“You'll be alright. Just stop squirming honey, lay still,” Orpah said.

Samson lay on his back on the hot rocks beside the rugged rock path of Sonder Mountain. The sun was flaming intensely, laying a blanket of heavy heat over them. His leg was bent awkwardly, unnaturally, so much so that a lick of the white of his bone could be seen through his shin.

“Calm down honey,” Orpah soothed him, leaning the water flask into his mouth.

The yelling had stopped. Samson had screamed and yelled in pain until his vocal cords were bloody. It was obvious that there was no one else on the path, and with nighttime fast approaching, unlikely it was that the situation would flip. Orpah took off her top, leaving her in just her skimpy white vest, before soaking it in water and laying it over Samson's forehead. The sky was a deep shade of orange. It would have been quite beautiful to look at if the situation was different, less dire perhaps. Orpah knew she would be able to find help at the bottom of Sonder Mountain. But that was easily a three-hour hike, and with night looming over them, she couldn't risk leaving Samson at the mercy of the coyotes. Not while his leg dripped blood and he dipped in out of consciousness, driven hysterical from pain. So she remained at his side, lovingly combing her fingers through his long hair as she tended to his needs.

“They'll notice we aren't there at dinner and come out looking for us. I'll start a small fire to make us a tad more visible,” Orpah said.

Samson gritted some form of acknowledgment through his gritted teeth. His face was almost as pale as his knuckles. Pain like this, it was nothing he ever felt before. It had him contemplating death, wondering whether a life with this amount of agony was one worth cherishing, worth fighting for. Was death not void of all such suffering? But he held on to life, if only for Orpah and her beautiful face, the love she evoked within him, and the tenderness of her touch.

“Go… find… help,” Samson managed to utter without opening his jaw.

Orpah looked up at him.

“Light the fire… and go find help… it'll keep the… coyotes away,” Samson explained.

“Are you sure?” Orpah asked.

Samson nodded. His leg had gone numb from the pain. The feeling of being stabbed over and over again was so consistent it had become a non-factor, like when noise is so ceaseless it becomes soothing or when you wear your glasses for so long you forget they're on. The first few stars twinkled in the sky which was slowly turning from orange to black. Orpah reached into her backpack and pulled out a box of long matchsticks. The trail was mostly stones and sand, but Orpah managed to gather enough sticks to start a sizeable flame. She cordoned it off with a few rocks, kissed Samson on the forehead, and headed down the trail.

“I'll be back as fast as I can,” Orpah said.

The smoke from the flame was serpent-like, the wisps slithering sinisterly. Every moment remaining in consciousness was a conscientious effort. He was glad for the flame. The air had suddenly gone from sweltering to chilly which only made the pain worse. Suddenly he felt the ground shake. He wasn't sure at first; it was as subtle as can be. But it grew and grew until it was an undeniable tremor, as if a giant was walking in the vicinity. Samson didn't have to wonder too much before the source made itself known. A kangaroo hopped out from behind a rock. It was purple and had a flame on the tip of its tail.

“What the everloving frick are you?” Samson said aloud in fear, “what in the frick is that?”

The kangaroo looked at him, tilted its head, and smiled. About twenty crabs crawled out its pouch and scattered all over. The kangaroo stretched in relief. Samson tried to crawl away but failed. The kangaroo was still towering over him.

“I done carried them from Jupiter. Nasty lil buggers, those claws are nothing to be ignorin',” the kangaroo said in a raspy voice.

“What the actual frick is going on?” was all Samson could manage.

“S'pose now is a good a time as any for an explanation. My name is, well I aint got a name. No need for those on the dimensional plane I'm from. I've taken this form because your puny mind would never understand my true form,” it continued raspily.

Samson blinked hard twice. He was convinced this was some kind of hallucination, his mind playing tricks on him, insanity brought on by dehydration and deliria.

“I am the bringer of the gift of death. You can do nothing to earn it, nothing to lose it but like any other gift, you may decline it,” the kangaroo continued, but this time in a different voice like a lady.

“How do I know you're real?” Samson managed to ask.

The kangaroo paused for a while, thought, and then answered.

“On the sixteenth of December your wife Orpah was asleep and you wanted a sandwich. You were too lazy to make it yourself so you opened a jar of Nutella and ate directly from it, you ate it all Samson, all. You got sick the next day and denied eating it. You told Orpah that from the bottom of your heart you didn't do it. But you did,” the kangaroo said in a different voice yet again.

It was as though the kangaroo was having great fun altering its voice each time. Perhaps more out of embarrassment than anything else Samson admitted to himself that indeed the kangaroo was not a figment of his imagination. The entire situation fell into the category of ‘too strange to be fiction'.

“So… am I dead?” Samson asked tentatively.

“Only if you want to be,” the kangaroo replied casually.

Samson lowered his eyebrow, his forehead creased. He was flummoxed.

“Death is a gift, as I have said. You can accept it or reject it,” the kangaroo explained.

He held his long tail in his hand, swinging it around casually.

“And, uhm, if I choose death? What would happen, I'm not saying that's what I want, but if I did choose death, what would happen next?” Samson asked, making very sure to emphasise that he wasn't asking for death.

“I don't know. I've never died. I'm only the collector of souls. I can tell what will happen if you choose life though,” the kangaroo said.

Samson shrugged.

“Oh c'mon, the same old,” said the kangaroo, “pain, misery, discontent, disappointment. Amidst it all a few moments of love and happiness. I've seen a lot of lives in my job. No matter where you are, how you live, it's always the same. Just a different variety of it.”

Samson paused for a while. He had forgotten about his broken leg, something that tends to happen when you have a kangaroo from the realm of death before you. A sly thought crept in his mind.

“You said that death is a gift, right?” Samson queried.

“Indeed.”

“Then, like any other gift, I could pass it on, couldn't I?”

“I s'pose.”

“Then I give my gift to Orpah,” Samson said resolutely.

The kangaroo looked at him, vexed.

“Your own wife? Well that's certainly a new one,” the kangaroo said.

“If death truly is a gift, I would not want my last action to be something as selfish as running away from the strife of the world. If my wife takes it, I will know she loved death more than I. If she rejects the gift, then this will be a life worth living. I don't know, it makes sense in my head,” explained Samson.

“Very well then.”

And the kangaroo stuck its purple hands out, waved them and uttered a magical spell. The sky lit up in a million colours. And then the kangaroo was gone. Samson lay there in the darkness of the night with only the flickering of the flames as his company. No one came until morning when the mountain ranger came around for his morning route. In a state of semi-consciousness, all Samson remembered was being lifted up and put into the back of a pickup truck. He swung in and out of consciousness and found himself on a soft bed, his leg raised in a cast in some sort of log cabin. The ranger and Orpah stood over him.

“He almost died,” he heard the ranger say.

“Oh my poor honey,” Orpah said, “I'm so grateful you saved him. How can I ever show my gratitude?”

“Well there is one way,” he heard the ranger say smugly.

A bit of whispering and a bit of giggling and Samson heard the sound of something oddly similar to the clank of a metal belt buckle hitting the ground. They left the room.

Samson wanted his gift back.

Admittedly, she is one my favourite feminists and scholars so I do have a soft spot for her even I don't agree with all her arguments. Catharine is a feminist law professor whose work has focused on civil rights. Her most influential work has been in the field of sexual harassment and has had a considerable impact on laws regarding sexual harassment in the workplace and in education. Consequently, her book titled Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of S*x Discrimination, published in 1978, is one of the most academically cited American legal texts.

Before we begin, I should provide a few definitions beforehand. Erotica is a broad term that covers a host of erotic art including nude photography, erotic literature and many other mediums each with their own conventions and degrees of explicitness. MacKinnon defines pornography as a subcategory of erotica which serves to subordinate women. To explain it more clearly, here is MacKinnon speaking for herself.

For her, pornography is an enactment of male sexual dominance over women. What should be noted about her definition, as Encyclopaedia Britannica points out, is that “The distinction between pornography (illicit and condemned material) and erotica (which is broadly tolerated) is largely subjective and reflects changing community standards”

Typically, anti-pornography stances are based on religious objections and moral disgust at sexual behaviour individuals find personally offensive. However, MacKinnon takes a much different route, one I consider worthy of consideration even if I don't entirely agree with it. One of the biggest influences of MacKinnon's views has to do with her experiences she's had legally representing women who have been harmed while working in the porn industry. One of the most famous examples of this is Susan Boreman who in 1972, starred in the pornographic film Deep Throat under the pseudonym Linda Lovelace. The film became one of the highest grossing x-rated films at the time. However, years later Susan Boreman came forward with allegations that the director, Chuck Traynor, has abused her during filming. Furthermore, she claimed that she was forced to do several scenes against her will, with Chuck standing with an M16 rifle pointed at her just off camera. Furthermore, she claims that in the film, bruises from her abuse could be seen. Such cases have caused MacKinnon to state that pornography differs from other sources of media in that what is depicted may be fantasy, but it requires actual women to be subjected to the acts being seen. In other words, porn is done to women. As MacKinnon writes: “with pornography, men masturbate to women being exposed, humiliated, violated, degraded, mutilated, dismembered, bound, gagged, tortured, and killed. In the visual materials, they experience this being done by watching it being done.” She continues by writing “As an initial matter, it should be observed that it is the pornography industry, not the ideas in the materials, that forces, threatens, blackmails, pressures, tricks, and cajoles women into s*x for pictures. In pornography, women are gang r*ped so they can be filmed. They are not gang r*ped by the idea of a gang r*pe. It is for pornography, and not by the ideas in it, that women are hurt and penetrated, tied and gagged, undressed and genitally spread and sprayed with lacquer and water so s*x pictures can be made.” MacKinnon also makes that claim, without providing a source, that “all pornography is made under conditions of inequality based on s*x, overwhelmingly by poor, desperate, homeless, pimped women who were sexually abused as children”.

Although pornography is a subcategory of prostitution, the kind of widespread research Farley provides from prostitution isn't available for pornography. Thus, we cannot be sure that MacKinnon is talking about token cases, or whether she is describing what the majority of what the industry does. Consequently, one can find numerous cases of women within the industry speaking both positively and negatively about pornography. For the sake of fair representation, I shall display two camps from within the industry talking about their industry.

On the negative side, a porn actress has recently accused a popular porn production company of sexual assault and abuse during one of her shoots. She claims she was choked, slapped and thrown against a wall until she bled. In 2015, several porn actresses came forth with numerous claims that James Deen had r*ped and sexually assaulted them during filming. There are also testimonials from ex pornstars who document several cases of humiliation and abuse on porn sets. However, for every negative story, there are several positive cases of women who claim they feel empowered by porn and find it to be a fun occupation. It is for these reasons that I hesitate to agree with MacKinnon summaries of the entire industry. There simply needs to be more research. If one is interested in the topic, I would strongly suggest the documentary ‘Hot Girls Wanted' produced by Rashida Jones which offers a relatively objective and neutral look into the porn industry.

So, what I do wish to focus on with regards to her anti-porn arguments lie with her discussions of pornography as free-speech. According to MacKinnon, pornography, at least in the United States is protected as free speech. Because of this, there is a belief that all free speech should be protected lest we fall victim to tyranny. She sums up the argument as such:

“The evil to be avoided is government restricting ideas because it disagrees with the content of their political point of view. The terrain of struggle is the mind; the dynamic at work is intellectual persuasion; the risk is that marginal, powerless, and relatively voiceless dissenters, with ideas we will never hear, will be crushed by governmental power. This has become the "speech you hate" test: the more you disagree with content, the more important it becomes to protect it. You can tell you are being principled by the degree to which you abhor what you allow. The worse the speech protected, the more principled the result. There is a faith that truth will prevail if left alone, often expressed in an openly competitive laissez-faire model taken from bourgeois economics and applied to the expressive marketplace: the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor. The marketplace becomes the battlefield when we are assured that truth will prevail”

MacKinnon problematizes this by arguing that although free speech exists, not everyone has equal amounts of free speech. Furthermore, the privileged have louder free speech or ‘more' free speech. Thus, in the case of pornography, subordinated women's bodies become the free-speech of porn producers (almost always male of course). Secondly, she questions why some forms of speech are banned when they target marginalized groups yet pornography does the same thing. In other words, hanging a noose in front of black person's lawn or burning a cross are all forms of free speech which conveys ideas. So is sticking a ‘whites only' sign in front of a store. However, these are regarded as prohibited forms of speech using a kind of rationale that isn't extended to pornography. MacKinnon argues that the free speech of pornography sends the message that women are to be subordinated. She writes “at stake in constructing pornography as "speech" is gaining constitutional protection for doing what pornography does: subordinating women through s*x.” MacKinnon argues that pornography, if it is speech, is a kind of speech (much like racism) that is harmful to society. She writes “Social inequality is substantially created and enforced-that is, done-through words and images.” Thus, by displaying women in subordinated positions, pornography conveys the message in society that women are second-class citizens that exist for the sexual pleasure of men. Now, for this claim, MacKinnon may in fact have evidence on her side. A study by Maree Crabbe which looked at the most popular porn found that 88% of it depicted physical aggression. Of this 88%, 94% of physical aggression was directed towards women. So what message does such ‘free speech' convey? According to MacKinnon, “the message of these materials, and there is one, as there is to all conscious activity, is ‘get her,'”.

The second aspect of MacKinnon's arguments which I wish to discuss concern the effects of pornography on society. MacKinnon claims “Pornography makes the world a pornographic place through its making and use, establishing what women are said to exist as, are seen as, are treated as, constructing the social reality of what a woman is and can be in terms of what can be done to her, and what a man is in terms of doing it.”

Now, there is an interesting phenomenon I want to discuss. When the influences of media on society are brought up, there is often a pushback. The argument is typically as such: ‘I know how to separate fantasy from reality, thus it is ridiculous to claim that media makes people do things'. On the surface, the argument is true. In most cases, adults can distinguish fiction from real life and it is also true that one cannot hold media accountable for the actions that they commit. However, within this there is an often overlooked fact that media doesn't outright control so much as it surreptitiously influences and, furthermore, individuals who believe that they are immune to this are often most at risk. It is often claimed that video games, movies etc don't contribute to violence. However, when one does even the most cursory research, we find that the complete opposite is true. There is in fact an almost unanimous agreement among experts that what we consume affects our beliefs and actions. If this were not the case, a multi-billion dollar advertising industry would not exist and propaganda would not be the dangerous weapon it is. In an article by Craig Anderson et al we learn that:

“Research on violent television and films, video games, and music reveals unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behaviour in both immediate and long-term contexts

This isn't limited to violence. Another study by Todd Heatherton et al found that:

• Compared to adolescents with low exposure to smoking in movies, those with high exposure are about three times as likely to try smoking or become smokers.

Yet many laymen still believe that media doesn't influence people. To explain this phenomenon in the face of an unquestionable scientific consensus, Brad Bushman et al posits that

• One reason is people think the media have a much stronger effect on others than on themselves—called the third person effect (Davison, 1983)

In other words, everyone thinks that they are the exception. More than just media having an impact on society, there is evidence that pornography itself has permeated society. According to Maree Crabbe, among “13–16 year olds in Australian schools, 93 per cent of males and 62 per cent of females had seen pornography online”. For many of these young children, porn will serve as one of the only sources of s*x-ed, which is a frightening thought. Maree writes, “porn has become a central mediator of young people's sexual understandings and experiences. Young people are exposed to porn at unprecedented rates. Many young people discover porn before they've encountered s*x. They are seeing it more frequently, through more media, and what they are seeing is harder and more aggressive. Young people are living in an era of new sexual expectations, acceptance and practices […] There is evidence that many young people are enacting porn scripts.”. Part of the issue is that porn catalogues women according to their race and body parts – in other words, this is peak objectification where women are merely the sum of their parts. This is problematic because, as MacKinnon points out “Sexual objectification is the primary process of the subjection of women”. She also adds that this objectification is far from different to the worker alienation described within Marxist theory.

Now if porn does create a misogynistic society, an opposition to pornography becomes a little more of a reasonable idea. For instance, oppositions to confederate statues in USA are often based on the grounds that the existence of these statues contribute to creating a society where African Americans are degraded every time they are forced to walk past them. In fact, similar arguments are made in South Africa regarding colonial statues. In other words, what these statues say is conducive to a white supremacist society. Could those same arguments be transferred to pornography? Does the proliferation of pornography create a male supremacist society? This is a very difficult question and, of the four horsewomen, I'd argue that MacKinnon poses some of the most troublesome ideas to wrap our heads around.

One criticism of MacKinnon and her theory is that it falsely categorizes r*pe as s*x. In other words, porn depicts s*x and thus could have nothing to do with r*pe. This is a rehashing of the “r*pe is about power” mantra. MacKinnon outlines these criticisms by writing that “some feminists have encouraged and participated in this type of analysis by conceiving r*pe as violence not s*x”. The problem with this, as MacKinnon points out, is that it fails to account for the fact that for some men, the force and violence in r*pe is arousing and sexually satisfying. Sexual sadists do exist. A huge deal of criticism towards MacKinnon has also come from Judith Butler. Summing up MacKinnon's views, in Excitable Speech, Butler writes: “In Only Words (1993) pornography ought to be construed as a kind of ‘wound' according to MacKinnon, because it proclaims and effects the subordinated status of women.” Butler's problem with this is that by insisting that pornography is subordinating, it limits the ability to rearticulate the hate speech as something that isn't subordinating. As Moya Lloyd summarises, “Dworkin, MacKinnon and Helms are, for Butler, actively and somewhat ironically engaged in rearticulating and reinvigorating the very discourses they seek to repudiate” (114-5). Thus, Butler argues that “keeping such terms unsaid and unsayable can also work to lock them in place, preserving their power to injure”. If one is familiar with Butler's work, it becomes clear that Butler very much favours rearticulation, that is, disrupting the relationship between signifiers and signifieds. Now, broadly speaking, I agree with Butler's theory. However, I feel as though examples of successful rearticulation of hate speech are few and far between. Language and symbols change over time, but hate speech seems to be very resistant to change. Hate speech such as BIPOC and queer are said to be rearticulated and have been used in different contexts, yet it's plainly obvious that after all these years they still carry their injurious power. In terms of pornography, there have been attempts to rearticulate it. Some feminists have championed feminist pornography which features female directors, sets to depict genuine female sexual pleasure and seeks to subverts the harmful tropes of traditional pornography. Furthermore, with the proliferation of webcams, amateur pornography which is not dependent on large corporations has been allowed to flourish, enabling a variety of pornography which strays from heteronormative and subordinating depictions of women.

So, in closing, I'd like to ask the rest of you: In light of everything I've said, considering the fact that 84% of pornography depicts physical aggression (the vast majority of it directed towards women) does pornography create a pornified society? Is pornography, as it exists today, the proliferation of hate speech? Can pornography be rehabilitated to promote a healthier kind of sexuality?

For further reading, I would suggest MacKinnon's text Only Words as well as her excellent article titled “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State” which, for me at least, has offered one of the most definitive outlinings of the purpose of feminism and what its methodology for action should be. It also brings up my discomfort regarding the relationship between capitalism and feminism.

In South Africa, chastity devices don't work as well as in medieval Bongland, because we are the R*PE capital of the work.

https://www.news24.com/news24/the-r*pe-capital-of-the-world-20140821

Back in 2014, especially during the reign of the Jacob Zuma administration, where our president had the worst controversy of him being a known male feminist following him, South Africa had developed the reputation of r*pe being endemic to its society, because our dysfunctional Police forces (SAPD) and justice system did not catch criminals, and especially did not catch or punish male feminists and sexual assaulters.

10 years ago, even beyond India (which itself had started to develop a strong negative reputation for countrywide r*pe being rampant), South Africa was being regarded as one of the worst places to be a woman in. While South African violent crime was not as bad as other 3rd world countries, such as Mexico's and South America's cartel and gang murder crimes - it would be smaller crimes like petty theft which had become the norm for its international reputation.

As a tourist you were very unlikely to be murdered, but you were exceedingly likely to be a victim of petty theft, and having you electronics like cellphones and laptops stolen right out of your backpacks in the airport, or your rental car highjacked. Still you were very seldom violently hurt unless resisting. This was because criminal activity for the past 2 decades was simply not punished, not in any meaningful sense. The police had become corrupt, complacent, lazy and incompetent on a nationwide scale, and the prison system was woefully inept, small and inadequate. The justice and court system had been packed with ANC loyalists and BEE hires, and had become intensely corrupt, where only the wealthy could afford lawyers.

Petty crime was simply not punished. But alongside the reality of the daily threat if theft, the uglier side of RSA would also surface - especially mass unopposed r*pe. And especially unpunished r*pe within the homelands of south africans.

Now it is very likely that other underdeveloped african nations, or places like India, or even places in South East Asia have much greater degrees of systemic r*pe on their societies, but South Africa has an unusually above average community of journ*lists who punch above their weight in reporting. South Africa also has a very large degree of Freedom of Information, we are not censored like autocratic nations like China, and most of all we are highly self-critical and honest with all of our shortcoming.

Compared to other nations, we basically record every single misstep and corruption. Just like Burgerland's extreme levels of self criticism, it is likely that places like Ireland, England, Western Europe also have comparative levels of societywide sexual abuse, but are not as excessively self critical as Burgerland and RSA, and have such a potent media presence as us.

https://theconversation.com/r*pe-is-endemic-in-south-africa-why-the-anc-government-keeps-missing-the-mark-188235

The ANC women's league wanted to enforce chemical castration of male feminists in 2022, but many people criticized this endeavor, as they felt this type of punishment did not address the underlying motives for why r*pe is so consistently rampant.

R*PE SURGE DURING COVID LOCKDOWNS:

https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/spotchecks/old-claims-about-r*pe-south-africa-still-being-shared-online

Back in 2020, r*pes would surge in terms of statistics, and into the national conversation again during COVID19 Lockdowns. This was because of so many people forced into the confines of their homes for many many months, and domestic disputes would be aggravated by cabin-fever on a national scale.

The r*pe rates were of such a magnitude that one publication claimed that 40% of Safrican women would be r*ped within their lifetimes. And these were not Tumbler-kin definitions of spastic autismo womyn claiming they would be r*ped when some dude catcalled her, or violated her with his eyeball-pressure on the train with a skeevy glance, but these were full on penetration hardcore sexual violence and sometimes brutal gangrapes being reported.

"A widely shared tweet posted in July 2023 reads: “In what is known as the r*pe capital of the world, it is estimated that over 40% of South African women will be r*ped in their lifetime and that only 1 in 9 r*pes are reported. It is also estimated that 14% of perpetrators of r*pe are convicted in South Africa.”

This controversial claim would be disputed by many NGOs who would investigate along with Interpol and United Nations women's organizations, and they would find the claim of 40% of RSA women being r*ped being so excessive that they would be forced to check the statistics to see if there was any truth to this alarming horror statisitc. This would not be easy tasks, as r*pe statistics are notoriously unreliable and chaotic, just as the nature of the act of r*pe itself. And approximate reports by RSA police stations were often less reliable than publications of private journ*list organizations.

Unsurprisingly they found the methodology of the 40% flawed, yet ironically the new remodeled statistics STILL would be an atrocious and alarming figure!

"It quoted a 2013 World Health Organization report which used data from the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study to estimate that Southern Africa had a 17.41% prevalence of r*pe. In other words, around 17.41% of women in that region would be r*ped in their lifetime."

https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/302733/retrieve

Again these are not minor westoid white women definitions of r*pe - but full on unsolicited penetrative s*x and gangrapings!

INCONVENIENT TRUTHS:

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/why-sexual-violence-so-endemic-south-africa-and-why-has-it-been-so-hard-combat-jessica

So errr....the thing about South African r*pes is that they are not equally distributed by demographic and ethnic groups in RSA. This subject has been avoided due to the maelstrom of race-politics in South Africa for obvious reasons. The main takeaway is that whites, coloureds, Indians and Chinese Safricans just do not commit r*pes to the same magnitudes of their black countrymen.

