Item the 1st – I suppose that, with entry XX, it’s only appropriate I have a thought about radical feminists. A thought triggered by the title “How Woke Feminism Created the Manosphere” from the “Dad Saves America” podcast. I haven’t watched/listened to the podcast, so I’m making no representation as to it’s content or quality. But I did have a gut level reaction: “You fucking think?!?!?!” But this isn’t really about that question.
It’s more me wondering, how the hell do said woke feminists square the cognitive dissonance inherent in their central premise?
Namely – women have been held down by the patriarchy for… well, forever or at least the whole of recorded human existence. But somehow, men are just going to let you waltz in, tell them what to do, force them behave a certain way, and allow you to dominate them (yeah, yeah, some will actually pay extra for that!)? So how does that work (I mean other than the ancient access to the tiddies method)? If men are toxically masculine, patriarchal to the core and are capable of dominating women physically and mentally for all of human history and, by all your whining, apparently continue to do so to this day, just what the hell are you going to do about it? Even if you think you can ‘educate’ or cajole us out of it, why haven’t your equally capable feminine ancestors already done that? And why do you depend on men with guns and force to enforce whatever laws others, largely men, have passed? If men are the patriarchal monsters you always claim, you would be in chains. The whole of human history, including the modern history of your movement, is a giant refutation of your central postulate. If your postulate were true, rather than being not only tolerated, but actively coddled and getting preferential treatment (note I’m not objecting to said state of affairs), you would have been stuffed into a box somewhere to serve whatever purpose the nearest set of balls and toxicity thought best. But eventually, keep pushing and people will tire/have tired of your bullshit (including, more and more other women). Be thankful that, at least for now, the reaction is largely “fuck off, you’re on your own” and not the reaction one might imagine from real toxic masculinity that you are always imagining.
Item the 2nd – In a recent thread here, someone posted a comment about cops doing bad things to people in the service of the ‘elite’ – it may have been that whole “lego” kerfuffle. I responded something along the lines of “the holocaust was built on a pension and a paycheck”. And someone else (may have been JI?) had an observation about the cops behavior in COVID and/or BLM. An example currently in the new is the Nowak murder in England – every single cop did what they were ordered/trained to do
I thought about a more personal story. My father was a card carrying Bacon-man. This was in the late 60s through his retirement in the early 90s in small town Wisconsin. One story he told me was that, in the early days, laws against cohabitation were still on the books – you couldn’t shack up with a member of the opposite sex for illicit purposes unless you were married. Licit away if married. Anyway, it was never enforced except when the former significant other would call the police on her ex – and yes, according to him, it was always women that reported their ex-boyfriends or husbands, not the reverse. He reported his embarrassment and profound shame, standing in the hallway while the guy tried to hide in the closet or stood on the porch in his underwear holding his shoes. Profound shame. But he still ‘did his job’.
Now I’m not comparing busting up a rutting couple to letting a guy bleed out or putting a bullet in the back of pregnant Jewish woman’s head. But the principle is the same. For my father, the right thing to do would have been to refuse to do it. But he was a young father with a young wife and children. And even though it likely would have worked out better in the long run for him and his family (he never really like the job), in the moment, he felt he could not take the risk. In fact, this approach can be honorable – you do something difficult and unpleasant for your family, shield them and provide for them by absorbing the bad (quite the contrast to all that toxic patriarchy…).
It’s challenging to separate the honorable from the cowardly and to know when the unpleasant task is just an unpleasant, difficult task and when it is an affront to humanity. And even if you realize sub-consciously it’s the latter, very few are willing to invite attention, potential harm, and ostracization for a principle.
