Saad on X - "The new mayor of Montreal @SorayaMartinezF thinks that the Muslim migrant who hurled astounding insults at a female @SPVM officer suffers from "masculinism." This is the real problem in Quebec, a surplus of "masculinism." People from cultures that view women as less worthy than cows is not the problem."

Migrant filmed hurling vile abuse at female cop and vowing to make her his 'slave' moans he is the victim of racism after being shamed over his behavior - "A migrant who was caught hurling foul-mouthed sexist abuse at a police officer claims he is the victim of racism after being hit with a fine for the vile tirade.   Mohamed Bekkali, 24, a migrant living in Montreal, Canada, filmed himself ranting at a female cop during a traffic stop, telling her: 'If I want, I'll buy you and make you my slave.'   'Filthy f***ing w***e, shut your f***ing mouth, with your b***h face,' he said to the cop, who had reportedly pulled him over for driving with tinted windows in June 2025.   In further clips to his since-deleted TikTok account, Bekkali then shared footage of himself berating two more police officers, telling a male cop: 'I think he's angry that we f***ed his daughter yesterday.'  'That son of a b***h, bald piece of s***, son of a b***h, motherf***er, that I probably f***ed his sister,' he screamed down a street at the officers.   Bekkali was fined $228 for his rant at the female police officer, according to Canadian outlet La Presse.    After the videos circulated social media and sparked outrage across Canada, Bekkali claimed in another video that he was the victim of 'social and socio-profiling.'   In his clip defending himself, which was deleted, Bekkali said he berated the police officers because he dislikes police, and said the 'problem has never been the sex of the officer.' Bekkali said in his video defending his actions that he was targeting police because of his hatred of law enforcement, saying he 'puts both male and female police officers in their place.'   'The problem is a police force riddled with abuse, arrogance and incompetence, to the point of pushing perfectly normal, honest citizens to their breaking point,' he said, according to Journal De Quebec... Bekkali claimed he was being unfairly targeted and scrutinized for the clips, saying he is 'arrested every day' for 'reasons that are more outlandish than the next.'  His foul-mouthed rants at the police officers are not Bekkali's only run in with the law in Canada, according to the Journal.   The outlet cited Canadian records that showed Bekkali has received at least four driving tickets in the past three years, including speeding at 55mph in a 30mph zone.   He was also caught driving 34mph in a 20mph zone and 63mph in a 40mph zone.   In 2020, he also pleaded guilty to using forged documents to commit a crime, and received an absolute discharge - meaning he admitted guilt but received no penalty, reported La Presse... He told the host that he is constantly harassed by police because of his appearance, and said he did not understand slang from 'Quebecers' - meaning people from Quebec.    The Montreal Police Service said he was not fined at the time of his rant at the female police officer, but after review the department said Monday he was hit with a $228 penalty for his 'misogynistic and degrading' remarks.   This week, Canadian attorney Vicky Powell also filed a police complaint against Bekkali after she alleged he threatened her during a live stream online. She said she told Bekkali he 'can't talk to women like that' in reference to the clip of him abusing the police officer, leading him to allegedly threaten her.   She says he told her: 'All the guys who talked s*** about me ended up badly. You're here, you think you're a lawyer, nothing's going to happen to you?'"

Why don’t Hong Kong Canadians just say they are Chinese? Because of subethnicity, and this is why it matters | South China Morning Post - "Hong Kong people come from a colony and ought to act “more civilised”. Taiwanese are “old-fashioned”. Mainland Chinese are “rich but rude”. Welcome to the awkward world of Chinese subethnicity in Canada, where its various communities tend to self-segregate, discriminate against each other and generally defy assumptions of homogeneity among “Chinese Canadians” that are imposed from outside the group... “The influence of transnational politics on interpersonal interactions at the individual level cannot be underestimated,” the study concludes, with political conversation “taboo” between the groups. “Avoidance is a major strategy,” says the study, published last month in the journal Asian Ethnicity...  Some of the results were “common sense among Chinese”, he said, but might surprise others. People in the Chinese subethnicities tend to stick to their own kind when making friends. Language can divide them. And when relatively uncommon friendships do emerge across the subethnic boundaries, they usually happen in non-Chinese environments, where a Hongkonger and a mainland immigrant might find common ground as outsiders... He said the tendency of Hong Kong-origin people to now identify as Hongkongers or Hong Kong Canadians – and not simply as Chinese, or Chinese Canadians – had solidified since the 1997 handover. It is a tendency reflected in previous surveys from Hong Kong, one of which found that only 8.9 per cent of people there identified solely as Chinese , compared with 32.1 per cent at the time of the handover. That tendency is even more extreme among young people: in 2017, Hong Kong University pollsters found that only 3.1 per cent of respondents in Hong Kong aged 18-29 identified as Chinese, compared with 65 per cent who identified as Hongkongers...  Frances Hui, a Hong Kong student at Boston’s Emerson College, wrote a column titled “I am from Hong Kong, not China” for Emerson’s student paper. A strong backlash from mainland Chinese students ensued... Yan said navigating the subethnic Chinese landscape was challenging for an outsider. “I would say the No 1 thing to know is that being ‘Chinese’ is not homogenous,” Yan said. “And what about the ‘old overseas Chinese’, loh hua qiao [lo wah kiu in Cantonese], who have been here for two or three generations? They don’t like Hong Kong Chinese. They don’t like the new mainland Chinese. The differences are not just about from where you came. It’s when you came.” And frequently, this boiled down to class... in metro Vancouver, people born in mainland China now easily outnumber people born in Hong Kong, by 188,865 to 71,720 according to the 2016 census (with 37,425 born in Taiwan). And Mandarin is on the brink of replacing Cantonese as the most prevalent non-English mother tongue in the city... "You go to T&T [a Chinese supermarket chain] now, and if you speak Cantonese you get asked ‘Why don’t you speak Mandarin?’”.

Upto 40% of Canada’s top 1% income earners have moved to the US : r/TorontoRealEstate - "Keyword here is top 1% “income”, not wealth.  Boomers with multi million dollar real estate portfolios are staying put while young people with high paying jobs like tech are leaving Canada in droves.  More devastating is, the report estimates upto 50% of top 10% earners in Canada have moved to the US.  Yet, the other insane stat is you need to have a top 5% income level to afford a median home in Canada. Apparently half of the people that can afford homes are leaving the country.  And yet, every Canadian sub calls for more income taxes which basically kills any upward mobility and pushes smart young people out.  We need to fundamentally rethink how income tax rates."