But what is even more, is that r*pes are not per capita proportional amongst all of black south africans, and between the various ethnicities. Comparing Sotho and Lesotho peeps, as well as the descendants of Khoisan coloured peeps, and even Venda peeps, they commit the least proportional amount of r*pes. Instead r*pes are disproportionally distributed amongst the most conservative members of Safrican black society, ESPECIALLY Zulus, Xhosas and Pedi.

Any broaching of such a sensitive subject is like stepping upon nuclear minefield, as you can well imagine. Much of the reason for these r*pe rates are consequent of the parallel societies of South African Homelands

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft0489n6d5%3Bchunk.id%3D0%3Bdoc.view%3Dprint

Now during apartheid, the NP regime would forcefully remove many black peeps according to their ethnicities, to live in their allocated historic Homelands, as in where their specific ethnicity lived before the dutch and Bongs arrived on the scene

What made this move atrocious and cruel, was that over time many people of various ethnicities spread all over the country post-1900, and mixed and went to work in the big cities built by europeans for work. The forced relocation to their historic Homelands, basically forced black peeps to life where they did not want to, and where there were no economic development or work, forcing many black peeps into lives of impoverishment.

If a black women of Zulu descent had been living in Gauteng for 20 years, and considered it her home, then poof, suddenly the Apartheid police would force her to take her shit and make her live within KwaZulu Homeland, the residence of Zulus - but she had no modern attachment to that province, and would be deprived of her fiends and home.

Additionally in the modern era of post 1900, much of South Africa's wildernis had been devastated and culled. The wildebeest and antelopes of SA had been severely depopulated, and the amount of game available for hunting and subsistence living was no longer possible by 1950 as it had been in 1850, further aggravating the poverty within which SA black peeps had been forced to live in within these Homelands system.

When democratization occurred within the Mandela Administration in 1994, there was a shocking development in that many tribes like the Zulus and Xhosa had indoenas and chieftans who wanted to KEEP some parts of the Homelands system, and did not want to adknowlegde the white European system of modern South Africa's government, and wanted to keep their tribal system, as they would lose their power of Customary land rule.

Indoenas and chieftans had a lot of sway within their fiefdoms, and did not want to lose their influence. The Mandela Admin did not want to alienate this critical voterbase, and would promise to supplement his overhaul of the white government, with additional Acts in parliament which would respect the cultural rule of Indoenas there.

These acts are flowery but the summary is that a lot of autonomy would be given to modern homelands, for example like the KwaZulu region as ruled by the modern Zulu king, and acted as both a reserve and unofficial province within South Africa. It basically ended up as a sort of ghost province and parallel society, which proved to be an extremely complicated arrangement in terms of enforcing law and determining where the municipal/provincial government reach began, and the Zulu-indoena authority ended!

This would perpetually be controversial within South Africa, as the ANC promised equal rights between all south african demographics, yet here was the Mandela administration allowing a semi-feudal state system within the confines of the country! Yet the very culturally conservative Xhosas and Zulus, WANTED this. So the ANC allowed it, as any Xhosa or Zulu person was free to leave and enter the modern Homelands as they wished if they did not want to live beneath the rule of their tribal leader or Indoena, so they were never trapped there.

Yet just like the Mormons in Burgerland, leaving your entire family to exit the stifling rule of a conservative douchebag chieftan wasn't as easy as packing your bags and going, you might cut off your entire friend circle, family and support. This would be criticized by feminist Zulu women.

ZULU KING ASCENSION DRAMA:

https://qz.com/africa/1985840/south-africas-next-zulu-king-will-have-to-modernize-the-monarchy

=====(from qz article)[my commentary]

By Norma Young PublishedMarch 19, 2021

The Zulu dynasty has almost been felled numerous times by trials, trysts and tragedies, but has stood steady through the centuries. The largest ethnic group and nation in South Africa today, counting in excess of 10 million people, the Zulus have a family tree with roots stretching as far back as the migration of the Bantu people from their origins in West Africa throughout the continent several hundred years ago.

They now face a challenge that threatens their growth and relevance. The late King Goodwill Zwelithini, who was laid to rest this week after serving for almost 50 years, leaves a legacy that is admirable, but not replicable.

With South Africa's next national elections set for 2024, the new Zulu king will maneuver through tricky political terrain quite early in his reign. This is particularly significant in the kingdom's home province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), which has seen decades of simmering tensions between the ANC and IFP political parties, who both have deep roots in the province, and therefore compete for votes.

King Zwelithini was reminded of this in 2012. At an event commemorating the Battle of Isandlawana, he sparked controversy with a statement that same-s*x relations are “wrong,” “rotten,” and not part of Zulu tradition. (South Africa legalized same s*x marriage in 2006.) Following condemnation from then President Jacob Zuma, the South African Human Rights Commission, and LGBT rights groups, the Zulu Royal Household walked back his comments.

====(end)

This article was just to showcase how vague and murky the influence of tribal leaders and the king of KwaZulu rivals that of the ANC within the province, and how defining power of the government is not absolute, when competing for the support of people in the KwaZulu-Natal province.

https://theconversation.com/what-the-zulu-kingship-judgment-tells-us-about-the-future-of-south-african-customary-law-178786

====(from article) [my commentary]

Following the death of AmaZulu King Goodwill Zwelithini on 12 March 2021 in South Africa, the royal family convened on 24 March 2021 and appointed Queen Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu as regent. Although the king's third wife, she was his great wife – a royal consort who, by Zulu law, births the king's successor. The king had five other wives.

Before her regency was gazetted by the premier of the KwaZulu-Natal province, as required by South African statutory law, the queen died on 29 April 2021. On 14 May 2021, the royal family unanimously nominated her firstborn son, Prince Misuzulu, as the successor to the Zulu throne.

[And oh yeah, to showcase just how much was at stake in this rulership, there would be infighting within the Zulu royal family the Zulu king had tremendous influence upon South African politics and power, especially within the KwaZulu-Natal province!]

Later that month, various members of the royal family, notably Queen Sibongile Dlamini, the late king's first wife, challenged his will, and the validity of Prince Misuzulu's nomination as his successor. On 2 March 2022, the High Court in Pietermaritzburg found that Prince Misuzulu was appropriately identified and nominated as the undisputed successor to the Zulu throne. By dismissing objections to his nomination, the court paved the way for his coronation as the king.

There are 10,7 million isiZulu speakers in South Africa, about 22% of the population, according to the 2012 census. [Yes 1 out of every 5 peeps in RSA is a Zulu person; they are the most populous ethnic group within the country, and thus hold tremendous sway over the running of the country, which is why I always harp upon them in particular]

Why was this dispute adjudicated with “the white man's law”, thereby questioning the authority of the AmaZulu Royal Council, whose dispute resolution mechanisms ought to be respected by all Zulus? What is the significance of the ruling for matrimonial property rights under customary law?

[Now this ascension was incredibly controversial within Zulu society because the current king basically used the RSA court system to validate his claim, instead of relying upon the Zulu custom law! AKA they used the mayo system]

Firstly, the royal family's resort to the courts confirms an uncomfortable truth: African customs and traditions are subject to state courts. Importantly, these courts – both procedurally and content-wise – are replicas of the colonial justice system bequeathed by the Dutch and the British.

Lest we forget, although European colonialists allowed Africans to continue observing their indigenous customs, they smartly subjected the validity of these customs to European standards and procedures. Moreover, colonial schools, churches, and work systems were configured to reflect European culture. So, in essence, African elites, especially judges, are philosophical clones of Europeans because they carried on from where their colonial masters left off.

[Basically the author is hardcore sneeding about RSA constitutional and court law being based upon previous dutch and Bong judicial systems, and that the Zulu king had abused the white man's system to solidify his authority]

The Sithole declaration is radical because indigenous African laws lacked binary notions of equality in marital property division. Due to the agrarian nature of precolonial societies, income was generated by the family as a group through farming, hunting, and artwork. Individual rights were muted, while group welfare was paramount.

Thus, women's property rights were confined to items of adornment. In rare cases of divorce, they were reabsorbed into the welfare system of their parents. Thus, their matrimonial property rights were unproblematic.

[HAHAHAHAH, this cultural wingcuck is trying to process the contrast of how his beloved Zulu cultural laws have been turbo cucked by the national constitutional laws, and is trying to Doublethink himself in that Zulu women being relegated as 2ndary citizens in past and modern Zulu cultural law was totally a good thing! ]

=========(end qz article)

I highlight this article to showcase the bullshit of Zulus who defend their cultural law within their modern Homelands, aNd how they basically are very resistant to national South African constitutional justice-systems to "meddle" within their affairs. The Zulus are not the only ones to resist enforcement of national law upon their custom laws, Xhosas and Pedis are also mega conservative and many wish to preserve their parallel feudal societies within South Africa, usually against the principles of equality which is the constitutional declaration.

This is important to the r*pe epidemic story.

Some comments beneath the QZ article

And guess what? The reason why there is a Zulu-Kingdom independence movement, similar to the Western Cape Independence movement, is because many Zulus are so turbo nationalistic and conservative, that they believe the ANC meddling in their affairs, AKA trying to implement gender equality, and put a stop to gender violence in the province, is seen as an affront.

YES, in this case the ANC are the good guys!

"This article appears to be in support of a ethno-traditional nationalist paradigm, arguing for traditional law to trump constitutional law." Yeah uh that's exactly what it's doing lol

THE REASON FOR R*PE CULTURE IN SOUTH AFRICA:

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/why-sexual-violence-so-endemic-south-africa-and-why-has-it-been-so-hard-combat-jessica

Why is sexual violence in RSA specifically so hard to combat? Because of culture, and political forces to actively preserve ultra conservative customs within factions in South Africa, specifically the ethnic group ultra-nationalists such as Zulus and Xhosas.

The desire to create parallel societies, governed by customaty and cultural law have created murky legal grey zones, where police are not always permitted to patrol or hold station. Where internal customary law is dependent upon the whims of the local Indoena and chieftan, and if that individual doesn't consider r*pe a punishable offense, then it will not be punished - thus creating a culture where r*pe is normalized, in a society where women are 2ndary citizens, in spite of what the actual constitutional laws are within the country of RSA.

And the women of these ultra conservative societies, especially Zulu women, actively participate and enable it. They grow up within these conservative customary tribal homelands, and believe it to be the normalized experience, and don't report it to the police, creating a chain-reaction where more and more peeps within these Homelands, especially men consider s*x to be their right to take whenever.

=====(FROM ARICLE) [my comments]

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/why-sexual-violence-so-endemic-south-africa-and-why-has-it-been-so-hard-combat-jessica

government legislation which is meant to protect women's rights, arguing that the legislation itself is progressive but that the implementation of these rights is significantly hindered for numerous reasons.

Firstly, the example of Zulu culture and the r*pe trial of President Zuma (2005/2006) will be used to show the justification and acceptance of sexual violence, particularly with the re-traditionalisation of South African culture. [ANC Women's League would attack feminists during the famous Zuma R*pe Trial, in support of Zuma, showcasing how even amongst women, r*pe was acceptable if done by their preferred leaders]

Generally speaking, the constitution and laws of South Africa are very liberal, yet the reality is that “beneath the heroic façade of the constitution”¦a vicious cocktail of violence, sexism and hatred brewed” (Hassim 2009, 57).

he realisation of the rights promised in the constitution is limited for several reasons, such as lack of political will and cultural beliefs. There have been attempts to combat sexual violence by legal means but the issue appears to be deeply embedded into South African culture which is a difficult obstacle to overcome. The realisation of these rights are hindered by certain barriers.

The first example used will be the importance of traditional cultures present in South African society and the patriarchal systems which they establish. This has been made particularly relevant in contemporary South Africa due to the 2005/2006 r*pe trial of (then, Vice-) President Jacob Zuma.

Prior to colonisation, South Africa was made up of many tribal cultures such as Swazi and Zulu. However, it appears contemporary South Africa is made up of a ‘patchwork of patriarchies'- women being subordinate in the majority of Southern African societies, subject to their chiefs or heads of the family (Bozzoli 1983, 149).

Whilst many cultures have helped to make up contemporary South African society, this section will focus specifically on Zulu culture due to the 2005/2006 Zuma r*pe trial in which he used his Zulu culture as a significant part of his defence. Moreover, Zulu cultural traditions still hold influence, particularly in isolated rural areas, such in the KwaZulu-Natal province where government services are less effective than in urban areas. [Very Importante ]

Whilst many cultures have a patriarchal structure, Wright highlights that Zulu society incorporates ideological controls which “served to socialise females into accepting a position of inferiority” (Bozzoli 1983, 150), limiting them to the traditional roles of mother, wife, daughter, accepting themselves as ‘second class citizens'. This idea of women as second class citizens has been carried through into contemporary society; in general, society conditions women to believe themselves at the disposal of men.

However, during colonisation in the late 19th century, Christian missionaries attempted to stop ‘backward' practises, in particular, as many colonists found sexual subjects' offensive to discuss. Therefore, throughout colonisation and into contemporary society, many traditional Zulu practises lost their popularity, such as polygamy. However, the patriarchal structure remained throughout society.

Zuma was accused of the r*pe of the daughter of a family friend. He argued that earlier in the evening the complainant had been wearing a Kanga; a traditional African cloth which usually symbolises modesty and respectability. Throughout the trial this was“sexualised and transformed into an object of seduction” (Robins 2008, 415). Importantly, the use of the Kanga within the trial can be used to “entrench stereotypes and the r*pe mythology that dress is a key marker in the potential for r*pe”

Importantly, Zuma especially, has made an attempt of ‘re-traditionalisation' within South African society. As Harrison indicates the “re-legitimisation of cultural pride has fostered belief that returning to past traditions can resolve contemporary problems” (Harrison 2008, 177). These traditions, such as polygamy or ‘virginity testing'[1], are symbols of an unbroken connection with the past.

The r*pe trial revealed many within the country openly sided with Zuma. On the opening day of trial, Zuma supporters were more than 1000 strong. His support was mostly organised by the ANC Youth League. (Kapp 2006, 718) This highlights the attitudes of those within South Africa, especially the youth who, generally speaking, tend to be the ones to push through liberal reforms and fight for change. Their support highlighted that many viewed “the accused [Zuma] to be considered a ‘victim' and the complainant to be viewed as an ‘accused'” (Reddy and Potgieter 2006, 520). The complainant was heavily scrutinised and following the trial, she was forced to leave the country. Zuma was acquitted of the charges against him. These attitudes against r*pe victims highlight key difficulties in overcoming sexual violence.

Moreover, general police incompetency further implants the reasons why women do not rely on the justice system. On the surface, the police are ineffective due to budgeting problems, resource issues and failure to properly train personnel but there is general lack of will by the services to address sexual violence. It is estimated only 14% of perpetrators of sexual violence are sentenced.

Moreover, the police do not just fail over women's rights but, also, 80% of murders and robberies go unsolved (Anderson 2000, 792). This is a shocking figure, showing that structural issues are also problematic in the general fight for justice. Sadly, the police are seen as “more likely to engage in crime as to solve it” (Anderson 2000, 820).

After consideration, it can be viewed that South Africa is a society of profound contradictions, particularly between the promises of the constitution and the realities of contemporary society.

It is essential to combat the violent legacy of apartheid but the encouragement by Zuma of re-traditionalisation only further entrenches the patriarchal system of governance.

====(End Article)

R*PEX:

The r*pe epidemic had become so extreme, that in 2010, some Safrican white woman had the ultimate white woman moment and prototyped a device called R*pex.

"This is R*pex, an anti-raping device for women. The woman inserts it like a tampon, with an applicator, and any man who tries to r*pe the woman impales himself on the barbs and must go to an emergency room to have the R*pex removed."

https://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/06/20/south.africa.female.condom/index.html

====(from article)

Ehlers said she sold her house and car to launch the project, and she planned to distribute 30,000 free devices under supervision during the World Cup period.

"I consulted engineers, gynecologists and psychologists to help in the design and make sure it was safe," she said. After the trial period, they'll be available for about $2 a piece. She hopes the women will report back to her.

"The ideal situation would be for a woman to wear this when she's going out on some kind of blind date ... or to an area she's not comfortable with," she said.

The mother of two daughters said she visited prisons and talked to convicted male feminists to find out whether such a device would have made them rethink their actions. Some said it would have, Ehlers said.

Critics say the female condom is not a long-term solution and makes women vulnerable to more violence from men trapped by the device.

"It not only presents the victim with a false sense of security, but psychological trauma," she added. "It also does not help with the psychological problems that manifest after assaults."

However, its one advantage is it allows justice to be served, she said.

Various rights organizations that work in South Africa declined to comment, including Human Rights Watch and Care International.

Critics have accused her of developing a medieval device to fight r*pe.

"Yes, my device may be a medieval, but it's for a medieval deed that has been around for decades," she said. "I believe something's got to be done ... and this will make some men rethink before they assault a woman."

=====(end article)

As critics pointed out this device was both impractical and dangerous, as it would most likely turn a r*pe into murder. Also women who prototyped the thing gave feedback that the R*pex device was pretty uncomfortable....

It was only a prototype and the government had refused to fund it. The media also mocked it.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-r*pe-condoms-picture-will-jagged-teeth-deter-world-cup-s*x-assaults-r*pe-axe-hopes-so/

Anyways I don't have anything else of substance to say. Basically please don't r*pe anyone, GOOD NIGHT

In case you hate the shitty AI voice here's the summary

• In 2018 when he was 12 he discovered reddit. He eventually finds out that there's a karma leaderboard.

• By 2019 he has 3,000 karma. He cringes now looking back at his comments.

• His "breakthrough" happened in March 2019 when a meme he posted got upmarseyd. It was even reviewed in one of Pewdiepies videos.

• He makes it into /r/EternityClub realizes they're cringe and leaves.

• Still he wants to make it into /r/CenturyClub. Gets banned for 3 days for telling a furry to kill himself Continues grinding and finally gets 100k and makes it into /r/CenturyClub. Realizes they're cringe 30+ year old Americans obsessed with politics and leaves.

• In 2020 he turns his focus to minecraft. Gets bored with that and goes back to reddit.

• He had much more time now because of the pandemic which kept him at home for almost 2 years.

• Now he wanted 1 million karma. He messages Gallowboob for advice. Now he is locked in.

• It took almost a year to reach 100k karma. Another 6 months to 200k. But now it only took 6 days to get to 300k.

• He got every reddit award now. Some guy gave $175 worth of awards

• In September 2020 he reaches 1 million points after only 47 days of grinding. It was quite fast.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger even replied to one of his posts, but he didn't really know who Arnold was

• Now the American election is coming up. He's an Italian kid so he knows nothing about it, but he realizes reddit hates Trump so he starts posting anti Trump memes. They do well. He learns about more American politicians and which ones reddit hates so he can get more karma

• By the end of 2020 he was over 2 million karma.

• He joined a groomercord some Indian guy made called Redditors United where top karma accounts could share advice. He considered them idols, but later realized they were mostly "16 year old Indians with way too much free time. Just like me."

• He still wanted to grind to 10 million karma. He now posted 100 times per day at regular intervals.

• Time was not a problem since he had online school and could keep Google meet open while posting to reddit.

• He made a google spreadsheet to track his progress and aimed for 30k points a day or 1 million a month.

• By his 14th birthday he reached 5 million. He basically just spammed posts now and at one point was averaging 90k points per day. By May 2021 he reached 10 million karma after "5 months of grinding with no breaks."

• But this was starting to negatively affect his school work so he had to take time off reddit to focus on algebra

• He came back to reddit. Now he wanted to be number 1. The target was 38 million "set by /u/CheetahSperm18, a porn addicted American man who posted naked anime girls everyday."

• Someone gets suspicious and sees that this zoomer posted at almost the same times everyday. They assume he's a bot so he gets banned from the /r/BotDefense system. This banned him from 3k subs.

• Undeterred he carried on eventually reaching 25 million karma.

• Now he was back at in person school so he would run home when it finished and spam reddit with more posts. During this time he got banned twice. But appealed them successfully.

• The start of 2022 was great because Putin invaded Russia so now he could spam Zelensky.

• But he notices his karma started slowing. He was banned from too many subs. Had to focus on school. So he took 3 months off.

• He claims now is when he learned python and made a bot to automate his posts. Posting 360 times a day.

• People got mad. Someone reports him and reddit permanently bans him for content manipulation. Other big accounts got banned as well.

Now he was free to touch grass and just posts to his youtube.

Proving that reportmaxxing works!

I saw this here

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1c66kpp/how_millions_of_karma_are_made/

I didn't plan to watch it all due to the annoying voice, but the autism of it drew me in. Where were this kids parents. Absolutely r-slurred. At least he got away from it eventually.

If there's one thing we all share in common, it's that we need food to live. Food is our sustenance and without it, we perish. Some of us eat too little and become skinny. Others eat too much and become fat. Regardless, at the end of the day, we're all eating.

Children, especially young infants, cannot obtain their own food. Hence, it is the job of the parents to ensure that the child receives the sustence they require. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case and there are some parents who abandon their responsibility. Today I'll briefly discuss two cases of parents who let their children starve to death. My writing won't be all too animated, and you'll find out why in the conclusion.

The Deadly Vacation

Who doesn't like a good vacation? It's a chance to get away from the stresses of life, see new places, and maybe even enjoy a holiday fling. But what if the stressor is your own child? Suddenly, a vacation becomes a dark deed.

Kristel Candelario wanted to go on vacation. But her pesky 16 month old child Jailyn would take the fun out of it. So, she decided to leave the child in the crib while she jetted off to Detroit and Puerto Rico for ten days. While Kristel was on the beach, Jailyn defacated all over herself and ate the waste as her only source of sustenance. Of course, this turned the situation deadly and the child perished. After the ten day long holiday, Kristel returned home to a poop-covered dead child. She changed the child's clothing before calling 911, claiming to have found the child not breathing.

Of course, upon investigation, it was found that she had abandoned her baby who starved to death. Upon receiving her life sentence, the judge described Kristel's actions as the ultimate act of betrayal. Do you agree? What do you think was going on in Kristel's mind?

The Dirty Home

Seth Welch and Tatiana Fusari had a child named Mary Welch. They did not treat the child very well. CPS found traces of THC in the child, suggesting that the parents were blazing around the infant which is no laughing matter.

Mary was heavily malnourished but the parents refused to seek medical assistance, citing religious reasons. They say God dwells in a cleanly home. Their house must have been the domain of Satan because it was found to have roaches and vermin and mould. For unknown reasons, the parents witheld food from the baby. The likely cause is that they were too wrapped up in their drug-fueled life.

Eventually, Mary succumbed to malnourishment, and the pair were charged with negligent homicide and were sentenced to life. Prior to sentencing, when Seth was told he was facing a life sentence, he made the soyjack face.

This is no laughing matter however.

Conclusion

I can't sleep. I've stopped taking benzos and I feel sick. My head is pounding, I feel like puking and I am constantly moody and agitated. I feel like I need benzos like an infant needs breastmilk. I started playing Red Dead Redemption today. Very cool, but also very slow-paced. I like Bonny McFarlane and walking around the ranch. I think it captures the "Western" aesthetic better than its successor.

Why the Fed won't cut rates

There's a new storm on the horizon. But this is the kind of storm that brings relief on a hot summer evening. There is the scenario of a high for long soft landing on the horizon. A world in which rates stay high, but there's sufficient resilience in the economy to tolerate these high rates. About a 30% probability on this high for long soft landing, combined with the other scenarios of boil the frog with high rates as well, we see about a 75% chance that rates just stay higher than what is currently anticipated.