Item the 3rd – (Bonus Muzak) This was just a reaction to the CBS news story referenced here. In this case, it was related to injury from taking Ozempic and Mounjaro for weight loss, but I was triggered by the general framing of “If it can happen to me, it can happen to you!” that occurs when ever someone suffers consequences that they just didn’t think would happen. “It can happen to you!” – No. In this context, No it can’t. Because I’m not taking any of these drugs and when I heard about them did look into them and the paralysis, bowel obstruction is, if rare, documented and may be especially relevant given that the dosing for weight loss of these drugs is considerably higher than for glucose control/diabetic treatment where most of the longer term data on effects is available. If that’s a risk you’re willing to take (and not just at the level of “Oh, it’s rare, it couldn’t possibly happen to ME!” which seems to be the common interpretation of ‘rare’ side effects) against other methods of controlling your weight, more power to you. But, no, it can’t happen to anyone! because it requires action on your part to create the conditions under which it could happen. And if you took those actions and placed yourself in the category of people to which, yes indeed, it could happen to, you have assumed the risk – KNOWN risk; I’m not even taking them nor have I thought about taking them and I know the risk. Especially since Mounjaro and Wegovy have – as far as I can tell – always had warnings regarding ileus and Ozempic has since 2023. Whether those were sufficient is, I suppose, for the courts, PBUThem, to decide.
Note that this is not a comment on GLP-1 agonists in general, Ozempic in particular, or any other approach to weight loss, or any other treatment for anything really. Nor is it a comment on the appropriateness of the lawsuit itself, especially in case of Ozempic which did not list ileus as a potential side effect initially. Just the emotional manipulation inherent in the “bad thing X can happen to anyone” formulation to bolster a law suit. The basis of a lawsuit is whether the notification and knowledge of the side effects justify a tort, not whether it can happen to anyone. OF COURSE a side affect can happen to anyone. Who is taking the drug.
If men are the patriarchal monsters you always claim, you would be in chains.
That’s the feminists’ fetish.
Ain’t that the truth.
It ain’t men that made The Handmaid’s Tale so popular.
Or 50 Shades of Grey.
I recycled SOG, into a dumpster.
I try to avoid thinking that, but there certainly seems to be an undercurrent of it, at least as an outside observer to female psychology.
It’s not precisely ‘in chains’ but there is a common aspect – clearly to greater or lessor/non-existent degrees – of ceding control but with the underlying knowledge of essentially complete safety and support.
Perhaps analogous to the seemingly inherent contradiction in men’s psychology of wanting a total slut in private but a chaste virgin in public and prior to making your acquaintance.
My ex thought she was in control, until she wasn’t.
I remember my son told me one of his teachers said that homelessness could happen to any of us.
She got mad because he argued that his family weren’t drug addicts and if something bad happened either I would figure something out or our extended family would help.
I was kind of proud he had that much faith in me and definitely did not discourage him from arguing with his teachers.
If I have a house that I do not regard as a home, am I homeless?
baller
How dare one of the little shits deny the Narrative.
Well, it could happen. You might accidentally start using addictive drugs that you found out in the yard and then you’re hooked.
Thanks for the warning, I’ll try not to do that.
The most common length of homelessness is one night. Second is two nights.
It takes a lot for someone to not find any resource available to find a place to stay. And burning every bridge due to drug or alcohol addiction is a fast way to eliminate those resources,
We’re all just one paycheck away from flinging shit and yelling at imaginary people on the streets.
Too late! Even as the road is deserted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc2_Rexmws4
And even though it likely would have worked out better in the long run for him and his family (he never really like the job), in the moment, he felt he could not take the risk.
In all likelihood he would have been replaced by someone eager for the chance to put his boot on somebody’s neck.
Hey buddy…
Yes probably. And that eagerness was certainly true for a substantial minority of the force. For all his faults, he was not one for that. That also led to him not making much progress in the profession, staying a patrolman on late shifts for essentially his entire career – you don’t get promoted if you give warnings rather than tickets or don’t participate in the culture of us vs. them.
Hence, he would have been better off leaving in the long run, if not the short run; it was not a good job for his long term mental health.
To add to the cognitive dissonance, woke feminists will support the Current Things, which are standing up for Palestine and illegal immigration, both of which involve cultures that actually DO hold women down. It’s one ideology of the day over another, ignoring inconvenient facts that conflict with their current narrative.
I think that’s a different sort of cognitive dissonance. It’s a case of ignoring reality/compartmentalizing in the service of what is, clearly to them, a more important political/social goal. A trade-off in way.
The dissonance of the patriarchy is just an inherent contradiction in the whole concept.
It’s also not directly harmful to them, which allows them to choose fashion over practicality.
Holding luxury beliefs requires the willful ignorance of inconvenient facts.
I still don’t know how that works.