Kirk Lubimov on X - "Which demographics of Canadians are leaving Canada?
>67% of the are 20-44 year olds.
>3x more likely to be in Sciences than avg population.
>31.1% have a masters degree.
>61.4% left to the US.
In other words, it's Canada's youngest, most talented and educated population."
Time to "tax the 'rich'" even more

Canada’s international student program blasted by auditor - "Canada’s Immigration Department failed to crack down on study permit applicants and holders flagged for potential fraud and non-compliance — and did not even know if those with expired permits had left the country, a government audit has found.  Between 2023 and 2024, more than 153,000 post-secondary international students were identified as potentially non-compliant with study permit rules, but officials had funding to probe only 2,000 cases annually, according to a report released Monday by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.  The department began 4,057 investigations, but 41 per cent of these cases could not be closed because the students did not respond; another 50 cases were identified as non-compliant and requiring further follow-up... According to the audit, officials identified 800 approved study permits issued between 2018 and 2023 where applicants had either used fraudulent documentation or misrepresented information to gain entry to Canada. Most of them later applied for other immigration permits once in the country, and half have been approved.  “The absence of having a warning or something on their file to say fraudulent documentation or misrepresentation was used in the initial application means you weren’t able to then apply rigour on the second application,” Hogan cautioned... The audit also reviewed the status of the 549,000 people whose study permits expired in 2024; it found that 93 per cent of people were allowed to remain in Canada, managing to maintain legal status, and identified 39,500 people who should no longer be in the country. The Canada Border Services Agency confirmed about 40 per cent or 16,000 of these people had left."
Damn racism and xenophobia! IRCC and the Auditor General need to do better

Holly Doan on X - "MEMO: Department @ESDC_GC for first time admits an 18% jobless rate for Canadian students was due to “large numbers” of foreign students, contradicting earlier claims by @CitImmCanada Ministers @SeanFraserMP and @MarcMillerVM."
How ignorant. Don't they know immigrants create jobs? Clearly the solution is to import even more low wage workers

Blacklock's Reporter on X - "Feds on Nov 15, 2022 suspended regulations limiting foreign students to 20 hours’ work per week. “It’s good for our economy.” — @SeanFraserMP, 2022 “I don’t think international students are taking jobs away from other people.” — @MarcMillerVM, 2023"

Meme - Charlie Smirkley @charliesmirkley: "These were the most important issues for Muslim-Canadians in the 2025 CANADIAN election. The voting motivation is just group identity. Source: 2025 Mainstreet Research poll of 1,138 Muslim voters."
"THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE IN THE ELECTION WAS PALESTINE AT 45%, AFFORDABILITY AT 16%, HEALTH CARE AND ISLAMOPHOBIA TIED AT 7%."

Refugee who returned to Pakistan 6 times could keep Canadian status - "A Federal Court judge set aside a ruling by Canada’s Refugee Protection Division (RPD), saying it failed “to engage with a critical piece of evidence” when it revoked a Pakistani man’s refugee status after he returned to the country on multiple occasions.  Irfan Ahmad arrived in Canada under the “convention refugee abroad” program in 2014, citing his status as a member of the Ahmadi community, a persecuted Muslim minority group in Pakistan.  However, since attaining refugee status, immigration authorities found that Ahmad twice visited the Pakistani consulate in Toronto, both times to receive a passport. Between January 2016 and March 2022, Ahmad returned to Pakistan six times, spending 336 days in the country, the ruling notes. The RPD, a division of the Immigration Refugee Board of Canada, found Ahmad “voluntarily re-availed himself of the protection of Pakistan” and “had not provided sufficient evidence to rebut the presumption,” the judgment reads. The tribunal found Ahmad’s description “of the agents of persecution ‘evolved depending on his audience,’” shifting between fear of religious extremists and government authorities on different occasions. The RPD found his statements to be inconsistent...  Immigration lawyer Sergio Karas struggled to understand Go’s decision after reading the ruling and seeing the justice repeatedly acknowledging much of the tribunal’s initial findings.  “It seems to be that she bends over backwards in this decision to find a way to root in favour of the applicant,” Karas said by phone on Thursday. “I think it’s grasping at straws here.”  Karas said he is familiar with the Ahmadi community from his work in the immigration space and the persecution they face in Pakistan, but sees Ahmad’s repeated and lengthy visits as undermining his refugee status.  “The problem with the argument is the length of time and the number of trips that the applicant made,” Karas wrote over email. “While brief trips for emergencies may be understandable, multiple trips over an extended period of time, and remaining in the country of alleged persecution for weeks or months, seem to be at odds with the alleged fear of persecution. Also, obtaining Pakistani passports not once, but twice, points to a lack of concern for safety.” Karas believes there is an urgent need to reform immigration law, particularly existing loopholes governing refugee status. He pointed to the spike in refugee applications in recent years, driven, in part, by foreign students seeking to extend their residency in the country. Figures reported by the Globe and Mail from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada show there were roughly 1,500 asylum claims from international students in 2018, which ballooned to over 11,000 by 2023."

23F - Toronto club scene has gotten creepy : r/TorontoHangoutFriends - "  I've been clubbing in Toronto since I was 19, and I've always loved it; the music, the energy, dancing with friends, letting loose. But lately, it's started to feel uncomfortable in ways I didn't expect.  It's not like men approaching you at the club is a new thing, but recently it's gotten creepy on a whole different level. Since the end of 2024, many Indian/ South Asian men at Toronto clubs are not taking no for an answer.  Some of what l've seen includes:
staring while you dance in a way that feels creepy
• trying to touch or dance with you after you've said no
• ignoring personal boundaries and just not takin NO for an answer.
The worst part? One of my girlfriends was actually followed home just last week. I've talked to other women who go out in Toronto regularly, and they feel the same way. It’s also gotten worse online.  There feels like there’s no space for us anymore even digitally. If you post here and mention “girl” friends, you’ll get random private messages with Instagram handles or unsolicited advances. It’s exhausting. I don’t understand what the expectation is when someone reaches out like that after you’ve clearly just been talking about safety and boundaries.  Again, this isn’t about attacking anyone’s identity. It’s about behaviour. Not taking no for an answer whether in person or online isn’t okay. Women should be able to exist in nightlife spaces and online spaces without feeling constantly pursued or ignored when they set boundaries."

Smith and Poilievre find someone to blame for their problems: immigrants - The Globe and Mail
To left wingers, the Globe and Mail being "centre right" means being ignorant of economics, conflating criticism of policy with criticism of immigrants and attacking nominally right wing politicians because they don't push the left wing agenda

MikesMoneyTalks.ca on X - "By mischaracterizing Poilievre & Smith's criticism of government policies as attacks on immigrants instead of the blatant failures of the Liberal government's immigration, temporary visa and asylum policies, which included changing arguably the most respected immigration system in the world, Mr Coyne is giving plenty of amo to those who accuse him of carry the Liberal government's water. As Canada's leading expert, Mikal Skuterud states "Incredible that Coyne continues to Pollyanna the LPC damage.""