In terms of the CPI report from March, it obviously came in a bit firmer than expected. And so you're running at rates that are still, a bit uncomfortably high for the Fed. But more importantly, Fed officials had looked at the January and February numbers as maybe kind of an outlier, a bit of a one-off, probably a little bit stronger with underlying trend was. And so, another strong print for March certainly undermines that view and potentially shifts the Fed a little more cautious direction.

And obviously that's what's been reflected in market pricing and taking out some of the cuts that we've had. We're down to, atm, fewer than two cuts by year-end price for the market right now.

The two pieces the Fed had been kind of separating out between housing and the super core. Both of them have been firmer than expected. Housing is basically kind of moving sideways, 0.4 plus per month.

Investors have been expecting it to be gradually cooling a bit more. And the big one obviously is the super core. The three-month run rate of that thing is now above 8%.Thus that's a really strong signal that you've got some meaningful stickiness yet in services inflation. And that's just not the US.

Two points make a line, three points make a trend, and you've got strong growth, not much delinquency and Labor markets are super strong. Why shouldn't Powell just look at this and saying, you know what, the Fed's not done here.

At minimum, they should not be cutting at all. Maybe they should be even hiking. Is there even a counter to that?

Japan

Institutional clients have a very positive outlook on the Japanese economy because they believe that Japan exiting a deflationary era. And you're starting to see things like very tight labor market, higher wage pressure, so real inflationary forces come to the forefront.

Emerging Markets (Interesting counterbalance)

So investors did shift their bias from a bullish one to a more neutral one on both EM local bonds. And currencies off the back of yesterday's US CPI print. After arguing for some time that so long as the Fed is cutting rates, the timing didn't really matter all that much.

But if the market is confident of being in a gradual cutting cycle, that alone would be sufficient to help emerging market assets deliver decent positive returns. And that also explains why, despite a pretty decent repricing in the US yield curve lately. Back in January, markets were pricing in over 100 basis points of cuts.

And now it's far less. EM assets overall held in well on the view that the regime was still one of rate cuts and people can debate the details of timing and overall magnitude. But now, the US has had three consecutive upside surprises to CPI inflation.

That opens the door for a more bearish potential scenario and regime for fixed income assets more generally. So not saying that's the base case now, but clearly the probability of something like the market having to think about no cuts is increasing. So it makes sense to step aside a little bit and let the dust settle on this one.

At EM local bonds, if you look at them inflation adjusted, in real yield terms, those EM real yields are actually the highest since 2009 at the moment, given the lower relative EM inflation. EM currencies are also generally cheaper. If you look in long-term versus the dollar, looking at how EMs been lagging some of these global cyclical upturns at the moment, the valuation side of things is probably not in a bad place right now. And if you look at EMFX risk appetite index, which is good to follow, it's been sort of oscillating around zero (not as of 12 hours ago though lol when I started writing this. More on that below) as well, not showing any significant positions.

If you look at sort of global investors, if you just take flows as a metric of their sentiment and how they've been seeing the asset class, they really have not been putting any money into EM bond funds. In fact, quite the opposite. So far this year, there has been 10 billion of outflows. That's on the back of 34 billion of outflows last year.

And that was on the back of 90 billion of outflows in 2022. So it just doesn't feel like the global investor has been piling into EM. In fact, the opposite, they've, on the margin, been withdrawing money from the asset class.

So it's important to recognize that emerging markets have their own inflation story. It's no longer being driven by a common global factor, as was the case back in 21 or 22. And the contrast this week between the downside surprise in inflation in Mexico, which is the EM country with the greatest trade and economic linkages to the US versus the upside surprise here in the US, that was quite telling about the sort of independent monetary policy and inflation trajectories that we see in emerging markets.

So, in an environment where the market is questioning the Fed's ability to cut at all against the backdrop of firming global growth is not necessarily a bad one for credit markets as recession risks are being seen as fallen and certainly that's what US economists think. But it's going to depend which bit of the credit markets and that's been our theme for a long time. Fundamentally, there's also quite a lot of idiosyncratic driver in those, let's call them post-distressed EM sovereigns who are coming off the back of a couple of years of really special situations distress,[COVID and CHINESE BRI DEBT] some going through restructuring, some narrowly avoided it.

And those are drivers which are just, it's a very big cyclical driver coming off the back of a distress period, which is probably not going to be affected as much by even a rethink of this fed path as the market's going through.

What do I think?

So probably sticking with those post-distressed, very high yield type of countries in sovereigns is probably right. For the lower spread portion, you could see people start to look at it and ask and ask an environment where core rates are going to stay higher for longer, where the value proposition is in there.

EMFX with high yields as outflows increase as FED continues to hold rates still or maybe even hike is a good strategy. 70/30 is also good. 70 in US money markets, 30 in EMFX money markets.

Notes for further Study:

https://www.xtb.com/en/market-analysis/risk-appetite-sinks-as-risks-hit-the-market

2015 paper from Morgan Stanley: https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/investment-insights/ii_emergingmarketattractive_en.pdf

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-12/emerging-market-currencies-hit-two-month-low-on-flight-from-risk

!math !r-slurs

Caution: ALL INVESTMENT ADVISE IS OPINION. MARKETS ARE RISKY. INVEST AT YOUR OWN RISK. I BEAR NO RESPONSIBILITY IN ANY OF YOUR INVESTMENTS.

Happy Confederates Lost The War Day pic.twitter.com/7UbJArzjKR

— Polling USA (@USA_Polling) April 9, 2024

Should be a national holiday smh

National today but only northern states get PTO

Former slave states should get mandatory work day with no pay

>Native American woman praising Sherman

Who's gonna tell her?

How much want to bet her boyfriend is a white

That like betting if the Sun will rise tomorrow

(https://x.com/BurnInHellParag/status/1778164587604460031)

Congolese-killing

I thought this was funny then I looked at the comments and the absolute seething from dorks mad that she's Asian made it 10xs funnier.

It's so funny that a goth highschooler on r/ShermanPosting managed to make so many people mad. Like...her other reddit posts are about the cool pants she found at Hot Topic (literally). Just 10/10 stuff.

There were exactly 0 union soldiers who behaved like this

Grant was hitting the dab as his troops marched on

He was actually hitting the bottle

Yet you still fear them to this day. Interesting.

No need to fear dead traitors to the republic 🦅

But you do.

Love how leftists are only patriotic from 1861-65.

American libs are only allowed to be patriotic when they're celebrating killing their own countrymen and I think that's funny

the men who actually fought in that war:

(In a press-staged photo, not showing injuries sustained from one of the Confed vets starting a fistfight with a Union vet for complimenting Lincoln)

Turns out that dunking on the Confederacy is what makes conservatives go "can comedy go too far?"

Oh, no ancestors who fought in the civil war? Opinion discarded.

Have some respect. The civil war was a tragedy in our history and people who have next to no connection to it making memes pissing on the graves of southern soldiers is sick.

this applies to most ethnic whites today whos ancestors came in the late 1800s and early 1900s but I totally agree its weird af when I see people in California fly a confederate flag or something. Its not your culture at all

Most of these people who hate the confederacy hate the union and will call America stolen land.

My ancestors fought for the confederacy.

It's good that they lost.

Traitors to what? The military pledges an oath to the Constitution, not to the number of states in the Union.

Today, the only way to preserve Americanism and the interests of real Americans is to initiate a National Divorce. Help Louisiana or Texas lead the red states out!

Native Americans despite being actual victims of colonialism and genocide still exist, whereas the Confederacy doesn't.

Native Americans: 1

Neo Confederates: 0

Union soldiers, get this man's butt

As someone with ancestors that served in the Union army, I'd like you to know that they'd declare you the enemy before any Confederate.

The Union troops did not fight for you and would loathe you if they were alive today.

You do know that the vast majority of natives fought with the confederates and against the union, right?

I don't recall the Natives gaining much from the Civil War.

A decent amount of Native American tribes fought for the Confederacy solely because they wanted to keep their slaves

In other words, happy indigenous peoples day amigx 🏳️‍⚧️❤

“The south were losers get over it” crowd reeeaaally don't like it when you extend that logic to Native Americans and colonized Africa.

It's important to remember when you see this video that soldiers who fought on both the Union and Confederate sides of the American Civil War crushed Mexico in a humiliating defeat where their land was only not annexed because we decided that we didn't want their people.

Is hating the confederacy some new way for 1st/2nd gen Americans to virtue signal their loyalty to the regime? Never see a white person doing this. Always Asians or something. There's also a weird trend of Asians to be very race conscious now, like they're upset they missed out.

Yes because we all know about the stories of those battalions of Korean women fighting the Southern states wanting to exercise financial agency and exercise the right to succession without being invaded by a Bankrupt corrupt Group who denied them representation in Congress

This is what rightoids actually believe

my ancestors fought for the union and i still think the punishment for dancing on graves of confederate soldiers should be immediate deportation

at minimum. you don't get to show up here and defile the legacy of the people that brought you in

Grant 🤝 Lee

Conquering Mexico

The problem with being a bumbling aesthete is that you don't know jack about actual history.

Grant was deeply ashamed by the Mexican–American War and his own participation in it, and considered it an unjust war that brought on divine punishment in the form of the Civil War.

Word...

If you're mad at this, there's only one explanation..

Never met a bigger bunch of sore winners. Who the frick gets off on degrading peoples ancestors? The Union defeated the secessionists. Why would anyone still be gloating 160 years later?

Imagine emigrating to China as an American and making TikTok videos mocking the Qing Dynasty dressed as Sun-Yat Sen.

Chinese people would laugh and think it's funny

That would be hilarious.

1. One of the major justifications towards overthrowing the Qing was racial identity, the Han made up the vast majority of China's populace. Sun Zhongshan described it as so.

“A political revolution must proceed simultaneously with the nationalist revolution. When we overthrow the Manchu regime, we will achieve not only a nationalist revolution against the Manchus but also a political revolution against monarchy. They are not to be carried out at two different times.”

1. Nobody would care, good luck finding someone who has any sentimental feelings towards the Qing Dynasty, except for maybe a handful of people in the northeast.

1. Comparing the Confederacy to the Qing Dynasty is the ultimate insult if you really think about it, and probably not a good parallel to draw.

It's not your history. But I understand your impulse to identify with the Union Army given that many of them were also immigrants who shared little history with the men whose ancestors established this country.

She'll be going back btw

Abraham lincoln wanted to send ex-slaves back to Africa. The idea that the average Union soldier (who was conscripted to fight), would side with this asian chick over the confederates is honestly hilarious.

There's literal written letters of standard regular troop men in the union writing back home talking about how they didn't know slavery was like this and regret it immensely. Human beings are capable of empathy

Ah yes, those devout Protestants would surely trade in their lives for the right of their decedents to be made a minority by sodomites! You read a few letters saying slavery was wrong, of course that's the end of it

Like I said, r-slur, even strident abolitionists like Lincoln wanted to send them back to Africa. They would not be on your side. They would despise you

Like seriously, read Sherman's thoughts

You are spiteful and angry, your ancestors would not smile upon your rage but find it pathetic. People who think like you do tried to do action on January 6th and you failed horribly, that's because you are all keyboard warriors and not at all a threat, as you think. I pity you

Notice how they cannot contend with the actual beliefs of the people of the time, so they do the typical r-slurred leftist thing and try to psychologize over a few internet posts (something no actual psychologist would do lmao). Do you actual think a single union soldier would prefer the company of a foreigner over those in the south? We can see the policies they voted for when they got home r-slur.

why would she care

Because those same union soldier went on to, overwhelmingly, ban her ancestors from coming to america with numerous asian/chinese exclusion acts. It is so pathetic that she has no connection with her own homeland (as they got dominated by the west) and then she must larp as a union soldier, who would despise her being in their country.

"The north was also racist, so that's why i must support the "we love slavery" guys"

A brown non-American woman is definitely a Union Yankee and not a border hopping wetback

Why is the union soldier a chinese woman

Who do you think built the underground railroad

The Confederate army was led by General Bruce Lee. Google it.

who do u think fought the war just old straight white christian men?

Uh, yes. The majority of them were I believe. I certainly doubt there were many if any Chinese ladies fighting for the Union, correct me if I'm wrong. Not that I really take any issue with this lady making a pretty dope video depicting it tho

hope ur sitting down for this but at least half, if not more, of the unions front line troops where chinese women

This girl's ancestors probably got killed in the Taiping Rebellion, where 30 million Chinese died over question of whether to worship a European religious cargo cult or a European imperial proxy state. Now their great-granddaughter is internet dancing about the American Civil War

she's filipino, you guys need take being racist more seriously.

The Civil war in Taipei?

Where were her ancestors in 1865?

French Indochina

Blowing themselves up making a railway west to california

Anyone who likes the rebel tears meme is either gay, obese, or an overbearing woman.

I like the rebel tears meme because the South sold out to British commerce and Jewish finance in opposition to President Lincoln who was basically a fascist.

Lincoln was the American Cromwell.

He was a proto-Bolshevik and Marx recognized him as such.

Lincoln was the American Otto von Bismarck

Rightoid infighting

The confederacy were democrats

- Blames Democrats for slavery

• Defends the Confederacy

Republicans in a nutshell.

I will continue to fly the stars and bars in my northern state.

Standard weeb response

Femboy who would get hate-crimed by his fellow Confederate participation trophy celebrants

Without fail, it's the chibi art pfp.

It's cropped hentai, actually

Average RuZZia stan

please k¥s homura will never like you homura will never be ur wife homura will never be ur “l0li” DIE DIE DIE

Foid seething lmao

I feel like old school racists would be absolutely disgusted with racists who love anime

Lmaoooo they crossdress too. Bringing back a confederate general and telling him his cause is being carried by a crossdressing fan of Asian art forms just so I could see them melt into a puddle of rage

Northerners would freak if they met one of my black buddies. Ones named black country who wears rebel flag shirts and hats. Rural black people are the best.

If your ancestors didn't fight for either side your opinion is largely irrelevant.

do you hold this view for all wars and events occurring in world history?

uhm. bad take. union soldiers were NOTORIOUSLY transphobic

and you're telling me that the people down in the south weren't??

oh so other people's transphobia excuses their own bigotry? do better

These edits have to be a reverse pschology dixie propaganda man they're cringe af

Will, 35

Hannah, 35

Jarell, TX

Personal

• Married for near 7 years

• Two children, ages two and three

• Brought salami

• She is not a viewer, he is, she didn't watch anything prior to show timestamp

Career

• Him - "Food Broker"

  • 68'250 salary

  • $500 stipend for car

  • Another 5'000 in performance bonuses

• Him - Woodworking side business

  • Net $500-$600 a monthly

  • Facebook marketplace

• Her - 3rd grade teacher

  • Math and Science

  • $41'000, paid ten months, not 12 timestamp

    • "You have the choice to divy it up"

      • "But you don't"

  • Has to pay 3 bucks a day for lunch at the school?

Finances

• Married but finances are separate? They "each pay different things" timestamp

• "She has a bit of a spending issue sometimes, like I don't really trust her to have like a joint bank account with me" timestamp

  • Panicked rephrase - "We have uh different ideas sometimes about wants versus needs" timestamp

• Hannah thinks that furniture is a "need" to survive "things for a home are needed" timestamp

• Hannah also thinks that she couldn't trust if they combined finances timestamp

  • She was prior married, with joint finances. Ex habitually spent while neetmaxxing, married for four years

• Both want to make finances joint now? Husband is hesitant about debt, thinks wife doesn't understand timestamp

  • Wife - "I get told things, after the fact"

• Claims about past finances timestamp

  • Tried to talk about finances but they never actually get around to it, high level procrastinationmaxxing

• "So you believe the finances and a lot of bad finances are her fault" timestamp

  • Husband claims the wife makes "a lot of bad purchases"

  • "A lot of them are purchases that we make together"

• Some discussion about what a happy childhood is timestamp

  • they recently spent $800 on a TV?

• Wife tries to justify some spending talking about how they didn't inherit anything and deflecting onto spending on daughter's extracurriculars timestamp

  • Genuinely pathetic

• Housing situation timestamp

  • Used to rent a house in Long Beach, now they rent one here, moved because it's more affordable. Spent "every dime" ($12'000 )

  • "Unfortunately my husband was also in charge of the move"

  • Minor bickering, wife doesn't feel 'included' in decisions, quick rehashing of an old argument about what they brought with them while moving timestamp

• Scores timestamp

  • Him 1/10, her 8/10

  • Wife gives her perspective on things, she feels like she only gets a glimpse of how bad things are sometimes? Never thinks about it?

• Wife Statements timestamp

  • A few Ikea, some fast food, a couple Apple Bill, the grocery store, tickets to SeaWorld

    • Sea World explanation timestamp

  • Husband's travel expenses somehow ended up there because she paid for it? timestamp

    • They are going to visit family "for Halloween"

  • Pushback on whether wife is actually the reason for the debt timestamp

    • Wife looking smug

  • There's a $300 overdraft protection timestamp

    • No fees but she still overdrafted

  • $1'845 in, $2'386 out timestamp

• Car "situation"

  • Foreshadowing - wife "didn't have her id" timestamp

    • Car is under his name because wife doesn't have as steady a job history? She had a credit card she wasn't paying on that went to collections. She "got so overwhelmed"

• "We were in a different position in our lives when we decided to have the kids" timestamp

  • Juicy deets - He was a chef for 15 year, lost everything during COVID

    • Executive Chef, owner wanted to not close down the second time. He'd already used his unemployment benefits

    • Background not in video - Cali's lockdowns were, on paper, a couple steps away from turning every 'citizen' into a prisoner. The state told people they couldn't go more than a few miles from home, couldn't cross county lines, all sorts of other tin pot tyrant insanity. A city deciding devastate some restaurant that didn't kowtow is completely in-character

  • Tried solar sales and being a realtor between this and the food broker job

  • Filled up his CC during his attempt at real estate timestamp

    • He's still in real estate classes? Takes a couple hours

    • Descends into more bickering, he's worried about committing to the wood-working

• Debt timestamp

  • Credit Card 1 - Quicksilver ($5'072) timestamp

    • 174 minimum payment,

    • he paid 372 but made 188 in transactions got 122 in interest

    • Purchase explanation timestamp

      • A $160 router on amazon - switching from Optimum to Fiberfirst

        • 150 for the router, 10 for the fiber receiver

      • They had a mesh router system but it stopped working

      • Caleb simps for renting routers

  • Credit Card 2 - Chase Freedom ($5'665) timestamp

    • Bickering about whether or he had told her just how much debt they are in timestamp

      • she thought it was seven or eight, not 30'000

    • Made 2'650 in payments, 2519 in additional transactions

    • Fair bit of eating out, some subscriptions, a couple trips out with the daughter

  • Credit Card 3 ($2'434) -

    • $81 minimum monthly payment, 52 in interest accrued

  • Credit Card 4 - Shell - ($632)

    • $16 interest, $29 minimum payment

  • Credit Card 5 Best Buy - (1'816) timestamp 1 also timestamp 2

    • The $800 TV and her phone

    • "How much was my phone"

    • TV was zero percent but he didn't finish paying it off before that ended

    • Phone is currently in the interest free period

• Car time timestamp

  • "Ask him about his cars"

  • 1998 Jeep Cherokee - 117'000

    • Got it because he heard it's very reliable

    • Had a Chevy S10 prior that had a lot of problems, engine blew up, needed help from his granparents to replace that engine

    • At the mechanics right now because "a pin fell out" - mechanic is putting in a push button start, not charging for labor?

    • Owes 4'196 on this timestamp

    • $204 minimum payments, 36 months

    • He thinks the interest is twenty-something, maybe 24%

  • 1983 Mercedes and some other car at some point

    • Needs a vacuum that costs $250 to replace

    • Posted on Facebook marketplace but took it off while the Jeep is getting repaired

    • Thinks he can get $3'500 for it after he replaces the vacuum

      • He bought this car in California

  • Kia Van

    • 306 minimum payment - she pays $500 into some account that takes autopays it every month?

    • Her car, under his name because she forgot her id that day?

    • Took out a loan through CarMax, refinanced it jointly with her mother - interest is 3.4% maybe?

  • "I think we should just get a new truck"

• Amazon Purchases timestamp

  • One or more of them is taking Melatonin

  • The router timestamp

    • Caleb (routerlet) seethes for a moment

  • Subscriptions for a 15% discount on household necessities

• His Account statements timestamp

  • Mostly sane stuff

  • $5 in savings

• $7'000 in the business account

  • Gets his checks there because he's a 1099 not a W2

  • Also pays his rent out of here because Quickbooks tracks his business account and then he splits it within that account - whole garage and office are what he's writing off

    • got told that this works by a CPA friend of his

• Wife goes for the throat "You've literally confessed to..." timestamp

• Retirement

  • His - $4'200

  • Hers - $1'200

Overall Finances timestamp

• 42'000 a year from his main job

• Some from wood-working (he hasn't paid taxes on this, mostly done in cash )

• Ad placement from injury lawyers, Caleb's hit the big time

• Pie chart timestamp

  • They get charged subscription fees for Smart Locks on their rental - no mentions of tipping

She’s pretty wym pic.twitter.com/a3ljCBAuBK

— ☆🄿🄸🄴 ☆ (on Break)(not anymore) (@Artiah669) April 12, 2024

!macacos !soyteens

Tried my best to doodle their pinkie! Any criticisms is welcome to this doodle and I don't mind updating it

woa this might be even worse

"she looks ugly" and it just looks like a regular person youd see in real life

i want a detailed description of whats supposedly ugly ab this design w out them being colorist

well..no! never seen anyone like this in my life lololol

have you considered talking to real people instead of playing royal high all day

31.5k posts telling ppl to go outside insane projection

Literally

edtwt stays online and inside too much looking at pinterest girls they forgot what other people also look like

Is this the female equivalent of accusing people of being a porn addict?

Do you live in Chernobyl?

It looks like a racist Wojack dude what are you talking about

Incomprehensible woahjacks from Bahia, Brazil

bro living in ohio

Normalise having average looking characters

normalise not looking like a runway model

girl looks so freaking happy and that's one of the many things that makes a person pretty, imo

The issue is that artists make inclusive POC and LGBT characters ugly as frick while the generic cis white straight characters are pinnacles of beauty.

This literally feels borderline racist like... No, that's not an average person look. That looks like some sort of wojack or minstrel cartoon ☠️☠️

literally. she IS pretty. i saw people jumping thru hoops in the replies trying to make this problematic which is really funny

She looks like a racist wojack made by some neonazi on 4chan

This design looks cute @RobotinTheVoid

^^ Twitter needs to stfu and stop bullying a child

the mlp fandom when artists ' human versions of magical rainbow ponies look like a regular human and not a supermodel ( the whole point of the show is friendship and accepting people for who they are )

Darn apparently every character ever needs to follow strict societal beauty standards rooted in white supremacy….

she's so pretty, i have a friend who looks like her

hope your friend doesn't know you think they look like this.

God forbid a black girl have braces ig??? seriously what is their issue

Babe its the… face….

nah learning that the artist is white made this whole discussion flip for me

Ok but that specifically looks like satire...

as a black girl, it's really aggravating when people draw us in these..unsightly ways and then try to gaslamp us into thinking this is what every other black woman looks like. "this is what an average person looks like" average person here, no the frick its not!

like its just smth abt making the poc headcanons god awful ugly that doesnt sit well with me like lets think inwards on why yall wanna make the poc headcanons fat and ugly

the drawing is literally bordering on racist wojack and they're like "she's pretty!!!!"

imagine if the person who drew these was a very very VERY white person LOL

sources are saying theyre white

Why do they always make these exaggerated drawings ugly as sin. Black people are beautiful... this feels like racist insults every single time.🤦‍♂️

If I was told this was a right wing meme made specifically to make fun of s I would believe you

I've seen actual racist caricatures of black people that looked better than this.