But I think “Palestine” is just a stand-in for “leftism”. None of them actually gives two shits about those people. Probably the same for illegals. They pretend to support these things because all the other right-thinking people pretend to support these things.
OT – the mainstream PR groups are too right wing!
https://nypost.com/2026/06/11/opinion/mamdanis-only-making-his-puerto-rican-day-debacle-worse/
Mandami wasn’t even living in this country when the Puerto Rican day episode of Seinfeld aired.
“Arrogantly making needless enemies is a good way to make yourself a one-term wonder boy.”
Not if you crush your enemies underfoot, hearing the lamentations of their women…..
Mamdani watched the Heath Ledger Batman movie and saw that as a roadmap to good governance.
He may need to block the bridges to stop people from fleeing if he keeps going the way he is going
Saw that. Hilarious.
This guy does not want to step outside his comfort zone, at all.
I like the author’s optimism. I am not sure I share it.
Insurrection ! The real way
https://history.house.gov/Oral-History/Events/1954-Shooting/
Okay, I don’t bother to think about this stuff very often, but…
Have any of these “radical feminists” ever contemplated the notion of partnership, as opposed to enslavement? Maybe that whole division of labor concept is just a cruel hoax, but I wouldn’t want somebody who does the same things and wants the same things I do. It would be boring as Hell, and a lot of necessary tasks would go undone.
Maybe that whole division of labor concept is just a cruel hoax
One that has persisted in form or another throughout human history and, further, is essentially an iron clad rule in the entire biological world (outside of parasites, viruses, and the like). “Essentially” only because there may be examples, but I can’t think of a single animal or plant where there isn’t some division of ‘labor’ (function) between an exclusively bimodal division of phenotypes (to avoid the racist, sexist, and misogynist terms ‘male’ and ‘female’)
Cooperation? Don’t you understand that all human life is conflict? The core of conflict is between those with power and those ground underfoot by that power.
But relevant enough for you to try to gotcha him?
How does it feel to be outwitted by a geriatric Jew?
I would never heckle a stand up comedian, even a retarded one, because they would be much better at come backs than I ever would be.
One of my favorite examples, but Norm was definitely not a retard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7az23QCJBnQ
Exactly. These are people exposed to heckling on a regular basis.
That’s funny right there, I don’t care who you are.
Note that they’re not ambushing Israelis; they’re ambushing Jews.
Try that sort of collective guilt against any other minority group, and imagine the resulting howling.
He seems to be pro-Israel – that’s good enough for them.
So unbelievably not relevant that you are chasing him through the parking lot. Nice.
It seems there might be a downside to influencer culture
Hence, he would have been better off leaving in the long run, if not the short run; it was not a good job for his long term mental health.
A long time ago, I hit on the idea of “term limits” for cops. They deal, in large part, with the scum of the earth on a daily basis, and cannot help but be adversely affected by it.
Dear The Powers That Be,
R.J. explained to me how to force WordPress to render a plain URL instead of an embedded link. I edited my submitted article appropriately. Thank you R.J.!
(The secret is to press Shift-Ctrl-Alt-M to go into the code editor and edit the HTML directly. Press Shift-Ctrl-Alt-M to return to the visual editor.)
Even thought it’s a links article please feel free to assign it to any needy time slot.
For RJ, I’ve seen Switzy commenting over in Twitter land.
I know what the DOD needs… one more 4 star billet!
https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/senate-defense-bill-authorizes-new-combatant-command-autonomous-weapon-systems
I saw that movie. That will be the first guy Skynet kills.
Movie? I think there were several. Robocop comes to mind. Probably some Marvel movies too.
Bitching mode activated:
Earlier this morning I saw a post on X that inspired me to respond. It was a national account, but at that moment I was one of the first to view it.
Since my post, the post I responded to has been viewed almost 2,000 times and reposted twice. I am the only response (as far as I can see).
My response has *four* views.
Four.
Presumably X displayed that post almost 2,000 times with zero responses under it.
How many other responses is it hiding?
I get burying a post from a nobody in an avalanche of hundreds of responses…. but showing zero instead of one? (Or 4 or 5)
What the heck, X?
Reddit is better than that.