Woman is suing Canada for ban on adoption under Muslim law - "Qadeer, a Canadian citizen since 2023, has not been able to go back home to see her adopted children — now 27, 25 and 21 — because Canadian officials will revoke her protection status for returning to the country she fled, Hirji added."
Melanie Bennet on X - "If Canada rules that its own laws are discriminatory against the laws of other countries, especially countries ruled by sharia, then our laws essentially become meaningless. "They contend that Canada’s immigration policy has disproportionately affected Muslim families and denied them equality rights under the Charter, even when a guardianship arrangement following traditional kafala is permanent and sanctioned by a foreign court.""
Having your laws be different from those in a brown or black country is racist. Muslims should sue for the right to practise polygyny
Weird that they're already so old, but still need to be adopted to gain entry to the country

Harrison Faulkner on X - "Canada is boosting the number of allowable low-wage temporary foreign workers from 10% to 15% in rural regions. Today, the government announced that youth unemployment rose to over 14%."

Harrison Faulkner on X - "Prime Minister Mark Carney: “Four times as many Indians study in Canada as in the UK. Twice as many as in the U.S. Yeah, we have a lot of people coming to Canada to study.”"
Daniel Tyrie on X - "This isn't a flex. The UK has 1.75x our population, the US has 8.5x our population and yet we have more Indian students than both combined? Indians are scamming our system and our Prime Minister is bragging about it..."
Gullible left wingers still vote for him and vote Liberal. Despite his claims about just getting there it's clear he's continuing a lot of the old bullshit

YEGWAVE on X - "🇨🇦🇮🇳 Dinesh K. Patnaik, India’s High Commissioner to Canada, says Canada needs 60 million Indians and adds that he could help make it happen."

Harrison Faulkner on X - "Canada's Immigration Minister Lena Diab: "The preservation of Lebanon's sovereignty is a cause I have championed throughout my political career, but indeed all my life.""
If you talk about dual loyalty among those with a migrant background, you're racist and xenophobic

Blacklock's Reporter on X - ".@LenaMetlegeDiab will no longer take questions from independent media under @CitImmCanada policy; only newsrooms that meet criteria for gov't approval will be granted audiences. https://t.co/mplJz5LM2q #cdnpoli @CanRevAgency @CdnHeritage"
Clearly, it is right and proper for the government to regulate the media, and if you disagree, you believe in spreading misinformation

'That's Crazy': Conservative MPs Confront Canada's Refugee Chief Over Iranian Regime Suspect Shielded From Public View - "The report found the IRB had accepted tens of thousands of asylum claims from a list of nations that didn’t require in-person interviews, including Iran and Syria. It documented acceptance rates running nearly double those of Canada's peer nations, and a backlog that has grown from 17,000 claims in 2016 to nearly 300,000 today. She confirmed for the first time that more than 23,000 of those claims were approved without a hearing or a single question asked."

Jamie Sarkonak: European citizens claiming asylum in Canada is a fraud - "the Federal Court gave a family seeking refugee status another shot at remaining in Canada. But they weren’t fleeing war — they were fleeing Spain. The family (aside from the mother) were Spanish nationals who claimed that they were being pursued by a transnational criminal organization, and that police were so useless that it warranted refugee status in Canada. Originally from Latin America, they moved to Europe when the father allegedly received a death threat from the gang in question. Spain didn’t feel safe either, however: the father’s relatives there said the gangsters had come looking for him, and the court heard evidence that the organization recently committed several murders there... you might be wondering: Why can Spanish nationals, based in the developed, allied, European Union, claim asylum in Canada in the first place? Well, in short, we allow anyone from anywhere to submit asylum claims, including democracies with functional, accountable justice systems. Since 2020, we’ve had claims from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Claims are just the first step to becoming a protected person who is permitted to stay in Canada, and many of those from western countries will be rejected. But even this is a problem: asylum seekers in the queue receive all sorts of social supports and take up capacity in our courts, health-care systems and schools. Even those whom we send back will cost us greatly. Claimants coming to us from developed democracies — such as our Spanish friends — often argue that they need to live in Canada because they lack adequate state protection at home. While it’s presumed that countries will protect their people with their police and courts, those who feel that protection is inadequate can claim asylum on that basis (whether that claim is accepted is a different matter, but it can take a long time for that process to work out). It’s a bizarre standard, given that it describes many parts of present-day Canada. More than one city is out of its depth trying to handle the local gang wars and daily cases of extortion . Nevertheless, over the years Canada has offered itself up to citizens of safe or allied countries. In 1985, a dual British-Irish national and former member of the Irish National Liberation Army claimed asylum here after the paramilitary group sentenced him to death for allowing hostages to escape. He wasn’t safe in Ireland, and it wasn’t clear whether he would be safe in Britain either, given his past involvement in terrorism and the fact it could be used to bar his entry. His case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and it wasn’t until 1997 that he was finally deported . The inadequate state protection argument has given asylum claimants of all sorts of backgrounds additional kicks at the can. A trans-identified American did this in 2019, arguing that Colorado police and the U.S. in general couldn’t be trusted for protection. They lost at the Federal Court in 2024 but an appeal appears to be in the works; the individual still appears to be in Canada, identifying as an “Exile from America” on a social media site for adult fans of My Little Pony. Numerous examples can be found among Hungarian nationals alleging that police won’t protect them because they are gay , or, more often , Roma . Indeed, the Canadian system seems to be very open to hearing out the cases of Hungarian Roma, who show up regularly in our immigration courts. Their cases are often dismissed, but their lengthy deportation fights secure them Canadian benefits for the time they’re here. Worse, they are known for committing crimes while they’re here; in 2012, a prosecutor estimated they cost Canadians $500 million to deal with. More Roma asylum claimants, and subsequent crimes , also come to us from the Czech Republic and Romania . Egregiously, in February 2025, an asylum adjudicator granted refugee status to a family of Nigerians, some of whom had French citizenship, the rest permanent residency. The mother alleged that she’d been trafficked by organized crime to Italy many years ago, escaped to France, and had lived for 12 years before the man who trafficked her found her again and began threatening her. She never contacted police and eventually fled to Canada. It was a terrible situation, but nothing so dire that it should require Canada to make refugees out of citizens from a fellow G7 country. The asylum adjudicator nevertheless found “serious shortcomings” in France that deprived these people of state protection, including racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant sentiment. This was overturned by an asylum appeals tribunal later in 2025, but it’s a problem that someone in the immigration system approved them to begin with. In 2019, immigration adjudicators rejected a claim by a German citizen who impregnated a married Muslim woman and received a death threat from her husband. In 2020, they rejected the claims of Belgian nationals originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who alleged that the justice system couldn’t keep them safe from their abusive father/husband. A similar case by Afghan-Dutch nationals fleeing domestic violence was rejected in 2025. That may sound like the system is working, but it’s not. These claims take years to process, and during that time, we offer them all sorts of social services. For example, an Eritrean man who gained Swedish citizenship and lived there for many years came to Canada and claimed asylum in 2014, alleging that Swedish police weren’t protecting him from persecution by the Eritrean government. Canada was still trying to deport him in 2024 — 10 years later — because removing people from the country takes an absurd amount of steps. Canada’s asylum system needs a complete overhaul. There should be a narrow list of countries from which we accept claims, and a firm cap on how many we accept from each. It’s foolish to waste our limited resources on fake refugees from western democracies."
If Europeans can seek asylum in Canada, that means that their own countries aren't safe. So they shouldn't accept refugees, to protect them

Once a Man, Never a Woman

Once a Man, Never a Woman
In an extraordinary new book, Shannon Thrace describes her disintegrating marriage to a man consumed by narcissism and gender dysphoria.