"She's pretty wym"

my good friend spoke about this before

Hear me out...

I look like this

In France many shop assistants wear the hijab. The Islamization of Europe is proceeding at a rapid pace and no one is saying anything. Dark times ahead. pic.twitter.com/FPnzNBtEwS

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) April 13, 2024

Image/Video replies

More chud seething underneath:

https://x.com/Shunyaa00/status/1779163256965452202

Just a womyn looking outward of the window.

https://x.com/EuropeImmigran/status/1779163037976449410

Made an AI image and get mad at it.

https://x.com/vikasnisu_007/status/1779164439209705821

They truly won't stop being racists towards every non-yt race despite they're the main recipient of racism.

https://x.com/BananaN72477354/status/1779337312574505310

It the same as in Japan

Most japanese department stores have Koreans-style greetings

First time seeing Jap rightards hating Kimchis Koreans

https://x.com/Muhamadraslulla/status/1779432150930194839

Some halal food from puslims

We all know that only one country in this world would people do this.

https://x.com/MoMoney2030/status/1779173713470181576

Text replies

https://x.com/Mai_ASUR/status/1779163107320869101

Yeah but France always gets conquered without a shot.

So true

https://x.com/martin_karissa/status/1779322563182629102

Saw these outfits at a small town Texas festival this week.

Why are these people in a small town in Texas?

They have no interest in assimilation.

They are NOT here for opportunities.

It's clear they are here as part of a large, orchestrated plan.

Even they speak only English they're probably get treated in a racist manner lol.

Also, she looks like this btw

https://x.com/Cobratate_WR/status/1779164015421530397

are you trying to say Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, is in dark time right now?

They're in dark times because they are letting indian workers in.

BTW this fake Andrew Tate doxxed Aevann:

https://x.com/Cobratate_WR/status/1779611192757203172

https://x.com/Ahly_wy/status/1779365234584743939

France is down

This chink coomer is mad about muslim despite is close with many islamic countries!

Muslims Retaliate

https://x.com/qanimahrez2/status/1779615658285658489

We will take over the whole Europe inshallah 🤺🗡️

Someone have that meme of a bell curve midwit meme, with the right side a saying "Islamic Emirate of Europe 2050 Inshallah"?

https://x.com/ragedmom/status/1779402637647179980

Didnt Mary wear head coverings? Head coverings are signs of submission to the Almighty.

>What's your problem?

It's funny chuds almost always forget Islam and Christianity are just reinterpretation of Judaism.

https://x.com/MBTCETH1/status/1779513511208538297

Soon everyone will be Muslim😀

Because they understand

Waiting for better days...

It's funny muslims do not hesitate to say "yes we are going to completely destroy your society and rebuild it in accord with our ideology".

https://x.com/canto8787/status/1779184020313587744

What's your effing problem with that?

Window shopper

People like u don't even buy stuff

U must be an Indian sexy Indian dudeh from the looks of it

Another day for and to fight! But it's mostly indian hating them rather than arabs hating them back.

Anyway I am tired now, see you next time!

Introduction

Q: What is Happy Tree Friends?

A: You should have watched it as a kid. If you haven't, you can watch this:

Q: who the frick like this show?

A: neurodivergents , and no, this is unironic.

The Subreddit

I watched Happy Tree Friends as a kid and think it is pretty funny, and found out they made a new episode recently, so I read something about happy tree friends, and found the subreddit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/

It is filled with neurodivergents obsessing over their stupid fan-made characters:

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/1c3mrx1/my_first_animation/

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/1c31s79/hi_im_new_to_this_community_htf_persona/

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/1c0qcwk/millie_rabbit_feel_free_to_draw_her_anyway_you/

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/1c0bnyz/help/

It is not even that interesting until you look into the stickied post of the subreddit.

The Neurodivergent

Here is the stickied post:

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/198sto6/since_yall_wont_learn/

I don't care if I left the fandom! If you mention brunynhoalves, you're getting a 5 day ban! Just frick off already! I said to stop talking about him! I saw another post today!

Even the mods talk like an neurodivergent.

But who is /u/brunynhoalves?

So basically he spams the subreddits with posts to tell people to subscribe to him or whatever:

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/15q2uet/do_you_wanna_subscribe_me_on_my_youtube_account/

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/15vgrx5/add_me_on_groomercordbrunynhofernandes_99185/ (Trigger Warning: Groomcord )

Since he spams the subreddit non-stop, he is eventually banned from it

And he appeals to the subreddit mods :

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/17il0f4/the_entirety_of_my_convo_with_burnynhoalves_a/#lightbox

So this is apparantly Flippy x Fliqpy ship:

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/16q0ach/brought_back_this_shit/

It gets even worse:

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/17w6j17/the_entirety_of_my_convo_with_brunynhoalves_the/

In case you can't see the screenshot in the last screenshot:

Can you rub your breasts on my peepee?

Hey

Can you rub your breasts on my peepee?

I said can you rub your breasts on my peepee?

He apparantly shit up the subreddit so much that there are many complain posts about him:

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/17vc4k7/i_dont_tend_to_be_an_empathetic_person_but/

What the frick is even illegal shit? These are all fricking anthropomorphic animals and these zoophilic neurodivergent do be like "no only the yellow rabbit and the pink female one not the same character but two personality"

https://old.reddit.com/r/happytreefriends/comments/17vj3sb/brunynhoalves_meme/

When the neurodivergents noootices

And from the above post, I found his twitter:

https://x.com/BrunoFe62752625

💚🐻Flippy HTF🐻💚 (DO NOT UNFOLLOW ME)

DO NOT UNFOLLOW

Gives off DO NOT REDEEM energy

13🎂| Neurodivergent🧩| Male | (he,) I'm a good artist, I'm obsessed with #happytreefriends, follow me if you want.

Neurodivergent

quite apparant

Look at this beautiful retweet:

https://x.com/ADONIS_577/status/1705743589676843332

And here's his YouTube Channel:

Made on Alight Motion

How To Make G Major 74 in Alight Motion:

1st go to up tempo and pitches:

-10

+9

+14

2nd: go to alight motion and create a project what you want

3rd: tap + on Bottom Right

4th: click Klasky Csupo

5th: go to homogenization and opacity and click Luminosity

6th: go to effects and search Stretch Axis:

Scale: 0,85

Angle: 0,0°

7th: go to effects and search Circular Ripple:

Centralize: X Axis: 0 Y Axis: 0 Frequency: 1,00

Intensity: -0,140

Phase: 0,00

Radius: 0,30

Feather: 1,000

8th: go to effects and Search Stretch Axis: (again)

Stretch: 1,22

Angle: 0,0°

The autism is strong

https://youtube.com/@brunofernandes7072/videos

And this is legitimately disturbing.

And of course it is easy to find his DeviantArt too:

https://www.deviantart.com/brunynhofernandes101

https://www.deviantart.com/brunynhofernandes101/art/Rubbing-your-breasts-on-my-peepee-981966251

Rubbing your breasts on my peepee

So, how neurodivergent do you think he is?

The RT subreddit jannies have "temporarily" suspended rule 6. Rule 6 says "6. Do not come here to complain about how "RT is dead"."

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

For the rest of RT's history see my previous effortposts.

Part 1

Part 2

The End of RoosterTeeth

We covered the majority of the reasons why RoosterTeeth eventually went under in the previous post. In this Part 3 I'll wrap up a few points I didn't have room to elaborate on previously before detailing the actual collapse and aftermath. After all there isn't any single climactic scandal or crisis that did them in on its own.

Though the following point did contribute heavily to RWBY's decline.

Animation is Expensive

I'M GENLOCKING!

— Achievement Hunter

RoosterTeeth didn't have an actual animation department back when they hired Monty Oum for RvB. Monty and some of his "apprentices" handled all of the cgi for RvB seasons 8-10, and the first Volume of RWBY couldn't have had more than fifteen people total behind its animation. The success of RWBY is what created the proper Animation Studio, and going forward it would handle the rest of RWBY and RvB along with a few new IPs RoosterTeeth tried to get off the ground. RT's other animated productions include Camp Camp, Nomad of Nowhere, X-Ray and Vav, S*x Swing, and RoosterTeeth Animated Adventures.

The main show of note however is Gen:LOCK. Out of all the post-RWBY properties, Gen:LOCK was RT's biggest hope of recapturing that lightning in a bottle and was easily the most expensive production. Indeed it's been claimed that Gen:LOCK appropriated funds from other animated productions since its creator also just so happened to be head of the animation department

As I mentioned in the first thread, Xoomers were some of the first weebs and American anime is their fault Gen:LOCK creator Gray Haddock had originally only done minor voice work when he started with RT. But that made him a professional compared to everyone else involved with developing RWBY, a very indie show in which RT was turning to their animators, HR employees, and podcasters just to fill out the voice acting roles. Gray voiced and was popular enough to have the character stick around for three seasons when he was only meant to be in the first episode. When RoosterTeeth formed their proper animation studio in 2014, Gray was made Head of Animation. He was also a writer and assistant director for RWBY.

Gray grew up watching mecha and cyberpunk anime and much like Monty Oum he must have decided at a young age that he'd make his own cool thing if ever he got the chance. As CRWBY (production crew of RWBY) began work on Volume 5 and RT decided on what the best big show would be, Gray pitched his idea for RoosterTeeth's very own robot franchise and used his position over the animation department to give his pitch a few advantages over any others. For one thing he could have the artists draw up concept art on demand

Gray really wanted Gen:LOCK to be a full blown production comparable less to web shows and more towards network television. Not only would the production costs greatly exceed any previous RT animated endeavor. The show also shilled out for actual talent from SAG-AFTRA. Apparently it really started to come together after a concept artist used Michael B. Jordan as a reference for the main character and Gray sent an email to Jordan's agent.

I should note that at the time Jordan was most well known for the 2015 Fantastic Four movie so this might explain why RT's random robot pitch was taken seriously. But even though he eventually went and did Black Panther he still agreed to work on the project, apparently because he's a huge weeb and liked the idea personally. His company Outlier Society Productions even co-produced the show. Other names attached include Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) Dakota Fanning (Independent movies apparently) Koichi Yamadera (Cowboy Bebop) and David Tennant (Doctor Who)

No, really

Work on Gen:LOCK started in ‘17 at which point Gray left CRWBY to work on Volume 5 without finishing his workload or finding a replacement He also siphoned both funds and animators from other projects while still demanding every show hit their deadlines. It was at this point that RT started bringing on unpaid interns to finish their animation — more details on this in the "Controversies" section of my second RT effort post.

RWBY Volume 6 and Gen:LOCK were produced together through mandatory crunch time and free labor from interns promised a job at RT after 90 days only to be shown the door as soon their contracts expired Gen:LOCK's development went well into the red and was pushed back to 2019. It's been estimated that both GL and Volume 6 had about a third of their seasons made entirely for free thanks to not paying overtime. People were working up to 80 hours a week, with management offering empty platitudes about the crunch and how they'd resolve it. The planned number of episodes was cut from 12 to 8. RT had a whole pipeline set up with Full Sail Animation to provide them with yet more interns for the meat grinder.

Finally Gen:LOCK premieres in January as a FIRST exclusive. The show did moderately well in viewership and reviews. A dedicated fandom formed — probably the third largest RT fandom behind RvB and RWBY if that means anything — and the show actually made it to syndication on Cartoon Network's Toonami.

But as such an expensive and time consuming production with Hollywood actors attached, Gen:LOCK broke RoosterTeeth's bank and fell into the trap of needing to be a massive, breakout hit in order to make any kind of profit. Since RWBY made a lot of money as an indie success story, RoosterTeeth had hoped something with more budget would make proportionally more profit.

Gen:LOCK was their animation department's biggest misstep and a significant reason why the decline became terminal. Gen:LOCK was simply too expensive and didn't prove to be worth the investment. None of the other shows were runaway successes either. In the grand scheme RT's animation department only served to drain the company's treasury.

In the wake of the show's release RoosterTeeth's ‘19 Glassdoor scandal broke and soured their reputation along with the myth of their being a great company for animators to get their foot in the door. The RT founders had apparently given Gray Haddock a lot of leeway in animation and were unpleasantly surprised to learn how the department had been handled. He resigned soon after and RT never attempted anything this ambitious again.

Gen:LOCK itself wasn't (quite) dead and in October it was announced that Season 2 would initially premiere with HBO Max before becoming available to FIRST members.

But RoosterTeeth simply did not have the capability to make such a show anymore and so HBO was given reins to write and produce while outsourcing the actual animation to the people who did Planet Sheen and Fanboy & Chum Chum. The Ship of Theseus that was season 2 released in November 2021 and, well, I've never heard of anyone who liked it. Modern RWBY may not be great but it at least has an extremely dense fanbase conditioned over years to watch the show uncritically. Gen:LOCK died in its infancy and the few remaining fans mostly just ignore season 2 these days.

People are letting their nostalgia blind them as to what RT was at the time of its death: a corporate entity like any else, with widely documented worker-abuse issues. It's a shame that the studio that once pioneered independent animation on the internet became just another cog in the machine that was thrown out after it became useless, but it did it to itself.

/r/RWBYcritics

Speaking of RWBY, this show too became more and more expensive with every season and had probably stopped being profitable by the time RT imploded. Volume 9 supposedly cost over 6.6 million to produce and had to be funded with help from Crunchyroll in exchange for an exclusivity deal.

Looking back it's a quiet miracle the show even lasted nine seasons. There was almost never a time something wasn't wrong with RoosterTeeth's animation department. In brief,

V1: No budget lol. The only reason RWBY is a 3D show/got made at all is because Monty was already used to the animation software and wasn't asking RoosterTeeth to go find a studio.

V2: No major problems, but…

V3: Monty dies

V4: Switched to another graphics program entirely. Shane's infamous letter also comes out around this time (detailed in the previous post) He and other Monty loyalists are dismissed from the company.

V5: This is when Gray Haddock began taking resources for Gen:LOCK. The volume also had more episodes than usual.

V6: Gen:LOCK problems continued. The Glassdoor scandal happened for RT. Actor Vic Mignogna was also fired from his role on sexual harassment allegations.

V7: No problems, however…

V8: Covid and the Texas power crisis from Greg Abbot's paraplegic witch magic snow storm Also a longer season than normal

V9: Continued production issues from Covid. Made at the same time as the Justice League crossover movies. More RT workplace misconduct. Led to a 2 year hiatus.

V10: Isn't even greenlit. I'm bringing it up because CRWBY claimed in early March that preproduction was done and they were waiting for the go-ahead

In retrospect cartoons pushed RoosterTeeth to its limit.

Collapsing Influence and Fading Influencers

REMINDER THESE BIPOCS ARE WORSE AT BUSINESS THAN COLLEGEHUMOR OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS

@KoreanKongKing

In this section we'll discuss the evolution of the podcast half of RoosterTeeth. Many of these changes represented attempts to reverse course on the company's decline or, in the case of some influencers, to get away from the sinking ship.

First I'll bring up the Let's Play family. To clarify, "let's plays" are videos where people would play a video game and, uh... that's it. IIRC they go back to the noughties and predate any real streaming personalities. Let's Play as a proper noun was created by Achievement Hunter as a channel specifically for their relevant let's plays, originally featuring videos from just the main six AH personalities with the videos uploaded to YouTube. As RT grew Let's Play also featured people from Funhaus and other Fullscreen aquired groups like ScrewAttack. Gradually this evolved into a larger network.

On May 31, 2017, it was announced that YouTubers JT Machinima, NoahJ456, LazarBeam, and Steven Suptic (now known as Sugar Pine 7) had joined Let's Play, with JT Machinima being the first of which to have merchandise sold through the RT Store. Others to eventually join include Criken2, James Buckley, BedBananas, Tomato Gaming, ChilledChaos, Retro Replay, Castle Super Beast, GaLm, and Tom Fawkes.

Yeah I haven't heard of most of these people either There was also Etika though and I remember him entirely through the rDrama gayop

As mentioned previously, the evolution of YouTube and changes made to its policies regarding advertising revenue hurt RoosterTeeth over time. Aside from trying to make up for it by expanding on FIRST and their own website, they noticed the Let's Play "family" had always been a consistent source of income and was relatively less affected by YouTube's evolution. They represented numerous personalities and different kinds of content that still appealed to the ever changing algorithm while having a low overhead that RT wasn't entirely responsible for. RT hoped the Let's Play group would keep them relevant no matter how YouTube continued to evolve.

Unfortunately they never succeeded in cultivating the goal of having this many more Achievement Hunters. The partners that were already hemorrhaging continued to do poorly and others simply declined to renew their contracts as soon as they were up. The successful members must have decided there wasn't much to gain from working with RT. Individual influencers certainly didn't appreciate RT's restrictions on their individual streaming. Ultimately the Let's Play family was pointless.

Funhaus used to be really good before they lost their whole cast and replaced them by the same kind of sanctimonious r-slurs that made the rest of roosterteeth unwatchable.

They removed all the edge that made funhouse great. The new cast would call hr if you tried to make them watch vr gay porn.

-- @OutKongged and @w1n5t0n

This is as good a time as any to bring up how RT podcasts and meta gaming content simply lost SOVL over time. The let's play formula Achievement Hunter pioneered requires entertaining people with chemistry. Parasocialmaxxers want to feel like they're watching friends play a game together. RT started sticking random "influencers" in front of the screen in the hopes of hitting it big on the algorithm, never mind that these were random people who didn't know each other and were always talking over each other. Losing more and more of their originals to scandals and retirement and replacing them with culture warrior/"zoomers like this kind of thing right?" types didn't help either.

The comedy that the original g*mer dudebro demographic liked disappeared and RT never grabbed the limited attention spans of youngins to replace them.

I don't think there were any other major RT events and scandals left to cover so we're gonna start skipping ahead. The following developments are recent enough to overlap with the history of rDrama.net and represent some of the final happenings in the history of the company.

In September '23 it was announced that RT's longrunning Achievement Hunter would no longer produce content. The stated reason for this was the entire AH cast moving onto different creative projects throughout Rooster Teeth -- BlackKrystel and Jack getting more involved at Inside Gaming, Ky working behind the scenes, Lindsay doing voice work and Twitch streams for RWBY V-Tubing, and Geoff and Gavin doing the thing mentioned in a following section. Meanwhile Trevor, Michael, Alfredo, and Joe created an entirely new channel called Dogbark, which premiered its first video in October.

Michael and others apparently felt stifled by the AH name but even the RT community wasn't super enthusiastic and the subreddit left comments like the following,

I wish ya'll the best, and I'll give it a fair shot, but this video doesn't instill confidence guys.

Im gonna be honest this trailer just gave me "We're trying to be Smosh" vibes

"The community has consistently told us they dont like scripted shorts or improv bits and want us to just go back to being 4 to 6 friends playing games together and shooting the shit. So we have decided to move to a new channel that is exclusively scripted shorts and improv bits"

Incredible.

great to see them leaning into their weaknesses

Views were never great.

Always Open (aka the finger me podcast)

DAE vaginas amirite, ladies?

-- @JimieWhales

In December Rt shut down All Good No Worries which was meant to be a network focusing on female fans (And yes s were involved namely Charlotte from Funhaus) This was also the third and final time the Always Open podcast had been put on pause.

In the wake of Achievement Hunter's dissolution Geoff and Gavin started the FrickFace Podcast with Andrew Panton as well as becoming the new hosts of Let's Play. Some have said this was more akin to old AH because it was back to being a group of RT originals playing the games. This was one of the more active groups in RT's final hours.

The fact that this was announced 30 minutes before the end of rooster teeth

-- /r/frickfacepod

One of the funnier moments of RT's closing Ratyboy Adventures is a game that Andrew Panton subjected FrickFace to in a Let's Play video. For whatever reason he then decided to buy the rights to the character and so on March 6th, 2024 it was announced that RatyBoy would become the official mascot of Let's Play.

This, erm, news came out just thirty minutes before it was announced RoosterTeeth as a whole would be shutting down

Anyway, this is just some noteworthy tidbits from RT's very late history. Remember the true and boring background cause of their collapse was declining ratings and stagnation over time.

The Fall

RT's cause of death is via shooting themselves in the foot way too much over the years, or death via a million and one papercuts if you prefer. A studio like theirs surviving twenty-one years should be a success story, but they've been treading water for so long it doesn't feel that way, and despite many fans being upset with WBD, for all we know, they only pulled the plug once RT's brain function fully stopped.

-- /r/RWBYcritics

And now we reach the end.

Since it's not a podcast I'll mention in this section that the last RTX convention was held in ‘23. The majority of the event staff was laid off later that year and in December General Manager Jordan Levin announced the cancellation of RTX 2024. He notably cited that the conventions had never been profitable. This was a major red flag to even the staunchest RoosterTeeth fan since the conventions had always been an important way of promoting projects and making deals with other companies.

Remember Red vs. Blue, the show that started all of this? RT continued making it over the 10's, even after RWBY became the primary IP and even after Bungie's Halo transitioned over to 343 After 18 seasons it was finally announced in July ‘23 that the longrunning web show, the longest in American history besides maybe Homestar Runner would end with the following season. I'm not sure if this was the result of RT's imminent closure or not but the RvB finale ended up being a movie instead of a full season, Red vs. Blue: Restoration. This is set to premiere in May of this year making it one of the last RT productions.

Most people considered RT's announcement to be a long overdue mercy kill to the Halo series people once watched on their CRT monitors But it's fitting in the end that Red vs. Blue lasted as long as RoosterTeeth itself.

My favourite quote from the Rooster Teeth subreddit today:

For me personally, Rooster Teeth shutting down feels like the equivalent to an ex-spouse getting killed in an accident.

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

The decision to shut down RoosterTeeth came from Warner Bros Discovery. As far as I know there isn't a specific reason why it was closed down last month other than a simple case of bean counters taking a hard look at the data. Warner Bros itself has been having money issues lately and under the reign of Daddy Zaslav they've been slashing expenses left and right. 2023 saw RoosterTeeth announce that RTX was unprofitable, the end of Achievement Hunter, the end of Red vs. Blue, and the admission RWBY's last two seasons had gone over budget and that the show itself wouldn't have continued without Crunchyroll's support. It's not hard to see why WB didn't let it go on another year.

Everything RT that still exists; Funhaus, Frickface, The RoosterTeeth Podcast (Formerly The Drunk Tank), CRWBY, and whatever else is currently being looked over by WB execs (picture that for a moment ) IPs like RWBY and Gen:LOCK are allegedly being shopped around for potential buyers alongside the podcast and gaming networks.

Worth noting that on April 8th it was announced the Roost Podcast Network (not the same as the regular RoosterTeeth Podcast ) had been sold by WB to Night, a digital talent management company. I think this represents the first sale of a former RT property.

I'll also clarify that March 6th was only the shut down announcement date and that RT is going to continue operating until early May. This might be because Texas law requires employers to give at least 60 day notices before layoffs actually start. Funhaus and Frickface at least will continue until then and the RvB movie is supposedly still coming out.

Late Stage RWBY

RT died with a whimper, and RWBY died with a teenage girl committing suicide because she gave up hope and nobody cared about her, which was very prophetic if you ask me. Salem's goal was the world's longest suicide note, which is fitting because that's what happened to RWBY and RT as a whole.

— /r/rwbycritics

You may be wondering how RWBY was doing throughout all this? As evidenced by the thread quotes RWBY fans had gotten a little unhinged by the time the show's last volume rolled around. The fandom divide was thoroughly entrenched and people started acting like very soy echoes of dramanauts. RWBY became less a show and more a vector for online antics where the terminally online would fling at each other and celebrate if anything happened to the other side Honestly the evolution of the FNDM's "culture" could be its own effortpost but it's also kind of hard to translate for normie comprehension

Regarding the civil war, those hardcore fans rabidly loyal to CRWBY — largely represented by showrunners Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross — are known for having parasocial relationships with crew members not so unlike people who followed specific AH or Funhaus personalities. The writers preferred to interact with them over any unfair and mean spirited critics and certain developments like Blake and Yang being together are accused of being bones of appeasement thrown their way for ratings. The most hardcore CRWBY stans outright hate Monty and basically anyone who left the show's development for any reason because they're not seen as part of current RWBY.