Reddit hides responses also. Not sure if it’s lag, crap design, or intentional algo. They’re all the same. The goal is engagement and manipulation. Pomtekin villages were more real than this.
Ugh. I used to be active in Reddit science and nerd groups. It was fantastic. I talked with people at NASA and the CDC and SpaceX and ULA.
And then the communist invasion happened and I kinda gave up.
But when I left, I could leave an early comment in a thread and Tory Bruno would see it, read it and respond.
It was a pretty cool chat-room type experience.
Before that, Slashdot was really good, with meta-moderation keeping things in line.
Not anymore. Too bad.
*points wrinkled, liver-spotted finger at cyto*
Look here, Sonny. Usenet was where it was at.
Heck, I used to correspond with people in Australia over FidoNet using my Amiga 500.
I was just talking with someone on X about the transformation when someone built the tools for Usenet uuencoded binaries into Emacs so you didnt have to strip, cat and pipe the text yourself. Odd that this came up 2 days in a row I. 2 entirely separate planes of existence.
I have a feeling that if you just scroll down through responses, it doesn’t increment the views to the same extent that actually clicking on the time-stamp or being sent to a tweet by direct link does.
But people want to virtue signal about how evil the social media companies are….
To wit, I happen to have a tweet of mine open that I responded to 17 minutes later to add some more photos. The second tweet shows up in the responses, but it has significantly fewer views.
I returned to a prior post a couple of hours later. It had up-to-date info on views. I dont think it is a caching issue.
Clearing cache, restarting app just now… views of original up to almost 1,300. My post… still the solo post…. 8 views. They got 8 likes. And still only 2 reposts.
Hmmm… thinking further about Ted’s thoughts…. it probably indicates that the OP got very few interactions, so nobody saw any replies and nobody else replied. The 8 likes and 8 views are suspiciously congruous. So Ted may have the winner.
Huh.
I experienced the most effortful scam attempt that I’ve even heard of.
I have two financial institutions that I use for day-to-day money stuff: TXCU (which I’ve had since my first post-graduation real job and they were cool to me so I stuck with them) and NYCU (which I opened when I bought my house because TXCU isn’t allowed to write mortgages in NY . The overwhelming majority of my liquid assets are with TXCU
Phone call (Caller ID is NYCU)
Middle aged white lady voice: “This is NYCU Fraud Department calling with some suspicious activity” The actual interaction is very similar in script to the actual fraud checks that my credit cards have done. “Did you make a purchase at [place] on [date]? ” Naturally the places were places I was not. Mostly Nashville. When I said no, they said “we’re cancelling that transaction” This went on for about twenty minutes. Then there was one they said they couldn’t cancel, involving TXCU. Then more that they could for another ten-fifteen minutes. They’d be locking down my account, cancelling my cards, deactivating my online login. They asked me if I could come into a NYCU branch today, that a visit sooner would be better to sign some stuff and get my account opened back up.
But that TCXU transfer, they couldn’t handle that one, but they’d reach out to TXCU and have their fraud department call me.
A few minutes later caller ID lights up with TXCU on it. Another middle aged white lady voice. They went through something similar, also involving purchases made from an iPad in Nashville. Said they were locking down the account, cancelling the cards, and they’d text me a link so I could reset the password on my online banking.
And there it was. A text asking for my credentials for a “one time security check.” I hung up, confirmed with both TXCU and NYCU that it was a bogus attempt.
Still though, they did their research on me and put in the human interaction time to get me to lower my guard. I did not know that level of dedication still existed.
Wow. That is fantastic. That could easily catch almost anyone off-guard. My wife would 100% fall for that, except she would get frustrated and bored long before 15 minutes and make me handle it.
They must think or know that there is enough in those accounts to cover the time investment.
Aggregate data from various online sources (both public and from myriad data breaches) and identify people with enough money to be worth the effort, but not so much money that they have people to handle things, sculpt the attack, then go for the big bux.
Yeah, I would absolutely love to know the inside of this one. Clearly not just 2 old ladies on their own trying to scam $1,500 at a time.
National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University? There’s your problem! What financial institution is NYCU?
I can easily see why you’d be confused. One thing that’s always good to remember when these things start ballooning is take a number, name and ticket and say you will call back. The number you call back is the one on your credit card, or financial institutions statements.