I’ve never been big on personal memoirs, let alone memoirs about intimate relationships. And so 18 Months: A Memoir of a Marriage Lost to Gender Identity isn’t a book I expected to like. But the author sent me a personalized review copy last month, and then nudged me a few times by email to check if I’d read it. Feeling duty-bound to get through at least a chapter or two, I cracked the cover on Thursday night. By Friday afternoon, I’d torn through the whole thing.

To sum up the story—and yes, this whole article will be full of spoilers—author Shannon Thrace and her spouse Jamie (both pseudonyms) enter the narrative as a loving couple, inhabiting a rural hipster idyll outside of Indianapolis. Husband and wife are software experts in their early 40s, with no kids, a great sex life, and lots of time for antiquing, gardening, and esoteric art-house interests such as kintsugi (look it up). Dinners consist largely of vegetables hand-picked from their own garden. They’ve been together for 14 years, yet sprinkle their playful conversations with ambitious literary allusions, like young lovebirds still trying to impress one another.

I mentioned the great sex, yes? Because that’s the pleasure perch from which the relationship begins its fatal nosedive. Shannon is on her computer, cycling through some of Jamie’s favourite porn genres as they get prepped for yet another satisfying bout of coitus. Jamie wants to see something new, he says—images of fully intact (and aroused) men wearing women’s underwear. Shannon, a former drag-bar worker who’d gone through a polyam lesbian period in her 20s, is the furthest thing from a prude. So she duly loads up the “tranny” videos (as Jamie calls them), and the evening comes alive with porn-fuelled sex.

As the story proceeds, Shannon serves up flashback sequences that take readers through her childhood, and on into the early years of her relationship with Jamie. She’s always been something of a lonely soul, we learn, sporadically preyed upon by older boys and men. As a young adult, she fled her Christian roots in Bluegrass country, only to replicate the same climate of fear and dysfunction with seedy jobs, deadbeat friends, and adulterous sex.

Jamie is an affable, attention-seeking man-child who plays guitar at parties and picks dorm-room-style arguments about religion and philosophy. When the couple flees the city, Jamie tells Shannon he’ll take on the role of domestic house-husband while she works an office job. We only have Shannon’s side of the story. But if her account is to be believed, Jamie never delivered: She ended up making six figures while he couldn’t even be counted on to do the laundry or cut up a melon. (I know that last detail sounds oddly specific, but that fruit makes a memorable appearance in an important scene.)

Like pretty much everyone else in their lives, Shannon and Jamie conceive of themselves as committed social progressives. And so right from the beginning, Jamie’s cross-dressing takes on activist overtones, including through a personal blog that he dedicates to breaking down the “gender binary.” He creates an author account for Shannon, too, so they can present a united blogging front against all those bigots eager to denigrate Jamie’s blossoming new gender-bending identity. In the end, the bigots never really show up—though Jamie doesn’t let that stop him from steadily taking on a victim mindset.

The trans community is diverse, especially when it comes to attitudes toward sex. As writer Angus Fox noted in a seven-part Quillette series, When Sons Become Daughters, some biologically male trans-identified teenagers live a sexless existence; and are drawn to puberty blockers and androgynous aesthetics precisely because they seem to offer safe harbour from male sexual development. In the case of middle-aged men who abruptly adopt a trans identity later in life, on the other hand, it can be the opposite: the presentation is often hyper-sexualized.

Such sexual inclinations can manifest as autogynephilia—arousal at the thought or image of oneself as a woman. This term doesn’t appear in 18 Months. But much of what Shannon writes about Jamie is consistent with the subcategory. When it comes to sex, she reports, he starts becoming excited by hard-core female-themed role-play involving a strap-on dildo. Shannon tries to be a good soldier, but plainly finds these new fetishes to be off-putting. Moreover, the intimacy of sex evaporates: Jamie is so deeply absorbed in his cosplay fantasies that her presence in the room barely registers. “Your hang-ups aren’t the kind most people have—the kind that lead to interesting, if controversial, sex,” Shannon writes. “You have the kind that kill sex. Making love to transgender Jamie turns out to be like making dinner for an anorexic.”

Shannon also becomes concerned by the increasingly extreme measures Jamie takes to present as feminine. These include not only expensive hair-removal treatments, but also painful cinches and body clamps. He obsesses endlessly over clothing, makeup, and hair, collapsing into tears if Shannon doesn’t repeatedly affirm that he looks like a “real woman”—which, of course, he doesn’t. It’s only a matter of months before Jamie announces that he’s no longer merely a cross-dresser—as he’d formerly described himself—but is now unambiguously transgender. He also wants to be addressed with female pronouns. (While Shannon honoured this request at the time, I’ve decided to refer to Jamie according to his male biological identity, for reasons explained in the last paragraph.)

Eventually, Jamie abandons both his household responsibilities (such as they were) and his part-time job teaching high-school computer science, so that he can dedicate himself to feminizing his appearance and writing social-media posts about his gender-related epiphanies. He also spends a lot of time patrolling discussion groups, heaping abuse on anyone he deems inadequately trans-supportive. As the months pass, Shannon notices, the sloganeering activist idiom he uses online begins to creep into personal conversation. So a simple request that Jamie not blow their mortgage money on beauty products is thrown back in Shannon’s face as a bigoted attack on Jamie’s very “existence.”

One reason Shannon’s narrative feels reliable is that she sometimes takes pains to argue points in Jamie’s favour, which isn’t something you’d expect if this book were written as a dedicated hit job on a despised ex. She notes, for instance, that Jamie still remained something of a free thinker and feminist during the initial stages of his transformation. At one point, he admits plainly that he’s a cross-dressing man with male privilege. And he tells Shannon that he won’t use women’s public bathrooms at the mall because he doesn’t want to cause anxiety for any women he might encounter therein.

Over time, however, Jamie becomes radicalized in his outlook, and these concessions to reality are retracted. In one especially shocking episode that took place just before the marriage collapses, Shannon catches Jamie joining a vicious online pile-on—which includes rape and death threats—targeting a female sexual-assault survivor who’d expressed anxiety about using the bathroom alongside trans women.

One gets the sense that Shannon might still be with Jamie to this day, trying desperately to make the relationship work, if she truly believed that transition was making her husband happy. But it’s the opposite: His inability to look like a real woman becomes a subject of inexhaustible emotional agony, causing him to lapse into crying jags whenever some anonymous waiter or clerk seems confused about his gender presentation. Many of the other trans women that Shannon meets at local support-group meetups also seem sad. In their canned rhetoric and online pronouncements, they channel the language of joy, liberation, and solidarity, all the while exalting their internally felt sense of gender identity. But in truth, what they really seek is the fleeting external validation that’s transmitted through the gaze of credulous onlookers.

In many cases, Shannon states bluntly, their elaborate faux-feminine get-ups look clownish. But no one is allowed to say so out loud, especially their partners. And much of this book consists of Shannon giving vent to such long-bottled up truths:

Your corset, your razor, your gaff: They whittle away your waist, your beard, the bulge between your legs. They make you less of who you are. But they can’t make you more … Shaving has laid bare your timeworn skin, not made it tighter nor brought back its flush. Tucking and compressing has squashed what makes you vibrant. You’re polished like a doll, now veiled like a widow, perfumed like a corpse.

Eventually, Jamie remakes not only his appearance, but also his past. He announces that he’d known he was female-spirited since the age of four. An oft-told story about a childhood brush with an abusive Boy Scout field-trip chaperone is rewritten to the effect that “it happened because I was seen as a girl.” Following an airport security search that’s conducted respectfully by well-trained staff, Jamie starts claiming he was transphobically harassed.

Jamie also rewrites his sex life, now claiming that his gender identity has nothing to do with sexual appetites. Unable to bite her tongue at this whopper, Shannon reminds Jamie of his requests to be demeaned as a “tranny” during sex, his inability to perform sexually unless he presents as a woman with a vagina while Shannon pretends to be a man with a penis, and, especially, his penchant for trans-themed porn—to which Jamie replies, without a hint of irony, “I was trying to find people like myself represented in the media.”

Lies, distortions, and selective memory are features of many disintegrating relationships, of course. But the style of conflict that Shannon describes seems uniquely toxic, since gender theory allows Jamie to cynically escalate even the most mundane disagreement into preposterous accusations of transphobic bigotry. And if that trick doesn’t work, he simply flees Shannon’s company altogether in a great flourish of tears, on the claim that her words are making him feel “unsafe.” As anyone who’s followed this issue on Twitter might have predicted, Jamie sometimes plays the suicidal-ideation card as well.

All of this gaslighting works on Shannon—at least for a while—because she has no one to talk with candidly about her pain. “You tell me you’re sad. I tell you I’m sad, too,” she writes (using “you” as a stand-in for Jamie). “[But] everyone considers your sadness an important civil rights issue, [while] no one gives a shit about mine.”

At one point, Shannon and Jamie go to therapy. In the first session, “Dr. Doris” tells Jamie that she can’t wait to begin the “fun part” of the therapeutic process—i.e., helping him transition. In the same breath, Dr. Doris urges Shannon to go get another therapist for herself, since Shannon’s insufficiently supportive attitudes toward Jamie’s feminine nature present a “conflict of interest.”

Nor does Shannon find allies among the friends who populate Jamie’s social orbit and enable his narcissism. For the most part, these are childless, underemployed, superannuated adolescents who spend a lot of time in imaginary realms created through video games, Dungeons & Dragons, science fiction, and live storytelling shows. When it comes to the younger set, Shannon describes “a penchant for undercuts, often dyed blue, [with] names that evoke Victorian toddlers: Larkin, Duncan. Two Quinns. Two Flynns.” At an older trans couple’s home, she observes:

tall stacks of comic books teeter[ing] alongside fantasy novels and the complete Twilight series on DVD. The bookshelves are dotted with superhero figurines, a bendable Grey alien and a Starship Enterprise model. Under the large-screen TV, a PlayStation sits wedged between an old-school Atari, a Dr. Who Lego game and a Magic: The Gathering card deck.

What truly drives the relationship to its breaking point is Shannon’s eventual realization that, with his slinky dresses and high-heel boots, Jamie isn’t a wannabe woman so much as an amateurish imposter. What he imagines to be womanhood is in fact a male masturbation fantasy that presents women as endlessly parked in front of boudoir mirrors, staring dreamily at their own decolletage as they mist themselves with bulbed perfume bottles. As Shannon writes, real women are more likely to spend their lives fleeing such male-imposed expectations:

‘Why can’t I get this right?’ you [Jamie] ask, moving toward the mirror in the foyer. You look at yourself from the side, from the back, desperate to understand where you’ve fallen short. But you are not made of ruffles and pink; a rejection of them is not a rejection of you. And I have earned my opinion. I learned at a young age that dressing sexy was my job. That in pants, I was too shapeless; without makeup, too blotchy and plain. I stopped shelling pistachios to preserve my manicure. I stopped climbing trees to wear heels. I learned to express my opinion less and smile more. Then, a little too late in adolescence, I realized that shit was holding me back … So these fabrics and pigments don’t hold the magic for me that they hold for you. They bore me, at best. At worst, they mean submission to the male gaze and life unlived. I don’t owe a reverence for femininity to conservative geezers who wish I’d ‘put in a little effort.’ And I don’t owe it to you.

---

Many of the activists who advocate for trans rights do so in the name of what they call “intersectional feminism,” which means, according to one doctrinaire formulation: “When we say women, that word always includes trans women … A woman’s gender identity is her innermost concept of being female. A trans woman’s gender identity doesn’t define or caveat her womanhood, it simply describes her journey to womanhood.” It’s a fashionable idea that everyone is supposed to endorse for public consumption, but which, as Shannon is brave enough to point out, very few people truly believe.

The experience of reading 18 Months strengthens my view that feminism will indeed be revolutionized by gender ideology—but not in the way activists imagine. Thanks to the overreaching of trans-rights fundamentalists, a whole generation of “gender-critical” women is now being forced to go through the bonding exercise of explicitly articulating what is unique about the experience of being biologically female. Though much maligned by doctrinaire progressives, this group has already become a real force, especially in the UK and the United States.

This book is an important part of that movement. Shannon’s understanding of womanhood isn’t the abstract, bloodless verbiage of a gender-studies treatise or woke Twitter thread. It’s the gritty, everyday stuff of heated, face-to-face discourse—the things she often didn’t say in the moment, but should have, to the man who shared her bed for 14 years:

I had sex with you. Sex in which you penetrated me, as men do to women. Sex that left semen in me and on me. I slept in the wet spot. I endured migraines and the birth control regime that caused them. When I missed a pill, I unrolled a condom onto your penis. When I missed a period, I took a pregnancy test. It was I who dealt with these women’s issues, not you.

As a general rule, I do my best to avoid misgendering people, even if words such as “she” and “her” don’t accurately describe biologically male individuals. But some situations invite exceptions to that polite rule, and a discussion of 18 Months strikes me as one of them. When I began reading this book, I still imagined that to call someone like Jamie a woman was merely to bend the truth in the service of courtesy. By the time I got through Shannon’s account of what she’d endured at Jamie’s hands, I realized that it’s nothing more than an ordinary lie.

 

 

Links - 26th April 2026 (1 - Pro-Crime Policies)

Libs of TikTok on X - "Ronald G. Johnson, a Circuit Court Judge in Hawaii, ordered the RELEASE of a convicted sex offender with 300 PRIOR ARRESTS despite prosecutors' objections. Just days after his release, Tommy Chiles was arrested AGAIN for BITING a police officer on Thanksgiving. Absolutely  INSANE."

Meme - Give A Shift About Nature: "If you're cool with your taxes being used to send people to prison but not college, there's a chance you might be a part of the problem."
Robert Hull: "Sending a bad person to prison improves the rest of society for everyone. Sending a person to college really only helps him. He might learn to be a doctor, but he's not going to offer his services for free."
College mostly benefits the individual but criminals harm society. Left wingers want criminals free to terrorise normal people.

Fury as Kentucky child killer who slaughtered boy is released 9 years early for 'good behavior - "A Kentucky child killer who butchered a boy to death in his sleep ended up being released from prison nearly a decade early for good behavior — only to be re-arrested just weeks later for violating his parole.  He’s due to be released again next year — this time with no parole restrictions.  Ronald Exantus, 42, of Indianapolis, was slapped with just a 20-year sentence after he broke into 6-year-old Logan Tipton’s home in Versailles, Ky., and went on a late night stabbing frenzy back in 2015, Lex18 reported. He used the insanity defense, and was found not guilty of murdering the kindergartner — but was convicted on three assault charges for knifing the other members of the Logan’s family.  After racking up good behavior credits in the slammer, Exantus wound up shaving more than 9 years off his sentence and became eligible for early release in October — sparking fury from the little boy’s family...   He was re-arrested just eight days later after he failed to register as a convicted felon with the local sheriff’s office within 48 hours of arriving — as required by the conditions of his parole.   Exantus has since been extradited back to Kentucky.  But a second quirk in Kentucky’s prison regulations means that he could get out again next year — this time with no parole... “Anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen people get good time credit for learning to play guitar — it was considered an educational credit which reduced the time of their sentence,” Kentucky Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Association president Ronnie Bowling said...  state Rep. Jason Nemes is trying to introduce Logan’s Law to ensure those found guilty by reason of insanity are sent to a mental health facility."

Rep. Andy Ogles on X - "🚨WOKE NASHVILLE JUDGE UPDATE Instead of apologizing to the family of that young woman who was raped to death, instead of apologizing to the people of Nashville, these judges have the gall to publicly complain about my oversight and call it 'dangerous rhetoric.' A woman was raped and is now dead because of woke policies, and those on the Davidson County General Sessions Court who let off a dangerous migrant criminal more than twelve times.  These judges are asking Governor Lee to give them heightened security because they feel threatened by my comments. Where were these Judges when she was being raped? Where were they when she lay dying? Do they care at all about the safety of my constituents? Doubtful."

Americans for Public Trust on X - "The prosecutor who released the Reston, Virginia, shooting suspect, an illegal alien, was backed by George Soros. Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano has received $627,653 from the Soros-funded Justice & Public Safety PAC."
AG on X - "Soros publicly bragged about funding a national campaign to elect hundreds of prosecutors who don’t believe in sending criminals to prison. He was very successful at electing those prosecutors, but it has been a costly disaster in every jurisdiction where it was applied.   Most of those prosecutors have since been recalled or voted out of office, but millions of Americans paid the price as victims of crime in the meantime. Those policies don’t work and cause immense harm.  One of the goals of the right should be to recognize local elections matter and remove every “reform” prosecutor in the country."

Will Tanner on X - "Europe became the greatest civilization ever seen by hanging criminals for centuries, executing 1-2% of each generation until doing such became unnecessary because the crime genes had been weeded out. As a result, they could focus on empire building and high civilization rather than forever paying the EBT Danegeld to a hostile and irrationally violent underclass"

Thread by @Will_Tanner_1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I'm once again reminding you that insane judges minted by our craven and wretched system have made it legal to murder white people so long as you're non-white.  A new 🧵 with the four most infuriating and disgusting cases👇
First, there's the above case.  Ayala intentionally ran down and m*rdered retired police chief Andreas Probst. Cackling with glee as he did it, he taunted cops and said he'd only get a "slap on the wrist" for murdering the white man.  And that's what he got; murder charges were dropped and he was sent to a psychiatric facility. He was smirking in prison when the charges were dropped
Then there's the "fellow classmate" who stabbed another student, almost to death, merely because she could. She said the other student, the white girl, looked like an easy target.  She's also had her attempted murder charges dropped, and faces charges that will only put her in jail for a few years, if at all
Then there's Ethan Liming. He was stomped and beaten to death by a gang of thugs at Lebron James' high school.  The thugs who did it, who intentionally killed him by beating him to death, effectively got away with it, getting only a few months in prison for the obvious murder
Then there's Jonathan Lewis.  A white high school student, he stood up for one of his friends who had had items stolen by black students.  He was murdered. A gang of 15 thugs beat him to death, intentionally, murdering him.  Only 4 of them faced charges at all, and those got a SWEETHEART sentencing plea deal that would have their adult murder charges fully downgraded to juvenile charges on manslaughter. They wouldn't even have an adult record.  They and their fellow thugs got away with murder caught on tape
There are many other cases where the DA is obviously unwilling to go after blacks who murder whites with due vigor, though the killers at least face some consequences.  In one example of many, there was 18-year-old Jacob Alexander Zamora. He was murdered in cold blood by a 34-year-old black male, Rashad Bernard White, for having skated near White's car and tapping it as he passed by it.  The DA not only took a full year to decide to file charges, and then it was only second degree murder despite obviously being premeditated given how White swerved toward Zamora and advanced upon him with a drawn pistol for a good bit of time before firing.  Once again, obvious first-degree murder was ignored in a way it surely wouldn't have if the races were reversed
What these cases, and the thousands more like them, show is that America is not only drifting toward becoming South Africa, but racing toward that outcome.  Anarcho-tyranny isn't just in our future, it's already here"

Dudley’s Hardware at Church and Wellesley will be closing after 75+ years. : r/toronto - "yea the truth is addicts and homeless people make it unbearable to run a business, not surprised they are closing. The government and police don't want to take any measures because people who don't live in the area, are super compassionate but don't offer any practical solutions. They might bang their pots and pans to show you their solidarity though in their high rise condos they live in ."

Dudley’s Hardware at Church and Wellesley will be closing after 75+ years. : r/toronto - "Wow, I rode past the other day and thought about how few oldschool hardware stores are left and how nice it is they're still there"
"Hopefully the "bUt ThEy HaVe iNsUrAnCe" crowd takes note."
"They have insurance, until the insurance company decides they're too risky to insure. There's a cafe up the street that gave up on replacing the windows and boarded them up permanently, with some fake plants to make it look nicer on the outside."
"Insurance for retail is also rising about 15% a year, part of is covid claims, part of it is stuff like this.  Its one of the reasons Loblaw is going out of its way to check receipts etc, its something they can show to insurance companies they are aiming to work to reduce loss."

Toronto Crime Watch on X - "Want to know how broken Canada is?  Waleed Khan, 26 of Toronto, who is now charged with terrorism offences, was arrested in August 2025 after trying to kidnap teenage girls at gunpoint.   Police found two loaded prohibited firearms: an AR-15 rifle capable of automatic fire and a pistol, both equipped with prohibited high-capacity  magazines, along with over 110 rounds of ammunition.  He was on probation at the time of arrest for prior violent offences and prohibited from possessing firearms. A judge still released him on bail with an ankle monitor.  Today it was revealed he had links to ISIS, they were targeting teenage Jewish girls, and he is being charged with terrorism offences."
Jason Kenney 🇨🇦🇺🇦 on X - "Utterly insane.  This guy was arrested in August,  while on probation, for trying to kidnap girls, and being in possession of illegal assault weapons.  And he was then let out on bail!!  Now he has been re-arrested, and has known ties to ISIS.  This is a total, catastrophic failure of the Canadian “criminal justice system.”  Is it going to take a terrorist on bail to replay a Bondi Beach style massacre in Canada before Parliament will act?  Enough!  Parliament should be reconvened immediately to eliminate bail provisions for re-offending violent criminals, with prospective application of the Notwithstanding Clause.  This is not complicated. The vast majority of Canadians would support it."

Do women deserve to feel safe on our streets, or don't they?: Selley - "Osman Azizov is out on bail. It cannot be, and yet, apparently, it is. Among the 14 charges against the 18-year-old Toronto man, and two alleged accomplices, are sexual assault with a weapon, attempted kidnapping, impersonating a police officer and unauthorized possession of at least one firearm.  It’s a close race, but the kidnapping allegations are perhaps the most disturbing — because who knows what might have been in store for the victims afterwards?... Three guys were allegedly running around trying to sexually assault and kidnap women for God-only-knows what purposes. Possibly they (or at least one of them) were targeting Jewish women specifically, though police communications have been somewhat vague on this point. There is a an alleged nexus, albeit indirectly in Azizov’s case, to Middle East terrorism.  And that’s somehow not enough to keep the accused behind bars pending his trial? It’s a good thing for Azizov that Canadians are not prone to vigilantism. It’s a good thing across the board that Canadians are not prone to vigilantism! But our general equanimity is being taken advantage of... Electronic monitoring, usually via an ankle attachment, is one of the more stringent conditions Canadian courts can impose on people while they await trial or sentencing. A cursory news-archive search confirms my impression that these ankle monitors are not especially hard to leave behind (though, small blessing, most of their former owners seem incapable of avoiding recapture for long).  This year in Ontario alone, at least two men facing weapons and theft charges have allegedly cut off their monitors and fled, along with one man awaiting sentencing for having sex with a child, and another for smuggling guns across the Canada-U.S. border. Others who have been assigned ankle monitors in the past include the aforementioned Waleed Khan.  There are semi-mainstream voices in Canada who will argue that Jews really have nothing to worry about in Canada. They include Avi Lewis, who might well be the federal NDP’s next leader. In a toe-curling melodramatic tour de force last year — Lewis deplored “the relentless cries of antisemitism that ring out hour after hour,” that “pour forth like a torrent these days, from CIJA (the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs), from B’nai B’rith and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, from Hillel (the Jewish student organization).”  “Everyone is so tired of being battered by … the hyper-entitled victimizing victims, who wield (antisemitism) as a rhetorical cudgel. So tired of the bludgeoning brigade of cry-bullies”... These are not the sorts of things New Democrats, or anyone else, would typically say to women pondering the threat of kidnapping and sexual assault on the streets of Toronto and its surrounding municipalities."

Elderly Seattle woman has eye gouged out in random attack by repeat thug — as cops admit 'he's notorious' - "Jeanette Marken, 75, was permanently blinded in her right eye after the alleged perp, Fale Vaigalepa Pea, 42, struck her with a piece of wood riddled with bolts and screws...   “Is that Fale Pea?” one officer can be heard asking. “He’s notorious for random assaults on Third [Avenue].”  When an EMT asked about the suspect, a cop responded, “He’s a regular. He usually punches. I guess today he decided to escalate from his usual.”  Pea, was slapped with an assault charge over the latest incident, has racked up a long list of prior arrests for assault, property destruction and unlawful use of weapons.  He was booked eight times this year alone in the King County jail, but none of them resulted in felony charges, records show.  The revelation infuriated the victim’s family as they demanded to know “what the hell is wrong” with the soft-on-crime system."
Elderly Seattle woman has eye gouged out in random attack by repeat thug — as cops admit ‘he’s notorious’ : r/SeattleWA - "This says it all 'One of the victims in that attack was stabbed eight times, yet despite a jury finding Pea guilty of the savage attack, he received a sentence of just 18-months community custody. '"

Salem, OR appoints convicted murderer to public safety position, officials speak out - "A controversy is brewing in Salem as public safety professionals say they oppose the City Council’s appointment of a convicted murderer to a public safety position.  Kyle Hedquist was appointed to serve on the Community Police Review Board and the Civil Service Commission after he was arrested for the murder of a 19-year-old back in 1995."

Dozens of mentally ill offenders go on to kill after secret release - "At least 30 dangerous mental health patients secretly freed from high security hospitals have gone on to kill in recent years, The Telegraph can disclose.  Around 250 violent offenders are detained in institutions such as Broadmoor, Rampton and Ashworth each year after courts decide they are too mentally ill to go to prison  Many, like the Nottingham killer, Valdo Calocane, are told their conditions are so acute that they are unlikely to ever be freed.  But figures obtained by the Telegraph reveal that 55 per cent of those sent to secure hospitals are quietly freed within five years, almost 90 per cent within 10 years and 99 per cent within 20 years... Julian Hendy, from Hundred Families, a charity that supports those affected by mental health-related homicides, said mental health tribunals were the last remaining secret courts in the justice system.  He said: “I know that when seriously mentally ill people who kill others are given hospital orders they are detained ‘indefinitely’ under the Mental Health Act. Indefinite sounds like a very long time indeed, but often it’s not.  “And many judges seem to be either ignorant or badly misinformed about the actual length of the detention of such offenders.  “I know from considerable experience that most mentally ill killers on hospital orders will typically be released back into the community within just five to 10 years.”"
Clearly, talking about this increases "stigma" against the mentally ill, and the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, so "empathy" means we should shut up and release more of them

Meme - Basil the Great: "Sadiq Khan said he stopped this advert going up because it's 'offensive'. The truth is he didn't want it going up because it's accurate. He doesn't want people being reminded of how awful our country has become"
'WELCOME TO LONDON. DONT FORGET YOUR STAB VEST. DUTCH BARN VODKA"
Time to mock the US for school shootings, which kill fewer kids than Americans killed by cows, even though knife murders in London alone are at least 10x the number of fatalities in school shootings in the whole of the US

Liberals' contradictory judicial and foreign policies endanger women - "Canada is drifting into a dangerous contradiction: we speak the language of women’s equality but tolerate legal, judicial and diplomatic outcomes that steadily erode women’s actual standing under the law... Canada’s domestic incoherence is mirrored in a foreign policy that subsidizes the very ecosystems where women’s rights go to die... To mask these failures, the federal government routinely redirects public debate toward abortion as the sole litmus test for women’s rights. This is a strategic diversion. Abortion access is settled law in Canada. What is not settled is the right of a woman to walk down a Toronto street without being targeted by an ISIS-inspired kidnapping plot, or the right of a survivor to know her attacker isn’t back on the street 24 hours after an arrest due to permissive bail. States derive legitimacy from their ability to protect their citizens. When the government tolerates a “principle of restraint” for predators at home and a principle of engagement for misogynistic tyrants abroad, it is no longer a champion of equality. It is a merchant of complacency. If Canada continues to negotiate away the safety of its women for the sake of judicial “efficiency” or diplomatic “utility,” it will fail more than just half its population. It will collapse the rule of law itself."

Hunter Ash on X - "If we truly neutrally applied the law, it would eventually reduce racial disparities in crime rates. Most crimes are committed by a small minority in all groups, and if you simply jail those people and keep them jailed, no group will have a high crime rate among the remaining, non-jailed population.  If we managed to catch them early and keep them jailed during their peak crime years, which are also peak reproductive years, it would have a durable, intergenerational effect because violent criminality is moderately heritable.  Uniform policies/selection pressures cause asymptotic convergence. If we create a system where crime reduces evolutionary fitness, then criminality will decrease fastest in the groups that currently commit the most crimes."

Angus Reid finds 62 per cent of Canadians believe crime is increasing - "Canadians are increasingly concerned about rising crime in their communities, according to a new Angus Reid Institute poll.  “New data from Angus Reid,” says Shachi Kurl, president of the institute, “shows that three-in-five (62 per cent) Canadians believe crime has been rising in their communities over the last five years. That’s a lot more than the number of Canadians who say there’s been no change (24 per cent) or a decrease (five per cent).”  The new perception is matched by empirical data from Statistics Canada, which shows a rise in both its Crime Severity Index and Violent Crime Severity Index since 2020... The rate of police-reported violent crime in the U.S. was 334 incidents per 100,000 in 2023, which remains significantly higher than the rate in Canada — 252. However, the gap between the U.S. and Canada has shrunk over the past 25 years."
Statistics Canada is ignorant. Don't they know that crime is down?
The reality of lived experience is only useful when it pushes the left wing agenda

I was banned from the toronto sub for sharing my accurate perspective on the carding issue : r/Toronto_Ontario - "This is exactly what I wrote, I got 52 upvotes and they hated that. They banned me for this which is insane.
"Carding worked, to say that it didn't is disingenuous.  I actually grew up in the hood, I was carded over 30 times. What carding did and the effects after it was stopped are actually pretty drastic but you have to actually want to have the nuanced conversation and understand. The problem is many of you on here didn't grow up in the hood so you don't understand the mentality and the way we grew up because you all have grown up privileged and just cant grasp that there is a different world here.  During carding, the mentality of my peers was that we do NOT bring guns everywhere we go because we understand we could always be randomly stopped and do a 5 year bid (it was automatic minimum 5 years back in the day for getting caught with a gun), so essentially if you went to the mall or downtown or to some event and you seen your opp the chance of a shooting is much less likely and essentially you might get into a fist fight or call your crew and by the time they come to bring the gun it would give enough time for people to get away and etc.  Now people in the hood are not afraid to bring guns everywhere mostly due to just not being able to randomly stopped, I don't live in the hood anymore but Im still generally associated to younger people from there as I work in music and its completely changed in mentality for this aspect now. The biggest difference now is you have so many instances of guys that don't like each other bumping into each other and shootings happen, its one of the reasons why alot of rappers have been killed downtown, ie smokedawg, Houdini and more.  This article uses data from thats not empirical and already has preconceived conclusions if you look at who's doing it, its not hard to sway how the data is gathered to get YOUR conclusion. There is currently big business in race grifting and I literally know the people who make money off this.   As for the aspect that it's racist, you can argue that but you also have to have a nuanced conversation about that as well. Cops always targeted people who they believed would be up to criminal activities not just "because they are black" they weren't that stupid, they weren't just going to bother you because of your race but for instances back in the day if you wore baggy jeans, bandanas, long tee's, timbs and etc you would fit the appearance of people who would do these activities including violent robberies, dealing drugs and etc, I was one of them. This description changes 10 years ago it would have been bubble jackets and true religion jeans and now probably Nike Techs or Skinny jeans in a specific way, the only thing thats been consistent is prob black air forces lol. I've been around situations when cops would do block raids and my boys cousin who was black wearing and fitted polo, khakis and boat shoes didn't even get looked at by them.  Now the reason why it seems like its a racist policy is because most people that live in the hood are black, usually at least 50% if not higher depending on what area but its not everyone, there were people of all races in the hood including white kids kids that faced this same thing but there wasn't many white kids in the hood especially after the 90s except maybe like Regent Park.  Were many of the cops assholes? Sure, did they try to bully? yeah but did it actually work in preventing crime? It did. The biggest issue is many of you on reddit don't like nuance and the reality of things. This is why this will probably be downvoted.""

onion person on X - "rightwingers continuously too low IQ and cannot differentiate between state violence that the state endorses and random acts of violence that are immediately punished"
wanye on X - "The stabbing on the train is very clearly a kind of state violence, or is at the very least state endorsed. This state refused to incarcerate the perpetrator. The state similarly prevents me and you from dealing with the perpetrator as people would in the absence of rule of law."

Thread by @xwanyex on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Big difference between liberals and conservatives on the limits of this principle. To liberals, your life has value in every conceivable situation. But conservatives just want the rules to be clear, fair, and easily followed.  “Don’t run from the police” meets all three requirements and so isn’t at all problematic under such a framework.  Can I understand the rule? Does it have a purpose? Is it easy to avoid the bad outcome? Does the rule produce good outcomes for everybody who follows it? Is the rule fair? Can I easily control whether I break the rule?  These question bear heavily on what the conservative thinks of bad outcomes for rule breakers.  Liberals on the other hand don’t think any of that is relevant or interesting. Home invasions are the clearest example of this. It’s hard to imagine anything more easily avoided than getting shot in a home invasion. But the liberal position is that your life has infinite value in every conceivable situation such that it outweighs literally every other imaginable concern."
blighter on X - "mostly true except the left clearly, explicitly thinks you can forfeit the value of your life if you violate rules they hold dear. it seems to be when you’ve done something they think hurts people unforgivably. if you, say, have hurt people by running a health insurance company then of course there’s no problem with killing you, your life isn’t infinitely valuable, rather your murder is laudable."
Nemesis 2026 on X - "I think this is correct for what it's worth, but also probably overly generous to the leftist mind. Assigning principle where there isn't one. Their position is not actually that every life has infinite value in every situation. Their position is that the people and groups on their friend list have infinite value in every situation.  If Good had been a redneck in a MAGA hat trying to stop the cops from arresting literal neo-nazis, does anyone think the left would have demonstrated outrage?   Of course not. They'd have laughed and said he got what he deserved.  And sure, some conservatives would have flipped the script and been outraged. But most would probably agree that he was just a dumbass."