The other half are the heckin chud critics — though really it's about one part one part and two parts but for fantasy waifu slop. These guys haven't liked RWBY in a long time and have been waiting patiently for it to end either out of desire for a reboot or because of pure schadenfreude.

This divide is very serious business in places like Reddit i.e. posting regularly in /r/RWBYcritics grants an automatic ban from /r/RWBY

For those of you mayo scrotes who watch video essays one of more infamous RWBY fandom developments came from a critical video by hbomberguy. Idk who he really is honestly but his three hour video in which he simply points out how disappointing RWBY is/has become set the FNDM on fire and was otherwise good for dramacoin I don't consider this sort of thing to be news but I'm bringing it up because to this day you can really make RWBY weirdos just by reminding them it exists. Any criticism of CRWBY's precious little baby is not allowed

Moistcritikal also apparently made a negative comment about RWBY once though I don't think it was a whole video. He's also on the list

As mentioned earlier CRWBY went through a difficult production period post Covid, but though it took almost two extra years and outside funding to make it happen, they finally did finish Volume 9 as of last year alongside the two Justice League movies that Kang really loved and recommends you watch. As Volume 9 finally ended its Crunchyroll exclusivity and premiered on RT just these past few months, CRWBY also announced they'd wrapped up preproduction on Volume 10 (though they do tend to exaggerate how much they've done at any time) and were just waiting for the green light on funding. When this didn't immediately happen, the poor bastards even started appealing directly to the fans at places like RTX for support

But with the extra content that's come out since Volume 9, there's also evidence CRWBY could see the writing on the walls and that they were preparing Volume 10 as a possible last season though they'd previously claimed to have a 12 Volume roadmap for the entire story.

They were just one Volume short in the end

The Fate of RWBY

This is the first comment on the first thread I clicked on in rwbycritics:

"It's strange, while my countrymen cheer the beast's fall, I feel a strange melancholy, after all these years, what once was filled with majesty and pride, goes out not with a blaze of glory, but a whimper in the dark."

So that's how they're taking it

— @HugeKongson

Obviously RoosterTeeth's shutdown kills RWBY too since this former passion project now costs seven figures a season to produce. The true fate of the IP is entirely in the air though. The legal rights now belong to Warner Bros or one of the other companies under them in the family tree and it remains to be seen what will happen. Meanwhile a spattering of newish RWBY developments have happened since March 6th.

Volume 9's release on RT FIRST still happened as planned. In a rare moment of RT generosity it was announced that all RWBY content would be free on the RoostrTeeth site until closure. (Though this does track with their treatment of FIRST members ) As it wrapped up CRWBY actually released a slightly extended version of the season's epilogue, albeit it took the form of an unfinished animatic.

This leads into RWBY: Beyond, a four episode "storybook anthology" that will represent the last official CRWBY content and otherwise wrap up RoosterTeeth's tenure with the show. It actually premieres today

Unfortunately all the post RWBY shutdown content looks like this since the budget's gone.

But at least there's something since otherwise the below image would be true.

Alas the Justice League movies still represent the last properly animated RWBY content ever made by RoosterTeeth.

So what will happen to RWBY now? It entirely depends on whether WB finds a buyer or not and whether or not they can agree on a price. Unless some exec decides there's a lot of potential in the RWBY x DC stuff I doubt they'll want to make use of the IP especially since they'd have to find new producers.

Remember Dillon Gu and Shane Newville from earlier? After being banished from RoosterTeeth for violating the CRWBY Covenant they went on to have their own animation studio and make videos like the one above. A lot of the studio's work is obviously RWBY inspired.

Dillon Gu has expressed interest in acquiring RWBY but I doubt they have the money Warner Bros will ask for. I'm still bringing it up because all the nerds are hoping for this so it could be a good source of seethe if it doesn't happen that way.

The most likely potential buyer is probably Crunchyroll. RWBY has actually been one of their most popular shows over the years and was fairly popular in Japan for a western series. In fact RWBY was the most watched anime in Japan on Crunchyroll for the 2010's.

For the moment RWBY will remain on Crunchyroll even after the RT website disappears and if nothing else WB will talk to Crunchyroll about renewing that deal or not. It's quite possible Crunchyroll will look into buying the IP though it's not confirmed yet.

If no one buys RWBY then it will remain in the hands of Daddy Zaslav WB is the same company that made a Batgirl and Wile E. Coyote movie and chose not to release them. With the latter WB didn't even negotiate with attempted distributors. They just opened with an unreasonably high offer and refused to respond to counter offers.

So yeah who knows what'll happen to RWBY. I just wanted a fighting game out of it

CLOSING THOUGHTS

They are Austin, Texascels who drank California grade wokism but didn't have ANY of the California chuds or safety rails to rein in their bullshit and quickly alienated their fanbase.

— @KoreanKongKing

They had frickin huge billboard ads up in the heart of Austin overlooking i35 for the lazer team release- probably some of the most expensive in the city. , all of them.

— @Konggles

I've only tangentially followed the fall of Roosterteeth as a podcast I listen to was on their network, but in general I deeply hate how what ten years ago was framed as “independent creators can make things” has become so many levels of frickery.

— /r/hobbydrama

It's their 20th anniversary this year, and literal no one gives a frick. It's absolutely that this company that was pretty well loved on the internet and had a big enough fanbase to support a yearly convention has petered out to a corpse that's being puppeted by media corpos. I remember religious watching up to 2015 and leaving when Ray did. It's telling that Ray even gets brought up anymore going on 8 years since his exit.

— @DiamondKong

I've written three effortposts now so I don't have a lot to say here. Really I'm just waiting to see what happens to RWBY.

It is sad yet interesting to me that RoosterTeeth was in decline for as long as they'd been successful if not longer. No one was surprised to hear they'd be shut down. Most people only reminisced about when they'd been better.

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/3bgfa3/the_blood_gulch_chronicles_versus_the_later/

If you want more info this hobbydrama post, while a little soy, is pretty informative especially regarding the podcasts and how YouTube's policy changes harmed RT over time.

And for you ypipo out there here's a YouTube video essay

This account is private

This user has enabled private mode to cloak their posting history.

— @ProterozoicBussy

ProterozoicBussy wanted me to quote him so I went to his profile on an alt and saw this and anyway I fulfilled my end of the bargain.

Also if any of you dramanauts have RWBY: Grimm Eclipse on Xbox then HMU I still need the four person achievements before the servers maybe go offline.

On the 23rd of May 2004, a young 22-year-old boy woke up and, that afternoon in his apartment stabbed his roommate George Chen 94 times, his second roommate Cheng Hong 25 times, and a third visitor Weihang Wan 15 times. Following this, he took his laptop, entered his BMW 328i coupe, and drove to Starbucks to purchase a coffee before, later that evening, driving to Alpha Phi sorority house at The University of California Santa Barbara with intentions of slaughtering everyone in the building. Failing to gain entry, he opened fire at three passing sorority sisters, killing two. He then re-entered his BMW, drove up Pardall Road and fired into an empty coffee shop as well as a Delhi, killing another student. After ramming several other pedestrians along Isla Vista police finally caught up to him and proceeded to exchange fire with the 22-year-old. They managed to shoot into the passenger's side and wound him in the hip. The night, which would come to be known as the Isla Vista Massacre, ended with the 22-year-old taking his own life with a bullet to the head.

Unfortunately, mass shootings of this nature aren't particularly rare. However, unlike most mass shooters, the 22-year-old, whose name is Elliot Rodger, had a Youtube channel (which is still up) along with a 142-page manifesto detailing exactly why he chose to commit this heinous crime he coined the “Day of Retribution”.

In his own words: “I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts. I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender”. Today, I will be looking at the body issues described by Elliot Rodger in his manifesto – namely his height, race, and masculinity. For each of the three body issues I'll be analyzing the poor – and eventually deadly – ways Elliot Rodger chose to deal with them which all involve a lust for power in order to reassert his masculinity. Due to the fact that Elliot Rodger had a history of mental illness prior it may be a futile task to try to find sense in his actions. However, I still think the fact that his mental illness manifested in such extreme misogyny is indicative of the society he grew up in and thus makes him a worthy subject of study.

Height

One of the insecurities that constantly come up in Elliot's manifesto is his height. It's spoken of so intensely that it borders on obsession. From a young age Elliot believes that he is smaller than the rest of his peers and, as a result, often feels inferior, intimidated, disempowered and dominated by everyone around him. One of the shining examples from the manifesto that mark the beginnings of Elliot's height anxiety is when he visits Universal Studios and is too short to board the amusement rides: Elliot writes: “The ride that I was so excited to enjoy at the theme park was forbidden to me. I immediately fell into a crying tantrum, and my mother had to comfort me. Being denied entry on a simple amusement park ride due to my height may seem like only a small injustice, but it was big for me at time. Little did I know, this injustice was very small indeed compared to all the things I'll be denied in the future because of my height.”

From this incident we see the seeds of his insecurities being sown. What was in actual fact a simple safety measurement put in place for practical reasons, Elliot Rodger interpreted as society telling him that because of his height he would be cordoned off from some of the joys of life. The feelings of inferiority that arise from this complex are revealed in another incident that occurs when young Elliot goes on camp is bullied by a taller girl. Surprisingly, Rodger is quite a descriptive writer is able to express his feelings quite eloquently. When speaking on the incident, he writes: “It made me feel like an insignificant, unworthy little mouse. I felt so small and vulnerable.”

It's clear that his height was a notable source of anxiety. One of the ways this manifests in his life is through an intense jealousy for men taller than him who were successful with women. In Elliot's own words: “Jealousy and envy… those are two feelings that would dominate my entire life and bring me immense pain.”. Elliot's younger brother Jazz becomes one of the biggest targets of Elliot's jealousy. When he speaks about his brother, Elliot rodger says “I realized how much different my brother Jazz was from me at that age. While I was shy, short, and physically weak; Jazz was tall for his age and very social. He had no problem going up to other boys at the playground and making instant friends. I began to form a bitter envy towards him, though I hid it really well. My little brother had all the potential to grow up to be a popular kid and live the life I was never able to live. I cursed the world for granting my little brother Jazz so many more advantages than me.”. His jealousy grows so intense that in Elliot Rodger's initial plan for the Day of Retribution, he had intended to first drive to his stepmother's house and kill Jazz because he couldn't bear to have his brother grow up and surpass him. Luckily, things didn't go as planned, Elliot never went to his stepmother's house and Jazz was spared.

Elliot's jealousy isn't completely unexpected.

Elliot seems to cope with the inferiority complex arising from his height anxiety by embracing an extreme narcissism as a defensive mechanism. He puts on a façade of an extremely confident individual, calls himself the “supreme gentleman” and convinces himself that he is a god amongst men. However, what strikes me as the most confusing detail is that Elliot Rodger was actually 5'9 or 175cm. The average height for an American male is 5'10 making him a negligible one inch below the average. This leads me to suspect that a lot of the perceived heightism he experienced might have been in his own head.

Race

Unfortunately, height is one of Elliot's more benign insecurities. The second body issue that surfaces in his manifesto is his race. With a Caucasian father and Asian mother Elliot Rodger was mixed race, something he was far from happy about. He believed that due to his mixed-race status, he was being rejected by his peers. As Elliot Rodger says: “On top of this was the feeling that I was different because I am of mixed race. I am half White, half Asian, and this made me different from the normal fully-white kids that I was trying to fit in with.

This form of self-hate due to race can be seen as a form of internalized racism which can be defined as “an individual's conscious and unconscious acceptance of a racial hierarchy in which whites are consistently ranked above People of Colour”. One of the ways this internalized racism is expressed is through an idolization of the white race. Throughout the manifesto, he expresses a fetishization of whiteness, especially tall, blonde white females who are often the subject of his sexual fantasies.

He tends to cope with this internalised racism not by empowering himself but by denigrating others. He tends to find races he believes to be lower than him on the social hierarchy and imposes on them the same discrimination and prejudice he feels he has been subjected to. One of the most disturbing times this occurs is when, in college, Elliot hears a black student talk about how he lost his virginity to a blonde white girl at age 13. Elliot snaps, runs to his room and cries before calling his mother and crying to her on the phone. He expresses his extreme racism when he says: “How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have s*x with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I've had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice!”

A similar incident occurs when Elliot Rodger goes out to a restaurant with his father and finds a Mexican man with white blonde female. The sight alone of an interracial relationship infuriates him and he is further enraged by the fact that he believes that he, as a half-white male, was worthier of the blonde. When expressing his frustrations, Elliot says: How could an inferior Mexican guy be able to date a white blonde girl, while I was still suffering as a lonely virgin? I was ashamed to be in such an inferior position in front my father. When I saw the two of them kissing, I could barely contain my rage. I stood up in anger, and I was about to walk up to them and pour my glass of soda all over their heads. I probably would have, if father wasn't there. I was seething with envious rage, and my father was there to watch it all. It was so humiliating. I wasn't the son I wanted to present to my father. I should be the one with the hot blonde girl, making my father proud. Instead, my father had to watch me suffer in a pathetic position.”

Masculinity

The third anxiety that Elliot Rodger mentions is his masculinity which I believe may have been at the centre of all his other issues. Everything else he mentions from his height to his virginity seem to offend him because they draw away from his masculinity. He often compares himself to his male peers and feels as though he doesn't size up to them. He also sees girls rejecting him as an attack on his masculinity. To Elliot, s*x and having a girlfriend were rites of passage into manhood and failing to achieve those things while his peers did inspired feeling of inferiority within him. In the ninth grade Elliot hears his friend talking about losing his virginity and upon hearing this he says: “I felt so inferior to him, and I hated him.”

In Elliot's mental landscape masculinity becomes a constant competition and failing to acquire the tokens of masculinity was a sign of failure and something to be ashamed of. Thus, because of his virginity, Elliot believed that other men didn't view him as a peer. Elaborating on this idea, Elliot says: “I had to suffer the shame of other boys respecting me less because I didn't get any girls. Everyone knew I was a virgin. Everyone knew how undesirable I was to girls, and I hated everyone just for knowing it. I want people to think that girls adore me. I want to feel worthy.”. The unfortunate thing is that Elliot's anxiety may not be completely unfounded. Throughout his manifesto examples can be found of Elliot being mocked by his male peers which points to the fact Elliot may very well have been genuinely persecuted for not living up to societal standards of masculinity.

Interestingly, Elliot makes up for his emasculation by aggressively performing masculinity in other ways mainly through the desire for the acquisition and control of resources. Shopping for clothing becomes a therapeutic habit for Elliot as he believes buying expensive clothing will make women like him better. Of course relating to others is much more complex than that and as a result Elliot's plans to get a girlfriend by wearing expensive clothing fails. He also develops a weird obsession with the lottery, going so far as to travel to other states when the jackpot was big enough. Again, he believes that by becoming rich he will be respected and girls will like him more.

Due to his constant social failure and perceived emasculation, Elliot Rodger grows an obsession with power which ultimately leads to the Isla Vista Mass Shooting. From the manifesto it becomes evident that Elliot's motivation for the mass shooting was to make himself feel heard and feel powerful and the only way he believed he could do that was through an act of terror. As the manifesto proceeds and the perceived rejections pile on, the character of Elliot grows much darker, much more interested in controlling others and the misogyny and violent fantasies grow more frequent.

It is my belief that Elliot's masculinity issues and subsequent desire for power were key pieces in why he wanted to enact the “Day of Retribution”. All the previously mentioned incidents Elliot viewed as society conspiring against him and deeming him unworthy. Thus, his attack was a way of reasserting himself and proving he was a powerful person. Elliot Rodger himself says that much in his manifesto. In perhaps his most lucid explanation for his motivations, he writes: Women's rejection of me was a declaration of war. They insulted me by deeming me inferior of their love and s*x. They hate me, and I will return that hatred one-thousand fold. I will inflict suffering on everyone in Isla Vista, just like they have made me suffer. In the past, I have always been at their mercy, and I was given none. On the Day of Retribution, everyone will be at my mercy, and in turn I will show them no mercy at all. My Retribution will be so devastating that it will shake the very foundations of the world.”

In conclusion, what Elliot had planned for the day of retribution was far worse than what had actually happened and his plan reads like a maniac's fantasy for power. He originally intended to sever the heads of his victims and roll them on the street so that everyone would respect him as a god. How Elliot Rodger's mental illnesses manifested tell us a lot about the narratives that society had made available to him for his ideas weren't born in an isolated mind but one which was, like all other minds, entrenched in the paradigms of the times. From this tragedy, we learn that ideas of women being pawns in the game of masculinity are still very much alive. We also learn that leaving these problems unaddressed and unresolved can have deadly consequences.

Goodbye!

Greetings Dramatards

I've had a crushing weak, and I believe I've had my soul broken by the confluence of corruption and societal-dysfunction amalgamating this week, into one unendurable boiling point.

I've spent the past year informing dramatards through various neurodivergent ramblings about the corruption and dysfunctions in modern South Africa, often trying to disguise them as Drama-effortposts, but usually they were vehicles for me to b-word into the ether of the internet about my daily problems, and bore dramatards about happenings in Safrica.

By this point in my lifespan, I've become accustomed to corruption and infrastructure-decay due to the poor leadership in government, and in usual circumstance are not affected by it. All the endless potholes, the serial theft unchallenged by incompetent police, all of the endless infrastructure-decay I had become so hardened to, that they were like inconsequential raindrops soaking down my skin, and i have never minded getting wet in under storms.

But I reached an abnormal breaking point this week, as various corruption related insanities had me aghast and my temper-fuse shortened into half a broken matchstick - felt an emotion of hopelessness and anguish which I could not process, and was physically twitching like spazzing druggy the whole week, with no mind as to how to vent out my compounded frustrations.

IRL i would snap at people not deserving of it, and even here on rDrama.net I behaved erratically; I believed I behaved very cruelly to Sneedman, and took out my frustration on him in a really mean-spirited comment, but i was so mouth foaming I dont even remember the cause of my triggering, or what precisely I had said, but I'm to cowardly to even go back and check in my shame.

I then remembered that the last time I was at such a corruption related breaking point, was more than I year ago, when I bitched into the void on rDrama.net about Loadshedding at its peak in RSA, and how surprisingly many dramatards would be curious and inquired about the circumstances of the country.

And in that time, I found the humor and stupidity of the corruption, and how fun it was regale other online autismos about the insane corruption stories of the country, instead of being angry all the time.

So let me regale you r-slurs about some depraved stories of corruption

MUNICIPAL TRASH-COLLECTORS STRIKES:

In South Africa, every municipality, or large Capital City government (like Cape Town), is supposed to be responsible for organizing the collection of trash and refuse from all homes within the vicinity of their rule. Once a week a trash-lorry is supposed to come to the neighborhood/suburb/township, and collect the refuse which is typically expected to be contained within plastic black bags.

In small towns (like most of the Free State province), the trash-collector teams are small, and thus spread out the collection of trash over the workweek of Monday==>Friday. With every sector of the city/town getting a designated date upon which the trash-collector teams will traverse through and collect the expected trash-bags placed upon the street curbs or outside the gates of the various homes.

IF you are lucky and live in a less-dysfunctional municipality, then the local gov will even have a timetable communicated to the residents of the town, and each city sector or suburb will know which day of the week the darn trash-lorry arrives to fricking come and collect the refuse and trash. Most municipalities in the Free State are so inept, and are such a black-hole of non-communication towards their residents, that you don't always know exactly WHEN the trash lorries arrive, or what your neighborhood's designated day of the week is supposed to be

For most in the Free State, you either guess by hearing in the morning the trash-lorries busy emptying the large wheeled plastic bins in which trash or trash bags are placed, and then come to the conclusion that Thursdays are your sector's trash day of the week, or you have to ask your neighbours. Sometimes even then, there is no absolute certainty, as the incompetence of both the municipality leadership, and the Trash-lorries Trade-unions can have the darn timetables in complete fricking disarray!!

Now most of you may be confused as to why I'm harping on about the trash-collection dates and timetables, most of you in functioning countries will say: kaamrev, you autismo spaz, just place the refuse-bags outside your house the whole week, and the trash-lorries will arrive eventually to come pick them up! Which is true, even if the trash-lorries are late by two days, leaving your refuse bags or filled up plastic bins outside will lend the certainty that they will be picked up eventually.

========

But in South Africa there is an additional feature of living in our dysfunctional society: namely trash-beggars or trash-pickers. These are souls who are so low on the totem pole, so poor and destitute that they unveil themselves to a decrepit lifestyle which even ordinary beggars would not succumb to.

Many foreigners and tourists are familiar with the spectacle of beggars hounding the Robots of Stop-streets, as they beg and make themselves a nuisance to tourists to unaccustomed to such behaviour, and often make themselves a target of petty theft.

https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/kwazulu-natal/police-urge-motorists-not-to-give-to-beggars-at-robots-44581093

https://www.news24.com/news24/community-newspaper/tygerburger/beggars-the-ire-of-table-view-and-milnerton-residents-20220913

These types of beggars can range from benign desperate poor old people (black and white) trying their best in a ravaged economy, selling brooms by old black ladies, or selling fudge and other bread by old white ladies with no retirement funds - and can range to the insidious charlatans who scope out easy theft-targets, and harass tourists, and sell chinese crap.

https://old.reddit.com/r/southafrica/comments/8cykkl/do_you_give_to_people_begging_at_the_robots/

https://www.tripadvisor.co.za/ShowTopic-g312659-i9466-k10165035-o20-Aggressive_beggars_at_traffic_lights_robots-Cape_Town_Central_Western_Cape.html

Then there are the really REALLY insidious beggars who go so far as to destroy and sabotage traffic-lights, so that the traffic in 4-point stops are deliberately slowed for more begging opportunities, I'm not joking.

======

Yet even these types of traffic-robot beggars are less despised by all of safricans, that trash-pickers, who are people who dig through the trash which more fortunate South Africans place out in their black bags for their Trash-day. Even trasffic-street beggars are a whole economic level above trash-pickers, and it's hilarious to hear a streetcorner beggar talk about trash-pickers in disparaging terms, as if he himself wasn't clad in torn haggard clothing.

What makes these beggars and trash-pickers such a menace is that they have very little regard to what mess they make when searching through the trash and refuse bags of people they deign to malign.

God help you if it's a windy day in autumn, as especially callous trash-pickers will just rip open refuse-bags and dump them on your sidewalk. You come home to papers and plastic debris having flown all across your front yard, and all across your driveway, as the trash-lorries crew will only ever pick up the whole plastic bags, regardless if they have been emptied.

Thus it is a timing race between homeowners to place their refuse-bags outside of their gates/fences just in time for the trash-lorries arriving, without giving trash-pickers the opportunity to pollute your driveway, or bring ruination to your bags or trash-bin.

I've seen black owners lose their temper and chase trash-pickers away with their gardening rakes, as they had to time and again clean up the disgusting food remains of old fly-ridden bones or rotting apple cores from their polluted sidewalk. I've seen white owners unleash their bulldogs after waiting for trash pickers to frick up their trash bags. I've seen black gardeners chase trash pickers away with gardening sheers

Many homeowners don't even have the option to strategically place their refuse outside for trash-day. They have to go to work, most usually at 8AM, and have to leave their trash "exposed" for pilfering before the trash-collector crews can arrive to pick up the refuse-bags.

You can thus see the importance for homeowners in having at least some idea of when the trash-lorries will arrive, as leaving you trash-bags out for days, will expose them to looting and ruination by trash-pickers who will leave your sidewalk with I'm told that a similar race and strategic placements occur in Burgerland in the regions where the animal known as raccoons reside, as raccoons are also known for polluting a burger's driveway with their carefully placed refuse.

Additionally I've seen liberals in places like UCT moan and minge that mistreatment of trash-pickers, especially as they are so stiflingly poor, usually black, is a mistreatment and human rights abuse especially by the white upper middle class Bong Capetonians, and thus was emblematic of the economic disparity between races - but trash-pickers do not relegate themselves to merely vandalizing wealthy white neighborhoods, they malign lower-middle class coloured neighbourhoods just as frequently as the absence of security allows. In black inland townships trash-pickers live closest and cause the most pollution

This is not some Robin Hood story of the decadent elite whites being robbed by poor desperate people of color having to dig through trash to survive, the trash-pickers are a true menace for everyone who owns a home or even rents a place.

https://groundup.org.za/article/jhb-waste-pickers-face-routine-harassment/

On the other hand there are more benign and desperate poor trash-pickers who make a living collecting plastic for Recycling in these huge bags they pull on trolleys, and actively try to make themselves less of a nuisance by carefully filtering through trash, and even tie the black refuse-bags closed, once they are finished, and deliberately don't try to aggrieve the homeowner whose trashbags and bins they are picking from. And these are desperate people doing the best that they can in our godforsaken economy .

========

Thus you can see how misery of Safricans are compounded by our incompetent trash-lorry crews, in that they often arrive late, if they even arrive. And for most small towns in South Africa there has been even MORE dysfunction by the Trash-Collector's Trade Union, having a massive scuffle with municipalities like the Matjabeng and Moqhaka leadership.

You see for the past year, our butthole trash-lorries crew had the galaxy brain idea to only work during overtime which is the weekends. All manual labour jobs, such as trash-collector teams usually have an overtime clause in their contract as per Safrican labour laws.

But our corrupt Trash-collector trade unions, have abused this clause, by deliberately not doing any work during the weekdays of Mondays==>Fridays, and only arriving to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and thuse collect double-pay for overtime. This is usually when everyone is at church or away for shopping ,and not at home to place their refuse-bags and bins as they hear the trash-lorries appraoching

Thus these corrupt fricks have raced through suburb and township and collected the minimum amount of trash, and claimed they have done their job, the residents are the ones at fault for not having place their bags outside, it's not their responsibility!!!

And thus many people languish with up to 4-8 weeks worth of trash in their yards, gathering flies and maggots after the rot of inevitable food refuse. And sometimes the frickers when they eventually arrive, refuse to pick up more than a set amount of bags, cuz one house is only supposed to be allocated 10 bags per driveby, but there's more than 10 fricking bags because these bozos have been absent from their job for 8 weeks REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

=======

For the past 4 months, in this staggering sweltering heatwave in the Free State, almost every municipality had trashlorry strikes, and the union laws are so powerful, that they cannot even be fired. Public Unions are in my worldview a menace to humanity, Private sector unions have a place in society like actor's unions or whatever to confront Corporatism. But Public sector Unions like teacher's unions and trash-colelctor's unions have crippled societies to a standstill.

Even more r-slurred in the Central Free state region, the munipality have refused to pay the Trash-collectors for the time in which they had striked in the 1st two month of the year - SO NOW THEY ARE STRIKING BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT BEEN PAID FOR STRIKING 1ST.

I had to personally clean up literal maggots from the driveway of the place I rent front this week, as once again the bags had not been collected on the designated day, and the refuse had been spilled everywhere by indifferent trash-pickers

=========

But the climax of the insanity of this situation has not yet been reached. Because having to wait literal months for the trash-lorries to arrive had become so intolerable, and the municipal leadership so defunct to deal with the situation, many entrepreneurial Safricans have been quick to advertise their services as private trash-collecting companies. I'm not joking.

Many companies for the past year would advertise their services and making a living, by plastering their phone numbers all over malls, cafes, school notice boards, and so on. And they have reached widespread use.

https://www.facebook.com/CJDromDienste/

Here is an example of a guy literally just fricking advertising his services on Facebook, which is a popular place for Boomers in SA still.

They even have officially painted cars after 2 years of existence by now!

Just imagine the reality where residents have to actively hire a private company to come and collect their refuse, and drive it away to dumpsites, because the ruling government is parralized with corruption and infighting. Worse yet still, it is once again the poorest who suffer the consequences of this dysfunction, middle class and up are able to afford the measly sum of R160 per month to take their refuse away, but even such a paltry sum is too much to bear for those living in the poorest regions of a township.

Then there is the Nala municipality, which by reputation and gossip is apparently the WORST place in the entire province, as entire streets are just covered from pavement to curb in plastic and paper, OMG.

TRAIN ELECTRIC WIRES AND COPPER CABLES STOLEN:

Transnet is South Africa's government public company responsible for our trains, rails and ports, just like ESKOM is for our electricity. Well their ineptitude towards security, has meant that a staggery and crippling amount of cable theft has taken place in the past 4 years all over the Western Cape and Free State region.

Both me and my employer have personally witnessed with our own eyes the lack of electric cables, for the electric trains are dependent upon to traverse across our railroads, just gone for hundreds of kilometers, all the way from the Western reaches of teh province.

https://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-and-courts/free-state-man-found-with-stolen-transnet-copper-cables-sentenced-to-15-years-behind-bars-762b2bdb-bc06-4e14-b981-1e769c00faef

==============================

https://www.ofm.co.za/article/centralsa/317873/free-state-municipality-suffers-huge-loss-over-cable-theft

The police are too worthless, lazy and corrupt to either investigate these thefts, or to patrol our railway lines.

And to compound our national misery, the constant loadshedding have afforded thieves the opportunity to easily steal these copper electric wires, while the power is off, as they had never been built with anti-theft in mind, as it was presumed in their construction that the power would always be on, and thus deadly for anyone physically touching them.

Regular electrical cables for transporting power to homes are just as frequently stolen. The suburb I'm renting from, had 3 cable thefts in the past 14 months, leaving us in the darkness even after Loadshedding was over.

https://groundup.org.za/article/cable-thieves-target-mangaung-communities-during-loadshedding/

======

But the worst are when specific gangs target a suburb or railway line. There are two traffic robots between where I work and sleep, that have remained unfixed for over 2 years, because each time the municipality actually come and repair them, thieves just steal their wiring, as they are out of town, and out of sight, thus they have been relegated as 4-point traffic stops.

Other gangs will target traffic stops to steal all of the copper wire from the power poxes in a suburbs power-station when there is loadshedding. This has become so frequent that municipalities and private security have to place armed guards

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2023-05-08-government-spends-r146m-for-soldiers-to-protect-eskom-power-stations/

In some critical power-stations, ESKOM and the national government even places armed SADF patrols and watchposts to prevent cable theft. But they couldn't even do that permanently because it was too expensive to have so many patrols and watchposts for SADF.

https://unicornriot.ninja/2022/south-african-military-to-guard-power-stations-after-record-power-outages/

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2023-05-08-government-spends-r146m-for-soldiers-to-protect-eskom-power-stations/

Many corrupt informers work with the cable theft gangs, informing them of the precise timetables of loadshedding, and many scrapyard owners are also corrupt and buy stolen copper wires.

https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/18313-south-africa-s-illegal-copper-trade-dismantles-critical-infrastructure-at-all-levels

=======(from article)

Every day in South Africa, petty thieves and transnational organized crime groups siphon off the country's copper supplies from pennies to millions of dollars at a time. The result is billions in losses every year and a dismantling of critical infrastructure that shakes the public's quality of life to its core.

From mines to construction projects to any sites where copper cables are found, criminals steal whatever they can, no matter how much or how little. So pervasive is its allure for a quick score or a big payday that the yearly losses negatively impact the country at all levels, from energy, to transportation and mining, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

From mines to construction projects to any sites where copper cables are found, criminals steal whatever they can, no matter how much or how little. So pervasive is its allure for a quick score or a big payday that the yearly losses negatively impact the country at all levels, from energy, to transportation and mining, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

But such opportunity for growth and expansion means that criminal interest for the soft metal is widespread, especially when buyers can purchase it stolen for a third of the price, according to GI-TOC.

It's not only small-time thieves who are responsible for the grand scale larceny of the country's copper reserves. Syndicates made up of dozens of individuals have the resources and funding necessary to steal bulk amounts and transport it offsite to black market dealers, GI-TOC said.

While some of the stolen copper filters through the black market and back into the country's economy, a lot of it is ultimately exported to clients able to pay more. This problem is made worse by the fact that holes in the port industry and cases of customs fraud see the metal slip out undetected, either mislabeled or with the right people on the ground paid off.

By far the biggest buyer is China. In 2021, China acquired roughly 85% of all scrap metal exported out of South Africa.

Though that is not to say that importers are aware their purchases were procured illegally, Chinese triad groups reportedly have a strong interest and presence in South Africa. They are also well-integrated in local smuggling networks that siphon off the country's natural resources, according to GI-TOC.

=========(end article)

Yes we have literal fricking Chinese Triad gangs working with local copper-cable thief gangs, to smuggle stolen recycled copper to china!!

CONSTRUCTION CORRUPTION:

We've seen several projects this week completed for the development of RDP homes. RDP homes are government subsidized homes which provides beneficiaries with a fully built house that is built free of charge by the Government.

This was an initiative by the Nelson Mandela admin back in 1995, and in my personal opinion on of the best persisting initiatives of the RSA gov. You guys have seen the steriotypical south african squatter sink homes?

Well the Mandela admin made the initiative that the gov should build proper brick and mortar homes for all residents, and over 30 years several million homes have been built taking people out of homelessness and squatting, and into a properly built residential township, with planned laid out water and electrical utilities, approved by Town Planners, and laid ouw ith streets.

Of course like all government programs under the control of the ANC, this has also withered into shit over the decades. The absolute amount of money siphoned off by corrupt offcials, meant for buying construction materials, or paying builders is staggering and mind-raping. The amount of nepotism and tender corruption is just crushing.

The result of the usual ANC corruption, is that the costs of building these homes ballooned to many magnitudes to what they are supposed to be! And thus the planned 100 new RDP homes for which a municiplaity planned to build in their annual budget year, will inevitably be restricted to a mere 30 homes or such.

As an example to the atrocious effects which tender-corruption of nepotistic Municipalities can have upon a project, I have for example an uncle who builds windpumps in the Free State for a living.

He tender his services for government and farmers alike, and on average he would ask about R25 000 to construct one windpump, to either supply an animal crib, or supply additional water for a water tank for a newly built residential RDP township.

In that R25 000, it includes the labor costs and building material, and maybe he takes home 15 000 at the end. Well in order to even ALLOW the construction of any project or feature like a windpump withing the jurisdiction of a municipality, a tender waiver needs to be signed and approved by several clerks. I've heard horror stories where the same tender approval needs a concurrent bribe from official to offcial within the labyrinth of a Free State municipality's bureaucracy.

And that same R25 000 needs a further bribe just for the PERMISSION and approval of construction to begin, and sign and stamp of an illiterate individual who's never even seen a windpump, or even touched it, and they have to give their approval for the project to begin. And one the tender had proceeded through conveyor belt of bribes, that same R25 000, will cost the municipality a colossal R110 000 just to finish the construction

So some fat clerk can pocket R50 000 just for his signature and stamp, while the men doing the hard labour, will have to eat the cost of the orginal construction. In this manner the price of RDP construction balloons and far exceeds the originally national budget allocated for each provincial government, and every fricking year the national government will come screaming to each municipality, asking where the frick are the RDP homes!!!???

The worst part is that RDP homes are a lifeline and a hope for many poor impoverished black peeps, who often are on a literal waiting list 10 years long.

========

This week and the months before, we surveyors had encountered a crushing level of corruption in the finished RDP homes in one of the townships we regularly survey in. It was brutal and blatant the corruption and stupidity involved with these two projects that it was like a cold iced bucket frown in your face.

The 1st: The fricking engineers didn't install a sewage system in a multi story building.

Whatever brilliant foreign Nigerian was hired had this brilliant 3 story building building constructed, which we had to come and survey the Sectional Title of, and to our disgust and dismay discoeverd that there were no sewage outpipes installed. Water could come in, but could not come out.

You could not flush your potty and water from the sink had nowhere to go, but through your flat. The whole building was a catastrophe. There were like 12 families waiting with lights in their eyes to come and live in this place after waiting literal years on the RDP waitlist, and we had to go inform them and the municipality who had hired us for this job, of this impending shitshow. The people could not life there, the whole structure would have to be overhauled or destroyed and rebuilt.

========

Finally this week my employer and I would visit another worksite where RDP homes had been built by dodgy developers, and once more we would be utterly dismayed to the corruption and stupidity involved with the entirety of the project.

I had no personal stake in the matter, and no matter how badly the homes were built, our private company would be paid regardless, yet even I was in shock at the horror which was before us, on behalf of the poor people who would realize that their homes would be near unlivable.

The buildings were built by amateurs, the walls and roofs were scewed. But most of all, the walls were SOLID

The corrupt developers had not installed the electric wires and water pipes as they were supposed to between the walls, as the brick and mortar was gradually built. Instead as sloppy job of walls and roofing had been done in a massively hasty manner, without any attempt to even install electricity and water piping or sewage outflow.

Worse yet still, was that the frickers had disguised their ineptitude with mock ups. They had received pottys and taps and baths, and had actually installed them, in the sense that they had just placed the taps and shower heads into the raw concrete to make it look like they were attached to piping within the solid walls.

Light switches were basically plastered into the painted concrete walls, with no electrical utilities behind them. The poor souls arriving in these homes would turn taps unconnected to any water flow, and push switches, unconnected to wires, into the walls.

My employer had ripped the bath taps out of the solid walls, and pulled out light switches to show the municipal representatives this utterly kak job

As surveyors we are often the 1st in the field, before there are even bulldozers to clear the overgrown worksite, and I am often inquired by desperate poor peeps when the RDP homes are complete. We dont work for the municipality, we are independent private contractors who are hired by them.

Whomever corrupt official signed off on this tender is always unknown when the questions and anger starts flying, and we surveyors are often inline by desperate peeps when their homes are basically unlivable.

Anyways that's all the corruption stories I have for today.

GOOD night.

What's s*x? I wouldn't know. But I've read a lot of opinions about it. Today I'd like to go through the opinions of Andrea Dworkin, a feminist who argued for a rather s*x negative view on the topic. Was she correct or was she hysterical? Let's find out.

Who is Andrea Dworkin?

Andrea Dworkin is most known for her iconic text Intercourse. She's also fat. In her lifetime, Dworkin remained a controversial feminist figure due to her views which were sometimes regarded as ‘s*x-negative'. However, regardless of whether you agree with her overall conclusions, many of her critiques concerning the problematic aspects of society prove to be quite valuable. Her text is notable for its coarse and direct language, as well as the liberal use of literature to illustrate certain points.

Andrea Dworkin and s*x

Dworkin views heterosexual s*x as an act of subordination on the part of the woman who is the one getting "fricked". Popular conceptions of intercourse often normalize forms of hostile sexism which subordinate women and remove their agency. Typically, women are viewed as sexual prey that is to be conquered by the dominant male who, in doing so, achieves possession of the woman. Dworkin expresses this slightly more crudely when she writes that intercourse is commonly conceptualized as:

“a form of possession or an act of possession in which, during which, because of which, a man inhabits a woman, physically covering her and overwhelming her and at the same time penetrating her; and this physical relation to her—over her and inside her—is his possession of her. He has her, or, when he is done, he has had her. By thrusting into her, he takes her over. His thrusting into her is taken to be her capitulation to him as a conqueror; it is a physical surrender of herself to him; he occupies and rules her, expresses his elemental dominance over her, by his possession of her in the” act.

Dworkin adds that often the act is “taken to be an act of invasion and ownership undertaken in a mode of predation”. Essentially, all heterosexual s*x is r*pe. How does Dworkin explain this? I'll let her speak:

"A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth—literature, science, philosophy, pornography— calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into (“violate”) the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy. She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physical privacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetime is deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation of the way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity. There is a deep recognition in culture and in experience that intercourse is both the normal use of a woman, her human potentiality affirmed by it, and a violative abuse, her privacy irredeemably compromised, her selfhood changed in a way that is irrevocable, unrecoverable. And it is recognized that the use and abuse are not distinct phenomena but somehow a synthesized reality: both are true at the same time as if they were one harmonious truth instead of mutually exclusive contradictions. Intercourse in reality is a use and an abuse simultaneously, experienced and described as such, the act parlayed into the illuminated heights of religious duty and the dark recesses of morbid and dirty brutality. She, a human being, is supposed to have a privacy that is absolute; except that she, a woman, has a hole between her legs that men can, must, do enter. This hole, her hole, is synonymous with entry."

Do you agree with her? Maybe a video will elucidate her points better.

Andrea Dworkin and FGM

Dworkin also discusses female genital mutilation at length. According to Dworkin, FGM has been used on women around the world to “take away sexual drive and behavioural nonconformity”. At its worst, FGM/C takes the form of infibulation which Dworkin regards as a violation of a civilly inferior group. Infibulation is a procedure whereby the birth canal is stitched closed enough to prevent intercourse and thus, as Dworkin explains, infibulated women “are partially cut open at marriage, and must be fully opened at childbirth - after which they are sewn up again”. For these reasons, Dworkin regards FGM/C as another form of sexual suppression which aims to limit women's autonomy, in some cases through irreversible body modification.

This view has been hotly challenged and remains controversial within the feminist realm. Scholars such as Obioma Nnaemeka claim that the word mutilation conjures imagery of knives and blades which may not necessarily be accurate as in some communities hot water is used instead. Furthermore, the term mutilation may result in negative perceptions of certain groups of people and their cultures. Okorafor, on the other hand, argues that the word mutilation is fitting. On her blog she justifies this by claiming that the word female circumcision falsely “implies that it is the equivalent of male circumcision”. I disagree with Okorafor because I do think it is equivalent and male peepees shouldn't be cut.

Conclusion

What do you think about the nature of penetration? Is it okay because it feels good? Can incels use this theory to indignify normies? I believe this is all true and more. Men who have s*x are male feminists, and I am a good person because I don't.

Nathan, 26, Austin TX

Personal:

• Wearing a $600 watch timestamp

  • Claims he got it on sale 20% off

• "It was a Christmas gift for myself"

• "It's a nice watch, I wanna get another one I just don't have the funds to do so right now. But as soon as I do I'm gonna get one" timestamp

• "Did you graduate high school?" timestamp

  • "Yeah, it was hard though" "Numbers and stuff, the start to look funny after a while"

• "You bought yourself a watch and you said you'd do it again" timestamp

  • "Well I bought myself some - uh nevermind"

Career:

• "I sell cars" "Gross" timestamp

• "My customers love me"

• "I don't just care about my commission checks, I care about people"

• New car place for 2 months

  • first month between two and three thousand

  • Attempt to figure out just how much he makes timestamp

    • "They take it back when I get my commission check"

    • "It's hard to say just what I make... I don't pay attention to it"

  • Was making 7 or 8 thousand dollars a month at his old car place

    • Thinks he will need 4 months to ramp back up to this

    • Had gotten a promotion at his old place but didn't like it as much as he thought it would be

• "Well there's also the 1099 income from the manufacturer.... I didn't report that so I guess it could be something extra" timestamp

  • "I didn't have the money to pay the taxes on it, I spent it all"

• Not setting money aside for taxes?

• Checks his March income later timestamp

  • 9'000 before taxes and minimum wage removal, around 6'000 after all that is taken out

Finances:

• He has two phones because he wanted two phone numbers

• "[The debt]'s not 'new new' it's been there, it just got worse" timestam

• Credit Card 1 (Revy) (302,32) timestamp

  • 205 amount past due, "I had to pay my rent so I couldn't pay the card"

  • 4 months of missed payments, what a king. Frick that card.

• Credit Card 2 (CreditOne) ($500/$500) timestamp

  • Got this one after the repo - only card that would "help him out"

  • He thinks this one is closed but not sent to collections yet

• Credit Card 3 (Also CreditOne) [timestamp](https://youtube.com/watch?v=EdQqpTHnzlQ%26t%3D12860

• Card 3 (738)

  • $125 past due - 2 payments

• Credit Card 3 (Also CreditOne) (1500/1200) timestamp

  • $268 past due (3 payments)

• Credit Card 4 timestamp

  • He paid this off "It's on automatic payments"

  • "I didn't catch it in time, if I'd a caught then that one would not be on autopay"

• Credit Card 5 timestamp

  • $1 of credit free

• Rent $2250 a month

  • Rents a townhouse timestamp

  • Two bed, two bath, attached two car

  • Signed lease last year, just resigned in February

• Car got repoed "that was in the past" timestamp

  • 4 years ago "That wasn't my fault though, that was somebody else that did that"

• "My plan is to make more money"

• CashApp Payments timestamp

• Car (14'000) [timestamp](https://youtube.com/watch?v=EdQqpTHnzlQ%26t%3D1557

  • Paid the car bill late, ate a $20 late fee

  • Caleb seethes over a 2015 Chrysler 200 for some reason

  • "It was a steal"

    • dealership advertised a price but then charged him a higher price

    • Got it in 2020

  • 24% interest rate, got this car soon after his other was repoed

  • Doesn't drive this around?

    • Doesn't drive it around because he got a new car, he's trying to sell and find someone gullible to take over the payments timestamp

      • "So you're going to prey on people"

        • "Nah I'm helpin help them out, it's like a quid pro quo"

  • Has hail damage. There's some weird insurance thing timestamp

  • Owes 14'000 on this $8'000 car timestamp

    • "So that's not super terrible"

• Car 2 (28'700) timestamp

  • Mercedes, this is the one he drives around

  • $650 minimum payment

  • 18% interest rate

  • "It's in really good condition"

• Car 3 (13'700) timestamp

  • This was the one that got repoed

  • Nissan

  • Was in a relationship for 3-4 years, he bought a car for her mother, the mother made payments on it for 6 months but when the relationship ended and she stopped paying on it

• Energy Bill from 2023 that he didn't pay

  • From his old place probably, he didn't know about it

  • $600 bill

  • "You paid for your credit report and you never went through it once?!" timestamp

    • "No"

• Personal Loan

  • Mentioned and then forgotten about?

• Checking Account (-$50) timestmap

  • Lots of eating out lmao

  • He's subbed to near a dozen streaming services

    • "I be watchin shows"

• Credit Score 567 timestamp

  • "It was worse but I've put in work"

Finances Pie Chart timestamp

Attempts to form a budgeting plan timestamp

As most of you will probably know already Astral Codex Ten formerly Slatestarcodex is a blog run by Scott Alexander. The paper of record has called it Silicon Valley's Safe Space. Our partner site theMotte, is a community of connected to it and it's an influential blog.

Today Scott posted a Classified thread, where people could look for job opportunities and advertise their own stuff. I normally don't read the comments, but there was a section called dating that intrigued me. Some readers link to their so called Dating Docs. Think of them as a longer form OkCupid page. They're usually a little cringe, but also endearing and many words have been spilled about them.

But this post is not about them, a certain comment caught my attention.

At first glance this looks a troll post, like why does he want his wife to shave her head?

But after some digging , I'm inclined to believe it's a serious post.

The comment was posted shortly after the blog post was published, the poster provides a long list of math and coding competitions he either one or placed near the top in, and I was able to confirm that someone with the name he provides won them. Actually very impressive.

He also linked to a txt file called Productivity.txt, let's have a gander and answer why he wants his future wife to shave her head.

His main obsession appears to be the elimination of all smells.

He wants to cover most surfaces in his home with aluminium foil and build a house of very specific specifications.

You might have noticed that he always writes 0 instead of zero, but he explains that as well.

There's a lot of general autism, very specific food intake, a particular work out routine.

What appears to be a list of every single thing he owns.

Political opinions

Now let's get to the fun stuff, his love quest. If you read the first screenshot, you will have noticed that he's looking for a special someone.

She not only needs to be successful at math competition, but also shave her head to avoid unnecessary odours.

Must not have ever used hormonal birth control , or soap, never mind all the fun stuff.

He's actively studying how to please his prospective wife.

He brainstormed a pick up line to hit up successful female mathematicians.

But he already has a contingency plan in case no suitable wife can be acquired in time.

Thank you for sticking with for this long, if you wondered what he might look like, he wasn't shy and showed off.

What is a plural? A plural is according to themselves

Plurality is the state of having multiple headmates collectively sharing a single body. A group of headmates is called a system. Plural experiences are extremely diverse. Systems may be spiritual in nature or secular, median or partitionary, small systems or ones with thousands of headmates

According to regular people you might be aware of them as people who fake DID/MPD, You might've thought of it as a small mostly TikTok based community that was around for a short period in 2020 if any of you remember the infamous video

>HI im bunny! H-h-h-hey im oliver

Now how do these people explain themselves after being accussed of faking DID

DID is a specific psychiatric diagnosis. It is a Complex Dissociative Disorder(CDD) alongside several other disorders like P-DID (ICD only), OSDD, and UDD.

Some plural folks meet the criteria of a CDD, but many do not, as these disorders have very specific criteria- and experiencing 'more than one' experiences of various kinds is only one of those.

So they created a whole new spectrum lol

Some important words used in these spaces:

Plural = a person experiencing plurality

Singlet = someone who isn't plural

System = a group of people inside the body

Headmate = an entity inside the system

switching = a headmate taking over the system from another headmate

sysmed = someone who believes "systems" can only exist in disorders such as DID

Theres more terms (some are funny asf ) but those are the most important: https://dragonsroost.neocities.org/plural/pluralglossary

--

What are the causes of plurality (besides being an attentionseeker even doe i and (you) !attentionmaxxers are one aswell)

Traumagenic is the name for plurality caused from having trauma

Plurality can also come from tulpamancy (if you didn't know tulpamancers are the coomers of the occult world)

and other causes are called endogenic which spawns the terms "endo" and "anti-endo"

Internet history

They seem to have begun in 2001 when a website named darkpersonalities created an article on why they don't identify with their diagnosis (im assuming this was actual diagnosed ppl not identifying cuz im not reading allat), But the actual time i found when this whole community i think took off is when in 2019 streamer protomagicalgirl disclosed their plurality, which made the xitter hashtag #pluralgang trend and made many people "recognize" they were also plural

resources: https://dragonsroost.neocities.org/pluralstuff, https://pluralpedia.org/w/Plurality

Ok heres the community to troll now

https://old.reddit.com/r/plural/ (posts are restricted apparently but i havnt tried posting yet and if not should be easy to get into, also i think comments are free game)

Dramaworthy post to mine btw

https://old.reddit.com/r/plural/comments/1c0m68l/plural_lesbians_are_awesome_truth/

MTF 33 year old plural lesbian recieves backlash in lesbian sub (xer whole account is also very interesting )

So the show has released, and as expected by anyone with a brain, it sucks. However it seems to have sucked more than anyone could have predicted. This might legitimately darn Bethesda lmao.

First, here is a comment from this thread explaining how they absolutely butchered world building (this show is canon btw):

So, in summary, if I understand correctly, these are the major changes:

- Shady Sands got cratered in 2277

- NCR vertibird downed on the strip

- The Strip barricades are gone

- Vault Tec seemed to have caused the Great War

- The Boneyard is no longer a thing

- Shady Sands is in place of the Boneyard

- NCR Rangers are gone

- Aradesh is no longer the founder of Shady Sands (more speculatory)

- Somehow the Brotherhood seemed to have overran the NCR in 2277

What I can't believe is that they actually retconned the original two Fallout games and that nobody won New Vegas. Even more egregious is the lore change with the BoS-NCR war, which retcons THE ENTIRETY OF F:NV. This has to be a new timeline at this point.

TL:DR is they literally retconned the 3 games they didn't make, and then replaced the factions from those games with very special factions they made from the 2 games they developed themselves. This is like a bad fanfiction lol.

People predicably, are mad. Some seethe:

Jesus. I genuinely can't believe I was actually letting myself be excited for the future of this franchise before this release. Completely retconning the original games is genuinely fricking so sad man.

When is it said aradesh is no longer the founder of shady sands?

Also when do we see the ncr vertibird crashed on the strip?

It's never said by Moldaver, but it seems to be implied that she founded Shady Sands in addition to being the remaining NCR leader. This is speculation, and it probably shouldn't be listed as an actual change.

Vertibird: https://i.imgur.com/a/5ygLxmK

So even though it's been established that Shady Sands is in an entirely different state of the new california Republic from the boneyard, they just slapped it right into los angeles, and then they nuked it, why???

What even is a Shady Sands? Has anyone else wondered why they named the first game Fallout 3 by the way? Wacky Bethesda xD

That's not a nuke crater, that's a "Borg scooped up the settlement" crater. This is dumb.

I knee it.

I just knew it.

I prayed it wasnt the case but at any opportunity they had, Bethesda tried to retcon New Vegas and now their efforts... went nuclear.

Hate it. HATE IT. HATE IT.

New Vegas is the Canon version of events. Not some Amazon show.

I fricking knew Todd would frick it over to create their version of Fallout artificially. I fricking hate it. I was fine with a scenario where the NCR loses in Vegas, but to just extensively rewrite the lore of Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas to jerk off the BoS even more? Fricking dead to me.

Says you, but Bethesda owns the franchise and this is the direction they took. They entirely retconned the fallout games they did not make, and they've succeeded. Next season they'll go and show New Vegas as a dead husk bereft of anything that made it special. Enjoy!

Also, they do not care anymore. They are owned by Microsoft now and exist to make xbox and live games.

Look, I am very good at that. My Canon Star Wars are the old Comic books with sea dragons and Jaxxon the green rabbit. I literally ignored anything that came after that.

So I will need to ignore Bethesda to keep the correct Canon? Boo f#₪#^ hoo. They didnt get even a passable game out in the last 12 years!

I walked the Divide for the NCR, I can ignore Bethesda for them as well.

Haven't watched the show yet as I sail the high seas but this ending sounds very, very annoying. Seems like the show starts off well though but if what I'm seeing here is the case I'll be pretty fricking ticked that they essentially made the West the same as the East in terms of development and that they made NV mean nothing.

NV was entirely retconned. The casinos are literally husks and the city is dead. NCR died when Shady Sands (located in the wrong place) was blown up by one guy.

Christ alive 🤦🏿‍♂️. They should've atleast had some obsidian writers and lorekeepers there to keep things consistent. This is just laziness. I'm not one of those people who thinks Bethesda despises obsidian but like cmon.

It's not laziness. It was a deliberate choice.

Resetting to a status quo of “muh wasteland” absolutely is laziness

Its funny because there is a meme that Bethesda is spite driven because obsidian made a better fallout game than bethesda and the metacritic score 83, 85 thing FNV being retconned is funny knowing the meme

I hate it all.

The NCR was written out as a society entirely. The writers I guess just learned about shady sands and went 'oh its the capital so if we blow it up then the NCR will collapse.'

The NCR was such a good faction, it was the only one that actually grew, that had a familiar functioning postwar society. And what did they do? They nuked them out of existence to show off the brotherhood and a dead, empty New Vegas.

Why, why would they do this.. they could have made it right after the nuking not decades after. They pissed all over the legacy of my favourite game.

I blame Lonesome Road and Chris Avellone.

I can't hold him responsible for this, he had enough sense to know how big the NCR was and how the game world worked. That's why Ulysses wanted to destroy the Long 15 and block them from reaching the Mojave.

To me, Fallout stood apart for being a post-post-apocalyptic story. Just nuking the NCR not only strips away one of the most interesting aspects of the setting but does it, to my eyes, entirely unnecessarily. If you wanted to tell a wasteland story, you could have:

• Set it between Fallout 1 and 2, or even before Fallout 1

• Set it in one of the vast regions of America that are untouched by the games thus far

But no. Fricking why?

I knew this would happen the moment I've heard the name Todd Howard.

It really feels like they asked BETHESDA for the lore, and they said 'oh well you got the Brotherhood of Steel who have this big airship and vertibirds and huge machine guns that can only be wielded in power armor.'

then went 'oh there's this group called the NCR, I think they're from shady sands or something, you can blow them up for shock value it'll be fine. There's also this big place called New Vegas you can turn into a dump too who cares lmao.'

"heh heh heh that'll teach 'em to like obsidian's game more than ours*

Honestly I am becoming one of those people more and more by the minute, especially if their plans for New Vegas next season are what they seem to be.

somehow palpatine returned

So what did house predict then if it was vault tec who dropped the bombs. So Mr house knew the nukes where coming and still couldn't shoot them down or get the plat chip

Also it says shady shands fell in 2277 but new vegas is set in 2281 ?

I guess NV is just entirely retconned in the show? NV is dead, empty. The only places that exist are a half dozen towns outside of the city itself. The casinos are gutted entirely aside from the Lucky 38 which I guess House lives in still? He would be waking up just as the NCR was probing into NV, Caesar's Legion would be on it's way as well. Big MT is still abducting people.. The Brotherhod wouldn't have lost at Helios One but also now have infinite energy so why would they even care?

The entirity of FNV was fought over a dam, water and power.. Now the BOS has infinite clean and renewable fusion.. the NCR doesn't exist either.

So they're using the facade of 1, 2 and NV as a backdrop for more BoS shenanigans from Bethesda's mainline games.

Maaaaan

This is what I was afraid of. A good show based in world building that I think is fundamentally uninteresting.

I'm probably just gonna separate it out as its own thing in my head, no matter how canon Todd says it is.

This is what everyone paying attention was afraid of, but they got shot down as alarmist for daring to suggest the brilliant creative minds behind Starfield might provide a shite backdrop for worldbuilding.

He was in a meeting to know exactly when it would happen and was wrong.. somehow.

Did he not read the memo?

Fallout new vegas mr house : I was able to almost accurately predict a nuclear war and I have set the pieces for my rise to power after I come back online

Tv show Mr House : Shieeeeeeeet I ain't reading all that I'm just gonna pretend I read this

To everyone saying the NCR is totally collapsed.

I highly doubt it. It seems after Shady Sands was nuked the NCR was a bit scrappy but pulling itself together to keep everything afloat, with the BOS destroying the HQ and the view of the NCR leader using the Cold Fusion to power the entire city at once, it shows the civilians of the NCR are still existing at least throughout the entire ruins in some way.

I imagine next season, we're gonna see the BoS biting way more than it can Chew, and something with New Vegas as well, and with the father constantly mentioning something about "Meeting your Creators." How much you wanna bet Mr House is technically still alive? Just New Vegas went into dormancy??

Im excited to see potentially the NCR Regrouping or like Scrappy NCR rebels, and Desert Rangers in the Mojave. I highly doubt the NCR is done and over with from what we saw.

Whatever your opinions on it, retconning NV out of the timeline (which is exactly what they've done) frickin sucks.

Yeah.. But at least it isn't like a straight full on they don't even exist kind of retcon. Seems more like a soft reboot

Hello fellow spoiler fiends who went straight to the end and saw the New Vegas tease. Also, from what I gathered skipping around, the MC's father was a Vault Tec guy who nuked Shady Sands because her mother went there and was having a great time (missed a bunch of dialogue skipping through so that might not be right). The Brotherhood has cold fusion now and the guy in charge seems like a peepee so presumably they will butt up against whoever is now in charge of House's technology.

Dude wtf happened to the NCR? Didn't they say they had most of California pretty much colonized? I'm only on episode 4 but complete radio silence while it takes place near the boneyard and dayglow??

Episode 8 covers it.

It's not pretty.

About 5 years after New Vegas, Lucy's Mom left vault 33 to see if life was back on the surface, taking Lucy and her brother with her, and made her way to Shady Sands, which teleported to LA at some point. Her dad, who was a Vault-Tec executive came after them, stole the kids back, and use Vault-Tec's secret supply of nuclear weapons (The ones they launched to start the great war) to destroy the NCR, as they were a competitor to Vault-Tec.

Also, the ending credits show a destroyed New Vegas, with empty streets full of shattered Secuiritrons and a destroyed NCR Vertibird.

I also wanted to mention this specific comment, because I found it funny:

They also technically retconned FO4 since Kellogg mentions the NCR election.

Note that I'm not cherry picking comments here, basically everyone hates this garbage. Of course the critics love it, but the actual Fallout fans think it's terrible.

As one of the comments already mentioned, they really shouldn't have set this in the West Coast. They should have set it somewhere new for numerous reasons:

• New factions and threats to add a sense of tension and mystery as the viewer wouldn't know anything more than the main character

• Avoid having to retcon or step on the toes of the games

• Keep it in a region that is less advanced so you can have your apocalypse fantasy

• Set the show up as a prequel for Fallout 5, building hype for it even if it's years away.

Expect this thread to be updated as more seethe is posted, this is developing drama. In a few hours we will probably see the hitpieces from journ*lists calling the haters bigots, so keep an eye out for that.

Edit: here are more threads with tons of seethe in them:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fotv/comments/1bt7fzx/fallout_spoiler_master_thread/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fotv/comments/1bt7fzx/fallout_spoiler_master_thread/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/1c17tyn/spoilers_about_the_ncr/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/1c17mrr/discussion_about_the_ncr_in_the_tv_show/

dear god this one is maximum cope: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fotv/comments/1c185mn/my_theories_for_season_2_and_possible/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fotv/comments/1c15tey/so_does_the_show_take_place_in_an_alternate/

Two high profile murders have occured in Lebanon in recent days and they seem to be linked.

Jbail, the biblical Byblos. (See what I did there?)

Pascal Sleiman was the leader of the Lebanese Forces party in Jbail. According to army intelligence, a gang of Syrians pistol whipped him and dumped him in the trunk of his own car where he suffocated. They took his car and drove back to al-Qusayr just across the Syrian border. The motive was just to steal his car and had nothing to do with politics.

Pascal Sleiman.

Many people don't buy it. The Lebanese Forces is one of the two main Christian parties and the most important faction opposing Hezbollah. Hezbollah controls al-Qusayr and has long been notorious for protecting criminals in the nearby Bekaa Valley. And why would carjackers bother to kill him and bring his body back to Syria?

Syrian troops celebrating the fall of of al-Qusayr after a joint operation with Hezbollah, 2013.

On the other hand there are reasons to believe the official story. If Hezbollah did it then why would their allies in the army arrest the suspects? Why not just make up the same story but say they got away?

Karantina, January 18, 1976. The defenseless Beirut neighborhood was destroyed by Christian militias with hundreds killed and r*ped.

LF supporters have understandably gone apeshit and insist it had to be an assassination. They're reacting like you would expect, blocking the coast road in Jbail and attacking random innocent Syrians, of whom there are still a million or more living in Lebanon after fleeing Syria's civil war. Hezbollah's leader pointed to this and compared it to the LF's role in starting the civil war in 1975. Nadim Gemayal, an ally of the LF, responded by putting 100% of the blame for the civil war on the Palestinians and made a truly deranged comment claiming that the LF were actually the real victims when they carried out the Karantina and Tal el-Zaatar massacres.

Nadim Gemayel's father Bashir was the hottest of Lebanese warlords but he looks weird and effeminate like his uncle Amine instead. Also fat.

Major plot twist: It turns out that an important Hezbollah associate who had disappeared a few days before Sleiman's death had actually been murdered as well. Mohammad Sarur was known to play an important role in passing money from Iran to Hamas. He was found a week after disappearing in a house in Beit Mery, tortured to death with 10 gunshots to his legs. A large amount of cash was found with him, ruling out robbery. The killers were pros who have managed to disappear without a trace. It is virtually certain he was assassinated by Mossad.

Mohammed Sarur.

So is this a coincidence or are the two murders linked? It would be wildly irresponsible to speculate, so I'm going to speculate now. The LF has been allied with Israel on and since the 1970s. Did Hezbollah realize their guy had been killed and retaliate by killing a leader of the LF? Or did they believe the LF had some hand in his death? After all, Beit Mery is a mostly Christian town where the LF must have some presence. Why choose Sleiman? Jbail is of no significance to Hezbollah. Did Sleiman have some secret importance or tie to Israel that Hezbollah knew about?

The view from Beit Mery, a resort town in the mountains above Beirut.

Whatever the truth is, we can guess the future will be a total shitshow. Any time when the Maronite patriarch is begging people to show restraint you know things are about to get ugly. Hezbollah's popularity is probably at an all-time low right now. Some Lebanese support its rocket attacks on Israel but many more, especially among Christians, resent being dragged into war by an unelected militia that seems to care more about Palestine, Syria, and Iran than their own country. Everyone remembers the 2006 war when Israel failed militarily but inflicted massive damage to civilian infrastructure that has still never been repaired. Even before the Gaza war began, Hezbollah had already been deeply unpopular for its role in keeping the government totally dysfunctional. Its enemies see this moment as an opportunity to take it down a few pegs, so expect them to make more aggressive moves in the near future.

I've been put on lithium for Bipolar Disorder. Apparently it's potentially toxic so I have to take blood samples frequently. My psychiatrist wants me to be hospitalized again but I refused because I don't want to and I don't think I need to. I just admitted I have suicidal ideation but no plans. So long as I don't go manic, I'll still be able to refuse. I'm getting good sleep lately so I don't think a manic episode is coming anytime soon. Shit only gets bad when I only get an hour of sleep and feel fine afterwards. Let's talk a bit about South African history.

Following the end of apartheid in 1994, there were fears that revenge was going to be the norm. Several pieces of writing can be found on this "Swaart gevaar" or "black danger" that would come with democracy. Some whites fled, but many decided to stay and embrace the multicultural society. To help heal the wounds of apartheid, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was held. The aim was to air out all the crimes of humanity that occurred. Those who gave honest testimony would be given amnesty while those who were deemed to be politically motivated would face justice. It was also a platform for victims to tell their stories.

Instead of retributive justice, the country turned to restorative justice, which is an approach to justice that personalizes the crime by having the victims and the offenders mediate a restitutive agreement to the satisfaction of each. Victims take an active role in the process. Meanwhile, offenders take meaningful responsibility for their actions, taking the opportunity to right their wrongs and redeem themselves, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the community. This approach is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offense against an individual or community, rather than the State.

Do you agree with restorative justice, or do you think retribution is superior? Mull over this as we delve into the intricacies of the TRC.

Reasons for the TRC

It shouldn't need to be stated, but several atrocities occurred during apartheid. This is without considering the several freedom fighters who went "missing". Some of the most tragic incidents are:

• In 1960, the Sharpeville Massacre occurred, an event that garnered international attention and outrage. When protestors convened outside a police station to protest pass laws, police opened fire and killed 69 people

• Another notable protest occurred on the 16th of June 1976 when students in Soweto marched to Orlando West Junior Secondary School. Teargas and bullets were released, resulting in fatalities of children. Most famously, Hector Peterson was one of the victims.

Subsequent waves of protests meant that by the end of the year, the government issued an official (although likely underestimated) casualty figure of 575 dead. This was the heyday of apartheid, but it led to complete condemnation from the international community and sanctions were put in place. Eventually, when F.W. de Klerk came into power, apartheid laws were slowly repealed. In 1994, the first democratic election was held and the ANC was voted into power, allowing Nelson Mandela to become president just four years after serving a 27-year prison sentence.

South Africa experiences hope

Americans will be familiar with the metaphor of the melting pot. In South Africa, we have the rainbow nation. When democracy was won, a wave of optimism swept the nation. Along with this came the idea of the prosperous, racially integrated ‘rainbow nation'. The idea became so popular that the rainbow became a shorthand for a nation seeking reconciliation and unity after decades of racial and political tensions.

The TRC consisted of three committees: Human Rights Violations, Amnesty, and Reparation and Rehabilitation. For the first time, the TRC process allowed for the voicing of injustices rendered audible in the public domain, and harrowingly revealed the pain, grief, and trauma that had previously been borne in silence and anonymity by victims and their families. The TRC was also aimed at a restoration of humanity, and comprised a drama of national proportions.

Significantly, however, four kinds of narrative truth were recognised by the TRC:

• factual – objective, empirical, impartial, legal, forensic

• social or dialogue – the kinds established by social interaction, discussion and debate

• subjective – personal memories and experiences

• reconciliatory – stories about healing that were future-oriented.

The first TRC hearing was held on 15 April 1996 in East London. When Fort Calata's widow, Nomonde, let out a piercing wail on remembering her husband's murder, the entire East London hall, led by Bishop Desmond Tutu, stood up and began singing Senzenima – what have we done? – a chorus to her agony, those present taking on her trauma collectively. (Many who testified to apartheid atrocities were having to ‘speak the unspeakable', and were reduced to conveying their pain in a realm outside of language.) Fort Calata was one of the Cradock Four, a group which included Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlawuli, who were murdered by security operatives in the Eastern Cape in June 1985.

Over 50 public hearings were held over 1888 days, more than 20000 reports/statements on 38000 incidents involving 14000 deaths were taken from victims/survivors (although only about 2000 were heard in the public hearings themselves, i.e. 10%), and 7116 applications were made for amnesty (of which 1167 were granted, i.e.16%). Amnesty could only be applied for in respect of acts committed with the complicity, if not proven approval, of apartheid leaders (e.g. the military, government and security forces) in pursuit of alleged enemies of the state. The Amnesty Committee concluded its work on amnesty applications by perpetrators in May 2001 (3 years after the five-volume TRC report was released in October 1988), but work continues to prosecute those not granted amnesty. Some ex-members of the Security Police and Bureau of Civil Cooperation have been serving prison sentences for murder, illegal arms possession and fraud e.g. Eugene de Kock, the Vlakplaas Commander (known as “Prime Evil” in the media), Dirk Coetzee and Craig Williamson.

Post TRC - Was forgiveness worth it?

Jacob Dlamini's text Native Nostalgia which discusses the possibility of the existence of a nostalgia for a pre-democracy past. In the introduction, Dlamini provides statements from South Africans who reveal a dissatisfaction with post-1994 society and a longing for the past. anxieties surrounding life in the new South Africa have resulted in some portions of the population believing that their survival was more secure during apartheid. Thus, while the arrival of democracy may have brought some hope to South Africa, views of the country's socio-political state after 1994 have led to scepticism regarding the possibility for post-Apartheid prosperity.

These views are exemplified in the case of South African Brandon Huntley who applied for refugee status in Canada, claiming that the government failed to protect him from racially motivated attacks. His lawyer, South African Russell Kaplan, claims that one of Huntley's intentions was to inform the world “what a sickly place South Africa is”.

The biggest setback is the lack of change that followed the TRC. The thing about rainbows is that the colors are separate, which is the case in South Africa. Arial photos taken by Johnny Miller reveal that economic divisions created by Apartheid still stratify the Western Cape. Using a drone, he captures how the segregation is not created by any natural phenomena but instead is caused by the manmade divisions of Apartheid. The photo below is of Lwandle/Nomzamo, a township that was designated for black people by the Group Areas Act of 1950. It was originally built as a low-cost place for workers to live.

According to a 2011 census, Nomzamo still has a black population of over 90%, revealing that demographics have not changed since 1994 and society is still segregated racially. These racial segregations trace economic lines.

Another photograph taken by Miller features Manenberg. This township was created in 1966 for coloured people after District Six and other areas were declared whites-only regions.

Like Nomzamo, Manenberg mostly retains its pre-democracy demographics thus over 80% of its residents are coloured. Furthermore, housing continues to be a problem and the widespread poverty breeds crimes and gangs.

Questions to ask yourself

• Was the TRC a good idea?

• Was justice served?

• Would South Africa be better off with a tribunal?

• Would South Africa be better off with white genocide following the end of apartheid?

• Did the TRC do anything good or was it just a show to brush away a bloody past?

To end off, I'd like to post an interview with a jail warden who once jailed political prisoners but now works as a tour guide at Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was held. Do you think he received justice? Hmmmmm...

I was looking through /r/Justrolledintotheshop when this post grabbed my attention:

Lots of facepalming in the shop when we saw this roll in.

I got curious and decided to look up the website.

UNITED STATES FEDERAL SERVICES

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION.

NATIONAL AND WORLDWIDE DATABASE

a prime Unit of the United States Christian Church (USCC)

A quick Google search of 'United States Christian Church USCC' just brings me back to this website, almost like they gave themselves the most vague name possible.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Announcement from the UNITED STATES FEDERAL SERVICES (USFS)

Dear Members and Supporters,

We are excited to share that the UNITED STATES FEDERAL SERVICES (USFS) is undergoing upgrades to enhance our program. The scheduled upgrades include the improvement of Metal Tags and the International Driver's License, featuring an information bar and magnetic strip for ease of recognition.

Key Upgrades:

• Improved Metal Tags

• Upgraded International Drivers' License

Introduction of the Legal Arm:

To further educat

>To further educat

You can't make this shit up.

Alright let's take a gander at the photo gallery on the front page:

Ok let's explore this website a little bit more...

No I'm not clicking accept What the frick is a church diplomat?

Introduction of the Legal Arm:

To further educate our diplomats and law enforcement about the legal activities in which we operate, we are introducing a Legal Arm. For any legal inquiries, please reach out to legal@usfs-churchgov.org. Our diplomats, carefully selected from clergy and laypeople, as well as consumers supporting USFS, can now obtain a "Church Diplomat License Plate" through our Department of Transportation

What the frick is a church diplomat license plate?

We appreciate your ongoing support in funding the Gospel of Jesus "The Christ" by becoming part of this initiative and purchasing a "Church Diplomat License Plate." Together, we aim to showcase the fair and righteous authority of the Church in the world.

Why'd they put "The Christ" in quotation marks?

1. APPLICATION Request: Please send an email to membership@usfs-churchgov.com to request an intake questionnaire (We ask you to attach your current state ID or Driver's License with a current background check. (This can be obtained at your local police station. Note: It is very important that we maintain the integrity of our program, however, we will not judge any previous events but we must acknowledge them with an acceptable explanation.)

Bro they want my personal info and they want me to write an explanation letter for my bad behavour.

1. Payment: Your payment will be based on your position in the church and the level of diplomatic service requested. (Invoice will be sent with acceptance email)

I see this is a Mormon group.

THE BENEFITS OF THIS REAL UPGRADED METAL PLATE:

1. You get to immediately represent the Gospel of JESUS "The Christ", especially, by showing the whole world via your new "Church Diplomat" license plate on your mode of transportation that, I am not ashamed of the resurrected Christ Jesus while so journeying throughout this World while handling church business.

1. Your "Church Diplomat" license plate comes with an impressive USFS International Driver's License (IDL) that's been well-known to be received by the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), especially, when traveling throughout our nation's airports.

> Sir, this area is off limi-

> Official church business, move aside

Q: How does the process work?

A: Simply because you're now under the explicit jurisdiction of the Church regarding your "private" vehicle(s). There are no more fees or regulations by the STATE to be assessed because of the "Separation BETWEEN Church and State" clause. (However, whenever purchasing your vehicle for the first time you must register with the state in order to have your vehicle properly taxed and placed in the state's database regarding your VIN)

I THOUGHT IT WAS A FRONT VANITY PLATE BUT IT'S SOVEREIGN CITIZEN BULLSHIT AHAHAHAHA

Q: Can law enforcement officers ticket me, if, in fact, I am pulled over for speeding as an Ambassador aka "Church Diplomat"?

A: Absolutely, however, most times law enforcement officers will extend a one-time courtesy to the "diplomat" whether "political or religious".

Ok let's click on that 'become a diplomat' link and see what we get:

Unsurprisingly it's a form wanting my info.

I did however get a good giggle out of the website's address:

Let's move along to their Law Enforcement Guide:

Yeah it's sovereign citizen bullshit with a christcuck spin to it.

The Church has the authority to have and establish its departments as a literal governmental structure via the highest law in the land, the US CONSTITUTION's First and Fourth Amendments guaranteed rights to Freedom of Religion and Freedom of the Press. The framers of the US Constitution meant that upon instituting such unprecedented statements the incoming and newly formed union would not lord its authority over the church, but also in the same like manner, that the church would not lord its authority over the government of America. Thus, putting into motion not only religiously but certainly politically,, because of the one simple fact, "Separation of Church and State."

>The Founding Fathers fought for my right to not get my car inspected.

See: STATE OF ALABAMA website: www.sos.alabama.gov/onlineservices and Click onto: "Entity Name Search" Then, input in the search engine:

UNITED STATES FEDERAL SERVICES (USFS)

Of course Alabama would get brought up.

And I did like they told me and searched "United States Federal Services" on the website and all I got were links informing me about my voter rights.

Well let's move along to the "WHO WE ARE" page:

We are the prime unit of the UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN CHURCH (USCC), truly dedicated to the missions, ministries, programs, and departments of the church. However, the USFS is geared towards encouraging our law enforcement agencies, military, and of course, our first responders around the globe.

They've yet to mention what those missions are.

Thank You for Your Service

We can never do enough to thank and appreciate our arm forces. And on this particular day, the USFS Director Carolyn Breeding authorizes the Outgoing Chief of Staff, Dr. Sykes to award and pay for the breakfast of at least 21 USA's Service Men and Women.

A quick Google reverse image search brings me back to this page.

MEET INCOMING CHIEF OF STAFF:

Ms. Crystal Taylor.

Another reverse image search brings me back to this webpage. However there's a clickable "Learn More" button underneath this person and when I click it I get a cart/checkout sidebar pop out:

Account is Closed

This merchant payment account is inactive and cannot process payments. Please contact the merchant for further assistance.

Well might as well look up and see what we get with "DR ZEDEKIAH SYKES"... The first two results are court cases.

Let's take a gander at that PDF file.

THE DEFENDANT:

Defendant's Attorney admitted guilt to violation of condition(s) 1"6 of the term of supervision.

was found in violation of condition(s) count(s) after denial of guilt.

The defendant is adjudicated guilty of these violations:

Violation Number Nature of Violation Violation Ended

1 Failure to report to the probation officer 01/25/2017

2 Failure to notify the probation officer of a change of residence 01/2512017

3 Failure to refrain from gambling or entering in a veue where 0112512017

gambling occurs.

ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS

Violation Number Nature of Violation Concluded

4 Failure to pay restitution 01/25/2017

5 Failure to disclose all assets and liabilities to the probation officer 01/25/2017

6 New law violation-forgery 2nd degree and attempting to 616de a police offuèr 01125/2017

IMPRISONMENT

The defendant is hereby committed to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for a total term of: 3 years

The goombler's fate.

Here's Sykes business website: Global Customized Business Services Corporation

Montgomery's Leading Business Assistance Firm

>Montgomery

Alabama again...

Quality Attorney-like Services throughout the USA

>Attorney-like Services

The man himself:

Ok let's click on that "Endorsements" tab

GCBSC, is the official administrative and processing center on behalf of both, the UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN CHURCH (USCC) and UNITED STATES FEDERAL SERVICES (USFS) Department of Transportation since 2020.

He's also on the "WHO WE ARE" page on the Church website:

Working night and day to genuinely encourage and love those who are making a difference in our nation. Front Left: Dr. Zedekiah Sykes-CHIEF OF STAFF; Front Center: Carolyn Breeding-DIRECTOR; and Front Right: Michael J. Goodman-ASSISTANT DIRECTOR.

Once again: Reverse image searching just bring me back to the website. I tried looking up all the names on the website but only got results for Skye.

We gotta' keep digging bros. Onto the "OTHER OFFERED PROGRAMS":

SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROGRAM-

The USFS Department of Transportation administers, the churchs' "Power Over My Mind" spiritual drug and alcohol abuse program. This program provides the individual with a series of in depth comprehensive surveys that challenges the self-destructive person to take an abrupt look at their present condition, self-examination of ones conduct, and of course, with the aim to re-direct that person back into healthy living while under the leading, wisdom, and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Testimonials:

"Hey everybody, I'm telling you that Dr. Sykes' created program "Power Over My Mind" has been a real blessing to me for real for real! Now please don't judge me for how I express myself, but I was able to realize that when I was driving and perceived to be drunk, I only hurt not just myself and could have injured another, but I was really hurting my children whom I love dearly. Believe me, this program works because it helps you to know Scriptures as well, along with me getting to know the Lord Jesus himself."

T.T. Tolbert, former Client and Overcomer!

That fricking line about the kids got me lmao

Onto the "VERIFY LICENSE PLATE NATI" page:

I'm not sure if that's a real quote from Abigail Van Buren.

ATTENTION: TO ANY AND ALL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL, PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO JURISDICTION OVER THE CHURCH PER THE US CONSTITUTION AND BILL OF RIGHTS! THE SEPARATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE IS YET INEFFECT 300%.

WE APPRECIATE YOUR HARD WORK & USCC/USFS PRAYING FOR YOUR SAFETY!

Abigail Van Buren

Actually hol' up, who is Abigail Van Buren?

>Died: January 16, 2013

Let's take look at the "UPCOMING CHANGES" page:

...

There are no upcoming changes. But hey! We finally get to learn about the church!

I'm starting to think this isn't a church at all.

And finally let's look at the "DISCLAIMER" page:

It's just Syke admitting it's all bullshit.

The "Find Out More" link just reloads the page.

Well that's pretty much it for the Church website but we're not done with Ol' Skye just yet.

After a bit of Googling I found his business:

ZEDEKIAH SYKES EVANGELISTIC ASSOCIATION

John Sykes seems to be Zedekiah's brother, but unlike Zedekiah John is a legitimate pastor of 30 years with his own church. Not gonna' soft-dox this guy any further since he might not have anything to do with Zedekiah grift.

Harry William passed away in 2023. I'm pretty sure that's him

Phew, that was a fun rabbit hole.

If you bros decide to go looking up any church website for yourself make sure you have a good anti-virus. Church websites are crawling with every virus known to man because boomers don't know how to keep their websites clean.

!atheists bros come look at this new church grift.

Normaloids always seethe at any disrespect of the sacred institution of public school because stopping to consider the amount of precious youth wasted on it is maddening.

— kunk (@gunk4188) April 8, 2024

You weren't going to do anything with your youth, stop lying

Gay Slave Zogbot Goycattle Old Voice:

When Kennedy used this rebuttal on Nixon, you knew right then he won the presidency

I mean what was anyone going to do with their youth stolen from them by schooling? Was this dude trying to move out at age 9?

I would have gone to karate class fought my friends in the woods harassed girls and played Halo and it would have been more important than anything that happened in all the years I spent in school

You could've done that then you were just too much of a loser

Obviously I'm saying I would have done it more. Why do you guys always try to talk like high school bullies from a 90s movie it makes you look really gay

Yeah everyone else did it plenty if you didn't that's on you

It's just a fact that kids are lonelier and more depressed and suicidal when they have to go to school. Suicide spikes and drops with attendance. Doing this fake pseudo-chad 80s movie "shove nerds in a locker" affectation when you're a hyperonline 67k tweet irony lib is so gay

You saw someone you wanted to be like on a TV screen and adopted their manner of speaking to play-act as them on the internet Grow up neighbor

Libtards are not materialists they are superstitious reactionary peasants who want everything to stay the same because they're afraid of change

Libs are the REAL reactionaries

You're a grown man crying about high school.

Kunk(Fascist): The school system SUCKS. Here are some cold hard facts and statistics as to why that is.

Gayest Tone ((((((progressive)))))): uhhh lmao stop assailing this institution that I chose to defend for no apparent reason other than my hatred towards young people

That's too many parentheses sir

They will never ever try to actually explain why school making kids want to kill themselves is okay just boring shit like this. I'm glad that people like you are leaving the next crop of youth to people like me. Gen Alpha are going to be heartless Harkonnenesque Ultranazis.

We're going to have 10 year olds re-enacting Skibidi potty with your decapitated head. We're going to do shit to you that's never been done before.

Total Millennial Death!

what's your problem with school man. did the other kids pick on you just because you're a raving nazi freak. that's tough. personally i made lifelong friends and had s*x

Look, I know you're scared. I get it. Just imagining the racist ogre Trumpist militias rampaging through America if he loses, razing liberal cities to the ground, mass lynching of leftists, all their crying orphaned children, it breaks my heart. The future looks bleak.

That would be very worrisome except last time Trump lost you got about ten thousand dipshits nationwide to break into one building and then all die or go to prison

The GOP are enacting a fricking nationwide trans genocide right now and minorities are scared of going out at night for fear of being killed, Biden doesn't care. Rethuglikkkan social media radicalization is at its peak. The most popular site is owned by a racist billionaire ghoul.

Nı̇gger

Shouldn't you be in your retirement home that's like one of those brick wall bars with 80s arcade machines and a particularly strict mask policy? Why did your caretakers let you walk so far? You might get yourself run over! BTW, your euthanasia is scheduled for this Sunday

No one should have to listen to people like this anymore. Teenagers should rule the world and throw these r-slurs into fields for the worms. > > > > > > > > > That's the greatest thing they'll ever contribute to the Earth. What the frick do you think "Gayest Tone" has ever done?

Nothing. He does nothing. All of his talk about how "muhfuggen youths don't be doin' shieeeet nigguh dis nazi nigguh muhhhhhh bruuuuuuuuuh" is completely feeble considering HE can't fricking do ANYTHING except take anti-depressants and whine about systemic racism

His youth was abused and beaten and all he can do is hope he can abuse and beat other youths. Such a weak and servile cow. You will always put your head down when even the weakest and most r-slurred overlords come around. Just imagine what you'll be doing when we get power

Imagine how little irreverence will be left in you after a 15 year old whips you for looking at him funny. Imagine the look on your face as you take a bullet straight to it because we decided your labor isn't worth your general ugliness anymore

Same guy:

I sometimes hold out my hand expecting to feel hers

(https://x.com/gayest_tone/status/1777546404170215730)

"The year is 1967, the Council of Irony Socialists has been summoned for an urgent meeting. On the agenda: weird little guys who talk like mofugging Sepiroth. I'm your host David, and I'm about to tell you how the English language was changed forever. This is The Cold War"

these people are so delusional. when you say they're losers they lose their minds. when you try to engage they just play dolls with wojacks. continuing to put them in the public square to point and laugh is all you can do at this point.

Joe Biden is enabling genocide at home and abroad and you're busy defending the public school system to attempt to own young people?

It's funny that all the worrying about kids on social media revolves around Instagram giving them body issues or Tiktok doing gestures vaguely China Stuff, meanwhile there's a webforum that's turned 25% of men under 20 into lolicon-crazed school shooters and nobody notices

I was radicalized by being an intelligent weirdo in a Bolshevik r-slur society. You have no clue how intelligent youths operate because you're an old libtard that is deeply deeply concerned with the ALT RIGHT and Richard Spencer

I'm crying ahahahahahahhaa

I would be crying too if I had 285 days until 6th grader MAGA Red (Hat) Guards were going to unperson me and my family for taking a reactionary pro-school position. Such is the price of being on the wrong side of history.

Irony-shitlibs and lefty-soprany-meme accounts have to perform an eternal balancing act between the limpwristed whining of a beaten animal, and effete, stereotypical, jock mannerisms mimicking their highschool bully (from the 80s when they had hair).

Being an adult opining on the banality homework and detention instead of, like, shooter drills or class sizes really says a lot.

No one ever did that and you are hallucinating. We're going to give you your medicine and put you to bed now grandpa.

You think spending years of one's early life doing academically pointless busywork may not be mentally stimulating or positive? You should talk about more important issues, like how I had to sit under a desk for ten minutes once.

You really don't strike me as the type of person who spent their youth doing anything that was worth anything, tho

You're a r*pe victim and apologist

I got laid in the school bathroom every A Block day. So what I'm saying is "skill issue".

getting r*ped by the male teachers doesn't actually count as getting laid sorry

It's so funny how compulsory public schooling is one of the few truly good American innovations, to the point the entire world has basically adopted it and marginalized Americans have fought tooth and nail for full access to it, and it still has haters lol

i had a great time in HS yet i agree with most of this guy's posts, it's insane how western socialists pretend to be anti status quo or anti authority yet the second you attack an authoritarian institution…

…with actual well thought out criticism instead of whining about “muh oppression” or something of that manner, they project the 90's bully caricature onto you. what's really odd is a lot of the negative comments here are gay millennials, the people who actually got bullied in hs

I find it funny how you're fundamentally right in a lot of ways about how abusive teachers tend to be, as is standard for petty tyrants but because you don't describe it in a passive, pleading way about how you're a "traumatized victim" then they immediately turn on you.

Second Xeet

“There isn't anything critically wrong with youth today- old people always just say that”

Teachers subreddit:

teachers deserve all of this and 10x worse when you realize the total amount of life hours wasted away in a stale fluorescent lighting prison learning nothing instead of being in the sunlight and playing with your friends or developing real skills

also the fricking narcissism of an adult agent of the state with a captive child audience venting to them about personal matters and being offended when the kids dont give a frick

it's probably true this is caused by early exposure to the internet by negligent parents but if so it's a good byproduct of a bad situation. the internet offers near total intellectual freedom and access to all human knowledge, meaning kids now know their teachers are r-slurs

i remember often getting into arguments with a teacher about something where i knew for a fact that i was right and they were wrong but being forced to submit to them out of "respect" and i'm barely above average intelligence, it's probably 10x worse for kids today

Look replies …frend under attaq very amusing. Libtards love to imprison high spirit they're Nurse Ratched in everything now

I saw large Polynesian men sauntering around the campus with dead looks in their eyes, totally disenchanted with life. They could've experienced an incredible death in war, but they were denied this.

this person is mad because a teacher confiscated their phone last week

He's right. Having to listen to some fat r-slurred b-word condescendingly lecture you on something you know more about than them is something no intelligent young male should be subjected to. And a teachers home life and personal business has no place in a classroom.

That would imply there are subjects about which you're knowledgeable lmao

A. I'm an expert on elder scrolls lore, racial anthropology, antediluvian era history, and esoteric knowledge in general

B. You're a gay r-slurred normgroid freak who is knowledgeable in having a normal one and having the most cucked, longhoused and "safe" opinions

C. continued

Your "esoteric knowledge" is limited to and defined by whatever flavour of the month idea or popular term you picked up from online discourse, run by sub 110 IQ midwits with developmental disorders, or grifters such as gay Jew that larps as Bronze Age warrior.

In other words, a literal NPC.

Chud-killing trvth nvke

Do you still listen to radio? It seems to be a dying medium when podcasts and streaming are so easily available. However, there will always be truckers and they need something to listen to, so radio remains. You're probably familiar with Howard Stern, who is the archetypal "shock jock" who attracted fans with his outrageous content that sometimes skirted the limits of the law.

If we're talking famous shock jocks, it would be a grave error to not mention Opie and Anthony. The show began in 1995, and very quickly it gained popularity. However, all good things come an end and it's easy to argue that it is Anthony Cumia's fault.

So who is Anthony Cumia? How did he become a successful radio host? What led to his downfall? This and more will be explored in this post.

The Early Days of Cumia

Cumia is the middle child of Rosemarie DiLeonardi, and he has an older brother named Joe Cumia. His family lived in New York, and though Cumia attended Elwood-John H. Glenn High School in Elwood but never completed his education. For a few years, he worked as a handyman installing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. He also did construction work, but he didn't want this to be his future. He already had dreams of being a radio host, and he looked up to figures like Howard Stern.

His dream would come true when he and his brother, Joe, called into a radio show called Nighttime Attitude on WBAB to do an O.J. Simpson parody. At the time the host was Opie Hughes, and he loved it so much he invited Anthony to the studio. From that point onwards, Anthony's natural comedic nature landed him a spot beside Opie.

Here is the song:

The Opie and Anthony Show Era

As previously stated, the Opie and Anthony Show began in 1995 (my birth year). Their antics attracted fans, but there were already signs that the due had too much of a habit of taking things too far. The show was ended by an April Fool's Day prank that had them convincing listeners that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino was killed in a car accident while transporting a young female Haitian prostitute. But this wouldn't be the end of the show. Far from it, my friend.

The show rebooted at WNEW in New York City. At this point, the pair had built a reputation for themselves, and you can imagine the kind of crowd they drew. Let's just say they were uncouth, to put it mildly. This will be important later. The show shot up in popularity, and to be honest, the show was hilarious. I had a playlist of top 10 episodes that never failed to make me laugh. The show grew as comedian Jim Norton joined regularly alongside Bill Burr and Patrice O' Neal. Here are some good episodes:

Lady Gaga

Conjoined Twins

To Catch a Predator

Patrice O'Neal False Allegation Story

There are many more, but you can find them yourself. Things were going well, the edgy humor was going well, but eventually things got a little too edgy.

Anthony Cumia and his Chud Years

Over time, Anthony Cumia gave hints and clues that he wasn't a fan of black people, except for friends close to him like Patrice. He continually complained about 5%ers ranting about killing the white man, and being afraid of being killed or mugged by n-words.

This hit a crescendo during the Obama years when it started to become a central point of his persona. He didn't go unchallenged. Patrice spoke against it and even Bill Burr basically told him to frick off at one point.

Now, don't be mistaken, the show was going through several other controversies and it was cancelled and moved several times. However, it did find a home on Sirius XM where there was relative stability despite their shenanigans. Not all was well however, and even Opie was annoyed with Anthony being a chud and some friction was occurring.

Anthony Gets Cancelled

Anthony fancies himself a photographer, as he was taking pictures in 2014 at Times Square. His images included a Black woman who hadn't consented to being photographed. The based Kween punched him and he took to Twitter to sneed.

The controversy that arose from this got him fired from the show. It's a bit of a weird situation, as he had said worse on the show. However, on Twitter, he was being exposed to a much bigger audience that normally wouldn't tune into the show and hear the vitriol.

Leaving the show, Cumia started his own business called Compound Media and launched the Anthony Cumia Show. It struggled to gain nearly the amount of popularity of the Opie and Anthony Show. It also intersected with a split in the relationship between Opie and Anthony.

He also got into legal trouble when he domestically abused his girlfriend, with allegations including strangulation, assault, criminal mischief, and unlawful imprisonment. He accepted a plea deal and blamed it on the alcohol. In this video he threatens his gf with a gun.

So, in case you weren't keeping track. This is a man who couldn't keep a job, didn't finish school, totes guns, abuses his gfs, and gets into legal trouble. His greatest fear is thugs. I think he needs a long look in the mirror.

Anthony Today

Cumia is a shell of his former self. Before going private, the opie and anthony subreddit would make incessant fun at him and all his mishaps in life, too many to list here. He's still on his chud shit, and its old at this point. If you listen to him, there's a 100% chance you're a flaming chud.

https://x.com/AnthonyCumia/status/1777548682474168537

https://x.com/AnthonyCumia/status/1777481134890168344

https://x.com/AnthonyCumia/status/1777479132143591677

The lesson to learn from this is to not project onto others what you are. Instead, look at the man in the mirror and change his ways, as Michael Jackson would tell us. Also, don't be so racist that you even lose white friends over it. It's a pity things went this way, as the show was hilarious and Anthony is a genuinely funny guy. Alas, the chud in him led him down a dark path.