This is the way.
Credit union in TX and credit union in NY.
I can only assume that a credit report on me will show active accounts at both, though I don’t know if they would/could know that they picked the correct one to launch the real attack at, or if it was just a coin flip.
I had a similar call from “USAA”. Something about it felt a little off even though it showed as USAA’s fraud department. I checked my card, and none of the charges they talked about were there. I said I’d call back, and when I did USAA said, nope, not us.
Nice move
I had relatively recently checked my TXCU activity online, so the call made me super-paranoid that my computer had become infected with malware — most excellent psychological jujitsu on the scammer’s part!
Thanks, RC,
I got a call from “USAA” a couple years ago.
Caller ID shows USAA and the phone number is correct.
Very nice lady asks about a $500 something transaction in Houston, I had been there a couple weeks prior, but had made no large purchases.
She said if I verified my card number they could cancel the transaction.
I told her she should have the number there, still not suspecting.
She became adamant I give her the number, so I hung up and called USAA.
Shockingly, there was no $500 Houston transaction and they had not called me.
I hate thieves and scammers.
They must be putting more effort into each scam instead of casting a wider net. Not encouraging.
The scary thing is, someone is going to program an AI chat bot to do something like this, if they haven’t already. They could have it send emails, texts, and make calls using different voices.
Wow – nuts.
Definitely trying harder than that identically-worded texts to “Omar” (not my name) from a different number every day.
Me, I don’t answer any calls from anyone I don’t know. If they leave a message, I may or may not call back.
Just one question – how’d they manage to spoof an actual CU? If that’s easy then shit, my strategy won’t work.
AFAIK, there’s some fundamental uncloseable flaw in the US phone system that means spoofing can’t be stopped.
Shit.
Well. I think I might be good: I really only pick up when I am expecting a call. Even if I recognize the number but I’m not expecting a call, I don’t answer. They can leave a message.
I have not trouble reading Axios, but folks here sometimes do for whatever reason. That said if you can read this it’s an amazing screed against Musk throwing up roadblocks to progressive utopia.
Old title: Race-obsessed, untouchable Musk hits escape velocity from CEO rulebook
Current title: Elon Musk’s age of impunity
Elon Musk is on the verge of financial immortality: The world’s richest man — and potentially its first trillionaire — has built a sovereign corporate kingdom that is too systemic to fail.
Even the text embedded in the link is a treat:
https://www.axios.com/2026/06/11/elon-musk-spacex-belfast-riots-incitement
And there it is. The only possible explanation for being opposed to the destruction that woke is causing is “white culture”.
Dear Axios, go fuck yourself.
You mean, Western civilization isn’t the product of white people, their societies, and their cultures?
lol Historically, sure.
But I hear we let non-whites into the club now. As long as they behave themselves.
https://x.com/dcopechatter/status/2065032801737478589
Voting shenanigans in CA? Unfathomable.
But an unsourced claim of 18,000. Right now all I know for sure is one rejection based on that post.
I’m not disputing it, I just need more substantiation.
Is it Groundhog Day again?
“Trump says he canceled strikes against Iran as talks proceed”
https://abcnews.com/International/live-updates/iran-live-updates-israel-iran-trade-strikes-trump/?id=133674243
Of course he did.
How does he know there were 18,000 votes rejected?
I’m amazed. I’m reading a piece in The Atlantic on the decline of the UK. I find myself actually agreeing with most of the analysis and suddenly I’m reminded I’m reading The Atlantic again.
But the government’s actions during and after the crisis compounded the damage. Rather than increase spending to revive depressed demand, as modern Keynesians would counsel, the government, then led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, opted to slash budgets as revenue plunged. The theory was that fiscal discipline—cutting spending more sharply than Britain’s peer countries—would inspire confidence and spur growth. At the time, deficits and debt were seen as immoral; unlike profligate Greece, Britain would manage its affairs prudently.
How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi
A case study in self-sabotage
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/07/uk-productivity-economy-reform-party/687303/
Do you know who also wore Hugo Boss and was targeted for a takeover?
https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/hugo-boss-shares-jump-after-frasers-group-takeover-proposal-a22eebbb?st=hQsE4b&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink